Positivism and reasonableness: authoritarian leanings in new atheism’s thinking

  • Various contemporary phenomena of social regression and authoritarianism are related to religious actors, movements, and beliefs. This text, however, seeks to follow this up with the political–theoretical argumentation that New Atheism has to be understood as a way of thinking which carries illiberal and authoritarian tendencies with it as well. In defence of this position, this article will first reconstruct, with reference to Habermas’s and Rawls’s theory of democracy, elements that must include personal beliefs in order to be considered congruent with democratic values. Subsequently, New Atheism’s conception of rational politics will be presented in order to show in which aspects it contradicts the demands of reasonable convictions. This concerns, in particular, the rejection of reasonable pluralism on the one hand and a non-positivistic view of human beings on the other. As a conclusion, this text supports the proposition that, when speaking of the connection between certain worldviews and today’s illiberalism, New Atheism must also be considered as an unreasonable comprehensive doctrine.

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Author:Michael RoseneckGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-692798
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13020186
ISSN:2077-1444
Parent Title (English):Religions
Publisher:MDPI
Place of publication:Basel
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2022/02/21
Date of first Publication:2022/02/21
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2024/02/26
Tag:Habermas; Jürgen; Rawls; John; democratic theory; new atheism; pluralism; public reason; reasonableness; rhetoric of reaction; science and society; secularism
Volume:13
Issue:2, art. 186
Article Number:186
Page Number:20
First Page:1
Last Page:20
HeBIS-PPN:520349652
Institutes:Katholische Theologie
Dewey Decimal Classification:2 Religion / 20 Religion / 200 Religion
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International