ABSTRACT
Many scholarly discussions of science and religion, and of popular narratives of conflict between the two, place the phenomenon of ‘New Atheism’ centre stage. This is especially the case in the UK, where two of the four best known New Atheist intellectuals – Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens – are/were based. As an intellectual and cultural movement, New Atheism emerged in the West as a long-term response to growing non-religious populations in many Western states and as a shorter-term reaction to the growing religious right in the US and militant Islamist attacks on New York in 2011 and London in 2005. Recently, however, despite non-religious populations continuing to grow and become more culturally dominant, the influence of New Atheism has become more diffuse and arguably waned, raising questions about how we should view its claims about science and religion today. Through an exploration of interview and focus group data gathered in the UK between 2015 and 2017, this chapter looks at atheist and non-religious ‘claiming’ of science and rationality after the decline of New Atheism. Based on 60 interviews and eight focus groups, the chapter suggests that, while awareness of New Atheism appears to diminish across generations, non-religious identities are still oriented around claims about scientific rationality. Drawing from these findings, the chapter argues that common references by scholars to explicit battles over science between atheist and religious intellectuals – exemplified in the New Atheist case – misconstrues in important ways how science–religion conflict operates in the West: not principally as a battle line but rather as a ‘reservoir of cultural resources’.
