You don't have to share the New Atheists' beliefs to treat their culture with some respect – and be interested in why people are drawn to it
Jonathan Haidt's recent book on morality aims to explain "why good people are divided by politics and religion". In The Righteous Mind he says, yes, moral decisions are influenced by our intentional decision-making processes – the rational weighing up of alternatives, the assessment of right and wrong – but that this decision-making is really driven by underlying intuitions. This intuitive thinking does not involve rational thought but follows the logics of – and what would be advantages for – the social group or groups we happen to be a member of. In fact, we are less rational creatures than we are rationalising creatures, and the groups we participate in matter hugely and demand our attention.
Haidt uses religion as the exemplary social grouping, emphasising that it is cultural and social much more than it is belief-based – a "team sport". In so doing, however, he repeats one of the most deep-seated assumptions about religion (and non-religion) in contemporary thought: one that is, somewhat ironically, rationalist in nature. This is the view that, while religion is a "team sport", those that don't have it are defined by the absence of this kind of cultural and social commitment rather than the presence of an alternative one. We typically think of religion as cultural – a rich network of beliefs, symbols, practices and social relations – and non-religion as a purely intellectual critique of (some aspects of) these cultures.
Contrary to this, new anthropological work is beginning to show that being non-religious also involves a range of cultural and social manifestations. These manifestations are not organised into clear institutions – there is no Church of Atheism – and this means that they can't be so easily pointed to as we can to a Methodist chapel or Hasidic Jewish traditional dress. But they are there.
People who choose "secular" funerals do not pick images and ideas at random: they turn to an established lexicon of naturalist and other imagery and to certain secular as well as religious music. Those of the "New Atheist" persuasion celebrate and revere science in a way that helps them find meaning in their lives. And non-religious people often have an aversion to different kinds of religiosity and non-religiosity that comes out in their choice of friends and, especially, romantic partners.
Richard Dawkins and other New Atheists are often criticised for failing to understand that being religious is not about beliefs – but about cultural practice and social participation. Yet criticising New Atheists for their "false beliefs" makes precisely the same mistake and reduces this culture to its propositional statements and knowledge claims. In fact, people are brought together and tied together by their different kinds of non-religious positions, and to criticise one of these cultures, the New Atheism, on the grounds that it does not appreciate that religion is a team sport is to miss the point that atheism, too, is a team sport.
Obsessing about how coherent the arguments of New Atheists are – rather than noticing how popular the movement is; the emotional feelings of recognition that some readers have in response to it; how people discuss New Atheism with each other and use it to help articulate shared non-religious positions – is to do precisely what critics would have the New Atheists stop doing. You don't have to share the New Atheists' beliefs to treat their culture with some respect – and be interested not in whether its claims are correct but in why people are drawn to it and what is underlying the anti-theist prejudices that are sometimes expressed in these claims. The notion that cultural and social investments are more important than beliefs is fine, but it has to cut both ways.