Aron Ra is an atheist vlogger. Aron Rais also a former president of the Atheist Alliance of America, In addition, he is a former Texas state-director of the American Atheists.
Aron Ra has surrendered!
In 2017, Aron Ra wrote to some of his fellow atheists: "...since ya'll have effectively killed what was left of the atheist movement" (For details, please see the YouTube video at: AronRa Claims Mythcon Killed The Atheist Movement || Facebook Comments). Aron is not the first to indicate/suggest that the atheist movement is dead as can be seen by the articles below:
Now that Aron Ra has admitted defeat and has officially surrendered, it is time for all poseur atheists to admit that deep down there are no atheists and at best there are merely poseur agnostics. And deep down poseur agnostics know that God exists as they just have to looked out their windows to see God's majestic handiwork. Does not a painting demand the existence of a painter?
Atheism, as defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and other philosophy reference works, is the denial of the existence of God. Paul Edwards, who was a prominent atheist and editor of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, defined an atheist as "a person who maintains that there is no God." See also: Definition of atheism What proof and evidence do "atheists" have that God does not exist? Checkmate poseur atheists!
Of course, we know the next step after an "atheist" surrenders. He becomes a Christian young earth creationist!!! Congratulations Aron Ra, you are moving forward in your life. By the way, Mr. Ra as a politically left leaning American, what do you think of your new president - President Donald J. Trump? And have you noticed that European politics is now quickly shifting to the right? The circle is almost complete Mr. Ra, Soon you will become a Christian young earth creationist and a right-wing Republican. Utter annihilation awaits your errant secular leftist movements. Completely surrender now! Mr. Ra, if you surrender all to Jesus now, God will give you the strength to slim down your portly godless figure.
I Surrender All lyrics
All to Jesus I surrender
All to Him I freely give
I will ever love and trust Him
In His presence daily live
All to Jesus I surrender
Humbly at His feet I bow
Worldly pleasures all forsaken
Take me, Jesus, take me now,
I surrender all
I surrender all
All to Thee my blessed Savior
I surrender all
All to Jesus I surrender
Make me Savior wholly thine
May Thy Holy Spirit fill me
May I know Thy power divine
Are the Baptists starting to recognize that atheist ideology is going to eventually going to be a smaller threat to the Christian community in the future? On September 27, 2017, the Baptist Press reported:
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has created a single master of divinity degree in apologetics in its Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Ministry, consolidating two current apologetics programs.
Douglas K. Blount, professor of Christian apologetics at SBTS since 2015, will chair the Billy Graham School's new Department of Apologetics and World Religions. The seminary has had two separate apologetics concentrations -- one each in the school of theology and the Billy Graham School...
The seminary also will offer a M.Div. concentration in Islamic studies led by Ayman Ibrahim, Bill and Connie Jenkins Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Seminary, along with a master of arts in apologetics and the current M.A. in Islamic studies.
Greenway projected that the new apologetics department will become one of Southern's premier programs, drawing on the "strength of our institution from top to bottom."
The ultimate goal of the apologetics department is to train students not just to win intellectual arguments, but to have a concern for building the church, he said. The department will seek to equip pastors and teachers to be on the front line of engagement -- not just with non-believers or atheists, but also people of other faiths in an increasingly pluralistic culture.
...homeschooling has quietly experienced a surge in recent years too. Brian Ray, a homeschooling researcher at the National Home Education Research Institute, estimates the number of kids taught at home is growing by as much as 8% a year since the total hovered around 2 million in 2010, according to US Census figures.
That puts the upper estimate at approximately 3.5 million children, far surpassing charter schools...
In the age of the internet, they say, when university lectures and guided lessons are getting nearly as good as in-person instruction — and are free from distractions — almost anything can be taught.
School choice has generated quite a bit of headlines and debate lately. The election of President Trump has amplified that discussion. His pledge to make school choice a centerpiece of his education agenda — a proposal that is attracting much attention and scrutiny — along with his nomination of school choice champion Betsy DeVos for secretary of Education has added fuel to an idea that has gained tremendous traction over the past two decades.
