New atheism as a case of competitive postsecular worldviews

Abstract

The term 'new atheism' was first used in 2006 by Gary Wolf, who was describing the wave of irreligious publishing that was sweeping the world at the time and the social group that was growing alongside it. Since this time there has been an increased scholarly interest in non-religion and irreligion and more articles have been produced on the new atheists themselves. However, this literature has still been in the early stages and has been limited in its use of empirical sources, with only a small number of exceptions (Cimino and Smith 2007, 2010; Bullivant 2008a, 2008b, 2010; Pasquale 2010; Manning 2010; Kosmin and Keysar 2007; Hunsberger and Altemeyer 2006). Due to this lack of empirical data in the literature on the new atheism, it was an imperative to confirm current literature observations with participant data. This research set out to achieve this, using Grounded Theory in which the empirical field itself guided theory formation. This allowed the insider views of participants to inform the investigations within the field, to create categories relevant to irreligious individuals and groups. Using a constant comparison approach, I included the literature and history of the irreligious movement as part of my data after initial participant categories had been discovered. Via this comparison of Historical, Interview and Internet Participant Observation data with the literature, eight sociological categories of the irreligious were discovered along four structural organising dimensions. They were found to have consistent structuring affects throughout irreligious history and continuing into the new atheism itself. They were found to cause continuing division within the new atheism via a number of empirical case studies that show the emergence of sub-groups within the new atheism along these dimensions. These dimensions are covert/public, accommodation/confrontation, substitution/elimination and empathetic/intellectual. The irreligious field is an evolving construct, but many of its changes are driven by the four dimensions described. This will add to continuing academic discussions and critiques of the secularisation thesis and the concept of postsecularity. It will do this by highlighting secularisation as an evolving social process without a teleological endpoint. The new atheism is a particularly poignant example for making this argument, because as has been argued by Borer (2010), the movement is reacting to the perceived failure of the thesis itself. The new atheists feel a need to put forward a public form of irreligion in order to compete with religious views in the postsecular public sphere. It is a world that is still steeped in religious practices and in which the new atheists feel a need for public representation in order to validate their views. This validation can also involve the creation and appropriation of concepts often connected to religion, such as community structures, rituals and moral prescriptions. The mixing of religious and secular practices discovered within the new atheist group helps to highlight the idea that even the most irreligious groups are currently involved in appropriation of religious or religious-like ideas for public use. Moreover, as will be argued, irreligion is not the end point of worldview evolution, even if it is eventually decided that gods or the supernatural do not exist, there will still be continuing divisions within the groups that agree on that idea. This analysis serves to support a version of postsecularity in which dialectical evolution is continuous and religious/secular worldviews are mixing together in a competitive public sphere.

Date of Award	2014
Original language	English