Adrian Moore: "Reflections on the New Atheism"

Adrian Moore delivers his talk 'Reflections on the New Atheism' for the 2017-2018 Humane Philosophy Project/Ian Ramsey Centre seminar at Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford.

Adrian Moore reflects on what has come to be known as “the new atheism” associated with thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett. He compares it with the logical positivist view, advanced in the early twentieth century, that claims about the existence and nature of God are not false, but strictly meaningless. He argues that the logical positivist view is in many ways subtler than the new atheism, as well as being in many ways closer to much of what can be found in mainstream religious thought.

ADRIAN MOORE is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he is also Vice-Principal of St Hugh’s College. His publications include four books: The Infinite; Points of View; Noble in Reason, Infinite in Faculty: Themes and Variations in Kant’s Moral and Religious Philosophy; and The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things. A collection of his essays, entitled Language, World, and Limits: Essays in Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics, is forthcoming.