The New Atheism is a movement that emerged in the early 2000s, notably after and in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and is primarily based in the United States and the United Kingdom. The New Atheism movement has attracted a great deal of media attention and is of interest to many scholars and sociologists (1). In this article, we evaluate the New Atheism movement. We will determine who its main representatives are, why it rose in popularity, what the movement’s interests are, its philosophical foundations, and criticisms of religion. We then conclude with a lengthy critical evaluation of the New Atheism, its strategies, and arguments as offered by several interested theologians, philosophers, and scholars. 

New Atheism and Who Are the New Atheists?

The term “new atheism” was first used by the journalist Gary Wolf in a magazine article entitled The Church of the Non-Believers (2006). There Wolf wanted to portray the stance taken towards religion by the likes of Richard Dawkins and others as dogmatic, intolerant, and aggressive. Wolf’s identifying these atheists as “new” was a means through which he could denounce them for having nothing genuinely new to offer.

The New Atheism movement has been spearheaded by several high-profile individuals known as the “Four Horsemen.” These four men are Richard Dawkins (an evolutionary biologist), Daniel Dennett (a philosopher), Sam Harris (a neuroscientist), and Christopher Hitchens (a journalist who passed away in 2011). According to philosopher and historian Gary Habermas,

“[The] leaders of the New Atheism such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris have been referred to as atheistic evangelicals, secular fundamentalists, preachers, and so on. These epitaphs are apparent references to the zeal, fervor, and bombastic methods with which they not only write, but perhaps apply even more to their public presentations, debates, and interviews. Some have charged that their methods are more bombastic” (2).

As Habermas identifies, some have referred to the New Atheists as bombastic and loud, which is not inaccurate given the new atheists’ public appeal. But little of what they offer is new, perhaps except for their political activism and the unabashed contempt they have for all things religion. As we will see, condemning religion as immoral is a core strategy in the New Atheism’s charge against religion.

Perhaps one of the “new” elements to the New Atheism is its political activism. Atheism in the ancient world did not assume an overtly political character, but the New Atheism of the twenty-first century seems to have wider and more expansive political goals. We see this in, for example, the political aim of ensuring the separation of religion and state, legitimizing criticism of religion, the goal of making the public more accepting of atheists and atheism, and the attempts to ensure legal and civic equality for atheists. Various advertisements, conferences, and rallies have been purposed to attain these goals. Conferences, festivals, and meetings such as Skepticon, Atheist Film Festival, and Camp Quest, among others, have been established to build a sense of community and group cohesion for atheists. 

We must also recognize that the New Atheism is not limited to the Four Horsemen, but that many other atheist thinkers hold the same contempt for religion and communicate this with equal force.

The Rise of Interest in the New Atheism

Further, we might ask, what can account for the rise of interest in New Atheism? 

Several factors are thought to have spurred a rise in interest. One is the growth in religion, especially the rise of the “Christian Right” in the United States in the late twentieth century. Rather than religion declining, as some were expecting, there was a resurgence that has for many created a sense of unease. This unease is predicated on the assertiveness of religion and the perceived negative effects of religious beliefs and organizations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks and the high levels of prejudice, marginalization, and mistrust experienced by many atheists in the United States also served to elevate interest in the New Atheism. The 9/11 attacks were particularly momentous. Sam Harris, for example, began writing The End of Faith: How Science Can Determine Human Values (2004) on September 12, 2001.

Also helping the expansion of New Atheism was the rise of the internet which gave atheists the opportunity to promote their ideas and critiques of religion. It became easier for atheists to communicate with each other across the globe. There is the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and various atheist blogs that are easily accessible to an interested audience. The new atheists also published books that attracted attention, such as Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006), Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006), Hitchens’ God is Not Great (initially with the subtitle: How Religion Poisons Everything) (2007), and others, several of which went on to be best sellers. 

Philosophical Foundations of New Atheism 

Digging deeper into the ideology of the new atheists, one can identify several philosophical underpinnings. 

The New Atheism ideology is based on philosophical naturalism and materialism in that its proponents believe that the natural/material world is all that there is and that belief in the supernatural (a reality transcending the natural world and that is home to God and other supernatural entities) is an archaic superstition that most people have not grown out of believing in. 

