Essay: The steady grinding down of atheism

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Day and night the millstones of desecularization grind down the influence of the world's atheist population.

Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world's population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020.[1] See: Global atheism statistics

Day and night the millstones of desecularization grind down the influence of the world's atheist population. For example, the world's atheist population continues to go down as a percentage of the world's population (see: Global atheism statistics).

According to the University of Cambridge, historically, the "most notable spread of atheism was achieved through the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which brought the Marxist-Leninists to power."(see: Atheism and communism).[2] Communism certainly helped spread atheism during the 20th century. At the same time, the fall of the Soviet Union caused a significant drop in atheism (see: Collapse of atheism in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe and desecularization).

Atheism is now in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world's population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020.[3] See: Percentage of the world's population who are atheists - statistics and trends

On December 23, 2012, Professor Eric Kaufmann who teaches at Birbeck College, University of London and whose academic research specialty is how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics, wrote:

I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious.

On the other hand, the secular West and East Asia has very low fertility and a rapidly aging population... In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world. Ergo, we can expect significant immigration to the secular West which will import religious revival on the back of ethnic change. In addition, those with religious beliefs tend to have higher birth rates than the secular population, with fundamentalists having far larger families. The epicentre of these trends will be in immigration gateway cities like New York (a third white), Amsterdam (half Dutch), Los Angeles (28% white), and London, 45% white British. [4]

In April 2010, Kaufmann, who is an agnostic, declared "the rate of secularisation has flattened to zero in most of Protestant Europe and France."[5] See: European desecularization in the 21st century

In China, Christianity is seeing explosive growth, Christianity is seeing explosive growth (see: Growth of Christianity in China and East Asia and global desecularization).

American atheism

See also: American atheism

The New Atheism movement caused a rise in the percentage of atheists in America, but religion/irreligion demographic experts believe the secular population will plateau in the United States and there are experts in this field who foresee the platueing being followed a growth of religion (see: Acceleration of 21st century desecularization).

Current religious demography scholarship suggest that the relatively low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of the immigrant inflow provide a countervailing force that will cause the secularization process within the total population to plateau before 2043.[6]

In their 2010 journal article entitled, Secularism, Fundamentalism or Catholicism? The Religious Composition of the United States to 2043 published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Vegard Skirbekk and Anne Goujon wrote about American atheism: "The relatively low fertility of secular Americans and the religiosity of the immigrant inflow provide a countervailing force that will cause the secularization process within the total population to plateau before 2043."[7]

According to the 2014 General Social Survey (GSS), the number of atheists and agnostics in the United States has remained relatively stable in the past 23 years. In 2014, 3% of Americans identified as atheists, and 5% identified as agnostics.[8] In 1991, 2% of Americans identified as atheist, and 4% identified as agnostic.[9]

In June 2016, American Interest reported:

First of all, religious belief is still very powerful and widespread, and there is nothing inevitable about its decline. In fact, the proportion of people who say they believe in God actually ticked modestly upward, from 86 percent to 89 percent, since Gallup last asked the question in 2014.[10]

In June 2012, the UK based Dorset Humanists wrote:

There’s been a forceful backlash against the ‘new atheism’ of writers like Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, inspiring a new wave of Christian apologists. This group includes: Alister McGrath, Professor of Theology at King’s College London, Keith Ward, former Professor of Divinity at Oxford, and John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford.

Many atheists make the mistake of assuming religion is wholly irrational, relying on faith alone but, in a series of interviews recorded for DVD, the apologetics heavyweights from the list above demonstrate their ability to challenge us with reasoned arguments.[11]

The Christian apologetics organizations Ratio Christi and Trinity Graduate School of Apologetics and Theology formed after the launch of the New Atheism movement and before the decline of the New Atheism movement. See: Christian apologetics response to the New Atheist movement

The atheist Sam Harris quipped about William Lane Craig that he was "The one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists".[12][13]

Luke Muehlhauser (pictured on the left) and Brad Voytek (pictured on the right).

