There’s been a lot of debate over what is and isn’t a “New Atheist”, whether the term makes any sense, etc. As far as I can tell, the main difference between the “new” atheists and the “old” atheists is the former put an emphasis on the claim that religion and science are incompatible. This claim is, in fact, what seems to piss of critics of “new” atheists more than anything else (especially among atheist critics of “new” atheism).
In an October op-ed for USA Today, Jerry Coyne outlines the case against the idea that science and religion can somehow be “reconciled”, which usually seems to mean patting the believes on the head like children and assuring them everything will be okay and science doesn’t require changing their world views at all,
Science and faith are fundamentally incompatible, and for precisely the same reason that irrationality and rationality are incompatible. They are different forms of inquiry, with only one, science, equipped to find real truth. And while they may have a dialogue, it’s not a constructive one. Science helps religion only by disproving its claims, while religion has nothing to add to science.
…
In the end, science is no more compatible with religion than with other superstitions, such as leprechauns. Yet we don’t talk about reconciling science with leprechauns. We worry about religion simply because it’s the most venerable superstition — and the most politically and financially powerful.
Why does this matter? Because pretending that faith and science are equally valid ways of finding truth not only weakens our concept of truth, it also gives religion an undeserved authority that does the world no good. For it is faith’s certainty that it has a grasp on truth, combined with its inability to actually find it, that produces things such as the oppression of women and gays, opposition to stem cell research and euthanasia, attacks on science, denial of contraception for birth control and AIDS prevention, sexual repression, and of course all those wars, suicide bombings and religious persecutions.
One interesting thing that Coyne does not address is that even some atheists who disagree with him seem persuaded by his argument but nevertheless resort to a utilitarian argument against Coyne’s claims — namely that acceptance of science by the public will be undermined if non-atheists believe that science is incompatible with their beliefs.
Chris Mooney and PZ Meyers had a flame war over just this point, and it is useful to revisit how silly the secular critics of “new” atheism are. For example, here’s Mooney in his book Unscientific America trying to draw a line beyond which the “new” atheists shouldn’t cross,
It is one thing to say that scientific norms and practices preclude ascribing any explanatory force to God in, say, the movement of atoms, or the function of DNA. It’s quite another to say they entirely preclude God’s existence. In rejecting God or any other supernatural entity, Dawkins is taking a philosophical position.
Got that? So in the mind of at least some of the critics of “new” atheism’s emphasis on the irreconcilability of religion and science, it is okay to go ahead and tell believers, sorry science says there are no miracles, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, faith healing is bullshit, Mohammed never received a message from God, and the universe is entirely explainable by naturalistic causes without any need for intervention by a supernatural force. But once you take the next step and say “Oh, and this means there’s almost certainly no God”, you’ve crossed a line that will drive the believers into the hands of the anti-science fundamentalists.
I’m just not buying that. Most of the people I meet who are religious do not think of their god or gods in some detached philosophical deist method — they believe in a god or gods who not only affects the universe, but often intervenes directly in their lives and the lives of others around them. That support for science can be preserved by conceding some deistic version of god is absurd.