The Mystical Ethics of the New Atheists (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, etc)
theobjectivestandard.com
theobjectivestandard.com
Anyway, I think the author makes a bit of a straw man argument when saying that Dawkins' "moral Zeitgeist" doesn't determine a rational, consistent basis for morality. I don't believe that Dawkins was trying to show that.
I believe that Dawkins was trying to show that both religious and irreligious folks derive their morals from the same place for the most part: the moral Zeitgeist. This is a counter to the argument that religion is necessary for morality, because morality for most people is drawn from the Zeitgeist either way.
I haven't read Dawkins, so I may be wrong in my assertions of what Dawkins intended, but it feels like the author covertly (or accidentally) tried to shift the focus away from countering the "religion is necessary for morals" argument, onto a different topic (that of defining rational morals).
A disappointing end to the argument, IMO. Not just because of my personal dislike for Ayn Rand, but because it seems like it's just sort of stuck on the end there without appropriate justification. It would be better either without that part at all, or with a complete argument as to why Ayn Rand's position is not subject to the same criticism.
Religious morality is mystical? That's a reasonable point to argue. Dawkins' morality is equally mystical? The author presents a decent argument for this. Ayn Rand's morality is not mystical? Kind of a bold thing to merely assert and then duck out of the room.
"Those who maintain that being moral consists in being altruistic have no alternative but to base that belief on some form of mysticism"
It's like they haven't heard of the iterated prisoner's dilemma or something.
And even if such illustrations were more helpful, they wouldn't rise to the same level as an imperative moral code. Why not just view them as a challenge to be overcome?
Because I usually feel bad when I harm others, and I usually feel good when I help others. Altruism seems to be built into most human brains, and it would take a lot of conditioning to overcome. Most importantly, I think eliminating altruism would lead to a world where average quality of life was lower.
(Of course, these altruistic tendencies are what cause me to care about average quality of life.)
I do, to, but I also feel that often it's because it has been drilled into me.
If you prefer to look at it from a purely sociopathic amoral viewpoint, your ability to be a lone, rational actor is largely dependent on your interactions with society. You just have to look at people like Ted Kazcynski to see how completely independent actors live.
Game theory doesn't explain altruism. It wouldn't even convince people that capitalism (with full protection of individual rights) is a decent system to support. It's a game, and can be interpreted many ways, including self-interest.
The argument these and other atheists are making is that religion is, by design, overriding any innate sense of morality we might have built in. Or as Steven Weinberg put it: /With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion/
The atheists claim to be able to explain ethics, but they provide no ultimate foundation for ethics. Instead they point to intuition, evolution, game theory and community standards. However they are confusing descriptive talk for normative talk.
Where the atheists criticize religion, they presuppose an ultimate foundation for ethics. That is, they can only criticize religious atrocities from the ground that religion provided for them.
However, the idea that we ought to do what we want to do magically fills in the holes.
I don't think there is much space between hedonism and devil may care rugged individualism. Unless you provide a foundation for ethics, there is no way to compare my self-interest against your self-interest on the merits.
And in particular the critique of atheists still applies to Objectivists unless Objectivists provide an ultimate foundation for ethics.
I won't go into detail, but basically the foundation is: humans need to respect reality, use reason, and not be dependent on others but be productive to survive. This is how we each survive, and thrive. The standard of morality is life, ones own human life. Sacrificing your values is working against your own life. According to these principles, faith, mysticism, and using force against other people are all bad for your own life.
The point of the article is that altruism asks for sacrifice. Is there a rational basis for accepting it as a moral code? It's always been founded on religion throughout history. All the New Atheists do is say instead that altruism (or utilitarianism) feels right to them. This is not reason. Why does it feel right? And what about people for whom it doesn't feel right?
I like a lot of what the four horsemen have written and said in defense of science and atheism, and how they debunk religion and some of its more monstrous ethics. But, when they try to provide a positive ethics, they only offer what feels right.
"The Objectivist ethics holds man's life as the standard of value—and his own life as the ethical purpose of every individual man." Ayn Rand
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/standard_of_value.html
"There are, in essence, three schools of thought on the nature of the good: the intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective." Ayn Rand
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/good--the.html
You ask about good. Good implies value by some valuer. Saying that life is the standard of good is essentially as much as the question can be broken down (Rand gives a lot more detail than I can here). That's not the same proposition as saying "my feelings" are the standard of good, because feelings are based on something, so those need to be explored and reasoned about. You can't reason once you've denied reason or chosen death.
