Torres names names - Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, Laurence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, James Lindsey, Peter Boghossian, David Silverman and Steven Pinker - a Who's Who taken from the pantheon of what's called the New Atheism. Torres catalogues the offenses of each of these luminaries in his article, and to be sure, some of these men have certainly sullied themselves in their boorish behavior toward women.
But what seems to irk Torres the most is that many of them have also promoted positions on matters of race, gender studies, the cancel culture, the threat of Islam, free speech and "wokeness" in general that are disturbingly close to positions held by conservatives.
For a progressive atheist like Torres this is not just disappointing and disillusioning, it's grounds for public chastisement of the malefactors, but therein lies a problem with Torres' critique.
The gravamen of his complaint is that these men have committed serious moral faults, either with women or in their ideological predilections and public pronouncements, but as atheists why should any of them, including Torres, think there's anything objectively wrong, in a moral sense, with any of the offenses Torres imputes to them in his indictment? How does an atheist justify a moral judgment of another man's behavior?
That Torres sees the failings of these men as moral failings is clear from passages like these:
New Atheism appeared to offer moral clarity, it emphasized intellectual honesty and it embraced scientific truths about the nature and workings of reality. It gave me immense hope to know that in a world overflowing with irrationality, there were clear-thinking individuals with sizable public platforms willing to stand up for what's right and true — to stand up for sanity in the face of stupidity.So, aside from the fact that it's unclear what he means by the term "moral progress," what's the problem? It's this: unless there's an objective standard of right and wrong, "bad behavior" is nothing more than a reflection of one's own subjective tastes and preferences, and it's just silly to assert that anyone else's tastes and preferences are "wrong."
Pinker, Shermer and some of the others like to preach about "moral progress," but in fighting social justice under the misleading banner of "free speech," they not only embolden fascists but impede further moral progress for the marginalized.
Another way to understand the situation goes like this: Some of these people acted badly in the past. Others don't want to worry about accusations of acting badly in the future. Still others are able to behave themselves but worry that their friends could get in trouble for past or future bad behavior.
Indeed, the word wrong has no meaning other than as an emotive expression of one's own disapproval. It has the same content as "ugh!" It's just a behavior that some people don't like.
Moreover, unless there's a God there can be no objective standard for right and wrong. For an atheist, then, there is no objective standard of morality, only individual subjective preferences.
Nor is there any ultimate accountability for how we choose to behave, and with no ultimate accountability the notion of right and wrong conduct, a moral law, is an empty notion. It's like a law that carries with it no punishment for violating it.
For any act to be wrong in an objective sense there has to be an ultimate and inescapable consequence for doing it. If there is no God then there's no ultimate, inescapable accountability, which is what the great Russian writer Dostoyevsky meant when he has characters in his novel The Brothers Karamazov stress that, "If God is dead everything is permitted."
A Christian, then, can lament humanity's moral failings, but it borders on the ridiculous for an atheist to do it. Unless the atheist doesn't care about living consistently with his atheism, which is also ridiculous.
