“New” Atheism? No, I’m a common, or garden variety, atheist

There’s been much talk in the blogosphere and the press recently about “new atheism”, probably prompted by Gary Wolf’s Wired article, The Church of the Non-Believers in late 2006.

In the article, Wolf paints a picture of what he calls “new atheism” — a vocal, insistent form of atheism that seeks to get those who do not belief in personal gods and salvation for perceived and assumed sin, hiding behind the safe labels of “agnostic” and “deist”, out of the closet and into the open.

This is the so-called new atheist: a loud, unapologetic proponent of non-belief, confidently declaring I don’t believe in gods and defying anyone to prove them wrong.

And this isn’t “new” by any means. There have always been those who have spoken out against those who seek to impose their ideas of reality, morality and social justice on others.

Atheism, and other varieties of free-thinking, have been around for a very long time (in human terms, of course — in planetary or universal terms atheism, or anything human, is obviously quite new). The Ancient Greek term ἄθεος (’atheos’ – godless) was used by Plato in his The Apology of Socrates (Apology) written in the early 4th century BCE, and there is evidence that even before this, the pre-Socratic 5th century BCE philosopher Diagoras could have been considered the first “atheist”.

Other philosophers of this tradition, like Epicurus and Democritus, also espoused materialistic (i.e. natural) views of the world without reference to superstition. Epicurus’s ideas, while not completely ruling out the idea of a god or gods, was certainly concerned that, if there were any, they were of a deistic persuasion and completely uninterested in human affairs.

Even in the christian bible’s new testament book of (Epistle to the) Ephesians (allegedly written by Saul/Paul in 63CE), we find reference to atheism as ‘without gods’ (see the image above from the Papyrus 46 document).

Of course, the resurgence of atheistic ideas came again to the fore in the 18th century Enlightenment, when philosophers like Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau and Paine, while not necessarily calling themselves atheists, certainly espoused reason as a better source of understanding reality and the interactions of human societies than mythology, although they would probably have been labelled as “new atheists” by the Wolfs of their day.

So, should it come as such a surprise when today’s atheists — backed by 21st century science and knowledge, our modern methods of observing and testing the universe, tempered with the world’s experience of the past few thousand years’ attitudes and acts of theists and those with theocratic aspirations and justifying their acts and attitudes with reference to myths — people who are ready, able and willing to speak out against religion, do so?

I say “no”, and I say it loudly and proudly.

Atheism, like many ideas, has peaks and troughs. The current profile of atheism is an example of exposure to a pre-existing idea rising once again to one of these peaks, becoming more visible, more outspoken, and demanding the respect that we, first and foremost as human beings, not only desire, but have just as much a right to as those who do not share our (lack of) belief.

I don’t know what Wolf is talking about: my atheism has a very long and distinguished history — “new” it most certainly is not.

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