One afternoon in late 2015, I opened my inbox to see an invitation from a colleague at the University of Toronto asking me to take part in a dialogue with Richard Dawkins.
The Richard Dawkins. Arguably the most well-known atheist in the world. The man who’d practically trademarked disbelief in God. One of the so-called ‘Four Horsemen of the New Atheism’. And a man who had once almost mowed me down on his bicycle as I crossed an Oxford street. (Clearly, Richard doubted not only God, but also the sanctity of zebra crossings; not everything for him was black and white).
When that email landed, I’d just written The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist, a book responding (philosophically, practically, and playfully) to the most popular arguments of Dawkins and his other New Atheist teammates: Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. So the idea of sparring with one of them live on stage? It was terrifying but also thrillingly exciting.
Alas that debate never happened. Dawkins suffered a stroke in early 2016, and his speaking engagements were curtailed. A shame, as it would have been a fascinating conversation not least because by this point in time, the New Atheist movement with which he was so closely associated was beginning to wane.
From Billboard Blitz to Cultural Burnout
How different it had once seemed. When the New Atheism exploded onto the scene in the mid-2000s, it felt like a cultural earthquake. The Four Horsemen’s books sold millions. Atheist slogans were plastered across buses. There were TV appearances, TED Talks, conferences—the New Atheists were everywhere. Atheism had gone from the fringes to the centre, from being like an alternative thrash metal band playing in the smelly basement of a dive bar, to being rock-and-roll and headlining Glastonbury.
It really did seem that the tide was going out for faith. No wonder that Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, Dennett and their fellow Brights (as many of them liked to call themselves) thought that the world was there for their taking. Atheism’s star was ascending, religion was doomed and the future looked Bright, secular and rational.
But as ever, there was a twist coming. For it turned out that the New Atheism was just a cultural trend, a blip on the zeitgeist, a fad—and fads come and go. Just ask One Direction, the inventor of the fidget spinner, or Liz Truss.
Fast forward to 2025 and the New Atheism is, in many ways, old news. Hitchens and Dennett have died. Sam Harris has reinvented himself as a New Age guru, blogging and podcasting on mindfulness. Whilst Richard Dawkins has somehow managed to alienate not just the religious, but also his fellow secularists—whether by tweeting that women should abort babies with Down’s syndrome, or expressing politically incorrect views on gender and as a result being stripped of his Humanist of the Year Award.[1]
In truth, the movement’s collapse was always likely. New Atheism never offered much of a vision beyond “There’s probably no God so stop worrying and enjoy your life.” But when global crises came knocking—pandemics, wars, an epidemic of loneliness, financial crashes, political instability, social fragmentation—simply shouting “there’s probably no God” whilst plastering atheist slogans on the sides of buses ceased looking edgy and instead sounded about as tone-deaf as a drunken orangutan playing the bugle.
Furthermore, when you blowtorch away belief in God, you’d better have something to replace it with. But the New Atheists didn’t. They critiqued faith with all the subtlety of a Dalek, but they never attempted to find a compelling alternative basis for meaning, morality, or purpose. As the writer G. K. Chesterton (purportedly) said, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing—they believe in anything.”
The Curious Case of the Quiet Revival
But while the New Atheists faded into cultural irrelevance (or worse, spent time getting animals named after themselves [2]), something unexpected happened. The next generation didn’t become atheists. In fact, quite the opposite.
A growing body of research—most recently from the Bible Society’s Quiet Revival report—shows that Gen Z, far from rejecting belief, are actually more open to spirituality than any generation in recent memory.[3] Indeed, a 10,000 person survey for OnePoll revealed that just 13% of under-25s now identify as atheist.[4] That’s half the rate of their parents: indeed it looks as if Gen Z is now the least atheist generation in contemporary Britain.
Even more strikingly, church attendance among 18–24-year-olds has quadrupled in just six years, from 4% in 2018 to 16% today. Among young men, it’s even higher: 21%. And these aren’t just nominal Christians popping in for a carol service—weekly Bible reading, prayer, and a desire to grow in faith are all on the rise among this group. The New Atheists told us religion was dying. But the data now says: not so fast—something far more interesting is happening.
From Arguments to Openness
This changing landscape presents both a challenge and an opportunity for Christians. On the one hand, we still need to help people navigate the legacy of the New Atheism. Its arguments—though dusty—are still circulating online, repackaged by YouTubers, influencers, and bubbling up in a myriad online comment threads. The tone may be less Oxford debate hall and more TikTok takedown, but the underlying ideas remain the same and we need to be ready to respond to them.
That, incidentally, is one of the reasons I’ve updated The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist for its 10th anniversary edition. The arguments the New Atheists popularised still rattle around in conversations with sceptical friends. I’ve tried to show, with as much humour as honesty, why those arguments didn’t work then and still don’t hold water now.
But just as important is for Christians to learn how to speak to those who aren’t hostile to faith. Because the majority of Gen Zs aren’t rejecting Christianity—not least because, in many cases, they’ve never encountered it. So they’re not looking for rebuttals: rather they’re looking for meaning. For hope. For purpose. They’re open to prayer. And according to the Quiet Revival report, one-third of 18–24-year-olds would attend church—if only someone invited them.
We’ve seen this personally. Three years ago we moved house and as we got to know our new neighbours, we invited several of them to church. What struck us was it was the younger people who were far more willing to come (two now attend church most weeks, one is doing the Alpha Course). As we’ve prayed regularly for those in our street and plucked up the courage to invite them to things, we’ve been excited by the new openness we’re seeing.
You can still find aggressive atheism and aggressive atheists need to hear the gospel. But more widely, we’re in a time of spiritual openness, but also of spiritual confusion. Which means we need to be ready with more than just arguments.
Embrace the Opportunity … and Welcome the Seeker
The Apostle Paul’s words in Colossians 4 feel especially timely:
Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
If ever there was a moment to “make the most of every opportunity,” it’s now. We need thoughtful Christians who know how to answer the questions of sceptical friends, but also how to walk alongside seekers and doubters alike. And maybe even laugh along the way (as I hope The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist models for you).
A Book (Re)Born for This Cultural Moment
It’s been great fun working on the updated edition of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist. It’s revised (masses of new content, additional resources, discussion questions, and more), updated (every joke is 14.27% funnier), and it’s more timely—telling not just the story of why the New Atheism died, but exploring where our culture is going.
I first wrote The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist because I felt the need for a response to atheism that wasn’t a textbook, nor another dusty, fusty, dryly written apologetics manual sporting a tweed cover and a pen protector. But a book that tried to combine serious ideas with humour and wit, a book that would make a sceptic laugh as they think, a seeker smile as they contemplate, and a Christian encouraged not to be afraid of bad arguments, even if the bad arguer has an Oxford accent and a PhD.
The deepest questions never went away; the New Atheists just scared people off from asking them for a while. But now people are asking them again. So my prayer is that the new edition of The Atheist Who Didn’t Exist would help atheists think a little more deeply and Christians engage a little more confidently in conversations with their friends: sceptics or seekers, doubters or struggling-but-wanting-to-be-disciples.
[1] Steerpike, ‘Richard Dawkins gets cancelled by the humanists’, The Spectator, 20 April 2021 (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/now-even-richard-dawkins-is-cancelled-by-the-humanists/).
[2] Dawkins had a fish named after him—a species of, er, carp no less. Sometimes the jokes just write themselves. (See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-18893395).
[3] See: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival.
[4] Source: https://bit.ly/4ezEQUf