In the same sense attempting to attack the foundations of an irreligious framework for morality does not thus cause the facts to shift to supporting the position that religion is the source of morality. One does not need to go far in abrahamic religious dogma to find moral law which is abhorrent to modern ethical standards and immediately disqualifies such religions as a candidate for an actual source of modern morality.
The article attempts goes through various contortions to reduce all the candidate sources of morality to "altruism guided by intuition". I've not had much connection with Hitchens' or Dennet's works so I can't comment there, but if you look at Sam Harris' latest presentation from TED on ethics he pretty much directly holds up philosophical utilitarianism. Dawkins also mounts a case of modern ethical behaviour in "The God Delusion" as a simple case of a set of behaviour which confers evolutionary advantages upon the adopting group, with much supporting evidence for this, there is nothing "mysteriously shifting" about this position.
I agree that Harris presents utilitarianism, though he oddly avoids the word. That it is a variation of altruism, where each individual sacrifices himself to the group. Harris does not give a rational justification for this, just assumes everyone will feel it's correct. Feelings are not reason, so you have to ask where such feelings come from.
You're doing the exact same thing the author of the article accused the New Atheists of. Stop defending emotion based morality and start arguing for rational, reality-based morality.
I'm still studying Objectivism myself, but as far as I know, Ayn Rand has already based morality in reality. The article stating this at the end doesn't seem to be intended as a baseless assumption. It's basically saying "Here's a reality-based morality. For its validation, see Rand's works." I'd listen to it and actually try to understand where Rand was coming from before attacking her. I see idiotic attacks on her philosophy every day, and not a single one of the attackers understands or has even tried to understand it.
If you think there's an alternative to Rational Egoism, base that alternative on facts, not on personal feelings or the whims of large groups of people.
Again, stop arguing for emotion based morality, and start basing morality on facts.
The author of the article quotes Hitchens as saying (I've added emphasis): "[C]onscience is innate," and `[e]verybody but the psychopath' has the `feeling' that this is so. This `innate conscience' is what makes murder and theft `abhorrent to humans without any further explanation'; it is what gives children an `innate sense of fairness'; and it is what informs each of us of our `duty to others.'"
Now, Hitchens is perfectly comprehensible there and there is ample objective empirical evidence to back him up. The author has made a fine enough paraphrase of one of Hitchens' main points. The author of the article immediately goes on to err very badly:
Let's pick apart his next few sentences:
"The notion of an `innate conscience' is, of course, not original to Hitchens; the history of philosophy is replete with appeals to a `moral sense' or `moral intuition' or `moral law within.'"
Pardon me but philosophy has nothing to do with it. Such philosophers as the author refers to are trying to explain the fact that, by in large, we know right from wrong. As Hitchens asserted, we know things about morality and we know that we know these things "without need for further explanation". The author of the article ignores those words and proceeds to assume, behind Hitchens' simple statement, an implicit explanation. Once he does so, he is no longer arguing against Hitchens, he is arguing against a straw-man.
To borrow an example from a writer I like: Suppose you and I are sitting at the bar of a pub, chatting about sports. One of the patron's very friendly dogs is sitting outside waiting patiently, tied to a parking meter. A fellow walks by on the sidewalk and without provocation kicks the dog, hard.
Now, do we need to discuss what in scripture forbids such an act? Do we need to question whether our Kantian faculty for moral reasoning rings true when it signals the evil of such an act? Or do we just immediately agree that "That ain't right" and perhaps step outside to confront the man what done it? Is anything added to our obvious and gut-level reaction by additional discussion of where, in principle, that reaction comes from? Or can we just stipulate that it was in fact wrong to kick the dog and that almost certainly intervention is called for?
