The evolution of atheism

Science and religion: The dialectic of atheism

Michael J. Buckley (1987, 2004) has offered a compelling account of the ‘dialectical origins of atheism’, with atheism emerging not out of an antagonism between religion and science, but, rather, a relative harmony between religion and science in early modernity: ‘In the seventeenth century, not only was science … not opposed to confessional Christianity; it often believed that it could and should do the foundational thinking for Christianity’ (Buckley, 2004: 32). He argues that atheism came not from a contradiction between religion and science, but from an internal contradiction within theism itself that led to theology turning to science for its foundations. Gavin Hyman endorses Buckley’s theory, suggesting that in early modernity a modern concept of God arose that did away with transcendence as his essential property (this was a key element of pre-modern theology), instead offering ‘a conception of God as a “thing” in the world with a definable “substance” and identifiable “location” that could be referred to in much the same way as other things’ (Hyman, 2007: 39). When theologians decided that God was a thing of definite location and substance, it by definition became an object of scientific inquiry.

Scientists, meanwhile, thought it natural to ground apologetic arguments through empirical evidence, and were encouraged to do so by theologians and clerics alike. Most prominent thinkers of the Scientific Revolution were passionate believers and many developed theological positions to accompany their naturalistic theories (Henry, 2010: 41). The most important figure in the development of this early modern dialectic was perhaps Isaac Newton, a devout Christian who invoked divine intervention to fill some gaps in his theories (Thrower, 2000). Newton’s discoveries brought about a profound shift and step forward in our understanding of the universe that signaled the possibility that science might be able to find answers to questions that had long been the province of theology, transforming the enchanted universe into a ‘system of intelligible forces’ (Hampson, 1968: 37). As scientific knowledge expanded, God was increasingly seen as an unnecessary addition to self-sufficient theories, and by the 18th century science had rejected the notion of a static universe with laws generated by God in favor of a view that accepted nature as a product of great revolutionary transformations over an immense period of time (see Hampson, 1968). Scientists were not arguing that God does not exist, only that the concept of a designer was no longer required to explain the universe. Science did, however, begin to claim entitlement to what some considered the primary function of religion: an explanation of the origin and nature of material reality.

Buckley suggests that this development paved the way for atheism: ‘A theism built upon the discoveries of science eventually generated its own negation’ (2004: 42). For modern rationalist critiques to apply to God, there first had to be some change in theology that made God an object that could be investigated scientifically, so that ‘atheism did not so much provide an external challenge to theism, but rather a revolution within theology itself is what gave rise to atheism. This is to claim that the origins of modern atheism are ultimately theological’ (Hyman, 2007: 40). In this theory atheism is not the result of a conflict between science and religion – this false notion of the enduring and intractable conflict between the epistemologies and institutions of religion and science is referred to by some historians simply as the ‘conflict myth’ (Lindberg, 2010) – but, on the contrary, atheism ‘arose from the contradiction immanent within the orthodox tradition itself and its apologetic strategies’ (Buckley, 2004: 46).

Science and natural theology were principal among these apologetic strategies, and in the early days of concurrent revolutions in science and theology there was thus no real conflict, but, rather, science and religion were bound together. The shifting theological understanding of God (the move from transcendence to materiality) resulted in a shift of emphasis from revelation to natural theology, which was predicated upon the idea that ‘the existence and attributes of a divine being could be inferred using natural reason’ (Topham, 2010: 61), as well as an explicit turn to science to provide hard evidence of God’s presence in nature. This relationship would evolve and give birth to a modern form of atheism that rejected a modern form of theism that was ultimately unsustainable (Hyman, 2007: 40). That is, a theism grounded upon a conception of God as a natural entity amenable to scientific investigation would inevitably fail when the evidence failed to demonstrate his role in nature, but rather seemed to demonstrate more and more that the concept of God was not required to explain nature.

It must be noted, however, that these developments generally did not lead directly to atheism, but rather to skepticism of revelation and to a belief in ‘natural religion’ or deism (or in other words, a move from revelation to natural theology). Deists rejected the specificities of revealed religion (which was based on hearsay and thus could not be verified rationally or empirically) while embracing the view that religion should be founded upon rational proofs and that evidence of God’s design could be found in nature (Byrne, 1989). The prevailing Enlightenment sentiment was that ‘Religion which could not be established by reason was no religion at all – it was superstition’ (Thrower, 2000: 100). This transitional phase to true atheism emerged out of the dialectical relationship between religion and science, a product of the Scientific Revolution and a revolution within theology.

