The Mythology of the New Atheists

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A friend from the Internet writes:

Mythology defines who we are, and defines the way the world is. Mythology offers models of virtue and ideals of humanity in their heroes, and in their dramas they define many aspects of the societies it influences. Myths and religions are intertwined deeply. Often our values are derived out of mythic thinking in way that we don’t recognize.

There is much to be learned in the cultural anthropological studies of mythology, much that is often neglected by so-called proponents of science.

The most important lesson is that myths are not necessarily false, they are not lies, and they often point to or express important truths. Mature myths can play a very positive role in life, adding value and meaning. Immature myths, on the other hand, can distort our thinking and our understanding of the world.

Is Every Believer a Fundamentalist?

When a religious thinker turns towards their myths, they can either look at them as allegorical, so that they generally point to something greater than the literal myths, and in this way they relate the mythic heroes to the life situations and circumstances that they face. The other approach to looking at myths is to take them strictly literally. The literalists are generally referred to as fundamentalists, and those who take their myths literally are typically responsible for the worst side of religion.

To simplify their attack on religions, the New Atheists play the trick of only recognizing those religious movements that are literalists as legitimate religion, since then there are claims about the world that can be readily shown to be scientifically false. The fact that many religious movements are not literalists, or have worked out ways to be compatible with science is dealt with by simply claiming those are not actually legitimate religions since they don’t really believe in their religious books.

Mythology is a Sneaky Thing

On first glance, you might not think that the New Atheists have any mythology. After all, they claim that their views are all based on rationalism and empiricism, and they often proudly claim to believe only in what science can show.

But mythology is a sneaky thing, it often infiltrates in ways that we do not initially see. But because our minds by their nature think in images, especially self-images, and those images define much of how we think about the world and our place in it, myths creep in. If you examine the New Atheists carefully, they have their own myths which are in many respects a mirror of Christianity.

Us vs. Them

A central motif of much mythic thinking is to divide the world into some form of “us,” and “them.” For the New Atheists that division is obviously atheism vs. religion, which is a mirror of Christians who divide the world into believers and non-believers.

The New Atheists have perpetuated the Enlightenment myth that there is a war between science and religion. They imagine themselves being an oppressed group suffering at the hands of religion. (The fact that the New Atheists are largely made up of relatively affluent white males who enjoy the least oppression of any social group in our society doesn’t really fit with their myth, but they conveniently ignore that, for as with much of their mythology, facts are secondary.)

The view that there is a long-running war between science and religion plays into the New Atheists’ demonization of religion. They can create a mythology of scientists as heroes, noble warriors fighting for all things noble and just against the essentially evil opponent, religion. This can be a dangerous myth, one that is common through many religions, as it is a justification for violence. One only needs to look to the Marxists to see the violence that the myth of a war between science and religion can potentially lead to.

God is Not a Unicorn

Atheists allow their own mythology to distort their thinking about the myths of others. The constant comparison of the notion of God to an Invisible Pink Unicorn, Santa Claus, or a child’s imaginary friend is a result of their thinking in terms of their own myths, for they must see the other as simplistic and irrational so that they can hold themselves above them as sophisticated and rational.

The question of the existence of God is in Western philosophy one of the most central existential questions there is. The question of whether He exists or not has profound implications for ethics, political science, aesthetics, ontology, metaphysics, and many other domains of thought outside science.

God as understood philosophically is not some invisible super-hero in the sky, He’s not some being to taken as literally true as represented in some mythological account with no other dimension or implications to His being.

Unicorns are neither the cause of the cosmos nor the cause of the individual. They are not the good that grounds both the world and human nature. They are a creature, not a creator. God is not understood as just a mythological creature, but as a principle which informs all it creates with meaning. They are completely different classes of being, and have completely different ways of understanding them.

Unicorns are a contingent, particular, finite, kind of imaginary animal imagined to be living within nature and thus are within the domain of natural science to investigate. God is a non-contingent, transcendent, universal, eternal, infinite, absolute principle, which cannot be the subject of natural sciences, and can only be understood through either revelation, philosophical reasoning, or mysticism, not science.

Claiming Einstein and the Founding Fathers

There are other many instances of mythic thinking shaping and warping their understanding of the world that pop up. For instance, the Founding Fathers of the US are often claimed to be predominantly Deists, while in fact this was a minority view. Some have even expressed the bizarre view that they were closet atheists. To counter the Christian Right’s misrepresentation that the Founding Fathers shaped a Christian nation, they invent their own counter-misrepresentation.

There are figures that they would like to claim, such as Einstein, so that they can add him to their pantheon of heroes, so they cook up the excuse that pantheism is somehow atheism. Einstein was certainly not an atheist, and actually complained about their attempts to claim him as one. But the New Atheists want him as a hero to add to their mythology, so the facts are really not important to them.

There was a certain triumphalism beginning in the nineteenth century, and carrying on through the twentieth that religion would die, science and reason would eliminate it and ultimately rule. The fact that religion has persisted is something that seems to have frustrated the New Atheists, as they now lash out at the foe they once were so sure they would overcome easily.

An Immature Mythology

In the end, looking at the mythology of the New Atheists two negative traits stand out.

First is that they take their myths completely literally. Because the mythology is not very mature, many of their myths can’t really be treated as allegorical.

Second, in taking them literally, they are sure that they are noble warriors fighting an evil force in the world, so their myths reinforce the idea of conflict and hostility. They are sure that they are oppressed, and have various martyrs they can point to which makes them angry. They are sure that religion and science necessarily conflict.

But inasmuch as they themselves are a religious movement, they have become that which they hate. Their mythology reinforces a view that causes a hatred and hostility towards other religions. We can only hope for their sake that one day they see through their myths, overcome their immature self-images, and grow into a more clear and accepting view of the way the world is.

Note: If you are interested in the study of mythology, a good place to start is the works of Joseph Campbell. He had an incredible breadth of knowledge of the myths of the world, and a great amount of insight into the patterns, meanings, and importance of mythology.

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Tags: atheism, atheist, christianity, joseph campbell, mythology, unicorns