In the 19th century Friedrich Nietzsche infamously declared that "God is dead." It turns out he was on to something. Across the western world, churches are emptying out and closing their doors, and more and more people are rejecting organized religion. In the early 2000s a group of intellectuals who collectively came to be known as the "new atheists" capitalized on this fact, capturing the imagination of young skeptics and igniting a movement for secularism by arguing that religion is the ...

The concept of evolution is widely considered to be a foundational building block in atheist thought. Leaders of the New Atheist movement have taken Darwin's work and used it to diminish the authority of religious institutions and belief systems. But they have also embraced it as a metaphor for the gradual replacement of religious faith with secular reason. They have posed as harbingers of human progress, claiming the moral high ground, and rejecting with intolerance any message that chall...