On the other hand, I do see how there are efforts to blend science, reason, skepticism and atheism into one thing, the only justification for which is that christian fundamentalists reject certain parts of mainstream science (evolution, parts of geology, parts of cosmology). And while these fundamentalist Christians are by no means an insignificant minority in the States (the target audience for most New Atheism’s books), it does not even remotely justify this link between atheism and reason. This is where New Atheism shows the early signs of becoming an ideology, where non-New atheism isn’t. I see a lot of creationists on Twitter mocking evolution as “the atheists’ creation story”, and while this does nothing to invalidate the theory on a scientific level, they are right. (And if anything, it makes the ideological problems Christians may have with the theory stronger). So I think New Atheism is redefining “reason” and “skeptical” to mean “atheistic”, which creates an ideologically-infused false dichotomy between religion and reason/skepticism. There’s nothing inherently atheistic about believing in evolution, and nothing inherently atheistic about being skeptical about dousing, mediums and homeopathy either. Moreover, my hunch is that atheists are slightly overrepresented among 9/11 conspiracy theorists, so not all atheists are skeptics either.

So perhaps the double-helix earrings could perhaps be part of New Atheism’s ideological symbolism, but if we widen our scope a bit I think it’s rather obvious, which, from a scientific vantage point, is a bad thing. It also estranges them (or “us”, as I think of myself as a New Atheist on many levels) from a lot of religious allies, who also oppose creationism, mediums, religious privileges, bad science and the like. I’d love to see a proper academic analysis of New Atheism as an ideology, as almost everything people write about it stems from muddled thinking. And it could be an eyeopener for the reason=atheism folks.