Scientism and Utopia: New Atheism as a Fundamentalist Reaction to Relativism

Abstract

The New Atheism movement has generally been understood as a reaction to fundamentalism, but LeDrew argues that it is just as importantly a reaction to two other features of late modern culture: multiculturalism or cultural relativism (in the realm of social policy) and ‘postmodernism’ or epistemic relativism (in the intellectual sphere), which are both perceived as challenges to scientific authority. This chapter focuses on the atheist reaction to relativism specifically in its relation to the social sciences, which it sees as shaped by the influence of postmodernism and thus an illegitimate source of knowledge. The rejection of social science in the atheist movement is a response to the fear that the historical and comparative methods of the social sciences are capable of relativizing not only the social world but the production of scientific knowledge by demonstrating their historically contingent and socially constructed nature. The chapter explores two strategies the atheist movement has adopted: undermining the social sciences as a whole by advancing evolutionary psychology as an alternative and superior form of social science and a sacralization of science.