The new atheists place a strong emphasis on the use of reason and rationality to the extent that some of them even suggested calling themselves “brights” for their alleged love of the light of reason. Several new atheists are scientistic in that they believe that science is the only means for getting at reality and that science will one day explain everything. As the late theologian Michael Paul Gallagher said of Dawkins, “In Dawkins, too, we have a scientist who is unwilling to step outside the method of his discipline and yet he feels able to dismiss other horizons of questioning and answering” (3). Only science and the scientific method are taken to be the exclusive means for accessing truth and reality. 

Further, the new atheists believe that evolution supports naturalism. They also argue that religion can be explained as a result of biological evolution, which they assume shows that God is merely a human idea. Philosopher and theologian Gary Keogh explains this skeptical approach to religion,

“Although Darwin himself had interesting insights with regard to religion and how his understandings of nature had implications for how we perceive God, the new atheists have taken to re-championing Darwinism in their fight against religious belief… [Daniel] Dennett suggests that Darwinism is a ‘universal acid’ that offers an explanation for all facets of existence including human morality and pertinent to his new atheism, religious belief” (4).

Dennett, for example, thinks that belief in gods emerged from a misfiring of an evolutionary safety mechanism. Human minds essentially postulate agents where there are none because they evolved to think this way. Human beings thus came to mis-project agents (gods) onto natural phenomena and, for Dennett, such an explanation eliminates any truth value in religion and supports atheism. Religion is a natural phenomenon and therefore can be explained naturally, rather than supernaturally.

The new atheists, like their theistic opponents, affirm objective truth, which puts them well outside postmodern relativism. To them, a position and/or belief corresponds to reality in that it is either true or false. The new atheists claim that (most) religious beliefs about reality are false in that they fail to correspond to reality itself. 

Also shared by many of the new atheists is that there exists a universal and objective secular moral standard. They particularly object to claims that one needs to believe in God to be moral. They also do not believe God or religion is necessary for morality and, in fact, argue that belief in God and acceptance of religion produces immorality. That there exists an objective secular moral standard separates the new atheists from many other historical and contemporary atheists who hold to moral relativism and openly admit to there being no such objective standard. The new atheists’ embracing of an objective secular moral standard enables them to argue that religion is objectively evil. Perhaps the clearest attempt to provide an objective moral framework is in Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape. In Harris’ view, morality is not just a philosophical question, but also a scientific one.

With these philosophical foundations noted, we can turn to some of the major criticisms the new atheists have of religion.

Religion as Immoral and Dangerous 

The new atheists do not conceal their disdain for religion as being pathological and dangerous. Christopher Hitchens, in one of his speeches, stated, “I think religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred and contempt, and I claim that right” (5). Dawkins is equally abrasive when, at a Reason Rally, he urged his audience to “Mock them [religious persons], ridicule them… in public” (6). Religion is in their view the symptom of an archaic, superstitious mentality and set of rules that ought to be abandoned for its backward thinking. Religion is, in their view, good for only one thing and that is promoting prejudice, discrimination, and violence. As James E. Taylor notices,

“A standard observation is that New Atheist authors exhibit an unusually high level of confidence in their views. Reviewers have noted that these authors tend to be motivated by a sense of moral concern and even outrage about the effects of religious beliefs on the global scene” (7).

Faith and Reason

A clear pattern in the new atheists is in their drawing a dichotomy between faith and reason. Faith is characterized negatively as blind trust without evidence, or even against evidence. Dawkins views faith as evil because it does not require justification and does not tolerate argument. He further says that “Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think” (8). 

Reason, however, is championed as a good, especially because it is claimed to be supported by the empirical sciences. A belief can only be justified if it is based on adequate scientific evidence. Dawkins, for instance, thinks that reason shows that God does not exist. He claims that God is a scientific question and there is, in his mind, insufficient scientific evidence for God’s existence. God existing is, in Dawkins’ mind, as improbable as a hurricane sweeping through a scrap yard and assembling a Boeing 747.

Criticisms of New Atheism 

There is no shortage of criticism of the New Atheism and many books and essays have been written in response to them (9). 

Perhaps most conspicuous is that none of the Four Horsemen, who represent the vanguard of the New Atheism, are philosophers of religion or scholars in a relevant field to religion (only Dennett is a philosopher, but in a very different field to the philosophy of religion) and that this shows in none of them addressing theistic or atheistic arguments to any great extent. The critic argues that this demonstrates the New Atheism’s intellectual frailty and lack of depth.

