The New Atheism: Preparing Its Own Hilarious Defeat

That 18th century, vile, bourgeois materialist, Voltaire, no stranger to atheism, had warned, in his writings, against any attempts at ever popularizing it; he logically had greatly feared that if the common people truly became unbelievers that they would be much more morally worse and, consequently, necessarily threaten his own life; common folk, filled with atheist “enlightenment,” would find, he thought, no rational reason not to kill him for the practical sake of robbing him. (So much for the so-called Enlightenment.)
For the bulk of people everywhere, he yet favored, at the least, the needed pragmatic or utilitarian usages of religion to help insure basic degrees and standards of moral and ethical probity; this was for his own safety’s sake, and for those other atheists like himself, of course, who normally preferred to be simple hypocrites.
Those promoting what can rightly be denominated, these days, as the New Atheism are, thus, stupidly digging their own well-deserved graves, and many, not sharing their anti-God opinions, would wish them (supposedly) success; as that most apropos ancient Greek saying goes, whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. And, the advocacy of this particular form of insanity seems to be running rampant these days; it might, perhaps, be socially contagious.
This 21st century resurgence of modern atheism, the New Atheism, is completely different from all such past efforts that were almost entirely aimed at either real or supposed economic, literary or other elites, never the masses, and had, also, carefully advanced its nefarious doctrines under various kinds of legal, scientific, general enlightenment, or other such indirect guises. Presently, there exists the Council on Secular Humanism, among many other such organizations, actively seeking members.
Today, however, a most public appeal, with strident propaganda, is being openly and unabashedly made for the obvious conversion, rather quite blatant proselytizing, of the common people, not any elites, as had normally been the historical case. This current effort at spreading atheism, therefore, openly seeks direct popularization among the masses of people; it has, thus, also become what has been referred to as the atheists movement, a form of public insanity that can amuse those intelligent enough to see how ridiculous this silly cause is.
All of the above considerations are what makes such atheism interestingly new, from a sociological and psychological perspective, in its quite bold presentation and aggressive dissemination, among a broad populace, in mainly the Western world. When it was just or merely the thinking of certain elites in a society, it could be more furtive or even acceptable, at times, to the public at large in broad terms of celebrating the figure known as the “village atheist” or literary atheist, or other such similar kind of notorious or unusual specimen of a peculiar personage: Mark Twain or Ambrose Bierce.
With the observed coming of an advanced modernity in thought, therefore, unbelieving nonconformists became, increasingly, more tolerated; some became respected. And, because the bourgeoisie, as is known, are ever in need or want of (preferably vulgar) entertainment, these militant atheists’ views have, also, gotten promoted as a fitting fad; and, it sells books, doesn’t it? Do you hate money?
Now, the current crop of militant atheists have, however, incredibly committed the notable insanity of trying to supposedly and widely recruit the equivalent of armies of mental clones, not realizing the destructive consequences, especially to themselves. Nonconformity, even as heresy, seeks not truly to support tolerance but, rather, to create a new orthodoxy with which to be intolerant; thus, true nihilists have no “rational” reason, in their morally putrefied minds, to be actually tolerant toward anyone, including fellow atheists.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a 20th century famous atheist, e.g., had publicly stated, many times, that it was good to hate; Christopher Hitchens, (also) a much embittered man, fully shares that same opinion; and, as misery is said to love company, prominent, meaning militant, atheists, nonetheless, need converts to their ironic crusade, which doesn’t exactly seem to really promise ultimate joy, boundless happiness, or, for that matter, any gladness supreme. More pain, not gain, for the true believers involved.
In the end, there is only the total atheistic contempt for the historical truth that the atheistic regimes of the 20th century, Communism, Nazism and Fascism, for instance, had systematically and deliberately mass murdered at least 10,000 times more people than all of the theistic regimes, completely combined, that had ever, in fact, existed on the entire face of the earth. The lack of religion, as empirically proven many times over, has been fully responsible for massive acts of evil that no seriously minded and holy person, interested only in loving God in all matters, would ever even dare think of doing, much less actually doing such evil deeds.
