Meliorism - The rise of neo-atheism and the fall of reason

[Brayton.l]

Love me some big words.
Reminds me of the guys that have to have the biggest, loudest, most jacked up F150 in the little Hamlet I call home.
Napoleon Complex I think it's called.

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It’s becoming clear to me that there is a new kind of atheism. It stems from the cut n’ paste vox-pops puppets who think Dawkins’ greatest contribution to atheism is his ill-conceived disaster work, ‘The God Delusion’ and who wouldn’t recognize a Selfish Gene if it broke into the bedrooms and stole their laptops.

Sigh, have you read it? What part of it was disastrous? Or was it just the subject matter you found offensive?

People who are characterized by an atheist philosophy not born of critical thought and diligence but congealed out of a conflation of sound-bites from Youtube clips of proselytizing egoists and ratings-driven public access panels of smug half-educated, half-wits with half-baked notions of the absolute truth and authority of science delivering what they consider to be progress.

You mean their opinions? If you don't like them, don't watch them. I'm sure they appreciate the hits though, so carry on.

While I agree there needs to be more study of the classic Freethinkers, attacking people simply because they have not been exposed to them, or haven't taken a college course on Philosophy is just plain mean.

This neo-atheism would be quaint if it were not so dangerous.

The central theme running through neo-atheism is meliorism. The notion that science and technology, specifically as a result of human action, brings progress (and equally that and backward revision is retrogressive) is, in my experience dealing with neo-atheists, so central to their thinking it has become the priori on which their philosophy (if it can be called that) is predicated.

Meliorism. Meliorism Merriam-Webster

Its "A Priori"

It's called Humanism, and in case you weren't aware, your in an Atheist forum, so it's probably Secular Humanism. Who do you propose will make things better if not us?

So convinced of the absolute inviolability of modern science, the neo-atheist behaves like a fundamentalist in their defense of their belief. Offering up misinterpretations and meaningless quotes stripped of context to maintain purchase on their belief, attacking reasoned inquiry like cyber-crusaders lopping off the heads of anyone who dare violate the first commandment of neo-atheism – Science is a jealous god and thou shalt not have any other god before it.

It's not science we cling to, but scientific method and reason. Does that make every one of us reasonable and rational. Nope. Makes us human. Some are laid back, easy going people, and some are raging assholes. Deal with it.

The eighteenth century dream of human progress is alive and well and masquerading as neo-atheism. Any notion of progress or regression can only make sense within a system of teleological thought. Teleological thought has embedded itself into the neo-atheist psyche so deep it has become the embodiment of reason.

I don't think that paragraph makes a damn bit of sense. It's just wrong from beginning to end. Check your definitions.

“Eighteenth-century social philosophy was convinced that mankind has now finally entered the age of reason… With the progress of time society will more and more become the society of free men, aiming at the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Temporary setbacks are, of course, not impossible. But finally the good cause will triumph because it is the cause of reason.” [Bettina B. Greaves 1996]

But this is easily exposed as a myth. When we look back from any given state to the state of things in the past it is fair to use the terms development and evolution in a neutral sense. From this point it is easy to identify the process that led us from one state to the next, but we must guard against confusing change with improvement or progress. There is no progress against concrete goals, the general notion of progress and improvement is measured against a change in state, it simply doesn’t stand up to critical examination. The term progress is nonsensical when applied to a comprehensive world view.

You argue that we have made no progress when applied to a comprehensive world view, simply because we had no concrete goals as we progressed?

To compound the matter neo-atheists assert human action as the agent of this progress. It is not permissible to substitute pseudo-scientific anthropocentrism for the anthropocentrism of religion and older metaphysical doctrines.

The danger with Neo-atheism, as I see it, is that it has absorbed pseudoscientific anthropocentrism and the delusion of progress, and has rapidly become fundamentalist in its defense of these mistaken beliefs.


MM

That's my two cents. Maybe someone else on the board has the energy to unravel this Gordian Knot of babble. I just don't feel like it tonight. I did do my best to correct your many spelling mistakes.
Your welcome.