Atheism is "finally dying out"

[taylor93112]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/8885...w-atheism/

Not sure if this has been posted yet.

I do not believe atheism will "die out". This is going to be an ongoing thing with people until, as Dawkins says, people get over their fear of death.

What are your thoughts?

[CapnAwesome]

When he says Atheism is beginning a more interesting conversation hopefully he isn't referring to his own pseudo-intellectual ramblings.

[downbeatplumb]

As long as there has been theism there has been atheism.

Even the article itself didn't really claim that atheism was dying out just that there are no new vocal people like Dawkins or Hitchins coming through.

I would guess that the author of the piece is a believer, the sense of relief that the stupidity of theism wasn't being pointed out by so many atheists was palpable.

[taylor93112]

I just recently left Christianity after a few years of struggling to stay with it. It makes me sad that I missed Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, etc. when they first made "new atheism" a big deal.

[Neo-Scholastic]

You didn't miss much. They tended to hyperbole against a cardboard cut-out version of God. They also tried to paint all religious faiths with the same brush. The article calls for more substantive objections to religion and less overt hostility against believers.

[EGross]

The great thing about the internet, is that you need not miss anything. You can even watch a B&W video of Richard Feynman giving a lecture on the Scientific Method.

[StatCrux]

The "new atheist" thing was very much like watching the hippie movement of the sixties, lot's of nonsense talked by a few individual characters followed and admired by credulous college kids and fringe groups, no substantive arguments or real engagement with credible opposition to the movement. Then it just fizzles out as people realize it's empty vacuous nature when the leaders die or drift away to other money making schemes, quite amusing while it lasted though.

[Minimalist]

They tended to hyperbole against a cardboard cut-out version of God.

There's another kind? Oh. I bet you think your version is "different?"

[Creed of Heresy]

The "new atheist" thing was very much like watching the hippie movement of the sixties, lot's of nonsense talked by a few individual characters followed and admired by credulous college kids and fringe groups, no substantive arguments or real engagement with credible opposition to the movement. Then it just fizzles out as people realize it's empty vacuous nature when the leaders die or drift away to other money making schemes, quite amusing while it lasted though.

You sure seem to be of the opinion that the article was written by anyone of any intellect. There's still plenty of atheist voices popping up all over the place and becoming more well-known, and still plenty of authors who are openly stating agnostic or atheistic views that are best-selling.

Fact of the matter is that Christopher Hitchens openly and repeatedly debated spiritual leaders from all the myriad faiths out there. He devoted his life to debating them, practically. There's DOZENS of debates with people of all faiths against him. Never once have any of them ever managed to outwit him, nobody ever managed to make a satisfactory argument against his. They all trail off into feeble, fumbling attempts at vindicating themselves and utterly failing to make any point seem valid because he tears them apart each and every time. This isn't just a view by atheists only; almost every critical source on debates have said that Hitchens pretty much steamrolled his opponents, and he debated with intellectual big names of religions, too, so-called sources of theological mastery. And that craptastic book, "Unhitched?" Yeah, I love how its reviewers largely stated that the entire thing was a strawman attack and was incapable of addressing the points it was trying to address.

Fact of the matter is our "leaders" live on even in death. People still fondly remember Sagan and his wisdom and intellect, and laud his contributions to astrophysics, and hand-in-hand they also remember he was an atheist and that he was very openly an atheist. And there are many people who can claim Sagan to be the one who convinced them to denounce their unreasonable faiths for the wonders of the universe. I know I sure can say he was the catalyst, and that Hitchens, despite my never meeting or knowing anything about the guy when I bought "god is not Great," was the one who fully convinced me entirely of the unbelievability of religious claims.

Douglas Adams? Still remembered for his wisdom and intellect, still remembered for being an atheist, his words still carry weight.

Yeah, your belief that atheism is just the hippie movement is already incorrect by the fact that hippie culture existed for only 10 years, whereas atheism has been on the rise for the last 200 years, ever since the deistic movements that slowly evolved to become outright atheism.

But hey, I guess when you're convinced that there's an invisible sky daddy whose butt-pucker you're going to polish for an eternity watching over your every movement and arranging the entire universe specifically to you and those around you, you'll believe anything. Like atheism being a fad. Or the world being flat. Or talking snakes. You know, stupid shit that nobody with any semblance of logical thinking would ever believe.

[Ryantology]

That sounded like wishful thinking and a concealed plea for respect of religion without ever offering a single good reason to do so.

I do note that Dawkins is not often as respected as other prominent atheists, but this is not because of poor polemic (I found his arguments compelling enough to abandon the strict agnosticism I once practiced), it's because he's easily flustered and frustrated when he argues with a believer who is being insistently stupid about something, where Hitch would simply dismiss the stupidity for what it was and move along; it never got much under his skin.