The Non-Elite: A Brief Meditation on the Nature of Atheist Humanism

Everything old is new again. Except me.

The New Oxonian

ERASMUSWhat concerns me most about the misapplication of the word ‘humanist’ to full frontal atheists is that most such humanists are not humanists at all. Not in any meaningful sense. To be solipsistic about it, if they were they would not be full frontal atheists.

By dint of past associations, I have a great many ‘friends’ (as Facebook misuses the term) who would call themselves new or raw or ‘out’ atheists—-Dawkinsites in short.

In a pinch they will say they like books (who doesn’t?), art (sort of), and music (some). But I always have the impression that you can’t press them too closely on what books, music or art they like. It probably isn’t Bach, Chagall, or Proust. It certainly isn’t the Bible—-in any translation, or any context.

And that is the problem. The loudest God-deniers-—not all but the loudest-—seem to lack cultural context. They are metaphor poor literalists…

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One thought on “The Non-Elite: A Brief Meditation on the Nature of Atheist Humanism

  1. “The fundamental atheist error is that they see culture as something external to human experience, not something that forms the intellectual environment, the diet, that defines our lives and nourishes our existence.”

    This is the very problem that forced me to leave a local “humanist” group. Specifically, it was my repeated failures to persuade them of the wrongness of their approach that left me no other option than depart. You hit the nail squarely on the head in this short essay.

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