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The termNew Atheismdescribes the positions of someatheistacademics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries.[1][2]New Atheism advocates the view thatsuperstition,religion,andirrationalismshould not simply be tolerated. Instead, they advocate theantitheistview that the various forms oftheismshould becriticised,countered,examined, and challenged byrationalargument, especially when they exert strong influence on the broader society, such as in government, education, and politics.[3][4]Critics have characterised New Atheism as "secularfundamentalism"or"fundamentalist atheism".[5][6][7][8][9]Major figures of New Atheism includeRichard Dawkins,Sam Harris,Christopher Hitchens,andDaniel Dennett,collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen"of the movement.

History

[edit]

The secular humanistPaul Kurtz(1925-2012), founder of theCenter for Inquiry,is often regarded as a forerunner to the New Atheism movement.[10][11]The 2004 publication ofThe End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of ReasonbySam Harris,a bestseller in the United States, was joined over the next couple years by a series of popular best-sellers by atheist authors.[12][13]Harris was motivated by the events of11 September 2001,for which he blamed Islam, while also directly criticizingChristianityandJudaism.[14]Two years later, Harris followed up withLetter to a Christian Nation,which was a severe criticism of Christianity.[15]Also in 2006, following his television documentary seriesThe Root of All Evil?,Richard DawkinspublishedThe God Delusion,which was on theNew York Timesbest-seller list for 51 weeks.[16]

In 2010,Tom Flynn(1955-2021), then editor ofFree Inquiry,stated that the only thing new about "New Atheism" was the wider publication of atheist material by big-name publishers, books that appeared on bestseller lists and were read by millions.[17]Mitchell Landsberg,covering a gathering held by theCouncil for Secular Humanismin 2010, said that religiousskepticsin attendance were at odds between "new atheists" who preferred to "encourage open confrontation with the devout" and "accommodationists" who preferred "a subtler, more tactical approach."[18]Paul Kurtz was ousted from the Center for Inquiry in the late 2000's.[18][11]This was in part due to a perception that Kurtz was "on the mellower end of the spectrum" according to Flynn.[18]

In November 2015,The New Republicpublished an article entitled "Is the New Atheism dead?"[19]In 2016, the atheist and evolutionary biologistDavid Sloan Wilsonwrote: "The world appears to be tiring of the New Atheism movement."[20]In 2017,PZ Myers,who formerly considered himself a new atheist, publicly renounced the New Atheism movement.[21]The bookThe Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolutionwas released in 2019.[22][13]

Legacy

[edit]

In a January 2019 retrospective article,Steven PooleofThe Guardianobserved: "For some, New Atheism was never about God at all, but just a topical subgenre of the rightwing backlash against the supposedly suffocating atmosphere of 'political correctness'. "[23]In November 2019,Scott Alexanderargued that New Atheism did not disappear as a political movement but instead turned to social justice as a new cause to fight for.[24]

In an April 2021 interview, Natalie Wynn, aleft-wingYouTuber who runs the channelContraPoints,commented: "Thealt-right,themanosphere,incels,even the so-calledSJWInternet andLeftTubeall have a genetic ancestor in New Atheism. "[25]In a June 2021 retrospective article,Émile P. TorresofSalonargued that prominent figures in the New Atheist movement had aligned themselves with thefar-right.[26]

In a June 2022 retrospective article, Sebastian Milbank ofThe Criticstated that, as a movement, "New Atheism has fractured and lost its original spirit", that "much of what New Atheism embodied has now migrated rightwards", and that "another portion has moved leftwards, embodied by the 'I Fucking Love Science' woke nerd of today."[27]Following the conversion of writerAyaan Hirsi Alito Christianity in 2023, the columnist Sarah Jones wrote inNew Yorkmagazine that the New Atheism movement was in "terminal decline".[28]

Prominent figures

[edit]

Several key figures associated with the New Atheism movement includeRichard Dawkins,Sam Harris,Christopher Hitchens,Daniel Dennett,andAyaan Hirsi Ali.[29][30]

"Four Horsemen"

[edit]
The "Four Horsemen of the New Atheism" clockwise from top left:Richard Dawkins(b. 1941),Christopher Hitchens(1949–2011),Daniel Dennett(1942–2024), andSam Harris(b. 1967).

