Who Are the “New Atheists”?

I simply view a “New Atheist” as someone who is evangelical about atheism who makes an effort to talk about atheism to the general public. This is in contrast to the traditional “closeted” atheist who only discusses atheism in academic circles or amongst other atheists. I don’t view “New Atheists” as necessarily being rude, arrogant, or any of the other adjectives sometimes attributed. I personally know fundamentalist Christians who are quite aware of Richard Dawkins. They think he is “Satan himself” but that is because they view him as in competition with Jesus for people’s souls. The Christians that complain about “New Atheist” arrogance are probably experiencing some cognitive dissonance… I agree with other posters here in recent posts that it takes a variety of temperaments and personality types to make atheism more acceptable in the general population.

I think that “New Atheists” describes more the prominent members of the movement than the rank and file. In that sense, Dawkins and Harris, and maybe even you Hemant, would be “New Atheists”, but most of your readers wouldn’t be called that.

Female New Atheists? Hmmm, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Julia Sweeny come to minds.

I hate the term myself. I don’t know what I would put in its place. 21st Century Rationalists? I dunno.

The term is a contrivance like “creation science.” Creation scientists and ID proponents are simply creationists with new branding. Same fundamental arguments, new spin.

Has Dawkins, Harris, Dennett or Hitchens brought anything new to the table in the debate between athiests and creationists outside of the advances in science?

We should be asking ourselves, who are the “old” atheists? What were their arguments? Had they already settled the debate and we’re ignorant of it? Had they been silenced? It is just that they’re boring (unlike the hip “new” athiests) and their books are written in hard to read English?

I totally agree with Claudia. It is also my belief that the “New Atheist” is about the prominent and popular people in society and seem to focus on the more intellectuals and those that have caught the proverbial eye of those in the religiousphere,i.e. those that have made a big enough splash in a case for arguing against their propaganda for them to see and these are mainly Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris. My case for this is, Bill Maher is a proclaimed atheist and he is popular, but I don’t think anyone has called him a New Atheist. Then the next part of this whole thing is…what is an Old Atheist then? Which leads you to the other thought that an Old Atheist must be referring to atheists of yesterday like Sagan, Twain, etc…
which means that “New Atheists” are just really popular,famous and reasonable minded atheists that are still alive.

“Is there a better term we could use for the new generation of atheists?”

The future.

I thik that the term is used by commentators like Julie Burchill who ludicrously claims that atheism is a new middle class fad (thus disavowing herself of the middle classes and putting herself firmly with the proles. Despite having a successful career in journalism and publishing…

Here’s where I think the distinction ought to be made. (Whether it corresponds with popular usage is another story.)

The “Old Atheist” is concerned primarily with church-state separation and tends to have an accommodating stance towards religion. Live and let live. Old Atheist tends to assume that most people are too intellectually lazy to appreciate or benefit from atheism, and so isn’t focused much on outreach. Old Atheist is very much concerned with countering the popular religious critiques of atheism, and therefore Old Atheist is intensely concerned with maintaining rational credibility at all costs. Old Atheist actually cares, therefore, about whether fellow atheists are “weak” or “strong” or “agnostic,” because he fears being made to look bad — that is, irrational — by association.

“New Atheist” cares about church-state separation and cares about rationality, but New Atheist has scrapped the live-and-let-live philosophy in one sense: New Atheist is going to say in public that if falsehoods are bad and religion is demonstrably false, then something about religion must be bad. New Atheist does this because he has observed that no amount of rhetorical civility will persuade religion to let atheists and secularism and science go about their business. New Atheist has decided to abandon the unconscious assumption that atheists will always occupy a cultural ghetto, and as a result New Atheist happily evangelizes a naturalistic worldview for its own sake. New Atheist is less concerned than Old about the pure philosophy dividing weak from strong from agnostic, and sees credibility more as a matter of following the preponderance of evidence and living authentically with one’s choices.

I’m not famous and nobody cares what I think, but I’d happily call myself a New Atheist.