We do not need God in order to decide that kicking the dog was wrong. We do not need Kant or Descartes. We do not need debate. "Hey, look: that guy just kicked that dog!" What more do you need? Perhaps the philosopher at the other end of the bar will say "No, perhaps he kicked the dog to prevent a larger tragedy." Perhaps the theist next to him will point out the dog's place as chattel in the divine order of things. Perhaps the evolutionary biologist will try to stay our intervention by pointing out that we are reacting to genetically programmed perceptions. Perhaps the Taoist will solemnly observe that the dog can not experience pleasure unless it also experiences pain. Have any of these stooges added anything worthy of the moment? No, of course not. The situation needs no discussion - no explanation. What would happen, in real life, is that a large number of patrons of the pub would rise to intervene - and next to nobody would blame them. And this would be a moral reaction. We know right from wrong when we see it laid bare. No further explanation needed.
In order to "argue" with Hitchens, the author posits an "explanation" for this knowing and then proceeds to tear apart that explanation: a kind of intellectual onanism.
I do not mean, to answer how the author of the article burbles on, that we always make right choices or that we always agree about what the right choices are. Of course we do not. We generally agree (though not universally) in recognizing extreme cases of sociopathy. We all make moral mistakes, often tragic. We all are sometimes slow if not entirely unable to recognize our mistakes. These are separate questions and positing God, Kantian moral faculties, evolutionary proscriptions, etc. -- these add nothing to the conversation with the possible partial exception of the evolutionary psychiatrists who can at least provide some partial post-mortem analysis of failings, sometimes.
The author continues:
"But although many have appealed to such a sense, none has ever been able to overcome the fact that it is observationally false that humans possess an innate sense of right and wrong: Many people, and not just psychopaths, make horrifically bad choices that ruin their own lives, the lives of others, or both."
How this contradicts Hitchens is a truth to be found only in the authors' own imagination. Yes, tragedy happens. And yes, not everything is clear cut, especially in the heat of a decision-making moment.
"And not all of these people know that their actions are morally wrong. On the contrary, many believe that their actions are morally justified."
None of which contradicts anything Hitchens' said. The author seems to have assumed that Hitchens was talking about, to sling jargon around, an infallible moral faculty present in all but psychopaths. Had Hitchens ever, anywhere, argued for such a thing the author would have a point. Hitchens didn't. The author doesn't.
Suppose that pub was in Saudi Arabia, and instead of a kicking a dog, the man outside is gay and kisses his partner.
"Now, do [the Mutaween (moral police)] need to discuss what in scripture forbids such an act? Do [they] need to question whether [their] Kantian faculty for moral reasoning rings true when it signals the evil of such an act? Or do [they] just immediately agree that "That ain't right" and perhaps step outside to [arrest] the man what done it? Is anything added to [their] obvious and gut-level reaction by additional discussion of where, in principle, that reaction comes from? Or can [they] just stipulate that it was in fact wrong to [kiss the man] and that almost certainly [imprisonment and stoning] is called for?"
You claim that "we know right from wrong when we see it laid bare."
The Mutaween don't. Neither did Nazi German soldiers, slave owners, kamikaze pilots, Islamic fundamentalists, and countless other examples throughout history.
You have to think about your automatic moral judgments, and make certain that those judgments are based in reality. If you don't, you'll merely adopt the moral standards of those around you. Ultimately, those moral standards are decided by philosophy.
First, there is a background of a lot of theistic teaching regarding elaborate theories of morality. Second, there are elaborate machinations of the state and the clerics that make it possible to even conceive of arresting the men. You and I, I hope you agree, would find the arrest immoral even while those performing it would insist on its high morality. The difference is that you and I have to agree on little other than what we see happening to reach our shared conclusion, while the defenders of the arrest rely on an elaborate analytics of morality.
That's actually one of Hitchens' main themes: that the elaborate analytics or morality, most especially the analytics given forth by all of the worlds theologies, don't create morality but rather often the opposite.
Do the Mutaween know right from wrong? Or the the other groups that you mention? I don't think that there is one answer that applies to the whole group just as there is no one answer that applies to all atheists. Some see it. Some don't.
As Hitchens might put it, I can not seriously entertain here, among civilized people, that such an arrest is moral. And I observe that such an arrest is a byproduct of the actions of a theology that claims for itself a unique and privileged understanding of morality.
As a (half-gruesome) thought experiment, consider presenting to a pre-verbal child of any culture the image of two men kissing, and the image of dog abuse. Which do you think will more consistently upset the child?
When you're born, both your conscious and subconscious minds are blank slates. When you choose values and accept premises, those go into your subconscious since your conscious can't hold everything you know at once.