On 30 September 2007, Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, and Dennett met at Hitchens' residence in Washington, D.C., for a private two-hour unmoderatedround tablediscussion. The event was videotaped and titled "The Four Horsemen".[31]During "The God Debate" in 2010 with Hitchens versusDinesh D'Souza,the group was collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse",[32]an allusion to the biblicalFour Horsemen of the Apocalypsefrom theBook of Revelation.[33]The four have been described by critics as "evangelical atheists".[34]

Harris wrote several bestselling non-fiction books includingThe End of Faith,Letter to a Christian Nation,The Moral Landscape,andWaking Up,along with two shorter works (initially published as e-books)Free WillandLying.[35][36]He is a co-founder of the Reason Project.[citation needed]Dawkins, the author ofThe God Delusion,[37]and director of aChannel 4television documentary titledThe Root of All Evil?,is the founder of theRichard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.He wrote: "I don't object to the horseman label, by the way. I'm less keen on 'new atheist': it isn't clear to me how we differ from old atheists."[38]

Hitchens, the author ofGod Is Not Great,[39]was named among the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" byForeign PolicyandProspectmagazines. He served on the advisory board of theSecular Coalition for America.In 2010, Hitchens published his memoirHitch-22(a nickname provided by close personal friendSalman Rushdie,whom Hitchens always supported during and followingThe Satanic Versescontroversy).[40]Shortly after its publication, he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, which led to his death in December 2011.[41]Before his death, Hitchens published a collection of essays and articles in his bookArguably;[42]a short edition,Mortality,[43]was published posthumously in 2012. These publications and numerous public appearances provided Hitchens with a platform to remain an astute atheist during his illness, even speaking specifically on the culture ofdeathbed conversionsand condemningattempts to converttheterminally ill,which he opposed as "bad taste".[44][45]

Dennett is the author ofDarwin's Dangerous IdeaandBreaking the Spell.[46][47]He has been a vocal supporter ofThe Clergy Project,[48]an organization that provides support for clergy in the US who no longer believe in God and cannot fully participate in their communities any longer.[49]

"Plus one horse-woman"

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Main article:Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali(born 1969) in 2016

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was a central figure of New Atheism[29]until she announced herconversion to Christianityin November 2023.[50]Hirsi Ali, originally scheduled to attend the 2007 meeting,[51]later appeared with Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris at the 2012Global Atheist Convention,where she was referred to as the "plus one horse-woman" by Dawkins.[52]Robyn Blumner,CEO of the Center for Inquiry, described Hirsi Ali as the "Fifth" horseman.[30]

Hirsi Ali was born inMogadishu,Somalia,fleeing in 1992 to theNetherlandsin order to escape anarranged marriage.[53]She became involved in Dutch politics, rejected faith, and became vocal in opposing Islamic ideology, especially concerning women, as exemplified by her booksInfidelandThe Caged Virgin.[54]

Hirsi Ali was later involved in the production of the filmSubmission,for which her friendTheo van Goghwas murdered with a death threat to Hirsi Ali pinned to his chest.[55]This event resulted in Hirsi Ali's hiding and later emigrating to the United States, where she resides and remains a prolific critic of Islam.[56]She regularly speaks out against the treatment of women in Islamic doctrine and society[57]and is a proponent of free speech and the freedom to offend.[58][59]

Writing in a column in November 2023, Ali announced her conversion to the Christian faith, saying the Judeo-Christian tradition is the only answer to the problems of the modern world.[60][61]

Others

[edit]

Others have either self-identified as or been classified by some commentators as new atheists:

Some writers sometimes classified as new atheists by others have explicitly distanced themselves from the label:

Perspective

[edit]
The scarlet A, symbol ofOut Campaign

Many contemporary atheists write from a scientific perspective. Unlike previous writers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent or even incapable of dealing with the "God"concept, Dawkins argues to the contrary, claiming the" God Hypothesis "is a validscientific hypothesis,[73]having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested andfalsified.Victor Stengerproposed that the personalAbrahamic Godis a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. Both Dawkins and Stenger conclude that the hypothesis fails any such tests,[74]and argue thatnaturalismis sufficient to explain everything we observe. They argue that nowhere is it necessary to introduce God or thesupernaturalto understand reality.