The major exception to this rule of deism during the Enlightenment was a watershed event in the history of atheism: the publication of Baron d’Holbach’s Système de la Nature [System of Nature] in 1770. D’Holbach was a French-German intellectual and socialite living in Paris and ‘probably the first unequivocally professed atheist in the Western Tradition’ (Thrower, 2000: 106). David Berman (1988) considers Système de la Nature the first published work of ‘avowed’ (i.e. explicit and publicly stated) atheism in Europe. D’Holbach’s criticism of religion may be distilled down to three essential points: it is unscientific and its teachings are contrary to scientific truth; it supports a corrupt social order by diverting attention away from the here-and-now and instead toward the afterlife; and it is not a useful foundation for morality (Thrower, 2000: 107). These points refer to three dimensions of critique: epistemological, political and moral. These in turn correspond to the dimensions of the Enlightenment critique of religion as outlined by Casanova (1994), which includes the categories ‘cognitive’, ‘practical-political’ and the quite unwieldy ‘subjective expressive-aesthetic-moral’, which might be more simply stated as the moral-subjective critique.

The critical engagement with religion among 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers, for the most part, was rarely as boldly and proudly atheistic as the work of d’Holbach, and never quite escaped the influence of deism and the problem of design. Atheism, however, would find new life, new expression, and diverge into new trajectories in the 19th century. It was in this period that atheism evolved from its Enlightenment origins and took shape according to two new points of origin, from which we can derive most contemporary forms. These new strands of atheism grew from the Enlightenment’s approach of general skepticism and provided it with new grounding in the nascent disciplines of biology, anthropology, sociology and psychology. The first of these trajectories, emerging from the debates ignited by Darwin’s theory of evolution and anchored in the cognitive critique, is scientific atheism.

The evolution of scientific atheism

The publication in 1859 of The Origin of Species (2003[1859]) is not only one of the most significant events in the history of science, but perhaps also the most significant event in the history of atheism. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was one of the most provocative and controversial ideas in human history, chiefly due to its implicit challenge to religious explanations of human origins. This simple but astonishingly successful theory provided an answer to the riddle of the existence of life, which for thousands of years was answered with ‘God’, and thus provided atheism with an answer to the lacuna that had plagued it for centuries. Darwin’s theory not only challenged the argument from design but nullified it by providing a rational, evidence-based alternative explanation of the appearance of design in life (Dawkins, 1986). Darwin himself notes the implications of his theory for the oldest argument for religion in his autobiography: ‘There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows’ (2007[1876]: 94). Though Darwin never called himself an atheist, he expressed an agnosticism that grew out of the implications of his theory of evolution, which provided new scientific grounding for atheism and the critique of religion (Irvine, 1955: 133).

Darwin, a shy and chronically ill recluse, rarely spoke publicly and instead left the defense of his highly controversial theory in the public sphere mainly to Thomas Huxley, who would become famous for, among other things, coining the term ‘agnosticism’, and acting as ‘Darwin’s bulldog – actively taking the side of evolution in public debate against all challengers’ (Larson, 2006: 80). Huxley and a handful of others took to defending and promoting the theory of evolution in the academy and in the more inclusive public sphere, and ‘effectively collaborated to take over the scientific establishment, with the goal of enthroning naturalism as the ideology of science and science as the mainspring of modern society’ (ibid.: 108). Darwin’s theory, of course, met with resistance from religious authorities (as well as dissenters from the scientific community), and this, coupled with the fact that the biblical account of the creation and significance of human beings contradicted evolution, led some early Darwinists to engage in a public conflict with religious ideas. This conflict still shapes the discourse of the New Atheism today.