Emotions are the result of lightning-quick value-judgments performed by your subconscious mind. The subconscious is like a computer that your conscious programs, and your emotions are a constant printout.
Because of this, your emotional reactions to various situations depend on the values you've accepted and the premises you hold.
When you and someone else agree that it is wrong to arrest a gay man for kissing someone, based on your emotional reactions, it's because you both share western values such as individual rights and the separation between church and state. This allows you both to -feel- that the arrest is immoral. But someone who deeply disvalues homosexuality or deeply values a religion that is intolerant to homosexuality will -feel- -instantly- that the act of two men kissing is vile and the arrest is just and righteous, or at least preferable to allowing the men to kiss any longer.
THIS is why morality has to be based on facts. Why it must be grounded in reality. A person's wrong premises can easily make them -feel- that an evil act is righteous. Morality must be objectively defined and validated in order to stand up to peoples' whims.
Instead of trusting morality to a person's feelings and intuitions, you should examine the nature of reality and of human beings and determine, based on the way we are, what we should do.
I already linked this in another comment, but I'll link it here too. It's an essay Ayn Rand wrote that does just that. It examines the facts that give rise to man's need of a moral code, and then justifies, based on reality and man's nature, the proper moral code for man to practice. (Rational Egoism.) http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand...
If you don't agree with this essay, at least you can take from it an example of how to justify a moral code firmly grounded in reality, instead of in someone's -feelings- of right and wrong. Even if such feelings did default to a correct moral code, they would still be unreliable due to how easily they can be overridden.
Having an objectively defined moral code will not only allow you to be -certain- that you are doing the right thing, but you'll have intellectual ammo to back up your code when it is attacked. "I feel this is right" is insufficient to defend any moral code, even if it is the right moral code.
Beyond simple pub stories, moral questions about how to dispense justice in a large, diverse society and global gets really difficult, and we need a system of principles for that.
In addition, making all of the decisions for ones own life is complex, and a decent philosophy will provide a guide, principles to help you achieve goals. Most philosophies are not decent if one's goal is living a long, happy, fulfilling life, say with an excellent family and career.
Indeed we do. One of Hitchens' themes is that theologies are, on the face of their historic accomplishments, notably poor candidates to serve as a source for such principles. Perhaps it is interesting to note, here, that one of the principles of justice enshrined in the pointedly secular Constitution of the US is the right to trial by jury - an appeal to an "innate conscience" of morality if ever there was one.
If humans had innate conscience, why would human history be filled with such violence? If the moral sense is strong enough to be relevant for discussion, wouldn't it have shaped humanity more?
How is innate conscience distinguishable from one's emotional response? And I would argue that emotions are based on one's existing values, which may be different according to different people. Are you and Hitchens claiming to be more pure of heart than the rest of us, so you can see the true innate morality?
A jury is not at all an appeal to innate conscience. A jury isn't supposed to judge right and wrong, they are supposed to find guilt or innocence by the standard of a previously written law.
There are many situations in which your shallow observation is going to produce a wrong inference - suppose that dog just bit the man out of your view. Right, maybe not, justifiable certainly.
>"And not all of these people know that their actions are morally wrong. On the contrary, many believe that their actions are morally justified." >None of which contradicts anything Hitchens' said.
Is a direct contradiction of his paraphrase of Hitchins (from "God is not great") saying that we all have an innate conscience; which you claim is a "fine paraphrase". If we all have an innate conscience with a high degree of equivalence in it's value propositions then it would be near impossible for people to perform malevolent actions that they themselves find internally justified.
In your last para your arguing semantics without providing us with Hitchens view, do you know it? How is an "infallible moral faculty" different from an "innate conscience [that we all share and that produces identical results in each of us; but is somehow disabled under psychosis]". They seem largely coterminous.
Suppose indeed. You should join the philosopher at the other end of the bar who points out that perhaps the dog abuse averted a larger tragedy. ("You are standing by a railroad switch and a train is coming. You can divert it one of two ways. Stalled on one track is a schoolbus full of children. Stalled on the other is your lover. You can save one or the other but not both.....")