Scientific testing of religion

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Non-believers (in religion and the supernatural) assert that many religious or supernatural claims (such as thevirgin birth of Jesusand theafterlife) are scientific claims in nature. For instance, they argue, as dodeistsandProgressive Christians,that the issue of Jesus' supposed parentage is a question of scientific inquiry, rather than "values" or "morals".[75]Rational thinkers believe science is capable of investigating at least some, if not all, supernatural claims.[76]Institutions such as theMayo ClinicandDuke Universityhave conductedempiricalstudies to try to identify whether there isevidence for the healing power of intercessory prayer.[77]According to Stenger, the experiments found no evidence that intercessoryprayerworked.[78]

Logical arguments

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In his bookGod: The Failed Hypothesis,Victor J. Stenger argues that a God havingomniscient,omnibenevolent,andomnipotentattributes, which he termed a3O God,cannotlogicallyexist.[79]A similar series of alleged logical disproofs of the existence of a God with various attributes can be found inMichael Martinand Ricki Monnier'sThe Impossibility of God,[80]or Theodore M. Drange's article, "Incompatible-Properties Arguments: A Survey".[81]

Views on non-overlapping magisteria

[edit]

Richard Dawkins has been particularly critical of the conciliatory view that science and religion are not in conflict, noting, for example, that the Abrahamic religions constantly dabble in scientific matters.[75]In a 1998 article published inFree Inquirymagazine,[75]and later in his 2006 bookThe God Delusion,Dawkins expresses disagreement with the view advocated byStephen Jay Gouldthat science and religion are twonon-overlapping magisteria(NOMA), each existing in a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution".[75]

In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to distinct non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the empirical realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning andmoral value.Dawkins contends that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion. He argued: "It is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims."[75]

Science and morality

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Main article:Science of morality

Popularized by Sam Harris is the view that science and thereby currently unknown objective facts may instruct human morality in a globally comparable way. Harris' bookThe Moral Landscape,[82]and accompanying TED TalkHow Science can Determine Moral Values,[83]propose that human well-being and conversely suffering may be thought of as a landscape with peaks and valleys representing numerous ways to achieve extremes in human experience, and that there are objective states of well-being.

Politics

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In the context of international politics, the principles of New Atheism establish no particular stance in and of themselves.[84]PZ Myersstated that New Atheism's key proponents are "a madly disorganized mob, united only by [their] dislike of the god-thing".[85]That said, the demographic that supports New Atheism is a markedly homogeneous one; in America and the Anglo-sphere more generally, this cohort is "more likely to be younger, male and single, to have higher than average levels of income and education, to be lessauthoritarian,lessdogmatic,less prejudiced, lessconformistand more tolerant and open-minded on religious issues. "[84]Because of this homogeneity among the group, there exists not a formal dynamic but a loose consensus on broad political "efforts, objectives, and strategies".[86]For example, one of the primary aims is to further reduce the entanglement of church and state, which derives from the "belief that religion is antithetical to liberal values, such as freedom of expression and the separation of public from private life".[86][87][88]Additionally, new atheists have engaged in the campaign "to ensure legal and civic equality for atheists", in a world considerably unwelcoming to and distrustful of non-religious believers.[87][88][89]Christopher Hitchens may be the new atheist concerned most with religion's incompatibility with contemporary liberal principles, and particularly its imposed limitation on both freedom of speech and freedom of expression.[87][90]Because New Atheism's proliferation is accredited partly to the 11 September attacks and the ubiquitous, visceral response,Richard Dawkins,among many in his cohort, believes thattheism(in this case,Islam) jeopardizes political institutions andnational security,and he warns of religion's potency in motivating "people to do terrible things" against internationalpolities.[91]