For these early Darwinists, the theory of evolution was not simply a scientific fact that needed to be defended against irrational forces that would seek to discredit it. The theory of evolution was, from the beginning, tied to a certain political orientation. Darwin ‘was born, so to speak, into the financially secure intelligentsia of Britain’ (Browne, 2006: 10). This socialization proved determinative of his character and political views, which in turn were instructive in the development of his scientific theory: ‘Essential to Darwin’s conception was a modern worldview influenced by ideas of utilitarianism, individualism, imperialism, and laissez-faire capitalism’ (Larson, 2006: 70). He felt no compunction about declaring his support for the rising tide of liberalism: ‘The unfettered individual, pursuing his self-interest in a freely competitive society, had been the political ideal for half a century. … It was Darwin’s manifesto in the Descent of Man, and he himself remained a “thorough Liberal”’ (Desmond and Moore, 1991: 625). Soon after its publication, Huxley described Origin of Species as a ‘“veritable Whitworth [rapid-fire machine] gun in the armoury of liberalism” – the most effective new weapon for killing superstitious beliefs and clearing the field for rational materialism’ (Larson, 2006: 83).

Clearly, evolution was far from politically neutral in the minds of its defenders. Rather, the idea was tied to liberalism and rationalism and was used to promote modern goals and values, and thus transcended science to become a cornerstone of the political ideology of the Victorian liberal intelligentsia (Jones, 1980). Indeed, many scholars agree not only that Darwin’s theory validated his political views, but that the theory itself was a product of Victorian culture, with Darwin early in his scientific career committing himself to a theory of nature that reflected the Malthusian socio-economic inclinations of British high society (Radick, 2009). As atheism became tied to the theory of evolution, it moved from simple negation of religious beliefs to an affirmation of liberalism, scientific rationality and the legitimacy of the institutions and methodology of modern science – and thus from religious criticism to a complete ideological system.

In addition to linking evolution with liberalism and capitalism, Darwinists found in the theory support for the idea of western Europe as the world’s most advanced (or highly evolved) society. The theory of evolution took on enormous significance outside the realm of the natural sciences, shaping social and political thought as ‘natural selection became a kind of general revelation’ (Budd, 1977: 131). To this extent, Darwin’s theory of evolution became as much an instrument of conservative political ideology as it was an instrument of liberalism. This is most clear in the example of Herbert Spencer, who drew on both Darwinian and Lamarckian ideas for his conception of social evolution. In Spencer’s social theory, evolution ‘defines the stages through which the evolving social aggregate passes’ (Wiltshire, 1978: 194). The mechanism that drives this process is natural selection, or competition between the more and less ‘fit’ members of society: ‘Society advances where its fittest members are allowed to assert their fitness with the least hindrance, and where the least fitted are not artificially prevented from dying out’ (Spencer, 1965[1884]: 81). In this sentence we see Spencer’s ‘radical laissez-faire standpoint’ (Gondermann, 2007: 28) and a warning against the danger posed to the advancement of society by welfare state programs and support for the poor, all with the legitimacy provided by a scientific theory.

It is important to note that this idea of progressive social evolution, with its vision of a ‘natural unfolding of social complexity’ (Dunbar, 2007: 32), is predicated upon a misreading of Darwin. He viewed evolution as a radiating bush of adaptation and differentiation, a ‘random process with no fixed direction’ (ibid.: 31) rather than a journey down a singular line of improvement as it was for Spencer, who inflected biological evolution with his own prejudices and politics. With Spencer, evolution moved from liberal-rationalist ideology to what would become known as Social Darwinism. In many circles, scientific and otherwise, atheism became intertwined with this ideology, even though Darwin himself considered atheism to be an untenable position and instead preferred to refer to himself as an agnostic (Desmond and Moore, 1991).

Despite Darwin’s reservations, the theory of evolution meant for some that science was able to complete the break from religion instigated by the Scientific Revolution and a contemporaneous revolution in theology, now having an explanation of the origin of life to supplement the explanation of the cosmos. The atheism of the Victorian Darwinists, constituted by this explanatory model of religion, as well as political liberalism and a defense of the Enlightenment principles of progress, universalism and scientific-rationalism, is what I call scientific atheism. It carries on the cognitive critique, focusing on the irrationality of religious beliefs with the expectation that ‘The “darkness” of religious ignorance and superstition would fade away when exposed to the “lights” of reason’ (Casanova, 1994: 31). It emerged out of the science/faith dialectic described by Buckley, which culminated in the Victorian period in the view that ‘science has replaced religion as the explanation of the physical world and that moderns, who by definition possess science, must therefore reject the religious explanation’ (Segal, 2004: 137). With science claiming sole right to explanation of nature, critique of religion was in essence a rejection of worldviews that stood in the way of the legitimization and institutionalization of modern scientific methods.