The atheist Luke Muehlhauser wrote:

As far as I can tell, he has won nearly all his debates with atheists. When debating him, atheists have consistently failed to put forward solid arguments, and consistently failed to point out the flaws in Craig’s arguments...

This is especially embarrassing for atheists because Craig’s arguments and debates are easily available, and he uses the same arguments all the time. So it should be easy for atheists to prepare for a debate with Craig.[14]

American atheism: Death by a thousand cuts

The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines the military tactic of a delaying action thusly: "a defensive military action in which advance of an enemy is delayed by fighting as long as possible without the defensive force becoming involved in decisive battle...".[15]

The famous Lincoln–Douglas debates were a series of 7 debates and each debate lasted 3 hours. The debates were between Abraham Lincoln and Stephan A. Douglas and mostly focused on the issue of slavery.

In 2011, atheist Jacques Berlinerblau declared: "The Golden Age of Secularism has passed."[16]

Given the attention span of today's public, after the launch of the now defunct New Atheism movement, which had some momentum for about 7 years until it imploded, there never was an extended decisive ideological battle between Christians and atheists. Instead, there were a stream of books, articles, debates, lectures, sermons, podcasts, movies, etc. There was nothing approaching something similar to the Lincoln–Douglas debates. As a result, there was a series of Christian delaying actions which helped weaken the atheist movement (see: Decline of the atheist movement). Now, numerous atheists have declared that the "atheist movement is dead" or that it is dying.[17]

In 1990, the atheist philosopher Michael Martin indicated there was a general absence of an atheistic response to contemporary work in the philosophy of religion and in jest he indicated that it was his "cross to bear" to respond to theistic arguments.[18] Yet, in 1994, Michael Martin was criticized for his eleventh hour cancellation of his debate with Greg Bahnsen (see: Greg Bahnsen and debate and Bahnson-Martin debate press release).[19]

At this point, atheism has been effectively rebutted in every conceivable manner or nearly every conceivable manner (see also: Rebuttals to atheist arguments). Conservapedia alone has nearly 1,000 articles/essays on atheism covering a wide variety of topics.[20]

Atheists have generally done very poorly in debates and recently developed a reputation for dodging debates (see: Atheism debates and Atheism and cowardice).

At the 2018 American Atheists National Convention, the ex-president of the American Atheists organization David Silverman declared:

It is a hard time to be an atheist activist. This has affected us. And it has affected our community...

...it has really affected us. We are suffering a level of defeatism that I have never seen before...

We feel the loss. And we feel like we have lost. We feel like we lost the election... We see this cascade of attack coming down at us over and over from all different directions and we feel like it's over. I have heard so many times it makes me sick. It makes me sad. It feels like we lost.

The apathy that follows. It doesn't matter. We can't win anyways. It's useless to fight. This apathy is infecting us. It's hurting us.

And people are reacting to each other now. And so that is causing a division. Lots and lots of division in our movement. Hard, bad division... And that has resulted in a splintering and factioning of the movement that I have never seen before and none of us have.

In other words, we're in a bad situation and it's getting worse.[21]

From a global perspective, the world's percentage of atheists has been shrinking and many secular countries have experienced a significant amount of immigration from the citizens of religious countries (see: Desecularization and Global atheism statistics).

Various schisms occurring within the atheist movement and widespread infighting, has had an adverse effect on various atheist organizations (See: Atheist factions). Divisions within the atheist movement have caused a marked decline in the movement (see: Decline of the atheist movement). For example, atheist organizations have experienced large drops in donations to their organizations (see: Atheist organizations and fundraising).

Most atheists are apathetic when it comes to sharing atheism with others - especially when compared to evangelistic religions such as Christianity (see: Atheism and apathy).

