[Taraz]

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So the "new atheism" is just much more intolerant of other points of view regarding god, etc. than the "old atheism" was. Not surprising actually.

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No, not surprising. Considering that the intolerance present in most religion has been a driving force to the spread of atheism, it is perhaps interesting to observe the same intolerance in atheism.

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Seems to me that religion has gotten less intolerant overall, not more so that doesn't seem like a very convincing reason.

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Really? My not particularly thought out interpretation is that through intolerance and bullying religion grabbed a foothold in society, which eventually led to significant rejection of the religion, which made bullying tactics less effective, which led to attempts to stem defections by putting on a friendly face ("we really aren't that bad!") rather than the old school bullying face ("you'd better find faith in Christ or you're going to hell!").

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Considering the timeline of religion, your correlation seems little off.

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In my opinion, "new atheism" is a reaction against fundamentalist religion, which itself is a reaction against the increased tolerance of religion as a whole. Basically I believe that religion has actually become more tolerant. But as a result, certain factions have split off that do not approve of this tolerance or "softening" of their religious beliefs. Fundamentalism is a reactionary stance which seeks to go back to the "old" ways of practicing the religion (however fictional this old style is). Now that fundamentalism has gained such a foothold in the world (see: militant Islam and much of Evangelical Christianity), the new atheists perceive a grave threat to "rationalism". Because these new atheists misunderstand religion to quite a large extent, they perceive the threat to be from religion as a whole.

Instead of focusing their attack on the more ridiculous and radical versions of religion, new atheists target all forms of religion. Unfortunately this often results in creating an "us" vs. "them" paradigm, thereby forcing more moderate religious people into the fundamentalist camp. Fundamentalists claim that God and religion is under attack by science, progress, etc, and the new atheists are giving this position validity by following through with this attack.