Criticisms

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See also:Criticism of atheism § New Atheism

According toNature,"Critics of new atheism, as well as many new atheists themselves, contend that in philosophical terms it differs little from earlier historical forms of atheist thought."[92]

Scientism, accusations of evangelicalism and fundamentalism

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Critics of the movement described it asmilitant atheismandfundamentalist atheism.[a][93][94][95][11]Theologians Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey take issue with what they regard as "theevangelicalnature of the New Atheism, which assumes that it has a Good News to share, at all cost, for the ultimate future of humanity by the conversion of as many people as possible ", and believe they have found similarities between New Atheism and evangelical Christianity and conclude that the all-consuming nature of both" encourages endless conflict without progress "between both extremities.[96]Political philosopherJohn Grayasserts that New Atheism,humanism,andscientismare extensions of religion, particularly Christianity.[97]Sociologist William Stahl said, "What is striking about the current debate is the frequency with which the New Atheists are portrayed as mirror images of religiousfundamentalists."[98]

The atheist philosopher of scienceMichael Rusestates that Richard Dawkins would fail "introductory" courses on the study of "philosophyorreligion"(such as courses on thephilosophy of religion), courses which are offered, for example, at many educational institutions such as colleges and universities around the world.[99][100]Ruse also says that the movement of New Atheism—which is perceived by him to be "a bloody disaster" —makes him ashamed, as a professional philosopher of science, to be among those holding to an atheist position, particularly as New Atheism, as he sees it, does science a "grave disservice" and does a "disservice to scholarship" at a more general level.[99][100]Paul Kurtz,editor in chief ofFree Inquiry,founder ofPrometheus Books,was critical of many of the new atheists.[95]He said, "I consider them atheist fundamentalists... They're anti-religious, and they're mean-spirited, unfortunately. Now, there are very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good."[11]Jonathan Sacks,author ofThe Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning,feels the new atheists miss the target by believing the "cure for bad religion is no religion, as opposed to good religion". He wrote:

Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science.[101]

The philosopherMassimo Pigliuccicontends that the new atheist movement overlaps with scientism, which he finds to be philosophically unsound. He writes: "What I do object to is the tendency, found among many New Atheists, to expand the definition of science to pretty much encompassing anything that deals with 'facts', loosely conceived... it seems clear to me that most of the New Atheists (except for the professional philosophers among them) pontificate about philosophy very likely without having read a single professional paper in that field... I would actually go so far as to charge many of the leaders of the New Atheism movement (and, by implication, a good number of their followers) with anti-intellectualism, one mark of which is a lack of respect for the proper significance, value, and methods of another field of intellectual endeavor."[102]

InThe Evolution of Atheism,Stephen LeDrew wrote that New Atheism is fundamentalist and scientist; in contrast to atheism's tradition ofsocial justice,it isright-wingand serves to defend "the position of the white middle-class western male".[103][104][105]Atheist professorJacques Berlinerblauhas criticised the new atheists' mocking of religion as being inimical to their goals and claims that they have not achieved anything politically.[106]Roger Scrutonhas extensively criticized New Atheism on various occasions, generally on the grounds that they do not consider the social effects and impacts of religion in enough detail. He has said, "Look at the facts in the round and it seems likely that humans without a sense of the sacred would have died out long ago. For that same reason, the hope of the new atheists for a world without religion is probably as vain as the hope for a society without aggression or a world without death."[107]He has also complained of the new atheists' idea that they must "set people free from religion", calling it "naive" because they "never consider that they might be taking something away from people".[108]

Criticisms of responses to theistic arguments

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Edward Feserhas critiqued the new atheists' responses to arguments for the existence of God, especially Dawkins' and Dennett's.[109]

It can safely be said that if you haven't both understoodAquinasand answered him – not to mentionAnselm,Duns Scotus,Leibniz,Samuel Clarke,and so on, but let that pass – then you have hardly "made your case" against religion. Yet Dawkins is the only "New Atheist" to offer anything even remotely like an attempt to answer him, feeble as it is.