It is crucial to note that scientific atheism was not restricted to those in the fields of the natural sciences. Thinkers in the fields of sociology and anthropology also took to positing religion as a lower stage in the evolution of humanity, such as in Comte’s Law of Three Stages. E. B. Tylor shared the scientific atheist view of religion as a pseudo-scientific hypothesis (what Richard Dawkins [2006] calls the ‘God Hypothesis’) and believed that ‘Religion functions to account for events in the physical world as comprehensively and as systematically as science’ (Segal, 2004: 142). It is equally important to note that not all Darwinists took the Spencerian view of progressive evolution, and that scientific atheists in the Darwinian tradition today – Richard Dawkins is the prime example – are inclined to warp the theory of natural selection to fit their own particular visions of social progress. These facts taken together tell us that scientific atheism is not a necessary consequence of a Darwinian worldview, but rather an ideology that uses ‘evolution’ and ‘natural selection’ as metaphors in the advancement of what is in fact a deeply political position.

From science of God to science of Man: Humanistic atheism

The atheist defenders of Darwin, emboldened by the revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection and the answer it provided to the argument from design, extended and refined the Enlightenment tradition of religious criticism, most importantly the cognitive critique. At the same time, another revolution in thought was taking place, one founded on the notion that the Enlightenment rationalist approach ‘did not take account of the deep, non-rational forces that have caused mankind to believe in God and religion’ (Berman, 1988: viii). This revolution produced what Berman calls the ‘anthropological approach’ to criticism of religion, which steers atheism away from ontological questions concerning God’s existence. Instead, thinkers in this tradition ‘were almost entirely uninterested in the substantive question of God’s existence: they largely assumed His nonexistence, and offered absorbing accounts of the causes which have brought about, and sustain, belief in God’ (ibid.: ix).

This move might be understood as a departure from scientific atheism, which is a denial of the existence of God and the refutation of religious (as opposed to scientific) explanations of nature, and toward an approach that shifted focus from ‘nature’ to ‘humanity’, as ‘atheism in the nineteenth century bent its considerable energies to apotheosize the human’ (Buckley, 2004: 71). I will therefore refer to the atheism of the 19th-century anthropological approach to criticism, and subsequent criticism rooted in this tradition – which understands religion as a social and psychological phenomenon and emerged from the social and human sciences – as humanistic atheism. This approach surfaced largely as a response to discontent with the promise of the Enlightenment that modernity would lead to greater prosperity for all, as well as a recognition that the rationalist cognitive critique of religion did nothing to address the non-rational sources of religious belief, which include alienation, suffering, infantile neurosis and insecurity, and fear of death. It took its primary task to be one of disclosing the divine as a projection of alienation and suffering, thereby centering humanity and its earthly interests – rather than theological constructions – as the object of inquiry. It began with Feuerbach, who was a precursor to the three major antitheists.

Feuerbach’s contribution to the development of atheism was his notion of God as projection of the human onto the divine, which is a projection of alienation: ‘Religion is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him as the antithesis of himself’ (Feuerbach, 1957[1841]: 33). That is, everything that is great about God is alienated from humanity. Feuerbach considers this act of projection and what it reveals about the human condition the ‘true’, ‘anthropological’ essence of Christianity, while rejecting its theological claims as a ‘false essence’. His project was thus to repair the division with the human by revealing the secret or ‘true’ essence of religion, which is that it is not God that is worshipped, but humanity alienated from itself.

