Positivism and Reasonableness: Authoritarian Leanings in New Atheism’s Thinking
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article presents an original assessment of New Atheism within the framework of democratic theory, specifically by evaluating its status as a Rawlsian comprehensive doctrine that, according to the author, does not meet some of the requirements necessary to be considered reasonable.
The paper spells out very clearly its intent, how it is going to be achieved and then brings about the plan step by step, generally with good clarity, while also providing a reasonably extensive selection of appropriate references to the relevant literature.
I will point here to 3 areas of criticism that, if addressed, I believe would improve the quality of the paper.
1) Based on the Abstract and the introduction to the article, the reader would expect Habermas' work on the matters at hand to appear more prominently, at least as much as Rawls', but after a relatively balanced presence of the two authors at the start, references to Habermas become more occasional.
I suggest that Habermas work on the concept of the postsecular, especially the normative side of the concept, provides some interesting arguments that would be fitting the criticism of New Atheism that is presented in the paper. If Habermas is to appear so strongly in the Abstract and introduction, maybe it would be more present as a main point of reference in the discussion.
Just to point to some examples, consider these quotes from the collection Between Naturalism and Religion:
"Postmetaphysical thinking refrains from making ontological
pronouncements on the constitution of being as such; however,
this does not imply a reduction of our knowledge to the sum total
of statements that represent the current “state of science.” Scientism
often misleads us into blurring the boundary between
natural scientific knowledge which is relevant for understanding ourselves and our place in nature as a whole, on the one hand,
and a synthetic naturalistic worldview constructed on this basis,
on the other. This form of radical naturalism devalues all types
of statements that cannot be traced back to empirical observations,
statements of laws, or causal explanations, hence moral,
legal, and evaluative statements no less than religious ones. As
the revived discussion of freedom and determinism shows,
advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics provide
stimuli for a kind of naturalization of the human mind that places
our practical self-understanding as responsibly acting persons in
question and preempts calls for a revision of criminal law" (140-141)
"Scientism represents the opposite pole to this rational reconstruction
of the contents of faith. For scientism, religious convictions
are false, illusory, or meaningless per se. On this conception,
legitimate knowledge must be able to find support at the “level”
reached by the socially institutionalized empirical sciences at any
given time. The validity of religious convictions, too, is measured
exclusively by this yardstick; hence the religious language game,
if only for grammatical reasons, must be rejected as cognitively empty.
The practical evaluation of religion – whether it must be
regarded as dangerous and, if necessary, treated therapeutically or
whether it must be resisted – depends solely on the empirical
investigation of its causes, functions, and consequences. Scientism
enters into a genuine relation of competition with religious doctrines,
however, once it develops a naturalistic worldview and
extends the scientifically objectivating standpoint into the lifeworld
by applying it to acting and experiencing persons with the
demand for the self-objectification of everyday knowledge." (244-245)
2) A second problem is a matter of scope and clarity in some of the arguments.
2.i) At page 6 we read: "My objection to the criticism of Rawls just presented, and at the same time an answer to the question just posed, is, that it is relatively easy for citizens of a well-ordered society, as Rawls has it in mind in Liberalism, to comply with the requirements of the wide conception of the duty of civility and therefore prima facie distance themselves from their personal convictions, because this is in turn part of their conviction, which is also justified by their comprehensive doctrine (Rawls 1997, 782f.; cf. Jaeggi 2018, 11)"
Is this meant as the presentation of an original argument by the author or just the author's potrayal of Rawls' argument on the matter? It is clear that the author is presenting a "Rawlsian" argument, less clear which part of it can be ascribed directly to Rawls and which elements make it "my objection" in the author's words.
2.ii) At page 8 we read: "Moreover, reasonable comprehensive doctrines do not simply happen to give generally acceptable claims of validity, but they likewise only apply such justification procedures that could gain intersubjective acceptance"
The overall point being made is understandable, but the phrasing is a little off: "Doctrines" do not "apply procedures", citizens do, by acting consistently, say, with the epistemic boundaries granted by those reasonable doctrines.
2.iii) About the argument (b) developed in section 3.2.
It could be useful to find some reference to what specifically the New Atheism perspective has to say on the topic of free will. In this context, the argument is drawn by appealing to the implications of ontological positivism on that topic, but, if possible, a more direct engagement would improve the specificity of the argument.
Because of this, at present the (b) argument that aims at showing how the deterministic understanding of human will is problematic for some premises of justificatory democracy seem more like a general argument than a specific argument against the New Atheism perspective. But if this is the case, a wider consideration of deterministic understandings of human will should be considered (compatibilist accounts, etc.), with special consideration for the counter-arguments that supporters of determinism have about the compatibility of their stance with our legal and political arrangements. This would largely go beyond the scope of the present paper, which is already quite extensive. In this sense, it would be better to narrow the focus, by presenting and discussing specifically arguments from New Atheism theorists on this specific issue, if available.
3) The text still presents some typos and grammatical errors. For consideration of the author, I point a few lines that need attention and recommend they are corrected before publication:
Line 166: "Citizens who adheres to the duty"
Line 256: "or at least a recommendation for acting withing the"
Line 305: "to be juged in terms"
Line 347: "technologica rights"
Line 378: "will be discusses"
Author Response
Point 1: Based on the Abstract and the introduction to the article, the reader would expect Habermas' work on the matters at hand to appear more prominently, at least as much as Rawls', but after a relatively balanced presence of the two authors at the start, references to Habermas become more occasional.
I suggest that Habermas work on the concept of the postsecular, especially the normative side of the concept, provides some interesting arguments that would be fitting the criticism of New Atheism that is presented in the paper. If Habermas is to appear so strongly in the Abstract and introduction, maybe it would be more present as a main point of reference in the discussion.
Just to point to some examples, consider these quotes from the collection Between Naturalism and Religion:
"Postmetaphysical thinking refrains from making ontological
pronouncements on the constitution of being as such; however,
this does not imply a reduction of our knowledge to the sum total
of statements that represent the current “state of science.” Scientism
often misleads us into blurring the boundary between
natural scientific knowledge which is relevant for understanding ourselves and our place in nature as a whole, on the one hand,
and a synthetic naturalistic worldview constructed on this basis,
on the other. This form of radical naturalism devalues all types
of statements that cannot be traced back to empirical observations,
statements of laws, or causal explanations, hence moral,
legal, and evaluative statements no less than religious ones. As
the revived discussion of freedom and determinism shows,
advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics provide
stimuli for a kind of naturalization of the human mind that places
our practical self-understanding as responsibly acting persons in
question and preempts calls for a revision of criminal law" (140-141)
"Scientism represents the opposite pole to this rational reconstruction
of the contents of faith. For scientism, religious convictions
are false, illusory, or meaningless per se. On this conception,
legitimate knowledge must be able to find support at the “level”
reached by the socially institutionalized empirical sciences at any
given time. The validity of religious convictions, too, is measured
exclusively by this yardstick; hence the religious language game,
if only for grammatical reasons, must be rejected as cognitively empty.
The practical evaluation of religion – whether it must be
regarded as dangerous and, if necessary, treated therapeutically or
whether it must be resisted – depends solely on the empirical
investigation of its causes, functions, and consequences. Scientism
enters into a genuine relation of competition with religious doctrines,
however, once it develops a naturalistic worldview and
extends the scientifically objectivating standpoint into the lifeworld
by applying it to acting and experiencing persons with the
demand for the self-objectification of everyday knowledge." (244-245)
Response 1: Thank you for this very helpful comment. The arguments by Habermas made in Between naturalism and religion were very helpful to underline my argumentation that a worldview like the one of New Atheism is just one worldview among others - and could lead to conclusions that are incompatible with our idea of how a democratic order works ("As
the revived discussion of freedom and determinism shows,
advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics provide
stimuli for a kind of naturalization of the human mind that places
our practical self-understanding as responsibly acting persons in
question and preempts calls for a revision of criminal law"). I therefore integrated the quotations into my text at different places - including an acknowledgement.
