The debate with the “New Atheists” is over, writes philosopher Stephen Meyer. Scientific materialism displays “growing strangeness,” he says.
Is the atheist camp beginning to lose momentum? Is the debate with the “New Atheism” movement over? Yes and yes, according to philosopher and Intelligent Design advocate Stephen Meyer, whose essay on the matter was published Sept. 22 in The Telegraph.
Meyer contends scientific atheism displays a “growing strangeness. Its proponents are reaching for increasingly exotic ideas to explain evidence that seems otherwise to point straightforwardly to a transcendent and intelligent creator. In other words: God.”
The arguments of the “New Atheism” group “seemed strangely anachronistic following many of the great scientific discoveries of the 20th century,” Meyer writes. The Big Bang theory resembles religious creation stories, he notes, and physicists have discovered an apparent “fine tuning” of the universe (that we live in a “Goldilocks universe”). Even attempts at explaining these circumstances from an atheist standpoint themselves “require prior unexplained fine-tuning.”
Almost exactly 20 years ago, prominent atheism advocate Richard Dawkin’s book “The God Delusion” was published. The book became an international bestseller, and it was, according to Meyer, the starting point of a major cultural force, “New Atheism,” a movement that included authors such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Lawrence Krauss and Daniel Dennett.
A lot has happened since 2006. Most notably, science has steadily evolved further away from a stern atheist worldview, not least in the field of consciousness studies.
Furthermore, some former adherents of the movement have repudiated atheism entirely, with Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a prominent example, while others have moderated their materialist view.
The proponents of “New Atheism” are still active. “But honestly, I’d be hard put to name them”, writes David Klinghoffer in a commentary on Meyer’s piece. “It’s not that atheism per se has necessarily waned, but the aggressiveness and self-confidence have greatly faded,” notes Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. and a fellow proponent of the hypothesis of Intelligent Design.
Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher of science. He has published three books, the latest is “Return of the God Hypothesis.”
Written by Anders Bolling
Edited by Liza Horan
