Opinion of "New Atheism"

[bedstuy]

Personally, I have no interest in joining an atheist club or an atheist political party.  And, I do see a certain image on the internet of atheists as rude, smelly nerds, which I dislike.  However, I think that's unfair to identify as representative of "atheism." 

But, I actually like the famous "New Atheists" Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris.  They're always very interesting when they're on TV and I think they make good points.  They just advocate the atheist and scientific position on religion, which I think is healthy.  What exactly is the problem with criticizing religious belief? 

[bedstuy]

In my experience, the fatal flaw of the "New Atheists" isn't that they criticize religion, but that they criticize something that they don't fully understand.

I would make the same critique of secular defenders of religion, especially Islam, they defend something they don't understand.  But, in our overly-sensitive society, moderate heroes on the religion issue have the moral high ground.  It seems eccumenical and even-handed to say, "don't criticize anything because everyone and everything is basically the same so it's mean to single out anyone or anything."  On the left, people just deploy that smokescreen while they make these broad unlettered arguments about "imperialism," "capitalism," "zionism" and "white people." 

And, to be fair, you don't need to know the doctrines of any particular religion to be atheist or defend atheism.  There is an open empirical question, "Are there Gods and/or a supernatural dimension?"  Religion has no monopoly on answering that question.

[bedstuy]

Also, I've never seen such a tiny percentage of the population get so much attention.  I've never seen a poll with atheists comprising any more than 5% of the population.  Yes, there are many more who aren't religious, but that does NOT equal atheist.

I would instead look at atheism as part of a greater non-religious community, which would include atheists, agnostics, people with no religion and secular religious people who don't believe in any religious doctrine seriously.  Someone who is merely a deist in a very bare sense that they believe in some mystical thing like "the human spirit" or "nature" or "love," is basically an atheist.

Belief in God in that sense, existing or not, is actually pretty inconsequential, right?  That debate is basically an irrelevant philosophical argument.  There's no reason to believe in God certainly, but it's an attractive, comforting idea for some people.

The real step off the deep end with religion is when you start saying, God told me to do XYZ.  That's the problem with religion anyway in the eyes of atheists.  It's not so much the religion itself, it's the irrational, harmful behavior caused by magical thinking which predicates religious belief.