Point 2: A second problem is a matter of scope and clarity in some of the arguments
Point 2.i): At page 6 we read: "My objection to the criticism of Rawls just presented, and at the same time an answer to the question just posed, is, that it is relatively easy for citizens of a well-ordered society, as Rawls has it in mind in Liberalism, to comply with the requirements of the wide conception of the duty of civility and therefore prima facie distance themselves from their personal convictions, because this is in turn part of their conviction, which is also justified by their comprehensive doctrine (Rawls 1997, 782f.; cf. Jaeggi 2018, 11)"
Is this meant as the presentation of an original argument by the author or just the author's potrayal of Rawls' argument on the matter? It is clear that the author is presenting a "Rawlsian" argument, less clear which part of it can be ascribed directly to Rawls and which elements make it "my objection" in the author's words.
Response 2.i): This passage is meant to be a potrayal of Rawls's argumentation. My objection is only that if you read Political liberalism carefully, you should see that a critique like the one formulated by Wolterstorff and many others does not fit to what Rawls is actually saying. Whereas Wolterstorff argues that Rawls demanded to much of religious citizens by asking them to hold back their religions reasons in the public square, it actually is the case that Rawls argues that religious citizens would freely censor themselves because it is somehow a part of their value system. This is why I lateron argue that Rawls's position is a very unconvincing idea - keeping in mind those cases where religiously minded people do formulate political positions with regard to their religious convictions. So my critique is not that Rawls demands to much of religious citzens but that he somehow thinks that actually he does not have to demand anything grave because in a way citizens of a well-ordered society would acknowledge the proviso and the wide conception by themselves. To clarify this I rewrited the mentioned passage as follows: "Therefore, I would argue that the criticism of Rawls, as expressed by Wolterstorff, for example, is not fitting. My objection to this criticism is as follows – and this is at the same time an answer to Rawls’s question why it is convincing “for those of faith, as well as the nonreligious (secular), to endorse a constitutional regime” (ibid.) by perhaps having to withhold their comprehensive doctrines from deliberation: in a Rawlsian well-ordered society it is relatively easy for citizens to comply with the requirements of the wide conception of the duty of civility and therefore prima facie distance themselves from their comprehensive doctrines, because this is in turn also a part of their convictions, which is justified by their comprehensive doctrine as well (Rawls 1997, 782f.; cf. Jaeggi 2018, 11). The wide conception of the duty of civility is not a requirement imposed on them coercively from the outside, but part of their moral convictions." I hope this formulation makes the difference between what Rawls says and what I want to say clearer.
Point 2.ii): At page 8 we read: "Moreover, reasonable comprehensive doctrines do not simply happen to give generally acceptable claims of validity, but they likewise only apply such justification procedures that could gain intersubjective acceptance"
The overall point being made is understandable, but the phrasing is a little off: "Doctrines" do not "apply procedures", citizens do, by acting consistently, say, with the epistemic boundaries granted by those reasonable doctrines.
Response 2.ii): Thank you for pointing out this stupid formulation to me. I reformulated this sentence as follows: "Moreover, citizens with reasonable comprehensive doctrines do not simply happen to give generally acceptable claims of validity, but they likewise only apply such justification procedures that could gain intersubjective acceptance (Schmidt 2008, 100)."
Point 2.iii) About the argument (b) developed in section 3.2.
It could be useful to find some reference to what specifically the New Atheism perspective has to say on the topic of free will. In this context, the argument is drawn by appealing to the implications of ontological positivism on that topic, but, if possible, a more direct engagement would improve the specificity of the argument.
Because of this, at present the (b) argument that aims at showing how the deterministic understanding of human will is problematic for some premises of justificatory democracy seem more like a general argument than a specific argument against the New Atheism perspective. But if this is the case, a wider consideration of deterministic understandings of human will should be considered (compatibilist accounts, etc.), with special consideration for the counter-arguments that supporters of determinism have about the compatibility of their stance with our legal and political arrangements. This would largely go beyond the scope of the present paper, which is already quite extensive. In this sense, it would be better to narrow the focus, by presenting and discussing specifically arguments from New Atheism theorists on this specific issue, if available.
Response 2.iii): Thank you for this advice. I looked up some literature and added the following footnote: "Here, my argumentation has to be differentiated insofar as, on the one hand, there are authors who are at least close to the thinking of New Atheism and who explicitly reject the traditional concept of a free will (Harris 2012; Roth 2016) – Gerhard Roth, for example, advocates a conception of reality that is synonymous with that of Albert. On the other hand, one can of course say that if a New Atheist assumes a strictly positivistic worldview, the rejection of something like a (traditional) free will is logically compelling, even if not al New Atheists necessarily hold this explicitly." I also added literature with regard to the position that moral agency presupposes something like a free will, for example Sandel. However, as you also mentioned, I would be beyond the topic of my article to go into detail about discussion about the free will. I simply presuppose Habermas's stance as I generally presupposes Habermas's and Rawls's conception of democracy. Insofar as many authors do accept the thesis that morality needs free agency, I guess this is intellectualy honest.
Point 3: The text still presents some typos and grammatical errors. For consideration of the author, I point a few lines that need attention and recommend they are corrected before publication:
Line 166: "Citizens who adheres to the duty"
Line 256: "or at least a recommendation for acting withing the"
Line 305: "to be juged in terms"
Line 347: "technologica rights"
Line 378: "will be discusses"
Response 3: Thanks - done.
Reviewer 2 Report
It claims to find an authoritarian "drawl" in New Atheist thought, but I have no idea what is meant by a "drawl" in this context. Perhaps something like an "authoritarian tendency" is meant. But in any event, nothing in this article shows any such authoritarian tendency in New Atheist thought. This is simply because no evidence is given that any thinkers who could plausibly be considered New Atheists are involved in religious persecutions, imposition of preferred religious rites and doctrines, imposition of specifically religious moralities on non-believers, or other such authoritarian or illiberal actions.
These thinkers are not putting people with whom they have disagreements behind bars, or in detention camps, or executing them, or even trying to ban their books or to destroy their careers for expressing disliked ideas. On the contrary, they are strong defenders of free inquiry and discussion. At worst, the so-called "New Atheist" thinkers are involved in robust public debates that can sometimes become intemperate or uncivil on both sides. But in general, the tone public discussion and debate would actually be improved if no one were ever more uncivil than, say, Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett.
I might have had a different view if these thinkers were deeply implicated in the burqa bans in some European countries, or the ban on minarets in Switzerland, or even the treatment of Muslim immigrants from some countries by the recent Trump administration in the US. But I am not aware that New Atheist thinkers have been involved in any such actions as these, which might arguably be considered authoritarian. There is certainly no evidence presented in the paper to show any such involvement.
Indeed, the thinkers usually branded as New Atheists have not, as far as I know, tended to favor such actions. Mostly, they were strongly opposed to Trump in particular.
There might be an argument that one major New Atheist, i.e. Sam Harris, has sometimes gone beyond legitimate criticism of Islam into the zone of something more authoritarian, but the paper does not make such an argument, and even if it did it would be unoriginal. Also, it would be a criticism of Harris specifically, not of New Atheism in general, because it is unclear at best that others could be implicated.
To be clear, Harris would argue persuasively that many of his views have been taken out of context and are actually more subtle than has been attributed to him. In any event, this issue is simply not the argument of the paper.
This brings me to the question of what is "New Atheism" and who are the "New Atheists." In fact, these terms have a fairly specific and narrow meaning. They were coined by the journalist Gary Wolf in 2006, and they referred specifically to just three thinkers: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. The reference was, then, to a group of authors of then-recent mass-market books critical of religious beliefs; these were books published in the early years of the new century, subsequent to the events of September 11, which created a market for anti-religious books from large trade publishers. Two of these authors (Dawkins and Dennett) were already closely connected. The authors concerned did not necessarily accept or approve of the labels "New Atheist" and "New Atheism."