Some have contended that the new atheists are incredibly sloppy and lazy when it comes to carefully explicating the views and nuances of others, especially of their religious and ideological opponents. Rather than taking into account the diversity of religions and the views of religious persons, the new atheists take the crudest view of religion they can muster and apply it universally to all believers at all times. But as any competent scholar of religion will inform us, religious persons are incredibly diverse, use various modes of reasoning and logic, and hold to a dizzying variety of views and convictions. It is only fair then that if one wishes to argue against religion and expose it that he takes complexity into account, or at least tries to. Anything less is bound to be an uncharitable and one-sided characterization of religion.

Further, some critics have claimed that the approach the new atheists take to religion and trying to convince persons of their position is all wrong. According to philosopher Daniel Came, no supporter of theism himself, “there is something cynical, ominously patronising, and anti-intellectualist in their [the new atheists’] modus operandi, with its implicit assumption that hurling insults is an effective way to influence people’s beliefs about religion” (10). Hurling insults in the direction of one’s ideological opponents is preaching only to the choir, yet for most onlookers will be perceived as insensitive and likely serve to alienate them from the New Atheism’s cause, as well as from atheism itself. Paul Kurtz, the father of secular humanism, also noted this when he said that “I think they are atheist fundamentalists. They’re anti-religious and they’re mean spirited, unfortunately. Now, they are very good atheists and very dedicated people who do not believe in God. But you have this aggressive and militant phase of atheism, and that does more damage than good” (11). Many critics have argued that the new atheists offer nothing new except for their intolerant, dogmatic, and aggressively anti-religious rhetoric (12). 

Critics have also observed how the self-assurance of the new atheists tends to make them not dedicate much space to a discussion of the arguments for or against theism. As philosopher William Lane Craig observes,

“It’s perhaps something of a surprise that almost none of the so-called New Atheists has anything to say about arguments for God’s existence. Instead, they tend to focus on the social effects of religion and question whether religious belief is good for society” (13).

Gary Keogh continues,

“Within the academy of religious scholars, theologians, philosophers, and the like, one commonly encountered approach has been to almost dismiss entirely the arguments of the new atheists by pointing out their lack of academic rigour and nuance… When they wrote on religion, they adopted a similar approach, favouring facetiousness and tactfully coarse indictments over reasoned and balanced arguments. As such, their evaluations of religion proudly carry a satirical tone which drastically overlooks the complexities of the discussion they wish to engage in” (14).

After all, if the new atheist takes for granted that his worldview is just so obviously true, then this can filter down into his engagement, or lack thereof, with the beliefs and views of others. Critics argue that this is indeed problematic because it makes the atheist fail to grapple with a rich and long Western philosophical and theological history that often characterizes faith as rational, which is the exact antithesis of what the new atheists are claiming. It also results in the new atheists failing to take seriously the arguments of contemporary theistic philosophers offered by the likes of Alvin Plantinga, Craig, Richard Swinburne, and others. This is suggestive of the New Atheism’s intellectual laziness as it is much easier and requires considerably less effort to dismiss and ignore the ideas of intellectual giants like Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal, and others than to take them and their arguments seriously.

Also perhaps something of a surprise is that of the new atheists, it is probably Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, who has offered the most sophisticated argument against God’s existence. Dawkins argues that a God capable of designing a universe must be a supremely complex and improbable entity who needs an even bigger explanation than the one the existence of such a God is supposed to provide (15). This argument and others have produced several responses and reflections from both interested scholars and theists (16). Craig retorts that,

“Dawkins’ fundamental mistake lies in his assumption that a divine designer is an entity comparable in complexity to the universe [but that God] As an unembodied mind… is a remarkably simple entity. As a non-physical entity, a mind is not composed of parts, and its salient properties, like self-consciousness, rationality, and volition, are essential to it… Certainly such a mind may have complex ideas (it may be thinking, for example, of the infinitesimal calculus), but the mind itself is a remarkably simple entity” (17).

Came is particularly unimpressed with another of Dawkins’ arguments which is that if the universe requires an explanation and this explanation is God, then the question arises as to who created God. Came articulates,

“Dawkins maintains that we’re not justified in inferring a designer as the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe because then a new problem surfaces: who designed the designer? This argument is as old as the hills and as any reasonably competent first-year undergraduate could point out is patently invalid. For an explanation to be successful we do not need an explanation of the explanation” (18).

Craig agrees saying that “in order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn’t have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science.”