This philosophical project seeks to reclaim the divine properties for humanity; hence the basis of Feuerbach’s atheism is not a scientific-rationalist discrediting theological claims, but rather a recognition of the essentially human character of God. With this recognition established he sees fit to declare that ‘By his God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God; the two are identical’ (1957[1841]: 12), an insight that led him to a different kind of approach to religion that involved turning theology into anthropology. Feuerbach believed that in order to understand (and effectively critique) religion we must understand the conditions of life that give rise to it. As Gavin Hyman (2007) puts it, Feuerbach sought to replace the science of God with the science of Man. This shift in emphasis, from theological claims to the human condition, and from an understanding of religion as false explanation of nature (in Dawkins’ [2006] view, a pseudo-scientific hypothesis) to one that considers it a social phenomenon, is the essence of humanistic atheism. This approach was adopted by Marx, who reconfigured Feuerbach’s theory by defining more precisely the nature of the human experience that resulted in the projection of God – that is, alienation.

Marx stressed that religion could not somehow be siphoned off from social context, and in particular the material conditions of social life that produce the alienated subject. Roughly speaking, he echoed Feuerbach’s understanding of God as projected alienation: ‘The basis of irreligious criticism is: man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion, indeed, is the self-consciousness and the self-esteem of the man who has not yet found himself or who has already lost himself’ (Marx, 1983[1844]: 115). The alienated self, buried by oppressive conditions, is projected onto the divine figure, which in turn promises in the next world relief from this oppression. Marx’s description of religion as the ‘opium of the people’ and ‘the heart of a heartless world’ (ibid.: 115–16) serves to elucidate what Feuerbach meant by the ‘true’ anthropological essence of religion as opposed to the ‘false’ theological essence. Religion is true not in its theological claims, but in the sense that it is a real expression and manifestation of the human experience of alienation; thus, the critique of religion is really the critique of an unjust and oppressive world, and ‘the critique of heaven turns into the critique of earth’ (ibid.: 116). Marx insists that if the world were re-created according to his socialist vision it would have a heart of its own, and religion would be reduced to a vestigial organ of an oppressive social body, eventually to be left in the dustbin of history along with capitalism. He agreed with Feuerbach that the elimination of religion is necessary for human beings to be restored to their humanity, and by extension this requires the end of alienation, which is at the heart of religious faith: ‘The criticism of religion ends in the teaching that man is the highest being for man, hence in the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being’ (ibid.: 119).

Marx diverges from the Enlightenment tradition in his outline of the method for the abolition of religion, claiming that when the oppressive conditions that necessitate religious belief are transformed, the comforting illusion of religion will no longer be necessary and it will simply disappear – the ideology vanishes as its material foundation crumbles. While scientific atheism focuses on critique of religion’s ‘scientific’ claims, Marx pointed out that this would do nothing to transform the earthly social relations that constitute their foundation. He argued that the strategy of rational deliberation was bound to fail because it did not address this true essence of religion. Hence, just as Feuerbach wanted to turn the science of God into the science of Man by ‘resolving the religious world into its secular basis’ (Marx, 2002[1845]: 183), Marx similarly argued that the critique of heaven necessarily becomes the critique of earth. He notes that ‘Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into the human essence’, while adding that this is not an individual abstraction, but rather ‘the ensemble of the social relations’ (ibid.: 183). The point of emphasis is therefore not enlightenment, but social transformation. This shift in perspective signals a progressive development and point of divergence in atheist thought, moving from rational-scientific refutation of theology to consideration of religion as a social phenomenon.

Like Marx, Freud described religion as an illusion, and though the specifics of this are quite different, these thinkers do share an understanding of the essential value of religion to the believer. Religious illusions, for both thinkers, are in part a mechanism for coping with suffering and the harsh realities of life. Freud located the roots of this illusion not in the material conditions of production, but in something much less tangible: the human unconscious. He conceives of the religious believer as a fearful and wondering child; helpless, afraid and ignorant of the nature of the world, which appears before him as a terrifying and threatening place. He paints a portrait of humans desperate for some measure of control over the forces of nature which to them are so terrifying. This is only possible if nature is controlled by an anthropomorphic figure who can be influenced, and the result is the idea of God, master and creator of all of nature, who can be cajoled to prevent volcanic eruptions, droughts, hurricanes and pestilence, to name just a few of his limitless powers (Freud, 1989b[1927]: 20–1).