Subsequently, some other authors came to be widely regarded as part of a "New Atheist movement." The main example here was the late Christopher Hitchens. More marginal examples were A.C. Grayling, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and perhaps Michel Onfray.
Most of these are not discussed in the paper under review. Even Harris is not directly cited. By contrast, Philip Kitcher, who is discussed in the paper, has never been regarded as a New Atheist thinker, and he has been careful to distance himself from New Atheist thought. Likewise, Hans Albert is not a New Atheist, and almost all of his published work long predates the New Atheism.
It is, therefore, not appropriate to rely on views expressed by Kitcher or Albert in an effort to convict New Atheism of any "authoritarian drawl." Then again, Kitcher (and Albert as far as I know) is also not involved in anti-religious persecutions and the like.
Finally, on this point, the so-called New Atheist movement has been defunct for nearly a decade. Christopher Hitchens died in 2011, and various internal ructions among readers of Dawkins and the others took place in that same year and the years immediately following. As a result, there is no longer anything like a living movement that could be called "New Atheism," even though individual thinkers such as Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Grayling remain influential on various topics.
In all, the paper goes nowhere near establishing that the movement known as "New Atheism," which arguably existed between about 2006 and about 2011 or 2012, was authoritarian or had authoritarian tendencies. The paper shows a poor understanding of what the New Atheism was, and it uses a highly implausible definition of "authoritarianism" that has little to do with ordinary usage or with what is clearly envisaged for the purposes of this issue of Religions.
The real point of the paper seems to be to attack basic liberal ideas about church-state relations and to denounce any worldview based on philosophical naturalism.
There seems to be a complaint that there's something improper about any political regime that prevents governments from enacting laws and implementing policies based on doctrines of what counts as "sin," what is God's will, what actions and beliefs are needed for spiritual salvation, etc. It is understandable that many religious people might wish to employ such ideas to justify policies and legislation, but the strong leaning against that approach is not something original to, or especially distinctive of, the New Atheism.
It is, rather, a basic liberal idea with a very long pedigree going back to John Locke and even further. It has been accepted, under various formulations, by recent liberal thinkers such as Rawls, even if they disagree about details such as just when some kind of justification of a different kind (e.g., a justification using "public reason") must be provided.
The New Atheist thinkers, by and large, are quite capable of joining in this broad liberal consensus, even if they do so for reasons of their own, different from those of, say, Catholics, Protestant Christians, Hindus, or Muslims who also feel able to join in that consensus.
Admittedly, the New Atheist thinkers would likely go further and consider soteriological doctrines, and the like, as irrational. But that is not in itself illiberal or, in the relevant sense, unreasonable. For comparison, some religious thinkers might believe that atheists, agnostics, deists, and people from rival religious traditions are going to go to Hell. They might even preach that doctrine publicly - and this might be permitted in a liberal society with robust freedom of speech. But they will not be acting in an authoritarian way, or a way that is illiberal, or unreasonable in standard liberal terms, unless they seek that their soteriological or eschatological doctrines be used as a rationale for laws and government policies.
As long as they can find reasons, from within their own worldviews, not to employ such doctrines as a rationale for law-making and policy, they are capable of joining the liberal consensus.
This general liberal idea is often challenged, and not only by theologians and religious philosophers. For example, challenging it is bread and butter for someone like Stanley Fish, who claims that liberalism is a sham. Nonetheless, whatever we might think of the idea of a liberal consensus along these lines, there is no obvious reason for the New Atheist thinkers to reject it and no evidence in the paper or elsewhere that, by and large, they have done so.
A deeper and somewhat more original thesis that seems to be argued in the last few pages of the paper is that philosophical naturalism is incompatible with liberal democracy, since the former (seemingly) entails that there is no libertarian free will while the latter (supposedly) requires the recognition of libertarian free will. This argument is not fully developed, and it is remote from both the ostensible topic of the paper and the theme of the relevant issue of Religions.
It is worth adding that it seems like a highly implausible argument. At the very least, it needs much more development, not just some controversial assertions and some appeals to the authority of previous authors. The point here is that a standard account of political liberalism assumes that a very wide range of worldviews, value systems, etc., can and must be accommodated within a liberal society. It does not matter even if the worldviews are internally inconsistent, so long as they have resources for the prescribed kind of mutual toleration.
It seems that, in practice, most compatibilists, hard determinists, hard incompatibilists, etc., do, indeed, have the resources within their overall worldviews for mutual toleration. To the extent that some minimal conception of moral responsibility is required for any liberal democracy to operate, it also seems that most compatibilists, hard determinists, etc., can find at least the needed minimal conception, even if they reject a strong or "strictly speaking" kind of moral responsibility. (Of course, it is notorious that those who believe in libertarian free will also have problems giving a coherent account of how it is supposed to operate and how it can provide for the kind of moral responsibility that it claims.)
All of this takes us into seemingly intractable metaphysical issues. But what follows even if some New Atheist thinkers are not able to provide a completely satisfactory philosophical account of how all this fits together? If so, they are certainly not the only ones; and indeed, a system of political philosophy that excluded worldviews as somehow illiberal, unreasonable, or authoritarian unless they could provide such an account would arguably end up excluding everyone! It is not clear, that anyone has satisfactorily solved these metaphysical conundrums. But problems like these are just why political liberalism claims to be "political not metaphysical."
In all, there may be ideas in the paper that could meaningfully be developed, but this issue of this journal is not the right fit for them, and the paper in its current form shows fundamental misunderstandings. As a bottom line, these include a misunderstanding of what is meant by "New Atheism" and what it would mean for the latter to display some kind of authoritarianism or even a tendency in that direction.
Author Response
Point 1: It claims to find an authoritarian "drawl" in New Atheist thought, but I have no idea what is meant by a "drawl" in this context. Perhaps something like an "authoritarian tendency" is meant. But in any event, nothing in this article shows any such authoritarian tendency in New Atheist thought. This is simply because no evidence is given that any thinkers who could plausibly be considered New Atheists are involved in religious persecutions, imposition of preferred religious rites and doctrines, imposition of specifically religious moralities on non-believers, or other such authoritarian or illiberal actions.
These thinkers are not putting people with whom they have disagreements behind bars, or in detention camps, or executing them, or even trying to ban their books or to destroy their careers for expressing disliked ideas. On the contrary, they are strong defenders of free inquiry and discussion. At worst, the so-called "New Atheist" thinkers are involved in robust public debates that can sometimes become intemperate or uncivil on both sides. But in general, the tone public discussion and debate would actually be improved if no one were ever more uncivil than, say, Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett.
I might have had a different view if these thinkers were deeply implicated in the burqa bans in some European countries, or the ban on minarets in Switzerland, or even the treatment of Muslim immigrants from some countries by the recent Trump administration in the US. But I am not aware that New Atheist thinkers have been involved in any such actions as these, which might arguably be considered authoritarian. There is certainly no evidence presented in the paper to show any such involvement.
Indeed, the thinkers usually branded as New Atheists have not, as far as I know, tended to favor such actions. Mostly, they were strongly opposed to Trump in particular.
There might be an argument that one major New Atheist, i.e. Sam Harris, has sometimes gone beyond legitimate criticism of Islam into the zone of something more authoritarian, but the paper does not make such an argument, and even if it did it would be unoriginal. Also, it would be a criticism of Harris specifically, not of New Atheism in general, because it is unclear at best that others could be implicated.
To be clear, Harris would argue persuasively that many of his views have been taken out of context and are actually more subtle than has been attributed to him. In any event, this issue is simply not the argument of the paper.
