Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

http://www.publicbooks.org//nonfiction/soft-atheism

EXCERPT: [...] New Atheism is typically understood to have emerged in the first years of the 21st century, after 9/11, and after a series of prominent advances by creationists in schools, especially in the United States (but also in the United Kingdom). For one thing, though, as with many labels, it is not wholly owned by the people it is meant to describe. [...] All the same, the label sticks. And in the stereotyped version, what it refers to is a nasty form of atheism, nasty in the sense that its critiques of religion are biting, mocking, and relentless. But it’s not all negative. Much is celebrated in new atheism, above all the power of Reason (definitely capital-R), and its handmaiden, the scientific method.

New atheism—however one wants to cast or define it—is nevertheless alive and well. Yet almost as soon as it took hold—sometime around 2006—other kinds of atheists (often more likely to refer to themselves in the first instance as humanists or secular humanists) tried to shake it loose.

In 2011 [...] at the British Humanist Association’s annual conference in Manchester [...] Julian Baggini, the atheist, humanist, and philosopher, was at the podium trying to convince fellow BHA members that maybe the idea of transcendence had something going for it. There were sharp intakes of breath by some, but he wasn’t thrown off stage. The next year, Alain de Botton published Religion for Atheists, premised on the idea that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Religion has some things going for it (community, etc., etc.) and we ought to hold on to that, even as we get rid of the silly and sometimes dangerous stuff.

[...] Of course, nasty is often more noisy—and certainly more notable in the public sphere. It has taken a few years for the new-atheist din to subside enough for us to hear what else is being said—and, crucially, done. The “nice atheism” is often very much committed to doing things, to building community. The British Humanist Association, which I have been studying for over four years now, conducts close to nine thousand “non-religious” funerals every year. It has a lot of these nice atheists (many say they are atheists, yes, but prefer to emphasize their humanism, because it’s more positive and constructive...

A small fact in relationship to my Local city:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosary_Cemetery,_Norwich

In the City of Norwich, Norfolk, England. Rosary Cemetery is the first English "non-denominational" cemetery. It's not a recent addition, in the last five years it went from Grade II to Grade II* Standing which is a reference to it's historic significance (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/carin...buildings/).

I would suggest that "Soft-atheism" is just a polite way of implying that Scholars and Philosophers have the potential to reason religions existence, even if there own understanding or beliefs significantly differ. (I suppose you could suggest it's a form of empathy, which is likely why they refer to it as Humanism and is different from the "bench sitting" concept of Agnosticism.)

Transcendence however has become something that is growing in discussion topic, not so much for the nature of religion but for the adaptation of the original reasoning into something that is more future proofed. It's the ability to adapt cross-doctrines from completely different fields and weigh the outcome of one to suggest the other that has been extremely beneficial to Science, as the results of months of research work can be "educatedly guessed" before the research even takes place.

There is also the consideration of how some see their "spirit/soul" being moved from their biological body to being housed in something more mechanical or something build based upon the future of mankind's technological prowess. (There might even be some that consider the Singularity already has you...)

I think it is highly limiting to conceive of atheism as a-spiritualist. As if it is logically necessary to be a materialist or secularist or even a nihilist to not believe in a God. Such is not the case with me. I take a decidedly agnostic view on reality itself, half convinced of it's transcendent Being and half convinced of it being largely a mental illusion. Ofcourse if the illusion is all there is, then is that not the Reality? Because I cannot even pin down the meaning of real, I am even less convinced of the reality of a God, assuming we even know what that means.Tillich describes belief in God's reality, as a thing, as a form of atheism, since God is actually Being itself and so is not to be defined as "being something." Taken in this larger sense, I am as agnostic about God as I am about reality. I question the ability of our minds to even conceive of such metaphysical absolutes, as abstract concepts or categories, and promote a experiential approach towards phenomenality itself.

I'm not convinced of the reality of so-called 'new atheism'.

I'm not convinced that the 'new atheism' expresses new views about the God-question.

What seems to have happened is that a number of rather strident mass-market books championing atheism and attacking "religion" were written about the same time. They hit the reviewers at once, and those reviewers thought that they saw a publishing trend. The reviewers and columnists seem to have been the ones who originally coined the phrase 'new atheism'. It's a journalistic invention.

Of course, back in real life, there have always been strident atheists and strident expressions of atheism.  

Quote:In 2011 [...] at the British Humanist Association’s annual conference in Manchester [...] Julian Baggini, the atheist, humanist, and philosopher, was at the podium trying to convince fellow BHA members that maybe the idea of transcendence had something going for it.

It's almost certain that there's more to reality than human beings currently know. It's likely (though less certain) that there's more to reality than humans can possibly know.

The problem at this point is justifying why the unknown becomes an object of religious desire.

Transcendence, after all, seems to suggest 'higher', 'better' and even 'more divine' in a way that 'unknown' doesn't. Transcendence is imagined as something inherently worth seeking. What justifies that?

This question applies to science too. Scientists (particularly physicists) sometimes seem to think of what they are doing as some kind of holy quest. The search for deeper and deeper knowledge of the fundamentals of reality is sometimes imagined as leading to some kind of transformative gnosis, in which the limitations of humanity will finally be left behind. (That's an idea that's often expressed in science fiction.)

When a person is born into this world they either ask an endless supply of questions to garner answers that only cause more questions to be asked or they reach a point where they are satisfied to some extent with what they know (They can be considered content). 


Perhaps the brain makes that decision via the hypothalamus much like how we know when we've eaten enough, what is more than likely though is the regulation of knowledge is actually comprised from a number of different lobes balancing the information between them, but due to how we go about storing information defines how the memory fragments(causing loss), splinters (shifting where the information is stored) or is augmented to similar information to reduce storage space.  This in turn means that to those with a mind for accuracy will find they spend a lot of time sourcing supporting evidence just to make sure that their "hazy" memory is accurate and they haven't manufactured an incorrect supposition.

Some people are much more prone to "Analytics" than others, either due to their naturally abundant intelligence quota through genetics, decent parenting and education (To doctrine study and habit) or through a metaphysical mutation. 

In essence there are nerds, geeks and those somewhere in the autistic spectrum... and the occasional bonafide genius.  Unfortunately sometimes personality disorders encroach how they are perceived, especially with those of a sociopathic disorder who are probably more prone to cut corners, falsify data and plagiarise.

It comes back to Journalism however when you consider that Post Graduates have written and continue to write papers that are published, and Pop Science Journalists will scour for interesting (Fringe) topics and personalities that will sell their articles.  Not every Scientist is a lead Scientist working on a project, an example of this is Scientists that corroborate findings for companies or countries.  They aren't reaching for some lofty goal and inventing something new, they just duplicate experiments to make sure that the results are correct or making sure that the initial science wasn't falsified or corner cut.  (In other words Science can be just as mundane as any other profession.)