This helplessness experienced by the adult in relation to nature is much like the helplessness experienced ‘as a small child, in relation to one’s parents’ (Freud, 1989b[1927]: 21). Putting these two elements together – the helplessness against nature and infantile helplessness – we get a picture of religion as

… the system of doctrines and promises which on the one hand explains to him the riddles of this world with enviable completeness, and, on the other, assures him that a careful Providence will watch over his life and will compensate him in a future existence for any frustrations he suffers here. The common man cannot imagine this Providence otherwise than in the figure of an enormously exalted father. (Freud, 1989a[1929]: 22)

Here Freud complements the explanatory view of religion with a psychoanalytic account of the adoption of these beliefs. In this respect he diverges from scientific atheism, which is not influenced by humanistic considerations but concentrates entirely on the conflict between the factual claims of science and religion. At the same time, given the correspondence between his view of religion as a failed ancient explanation of nature and Dawkins’ (2006) description of the ‘God Hypothesis’, it is stunning that the contemporary New Atheists utterly ignore Freud’s contribution to atheism.

Another pioneer of humanistic atheism is the self-declared anti-humanist, Nietzsche. His philosophy rejects any epistemology of transcendence or universality. His famous declaration that ‘God is dead’ (Nietzsche, 1974[1887]: 167) is not, of course, a statement of fact about God’s existence. Rather, Nietzsche here refers to the condition of modernity, characterized by skepticism, transformation, and recognition of the possibility of self-determination. That is, the notion of the death of God refers to the end of ‘belief in any sort of absolute centre or unshakable foundation’ (Caputo, 2007: 270). It is a necessary step in the evolution of man, where ‘man is defined as a rope tied between animal and Ubermensch’, when finally ‘true humanity becomes the “meaning” of Earth’ (Ansell-Pearson, 1994: 138). Here we see a link between Nietzsche and Feuerbach’s theory of God as projected alienated humanity. That is, man cannot become Ubermensch – master of himself and creator of his own truth and morality – until God, the universalizing and alienating foundation of truth and morality, is ‘dead’.

Nietzsche takes a position not so alien from scientific atheism to the extent that he believes that faith robs people of their own capacity for understanding, instead forcing them to rely on the Church to explain, and provide meaning to, their existence, deepening their dependence on clergy. At the same time, he takes a humanistic approach to his conception of the suffering that is at the heart of religious belief: ‘Man shall not look around him, he shall look down into himself; he shall not look prudently and cautiously into things in order to learn, he shall not look at all: he shall suffer. … And he shall suffer in such a way that he has need of the priest at all times’ (Nietzsche, 2003[1895]: 177). He describes religion as an illusion constructed as an escape from reality: ‘it is the expression of a profound discontent with the actual. … But that explains everything. Who alone has reason to lie himself out of actuality? He who suffers from it’ (ibid.: 137).

In this sense Nietzsche can be placed in line with Marx and Freud in their diagnosis of religion as both an expression of suffering and compensation for it. This idea is expressed most forcefully in his disdain for Christian morality, which for Nietzsche is nothing other than a slave morality, with the oppressed living by a moral code that legitimates their oppression and encourages their passivity and submission to powerful rulers. This sentiment is voiced by Zarathustra, who says he has ‘often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws’ (Nietzsche, 1966[1885]: 118). In Nietzsche’s view, ‘slaves’ accept a ‘God of consolation and belief in future happiness in an afterlife’ (Salaquarda, 1996: 106) that eliminates (or at least tempers) the motivation to revolt and seek earthly justice by promising a much more meaningful divine justice to come.

For Nietzsche, then, as for Marx, religion turns our attention away from what is really important, which is human social relations, and toward the appeasement of a supernatural deity who has the power to end our suffering if only we are prepared to submit to his will – which, of course, is really the will of powerful clerics. The biggest difference between these thinkers is perhaps in their attitude toward the oppressed. Marx is clearly empathetic, while Nietzsche derides the weak masses beguiled by the Christian slave morality, and Freud is equally contemptuous of the majority who are mired in an infantile fantasy and ‘will never be able to rise above this view of life’ (Freud, 1989b[1927]: 22). Finally, it is important to note that while I have made a distinction between scientific and humanistic atheism, I would not suggest that these are mutually exclusive lines of criticism. Indeed, Freud and even Nietzsche at moments sound very much like rationalists in their critiques of the dogma of faith. The point is that humanistic atheists took the scientific position for granted and advanced a more sophisticated mode of engagement.

