Dear Dr. Myers,
I just saw your 2016 blog post relating to the issue of whether or not "atheism is in trouble". I am referring to this blog post of yours I get email — theistic tears edition
First, if Richard Dawkins is your example of a charismatic atheist, then atheism is most certainly in trouble. If you doubt me, just ask his 3 ex-wives and his detractor Rebecca Watson (see: Elevatorgate). Dawkins' popularity has plummeted and his now anemic web traffic is testimony to this matter (see: Alexa ranking for RichardDawkins.net ).
...the growing popularity of jibes associating outspoken atheists with fedoras, neckbeards, and virginity, led to an exodus of liberals and leftists from the “atheist” tent. Those who remained for the most part lacked in social skills and self-awareness, and the results were disastrous.
In addition, you previously declared:
If we're going to expand our base and we're going to draw in more people to recognize the virtues of living in a secular world, we need to appeal to more than just that geek and nerd subset of the population. We need to have a wider base. ...I seriously believe that we're on the cusp of a crisis. We're not there yet but it's looming in front of us. Will we adapt and thrive and change the world? Or will we remain an avocation for a prosperous and largely irrelevant subset of the population? Will we become something more than a scattered society of internet nerds? That's what we have to do.
Second, as per Discovery Magazine, most atheists are East Asians. And China is seeing an explosive growth of evangelical Christianity. See: East Asia and global desecularization
Third, the secularization rate has flattened to zero in Britain, France and Protestant Europe (see: Professor Eric Kaufmann - Shall the religious inherit the earth and Has Britain hit peak secular - The Guardian ). In Eastern/Central Europe, desecularization is occurring (see: Central and Eastern Europe and desecularization).
Fourth, as far as the United States, the American atheist Aron Ra recently said that the atheist movement is dead and he is not alone in his opinion among American atheists (see: Decline of atheist movement ).
At the 2018 American Atheists convention, the ex-president of the American Atheists organization David Silverman declared:
It is a hard time to be an atheist activist. This has affected us. And it has affected our community...
...it has really affected us. We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before...
We feel the loss. And we feel like we have lost. We feel like we lost the election... We see this cascade of attack coming down at us over and over from all different directions and we feel like it's over. I have heard so many times it makes me sick. It makes me sad. It feels like we lost.
The apathy that follows. It doesn't matter. We can't win anyways. It's useless to fight. This apathy is infecting us. It's hurting us.
And people are reacting to each other now. And so that is causing a division. Lots and lots of division in our movement. Hard, bad division... And that has resulted in a splintering and factioning of the movement that I have never seen before and none of us have.
In other words, we're in a bad situation and it's getting worse."
Dr. Myers, the atheist/humanist movements are lost causes! Abandon all hope now! Jesus still sits on the throne!
By the way, have you read this essay: Christianity and its margin of victory over atheism ?
Related article:
Apparently, the atheist PZ Myers recognizes that the New Atheism movement failed and that the 21st century is going to be a century of desecularization
Photo credits:
Description English: PZ Myers speaking at Skepticon 7 Date 22 November 2014, 22:04:30 Source Own work Author Mark Schierbecker
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
