The new atheists are considered ‘bad’ atheists because of their clearly stated belief that all beliefs about god are without any foundation. They have been criticized by ‘good’ atheists (i.e., atheist accommodationists) for being too extreme.

I have said before that the accommodationists should actually thank the new atheists because few people like to be on the extremes of a public debate and the new atheists have greatly broadened the range of the views and made accommodationism part of the center and thus acceptable the religious community. In fact, religious moderates seem to just love accommodationists.

Randy Pelton, president of the Northeast Ohio Center for Inquiry, tells me that this phenomenon of the range of acceptable views being limited and the ways to expand it actually has been studied by the political science community and has the name of the Overton window. The Wikipedia article gives a passage from Anthony Trollope’s novel Phineas Finn which captures the idea:

“Many who before regarded legislation on the subject as chimerical, will now fancy that it is only dangerous, or perhaps not more than difficult. And so in time it will come to be looked on as among the things possible, then among the things probable;–and so at last it will be ranged in the list of those few measures which the country requires as being absolutely needed. That is the way in which public opinion is made.”

“It is no loss of time,” said Phineas, “to have taken the first great step in making it.”

“The first great step was taken long ago,” said Mr. Monk,–”taken by men who were looked upon as revolutionary demagogues, almost as traitors, because they took it. But it is a great thing to take any step that leads us onwards.”

Oddly enough, it appears that Glenn Beck has written a novel with that title. I have no idea what it is about.