The social dimension of the new atheism

Abstract

The article examines the socio-political aspect of the new atheism. Within the framework of this phenomenon, initially associated with the four bestselling authors R. Dawkins, S. Harris, K. Hitchens, D. Dennett, who launched the “fight against religion” in the mid-2000s, a community and a weakly organized movement eventually formed. A number of connected questions are considered: characteristics of the phenomenon of new atheism (origins, sources, specifics); perception of atheism and new atheism by society in the USA and Great Britain; political views of key figures of the new atheism, external assess­ment of their political influence; views and activity of supporters, external assessment of the socio-political influence of the movement. The article focuses on the aspects of the new atheism as a movement in the USA and the UK. The author comes to the fol­lowing conclusions: the “creators” of the new atheism scarcely touch upon the socio-po­litical agenda in their activities (the main foreign policy interest is the fight against Is­lamic terrorism); currently, the new atheism as a movement and a community reacts to politics rather than forms it; not all actions of new atheists aimed at reducing the social and political presence of religion or at reducing discrimination against atheists achieve their goals; the main achievement of the new atheism movement is that atheism as a worldview ceases to be a marginal agenda, and non-believers receive a formalized, pos­itively colored identity for themselves. The latter is important in the context of discrimi­nation of non-believers against believers, which in the United States takes place both in the public consciousness and even at the highest political level.