Why New Atheism Failed

The New Atheists had reactionary politics and a distorted view of science, but they owe their demise to a more fundamental flaw in their ideology: religion can’t explain all the world’s problems.

Illustration by Thomas Hedger

Back in the mid-2000s, atheism ruled the internet. A tendency that became known as “New Atheism” sprung up, with a few prominent public intellectuals publishing best-selling anti-religious tracts, most notably Sam Harris’s The End of Faith (2004), Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (2006), and Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great (2007). Atheist forums proliferated online […]

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