When it comes to arguments, the other new atheists have also left interested readers rather disappointed. Habermas says the following of Hitchens’ engagement (or lack thereof) with arguments for and against theism in God is Not Great,

“When we get to chapter 5, “The Metaphysical Claims of Religion are False,” one might be forgiven for thinking that Hitchens is finally going to consider some of the stronger arguments given by believers. He mentions a host of topics such as scientists who were believers, medieval disputes such as the length of angels’ wings (p. 68), and Christians who think they should take a “leap of faith” (p. 71). But we find no serious discussion of any of the key issues that would occupy even an undergraduate discussion of metaphysics” (19).

This leads Habermas to categorize the New Atheism as a movement that “may be miles wide but only inches deep, at least intellectually.” The New Atheism’s intellectual appeal has also not been helped by proponents seemingly fearing to debate leading theistic apologists, such as in Dawkins’ and A. C. Grayling’s refusal to debate William Lane Craig, arguably theism’s most capable defender. Critics have pointed out that their refusal is more out of fear than for the reasons they give (20). Some atheists have also been “embarrassed” by the new atheists; the naturalist philosopher Michael Ruse, in referring to Dawkins’ book The God Delusion, says that it “makes me embarrassed to be an atheist and the McGraths show why” (21). Here Ruse is referring to a critical response to and evaluation of Dawkins’ book offered by the theist and scientist Alister McGrath. 

These insights into New Atheism considered above lead Gallagher to inquire as to why the new atheists, despite their intellectual frailty, even have a following. He asks,

“How could such simplistic stances become acceptable and even convincing for such a huge audience today? It would seem that many intelligent people harbour fairly primitive images and ideas of God – as some kind of Large Being beyond us, or as an Invisible Power that you had better not annoy. It is also likely that many people have absorbed the ‘modern’ position that all truth should be testable in an external way, and if this is impossible then everything is simply a matter of opinion or taste… There seems to be a sensibility distrustful of churches and impressionable before the claims of science, and so the new atheists have a ready market among those already alienated, disappointed or, to say the least, confused about religion as they perceive it” (22).

Further criticisms are directed at the new atheists’ attempts to monopolize science in their favor. The assumption they make is that if scientists, supposedly said to be the most rational of all people, are atheistic, then it must indicate that religion is just obviously superstition and therefore for irrational persons. But as critics retort, the new atheist’s claim here is far too exaggerated and inaccurate since many leading scientists are, in fact, religious. One could mention the likes of Alister McGrath, Francis Collins, John Lennox, Stephen Barr, Roseanne Sension, Ian Hutchinson, and others. Furthermore, critics rightly retort that scientists generally know very little about religion and the arguments for or against theism. As the philosopher and theologian Randal Rauser remarked, scientists are no more authorities on religion and the question of God than are artists or politicians. McGrath, in fact, accuses the new atheists of speaking “primarily as militant atheists rather than scientists” (23). 

Critics furthermore point out that the new atheists misrepresent what thoughtful and educated religious persons mean by faith. For example, as noted, the new atheists define faith as belief without evidence and despite evidence. But competent theologians and theistic philosophers have long since defined faith as trust based on sufficient evidence, not trust based on insufficient evidence. What the new atheists appear to do is to take the notion of faith embraced by the average theologically unsophisticated religious believer and claim that it represents the faith of all religious persons, including the more sophisticated ones like scholars, theologians, and philosophers. No doubt there will be justified protests that the new atheists are not playing fair in their criticism of religion. 

There have been some other criticisms of the New Atheism movement of only a peripheral note here. These include its lack of diversity in matters of gender and race. New Atheism, and atheism in general, is largely a White male phenomenon. According to the Pew Research Center, sixty-six percent (66%) of atheists are male (24) and seventy-eight percent (78%) are White (25). Some have suggested that this lack of diversity might hinder atheism’s political goals should it not become more inclusive (26).

New Atheism Today

Further, we might ask, how alive is the New Atheism movement today? 

Us speaking from the year 2021, the movement has certainly died down. Its most popular days were in the late 2000s with the publication of books by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and several others. But since then much of their interests have been placed elsewhere, as Keogh has noticed,

“Yet as a movement it seems that the momentum has waned; its proponents have largely returned to writing books in their own field of specialisation (science, philosophy, etc.). Perhaps they feel they have made their case against religion, and their popularity might indicate that they are satisfied with their success rates of, as they proudly suggest, ‘outing’ atheists and making it acceptable (or even fashionable) to be an atheist in today’s world” (27).

