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Our opponents often use the term New Atheists as if to imply that our ideas and values are transitory and opportunistic. Although atheism has a formidable intellectual and philosophical pedigree the reason it is asserting itself now is due to one single event, 9/11. If we needed a reminder of how dangerous religion could be, that was it. We were confronted with a religiously driven ideology that was hell bent on our destruction. Despite the invasion of Afghanistan we were not at war with a state but with an idea and that idea had become franchised out to all corners of the globe. None of us were safe, in Nairobi, Madrid, Bali or London. The great irony of 9/11 was that rather than subduing the ambitions of the other religions that might have been expected to keep their heads down, it emboldened them. Even the normally docile Sikhs tried to stop the performance of a play they considered disrespectful to their beliefs. More recently we have witnessed the grotesque spectacle of Catholic Church’s failure to acknowledge the gross abuse of young people in their charge and the ridiculous spectacle of Archbishop of Canterbury advancing the cause of Sharia law. In his book and TV series Richard Dawkins led the charge, to assert reason over superstition. He saw not only the threat from Islam and religion but of society slipping back into a world of unreason and in the US in particular the growing power of creationism that replaced reason with myth. 9/11 was the wake-up call to all us rationalists who had been slumbering. We now have a fantastic opportunity to drag at least part of the world into the 21 century. We are now driving an agenda that is making people think about religion and god and encouraging atheists to come out of the closet, particularly in the US. It is my hope that in 100 years time these last few years will be seen as a watershed that reignited the ideas embodied in the Enlightenment.
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