The Philosopher’s Beard has its facial hair in a knot over the prominence of New Atheism. The opening of an essay assailing the evangelical strain of the seeming non-evangelical:

“The New Atheist movement that has developed from the mid 2000s around the ‘four horsemen of the apocalypse’ – Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, Dawkins, and various other pundits, has had a tremendous public impact. Godlessness has never had a higher public profile. How wonderful for unbelievers like me? Hardly. I am as embarrassed by the New Atheists as many Christians are embarrassed by the evangelical fundamentalists who appoint themselves the representatives of Christianity.

It has often been noted that the New Atheist movement has contributed no original arguments or ideas to the debate about religion. But the situation is worse than this. The main achievement of New Atheism – what defines it as a more or less coherent movement – is its promulgation of a particular version of atheism that is quasi-religious, scientistic, and sectarian. New Atheism been so successful in redefining what atheism means that I find I must reject it as an identity. My unbelief is apathetic and simply follows from my materialism – I don’t see why I should care about the non-existence of gods. What the New Atheists call ‘rationality’ is an impoverished way of understanding the world that excludes meanings and values. At the political level, the struggle for secularism requires more liberalism, not more atheism.”