Today in Atheism News

Interesting article from New York Magazine about Atheism as a social movement.

Now, once again, nonbelievers have a fresh sense of mission. The
fastest-growing faith in the country is no faith at all. The Pew Forum on
Religion & Public Life released the results of its “Religious Landscape”
survey in February and found that 16 percent of Americans have no religious
affiliation. The number is even greater among young people: 25 percent of 18- to
29-year-olds now identify with no religion, up from 11 percent in a similar
survey in 1986. For most of its modern history, atheism has existed as a kind of
civil-rights movement. Groups like American Atheists have functioned primarily
as litigants in the fight for church-state separation, not as atheist social
clubs. “Atheists are self-reliant, self-sufficient, independent people who don’t
feel like they need an organization,” says Ellen Johnson, president of American
Atheists for the past thirteen years. “They’re so independent that if they want
to get involved, they usually don’t join an organization—they start their
own.”

The quartet of best-selling authors who have emerged to write the gospel of
New Atheism—Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Dawkins (the
Four Horsemen, as they are now known)—has succeeded in mainstreaming atheism in
a nation that is still overwhelmingly religious and, in the process, catalyzed a
reexamination of atheistic raison d’être. But for some atheist foot soldiers,
this current groundswell is just a consciousness-raising stop on the
evolutionary train, the atheist equivalent of the Stonewall riots. For these
people, the Four Horsemen have only started the journey. Atheism’s great
awakening is in need of a doctrine. “People perceive us as only rejecting
things,” says Ken Bronstein, the president of a local group called New York City
Atheists. “Everybody wants to know, ‘Okay, you’re an atheist, now what?’”

So some atheists are taking seriously the idea that atheism needs to
stand for things, like evolution and ethics, not just against things, like God.
The most successful movements in history, after all—Christianity, Islam,
Hinduism, etc.—all have creeds, cathedrals, schools, hierarchies, rituals,
money, clerics, and some version of a heavenly afterlife. Churches fill needs,
goes the argument—they inculcate ethics, give meaning, build communities.
“Science and reason are important,” says Greg Epstein, the humanist chaplain of
Harvard University. “But science and reason won’t visit you in the
hospital.”

Many atheist sects are experimenting with building new, human-centered
quasi-religious organizations, much like Ethical Culture. They aim to remove God
from the church, while leaving the church, at least large parts of it, standing.
But this impulse is fueling a growing schism among atheists. Many of them see
churches as part of the problem. They want to throw out the baby and the
bathwater—or at least they don’t see the need for the bathwater once the baby is
gone.

Interesting article that goes longer and more in depth. Check it out.