Momentum is growing, and not just because of the recent election results or the DeVos nomination, either. This week is National School Choice Week (Jan. 22 to 28), a time when parents, teachers and students are raising awareness highlighting the difference school choice has made in their lives. Organizers estimate more than 20,000 total events taking place across the U.S., including rallies in Washington, D.C. and many state capitals — the largest ever series of education-related events in the U.S. — and over 500 official proclamations from governors, mayors and county officials.
In addition to traditional schools, public education options now include charter schools, magnet schools, blended and online schools. Their growth can’t be ignored or understated — from one Minnesota state law in 1991 establishing the first charter school to now 43 states, plus the District of Columbia, enacting such laws.
In 2003, there were 3,000 charter schools. Today, however, there are now more than 6,500 charter schools serving nearly 3 million students nationwide. Thousands more students are on waiting lists.
Private schools and homeschooling continue to grow, too, as families seek a greater range of options for their kids beyond the traditional public system (between 2007 and 2014, the number of homeschooled children spiked by 17 percent). To compliment that growth, states are enacting school choice-friendly policies such as education savings accounts, opportunity scholarships, inter-district open enrollment, digital course choice and more.
In 2017, the organization Americans United For Separation of Church and State posted an article entitled We’re Fighting A Wave Of Private School Voucher Bills Across The Country. The article indicates: "Although 24 states already have private school voucher programs in place, so far this year, 14 states have introduced legislation that will either create or expand a voucher program."
Americans dissatisfaction with failing public schools is only going to increase - especially in an age of globalization where young people are competing in a global economy. On top of this, increasingly public school graduates will be competing with homeschool and private school educated students.
2. Muslim young people are not being secularized in Europe. They are more pious than their parents
Studies show that younger Muslim generations in Europe are actually more jihadist-oriented—some would say more pious—than their elders. There is, however, another factor that runs contrary to conventional wisdom.
In Europe, there has been less attention paid to fertility differences between denominations. However, several studies have discovered that immigrants to Europe tend to be more religious than the host population and — especially if Muslim—tend to retain their religiosity (Van Tubergen 2006). Though some indicators point to modest religious decline toward the host society mean, other trends suggest that immigrants become more, rather than less, religious the longer they reside in the host society (Van Tubergen 2007). All of which indicates that religious decline may fail at the aggregate level even if it is occurring at the individual level (Kaufmann 2006, 2010). This article thereby investigates the hypothesis that a combination of higher religious fertility, immigration, and slowing rates of religious apostasy will eventually produce a reversal in the decline of the religious population of Western Europe.
3. A significant portion of Muslim and Christian Pentecostal growth in Europe is under the radar
The military strategists Sun Tzu wrote about knowing thyself and knowing thy enemies in order to prevail in battles/wars.
How much do militant atheists know about the growth of Islam and Christian pentecostalism in the West? Not as much as militant atheists wish!
The Observer also declares
The Pew Research Center reported last July that the Muslim share of the population throughout Europe has grown “about 1 percentage point a decade, from 4 percent in 1990 to 6 percent in 2010. This pattern is expected to continue through 2030, when Muslims are projected to make up 8% of Europe’s population.”
(Note: We could question these statistics’ accuracy. France, for example, prohibits the collecting of census information on race, ethnicity, or religion—making a calculation of the Muslim population difficult.)
And France has Europe's second largest Muslim population.
Also, consider:
On July 12, 2012, the Christian Science Monitorstated:
French scholars say, evangelicalism is likely the fastest-growing religion in France – defying all stereotypes about Europe’s most secular nation... Daniel Liechti, vice-president of the French National Evangelical Council, found that since 1970, a new evangelical church has opened in France every 10 days. The number of churches increased from 769 to 2,068 last year,
In addition, there is Europe's porous border which illegal immigrants are successfully penetrating.
