Positivism and Reasonableness: Authoritarian Leanings in New Atheism’s Thinking

Religions

Michael Roseneck¹ 

[1] Faculty of Catholic Theology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, 60323 Frankfurt am Main, Germany;

关键词: democratic theory;    pluralism;    public reason;    reasonableness;    new atheism;    science and society;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rel13020186

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Various contemporary phenomena of social regression and authoritarianism are related to religious actors, movements, and beliefs. This text, however, seeks to follow this up with the political–theoretical argumentation that New Atheism has to be understood as a way of thinking which carries illiberal and authoritarian tendencies with it as well. In defence of this position, this article will first reconstruct, with reference to Habermas’s and Rawls’s theory of democracy, elements that must include personal beliefs in order to be considered congruent with democratic values. Subsequently, New Atheism’s conception of rational politics will be presented in order to show in which aspects it contradicts the demands of reasonable convictions. This concerns, in particular, the rejection of reasonable pluralism on the one hand and a non-positivistic view of human beings on the other. As a conclusion, this text supports the proposition that, when speaking of the connection between certain worldviews and today’s illiberalism, New Atheism must also be considered as an unreasonable comprehensive doctrine.

【 授权许可】

Unknown