You think 'new atheists' and/or 'strong atheists' have what amounts to an attitude problem.
That may be true to a certain extent, but its the ideological positions that are at the heart of movements such as this. If the movement keeps the bad attitudes of certain individuals from affecting their cannon of ideas, then the problem pretty much remains one of individual attitudes. i.e. there are bad apples in the bunch who go too far, call people names, etc. No group or category of humans will ever be immune to this, and taking a correct position about ideologies like religion does not automatically make someone a good/responsible person (the bad apples need to be reminded of this).
OTOH, making fun of religion itself is just part and parcel of being a non-believer (though I think most atheists prefer to watch a comedian do so than attempt it themselves).
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My beef with the new breed of atheists is that some of them are trying to recast it as some kind of positive world view. But atheism is only an answer to a single question; It is just a single point and doesn't say much about any person who ascribes to it. These new atheists use the "atheist" label for themselves, expecting us to read a set of values into that identity.
Without realizing it, they are essentially trying to channel secular humanism by assuming that atheism fills the need for a positive world view and assigning some of humanism's strengths to atheism. That is idiotic philistinism, like hanging Christmas tree ornaments on a flagpole. It doesn't work well, IMO.
These people should buck up, read some philosophy and history, and just call themselves humanists.
But that is unlikely to happen any time soon. Here's why... In America, the atheist movement has a constant influx of unprincipled non-believers. These people walked away from religion because they don't want to deal with rules and expectations in their social lives, and religion is full of social rules. They also don't want the work of using religion as sham to hide a selfish life. These people will never accept secular humanism, even if the set of rules that are usually ascribed to it are much smaller and more rational.
Most of them lean toward hedonism and/or Ayn Rand-inspired materialism. Some want to be religion-free "until they settle down".
These default atheists form the comfortably secular background of the new atheist's social scene. So switching to a label like 'humanist' to convey a set of explicit values is like announcing you're using cod liver oil to bathe from now on. Maybe not that bad, but the reactions of the default atheists won't be positive.
This is where the 'new atheist' social dynamic fails the most, IMO. They're afraid to identify with or promote a definite philosophy of life (much less preach to the choir about it), so they hang on to that 'atheist' label while implying there are positive values attached to it. This leaves them with not much to say apart from their usual criticisms of religion.
As a humanist myself, I don't think that 'atheist' is a good banner under which to identify with a community of like-minded people.
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