It warned a “staggering number” of EU citizens have travelled to Syria to fight with Islamic State and are now posing as refugees to re-enter Europe.
The danger to Britain becomes even more concerning in light of separate disclosures, which also emerged last week, that illegal immigrants are being smuggled to this country for as little as £100.
4. Christian, Muslim and Jewish religious fundamentalism is growing in the world and 21st century global atheism is expected to see a decline
As Penn State professor Philip Jenkins writes in The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, predictions like Huntingtons betray an ignorance of the explosive growth of Christianity outside of the West.
For instance, in 1900, there were approximately 10 million Christians in Africa. By 2000, there were 360 million. By 2025, conservative estimates see that number rising to 633 million. Those same estimates put the number of Christians in Latin America in 2025 at 640 million and in Asia at 460 million.
According to Jenkins, the percentage of the worlds population that is, at least by name, Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.
The American sociologist and author Peter L. Berger introduced the concept of desecularization in 1999.According to Berger, "One can say with some confidence that modern Pentecostalism must be the fastest growing religion in human history."
Pentecostalism is one of the fastest-growing movements in world Christendom, with an estimated 500 million followers.
“A century ago the face of European Christianity could have been labeled as white, but now it is increasingly becoming multicolored,” said Israel Olofinjana, a Nigerian-born minister in London told the Times.
6. Mainstream media, which has been pro-atheism, is in decline
The Media Research Center released a study reporting a pro-atheism bias by major press outlets in the United States.The study found that 80% of mainstream media coverage of atheism was positive and that 71% of Christian-themed stories had an atheist counterpoint or were written from an atheist perspective. The New Atheism movement received significant support from the mainstream media during its early years.
Mr. Secular Leftists, answer me this; "Do you believe that mainstream media is less trusted and in decline? If not, then why was Donald J. Trump elected despite the relentless barrage against him?
For national newspapers the last couple of years have seemed to be a near-death experience. Paid-for circulation is in decline, but cover prices have frequently risen to mitigate the revenue loss. Where the money has been haemorrhaging is in advertising.
Advertising revenues have a range of identifiable problems. It became clear in the 90s that the internet was going to be massively disruptive to the traditional classified sector.
Search for a job, house, holiday, car on the internet and in moments you can see what is available without having to buy a newspaper.
7. Trend of prominent atheists/agnostics being pessimistic about the future of atheism/secularism
Jürgen Habermas is a prominent German sociologist and philosopher. Habermas describes himself as a "a methodical atheist". In a 2006 essay, Habermas wrote: “secular citizens in Europe must learn to live, the sooner the better, in a post-secular society and in so doing they will be following the example of religious citizens, who have already come to terms with the ethical expectations of democratic citizenship. So far secular citizens have not been expected to make a similar effort.”
Let's fast forward to 2010.
Eric Kaufmann, an agnostic professor whose academic research specialty is how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics, indicated in 2010:
Worldwide, the march of religion can probably only be reversed by a renewed, self-aware secularism. Today, it appears exhausted and lacking in confidence... Secularism's greatest triumphs owe less to science than to popular social movements like nationalism, socialism and 1960s anarchist-liberalism. Ironically, secularism's demographic deficit means that it will probably only succeed in the twenty-first century if it can create a secular form of 'religious' enthusiasm
Now lets fast forward to 2016.
YouTube atheist Thunderf00t said about the atheist movement after Reason Rally 2016 had a very low turnout:
I'm not sure there is anything in this movement worth saving. Hitchens is dead. Dawkins simply doesn't have the energy for this sort of thing anymore. Harris went his own way. And Dennett just kind of blended into the background. So what do you think when the largest gathering of the nonreligious in history pulls in... I don't know. Maybe 2,000 people. Is there anything worth saving?
So let's review. In 2006, a prominent German atheist Jürgen Habermas warns of a coming post-secular age in Europe. By 2010, the scholar and agnostic Eric Kaufmann admits that agnostics/atheists have become exhausted and lack confidence. By 2016, the prominent YouTube atheist Thunderf00t asks if there is anything worth saving in the atheist movement.