Eric Kaufmann, an agnostic professor whose academic research specialty is how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics, wrote in 2010:

Worldwide, the march of religion can probably only be reversed by a renewed, self-aware secularism. Today, it appears exhausted and lacking in confidence... Secularism's greatest triumphs owe less to science than to popular social movements like nationalism, socialism and 1960s anarchist-liberalism. Ironically, secularism's demographic deficit means that it will probably only succeed in the twenty-first century if it can create a secular form of 'religious' enthusiasm.[22]

In March 2015, the atheist philosopher John Gray in an article at The Guardian titled What scares the new atheists reported: "Today, it’s clear that no grand march is under way...The resurgence of religion is a worldwide development...For secular thinkers, the continuing vitality of religion calls into question the belief that history underpins their values."[23]

In 2018, the atheist PZ Myers quotes an atheist activist who declares: "It’s quite depressing that movement Atheism has turned into such a joke. I valued it so much once."[24] Furthermore, Myers says the atheist movement is in "shambles" and this is "quite depressing" for him.[24] Myers also wrote: "... the optimism is fading and is being consumed by a new anger at the incompetence and betrayal of the self-appointed atheist leadership."[25] See also: Atheism and leadership

YouTube atheist Thunderf00t

YouTube atheist Thunderfoot said about the atheist movement after the Reason Rally 2016 had a very low turnout:

I'm not sure there is anything in this movement worth saving. Hitchens is dead. Dawkins simply doesn't have the energy for this sort of thing anymore. Harris went his own way. And Dennett just kind of blended into the background. So what do you think when the largest gathering of the nonreligious in history pulls in... I don't know. Maybe 2,000 people. Is there anything worth saving?[26]

In 2011, atheist Jacques Berlinerblau declared: "The Golden Age of Secularism has passed."[27]

In recent times, the number of people attending atheist conferences has grown smaller.[28][29][30] Atheist David Smalley wrote: "And we wonder why we’re losing elections, losing funding, and our conferences are getting smaller."[29]

Michael Brown wrote:

Several decades ago, church statistician and demographer David Barrett began to report the surprising news that around the world, the most rapidly growing faith was Spirit-empowered Christianity, marked by clear gospel preaching, belief in the literal truth of the Scriptures, and the reality of God’s presence. (The data were compiled in the prestigious “World Christian Encyclopedia,” published by Oxford University Press.)...

This is confirmed in the new Pew Forum report, which showed that evangelical Protestant churches in America grew by 2 million from 2007 to 2014 whereas the so-called mainline (liberal) Protestant churches declined by 5 million, meaning that evangelical Protestants now make up the largest religious group in the nation. (Although this is not part of the Pew Forum survey, my surmise is that the evangelical churches that are most Bible-based and make the most serious, grace-empowered demands on their congregants are, generally speaking, the ones that are growing rather than declining.[31]

Kaufman wrote in his academic paper Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century

Today, values play a more important role in fertility behaviour, throwing the contrast between religious pronatalism and secular low-fertility individualism into relief. Over several generations, this process can lead to significant social and political changes. Early Christianity’s exponential rise during its gestation period from 30 to 300 A.D. has been traced to its superior demography (fertility, mortality and female sex ratio), which maintained a rate of growth similar to contemporary Mormonism: 40 percent per decade. For Christians, this led to a jump from 40 converts to 6 million inside three centuries. (Stark 1996) Christianity became the religion of an empire and a continent. In the United States, conservative sects increased their share of white Protestantism from roughly a third to two-thirds during the twentieth century – largely on the back of higher fertility. On the other hand, sects like the Shakers and Cathars, which permitted entry only through conversion, rapidly faded from the scene. Demographic religious revival is a medium and long-term phenomenon, but awareness of shifting population composition can lead to political soul-searching and instability well before the full impact of demographic change takes place. This is clear in ethnically-tense societies like Israel, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Lebanon, Cote D’Ivoire or Assam.[32]

Dr. Steve Turley wrote:

