Red Cardigan accuses New Atheists of ignoring the big questions like “Why are we here?” or “Why is there suffering?”:
The part that frustrates me is that people from the dawn of human history have grappled with these questions, not finding them either frivolous or evidence of clinical depression. … New Atheism seems to think that "Death is a natural termination of the processes of organic life," is all the answer anybody needs, and that anybody who wonders at all beyond that point is just a superstitious person with a need to be comforted by fairy-tales.
Within a couple back-and-forths, Michael Mock addresses Cardigan's main inquiry:
[A]theism, new or old, does not address those questions because it isn't the sort of thing that should address those questions. It's not a worldview; it's just a lack of belief in gods – one god, two gods, many gods. So what she's really complaining about is what I'd call materialism – the idea that the world that we can see and measure and verify is the only thing that we can meaningfully talk about. Trying to talk about this as a characteristic of some kinds of atheism is misleading and distracting.
Vorjack cites a Buddhist parable in response:
It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’ He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city…
Vorjack concludes:
Right now, you’re alive. Worry about how to live. The meaning of suffering is less important that the fact of suffering.
(Video: Dutch Wife from Jesse Kanda on Vimeo.
The Dish 