Randal Rauser has also noticed the waning of the New Atheism: “But eventually as the novelty of atheists insulting religion wore off, the bestsellers stopped coming and the conversation moved on. Today many people believe New Atheism as a movement is passé.”

But Rauser laments the legacy left by the New Atheists, one which “has left behind a significant and very unfortunate legacy of incivility and anti-intellectualism.” He also wants to emphasize that that “not all atheists have been influenced by the sad legacy of New Atheism. There are many atheists who are thoughtful, charitable, and respectful of religion and Christianity.”

But this wane in popularity and interest is not to say that atheism itself has died. Atheism constitutes a small portion of the religiously unaffiliated demographic in the West, which is a group that continues to grow. Some of the new atheists have still published recent books on religion, such as Dan Baker’s God: the Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction (2016) and Dawkins’ Outgrowing God (2019), and a few others.

Why Did The New Atheists Get So Much Wrong About Religion?

It should be clear by now why the new atheists got much wrong in the assault on religion. Let’s just note several of these in conclusion to this analysis.

First, the new atheists failed to take into account the complexity of religion by lumping all religions and religious persons into one basket. But we cannot do this, no more than we can be justified in lumping all politicians in the world or all the inhabitants of Asia into one basket as if they are all the same. Equally, the object we call religion is so diverse in so many ways that this simply becomes impossible. But this is exactly what the new atheists did and this makes unjustified some of their major claims, such as all religions being equally immoral, having the same notion of faith, or that they all demand their adherents do the same things. 

The new atheists are also uncharitable in their analysis of religions by seeking to exaggerate their bad elements and omit the good they may produce. None of us needs to deny that religions can cause misery and suffering to also notice that they do much good in the world. Dawkins arguably bucked this major new atheist trend when he claimed that Christianity can be considered “a bulwark against something worse” when he spoke about Islamist terrorism.

Moreover, the new atheists dismissed any truth in religion but failed to take many religions into account in this criticism. This is, as noted above, evidence of the new atheist’s intellectual laziness as rather than taking complexity and difference into account, most of them tend to lump all religions into the same boat and subsequently dismiss them all as equally absurd, especially on matters of metaphysical truth. But this is not at all obvious simply because, as we have repeated several times now, religions are diverse, notably in the answers they offer to existential questions. The justifications given for religious faith will be different between, say, Thomas Aquinas and Sri Ramakrishna, two thinkers from very different social, temporal, and cultural contexts. Any critic of religion would need to be careful in delineating the differences in the thought of religious thinkers, yet the new atheists were slack here.

The new atheists typically limited their criticisms to Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Islam, although, as more sophisticated and informed thinkers would argue, they produced rather crude caricatures of these religions as their objects of criticism. But the new atheists leave us with almost nothing to be said of other world religions. So, hypothetically speaking, even if the new atheists were successful in their dismissals of the truth claims of Christianity and Islam, this says nothing about Confucianism, Jainism, Voodoo, Mormonism, or any of the other religions. Although we do not expect the new atheists to have taken all religions into account, simply because there are too many, we do expect them to have done a bit more work in their crusade against religion by not limiting their fight to Christianity and Islam. 

Another theme to emerge from the criticisms noted above is that the new atheists did not take into account many of the theological and philosophical arguments presented by religious persons. And when the new atheists did try to refute theological arguments, they were roundly criticized for misrepresenting them. Moreover, they did not provide anything new that was not already noted by some atheist thinker a long time ago, which, critics observe, is suggestive of New Atheism’s intellectual vacuity. The only thing new here, critics have noted, is the New Atheism’s political activism, not its intellectual component.

We could note other themes showing the new atheists to have got things very wrong, such as in their counterproductive bombastic and vitriolic approach to debating and discussing religion, their fears in debating notable religious opponents, exaggerated claims about scientists and belief in God, and more. But what we have considered, while not exhaustive, should suffice to show that when it comes to religion, the new atheists do not offer the most reliable appraisal on the block.

