Is the New Atheism movement dead?

[AgnosticBoy]

Another member brought up that the leaders of the new atheists movement seem inactive today. Found an article that deals with that matter, but it is from a Christian source. Still, I think it makes good points so here goes some excerpts:

This was near the height of the New Atheism movement—an angry, bombastic form of anti-religion that arose in the early 2000s. New Atheist leaders garnered millions from best-selling books and gained an influential following. At the time, it seemed that this would become the permanent state of secularism—that a lack of belief in God was necessarily joined with a bitter, trollish contempt for religion.

But things began to change. By 2015, some had begun to announce the death of New Atheism, and in 2020, 15 years after the ComRes poll, a new survey showed that only 20 percent of adults in the UK agreed that religious faith could be compared to an evil and intractable plague on society.

Nick Spencer—senior fellow at Theos, a Christian thinktank in the UK, and one of the coauthors of the new report—said the New Atheism era spawned an unprecedented scale of animosity against religion in the general public. But he concluded in a 2022 Theos report on science and religion that “the angry hostility towards religion engineered by the New Atheist movement is over,” with the UK public expressing a more balanced view of religion than during the height of New Atheist influence. Among the streams of contemporary nonbelief, more nuanced forms are on the rise.

As the New Atheist movement seemed to implode from within—due in part to its odd merger with the Far Right in the American culture wars—many secularists in the public square began to consider its leaders “a real embarrassment” who give “atheism a bad name,” says John Dickson, a Wheaton professor and public apologist who engages with atheists.

“Basically, the world has moved on and has rather left the New Atheism behind,” said Oxford theologian and apologist Alister McGrath, author of The Dawkins Delusion? “But that’s no cause for rejoicing, because we have new problems to worry about.” That is, the decline of the New Atheists’ particular brand of hyperbolic antireligious fervor does not necessarily signify a rise in religious faith or belief in God.

Source:

New Atheism Is Dead. What’s the New New Atheism? - Christianity Today

Far fewer British people agree with vitriolic assertions about religion. Still, disbelief in God is on the rise in both the UK and the US.

www.christianitytoday.com

Reactions? Comments?

 

[AgnosticBoy]

I think what made the new atheism die down is that politics took over. Members of those groups moved into politics, whether Left or Right, and so their focus has shifted. I also think the split in politics, with some atheists going towards the Right and others towards the Left, also fractured the New Atheism party.

Thankfully, I don't believe that agnosticism will become irrelevant in the same way as I see a big role for it in politics, particularly among independents. And by that, I don't mean the not knowing that God exists part, but rather it's the traits and habits that lead agnostics to those types of conclusions, like being open-minded, non-partisan, etc... all things this forum has as a theme!

 

[rebel]

Sounds about right. Atheists dont always share the same politics. Most of my friends are either nonpracticing or nonbelievers. Older friends are more conservative and younger ones are liberal.

 

[AgnosticBoy]

Older friends are more conservative and younger ones are liberal.

Predictable. I know some atheists who were conservative for the most part with the only exception being that they were for gay marriage. I think that's also due to the fact that many atheists are former Christians. Some of their Christian upbringing still has some impact on them. And that's not to say that Christianity doesn't have any liberal aspects.

Atheists dont always share the same politics.

Yes, and I also think that politics is the new religion. Deep political divides can cause a rift, even between atheists I believe. So having those divisions might take away from some of the unity atheists have, and so that makes them not as organized as before.