Militant atheists, I am looking forward to 2021! What's so special about 2016? Please continue reading.
Concerning the future of religion/secularism in Europe, Eric Kaufmann wrote :
We have performed these unprecedented analyses on several cases. Austria offers us a window into what the future holds. Its census question on religious affiliation permits us to perform cohort component projections, which show the secular population plateauing by 2050, or as early as 2021 if secularism fails to attract lapsed Christians and new Muslim immigrants at the same rate as it has in the past. (Goujon, Skirbekk et al. 2006). This task will arguably become far more difficult as the supply of nominal Christians dries up while more secularisation-resistant Muslims and committed rump Christians comprise an increasing share of the population.
In a 2010 paper entitled Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century, Professor Eric Kaufmann wrote:
What of European Christianity? The conventional wisdom holds it to be in free fall, especially in Western Europe. (Bruce 2002) This is undoubtedly correct for Catholic Europe, while Protestant Europe already has low levels of religious practice. Yet closer scrutiny reveals an increasingly lively and demographically growing Christian remnant. Several studies have examined the connection between religiosity - whether defined as attendance, belief or affiliation - and fertility in Europe. Most find a statistically significant effect even when controlling for age, education, income, marital status and other factors...
Moving to the wider spectrum of European Christianity, we find that fertility is indeed much higher among European women who are religious...
Today, most of those who remain religious in Europe wear their beliefs lightly, but conservative Christianity is hardly a spent force. Data on conservative Christians is difficult to come by since many new churches keep few official records. Reports from the World Christian Database, which meticulously tracks reports from church bodies, indicates that 4.1 percent of Europeans (including Russians) were evangelical Christians in 2005. This figure rises to 4.9 percent in northern, western and southern Europe. Most religious conservatives are charismatics, working within mainstream denominations like Catholicism or Lutheranism to ‘renew’ the faith along more conservative lines. There is also an important minority of Pentecostals, who account for .5% of Europe’s population. Together, charismatics and Pentecostals account for close to 5 % of Europe’s population. The proportion of conservative Christians has been rising, however: some estimate that the trajectory of conservative Christian growth has outpaced that of Islam in Europe. (Jenkins 2007: 75).
In many European countries, the proportion of conservative Christians is close to the number who are recorded as attending church weekly. This would suggest an increasingly devout Christian remnant is emerging in western Europe which is more resistant to secularization. This shows up in France, Britain and Scandinavia (less Finland), the most secular countries where we have 1981, 1990 and 2000 EVS and 2004 ESS data on religiosity...
Currently there are more evangelical Christians than Muslims in Europe. (Jenkins 2007: 75) In Eastern Europe, as outside the western world, Pentecostalism is a sociological and not a demographic phenomenon. In Western Europe, by contrast, demography is central to evangelicalism’s growth, especially in urban areas. Alas, immigration brings two foreign imports, Islam and Christianity, to secular Europe.
Below are other signs the atheist movement has seen a decline and please allow time for the Google trends graphs to load.
Question: Is there anything more fragile that the atheist movement? Eggs perhaps? Be sure to watch the videos below and see how dismal a future the atheist movement has.
The atheist blogger David Smalley wrote in a post entitled What's killing the atheist movement:
When our “friends” on Facebook or Twitter make a comment that we find offensive or absurd, we are so quick to disown them and “take a public stand” immediately, that we’re fracturing our movement into a thousand tiny micro groups that will be useless against the larger powers we’re collectively fighting...
...where’s our Humanism? Where are the private and personal phone calls to work things out? Where’s our love for humanity,,
when you don’t like someone’s opinion of a certain issue,,,you decide to attack his or her appearance, disability, weight, or anything else that may be a struggle for them, you’re being a bully, even if you think they were a bully first.
You may justify it that way. But the rest of us still see that as bullying, when you had the power to do something productive.
