Abstract
This chapter is about the theological foundations of the scientific approach of those contemporary pilgrim atheists that call themselves New Atheists. The core argument is that although Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, among others, do not like to be called ‘reductionist’ because of its semantic implication (i.e. being simplistic), they are nonetheless tempted to choose simple, coherent, straightforward and easy-going theories. I intend to search for the cause of this temptation in the theological ideals of modern science, the most important of which is what Amos Funkenstein called the ideal of economy and coherence. That ideal was based on seeking a univocal and representational language, on the one hand, and presupposing a homogenous nature on the other hand. So a scientist of the dawn of the modern age could discover the natural laws, which are represented in epistemologically simple but ontologically pervasive formulas, and in this way he (in this case dominantly male) could gain god-like powers. The main insight of this chapter is that we can find the radicalised and ideologised version of the ideal of ‘economy and coherence’ in the New Atheists’ naturalistic arguments against the existence of God.
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Notes
- 1.
However, Darwin did not become an atheist – he finally called himself agnostic. Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), known as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, coined the term in 1869.
- 2.
His translation was officially banned by the English church hierarchy in 1407 and it remained under that sanction until Henry VIII’s Reformation in the 1530s.
- 3.
It is necessary to remember that this is not a science-fiction tale. This is a highly important scientific project supported by some large companies. Those are companies that never invest in unrealistic projects which do not guarantee their future profit. The reason that this looks like science-fiction to some people is that it is still hard for us to see the speed of radical scientific-technological changes. Moreover, if this is nothing but science-fiction one needs to remember that science-fiction was the inspiring engine behind scientific discoveries such as the pioneering submarine designer who took the idea from Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870) by Jules Verne (1828–1905).
- 4.
The fact that ‘Ockham’s razor’, which was originally an argument for the existence of God and is today deployed as a metaphor for scientific methods, reveals a great deal about the historical evolution of the meaning of science.
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Hashemi, M. (2017). Pilgrim Atheists and the Myth of Warfare. In: Theism and Atheism in a Post-Secular Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54948-4_5
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