Simply put, atheism with liberal characteristics, they see the completely shit role religions always had in the capitalist, feudal and slave societies as the hand of the ruling class (and indeed priesthood was often part of it, sometimes even just was it) but as liberals they don’t see the material reasons for it and since they are really idealists they can’t see the the material reason behind it, they just think it fallen from the sky and needs to be exorcised with the same method which naturally won’t work.

However, atheism is intergral and inseparate part of materialism and thus marixsm. Just because some libs claim to be atheists does not mean marxists should abandon it.

I don’t blame them for disliking religion, but I used to listen to a few of them many years ago and in hindsight they all ended up basically being smug bigots using their atheism to demonize Muslims in particular

“Religion is dumb and I’m very intelligent, now let me explain why you should hate this particular religious group more than others and how they’re all evil terrorists. Imagine if the terrorists had nukes; you should be scared, and the US invading their countries is a good thing”
– Sam Harris, probably

Yeah, they sucked.

Because of the place it had in my specific journey through the youth internet culture of the 2010s, I am tempted to call this movement “baby materialism”. There was definitely common theoretical ground with historical and dialectical materialism, and when grilled on sociological questions New Atheists often ended up agreeing to Marxist talking points, but New Atheism ultimately suffers from its shallow and noncommittal philosophical nature. Looking back there are quite a few punctures where the surrounding medium of Marxism-Leninism can be seen seeping into the bubble, the most obvious of which is why there are currents of religion like liberation theology that run completely against the political will of the ruling class: Because New Atheism tries to pinpoint the origin of religion only as a tool of suppression (which to be fair is a valid and blindingly accurate approximation of much of its historical role), and due to its bias against religion, it fails to recognise that religion can also be wielded by the suppressed classes as a tool of liberation - a dialectical relationship that is nonetheless contained entirely within materialism.

From a social standpoint, New Atheism is a double-edged sword as well: On the one hand, it can push its followers towards scientific discovery, hence empowering them to adopt the scientific method, do proper research, question silent assumptions and the status quo, and look to a variety of sources to find alternatives; on the other hand, their obsession with formulating morality on a merely “scientific” basis is prone to both theoretical failure and practical views that are in equal measure dubious and horrifying. This is because of a problem common among New Atheists, namely that they are fatally attracted to plugging in numbers. If scientific findings are established in one setting, then they are all too susceptible to the fallacy that when the setting changes it suffices to change the parameters even though reality demands a wholesale reexamination of the entire model. They then go and try to reinvent some universal moral system such as Kantianism or Utilitarianism, and impose it on populations with vastly different, evolving material conditions with vastly different, evolving moral demands that follow from them, instead of just asking the actual population - who is after all the subject of the study - what they deem right and wrong. This is what sets them up for failure.

Idk about a pure marxist take on new atheism written by a scholar or theorist but my take is that the whole thing is repackaged white supremacy. In its time (and now too) it has functioned so as to facilitate islamophobia, chauvinism, and dogmatic hatred of anything traditional.

What is curious about New Atheism is that it pretends that atheism generally is separate from Christianity. I am laughing at the thought as I type this. IMO this is an intentionally undialectical view that either ignores history, or cynically tries to create a new imperial religion. Atheism is better understood as a tradition of doubt that has manifested differently throughout the history of the Christian world. Expressing doubt is actually a deeply religious, Christian, expression that is part of the unity and struggle of opposing experiences within Christianity. This is how I view my own Atheism. It is directly related and inseparable from the culture, languages, environments, histories, and socio-political economies that have thrived or survived within the context of Christianity. It is not necessarily a proclamation against religion, it’s not a chauvinist’s callous hatred for anything traditional or “backwards,” it’s not a dogmatic disposition towards “science,” it is a very spiritual expression of deep doubt.

IMO to understand New Atheism you have to understand that modernity is the apocalypse. It is the systematic destruction of traditional ways in favor of capitalist social relations. The celebration of this apocalypse is the context New Atheism flourishes under because it is inherently colonial, imperial, and racist. I will touch more on that soon.

Of course, there are many responses to the apocalypse that problematize it, Marxism being a part of it (though many in the academy will disagree–a post for another time), Indigenous methods being another, and still there are even right-wing perspectives that are concerned about the death of the aristocracy. However, others laud the apocalypse of modernity as a new heaven, as civilization, as development.

The liberals promote “modernity” and scientism rather routinely (Liberals will say marxists do it too-- again, a post for another time). But indeed, marxists are not incapable of getting sidetracked by teleological fallacies regarding development, I certainly did early on anyway. Interestingly enough, I think Trots and the left (derogatory) are also quite capable of doing it with performative non-christianity, dogmatic or virtuous veganism, unquestionable concern over human rights, accommodationist politics directed at the third world and indigenous people, even environmentalism… the list goes on. All of these things can reinforce colonialism, imperialism and thus capitalist social relations.