References

1. Scarfe, Adam C. 2010. “On Religious Violence and Social Darwinism in the New Atheism: Toward a Critical Panselectionism.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 31(1):53-70; Davies, Brian. 2011. “The New Atheism: Its Virtues and its Vices.” New Blackfriars 92(1037):18-34; Gallagher, Michael Paul. 2012. “Revisiting the ‘New Atheism.’” An Irish Quarterly Review 101(401):57-68; Schaefer, Donovan O. 2014. “Blessed, precious mistakes: deconstruction, evolution, and New Atheism in America.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 76(1):75-94; Glausser, Wayne. 2016. “The Rhetoric of New Atheism.” Style 50(1):1-18; Francisco José de Jesus Oliveira. 2020. “Richard Dawkins e o Novo Ateísmo. Uma Leitura Crítica – Richard Dawkins and the New Atheism. A Critical Reading.” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 76(1):433-454.

2. Habermas, Gary. 2008. “The Plight of New Atheism: A Critique.” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 51(4):813-827. p. 813

3. Gallagher, Michael Paul. 2012. Ibid. p. 58.

4. Keogh, Gary. 2015. “Theology After New Atheism.” New Blackfriars 96(1066):739-750. p. 740.

5. Christopher Hitchens in a talk in Canada on Free Speech (November 2006). Available.

6. YouTube. 2012. Richard Dawkins espouses Militant Atheism: “Mock them, Ridicule them.” Available.

7. Taylor, James E. n.d. The New Atheists. Available.

8. A lecture by Richard Dawkins. Available.

9. Beattie, Tina. 2008. The New Atheists: The Twilight of Reason and the War on Religion. Orbis: New York; Haught, John F. 2008. God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens. Westminster John Knox Press: London. Lennox, John. 2011. Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target. Lion Books: London. McGrath, Alister. 2011. Why God Won’t Go Away: Is the New Atheism Running on Empty? Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

10. Came, Daniel. 2011. Richard Dawkins’s refusal to debate is cynical and anti-intellectualist. Available.

11. Paul Kurtz quoted by Barbara Hagerty in A Bitter Rift Divides Atheists (2009). Available.

12. Beattie, Tina. 2008. Ibid; Haught, John F. 2008. Ibid; Lennox, John. 2011. Ibid.

13. Craig, William Lane. n.d. The New Atheism and Five Arguments for God. Available.

14. Keogh, Gary. 2015. Ibid. p. 740.

15. Dawkins, Richard. 2006. The God Delusion. New York: Bantam Books. p. 157-158.

16. Craig, William Lane. n.d. Dawkins’ Delusion. Available; Lash, Nicholas. 2007. “Where Does “The God Delusion” Come from?” New Blackfriars 88(1017):507-521; Ledwig, Marion. 2007. “The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins Review.” Religious Studies 43(3):368-372. p. 370-371; Ruse, Michael. 2007. “The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.” Isis 98(4):814-816; Montague, Roger. 2008. “Dawkins’ Infinite Regress.” Philosophy 83(323):113-115; Romain, Jonathan. 2008. “God, Doubt and Dawkins.” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 41(2):71-78; Bill, Toner. 2017. “Some Reflections on Dawkins.” An Irish Quarterly Review 106(422):179-182; Glass, David. 2012. There’s Probably No God – a response to Richard Dawkins. Available.

17. Craig, William Lane. n.d. Dawkins’ Delusion. Available.

18. Came, Daniel. 2011. Ibid. 

19. Habermas, Gary. 2008. Ibid. p. 814.

20. bethinking. 2011. Dawkins Refuses God-Debate “Apt to be interpreted as cowardice”, says Oxford academic. Available; Came, Daniel. 2011. Ibid.; Jones, Nelson. 2011. Why Dawkins disappoints. Available; Bishop, James. 2019. Was Richard Dawkins Fearful to Debate William Lane Craig? Available.

21. Michael Ruse quoted by Alister McGrath in The Dawkins Delusion (2007).

22. Gallagher, Michael Paul. 2012. Ibid. p. 59.

23. McGrath, Alister. 2011. Why God Won’t Go Away: Engaging With The New Atheism. London: SPCK Publishing. p. 81.

24. Pew Research Center. n.d. Racial and ethnic composition among atheists. Available.

25. Lipka, Michael. 2019. 10 facts about atheists. Available.

26. Kettell, Steven. 2016. “What’s really new about New Atheism?” Palgrave Communications 2(16099). Available.

27. Keogh, Gary. 2015. Ibid. p. 747.

28. Rauser, Randal. n.d. New Atheism May Be Finished, but Its Sad Legacy Lives On. Available.