As Dovstoyeski put it forever so well in his The Brothers Karamazov, if there is no God, anything is permitted; with the New Atheism, hordes of merely common and enraged atheists, not normally well tutored in any kinds of intellectualized refinements, will go from simple disbelief toward a necessary nihilism; this is with its then much attendant hatred and contempt of one’s fellow human beings.
Nietzsche, moreover, had correctly known that the sight of the awful abyss has terrifying implications that the usually delicate Liberal or Progressive mind just could not truly face, as when he, of course, publicly declared God to be dead (meaning what almost all of the modernists had said, previously, only in private). He saw, moreover, how the frightful implications had to be absolutely embraced, by all true modernists, for deliberately gaining authentic liberation as supermen supreme.
The now highly fashionable, philosophic dilettantes, with their oh-so- flashy, stylized prose and prosaic affectations of nuanced contempt for the many believers and beliefs, contrary to their dogmatic-atheist cognitive fixations, will find themselves, sooner or later, justly threatened by their own Frankensteinian monsters that they had created. How is this, however, fairly predictable?
As G.K. Chesterton so correctly and insightfully pointed out, long ago, when men are deprived of true religious belief, they do not then simply cease to be believing in something, rather, they are made ready to be more believing in anything, however superstitious or ridiculous it may be; most men, deprived of religious belief, will turn then toward almost anything as a substitute; but, almost never toward atheism, which will remain, contrary to the wildly delusional (and insane) New Atheists, the still rarified preserve of a distinct minority of pure miscreants, losers, or nonconformists.
Florence King and others had critically recognized that, moreover, for any nonconformists to have their chosen extra meaning in life it is vitally necessary for a society to maintain normative values; this is as to the regular norms of the majority, which, in turn, symbiotically help to, thus, sustain the existential and cognitive meaningfulness of the nonconformity of those who chose to be different, which logically, of course, even includes atheists. A “society” composed of only or mostly nonconformists would always be, therefore, a definitional impossibility, besides an illogical absurdity.
Thus, these ultra-sophisticated morons, the New Atheists, are ignorantly unable to notice how willing they are to, in effect, create the conditions ripe for having their own precocious throats cut by enraged, nihilistic mobs engendered by rhetoric and printed diatribes against the having of religious belief(s).
Amazingly, almost all intellectually inclined believers are, seemingly, scared out of their wits trying hard, perhaps, desperately to refute vigorously these militant atheists who, in fact, when all is said and done, really have absolutely no new arguments for modern atheism; they, in turn, equally lack any really or substantially novel denunciations of faith, contrary to sound belief in theological speculation or religious metaphysics.
If there was any thought to be given to this highly ridiculous situation, in the early 21st century, it ought to include almost only laughter, not much in the way of serious attempts to sagaciously refute such self-defeating idiocy.
No intelligent believer, especially a dedicated and educated monotheist, ought to be at all worried that atheistic argumentation cannot be refuted; rather, want should cause some true concern is if there may result armies of brainless or, perhaps, morally insensate nihilists chanting atheistic slogans, as generated by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, etc.
Thus, such supposed, sophisticated, and hyper-intelligent nonbelievers may come, eventually, to realistically regret their bombastic and excessive campaign for the New Atheism, for the exaggeration of disbelief, meaning, in essence, the odd belief in nothing (a denial of all metaphysical order). But, what motivates the aggressive unbelievers? Good and highly interesting reading ought to include an often neglected classic volume: Helmut Schoeck’s Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior.
Obviously, as Miguel de Unamano had dramatically and skillfully expressed it, atheists are such religious people, for who else has God on their minds so much. But, as is correctly detailed above, these fools are actually just preparing their own self-defeat. Nihilism, as with chaos, is not forever viable and all social, cultural, political, etc. vacuums eventually get filled with something; and, as is so well known historically, something (finally) beats nothing as an alternative in any basic kind of solid discourse and argumentation in human society.
This extravagantly proffered New Atheism, nonetheless, is merely old wine poured into new bottles that has the bitter taste of pathetic vinegar, not exactly the delightful ambrosia of the immortal gods, besides its (as was well noted above) swinish regard for the truth. Nonetheless, even great mythologies, e.g., get replaced by religions. And, certainly, the New Atheism will, later, be surely replaced by a renewed Faith; it will, ultimately, be the Roman Catholic Faith.
Athanasius contra mundum!