Jeff Sparrow on the need to save ourselves from the sickishness of the New Atheists

[abaris]

Given time, you say.  The centuries preceding weren't enough?

It's not even 300 years since the age of enlightenment, which was an intellectual movement, not reaching the masses. It's not even one century, since people got general access to education in the West. And now, even more than 30 years ago, there are a lot of disenfranchised, and/or low educated, people, who desperately look for a way out of their daily misery. Atheism can't offer that. It doesn't make promises of everything being better, if you just subscribe. Even less so when the only offer, again, comes from a purely intellectual perspective that doesn't even reach John or Jane Doe.