In the past six years, the decline of Christianity has stabilized in America, and atheism is no longer a

dominant cultural force. In fact, atheism's most passionate advocates are now defending the

usefulness of religion when it comes to maintaining social sanity. As I noted in a previous episode,

Richard Dawkins even calls himself a cultural Christian. In today's episode, we're going to talk about

the death of so-called new atheism, what comes next to the non-religious, and how Christians should

respond. First, let's talk about how all of this started. As a millennial, I remember as a child

experiencing a vibe shift when it came to religion and culture. Growing up in the 90s, morning shows didn't highlight

child drag queens. Instead, they warned parents about how films like 1992's Batman Returns were

inappropriate for children. And instead of cartoons depicting non-binary characters with pronouns

they, them, we had Wolverine from the X-Men finding comfort by reading a Bible and a

church. In fact, in 1992, about 90% of Americans identified as Christians, and only 5% identified

as non-religious. But today, only about 63% of Americans identify as Christians, and 29%

identify as non-religious. So what happened? First, after the fall of the Soviet

Union, identifying as an atheist was no longer synonymous with being an un-American commie traitor.

Second, the internet gave the non-religists something that the religious have had for centuries,

a place to feel like they're not alone and a place to encourage one

another in their life's mission. Today, about 96% of American adults use the internet, but in

1995, that number was only 14%. Just as the printing press gave Protestantism an edge during

the Reformation, the internet gave atheism the edge in spreading its arguments during

the information revolution. Of course, rapid spread of an idea doesn't demonstrate its truth,

because flat earth theory is the most popular it's been in the modern world because of its

advocates' videos on the internet. The satirist Jonathan Swift said it best. A lie can get halfway

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