New new atheism

George Dvorsky refers to getting past the frustration, anger and name-calling as “post-Atheism”:

I’m hoping to see atheists move past the religion bashing and start thinking about more substantive issues. This is what I mean when I say post-atheism. It’s time to set aside the angst and work more productively to help those who need it, while working to develop a world view and set of guidelines for living without God. It’s unfortunate and tragic that so many humanists have equated the movement with atheism, while completely forgetting their progressive roots.

Humanism is about the betterment of all humanity and the contemplation of what it is we wish to become. It’s about taking control of our own lives in the absence of divine intervention. And it’s about taking responsibility for ourselves and doing the right thing.

This is where our energies and attention needs to be focused. Not in ridiculous Facebook timeline posts that serve no one.

I wouldn’t call it “post atheism,” because the term atheism means that one doesn’t believe in God, and that is still true of the people who aren’t religious.  But I do agree entirely that it’s time for atheists to move on.  I get it, that we have been subjected to bigotry, but it’s time to move from our Malcolm X phase to our Martin Luther King phase.   I discuss all of this in detail in my five-part series titled “Mending Fences.”

As for a good model to use for getting past the frustration and, instead, making the world a better place, I often refer to this declaration by Paul Kurtz as my starting point.

Share

Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Avatar of Tige Gibson
    Tige Gibson

    Post-atheism would only be meaningful in a world where so few people are religious that it is not necessary to identify that one is not religious.

    For example, I happen to be anti-feudalism, but since there really aren’t any feudal governments around, we are in a post-feudalism world, we have no need to identify ourselves as anti-feudalist.

    I was going to use monarchy, but in spite of the lack of power of any monarchy, monarchies still exist, cost taxpayers money, and get in our faces in the media, so there are plenty of reasons to be anti-monarchy still, even though there are an extremely small number of specimens of non-butterfly monarchs.

Leave a Reply