How the New Atheists Forged the Way For the Woke Movement
Cause and Effect, and the Refusal to Observe Their Connection
Recently I viewed what became an increasingly fascinating interview between Peter Boghossian (of the New Atheist Movement) and Winston Marshall (one time banjo player of Mumford and Sons, turned public pariah) which took place last week on the media outlet The Spectator. Don't fret if you're not familiar with those names, I'll soon describe their relevance. But first, I want to draw attention to the incredible turn which the interview takes when the interviewer, Winston Marshall, asks Boghossian whether he thinks that the New Atheist movement cleared a path for psuedo-religious movements like the Woke movement. His answer? "100%. It's absolutely true." What follows his admission is an incredibly enlightening peak into exactly how our culture has evolved so rapidly, where Christianity fits in (or doesn't) as a culture-shaping worldview, and the surprising reaction of a deconstructionist when he beholds the inevitable results of his own work.
Peter Boghossian was professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years. However, he was most famous previously for his book A Manual For Creating Atheists (2013). As a prominent member of the New Atheist movement, Boghossian believes that Christianity and all other religions are "a delusion." This hearkens back to the more well-known members of the New Atheist movement, like Richard Dawkins who wrote The God Delusion (2006), Christopher Hitchens who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007), or Sam Harris who wrote The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004). Each of these authors and works would enjoy long stays on the New York Times bestsellers list. As you can see, the aughts (or noughties for my British friends) was a decade in which many worked quite hard towards the deconstruction of religion, and Christianity in particular. While this movement would sort of fizzle out by the mid 2010's, its effects are far reaching even, and especially, to the cultural moment in which we find ourselves today.
Which brings me to this recent interview. Winston Marshall functions as an insightful interviewer, as well as one who has skin in the game, so to speak. This is because Marshall lost his role as the banjo player for Mumford and Sons after a simple tweet calling attention to a book by journalist Andy Ngo on Antifa. Marshall's firsthand experience of cancel culture makes him an apt commentator on the real felt-effects of woke ideology. However, though he has endured what most people fear more than almost anything today, he survives his cancellation (!).
The entire interview is worth watching, but what is most striking is the deft expertise, alacrity, and eloquence with which Boghossian speaks before the question of the culpability of New Atheism, when compared to his behavior and insight after this question is asked. Boghossian, as one who has deep understanding of the woke movement and works tirelessly towards showing its inherent flaws is left, if not quite speechless, still unable to provide a cogent answer. Now that the West has in large part left behind Christianity as the foundational frame through which Westerners see the world, in no small part due to the influence of the New Atheists, Marshall asks "what is to replace it?" Boghossian, though seemingly still self assured, tries unsuccessfully at least three separate times to explain how society will move forward without Christian moors, and Marshall plays the role of each of us by asking what universal standard of moral principles could possibly replace Christianity in Western society. The truth is, there is no answer, and the expertise of Boghossian combined with his utter inability to provide an answer functions as a proverbial "emperor with no clothes" moment (see especially Marshall's thoughtful question here and Boghossian's response).
To his credit, Boghossian is fully willing to accept responsibility for the fact that the New Atheists’ collective activity was instrumental in causing Westerners to believe that because there is no God, and thus no moral Law-giver, Meaning-maker, or Purpose-giver; humans are "free" to make their own meaning. However, at the same time Boghossian is not unsettled by his and other New Atheists' culpability, nor does he question his own program, but persists in his principles that with religion out of the way, now only the Woke movement stands in the way of progressing to a perfect, though godless, society. However, how are we to believe Boghossian when the promise he held out concerning social progress and human freedom has turned to ashes in his mouth? It seems his efforts only unleashed a social contagion which erodes institutions, ideas, freedoms, and people.
The problem with our society is that without God, Westerners are drowning in the task of making our own meaning and identity, lost amidst a sea of subjectivity and opinion and fundamentally opposed to the idea that any single course of human behavior is "right" for all people. To continue the analogy, it is as if we have each of us abandoned the ship, preferring instead to be an individual body among the waves, but utterly without anything to keep us afloat. It is no wonder then that studies show that US adults are more likely to wonder about meaning and purpose in this life, but less likely to believe that there is more to life than this physical world. It is no wonder that when increasing numbers of young people think about their place in this world, they see no connection with their own bodies, no grounding in this world, and hold out hope that either surgery or suicide will somehow bring them either purpose, and fulfillment or at least some kind of relief. Suicide in America saw a 30% increase between 2000-2020, the same period which saw the fruition of the rejection of Christianity. In Britain, which is more advanced than the US in their post-Christian journey, one study finds that 9 out of 10 young Brits feel that their life has no purpose. This reminds me of the story of Noah's ark, where human society as well as God's many other creations are preserved and upheld only in obedience to Him, saved through the water by boarding a ship that He commissions. 1 Peter 3 likens this to salvation by being in Christ, as a preserving vessel. But when we cast aside God and his principles as those in Noah's time did, the result is not a matter of sinking or swimming on your own, we are left only to sinking.
That Western society is built upon a Judeo-Christian framework of principles, laws, and philosophy is widely acknowledged by even Atheist historians and philosophers. See Tom Holland's (the historian, not the Spider-Man actor) book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, in which he, though not a believer, calls Christianity "the single most transformative development in Western history." Even Douglas Murray, another of the New Atheists who has become known for his work against Woke ideology, admitted in a fascinating interview, and in his book The Madness of the Crowd, that Western society is all but doomed unless we return to some of the values and meaning which Christianity unquestionably supplied. This leads him to propose, astoundingly, some sort of Christian Atheism, which seeks all the societal benefits of Christianity without believing its truth claims about God and spirituality. As one among many theologians and ministers, I could helpfully predict the inevitable problems which would arise from such a program. The New Atheists sawed off the branch upon which they sat, giving no thought to the free fall that would result, and as the ground rushes towards them they no longer appear so terribly clever.
But the crux of the matter is this: Christians did indeed predict what would happen to society as a result of leaving behind Christianity. Those who did were widely panned, as people rejected the "slippery-slope" arguments of Christians concerning public morality, purpose, and satisfaction. In large part Christians were right when they predicted the decline of Western society when God was left behind. And so as I bring this post to a close, I want to come back to the Boghossian interview. Boghossian states that Christianity and Atheism have become "strange bedfellows" in resisting Woke ideology, and this is true. In fact, I would defer to his wisdom when charting the philosophical developments and effective antidotes to the troubling elements of Wokeness. But God makes foolish the wisdom of the wise (1 Cor 3:19), and watching Boghossian flounder is a spectacle which makes this perfectly clear.
What is so interesting to me is that, though faced with the results of the Atheist program, he proposes merely to right the ship from Woke flaws, and press on. After playing a part in making shipwreck of the faith of millions, Boghossian aims to bail out the water while ignoring the hole in the boat. Wokeness as a replacement pseudo religion has not been ideal for him, but he fails to realize that if not Wokeness, the next pseudo religion will have just as disastrous consequences, because it will be devoid of the objective meaning which may only be found in God, who is Truth. In the event that Wokeness wanes, perhaps even thanks to Boghossian &co.'s efforts to bail out the ship of Western society, the ship is yet not seaworthy without Christian moors restored, which is a major problem for sinking New Atheists, as they refuse to believe that God may make men to stand above water. But Christianity will not go down with the ship, but endure, as even the gates of Hell may not prevail against God's Church (Mt 16:16-18).
Selah
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