ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that while continuities with historical varieties of atheism are readily apparent, new atheism is genuinely unique in a number of important respects. In particular, new atheism represents a complex hybrid that combines a reassertion of modernist, Enlightenment-based rationalism with postmodern concerns around issues of culture and identity. The problem of discussing new atheism as if it constituted a well-defined, coherent and homogeneous category of thought can be seen in other ways as well. One issue is that posing the existence of a new atheism implies, by definition, a binary distinction to a similarly well-defined, coherent and homogeneous category of old atheism. The origins of philosophical atheism, is usually traced to Ancient Greece. The rise of new atheism during the first decade of the twenty-first century was driven, to a large extent, by the failure of secularisation and the growing political and social influence of religion.