Response 1: Thank you very much for this helpful comment, which gives me the opportunity to clarify that I just want to show that some of New Atheism's ideas can indeed be seen as problematic in comparison to elements that Rawls and Habermas identifies as necessary for a reasonable comprehensive doctrine. Yet, I do not want to say that New Atheism somewhere led to illiberal policies. I guess, as most New Atheists identify themselve as liberals, they would not support illiberal policies. So it is a purely philosophical argumentation. I tried to make this clear in the introduction to my article by saying: "To make the scope of the following clear: The aim is not to analyse empirically whether New Atheism has anywhere – directly or indirectly – led to policies that can be classified as illiberal or authoritarian. Rather, it is to argue on a purely intellectual level that the worldview and political ideas of New Atheism are in contradiction to publicly reasonable ones. If they were in fact to influence policies, there could accordingly be a danger that they would lead to undemocratic decisions." Moreover, I clarified throughout my text that by speaking of a authoritarian drawl I mean a drawl on the intellectual level meaning: If one thinks further about this or that position of New Atheism and considers what would follow politically from it if it were really implemented directly, this could have certain authoritarian consequences." In comparison, you can find similar analyses of utilitarianism in Political liberalism. There, Rawls do not argue that utilitarians somehow engage in illiberal actions but that an utilitarian worldview contradicts democratic values. This kind of critique on a purely cognitive level is not uncommon in Political Theory. So I think it is intellectually honest to deal with New Atheism in this way.
Point 2: This brings me to the question of what is "New Atheism" and who are the "New Atheists." In fact, these terms have a fairly specific and narrow meaning. They were coined by the journalist Gary Wolf in 2006, and they referred specifically to just three thinkers: Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. The reference was, then, to a group of authors of then-recent mass-market books critical of religious beliefs; these were books published in the early years of the new century, subsequent to the events of September 11, which created a market for anti-religious books from large trade publishers. Two of these authors (Dawkins and Dennett) were already closely connected. The authors concerned did not necessarily accept or approve of the labels "New Atheist" and "New Atheism."
Subsequently, some other authors came to be widely regarded as part of a "New Atheist movement." The main example here was the late Christopher Hitchens. More marginal examples were A.C. Grayling, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and perhaps Michel Onfray.
Most of these are not discussed in the paper under review. Even Harris is not directly cited. By contrast, Philip Kitcher, who is discussed in the paper, has never been regarded as a New Atheist thinker, and he has been careful to distance himself from New Atheist thought. Likewise, Hans Albert is not a New Atheist, and almost all of his published work long predates the New Atheism.
It is, therefore, not appropriate to rely on views expressed by Kitcher or Albert in an effort to convict New Atheism of any "authoritarian drawl." Then again, Kitcher (and Albert as far as I know) is also not involved in anti-religious persecutions and the like.
Finally, on this point, the so-called New Atheist movement has been defunct for nearly a decade. Christopher Hitchens died in 2011, and various internal ructions among readers of Dawkins and the others took place in that same year and the years immediately following. As a result, there is no longer anything like a living movement that could be called "New Atheism," even though individual thinkers such as Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Grayling remain influential on various topics.
In all, the paper goes nowhere near establishing that the movement known as "New Atheism," which arguably existed between about 2006 and about 2011 or 2012, was authoritarian or had authoritarian tendencies. The paper shows a poor understanding of what the New Atheism was, and it uses a highly implausible definition of "authoritarianism" that has little to do with ordinary usage or with what is clearly envisaged for the purposes of this issue of Religions.
Response 2: Thank you for this partly inspiring comment. It motivated me to clarify my selection of authors. However, I strongly disagree with the overall critique of my paper at this point. It is true that New Atheism was first a label given by Wolf to a small amount of people. Yet, this label nowadays is used both in standard philosophical and social scientifical literature to talk about both an intellectual and social movement that more or less developed out of the first self-described New Atheist (cf. an article about New Atheism in the 2019 pubished Metzler-handbook for analytical philosophy of religion or an article by Gladkich and Pickel published 2013 in an sociological anthology about religion in Germany). Even other articles in this special issue of Religions mention New Atheism, too. So, in my mind it is totally plausible to talk about an as far as possible homogenous ideology, which consists of elements like positivism/naturalism regard its worldview and an anti-religious secularism. Therefore, I justified my selection of authors with this following footnote: "While Denett is generally described as a New Atheist, Albert's and Kitcher's relationship to New Atheism is more or less pronounced. A major player in New Atheism in Germany is the Giordano Bruno Foundation, of which Hans Albert is a member and which also founded the Hans Albert Institute. Furthermore, other texts dealing with New Atheism also refer to Albert (cf. Viertbauer 2019). Kitcher, however, does not call himself a New Atheist, but represents a so-called secular humanism, which in turn is also seen as something that can be counted as a part of New Atheism. Furthermore, his critique of political religions is the same as that of New Atheism. Therefore, it seems opportune to engage with his writings of one wants to understand New Atheism."
Point 3: The real point of the paper seems to be to attack basic liberal ideas about church-state relations and to denounce any worldview based on philosophical naturalism.
There seems to be a complaint that there's something improper about any political regime that prevents governments from enacting laws and implementing policies based on doctrines of what counts as "sin," what is God's will, what actions and beliefs are needed for spiritual salvation, etc. It is understandable that many religious people might wish to employ such ideas to justify policies and legislation, but the strong leaning against that approach is not something original to, or especially distinctive of, the New Atheism.
It is, rather, a basic liberal idea with a very long pedigree going back to John Locke and even further. It has been accepted, under various formulations, by recent liberal thinkers such as Rawls, even if they disagree about details such as just when some kind of justification of a different kind (e.g., a justification using "public reason") must be provided.
The New Atheist thinkers, by and large, are quite capable of joining in this broad liberal consensus, even if they do so for reasons of their own, different from those of, say, Catholics, Protestant Christians, Hindus, or Muslims who also feel able to join in that consensus.
Response 3: With regard to this point, I also have to strongly disagree. What I want to argue for is that the separation of church and state and - especially - the seperation between public and private reasons do not favor a form of secularism that is put forward by New Atheism. By doing so, my argumentation is completely congruent with this of liberal thinkers like Rawls or Habermas (who are both as far as I know atheists or agnostics). Just to give you an example. Rawls says in his article of 1997: "We must distinguish public reason from what is sometimes referred to as secular reason and secular values. These are not the same as public reason. For I define secular reason as reasoning in terms of comprehensive nonreligious doctrines. […] A view often expressed is that while religious reasons and sectarian doctrines should not be invoked to justify legislation in a democratic society, sound secular arguments may be. But what is a secular argument? Some think of any argument that is reflective and critical, publicly intelligible and rational, as a secular argument; and they discuss various such arguments for considering, say, homosexual relations unworthy or degrading. Of course, some of these arguments may be reflective and rational secular ones (as so defined). Nevertheless, a central feature of political liberalism is that it views all such arguments the same way it views religious ones, and therefore these secular philosophical doctrines do not provide public reasons. Secular concepts and reasoning of this kind belong to first philosophy and moral doctrine, and fall outside of the domain of the political.” I added this quote in my text to underline that I do not want to somehow question the liberal idea that there has to be a differentiation between church and state. On the other hand, religious authors like Robert Audi try to justify that purely secular reasons, which are understood quite similar to New Atheism, are the only publicly reasonable ones - and they refer to religous reasons for this position. However, I would personally argue against this religiously minded author that he is wrong which I also indicated in a footnote and in the final paper I would add a bibliographical reference to another work of mine where I criticise Audis and other religious accounts for secularist reason for the same reasons why I criticise New Atheism in this paper. So, to sum this up, I do not want to take a religious stance against liberalism but with Rawls and Habermas wants to clarify what the seperation between church and state (which does not mean a seperation between religion and civil society by the way) and a seperation between public and private reasons mean. An empirical case that somehow underlines my scepticism with regard to New Atheism or let's say a militant atheism might be the German biologist Ulrich Kutschera, wo argues against same-sex marriage because of positivistic/naturalistic premises (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Kutschera). There you can see that the apprehension that a positivistic world view might indeed lead to reactionary, illiberal claims is not far-fatched.