The ‘New’ Atheism

The historical analysis presented in this article provides context for discussion of the New Atheism, an intellectual current and nascent social movement spearheaded and shaped by the writings of Richard Dawkins (2006), Sam Harris (2004) and Daniel Dennett (2006), and to a lesser extent Christopher Hitchens (2007), whom I view as something of an outsider because his critique is focused much more on the political and ideological dimensions of religion and less on its purportedly intractable conflict with scientific knowledge. Scholarly studies of the New Atheism and the atheist movement more generally are emerging (e.g. Amarasingam, 2010; Cimino and Smith, 2007, 2010; Eagleton, 2009; Smith, 2011), but they tend to lack historical context. I posit that the New Atheism is best understood as an extension of the scientific atheism that emerged in the Victorian period, and turn now to a brief examination of some of the implications of my model for our understanding of contemporary atheism, including some avenues for future research.

The New Atheists wield the Victorian discourse of an eternal conflict between religion and science for the polemical purpose of advancing the view that religion is a lingering feature of the pre-modern world and that ‘Moderns, who by definition possess science, must therefore reject religion and magic’ (Segal, 2004: 135). This is the essence of what I have called scientific atheism, and their thought can be placed in this category. The first and most important aspect of scientific atheism identified above is the notion of religion as explanation of the natural world, a pseudo-scientific hypothesis, or what Dawkins (2006) refers to as the ‘God Hypothesis’. The origins of this hypothesis, we are told, may be discovered in our evolutionary history. While Dawkins does mention some more sociological explanations of religion (such as ‘consolation’ and the importance of socialization in early childhood), he takes care to note that these are ‘proximate’ explanations. For ‘ultimate’ explanations we are instructed to look to the concept of natural selection, from which he derives the ‘evolutionary by-product’ theory of religious beliefs.

Dennett (2006) shares this view, theorizing that the idea of God is rooted in an evolutionarily adaptive proclivity to attribute agency to inanimate objects and natural phenomena, i.e. the ‘intentional stance’. Harris similarly argues that ‘because our minds have evolved to detect patterns in the world, we often detect patterns that aren’t actually there – ranging from faces in the clouds to a divine hand in the workings of Nature’ (2010: 151). These thinkers believe that evolution is an answer not only to the riddle of religion but many other sociological questions. Indeed, Dennett describes the concept of natural selection as a ‘universal acid’ eating its way through inferior theoretical frameworks in a number of disciplines, ‘promising to unite and explain just about everything in one magnificent vision’ (Dennett, 1995: 82). There is little room in scientific atheism for the type of ‘proximate’ explanations offered by humanistic atheism, a result of an ideological commitment to evolutionism as a master narrative as well as a continuation of the Victorian project of the emancipation of science from other forms of authority. If religion is a social phenomenon then the natural sciences relinquish authority on the matter. The New Atheists therefore treat it as a ‘natural phenomenon’ (Dennett, 2006) or product of natural processes that can be ‘ultimately’ understood only by recourse to biological and socio-biological theories.

These theories of religion are symptomatic of a more general scientism and a tendency among Darwinists to reduce all of the social sciences and humanities to an undeveloped branch of evolutionary biology, subsuming them to the overarching ‘magnificent vision’ of natural selection. This concept, according to Dawkins and Dennett (and an increasing number of social scientists, e.g. Blute, 2010; Frank, 2011; Hodgson and Knudsen, 2010; and many others), is equipped to explain not only the primitive origins of religious belief, but the entire nature and development of human society, culture and economy. This Darwinistic attitude presses the New Atheists beyond a scientific critique of religious belief and toward an alternative and politically loaded belief system. The result is an ideological brand of atheism forged through a fusion of Victorian Darwinism and Enlightenment rationalism. Terry Eagleton (2009) has observed a connection between the New Atheism and a certain brand of political liberalism grounded in progressivism and a defense of the legitimacy of the modern western mode of social organization – specifically, capitalism. This ideology is fueled in turn by the theory of evolution (and scientism more generally), much as it was for the Victorian Darwinists, including the originator of the theory himself.

