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Filosofická Fakulta Masarykovy Univerzity Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools Bc. Jiří Kinscher The reception of “New Atheism” among some leading British public intellectuals Master’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph. D. 2017 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature 2 I would like to thank my supervisor Stepehen Hardy for advice and support, my wife Ivana Kafková for support and help with the formal aspects of the thesis, and the Library of Ústí nad Orlicí for safe haven and coffee 3 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 5 2 Public Intellectuals in Britain ................................................................................... 8 3 New Atheism .......................................................................................................... 11 3.1 Richard Dawkins .............................................................................................. 15 3.2 Christopher Hitchens ........................................................................................ 19 3.3 AC Grayling ..................................................................................................... 20 3.4 Sam Harris ........................................................................................................ 22 3.5 Daniel Dennet ................................................................................................... 24 4 Selected Intellectuals .............................................................................................. 26 4.1 John Gray ......................................................................................................... 26 4.1.1 John Gray - The Academic ....................................................................... 26 4.1.2 John Gray –The Public Intellectual .......................................................... 27 4.2 Terry Eagleton .................................................................................................. 29 4.3 Roger Scruton................................................................................................... 31 4.4 Allain de Botton ............................................................................................... 33 5 Assessing the New Atheism in Context .................................................................. 35 5.1 Religious Dimension ........................................................................................ 35 5.1.1 Theological criticism ................................................................................ 35 5.1.2 The Perspective of Social Sciences .......................................................... 41 5.2 Political and Historical Dimensions ................................................................. 52 5.2.1 The Politics of New Atheism .................................................................... 52 5.2.2 The New Atheism and the Idea of Progress ............................................. 56 5.2.3 Harris – Chomsky “debate” ...................................................................... 67 5.3 Cultural Dimension .......................................................................................... 68 5.3.1 New Atheism and the Role of Science in Society .................................... 69 6 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 83 7 Primary Sources: ..................................................................................................... 88 8 Secondary Sources .................................................................................................. 91 9 Summary ................................................................................................................. 98 10 Resumé .................................................................................................................... 99 4 1 Introduction This thesis is supposed to be an enterprise in contemporary history of ideas. It sets itself the task to investigate the phenomenon of New Atheism in its various manifestations. New Atheism is a recent development of secular thinking which is typically inclined to oppose religion on intellectual as well as on moral grounds. It differs from the mainstream ways of coexistence between religion and secular space in modern society because it tends to view religion as a threat to moral improvement and social development. New Atheism views religion as a relic of the past and believes that it could be fully substituted for on epistemological level by science and on social level by cultivating secular discourse and nor-religious bases of morality. These views are endorsed by some influential scientists and philosophers but also it provokes a strong reaction from others. Though perhaps not the most important public debate of our time, still it encapsulates a whole cluster of related themes which are of highly importance for every society – transcendence or the absence of it, political action and the types of its legitimating and such hotly debated topics such as terrorism and cultural changes caused by accelerating global communication. The New Atheists tend to see the latest developments with optimism because they believe in the capacity of global civilization to come to being and maintain itself. Some of them put the optimistic message forward in very bold and open terms; we seem to be on a trajectory to more peaceful and morally developed society. Democratization, retreat of violent conflict and economical improvement is expected to be the future if we manage to tame some relics of the past, religion among them. They are afraid that these desirable developments could be thwarted by those relics of the past. Not everyone shares this optimistic vision about modernity on the one hand and the strong hostility to religious thought and practice on the other, and I 5 am going to explore these critics´ views in order to learn more of what type of intellectual current New Atheism seems to be and, what is its pedigree in intellectual history. The thesis is, thus, interested in the phenomenon of New Atheism as an example of contemporary thinking about religion and its role in society. The method I have chosen to pursue is to view New Atheism from the perspective of its critics. I chose several British intellectuals and I am going to investigate their writings in books as well as in media to discern certain patterns in their outlook. I also will employ the comparative method in trying to outline the main features of the critical discourse about New Atheism in Britain. The thesis will start with brief introduction of the personalities involved in the discourse and some of their relevant writings. Then I will proceed to looking at this particular kind of contemporary atheism in the context of religion, culture and history. I am especially interested in the implicit belief in Progress held by the New Atheists which is often the focus of the criticisms levelled against them. I will try to put New Atheist thought in a broader context of thinking about religion as it has been elaborated by social sciences. A crucial question I am interested in is a cultural dimension of the New Atheism, namely the way how it understands the role of science and religion in contemporary society. The New Atheist offer a confrontational model of relations between these two domains and the language of science is viewed as a capable framework in which people in our society of late modernity can understand themselves. Because I find his attempt to establish science as a dominant discourse about values, meaning and human condition in general, highly problematic I am going to explore the question of scientism and try to establish whether and in what way the New Atheism might be an example of scientistic thinking. 6 I will compare it to similar debates concerning education and culture and the role which science should play in them. The thinkers I have chosen for my enquiry are all British philosophers. They differ in philosophical, political and religious terms but they agree on various aspects of New Atheism. It is of interest for me, how certain leading thinkers, whose work I value, deal with the new combative type of atheism in its various manifestation. 7 2 Public Intellectuals in Britain The word “intellectual” has a long and complicated history and different connotations in different national contexts. The standing of “intellectuals” in Britain is especially complicated because there has been a long tradition of denying the very existence of this specific human type in Britain. Intellectual historian Stephen Collini wrote a study polemicizing with this “absence thesis”1 which is connected with the self-perception of the English as practically oriented people with healthy scepticism about abstract ideas.2 The term ‘British intellectuals’, according to Collini, still sounds to a lot of people as “contradiction in terms”.3 However, Collini´s finds out that the “absent thesis” is far from being an English peculiarity. Other European nations tends to lament the lack or decline of local public intellectuals. Idealization of the past is partly to blame, and also the “idealisation of elsewhere”.4 Many nations lament that they don´t
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