While you to consider all of the possibilities, several of the rest of us will step outside to intervene. If there are mitigating reasons for the dog abuse then hopefully we will discover them. If not, hopefully we will bring the offender to account. You don't need any elaborate theory of morality to make the simple observation that sometimes things are more complicated than they appear to be at first.
> How is an "infallible moral faculty" different from an "innate consciousness"
Fallibility. I have an innate ability to recognize a human figure at a distance but this doesn't mean I'm not sometimes fooled by shadows. I have an innate ability to recognize the taste of healthy food but it also happens that an episode of food poisoning has left me unable to taste avocado as anything other than poisonous (which it is not).
"These and similar statements show that Hitchens equates morality with altruism" (does not follow from given quotes, furthermore this is a setup for a straw man argument)
"... it is observationally false that humans possess an innate sense of right and wrong: Many people, and not just psychopaths, make horrifically bad choices that ruin their own lives, the lives of others, or both." (this argument is unsound; the author states that since some people make bad choices sometimes, then humans must not know right from wrong innately. It's like saying "It's observationally false that humans possess eyesight: many people, and not just the blind, fail to see the mayonnaise when they go to the refrigerator even when it's right in the door.")
"Ironically, the claim to innate knowledge—the claim to “just knowing” something—is precisely what Hitchens and the other New Atheists condemn when they condemn faith." (Other than the author's misuse of the term "irony", I have not heard the "new atheists" put forth such an argument and the author does not put forth a citation or quote to support this claim. As I see it, rather than condemning innate knowledge, the "new atheists" condemn what they see as baseless claims of fact.)
"Hitchens subscribes to the idea that man is mentally and thus morally hampered by innate irrationality." A slight bit later, "If man cannot choose his actions, then he cannot have a guide to choosing his actions." So the author takes a quote from Hitchens where Hitchens says humans are "only partly rational" (Hitchen's words as quoted by the author) and then concludes that Hitchens thinks that man "cannot choose his actions" (I know that the phrase appeared after the word "if", but you can parse the full three paragraphs or so yourself).
I stopped reading the article at this point due to the high density of illogical statements. Stylistically, I find it in poor taste to capitalize "new atheists", but there's no accounting for taste.
Actually, 4chan is nicer because everyone there knows they're dumb. Nobody has let these folks know yet.
Best to skim things like this. It takes him a long time to get to the thesis statement which can only induce eye-rolling.
I wonder about the plan of 'basing morality on reality'. In a way it can't be rejected of course, but it is a formula that is very easy to misread. There was a traditional distinction between 'practical' and 'theoretical' philosophy -- the origin of the familiar opposition practice/theory, but quite different. The associated epistemologies are very different.
Consider, to take a trivial illustration that doesn't reach so high as the ethical: my (practical) knowledge the I am typing something to Hacker News, and your (theoretical) knowledge of the same thing, if you are watching. Is my knowledge an effect of the 'reality' that I am typing something to Hacker News. Is it so to speak 'reality based', as yours certainly is?
Plenty of knowledge of reality, e.g. the layout of the keyboard, what has actually appeared on screen, etc. comes in, of course. But I am making this 'reality', I am making the thing that is cold external reality for you. The assymetry between your knowledge and mine in this case has parallels at the higher levels. Maybe Randism is true of Martians, for example. But even so that wouldn't be how the Martians know it. They wouldn't have 'reality based' knowledge of it. We would, if we could come to this knowledge by studying them.
Similarly, justice and mutual recognition belong to human life but we don't know this the way Martians would. There needn't be anything mystical in this.
The footnote was meant to recommend the reader to a source of moral guidance that is actually justified rationally and grounded in reality. (Objectivism.)
I don't think she seems that rational; adjectives like dogmatic, idealistic, romantic, manichean seem more apt. It is admirable to try and ground ethics in reality, but I think Rand claims much, much more than she accomplished. I can't put together her dogged insistence on a benevolent universe, the grand exaltedness of capitalists and individualists, the nonexistence of instincts, the objective life-affirming value of cigarettes, etc, etc — with the idea of sober, honest reasoning. Yet these features are actually what I like the best about Rand. I think her attitude shows someone who could have been a good poet of individualism — like a more austere and condemning Whitman — if she hadn't gotten tangled up in the business of philosophy.
(Richard Rorty's "Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity" to me shines brightly with a kind of humble yet very discerning rationality, almost saintly honesty — yet he and Rand are completely, utterly at odds philosophically.)