According to University of London scholar Eric Kaufmann’s detailed study on global demographic trends, we are in the early stages of nothing less than a demographic revolution. In Kaufmann’s words, "religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world." There is a significant demographic deficit between secularists and conservative religionists. For example, in the U.S., while self-identified non-religionist women averaged only 1.5 children per couple in 2002, conservative evangelical women averaged 2.5 children, representing a 28 percent fertility edge. Kaufmann notes that this demographic deficit has dramatic effects over time. In a population evenly divided, these numbers indicate that conservative evangelicals would increase from 50 to 62.5 percent of the population in a single generation. In two generations, their number would increase to 73.5 percent, and over the course of 200 years, they would represent 99.4 percent. The Amish and Mormons provide contemporary illustrations of the compound effect of endogamous growth. The Amish double in population every twenty years, and projections have the Amish numbering over a million in the U.S. and Canada in just a few decades. Since 1830, Mormon growth has averaged 40 percent per decade, which means that by 2080, there may be as many as 267 million Mormons in the world, making them by 2100 anywhere from one to six percent of the world’s population.

In Europe, immigration is making the continent more religiously conservative, not less; in fact, London and Paris are some of the most religiously dense areas within their respective populations. In Britain, for example, Ultra-Orthodox or Haredi Jews constitute only 17 percent of the Jewish population but account for 75 percent of Jewish births. And in Israel, Haredi schoolchildren have gone from comprising a few percent to nearly a third of all Jewish pupils in a matter of five decades, and are poised to represent the majority of the Jewish population by 2050. Since 1970, charismatic Christians in Europe have expanded steadily at a rate of 4 percent per year, in step with Muslim growth. Currently, Laestadian Lutherans in Finland and Holland’s Orthodox Calvinists have a fertility advantage over their wider secular populations of 4:1 and 2:1 respectively.

In contrast, Kaufmann’s data projects that secularists, who consistently exemplify a low fertility rate of around 1.5 (significantly below the replacement level of 2.1), will begin a steady decline after 2030 to a mere 14 to 15 percent of the American population. Similar projections apply to Europe as well. Kaufmann thus appears to have identified what he calls "the soft underbelly of secularism," namely, demography. This is because secular liberalism entails its own “demographic contradiction,” the affirmation of the sovereign individual devoid of the restraints of classical moral structures necessitates the freedom not to reproduce. The link between sex and procreation having been broken, modernist reproduction translates into mere personal preference. It thus turns out that the radical individualism so celebrated and revered by contemporary secular propagandists is in fact the agent by which their ideology implodes.[33]

Morale of the atheist movement

See also: Morale of the atheist movement and Atheists and the endurance of religion

Groups/organizations which unsuccessfully meet challenges and/or face future challenges which they believe they cannot successfully overcome, often: are dispirited; experience infighting; have less respect for each other; distance themselves from one another; have members who are less likely to take the initiative; become pessimistic and are also far less effective.[34]

At this time, the morale of dying/dead atheist movement is extremely low (See: Morale of the atheist movement).

In short, the atheist movement is experiencing battle fatigue (see: The atheist movement and battle fatigue).

Eric Kaufmann wrote in 2010:

Worldwide, the march of religion can probably only be reversed by a renewed, self-aware secularism. Today, it appears exhausted and lacking in confidence... Secularism's greatest triumphs owe less to science than to popular social movements like nationalism, socialism and 1960s anarchist-liberalism. Ironically, secularism's demographic deficit means that it will probably only succeed in the twenty-first century if it can create a secular form of 'religious' enthusiasm.[35]

At this point, the following is quite true: atheist castle walls have been reduced to rubble; the morale of the dead/dying atheist movement is nearly nonexistent and the last major stronghold of atheism is starting to be overrun (see: Growth of Christianity in China).