Point 4: Admittedly, the New Atheist thinkers would likely go further and consider soteriological doctrines, and the like, as irrational. But that is not in itself illiberal or, in the relevant sense, unreasonable. For comparison, some religious thinkers might believe that atheists, agnostics, deists, and people from rival religious traditions are going to go to Hell. They might even preach that doctrine publicly - and this might be permitted in a liberal society with robust freedom of speech. But they will not be acting in an authoritarian way, or a way that is illiberal, or unreasonable in standard liberal terms, unless they seek that their soteriological or eschatological doctrines be used as a rationale for laws and government policies.
As long as they can find reasons, from within their own worldviews, not to employ such doctrines as a rationale for law-making and policy, they are capable of joining the liberal consensus.
This general liberal idea is often challenged, and not only by theologians and religious philosophers. For example, challenging it is bread and butter for someone like Stanley Fish, who claims that liberalism is a sham. Nonetheless, whatever we might think of the idea of a liberal consensus along these lines, there is no obvious reason for the New Atheist thinkers to reject it and no evidence in the paper or elsewhere that, by and large, they have done so.
Response 4: Thank you for this comment. I totally agree with your argument that one has to differentiate between what somebody thinks as being irrational with regard to what is true and what is a good live, on the one hand, and what is politically reasonable. However, I tried to show that some authors like Albert and Dennett do advocate that because religious - mostly monotheistic - doctrines were irrational they also lead to "social dogmatism" and therefore has to be exluded from the public square. I even try to give some reasons and credit why, for example, Albert's idea is to some extent plausible but should be generalized to far. On p. 12 I say: "Albert’s argument is sociological: epistemic 'dogmatisation' can only persist through institutionally enabled social dogmatisation. One option of this institutionally founded stabilisation of 'dogmatic' convictions consists in making political claims on the bases of 'supposedly revealed truths' (ibid. 160, trans. M.R.) in order to endow them with the power of legal norms. If this succeeds, positive law then serves to consolidate or at least privilege certain 'dogmatic' world views and ways of life. This quite daring hypothesis may at first sound abstract, but it gains plausibility when one thinks of, for example, efforts by religious fundamentalists to prevent legislative initiatives such as the establishment of same-sex marriage by referring to 'theologically sanctioned texts'. This is highly problematic in terms of democratic theory because, as mentioned, democratic rule, although it is rule and accompanied by the option of state sanction, does not violate the freedom and equality of all those subject to the law in that, on the one hand, citizens are the authors of the law and, on the other, they jointly seek for reasons that can be accepted by all affected. Prima facie, the 'supposedly revealed truths' of a specific part of the population do not meet this qualification, because they are based on personal beliefs." So, in my mind I try to give an explanation how the link between the irrationality of religion and the unreasonableness of religiously founded arguments work in New Atheistic thought. Moreover, when you look at Dennetts argumentation for excluding religion from the public sphere it is even more obvious that he does not simply think of religion as irrational but as something that is politically dangerous. So I cannot agree with your point that New Atheism simply argues that religion is irrational but beside of this is perfectly liberal - at least if you follow Rawls's idea of a political liberalism as mentioned in the quote above. But again, the focus of my argumentation is not what New Atheists actually do but what the worldview of New Atheism.
Point 5: A deeper and somewhat more original thesis that seems to be argued in the last few pages of the paper is that philosophical naturalism is incompatible with liberal democracy, since the former (seemingly) entails that there is no libertarian free will while the latter (supposedly) requires the recognition of libertarian free will. This argument is not fully developed, and it is remote from both the ostensible topic of the paper and the theme of the relevant issue of Religions.
It is worth adding that it seems like a highly implausible argument. At the very least, it needs much more development, not just some controversial assertions and some appeals to the authority of previous authors. The point here is that a standard account of political liberalism assumes that a very wide range of worldviews, value systems, etc., can and must be accommodated within a liberal society. It does not matter even if the worldviews are internally inconsistent, so long as they have resources for the prescribed kind of mutual toleration.
It seems that, in practice, most compatibilists, hard determinists, hard incompatibilists, etc., do, indeed, have the resources within their overall worldviews for mutual toleration. To the extent that some minimal conception of moral responsibility is required for any liberal democracy to operate, it also seems that most compatibilists, hard determinists, etc., can find at least the needed minimal conception, even if they reject a strong or "strictly speaking" kind of moral responsibility. (Of course, it is notorious that those who believe in libertarian free will also have problems giving a coherent account of how it is supposed to operate and how it can provide for the kind of moral responsibility that it claims.)
Response 5: I totally agree with you that the connection between free will and morality/deliberative democracy is a complex issue - including the question what we can understand as a free will However, in this paper I just argue that if you take Rawls's and especially Habermas's idea of what a normative sound democracy needs with regard to duties and reasonable world views, you have to somehow think of the human being as being capable of making free choices. This might be disputed but Rawls and Habermas are the starting points of my paper. I did not want to go into too much detail at this point for two reasons as well: I also did not want to go into too much detail at this point for two reasons: On the one hand, I would then definitely leave the field of political theory (and, moreover, this special issue), on the other hand, this gives me the possibility that different conceptions of a free will can somehow be inserted into my argumentation. (For this reason, for example, I have not discussed the differences between Habermas and Rawls, some of which lie in epistemological detail, too, but have tried to trace the common broad lines in your argumentation as to what characterises a deliberative democracy.) However, I added some references to authors who share my intuition - and a reference to Sam Harris who strictly opposes the concept of a free will.
Point 6: All of this takes us into seemingly intractable metaphysical issues. But what follows even if some New Atheist thinkers are not able to provide a completely satisfactory philosophical account of how all this fits together? If so, they are certainly not the only ones; and indeed, a system of political philosophy that excluded worldviews as somehow illiberal, unreasonable, or authoritarian unless they could provide such an account would arguably end up excluding everyone! It is not clear, that anyone has satisfactorily solved these metaphysical conundrums. But problems like these are just why political liberalism claims to be "political not metaphysical."
In all, there may be ideas in the paper that could meaningfully be developed, but this issue of this journal is not the right fit for them, and the paper in its current form shows fundamental misunderstandings. As a bottom line, these include a misunderstanding of what is meant by "New Atheism" and what it would mean for the latter to display some kind of authoritarianism or even a tendency in that direction.
Response 6: I understand point 6 as a summary of your critique - and I can only response by giving a summary of my given responses: In my opinion the problem with New Atheism is not that it does not provide an "unsatisfactory philosophical account" but that New Atheism's worldview and political stance entails certain ideas - only (!) empirically checkable knowledge is reasonable and therefore a legitimate source for deliberation - that would lead to authoritarian consequences if implemented. Just like Rawls, for example, critisised utilitarianism in this way, I tried to critise New Atheism on a purely intellectual lever - without saying that New Atheists do behave in such a way. Moreover, in identifying what New Atheism is I referred to authors and literature that is seen a exemplary like Viertbauer oder Gladkich and Pickel.
Reviewer 3 Report
The article in question aims to demonstrate that the New Atheism movement, while declaring to defend liberal democracy from authoritative intrusion of religion, represents itself a non-liberal political position. The author takes into account the John Rawls theory of reasonable comprehensive doctrines, the only admissible in political communication which aims to preserve liberal values such as freedom and equality. Then the author argues that New Atheism didn't meet necessary requirements for reasonable comprehensive doctrine being a rigid dogmatic position in both epistemological and ontological senses which misses to recognize democratic pluralism of worldviews (including religious ones).
The article is well-organized and its claim is clearly stated and argued. However, in some aspects it could be improved.