While the four major New Atheist thinkers vary in their points of emphasis (Hitchens is notably less interested in science than politics and less inclined to collapse the latter into the former), the one thing they all share is a teleological vision of the progressive advancement of civilization, which they believe is inevitable given the free rein of science and reason and no impediment from religion. None of the New Atheists explicitly support Spencerian socio-economic views, and, indeed, they generally avoid direct engagement with the subject of economics. On the conspicuous absence of any mention of economics in their work, Eagleton notes that they ‘have much less to say about the evils of global capitalism as opposed to the evils of radical Islam. Indeed, most of them hardly mention the word “capitalism” at all’ (2009: 100). In Eagleton’s view, the New Atheists treat religion at least in part as a scapegoat for capitalism, ironically deploying science and Darwinism as substitutes for religion’s ideological functions.

While Eagleton’s characterization of the New Atheists as liberal rationalists is on target, a more extreme laissez-faire liberalism, and even the specter of Social Darwinism, can be observed in the social movement that coalesces around their writings. This is most clear in the case of the Center for Inquiry (CFI), the most prominent atheist organization in North America. While there is dissent in CFI’s ranks, it is heavily influenced by militantly atheistic, self-proclaimed libertarians who employ the rhetoric of reason and free inquiry to advance a radical individualism and opposition to the state. Tom Flynn (2011), editor of CFI’s quarterly periodical Free Inquiry (which has for several years featured regular contributions from Christopher Hitchens and more occasional pieces by the three other major New Atheists), has likened social welfare programs to Ponzi schemes. The magazine regularly features editorials and articles defending economic inequality and neo-liberal capitalism – even celebrating the corporation as the ‘quintessential secular institution’ (Pasquale, 2010) – while arguing against the state’s right to appropriate privately held wealth for purposes of social assistance (e.g. Machan, 2011). The relationship between scientific atheism and Darwinian socio-economic views clearly merits further investigation.

There is, of course, disagreement within CFI on matters of social and economic justice, and this is an internal tension shaping the dynamics of the movement. Another major source of contention is the increasingly hostile attitude toward religion expressed among those militant atheists labeled ‘true unbelievers’ by Paul Kurtz (2010), the organization’s founder and a self-declared secular humanist (not atheist). The issue, in short, is a division within the atheist movement between those favoring an approach of ‘confrontation’ with all forms of religion and those who wish to pursue a strategy of ‘accommodation’ of religious groups and forms of faith that are not hostile to science in order to work together on issues of mutual concern. A panel debate between representatives of these approaches was a major element of a CFI conference in 2010 and portions of the presentations were published in the June/July 2011 issue of Free Inquiry, and the issue is of critical importance because it essentially defines the goals of the movement. The New Atheists clearly endorse the confrontation approach.

This debate, and the relationship between ‘secular humanists’ and ‘atheists’ more generally, is a source of significant and seemingly growing tension within the movement (Cimino and Smith, 2007, 2010). Like almost every other aspect of atheism, this tension merits more rigorous study, and in closing this article I would like to propose the historical model I have outlined here as a template for further research. That is, the tension between secular humanists and atheists becomes clearer when we situate their arguments within the scientific and humanistic traditions of atheism. While scientific atheism is built on the premise that religion is the antithesis of science and therefore must be de-legitimated through rational-scientific critique of its ‘truth’ claims (and thus ‘confronted’), humanistic atheism recognizes the social nature of religion and thus directs critique at social problems that might be of common concern to secularists and believers. The antagonistic groups within the atheist movement might be understood as a reflection of this division in atheist thought, with one group currently dominating official movement discourse.

A critical question emerging from this concerns the political orientations of these groups. With more intensive study of the ‘confrontation’ and ‘accommodation’ camps we might find a relationship between scientific atheism and libertarianism/laissez-faire liberalism, and between secular humanism (roughly representing humanistic atheism) and a more moderate liberalism oriented toward social justice. While we should not expect direct and clear correspondences and divisions along these lines, and admitting that the labels applied here may require modification, I hope that the historical analysis and contextualization I have provided will enrich our understanding of these trends within contemporary atheism.