A recent piece from the Christian organization Union of Catholic Christian Rationalists (UCCR) tries to explain why New Atheism —and atheism in general— is dead. The group lazily lists reasons for the movement’s death, many of which simply aren’t true.
Biologist Jerry Coyne has already written a sharp takedown of their claims. I agree with most of his rebuttal, though not with his conclusion that there’s no longer a need for a movement like New Atheism. As Coyne writes:
The oxymoronically-named Union of Catholic Christian Rationalists (UCCR) has joined the yammering pack of believers that keeps telling us that New Atheism has died, when, in fact, it did its job and then moved on. It’s like saying that suffragism failed and has died out! The New-Atheist-dissers are trying desperately to explain the failure of a phenomenon that not only succeeded in changing minds, but whose proponents, no longer consumed by a need to point out the lack of evidence for gods, have moved on to other things.
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As for me being “burned out” and focusing on cats, that’s ludicrous. I’m as atheistic as ever, and still promulgating it, as I am in this piece. But after I spent three years researching and writing Faith Versus Fact, I grew weary of banging the same old drum, and decided to bang it only when necessary, for example when this moronic article came out.
Coyne closes by asking, “Why are so many people eager to proclaim the death of New Atheism?“
I can imagine why believers are eager — they seem to be quite defensive, and the UCCR piece is a perfect example of it. But still, Coyne is wrong on one point: New Atheism didn’t succeed.
The comparison with suffragism is apt. Both movements had civil-rights claims at their core, but suffragists didn’t stop once people’s opinions shifted — they fought until laws changed. In contrast, Coyne and the Horsemen treated intellectual persuasion as the finish line.
Even if New Atheism succeeded culturally, that is not the same as succeeding politically. That is the crucial difference from the suffragists, who succeeded both culturally and politically. In other words, changing minds was never supposed to be the whole project; it was only the beginning.
For suffragists, success meant securing the right to vote under law. For atheists, the equivalent would have been ensuring that nonbelievers no longer face systemic discrimination, and that religion is entirely separated from government. That would mean turning deconversion into action: lawsuits, lobbying, policy advocacy, and accountability for public officials who use their office to advance religion.
And that, in turn, raises a simple question: where was that project in the New Atheist literature? As far as I can tell, none of the books by Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris, Stenger, Pinker, or Coyne is specifically devoted to the separation of church and state.
That omission matters even more in the US: in my layman understanding of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, public officials can promote their faith while on duty through clothing, jewelry, and other religious displays, waste taxpayer money on religious expression, and sometimes bend rules to favor believers — for example, by granting religious dietary accommodations in prisons that aren’t medically necessary. This is wrong. Until religion is treated in law and by public officials like any other hobby or private preference, atheists and religious minorities without the means to lobby are not being treated equally under the law.
That is why the suffragist comparison remains useful. Suffragists declared victory once equality was codified in law. New Atheists walked away long before that point. Legal and political systems in many places remain deeply entangled with religion, and in some cases that entanglement has grown. So the job isn’t done. Not even close.
This is why I find it odd when writers such as Jesse Singal and Colin Wright claim they “used to be an angry atheist”. I wonder: why did you stop being angry? Have laws changed? Are atheists now treated the same as Christians? No? Then why the complacency? My educated guess is that what changed was not the problem, but their willingness to stay engaged with it.
And that willingness mattered, because culturally, New Atheism has fizzled out — and it has little to show in terms of changing how societies treat nonbelievers. Meanwhile the religious never stop beating their drum. Do you ever hear Joel Osteen, William Lane Craig, or your local preacher say they’re too tired to repeat themselves? Of course not. They persist daily, produce podcasts, preach, and lobby to protect their privileges.
Coyne says New Atheist figureheads have “moved on to other things”. Fine. But who is countering the ongoing religious capture of policymaking — a trend that has only intensified in recent years? That is the unfinished work. If atheist organizations were serious about equality, they would be leading that fight. Instead, many have drifted into internal culture-war disputes and lost sight of the broader secular project.
When figures like Steve Bannon openly frame their approach to politics in theocratic terms, and wealthy reactionaries treat religion as a tool of power to avoid getting tax hikes, we know the secular fight isn’t over — and there is no one tackling this, because they moved on to other things.
That’s why the suffragist analogy cuts both ways. Suffragists reformed the system and could then declare victory. New Atheists changed minds — and stopped there. To me, there was a logical next step: to turn those changed minds into tangible reforms so everyone can live free of religious imposition. Falling belief rates mean little if the laws remain biased in favor of faith.
Had New Atheism not imploded, it might have pushed for more: making religious instruction of minors a felony, taxing places of worship, delegitimizing prosperity gospel, banning religious buildings near schools, defanging Middle Eastern theocracies, keeping countries with lousy human-rights records out of the UN Human Rights Council, and prosecuting religious child abusers and their enablers. These weren’t pipe dreams — they were logical extensions of the civil-rights logic already in play.
Instead, atheist rights have faced serious setbacks for over 15 years in many parts of the world, and even in atheist-majority countries like Sweden or Norway, religion still enjoys privileges. So no, New Atheism didn’t just “move on”. It imploded —thanks in no small part to bullies, grifters, and chauvinists like Myers, Watson, and Mehta— and then it dropped the ball.
I’m not eager to proclaim the death of New Atheism, but it clearly didn’t succeed where it mattered most.