— Edward Feser,The Last Superstition(2008)

Criticism from David Bentley Hart

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Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable EnemiesbyDavid Bentley Hartwas published byYalein 2009. PhilosopherAnthony Kennycalled Hart's book "the most able counsel for the defence in recent years".[110]Writing forCommonweal,poet Michael Robbins described the book as "an unanswerable and frequently hilarious demolition of the shoddy thinking and historical illiteracy of the so-called New Atheists."[111]On 27 May 2011, Hart's book was awarded the Michael Ramsey Prize in Theology by the Archbishop of Canterbury,Rowan Williams.[112][113]Hart argues positively that Christianity was a progressive factor in human history and the only factor that "can be called in the fullest sense" a revolution. In his negative case against New Atheism, Hart argues that the Enlightenment was actually "a reactionary flight back toward a comfortable, but dehumanizing, mental and moral servitude to elemental nature."[114]

Accusations of bigotry

[edit]
See also:Elevatorgate

The New Atheist movement has been accused of sexism, especially prominent figures such asRichard Dawkins.[115][116]In 2014, Sam Harris said that New Atheism was "to some degree intrinsically male".[116]Sebastian MilbankofThe Criticstated thatanti-Catholicrhetoric by the New Atheist movement reached its pinnacle in 2010, during thestate visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom,where "many mainstream newspapers (especiallyThe Guardian) engaged in more or less naked anti-Catholic rhetoric of a sort that seemed more suited to the eighteenth century than the twenty-first ".[27]

Some commentators have accused the New Atheist movement ofIslamophobia.[117][118][119][120]Wade Jacoby and Hakan Yavuz assert that "a group of 'new atheists' such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens" have "invoked Samuel Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' theory to explain the current political contestation" and that this forms part of a trend toward "Islamophobia... in the study of Muslim societies ".[119]William W. Emilson argues that "the 'new' in the new atheists' writings is not their aggressiveness, nor their extraordinary popularity, nor even their scientific approach to religion, rather it is their attack not only on militant Islamism but also on Islam itself under the cloak of its general critique of religion."[120]

See also

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References

[edit]

Informational notes

  1. ^The term is sometimes used benignly, for example by atheists such as Frans de Waal.[93]