And that doesn’t lead to progress. It only leads to more fighting, smaller groups, and a more ineffective atheist movement for the greater good.,,,
Why are we so quick to look for signs, to see what side of an issue a person is on so that we know whether or not to publicly disavow him or her? What happened to looking at the humans behind the comments to see what’s fueling the rage, or misinformation?
Notice how he says: "we’re fracturing our movement into a thousand tiny micro groups that will be useless against the larger powers we’re collectively fighting."
Thank God the atheist movement is so divided! Divide et impera.That is Latin for divide and conquer.
I disavow you! You are not acting like a TRUE atheist. Whatever that is!
Atheists can't even agree on a definition of atheism (see: Definition of atheism). If only there were not so many atheist poseurs masquerading as atheists when they are actually agnostics.
The atheistic Soviet Union with all its modern military technology was defeated by the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
According to the New York Times, "The Soviet Army has performed poorly during its eight-and-a-half-year war in Afghanistan, largely because of low morale, according to a study of its combat effectiveness completed for the United States Army." Morale matters! And atheism is not a very motivating ideology (see: Atheism and apathy).
If only the godless Soviets had the high morale of the soldiers of Christ! The prominent historian Sir Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, said, "Christianity, the world's largest religion, is rapidly expanding – by all indications, its future is very bright." (see: High morale of Christendom ).
Colonel Dave Grossman and Bruce K. Siddle wrote in their work the "Psychological Effects of Combat" which was published in the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict
During World War II, 504,000 men were lost from America's combat forces due to psychiatric collapse--enough to man 50 divisions. The United States suffered this loss despite efforts to weed out those mentally and emotionally unfit for combat by classifying more than 800,000 men 4-F (unfit for military service) due to psychiatric reasons. At one point in World War II, psychiatric casualties were being discharged from the U.S. Army faster than new recruits were being drafted in.
Swank and Marchand's World War II study of US Army combatants on the beaches of Normandy found that after 60 days of continuous combat, 98% of the surviving soldiers had become psychiatric casualties. And the remaining 2% were identified as "aggressive psychopathic personalities." Thus it is not too far from the mark to observe that there is something about continuous, inescapable combat which will drive 98% of all men insane, and the other 2% were crazy when they got there...
It must be understood that the kind of continuous, protracted combat that produces such high psychiatric casualty rates is largely a product of 20th-century warfare. The Battle of Waterloo lasted only a day. Gettysburg lasted only three days--and they took the nights off. It was only in World War I that armies began to experience months of 24-hour combat, and it is in World War I that vast numbers of psychiatric casualties were first observed.
97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious. In the coming decades, religious immigrants will be pouring into secular Europe to replace an aging workforce due to irreligious Europeans not having a replacement level of fertility. Europe will become post secular. China, which has the largest atheist population, is seeing an explosive growth of evangelical Christianity. Evangelical Christianity is expected to grow as a percentage of the world's population in the 21st century.
In terms of the global picture, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year, the atheist movement will be losing ground in the 21st century due to demographic changes and other factors (see: Causes of desecularization ). This will invariably affect educational systems, the media and a wide range of government policies. Religious people vote in elections and consumers vote in terms of their purchases. For example, news organizations will not want to lose religious customers by offending them as the religious become more dominant in a culture. And today's news organization are operating 24 hours a day. In short, militant atheists in the 21st century will face continuous, protracted culture war which they will be losing to an ever increasing degree.
Eric Kaufmann, an agnostic professor whose academic research specialty is how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics, wrote in 2010:
Worldwide, the march of religion can probably only be reversed by a renewed, self-aware secularism. Today, it appears exhausted and lacking in confidence... Secularism's greatest triumphs owe less to science than to popular social movements like nationalism, socialism and 1960s anarchist-liberalism. Ironically, secularism's demographic deficit means that it will probably only succeed in the twenty-first century if it can create a secular form of 'religious' enthusiasm
Grossman and Bruce K.Siddle further wrote in their work the "Psychological Effects of Combat:
The soldier in combat endures many indignities...