The best validation of her ethics I know of is an essay entitled The Objectivist Ethics, in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness. The first several pages are dedicated to establishing why man needs ethics, and the rest of the essay to explaining Objectivist ethics and why it benefits human life.
Ooh, I think we're in luck. A quick google search shows that you can read the essay here. I just glanced over it, but it appears to be the same essay as in VoS. http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ari_ayn_rand...
In the wake of the religiously motivated atrocities of 9/11, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have penned best-selling books
This wasn't a good start; I feel it is something of an invocation of a parallel to Godwin's law.
The middle bit spends a lot of time debunking the idea of innate morals. I happen to agree there; Hitchens is, I think, wrong in some respects (I only read him once; so there is almost certainly a subtle message as well). But the conclusions drawn are rather inane and, really, fall foul of the same mistakes the writer highlights.
I skipped to the end at that point to see the conclusion was "Ayn Rand" - that's a lot of words just to get to that point...
But there were also no solutions (something the writer calls dawkins et al on a few times) to the fundamental questions - until the end when Ayn Rand is presented as the answer (and I mean her works in the possessive)
Responding in the form "I agree that..." or "I disagree that..." could start an interesting discussion.
Of course; I just wish that the writer had mentioned this at the top so I could have given the arguments context. I've read Rand and personally don't find her useful so all that reading led to... nothing insightful (for me anyway) :)
There was a lot of use of "The fact is" - this is just bad rhetoric. I didn't feel these sections were well enough argued/presented to constitute a solution to the questions posed earlier in the piece.
Ultimately I just felt the conclusion was poor - the article posed a lot of questions and never really addressed them, except to say read Ayn Rand.
Among the countless counterexamples one could cite against any claim to an “innate conscience” is the fact that the 9/11 hijackers regarded their murderous actions not as abhorrent, but as sublime.
Poor logic here. Hitchens would claim that it was their religion that perverted their innate sense of right and wrong. To search for such a sense, I can only imagine you would need to look at very young children and even then it would be hard to discount the cultural/upbringing factor.
The claim to “innate knowledge,” like the claim to knowledge through faith, is a form of mysticism, the claim to a non-rational, non-sensory means of knowledge.
Not if its been observed enough. You don't need to be able to explain something down to the quantum mechanical level to assert it exists.
How can religious belief be wrong if the “innate consciences” of billions of people tell them that it is right?
What? Historically, most religions were spread by a small number of individuals. How is this innate? (Someone correct me if I'm wrong on the history).
If man’s ethical ideas were innate, if his biology predisposed him to irrationality, if he had no choice about whether to commit evil, then the entire field of morality—which presupposes that man does choose his actions—would not only be pointless
No one is claiming there is no choice, merely that our moral decision making procedure is imperfect and/or very flawed.
Why does an “ethical realist,” who claims to believe that ethical truths are waiting in reality to be discovered, insist that ethics must be grounded “intuitively,” via “irreducible leaps,” rather than rationally
In part, this might be because introspection is, in some ways, inherently self limiting. There is nothing logically incoherent about saying that "this is far as I can break things down."
The whole discussion of how senses are needed to even write a book is silly. You can't take someone's argument to an extreme and then point out how silly it is. The claim isn't (or shouldn't be) that "senses are useless" but that "our senses are not perfect receptors of the outside world."
Overall, the large problem is that the author is looking for a perfect answer to questions when the thought process behind it is still in its infancy.
Many religions teach you that the goal is not to be a douche. Most college pseudo-intellectual atheists/internet atheists are douches.
I am/was an agnostic. At this point I am willing believe the exact opposite of Dawkins and his fellow atheist zealots - since I know that they are assholes.
They (like the Khrushchev of old) just replaced religion with their own zealotous dogma.
(E.g. Unconditional love, true love, etc...).
You do not understand the problem. The problem is not beliefs or ideology, but zealotory (the insane belief that your way is the one true way and that you are better/smarter/more enlightened than anyone else).
That is pretty much an apt description for New Atheism. It is just a different form of zealotery.
Yet New Atheists do not see this as wrong. Some have even argued that parents should be prevented from "indoctrinating" (i.e. teaching children religion and their moral framework).