Citations

  1. ^Lee, Lois; Bullivant, Stephen (17 November 2016).A Dictionary of Atheism.Oxford University Press.ISBN978-0-19-252013-5.Archivedfrom the original on 20 January 2023.Retrieved12 March2017.
  2. ^Wolf, Gary (1 November 2006)."The Church of the Non-Believers".Wired.ISSN1059-1028.Archivedfrom the original on 21 July 2017.Retrieved19 January2023.
  3. ^Taylor, James E."New Atheists".The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Archivedfrom the original on 26 August 2016.Retrieved14 April2016.The New Atheists are authors of early twenty-first century books promoting atheism. These authors includeSam Harris,Richard Dawkins,Daniel Dennett,andChristopher Hitchens.The 'New Atheist' label for these critics of religion and religious belief emerged out of journalistic commentary on the contents and impacts of their books.
  4. ^Hooper, Simon (9 November 2006)."The rise of the New Atheists".CNN.Archivedfrom the original on 8 April 2010.Retrieved16 March2010.
  5. ^Hedges, Chris (2008).When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists.Free Press.ISBN978-1-4165-7078-3.
  6. ^McAnulla, Stuart (2011)."Secular fundamentalists? Characterising the new atheist approach to secularism, religion and politics".British Politics.9(2). Palgrave Macmillan: 124–145.doi:10.1057/bp.2013.27.
  7. ^LeDrew, Stephen (2018)."Scientism and Utopia: New Atheism as a Fundamentalist Reaction to Relativism".Relativism and Post-Truth in Contemporary Society.Springer. pp. 143–155.doi:10.1007/978-3-319-96559-8_9.ISBN978-3-319-96558-1.
  8. ^Stahl, William (2010)."One-Dimensional Rage: The Social Epistemology Of The New Atheism And Fundamentalism".Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal.Brill. pp. 95–108.ISBN978-90-04-19053-5.
  9. ^Nall, Jeff (2008)."Fundamentalist Atheism and its Intellectual Failures".Humanity & Society.32(3). Sage: 263–280.
  10. ^Evans, Robert (22 October 2012)."Paul Kurtz," giant "of humanism, dead at 86".Reuters.Archivedfrom the original on 28 December 2022.Retrieved25 December2022.
  11. ^abcdHagerty, Barbara Bradley (19 October 2009)."A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists".NPR.Archivedfrom the original on 1 April 2019.Retrieved12 February2017.
  12. ^Hitchens, Christopher(15 August 2007)."God Bless Me, It's a Best-Seller!".Vanity Fair.Archivedfrom the original on 2 October 2016.Retrieved14 April2016....in the last two years there have been five atheist best-sellers, one each from Professors Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and two from the neuroscientist Sam Harris.
  13. ^abHitchens, Christopher (2019).The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution.New York: Random House. p. 1.ISBN978-0-525-51195-3.Archivedfrom the original on 21 April 2023.Retrieved20 January2023.
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  18. ^abcLandsberg, Mitchell (10 October 2010)."Religious skeptics disagree on how aggressively to challenge the devout".Los Angeles Times.Archivedfrom the original on 21 January 2023.Retrieved21 January2023.
  19. ^Bruenig, Elizabeth (6 November 2015)."Is the New Atheism dead?".The New Republic.Archivedfrom the original on 12 July 2018.Retrieved27 August2022.
  20. ^Sloan Wilson, David (1 February 2016)."The New Atheism as a Stealth Religion: Five Years Later".This View Of Life.Archivedfrom the original on 16 August 2017.Retrieved20 January2023.
  21. ^Myers, PZ (31 July 2017)."The New Atheism is dead. Long live atheism".Pharyngula.Archivedfrom the original on 11 September 2018.Retrieved12 July2018.
  22. ^"The Four Horsemen: The Conversation That Sparked an Atheist Revolution".Publishers Weekly.19 March 2019.Archivedfrom the original on 21 August 2019.Retrieved21 August2019.
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  27. ^abMilbank, Sebastian (15 June 2022)."The strange afterlife of New Atheism".The Critic.Archivedfrom the original on 15 June 2022.Retrieved16 June2022.
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  29. ^abKhalil, Mohammad Hassan, ed. (2017),"The New Atheism",Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 95–96,doi:10.1017/9781108377263.009,ISBN978-1-108-38512-1,archivedfrom the original on 3 October 2023,retrieved24 December2022
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  32. ^Hoffman, Claire (2 September 2014)."Sam Harris is Still Railing Against Religion".Los Angeles Magazine.Archivedfrom the original on 15 June 2017.Retrieved13 April2016.As Western society grappled with radical Islam, Harris distinguished himself with his argument that modern religious tolerance had placated us into allowing delusion rather than reason to prevail. Harris upended a discussion that had long been dominated by cultural relativism and a hands-off academic intellectualism; his seething contempt for the world's faiths helped launch the 'New Atheist' movement, and together with Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett, he became known as one of the 'Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse.'
  33. ^Zenk, Thomas (2013). "16. New Atheism". In Bullivant, Stephen; Ruse, Michael (eds.).The Oxford Handbook of Atheism.OUP Oxford. p. 254.ISBN978-0-19-964465-0.Archivedfrom the original on 3 October 2023.Retrieved20 January2023.
  34. ^Stedman, Chris (18 October 2010)."'Evangelical Atheists': Pushing For What? ".The Huffington Post.Archivedfrom the original on 4 August 2016.Retrieved2 March2017.something peculiarly evangelistic about what has been termed the new atheist movement... It is no exaggeration to describe the movement popularized by the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens as a new and particularly zealous form of fundamentalism — an atheist fundamentalism.
  35. ^Harris, Sam(2012).Free Will.The Free Press. p.96.ISBN978-1451683400.ASIN1451683405.
  36. ^Harris, Sam (2013).Lying.Four Elephants Press. p. 108.ISBN978-1940051000.ASIN1940051002.
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