The ultimate fear and horror in most modern lives is to be raped, tortured, or beaten, to be physically degraded in front of loved ones or to have the sanctity of the home invaded by aggressive and hateful intruders.
Death or debilitation is statistically far more likely to occur by disease or accident than by malicious action, but statistics have nothing to do with fear.
In Sweden, Germany and elsewhere in Europe , the irreligious have seen Muslim immigrants target irreligious women in terms of sexual assault (see: Atheism vs. Islam). The YouTube atheist Pat Condell is very angry about the European Muslim rape problem. Yet, the irreligious have a poor track record when it comes to rape and domestic violence (see: Atheism and rape and Irreligion and domestic violence).
In a public lecture held in Australia, an irreligious woman asked the academic and agnostic Eric Kaufmann how he thought fundamentalist influence would affect public policy as far as the teaching of evolutionism in public schools. You could tell she was very fearful when she asked this question as she was afraid of Kaufmann's answer. Needless to say, Kaufmann provided her no reassurance that Darwinism would continue to be taught in public schools (see: Eric Kaufmann: Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, Australian Broadcasting Corporation ).
Mass migration has led to a rise in creationist beliefs across Europe, according to a British scientist.
Michael Reiss, who is a professor of education at the Institute of Education in London and an Anglican priest, said the evolution-creationism debate could no longer be thought of as something that happened elsewhere and that more and more people in the UK did not accept evolution.
Reiss told the Guardian that countries with a higher proportion of Muslims or fundamentalist Christians in their population were more likely to reject evolution. He added: "What the Turks believe today is what the Germans and British believe tomorrow. It is because of the mass movement of people between countries.
"These things can no longer be thought of as occurring in other countries. In London, where I work, there are increasingly quite large numbers of highly intelligent 16, 17 and 18-year-olds doing Advanced Level biology who do not accept evolution. That's either because they come from a fundamentalist Christian background or from Muslim backgrounds."
The British newspaper The Telegraphdeclared in an article entitled Richard Dawkins: Muslim parents 'import creationism' into schools:
Prof Dawkins, a well-known atheist, also blamed the Government for accommodating religious views and allowing creationism to be taught in schools.
"Most devout Muslims are creationists so when you go to schools, there are a large number of children of Islamic parents who trot out what they have been taught," Prof Dawkins said in a Sunday newspaper interview.
"Teachers are bending over backwards to respect home prejudices that children have been brought up with. The Government could do more, but it doesn't want to because it is fanatical about multiculturalism and the need to respect the different traditions from which these children come."
Now as the irreligious attain critical mass in terms of a voting block, it is inevitable that secular sacred cows in terms of pseudoscience (for example, Darwinism) and secular leftist ideologies will be rejected by the public and no longer promoted in public schools. Kaufmann believes that the conservative/fundamentalists of the Abrahamic religions will form alliances regarding matters they agree on.
Is a culture war as intense as a modern battle field? No. At the same time, militant atheists and atheist activists are a proud lot (see:Atheism and arrogance ). They are exactly the type of people who are most vulnerable to continuous and protracted conflict where they suffer defeats. For example, after 5 years of conflict with feminists where the feminists were largely winning, the New Atheist Richard Dawkins appears to have buckled under the pressure.
Atheist Hemant Mehta reported about Dawkins' stroke:
It was the result of stress-related higher blood pressure, which he says he may have had as a result of recent controversy, including being booted from the NECSS conference. He added, however, that on February 5, he received a letter from conference organizers apologizing for disinviting him and asking him back to the conference.
Post Elevatorgate controversy, Dawkins saw a large loss of public influence (see: Richard Dawkins' loss of influence ). In 2013, Martin Robbins wrote in the New Statesman concerning the public persona of Dawkins: "Increasingly though, his public output resembles that of a man desperately grasping for attention and relevance..."
