The New Atheist and Self-righteousness

There is a generation that is pure in their own eyes and yet is not washed from their filthiness. Proverbs 30:12

The new atheists think that they’re righteous because they have never really made an honest attempt to be righteous.  You never know how weak you are until you try to lift something heavy.  The new atheist believes that they are righteous because like many in the west they equate righteousness with believing the correct thing.  In other words, if you have the right doctrine, you are righteous.  They inherited this belief, that right doctrine equals righteousness, from evangelical Christianity which they so vivaciously hate.  Like all Pharisees they hate what they are and they detest their own shadow to the point that they deny that they even have one.

One man said of the new atheists that their thinking was “…attitudes masquerading as ideas, emotional commitments disguised as intellectual honesty.”  At first these remarks puzzled me and then I realized that the new atheist’s thinking did not have its origin in deep clear thinking and reasoning, but rather in attitudes and the emotions brought about by those attitudes.  The attitudes that come to my mind as typical of the new atheist type are rebellion, hubris and self-righteousness, which are very similar attitudes as those involved in the social justice movement. All of these attitudes are commonly found among younger people, especially young educated males.

Like so many young people of today the new atheists seem to be angry, but  why are they angry?  They are a part of the most spoiled and pampered generation that’s ever been on the face of the earth.  The majority of the new atheist types are college graduates that have grown up with comfort, ease and pleasure beyond another generation’s imagination.

What are they angry about? They’re furious that the world, and it’s God, is not to their liking.  Yet they are frustrated that they don’t have the power to change it.  They only have the power to destroy it, which is the reason they are called ‘deconstructionists’ by many.  This deconstructionism can take many forms; it can be seen in the new atheist movement, the feminist movement and the social justice movement.  All of these movements have their roots in atheism and in the denial of the divine.  All of these movements are nihilistic in the end and create a people without God, without meaning and without any hope in the world.  The only meaning they seem to have is found in their deconstructionism and their utopian world view.  This can all be seen in the atheistic communist movement that destroyed everything in its path.

Are the new atheists righteous?  Well, if there is a God, they are not righteous, they are evil.  If there is no God it really doesn’t matter because the word righteousness would be just a word without any real content.

Let me end with one of my favorite quotes by an old type of atheist, an honest unbeliever.  Dr. E. Wengraf once confessed, “Every piece of anti-religious propaganda seems to me a crime.  I surely do not wish it to be prosecuted as a crime, but I consider it immoral and loathsome.  This not because of zeal for my convictions, but because of the simple knowledge, acquired through long experience that, given the same circumstances, a religious man is happier than the irreligious.  In my indifference and skeptical attitude toward all positive faith, I have often envied other men to whom deep religiosity has given strong support in all the storms of life.  To uproot the souls of such men is an abject deed.  I abhor any proselytizing.  But still, I can understand why one who believes firmly in a saving faith tries to convert others.  But I cannot understand the propaganda of unbelief.  We do not have the right to take away from a person his protecting shelter, be it even a shabby hut, if we are not sure we can offer him a better, more beautiful house.  But to lure men from the inherited home of their souls, to make them err afterward in the wilderness of hypotheses and philosophical question marks, is either criminal fatalisms or criminal mindlessness.” Are the new atheists righteous? I guess not according to Dr. E. Wengraf.