Disagreements among the leaders of the movement led to division within the movement itself, and “a number of the leaders of the New Atheism themselves got tarnished with sort of accusations of misogyny and homophobia and transphobia,” Brierley said.
It was not merely disunity, however, that led to the movement’s demise. Brierley believes that the New Atheism “did actually fail…to answer people’s questions. Ultimately, I think science and reason, they’re great for some things, but they won’t ultimately give you a reason for living or getting out of bed in the morning.”
“I think people still had those questions bubbling away,” he said, “and they didn’t go away. They didn’t get answered by, you know, the wonder of science.”
Brierley says that Dawkins, who actually said earlier this year that he considers himself a “cultural Christian,” has mellowed “an awful lot since the heyday of the New Atheism.”
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The best-selling author of “The God Delusion” has “realized…that we’re all inherently religious, actually,” said Brierley. “And if we don’t get religious about Christianity or institutional religion, we will get religious about something else.”
“I think [Dawkins] has realized that in some ways, Christianity is the most benign of all the religions out there, including some of these ideologies and so on that he’s had to confront,” Brierley explained. Therefore, Dawkins is willing to call himself a “cultural Christian” and express appreciation for how Christianity has benefited society, even while he remains an unbeliever.
Brierley said that it was around 2017 or 2018 that he started noticing a shift in how people were talking about religion. Instead of virulently attacking it, prominent secular thinkers were interested in and sparking interest in religion. Jordan Peterson, who is not a professing Christian, nevertheless “was directing all of these seekers, these meaning-seeking Millennials and Gen Z towards the Christian faith.”
“I was fascinated by this because this is certainly someone who was essentially attracting the same audience as had been turning up for Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins,” said Brierley. “It was so interesting to see them flipping from kind of turning up to deride the Bible only 10 years previously, to now sitting in rapt attention at this person telling them that actually the Bible was full of wisdom and meaning.”
Brierley believes that the faith questions people are asking have changed from what they were 10 to 15 years ago. Now, instead of looking for rational arguments for belief in God, people are looking for purpose. “I think what we’re seeing is the fruition of a meaning crisis in our culture,” said Brierley, “and I see that in large part down to the fact that we have lost the Christian story, by and large, in the West.”