According to Glenn Gandelman, MD, "A recent study indicates that angry men have higher blood pressure and increased risk of heart disease."
Due to his chronic high blood pressure, Dawkins has been repeatedly warned by his doctors to avoid controversies. After his stroke, he finally gave up posting to Twitter.
The prestigious Mayo Clinic indicated on December 11, 2001:
In an article also published in this issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Mayo Clinic researchers reviewed published studies, meta-analyses, systematic reviews and subject reviews that examined the association between religious involvement and spirituality and physical health, mental health, health-related quality of life and other health outcomes. The authors report a majority of the nearly 350 studies of physical health and 850 studies of mental health that have used religious and spiritual variables have found that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes.
The data from social sciences - namely demography, history, medical science, sociology and psychology - point to the atheist movement suffering losses in the 21st century and many atheists being very demoralized by these losses. Atheists may desperately grasps for attention for a time, but as time goes on, resignation will set in. I can already see resignation/pessimism setting in post decline of the New Atheism.
And there are signs that the intellectual assault on atheism is increasing.
In June 2012, the UK based Dorset Humanists wrote:
There’s been a forceful backlash against the ‘new atheism’ of writers like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, inspiring a new wave of Christian apologists. This group includes: Alister McGrath, Professor of Theology at King’s College London, Keith Ward, former Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford. Many atheists make the mistake of assuming religion is wholly irrational, relying on faith alone but, in a series of interviews recorded for DVD, the apologetics heavyweights from the list above demonstrate their ability to challenge us with reasoned arguments
Dr. Johnson C. Philip & Dr. Saneesh Cherian wrote in their work Introduction To Integrated Christian Apologetics
American evangelical Christians have began to notice in the fifties that compromise is a slow poison that ultimately destroys respect for truth. Some of them came together and started writing aggressively on themes defending the historical and scientific reliability of the Bible. This gave birth to the modern interest in Apologetics and Creationism. At the dawn of the twenty-first century the influence of this revival has spread all over the world, and today more than one hundred and fifty organizations function around the world, devoted solely to apologetics. Their influence has be so strong that a large number of Seminaries all around the world have begun assert the historical and scientific reliability of the Bible...
...with the birth of the modern creationism and apologetics, a revival set in motion among the evangelical Christians. This group became quite vocal and aggressive in the sixties, and by seventies they started exerting significant influence among theologians, thinkers, and the Bible teachers all over the world.
Thousands of apologetic books, hundreds of magazines, and tens of thousands of articles have been produced defending the Bible since. In turn, this has started to diminish the influence of rationalists and radicals on Christians.
From the middle of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century the rationalists had their heyday, snatching away millions of young people from their Christian faith and commitment. The wounds of this loss can been seen in Christendom even today, but at the same time this loss has been greatly minimized now because of the work of Christian apologists.
Today anyone desiring to know about the Bible, and its connection with science, evolution, history, archaeology, has read any number of books on this topic. Literally thousands of titles are available, and he can choose anywhere from the most simple books to the most technically advanced ones. Thus the modern apologetics movement has been able to arrest the way in which rationalists have been bleeding the Christian church
Ratio Christi is launching Christian apologetics clubs at college/university campuses. The Trinity Graduate School of Apologetics and Theology initiative which offers quality Christian apologetics for free to third world country students and charges extremely low costs for others.
A creeping barrage of Christian apologetics intellectual artillery has caused atheists to largely crawl in their "intellectual bunny holes" (see: Stagnaton of atheist apologetics ).
Now most so-called atheists are merely atheist posers who claim that atheism is merely a "lack of belief" in God/gods. How is that different from agnosticism? See: Definition of atheism
Studs Terkel,
a self-described agnostic, jokingly referred to the frequent charge of
agnostics being called cowardly, "You happen to be talking to an
agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist".