The Chinese atheist stronghold is coming down

See also: China and atheism and Growth of Christianity in China

China has the largest atheist population in the world.[36]

China has the world's largest atheist population.[37][38]

East Asia contains about 25 percent of the world’s population. China’s population represents 20 percent of the people on earth.[39]

Razib Khan points out in Discover Magazine, "most secular nations in the world are those of East Asia, in particular what are often termed “Confucian societies.” It is likely therefore that the majority of the world’s atheists are actually East Asian."[40] See: Asian atheism and Global atheism

On November 1, 2014, an article in The Economist entitled Cracks in the atheist edifice declared:

Officials are untroubled by the clash between the city’s famously freewheeling capitalism and the Communist Party’s ideology, yet still see religion and its symbols as affronts to the party’s atheism...

Yang Fenggang of Purdue University, in Indiana, says the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980. He reckons that on current trends there will be 250m Christians by around 2030, making China’s Christian population the largest in the world. Mr. Yang says this speed of growth is similar to that seen in fourth-century Rome just before the conversion of Constantine, which paved the way for Christianity to become the religion of his empire.[41]

On April 19, 2014 The Telegraph published a story on the growth of Christianity in China which stated:

The number of Christians in Communist China is growing so steadily that it by 2030 it could have more churchgoers than America....

Officially, the People's Republic of China is an atheist country but that is changing fast as many of its 1.3 billion citizens seek meaning and spiritual comfort that neither communism nor capitalism seem to have supplied.

Christian congregations in particular have skyrocketed since churches began reopening when Chairman Mao's death in 1976 signalled the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Less than four decades later, some believe China is now poised to become not just the world's number one economy but also its most numerous Christian nation....

China's Protestant community, which had just one million members in 1949, has already overtaken those of countries more commonly associated with an evangelical boom. In 2010 there were more than 58 million Protestants in China compared to 40 million in Brazil and 36 million in South Africa, according to the Pew Research Centre's Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Prof Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, believes that number will swell to around 160 million by 2025. That would likely put China ahead even of the United States, which had around 159 million Protestants in 2010 but whose congregations are in decline.

By 2030, China's total Christian population, including Catholics, would exceed 247 million, placing it above Mexico, Brazil and the United States as the largest Christian congregation in the world, he predicted.

"Mao thought he could eliminate religion. He thought he had accomplished this," Prof Yang said. "It's ironic – they didn't. They actually failed completely."[42]

In 2019, the Financial Times reported: "Chinese tourism to Israel grew 1,600 per cent from 2009 to 2017, according to the tourism ministry, and many are believed to be Christians."[43]

The Tiananmen Square massacre fueled a big rise in Chinese interest in Christianity.[44]

The Telegraph reported on December 19, 2012:

The notice, apparently issued in May 2011 by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, suggests ongoing misgivings among senior leaders that religion, and in particular Christianity, poses a direct challenge to the ruling party.

Bob Fu, the founder of ChinaAid, the group which obtained and published the document, said the directive was proof China's central government was "directing a national crackdown against religious freedom especially targeting Christianity [in universities]".

Mr Fu claimed the document also indicated "panic" among Chinese intellectuals about the "rapid" growth of [China's] underground Christian population".

An official from the propaganda department of the State Council said they were unable to immediately comment on whether the document was genuine. But posts on the websites of several Chinese universities appear to confirm the leaked document's existence....

Yet despite government controls, the number of Christians in China has rocketed since the 1980s with many worshipping in illegal "house churches" which are subject to sporadic crackdowns. Some estimates suggest there are now as many as 130 million practicing Christians in China.[45]

Yang Fenggang of Purdue University, in Indiana, says the Christian church in China has grown by an average of 10% a year since 1980. He reckons that on current trends there will be 250m Christians by around 2030, making China's Christian population the largest in the world.[46]

A January 2011 news article entitled Third Church' China's New Face of Christianity indicated:

Christianity in China began decades ago in the countryside, but today, a dramatic shift is happening.