- The engagement of the author with current debate on non-liberal nature of New Atheism. At the beginning of the article (p. 2, line 47) the author briefly mentions a bit of recent scholarship which works out the thesis that New Atheism is a illiberal reaction to religious pluralism. It seems to be a very reduced description of the field. In order to admit not only favourable to the author's claim positions, I would suggest to take into account Marcus Schulzke's debate with Lawrence Wilde and Gregory Peterson (Schulzke, M. The politics of new atheism. Politics & Religion, 2013, 6(4), 778-799; Wilde, L. The antinomies of aggressive atheism. Contemporary Political Theory. 2010. 9(3), 266-283. Peterson, G. R. Ethics, out-Group Altruism, and the New Atheism. In: Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Amarasingam Amarnath. Danvers, MA: Brill. 2010) where Schulzke contrasts the accusation that the New Atheism is not compatible with liberal values.
- In the section 3 the authors describes New Atheism as an incongruent epistemological doctrine which fails to accept the possibility of existence of non-material entities and, therefore, is just another form of dogmatism. The author persistently uses the term 'positivism' as a core characterisation of New Atheism, whereas the main representative of the movement, Hans Albert, being a follower of Karl Popper, cannot be classified as 'positivist'. It seems that the author consciously caricaturizes the position of the adversary to make it more illogical and grotesque than it really is. The modern science doesn't differ from religion because it doesn't recognize non-material entities. The contemporary physical theory is full of non-material entities such as fields, energies, quantum functions etc. The difference is that scientific rationality requires that all those non-material entities, non being observable by themselves, could have observable consequenses. Therefore, representatives of New Atheism don't need to be positivists ad litteram to defend the priority of scientific rationality. This part of argumentation should be improved.
- My last observation regards the language style. While the structure of the article is very clear and logical, the language is sometimes difficult to understand. I had particular difficulties to interpret passages on p. 1 line 20 ('social regression'), line 28 ('conflict is imagined'), p. 10 lines 378-379, p. 11 lines 436-37, p. 448 (probably, it's an error, should be 'non justified'), p. 13 line 517 (evidence?). I would suggest a revision of the text from a native speaker.
On my general evaluation, the article is making an interesting contribution to the discussion. It is worth to be published but a certain revision is needed.
Author Response
Point 1: The engagement of the author with current debate on non-liberal nature of New Atheism. At the beginning of the article (p. 2, line 47) the author briefly mentions a bit of recent scholarship which works out the thesis that New Atheism is a illiberal reaction to religious pluralism. It seems to be a very reduced description of the field. In order to admit not only favourable to the author's claim positions, I would suggest to take into account Marcus Schulzke's debate with Lawrence Wilde and Gregory Peterson (Schulzke, M. The politics of new atheism. Politics & Religion, 2013, 6(4), 778-799; Wilde, L. The antinomies of aggressive atheism. Contemporary Political Theory. 2010. 9(3), 266-283. Peterson, G. R. Ethics, out-Group Altruism, and the New Atheism. In: Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Amarasingam Amarnath. Danvers, MA: Brill. 2010) where Schulzke contrasts the accusation that the New Atheism is not compatible with liberal values.
Response 1: Thank you very much for the references with regard to further literature, which I now mention in my article as well. Considering that my text deals only with theoretical questions concernig the congruence between New Atheism and democratic valcues, this paragraph simply mentions a more or less speculative empirical claim, which I now marked by prefixing the following phrase: "An empirical hypothesis at this point, but one that will not be pursued further:".
Point 2: In the section 3 the authors describes New Atheism as an incongruent epistemological doctrine which fails to accept the possibility of existence of non-material entities and, therefore, is just another form of dogmatism. The author persistently uses the term 'positivism' as a core characterisation of New Atheism, whereas the main representative of the movement, Hans Albert, being a follower of Karl Popper, cannot be classified as 'positivist'. It seems that the author consciously caricaturizes the position of the adversary to make it more illogical and grotesque than it really is. The modern science doesn't differ from religion because it doesn't recognize non-material entities. The contemporary physical theory is full of non-material entities such as fields, energies, quantum functions etc. The difference is that scientific rationality requires that all those non-material entities, non being observable by themselves, could have observable consequenses. Therefore, representatives of New Atheism don't need to be positivists ad litteram to defend the priority of scientific rationality. This part of argumentation should be improved.
Response 2: I think the problem with regard to point 2 is that we use different conceptions of positivism. To clear things up I added the following footnote, which gives my definition of positivism: "I define positivism as a worldview that assumes that only empirically directly observable entities exist or, in a weaker understanding, that only from these can epistemically justified knowledge be derived. Accordingly, phenomena such as a non-materialistic understood mind, a free will et cetera cannot exist or, with regard to the weaker conception of positivism, intellectually justifiable knowledge cannot exist about them. In this sense, my conception of positivism can be linked to other concepts like scientism or naturalism (cf. Kambartel 1995)" - following my definition, at least the early epistemological works of Hans Albert, which I refr to, can be classified as positivistic. Yet, if you would suggest exchanging the concept with scientism or naturalism, I would to this.
Point 3: My last observation regards the language style. While the structure of the article is very clear and logical, the language is sometimes difficult to understand. I had particular difficulties to interpret passages on p. 1 line 20 ('social regression'), line 28 ('conflict is imagined'), p. 10 lines 378-379, p. 11 lines 436-37, p. 448 (probably, it's an error, should be 'non justified'), p. 13 line 517 (evidence?). I would suggest a revision of the text from a native speaker.
Response 3: Thank you very much for pointing out to me this unprecise formulations. I overworked them or clarified what I'd like to say with them as follows:
- p. 1 line 20: "It is undisputed that many forms of social regression currently observed in liberal democracies – a depletion of the rule of law or the multilateral international order, hostility towards ethnical or sexual minorities, nationalistic hubris et cetera – are in various ways linked to religious identities, beliefs, and actors.
- p. 1 line 28: "Thus, liberalism on the one hand, and religiosity, patriotism, and nationalism on the other serve as expressions of opposing forms of value systems; a supposed constellation of conflict that is refered to by different authoritarian actors and movements such as Hungary, Russia, or Turkey."
- p. 10 lines 378-379: "Instead of religious or other reasons interpreted as obscure, only those reasons should be able to claim political validity that can be judged according to scientific standards, whereby an empiricist and scientistic understanding of scientific standards is prejudiced here. If this is done, so the promise goes, authoritarian or illiberal political decisions can be circumvented."
- p. 11 lines 436-437: "According to Albert (1975, 29, trans. M.R.), from the trilemma’s insolubility follows that all 'knowledge', which justifies itself in a foundationalist manner, is 'self-fabricated and thus worthless for apprehending reality'."
- p. 11 line 448: Yes, sorry, it is unjustified.
- p. 13 line 517: However, in liberal, enlightened societies, it is concluded, only evidence-based reasons can be a proper for the democratic decision-making process."
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
I have read the new version and the author's response to my original comments. I do believe the article has improved (adding Sam Harris's little book on free will was a good idea, for example), but I continue to think that it would require major reworking before publication was merited. In that respect, I see that the author was asked to make major revisions. However, the revisions actually made are minor, and the author's comments in reply consist largely of reasons for not being prepared to make major revisions.
I don't want to go back and forth debating the issues in this exchange of comments. However, I want to write a bit more to try to be helpful to the author in making further revisions - presumably for publication elsewhere, effectively as a new article.
First, I am still confused as to what is meant by a "drawl" in this context. A drawl is a slow, lazy way of speaking. However, nothing in the paper explains to me in what sense, presumably a metaphorical one, the New Atheists are supposed to speak in a slow, lazy way, i.e. with a drawl. I wonder whether the author was looking for some other word, such as "drift" (which would make good sense as a metaphor if it meant that there are aspects of New Atheism that make it tend to move in an authoritarian direction). In any event, if the paper does end up being published can it pleased be arranged that the title is changed to something that makes more intuitive sense?
