The Scientific Deception Of The New Atheists by Mohammad Hijab

In sum, it is difficult to evidence that scientific arguments against God, the design argument, and religion, have failed to produce apostatising results for the cause of ‘New Atheism’ within Christian and Muslim faith communities in the English-speaking world, although they have generated doubts within religious people. A poll conducted on a YouTube channel hosted by a Muslim influencer, with 254,000 followers and specialising in ‘arguing the case for and educating people about Islam’, sought to assess the cause of doubt by stating: ‘The answers to these questions are obviously anonymous, so please answer as truthfully as possible. If you are a Muslim, what causes you to doubt your religion the most from the following options: Moral arguments against Islam, scientific arguments from Atheist apologists, arguments for the truth of another religion or weaknesses of the ‘Islamic civilisation’ (Hijab, n.d., Retrieved April 11, 2020). 7,200 people responded anonymously to the survey with 48% acknowledging morality as the leading cause for doubt, 21% scientific arguments from New Atheists, 7% for the arguments for the truth of another religion and 24% on the weaknesses of the Islamic ‘civilisation’.

This poll together with the research conducted on doubt by Chouhoud and others that were previously mentioned, confirms that New Atheist arguments have some influence on Muslim and Christian communities. Though the arguments are not historically novel, the forcefulness of the ‘science’ arguments in New Atheist books and debate material, comparative to other social commentaries, make the effect of these arguments isolatable and researchable. Moral and politically philosophical arguments, which were shown to cause more doubt and apostasy for Muslims and Christians in the English-speaking world, are not the exclusive intellectual domain of the New Atheists. Finally, it would seem that New Atheists are steadily losing traction and popularity among younger audiences. Richard Dawkins had an average point score of 100 on Google Trends in November 2006 (following publication of the God Delusion) dropping to a meagre 19 comparative points in 2019 after the publication of Outgrowing God. Considering these stats, it seems difficult to argue that New Atheism will have any lasting demographic effect on religiosity in the future.