Bringing all this back to New Atheism, one of its biggest proponents was Christaphor Hitchens. This guy was a raging islamaphobe, a genocidal American exceptionalist, that played a role in bringing about and justifying the war on terror. This fucker is the shining example of the Trotskyist to Neoliberal/Neocon pipeline. He is a perfect example of how the “left” is a cultivation of empire that is seasonally harvested to better equip itself against the world.

Allow me to quote Allan Rosenbaum on Hitchens:

And in the person of Christopher Hitchens, writing in The Nation, the political left then sounded its voice. To Hitchens, anyone who refused to join him in celebrating with “great vim and gusto” the annihilation of the native peoples of the Americas was (in his words) self-hating, ridiculous, ignorant, and sinister. People who regard critically the genocide that was carried out in America’s past, Hitchens’ continued, are simply reactionary, since such grossly inhuman atrocities “happen to be the way history is made.” And thus “to complain about [them] is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift.” Moreover, he added, such violence is worth glorifying since it more often than not has been for the long-term betterment of humankind–as in the United States today, where the extermination of the Native Americans–the American Indians–has brought about “a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation.”

One possible exception Hitchens allowed to his vulgar social Darwinism, with its quasi-Hitlerian view of the proper role of power in history, was the Euro-American enslavement of tens of millions of Africans. But even then, Hitchens contended, those centuries of massive brutality only “probably left Africa worse off than they found it.” Clearly, however–as with Krauthammer’s and Schlesinger’s moral codes–if it could be shown to Hitchens’ personal satisfaction that Africa was in fact “better off” following the enslavement and simultaneous mass killing of 40 - 60 million of its people, he would celebrate the abominations of the slave trade with the same vim and gusto that he did the genocide against the native peoples of the Americas.

New Atheism is a hatred of any traditional thinking. It hates Christianity because Christianity is seen as unable to advance the destruction of traditional ways. Colonialism is so deeply developed that certain sections of it have come to see its tools as outdated and many of its leaders to be caught up in “superstitions” that will not efficiently advance and maintain the empire. It will choose its Christian neighbors over its Islamic, or Tribal enemies, but it seeks to fully destroy the parts of the colonial system that itself have failed to bow down to capitalist social relations totally. It has nothing to do with the tradition of doubt that is dialectically instrumental to Christianity. Rather it is a parody of it that is designed to aid imperialism.

Edit: words, syntax

A constrained liberal reaction to rising reactionary thought in religious garb. It was definitely in ways and times used as a tool in the war on terror to get all the good little ducks in a line behind it but it was also later fueled by domestic reactionary pushes among the religious fundamentalists and politicians who were them or pandered to them.

It was fundamentally a very liberal thing. It took as axiomatic that liberalism was the end of history, that liberalism was good, that capitalism was good. Then what was the problem, why this reactionary push against science (teaching of evolution), against contraception, against abortion, for putting religion in the classroom, for all this stuff. Why this happening shortly after the “defeat of communism”. Rather than being allowed a materialist, class-based, holistic analysis these liberals simple assumed what was directly in front of them was the cause, no need to look into the roots of the plant, it claims to be religious fundamentalism and on a surface level it is.

It served as part of the culture war fodder to keep the proles distracted from class, from the open plunder continuing and expanding against the proletariat in the 2000s as the bourgeoisie continued their celebration of victory over communism in the 90s with more claw-backs. Perhaps it was even a way for the bourgeoisie to try and tamp down a bit on some of the excesses of the reactionary successes and momentum. But mostly it was fueling the spectacle of the culture war. Keeping people angry and talking about that, fighting over that, bitterly attacking and struggling while empire continued its long-game-plans, while capital reached further into the wallets of the working classes.

In writing of any investigation in existential, metaphysical and epistemological questions in the name of science, the New Atheists not only reject religion, but philosophy in general including political philosophy, Marxism and crucially the philosophy of science itself.

For them, there is no need for any of that, because their trivial, superficial and ill defined understanding of “facts and logic” is seen as the end all be all. Similar to those who claim neoliberalism and US hegemony mark “the end of history”, these people claim the end of philosophy. They are right in a way, because if everyone adopted their views, philosophy would indeed be solved, as there would be no reason to discuss any philosophical questions any more. In this way, they are reactionary and seek to strengthen the status quo.

While claiming to be progressive, this idealist ideology of linear historical progress is anti-materialist and anti-dialectical.

That said, there are of course important and valid marxist critics of existing religious institutions, but that wasn’t the question.

Man I was embarrassing caught up in that for a while. Seems like a growing PMC secular element gaining strength against the more conservative Christian element in the country.

Religion is a narrative. People do not create or develop critical thinking with it.

If individuais imagined best possible world/universe(Kant), socialism would become inevitable. Humans organizated on common goals

@fire86743 Yeah, it’s way too political