I'm not all that happy with the word "positivism" either. In context, the author actually seems to mean something like philosophical (or "metaphysical" or "scientific") naturalism. The word "positivism" (like the word "scientism") has become more a term of abuse aimed at philosophical naturalists than a descriptive, neutral term for a certain philosophical position. Very few English-language thinkers are likely to identify as "positivists" or as embracing something called "positivism" (except for legal theorists who might say that they are "legal positivists" rather than natural law theorists). In my experience, the general feeling among Anglophone philosophers is that both Comte's "positivism" and the "logical positivism" associated with A.J. Ayer and the Vienna Circle are thoroughly discredited. To call someone a positivist these days is fairly much pejorative, rather than neutrally attributing to them a position that is considered a live option within philosophy.
The author insists that the term "New Atheism" means something that goes far beyond the historical New Atheist movement which lasted from about 2006 to about 2015.
(Note: I previously said from about 2006 to about 2011 to 2012. On reflection, I think it's pretty clear that it lasted for a little bit longer than that, even though it suffered a huge blow in 2011 with the death of Christopher Hitchens and with various internal divisions. However, it did still have some momentum at that time. Nonetheless, it had pretty clearly lost momentum by 2015. The death of Victor Stenger in 2014 also helped hasten the end of the New Atheist movement. Stenger was a very aggressive and high-profile bulldog for the movement, and he also wrote the closest thing to a definitive book on the movement at its height.)
The author cites a couple of papers that treat the New Atheism as something wider and rather different. I am not familiar with these papers, but the fact that a couple of academics, even respected ones, have used the term in a different way does not mean that others should follow suit and perpetuate confusion. If we are going to start using the term in a different way, we are really changing the subject and confusing our readers.
That said, perhaps the term now means something rather different in Germany (and perhaps in other countries in continental Europe) from what it means in the UK and US. Even so, the author is writing in English for an audience that will immediately think the article is about an authoritarian trend or drift or "drawl" in the movement that began around 2006 and was originally centered on Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris, with Hitchens joining soon after, as well as some others who were closely associated (Grayling, Stenger, Hirsi Ali, Coyne, etc., and Onfray as at least a close parallel).
At the least, the author owes an explanation as to how the term is being used and why. If he or she really wants to use the term to cover, say, contemporary public atheism in general, this needs to be explained. But then again, why not just say that it is this that has the "authoritarian drawl"?
I don't want to rehash the merits of the argument yet again. The author notes in comments that it is not being argued that the "New Atheists," however defined, are engaging in actual authoritarianism, but that they might do so if they obtained political power or significant political influence. This is said to be because there are elements in their ideas that could lead to a drift in an authoritarian direction, and because some have, indeed, said some dubious and worrying things.
I do accept some of what the author says about an argument put by Dennett and Harris (though I don't know that Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, or Dawkins went along with this). I.e., I agree that it's worrying when they say that public respect given to "moderate" religion somehow enables fundamentalist religion.
Also, some undoubted New Atheist thinkers have occasionally said illiberal-sounding things about the place of religion in the so-called public sphere. I agree that it's legitimate to criticize this, albeit with care. I also agree that there is a difference between the broad sphere of public discussion and the discourse of deliberation over/justification of political decisions. The examples I have seen appear to relate to the latter, but it is bad terminology to use an expression such as the "public sphere" for this. If some of these atheist thinkers really do want to ban religious books, magazine, TV shows, etc., thus driving religion out of the broadly defined public sphere, that is plainly illiberal. But there is no good evidence that this is what they are asking for. (Or again, if a strong case can actually be made out that this is what the New Atheists want, it will have to be a different paper with much more empirical evidence than had been provided so far.)
What is clear is that, despite some occasional illiberal-sounding remarks, the New Atheists do not favor imprisoning people, creating re-education camps, banning books and newspapers, or any other actions that could be fairly described as "authoritarian."
Doubtless some atheistic ideologies have been authoritarian. For example the blend of Marxism and Chinese patriotism (which risks becoming Han patriotism) currently embraced by the Chinese Communist Party is clearly authoritarian, and it is used to justify quite extraordinary controls over religion (as well as over certain ethnic groups that are considered threats to Chinese unity). But I can see nothing anything like this in respect of the New Atheism (even understood in an extended sense), and the author does not seriously argue otherwise.
In the end, the argument does not seem to be that New Atheists are likely to drift into authoritarianism so much as that any worldview which denies libertarian free will, or some kind of uncaused "mental causation," is somehow unreasonable in a Rawlsian sense. But that argument only really begins on about p. 14 of a 21-page paper, and I cannot see that much at all is articulated in its favor other than some appeals to authority. Perhaps this is the argument that the author should be developing further. However, it takes us straight to the complexities of the current free will debate.
Furthermore, it would be extraordinary if believing in libertarian free will were a prerequisite to having a reasonable (in the Rawlsian sense) comprehensive doctrine. It would have to be shown that fatalists, compatibilists, hard determinists, hard incompatibilists, etc., are all committed to comprehensive doctrines that lead them to impose their doctrine on others through coercive political power. But the argument for that thesis is not made at all.
Perhaps it could be made. I don't know for certain. From what I've seen, however, the main political implication that hard determinists and hard incompatibilists find in their views is that people are not responsible for their actions in ways that justify a fundamental kind of moral responsibility, and that therefore criminal punishments should be altered in ways that would reflect only a water-down kind of responsibility, with the result that the system (especially in the US) would become much kinder and more lenient. This does not strike me as illiberal, but perhaps there are other effects.
In any event, the only core New Atheist who has much to say about this sort of issue is Sam Harris. Jerry Coyne, who is also closely connected to core New Atheism takes a similar view. Daniel Dennett is, of course, a high-profile compatibilist, and disagrees with the hard determinism of Harris and Coyne. If the author really wants to target the denial of libertarian free will as something that leads to politically coercive action to impose a comprehensive doctrine, it would seem that the target would not be New Atheism (in any sense), but rather the philosophical proponents of skeptical ideas about free will, such as Derk Pereboom.
Author Response
Point 1: I have read the new version and the author's response to my original comments. I do believe the article has improved (adding Sam Harris's little book on free will was a good idea, for example), but I continue to think that it would require major reworking before publication was merited. In that respect, I see that the author was asked to make major revisions. However, the revisions actually made are minor, and the author's comments in reply consist largely of reasons for notbeing prepared to make major revisions.
I don't want to go back and forth debating the issues in this exchange of comments. However, I want to write a bit more to try to be helpful to the author in making further revisions - presumably for publication elsewhere, effectively as a new article.
First, I am still confused as to what is meant by a "drawl" in this context. A drawl is a slow, lazy way of speaking. However, nothing in the paper explains to me in what sense, presumably a metaphorical one, the New Atheists are supposed to speak in a slow, lazy way, i.e. with a drawl. I wonder whether the author was looking for some other word, such as "drift" (which would make good sense as a metaphor if it meant that there are aspects of New Atheism that make it tend to move in an authoritarian direction). In any event, if the paper does end up being published can it pleased be arranged that the title is changed to something that makes more intuitive sense?
Response 1: I understand that the concept of drawl might be misunderstood.
Therefore, I exchanged it with the concept of leaning. Moreover, I
always mentioned that I talk about something cognitively in New
Atheism's thinking when I talk about an authoritarian leaning. Last, I
also updated the title of my article so that no misunderstanding might
occur as you mentioned.
Point 2: I'm not all that happy with the word "positivism" either. In context, the author actually seems to mean something like philosophical (or "metaphysical" or "scientific") naturalism. The word "positivism" (like the word "scientism") has become more a term of abuse aimed at philosophical naturalists than a descriptive, neutral term for a certain philosophical position. Very few English-language thinkers are likely to identify as "positivists" or as embracing something called "positivism" (except for legal theorists who might say that they are "legal positivists" rather than natural law theorists). In my experience, the general feeling among Anglophone philosophers is that both Comte's "positivism" and the "logical positivism" associated with A.J. Ayer and the Vienna Circle are thoroughly discredited. To call someone a positivist these days is fairly much pejorative, rather than neutrally attributing to them a position that is considered a live option within philosophy.
