I don't think this writing reflects Hitchens particularly well.
> Everything that distinguishes New Atheism from mere secularism...
If I remember Hitchen's line of reasoning about secularism, it was that governments absolutely need to be secular - not just for the freedom of atheists, but for the freedom to practice one's own religion freely - which he was not against. A religious government will only govern for its own religion.
> In fact, New Atheism was, at its root, not about religion at all. It was about science, and its original enemies were not fundamentalists of any faith but a group of atheist Marxist biologists.
> Turns out it was bog-standard neoconservatism all along!
in a 2010 BBC interview, [Hitchens] stated that he "still [thought] like a Marxist" and considered himself "a leftist".
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens]
> New Atheism came into its own during the Global War on Terror, when secular neoconservatives like Hitchens realized that the arguments being used against Anglo religious fundamentalism could be wielded very conveniently against Islamic radicalism. This offered a way to challenge the common antiwar framing of the US invasion of Iraq and other Bush-era military operations as a new Christian crusade against the Muslim world.
Hitchens being pro-invasion of Iraq did surprise me, but I listened anyway. He didn't tackle the "Bush knowingly lied about WMDs and used the unrelated September 11 attacks to go to war with Iraq for its oil" (which is all we heard in our echo chamber, right?). He said that Saddam was a tyrant to his own people, and was into genociding the Kurds, hence the need for regime change.
I believe he was also sympathetic to Palestine, saying that Israel wouldn't declare where their border actually was, so no meaningful peace talks could actually happen.
I really just have a hard time agreeing with pretty much anything this author writes.
To include this in "some of the most unhinged tweets of all time" is just...laughable: "Saw a down-and-out in Seattle last night. His sign said not "I need food" or "I need a job" but "I need a fat bitch". What could this mean?"
I find that tweet hilarious. I also can't agree with the author on anything else, but looking at the "unhinged" tweets are the easiest way to exemplify that point.
I thought this article (a polemic and critical reflection on New Atheism) would be interest to the HN community.
History has shown us that a lot of “intellectual movements” loved by technologists et al have gone nowhere or otherwise been a joke:
- Rationalism: Styling itself as a rigorous way to interrogate reality to chart the best path forward (nurtured by the lesswrong community), its crowning achievement was Roko’s Basilisk, a hilarious “doomsday scenario” that only holds true if you happen to have a VERY specific set of beliefs about AGI and what its motive would be (ie the priors you must hold to believe RB are de facto religious)
Effective Altruism: Same as above, but (supposedly) tied to material pursuit of improving life for humanity as a whole; in practice, another rich tech brat playground and favored mindset of at least one multi-billion dollar fraud; also EA-motivated actors haven’t made a dent in any measurable global indicator of health/happiness, so what is all that money going for? Could it be think tanks?
And New Atheism: just a stalking horse for evopsych sex pests and neocons in academia (see the support for the war on terror, obsession with “western values” ,positions on campus protest post 10/7, etc… the article covers it well)
Putting this together: I think that “our community” isn’t very good at philosophy and the “lifestyles” we endorse end being the positions of culture-war conservatives (ie transphobia on the basis of “scientific reality”) or economic libertarians and white supremecist freaks like Moldbug.
I’d also like to be able to say I’m against ideology, but really I’m not. You can probably guess my perspective by what I devalue in my comment above. We are all reflections of our effect on the world, and I think the effect of the three “movements” above has been negative.
A good heuristic for whether a popular idea is worth paying attention to is whether you know more about the idea and why one might think it's true than you do about the person or people who are pushing it. If you know more about the people than the idea, there's a good chance that it's all marketing.
Atheism, I know what that is and why one might subscribe to it. "New Atheism"? The main thing I know about that is the names of the "Four Horsemen". I've read way too many articles in high-minded glossy magazines about it, that were mostly presented as profiles of people. I still have no idea how it's supposed to be different from atheism in substantive content.
“New Atheism” was basically just package branding for a handful of conference speakers/academics. It, much like “New Coke” before it, was about marketing a product (the speakers, not Atheism broadly) and did very well for them. It was basically just a subculture of atheists and their acolytes.
I did not like the article and I need to chew on it to give a proper reasoning, but the key point was the glib labeling and and over simplification of positions taken.
> Everything that distinguishes New Atheism from mere secularism...
If I remember Hitchen's line of reasoning about secularism, it was that governments absolutely need to be secular - not just for the freedom of atheists, but for the freedom to practice one's own religion freely - which he was not against. A religious government will only govern for its own religion.
> In fact, New Atheism was, at its root, not about religion at all. It was about science, and its original enemies were not fundamentalists of any faith but a group of atheist Marxist biologists.
> Turns out it was bog-standard neoconservatism all along!
> New Atheism came into its own during the Global War on Terror, when secular neoconservatives like Hitchens realized that the arguments being used against Anglo religious fundamentalism could be wielded very conveniently against Islamic radicalism. This offered a way to challenge the common antiwar framing of the US invasion of Iraq and other Bush-era military operations as a new Christian crusade against the Muslim world.Hitchens being pro-invasion of Iraq did surprise me, but I listened anyway. He didn't tackle the "Bush knowingly lied about WMDs and used the unrelated September 11 attacks to go to war with Iraq for its oil" (which is all we heard in our echo chamber, right?). He said that Saddam was a tyrant to his own people, and was into genociding the Kurds, hence the need for regime change.
I believe he was also sympathetic to Palestine, saying that Israel wouldn't declare where their border actually was, so no meaningful peace talks could actually happen.