ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author concludes his assessment of New Atheism and theism as incommensurable worldviews that can only be opposed by an alternative worldview. The debates between the New Atheists and theists, like the movie Groundhog Day, repeat themselves debate after debate. Unlike the movie, these debates go on and on without reaching a moral or intellectual resolution. The debate methodology is a way for the debaters to present their views and talk past each other. The debate methodology unfolds in a competitive arena of rhetorical skills and degrees of charisma rather than an educational arena that makes it possible for people to change their minds, to learn and internalize something one didn’t know before, and to ascertain the facts of the matter as known, corrigibly, fallibly, and tentatively by scientific consensus. The debaters represent two incommensurable cultures mimicking communication by speaking in the “same” language. These debates reflect incommensurable objectivity or truth communities. More generally, they manifest incommensurable worldviews and a fortiori cultural species. The author proposes a secular worldview alternative. The test of a systems truth value or survival value will not be rhetoric, or charisma, or reason or logic but evolutionary pressures, natural selection.