Atheism is dying in terms of its global market share. Atheist activists are increasing becoming demoralized. And atheists are now faced with a creeping barrage of excellent material defending the reasonableness of Christianity and the unreasonableness of atheism. Should Jesus tarry, in the latter half of the 21st century or possibly earlier, everywhere atheists look they will see a creeping barrage of BAD news (see: Desecularization).
Below is a video of a creeping barrage of artillery fire. As you will soon see, a creeping artillery barrage can be a very demoralizing thing. In addition, there is a video on the effects of artillery on the combat effectiveness of the opposing forces. The last video is a reminder of what happens when men oppose God - they lose!
An atheist recently asked: "What's killing the atheist movement?". The prominent atheist PZ Myers responded with a post entitled What if the atheist movement needs to die?
2. Vastly outnumbered and this situation is expected to get significantly worse over time according to religious/irreligious demography scholars. Atheism has a 20+ year track record of losing global market share in terms of adherents. See: Atheist Population and Desecularization
3. Has a very poor reputation with those it wants to influence. Its bad reputation has existed for thousands of years. See: Views on atheists
4. Has poor leadership "leading" people who are traditionally apathetic, quarrelsome and arrogant. The atheist movement also put a very large portion of its eggs in the Richard Dawkins' basket only to see Richard Dawkins and the New Atheism movement implode. See: Atheism and leadership and Atheism and apathy and Atheism and arrogance
5. Atheists are not only distrusted by religious people, but atheists frequently distrusts each other. See: Views on atheists
8. It recently has developed a reputation for cowardly avoiding/backing out of debates (see: Atheism and cowardice).
9. Has often relied on the power of the state to promulgate its ideology and silence dissent. The historian Martin Van Crevel points out that sovereign states are
losing power/influence due to technology democratizing access to
information, welfare states increasingly failing, fourth-generation warfare being waged against countries and sovereign states increasingly losing their ability to maintain internal order. See: Atheist indoctrination
According to the Systems Leadership Institute: "Systems thinking is a management discipline that concerns an understanding of a system by examining the linkages and interactions between the components that comprise the entirety of that defined system."
A fundamental principle of systems thinking is that if you have a key component of a system that will cause the system to shut down or degrade considerably then redundancy should be employed or the component should be able to be quickly replaced. Within evangelical Christianity there is a church pastor and church elders. So should anything happen to the pastor, an elder can quickly step in and replace him in many cases. In addition, the Bible gives a blue print on how a pastor should be chosen and how he should behave. God knows what He is doing! See also: Growth of evangelical Christianity Atheists on the other hand, put a very large amount of their eggs in the atheist celebrity Richard Dawkins basket. And to to make matters worse, they failed to have multiple layers of defenses against feminists when it came to them subjugating Dawkins under their collective low heeled shoes (Feminists don't wear high heels). Given Dawkins' two divorces before Elevatorgate (a sure sign that Dawkins does not understand women!), why didn't the atheist movement have a lady screen Dawkins' written statements to the public lest he wreak havoc on the atheist movement? Dawkins was a clear and present danger to atheism. And when Dawkins went down in flames, did atheists have a replacement? No they did not. Perhaps if atheists better understood Intelligent Design, they would have a better grasp of systems thinking.
Atheists don't have a system in place to replace themselves
Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world’s population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass."
Dr. Theo Hobsonwrote in The Spectator in 2013 about Richard Dawkins and New Atheism:
The atheist spring that began just over a decade ago is over, thank God. Richard Dawkins is now seen by many, even many non-believers, as a joke figure...
Atheism is still with us. But the movement that threatened to form has petered out. Crucially, atheism’s younger advocates are reluctant to compete for the role of Dawkins’s disciple. They are more likely to bemoan the new atheist approach and call for large injections of nuance. A good example is the pop-philosopher Julian Baggini. He is a stalwart atheist who likes a bit of a scrap with believers, but he’s also able to admit that religion has its virtues, that humanism needs to learn from it. For example, he has observed that a sense of gratitude is problematically lacking in secular culture, and suggested that humanists should consider ritual practices such as fasting.
