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The new atheism and the new anti-atheism: the stealth religion of David Sloan Wilson.

Article Excerpt
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS AND DANIEL Dennett must be used to having their atheism called a pseudo-religion. Usually, however, such accusations are made by religious figures who nonetheless do not seem to be willing to follow up with offers of inter-religious ecumenical exchange. It must have been something of a surprise for the so-called New Atheists to have their views called a stealth religion by a self-declared atheist who is one of the world's scientific authorities on religion. David Sloan Wilson--an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University (SUNY), NY whose critical review of Dawkins' The God Delusion appeared in SKEPTIC Vol. 13, No. 4--has proposed an evolutionary account of religion as a group-level evolutionary adaptation. (1)

In a series of commentaries on The Huffington Post blog page, (2) Wilson argues that the movement that is taking shape around Dawkins and others has all the hallmarks of a religion, the only difference being the lack of supernatural agents--something that Wilson deems "a detail." To make his claims clear, Wilson defines stealth religion as "any belief system that distorts the facts of the real world for the purpose of motivating a given suite of behaviors." Unfortunately for Wilson, by this very broad definition, the set of claims he makes against the New Atheism could itself be seen to be a new stealth religious tract. The reason is that he could be seen as misrepresenting what Dawkins and the others are doing in order to motivate people to study religion instead of opposing it.

To understand the problem it is necessary to first understand what is right about Wilson's criticism of the New Atheists and then to look at his evolutionary account of religion to trace back the weakness in it that leads to Wilson's inflated claims against Dawkins. Even having done that, however, we are left wondering what it is, exactly, that Wilson values so much in religion as compared to the New Atheist movement.

Wilson's Theory of Religion

Wilson begins with this point: "The discerning liberal (or any intellectual) would be a fool to assume that atheism stands for pure reason, just because it doesn't involve the gods." In fearing that the New Atheism assumes this link, Wilson is, in effect, fearing that atheism is turning into an ideology. It is...

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