Response 2: To get things clear with regard to my conception of positivism, I
added the following definition in a footnote where I first mentions
the concept positivism: "I define positivism as a worldview that
assumes that only empirically directly observable entities exist or,
in a weaker understanding, that only from these can epistemically
justified knowledge be derived. Accordingly, phenomena such as a
non-materialistic understood mind, a free will et cetera cannot exist
or, with regard to the weaker conception of positivism, intellectually
justifiable knowledge cannot exist about them."
Point 3:
The author insists that the term "New Atheism" means something that goes far beyond the historical New Atheist movement which lasted from about 2006 to about 2015.
(Note: I previously said from about 2006 to about 2011 to 2012. On reflection, I think it's pretty clear that it lasted for a little bit longer than that, even though it suffered a huge blow in 2011 with the death of Christopher Hitchens and with various internal divisions. However, it did still have some momentum at that time. Nonetheless, it had pretty clearly lost momentum by 2015. The death of Victor Stenger in 2014 also helped hasten the end of the New Atheist movement. Stenger was a very aggressive and high-profile bulldog for the movement, and he also wrote the closest thing to a definitive book on the movement at its height.)
The author cites a couple of papers that treat the New Atheism as something wider and rather different. I am not familiar with these papers, but the fact that a couple of academics, even respected ones, have used the term in a different way does not mean that others should follow suit and perpetuate confusion. If we are going to start using the term in a different way, we are really changing the subject and confusing our readers.
That said, perhaps the term now means something rather different in Germany (and perhaps in other countries in continental Europe) from what it means in the UK and US. Even so, the author is writing in English for an audience that will immediately think the article is about an authoritarian trend or drift or "drawl" in the movement that began around 2006 and was originally centered on Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris, with Hitchens joining soon after, as well as some others who were closely associated (Grayling, Stenger, Hirsi Ali, Coyne, etc., and Onfray as at least a close parallel).
At the least, the author owes an explanation as to how the term is being used and why. If he or she really wants to use the term to cover, say, contemporary public atheism in general, this needs to be explained. But then again, why not just say that it is this that has the "authoritarian drawl"?
I don't want to rehash the merits of the argument yet again. The author notes in comments that it is not being argued that the "New Atheists," however defined, are engaging in actual authoritarianism, but that they might do so if they obtained political power or significant political influence. This is said to be because there are elements in their ideas that could lead to a drift in an authoritarian direction, and because some have, indeed, said some dubious and worrying things.
I do accept some of what the author says about an argument put by Dennett and Harris (though I don't know that Hitchens, Hirsi Ali, or Dawkins went along with this). I.e., I agree that it's worrying when they say that public respect given to "moderate" religion somehow enables fundamentalist religion.
Also, some undoubted New Atheist thinkers have occasionally said illiberal-sounding things about the place of religion in the so-called public sphere. I agree that it's legitimate to criticize this, albeit with care. I also agree that there is a difference between the broad sphere of public discussion and the discourse of deliberation over/justification of political decisions. The examples I have seen appear to relate to the latter, but it is bad terminology to use an expression such as the "public sphere" for this. If some of these atheist thinkers really do want to ban religious books, magazine, TV shows, etc., thus driving religion out of the broadly defined public sphere, that is plainly illiberal. But there is no good evidence that this is what they are asking for. (Or again, if a strong case can actually be made out that this is what the New Atheists want, it will have to be a different paper with much more empirical evidence than had been provided so far.)
What is clear is that, despite some occasional illiberal-sounding remarks, the New Atheists do not favor imprisoning people, creating re-education camps, banning books and newspapers, or any other actions that could be fairly described as "authoritarian."
Doubtless some atheistic ideologies have been authoritarian. For example the blend of Marxism and Chinese patriotism (which risks becoming Han patriotism) currently embraced by the Chinese Communist Party is clearly authoritarian, and it is used to justify quite extraordinary controls over religion (as well as over certain ethnic groups that are considered threats to Chinese unity). But I can see nothing anything like this in respect of the New Atheism (even understood in an extended sense), and the author does not seriously argue otherwise.
In the end, the argument does not seem to be that New Atheists are likely to drift into authoritarianism so much as that any worldview which denies libertarian free will, or some kind of uncaused "mental causation," is somehow unreasonable in a Rawlsian sense. But that argument only really begins on about p. 14 of a 21-page paper, and I cannot see that much at all is articulated in its favor other than some appeals to authority. Perhaps this is the argument that the author should be developing further. However, it takes us straight to the complexities of the current free will debate.
In the end, the argument does not seem to be that New Atheists are likely to drift into authoritarianism so much as that any worldview which denies libertarian free will, or some kind of uncaused "mental causation," is somehow unreasonable in a Rawlsian sense. But that argument only really begins on about p. 14 of a 21-page paper, and I cannot see that much at all is articulated in its favor other than some appeals to authority. Perhaps this is the argument that the author should be developing further. However, it takes us straight to the complexities of the current free will debate.
Furthermore, it would be extraordinary if believing in libertarian free will were a prerequisite to having a reasonable (in the Rawlsian sense) comprehensive doctrine. It would have to be shown that fatalists, compatibilists, hard determinists, hard incompatibilists, etc., are all committed to comprehensive doctrines that lead them to impose their doctrine on others through coercive political power. But the argument for that thesis is not made at all.
Perhaps it could be made. I don't know for certain. From what I've seen, however, the main political implication that hard determinists and hard incompatibilists find in their views is that people are not responsible for their actions in ways that justify a fundamental kind of moral responsibility, and that therefore criminal punishments should be altered in ways that would reflect only a water-down kind of responsibility, with the result that the system (especially in the US) would become much kinder and more lenient. This does not strike me as illiberal, but perhaps there are other effects.
In any event, the only core New Atheist who has much to say about this sort of issue is Sam Harris. Jerry Coyne, who is also closely connected to core New Atheism takes a similar view. Daniel Dennett is, of course, a high-profile compatibilist, and disagrees with the hard determinism of Harris and Coyne. If the author really wants to target the denial of libertarian free will as something that leads to politically coercive action to impose a comprehensive doctrine, it would seem that the target would not be New Atheism (in any sense), but rather the philosophical proponents of skeptical ideas about free will, such as Derk Pereboom.
Response 3: Thank you for this note. On the one hand, I deleted the word
movement wherever it might suggest that by talking about New Atheism I
talk about a single social movement. On the other hand, I added the
following sentence in footnote 3 where I describe different actors of
New Atheism: "Sociologically, it is therefore important to emphasise
at this point that I do not understand New Atheism as a single
monolithic social movement, but rather as a specific way of thinking
that can be found among various public persons, social movements,
parties and organisations."
Finally, I added the following paragraph in my introduction, which
shall underline that I only talk about New Atheism's way of thinking
and not about concrete political outputs: "To make the scope of the
following clear: The aim is not to analyse empirically whether New
Atheism has anywhere – directly or indirectly – led to policies that
can be classified as illiberal or authoritarian. Rather, it is to
argue on a purely intellectual level that the worldview and political
ideas of New Atheism are in contradiction to publicly reasonable ones.
If they were in fact to influence policies, there could accordingly be
a danger that they would lead to authoritarian decisions. In this sense, it should also be stressed that I do not use the concept of New Atheism as a sociological and historical one insofar as it is meant to denote a concrete social movement in a concrete country or in a concrete time. This could lead one to believe that I am going to address an authoritarian tendency within a clearly identifiable group of people. However, this is not my intention. As an alternative to the concept of New Atheism, one could therefore also speak of a rhetorically militant, political atheism as it is represented by persons who explicitly call themselves New Atheists, but not only by them."
I hope this shows that my paper is not about any empirical phenomena but a normative discussion of what is, at least in some scientific contexts, denoted as New Atheism - just like Rawls did for example with regard to utilitarianism whithout saying that utilitariasts like for example Peter Singer are no good and reasonable democratcs in fact.