By that definition, I’d probably be considered a New Atheist (even though I’ve considered myself one for 3 years and have been anything but religious for most of my conscious life), seeing as I don’t hold myself back when someone asks me why I hate religion.

I don’t have a definition for “New Atheist” because I don’t use it. However, to me it seems that a New Atheist is an atheist who doesn’t stay in the closet about it.

Is there a better term we could use for the new generation of atheists?

Hemant, watch out for creating something that might not really be there, like a “new generation” of atheists. How are they so different than the old?

I suggest Contemporary Atheists as an umbrella!

*my apologies to the earlier “Tom” I need to use a different name than one of the most common first names in the English language!

I’m with Marvin — I associate the term “New Atheist” with atheists who have a stated mission to be “out” and to get atheism into the mainstream of American culture. They quite deliberately pull no punches with religion and faith — dumb ideas are dumb ideas and the sooner we all admit that, the better.

Strangely — and this is just my gut associations with the term, based on nothing concrete — I don’t associate New Atheism with church-state activism as much as I associate it with simply an open and unapologetic critique of religion.

Why get hung up on terms? implicit, explicit, strong, weak, atheist, agnostic, Bright, Freethinker, Humanist, “New Atheist”…

Why worry about trying to categorize ourselves? To me, it just seems like it makes not believing in something more complicated than it needs to be.

I don’t need a “term” to define myself. I’m me. I’m Peregrine. Well, online, anyway. Offline, I’m… well, without reveling any personal information, I’m myself. I’m an atheist because I don’t believe in any god(s), but I don’t identify with the term. I don’t shake hands with people, and go “Hi, I’m [name], I’m an atheist.” I don’t need a big red A on my Web site. I don’t have T-shirts printed up with my existentialist philosophy. I don’t hide it, but I don’t need to raise the flag either.

I’ve been an atheist for quarter of a century. I got there on my own. But then followed up with philosophical works to help me understand my decision more thoroughly. I’m fascinated why people believe. It’s an interesting subject for sure.

There are atheists, and there are theists, and very little else it would seem (ok, probably wrong but…) and recently atheists have found a voice. But not longer do you have to say “I’m agnostic” (if you were brave) or pretend you’re religious when you’re not.

The new atheists are the old atheists, but with the power of the internet and mass communication behind them.

I think Sarah’s definition is pretty applicable. I don’t think the term “new” here has any actual meaning at all.

I suspect the usage of “new atheist”, particularly by the people (whoever they were) who first started using the term, mainly indicates that the users are self-important and either young or poorly informed. Certain people love to think that they have discovered something new. How often have have you seen the term “new” applied to something which isn’t new at all? If you’re over forty, probably quite often.

I’m more of a pre-owned atheist than a new one.

The New Atheism, I think, recognizes the threat not just of fundamentalist religion, but of the mindset that makes people willfully credulous, that celebrates intentional ignorance. It says that religion (and everything else) ought to be criticized on its merits. I have used different terms to separate “new” and “old” atheism, but my terms are not based on newness or oldness. I have divided atheists into instigators (New Atheists, Hirsi Ali, Myers, etc.) and policers (Newdow, FfRF, etc.). Read all about that here.

I agree with ihedenius –

Just what, exactly, is “New” with “New Atheists”? Ingersoll, Mark Twain, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton – if any of these people started speaking publicly today they would be labeled “New Atheists”.

It’s a meaningless distinction applied to us by the religious in order to trivialize and denigrate our philosophy.

Are we more strident than Stanton? Do we ridicule religious people more than Twain? Do we show the foolishness of the Bible more than Ingersoll? Do we label religion as “superstition” and defeat it with logic more than Bertrand Russell?

When ever I’m confronted with a religious person using the term “New Atheist” I ALWAYS ask them to please give some sort of defining characteristic that would allow me to tell a “New” atheist from an “Old” atheist.

Religious people always equate “New” atheism with prominent contemporary figures like Dawkins or Harris. They often know nothing about historic atheists – so how would they even know the difference between old and new?

For the religious, “New Atheist” is a code word that really means, “People who have the audacity to have an opposing opinion about religion.”