New Atheism: Same Old Unbelief, New Packaging — and a Movement Losing Steam

The faces of New Atheism—less a new argument, more a new marketing campaign.

In his short piece “What Is New About the New Atheism?” David Glass makes a simple point that a lot of people miss: what felt “new” in the mid-2000s wasn’t that atheism finally found the winning argument. It was that atheism found a new public posture—loud, confident, media-ready, and built for a culture already primed to be suspicious of religion.

Let’s walk through what the article says, with emphasis on three things: the old vs. new atheists, why “New Atheism” got popular (hint: branding), and why that particular brand is starting to fade.

“Old” atheists vs. “New” atheists: the shift wasn’t the conclusion—it was the tone

Old atheism (in the way Glass is using the contrast) tends to look like this:

• More philosophical than crusading

• Often academic, slower, and less interested in mass persuasion

• Not usually obsessed with making atheism a public identity badge

New Atheism, on the other hand, shows up like a street preacher with a TED Talk slide deck.

Glass points to the mid-2000s wave driven by best-selling authors—Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—who helped push atheism into a zealous, confident, “proselytizing” public brand.

And he lists the “key tenets” that became the movement’s greatest hits:

• Belief in God isn’t merely wrong; it’s irrational/delusional, and the confidence of the claim outpaces the actual argumentation.

• Religion isn’t just false; it’s dangerous, and society’s solution is to marginalize it.

• “Faith” is framed as belief without evidence, a definition Glass says has been corrected repeatedly but remains central to their rhetoric.

• Science (especially evolution) is presented as having “explained God away,” even though that move quietly smuggles philosophy in through the back door.

• A marked contempt for revelation—skepticism toward miracles, suspicion toward the Gospels, and claims of corruption that Glass argues don’t survive scrutiny.

In short: old atheism tried to argue you out of belief. New atheism tried to mock you out of belief—and recruit an audience while doing it.

Why it got popular: not because it “won,” but because it rebranded

This is the part you specifically asked to spotlight, and it’s arguably the spine of Glass’s article.

He’s blunt: none of these ideas are truly unique to “New Atheism.” What was different was the method, the mood, and the moment.

Glass basically describes a three-part marketing strategy:

A. Confidence as a substitute for depth

He notes the movement’s certainty often outruns its engagement with the strongest arguments on either side—especially the best theistic arguments.

B. Ridicule as persuasion

New Atheism frequently made “effective use of ridicule,” which is powerful in public discourse because it doesn’t just aim at ideas—it aims at social status.

C. The Internet as a megaphone

Glass says this brand was “suitably marketed for the Internet and social media,” tapping into a ready-made audience of people cynical or disaffected with religion.

That’s the rebrand in a sentence: atheism as the brave, modern, rational identity—religion as the embarrassing relic.

So yes: the popularity wasn’t driven by the sudden logical inevitability of atheism. It came from packaging atheism as a cultural vibe: smart, edgy, liberated, and morally superior—even when the underlying arguments were, as Glass puts it, often wanting.

Why this brand is dying out: even the icons are becoming “cultural Christians”

Here’s the irony of the moment we’re in: you can still find atheism everywhere, but New Atheism as a movement—as a unified, dominating cultural “wave”—has largely fizzled.

Recent commentary and retrospectives increasingly describe New Atheism as something that has fractured, migrated into other culture-war tribes, or simply lost its early energy.

But the most fascinating sign of the shift is the posture of its most famous face.

Dawkins: “cultural Christian,” cathedral grief, and the weird return of reverence

In a widely reported 2024 interview, Richard Dawkins described himself as a “cultural Christian,” saying he loves hymns and carols and feels at home in the Christian ethos.

And then comes the line that would’ve sounded absurd at the height of the New Atheist moment: Dawkins said he “would not be happy” if Britain lost its cathedrals and beautiful parish churches.

Think about that.

The old pitch was: Christianity is a virus; religion poisons everything; faith is intellectual malpractice.

The new reality is: one of the movement’s chief architects is looking at the spiritual and cultural vacancy of the West and basically admitting, “I don’t believe—but I miss what Christianity built.”

That’s not conversion. But it is a concession: you can’t casually demolish Christianity and pretend nothing human gets lost in the rubble. 

The takeaway Glass leaves Christians with

Glass ends with a warning that’s both pastoral and practical: don’t overestimate New Atheism’s intellectual strength—but don’t underestimate its cultural impact either. Christians should be prepared to respond, because the brand spread effectively, even when the arguments weren’t new.

And in 2025, we can add this: the brand is weakening, not because atheism discovered humility, but because the culture is slowly realizing that a society can be “post-Christian” and still be deeply religious—just not necessarily toward Christ.