Young professionals in big cities like Beijing and Shanghai are changing the face of Chinese Christianity, as faith moves from rural to more urban areas.

On a recent Wednesday evening, a group of men and women in their late 20s met in an apartment not too far from the city center to discuss how to thrive in their rapidly changing nation.

Those who attended are members of China's new privileged class -- highly educated, cosmopolitan, middle or even upper class of urban professionals. And they're all Christians.

"We've never had it so good in China today," Jia Li Tian, a member of the group, told CBN News. "But there's more to life that just money and materialism."...

Although Christianity continues to grow in China's countryside, experts say it's in big cities like Beijing where the church is growing fastest.

"Whereas the rural church was not able to have an impact on society as a whole, the 'Third Church' in the cities is able to do that because they are comprised of leaders who can have an impact," Peter explained. "[They are] businessmen, government officials, professors, leaders in engineering, every aspect of life...

The Chinese government has always maintained a tight grip on religion. Torture, arrests, imprisonment, and beatings of Christians are still practiced in the country.

But in recent years, authorities have made positive overtures towards house church leaders -- especially those in urban areas.[47]

Justin Wood wrote:

Ten thousand Chinese become Christians each day, according to a stunning report by ...veteran correspondent John Allen, and 200 million Chinese may comprise the world's largest concentration of Christians by mid-century, and the largest missionary force in history...

I suspect that even the most enthusiastic accounts err on the downside, and that Christianity will have become a Sino-centric religion two generations from now. China may be for the 21st century what Europe was during the 8th-11th centuries, and America has been during the past 200 years: the natural ground for mass evangelization. If this occurs, the world will change beyond our capacity to recognize it...

China, devoured by hunger so many times in its history, now feels a spiritual hunger beneath the neon exterior of its suddenly great cities. Four hundred million Chinese on the prosperous coast have moved from poverty to affluence in a single generation, and 10 million to 15 million new migrants come from the countryside each year, the greatest movement of people in history. Despite a government stance that hovers somewhere between discouragement and persecution, more than 100 million of them have embraced a faith that regards this life as mere preparation for the next world. Given the immense effort the Chinese have devoted to achieving a tolerable life in the present world, this may seem anomalous. On the contrary: it is the great migration of peoples that prepares the ground for Christianity, just as it did during the barbarian invasions of Europe during the Middle Ages. [48]

To see the magnitude of the explosive growth of Christianity in China, examine this graph about the growth of Christianity in China in a DW news story about Chinese Christianity (DW is a mainstream news outlet in Germany).

Tiananmen Square massacre helped fuel an explosive growth of Christianity in China

See also: East Asia and global desecularization

The Tiananmen Square massacre fueled a big rise in Chinese interest in Christianity.[49]

Desecularization in China is partly occurring due to Christianity's association with equality, individual freedom and democracy and the growth of Christianity in China (see: Asian atheism).[50] See also: Growth of Christianity in China

Hong Kong Christians are playing a key role in Hong Kong protests

Joshua Wong, a Christian, is commonly called the face of the Hong Kong Protest movement.

Hong Kong Christians are playing a significant role in the Hong Kong protests movement:

References

  1. Global Study: Atheists in Decline, Only 1.8% of World Population by 2020
  2. Investigating atheism: Marxism. University of Cambridge (2008). Retrieved on July 17, 2014. “The most notable spread of atheism was achieved through the success of the 1917 Russian Revolution, which brought the Marxist-Leninists to power. For the first time in history, atheism thus became the official ideology of a state.”
  3. Global Study: Atheists in Decline, Only 1.8% of World Population by 2020
  4. 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious, Tuesday, April 30, 2013
  5. Shall the religious inherit the earth? by Eric Kaufmann
  6. Secularism, Fundamentalism or Catholicism? The Religious Composition of the United States to 2043, Journal for the Sientific Study of Religion, vol. 49, no. 2 (June) 2010, Vegard Skirbekk and Anne Goujon,
  7. Secularism, Fundamentalism or Catholicism? The Religious Composition of the United States to 2043, Journal for the Sientific Study of Religion, vol. 49, no. 2 (June) 2010, Vegard Skirbekk and Anne Goujon,
  8. Hout, Michael; Smith, Tom (March 2015). "Fewer Americans Affiliate with Organized Religions, Belief and Practice Unchanged: Key Findings from the 2014 General Social Survey" (PDF). General Social Survey. NORC
  9. Hout, Michael; Smith, Tom (March 2015). "Fewer Americans Affiliate with Organized Religions, Belief and Practice Unchanged: Key Findings from the 2014 General Social Survey" (PDF). General Social Survey. NORC
  10. Atheism is Rising, But…, American Interest
  11. Philosophy, Science and the God Debate
  12. William Lane Craig Puts the Fear of God in Atheists, video clip of the William Lane Craig vs. Sam Harris debate
  13. The God Debate II: Harris vs. Craig, University of Notre Dame YouTube channel
  14. William Lane Craig’s Debates (Reviews)
  15. Delaying Action
  16. Berlinerblau, Jacques (February 4, 2011). "Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast". The Chronicle of Higher Education/Brainstorm blog. Retrieved on May 29, 2015.
  17. Open Questions: Diverse Thinkers Discuss God, Religion, and Faith by Luís F. Rodrigues, page 201
  18. Bahsen at the Stein debate by John Frame
  19. Conservapedia atheism articles
  20. David Silverman - How the Mighty Get Back Up
  21. Shall the religious inherit the earth? - Eric Kaufmann
  22. What scares the new atheists by John Gray, The Guardian, March 3, 2016
  23. 24.0 24.1 Atheist Activists Lament a Movement in “Shambles” by David Klinghoffer
  24. The Atheist Disillusionment by PZ Myers, September 27, 2014
  25. Even atheists bash 'Reason Rally'
  26. Berlinerblau, Jacques (February 4, 2011). "Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast". The Chronicle of Higher Education/Brainstorm blog. Retrieved on May 29, 2015.
  27. Whoever I Don’t Like Is Ruining the Atheist Movement by Jeremiah Traeger
  28. 29.0 29.1 Reasonably Controversial: How the Regressive Left Is Killing the Atheist Movement by David Smalley
  29. #ReasonRally Crash n burn. Thanks SJWs! by Thunderf00t
  30. Why conservative churches are still growing
  31. Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century by Eric Kaufmann, Belfer Center, Harvard University/Birkbeck College, University of London (PDF)
  32. (source: Text below the YouTube video Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth and the text was written by Dr. Steven Turley).
  33. Confidence in teams and organisations, Center For Confidence and well-being]
  34. Shall the religious inherit the earth? - Eric Kaufmann
  35. Top 50 Countries With Highest Proportion of Atheists / Agnostics (Zuckerman, 2005)
  36. A surprising map of where the world’s atheists live, Washington Post By Max Fisher and Caitlin Dewey May 23, 2013
  37. The Growth of Christianity in East Asia
  38. Most atheists are not white & other non-fairy tales, Discover magazine
  39. Cracks in the atheist edifice, The Economist, November 1, 2014
  40. China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years
  41. Christian pilgrims fuel Holy Land tourism boom, Financial Times, 2019
  42. Militant atheists caused a massive and explosive growth of Christianity
  43. Chinese universities urged to fight back against foreign religion, The Telegraph, 2012
  44. Cracks in the atheist edifice, The Economist, November 1, 2014
  45. Third Church' China's New Face of Christianity, January 2011 CBN News article
  46. Christianity Finds a Fulcrum in Asia by Justin Wood
  47. Militant atheists caused a massive and explosive growth of Christianity
  48. The rise of Christianity in Asia by Masako Fukui, Australian Broadcasting Corporation's website RN