Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:39:06.416Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

54 - New Atheism

from Part VIII - Emerging Atheisms in the Twenty-First Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2021

Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Stephen Bullivant
Affiliation:
St Mary's University, Twickenham, London
Get access

Summary

The first decade of the twenty-first century in the anglophone west witnessed the emergence of a scholarly, but largely journalistic, discourse surrounding a ‘New Atheism’. As the above quotation from Thomas Zenk suggests, ‘New Atheism’ is frequently in the eye of the beholder and specifying what is to be included under this wobbly umbrella is far from a simple task. The term is most frequently understood as applying to some popular texts by four men – Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens – with some other voices, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ariane Sherine, Herman Philipse, Sikivu Hutchinson, Alom Shaha, and Michel Onfray adding elements of diversity into this predominantly English-speaking, white, cis-het boys’ club.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cotter, C. R. 2011. ‘Consciousness raising: the critique, agenda, and inherent precariousness of contemporary Anglophone atheism’. International Journal for the Study of New Religions 2(1), 77103.Google Scholar
Cotter, C. R. 2017. ‘New atheism, open-mindedness, and critical thinking’, in Cotter, C. R., Quadrio, P., and Tuckett, J. (eds.) New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates. Dordrecht: Springer, 3350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cragun, R. T. 2015. ‘Who are the “New Atheists”?’, in Beaman, L. G. and Tomlins, S. (eds.) Atheist Identities: Spaces and Social Contexts. New York: Springer, 195211.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. 2007. The God Delusion. London: Black Swan.Google Scholar
Dennett, D. C. 2007. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Finger, A. 2017. ‘Four Horsemen (and a Horsewoman): what gender is New Atheism?’, in Cotter, C. R., Quadrio, P., and Tuckett, J. (eds.) New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates. Dordrecht: Springer, 155–70.Google Scholar
Guenther, K. M. 2019. ‘Secular sexism: the persistence of gender inequality in the US New Atheist movement’. Women’s Studies International Forum 72, 4755.Google Scholar
Harris, S. 2006. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. London: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Harris, S. 2007. Letter to a Christian Nation: A Challenge to Faith. London: Bantam Press.Google Scholar
Hitchens, C. 2008. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. London: Atlantic Books.Google Scholar
Hutchinson, S. 2011. Moral Combat: Black Atheists, Gender Politics, and the Values Wars, Kindle edition. Los Angeles: Infidel Books.Google Scholar
LeDrew, S. 2015. ‘Atheism versus humanism: ideological tensions and identity dynamics’, in Beaman, L. G. and Tomlins, S. (eds.) Atheist Identities: Spaces and Social Contexts. New York: Springer, 5368.Google Scholar
LeDrew, S. 2016. The Evolution of Atheism: The Politics of a Modern Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAnulla, S., Kettell, S., and Schulzke, M. 2018. The Politics of New Atheism. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quillen, E. G. 2015. ‘Assholes: a theory of New Atheism’. Everything Is Fiction (blog). 20 January. Available at: https://everythingisfiction.org/2015/01/20/assholes-a-theory-of-new-atheism.Google Scholar
Quillen, E. G. 2017. ‘The satirical sacred: New Atheism, parody religion, and the argument from fictionalization’, in Cotter, C. R., Quadrio, P., and Tuckett, J. (eds.) New Atheism: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary Debates. Dordrecht: Springer, 193220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trzebiatowska, M. 2019. ‘“Atheism is not the problem. The problem is being a woman”: atheist women and reasonable feminism’. Journal of Gender Studies 28(4), 475–87.Google Scholar
Zenk, T. 2013. ‘New atheism’, in Bullivant, S. and Ruse, M. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 245–60.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×