In addition to their own jarring polemics and personal misfires, the New Atheists failed to realize that religion, especially Christianity, was the proverbial branch upon which they were sitting. For example, the freedom of expression depends on a number of assumptions, that there is objective truth, that it can be discovered, that it is accessible to people regardless of race or class, that belief should be free instead of coerced, that people have innate value, and that because of this value they should not be silenced. Every one of these ideas assumes the kind of world described in the Bible and mediated across centuries of Christian thought. Not one of these assumptions can be grounded in a purposeless world that is the product of only natural causes and processes.  

Though it’s not always clear when a movement is over, there are many indicators that suggest this is the case of the “New Atheism,” a cultural wave that rose in the 2000s and aggressively attacked religion in the guise of scientific rationalism. Despite the name, the New Atheism wasn’t really new, at least not in the sense of presenting new arguments. Instead, leveraging the global shock of 9/11, New Atheists pushed an anti-religious mood along with a vision of a society free from the cobwebs of religion, defined by scientific inquiry, free speech, and a morality not built on God or religious traditions. 
In 1996, prominent New Atheist Richard Dawkins articulated this mood in his acceptance speech for the “Humanist of the Year” Award: “I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils,” he said, “comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.” There was a commercial aspect to the New Atheism, with bumper stickers and T-shirts carrying well-worn slogans, such as one coined by Victor Stenger: “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”  
Though, at the time, it grew into somewhat of a cultural force and platformed a group of minor celebrities, the New Atheism now seems to have run out of steam. Divided by progressive politics and haunted by the obnoxious tone of many of its own founders, the movement is being devoured by other ideologies. Concepts like freedom of expression, scientific realism, and morality without God have all met their antitheses, often in clashes featuring the New Atheists themselves.  
One watershed moment was a conflict over the role of science. Just last year, the American Humanist Association revoked Richard Dawkins’ “Humanist of the Year” award for his long history of offensive tweets. For example, Dawkins told women who experience sexual harassment to “stop whining” and parents of babies with Down syndrome to “abort and try again.”
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The overwhelming need for courageous truth-tellers has always been with us, since lies are everywhere and at all times found. Plenty of champions for truth could be mentioned here. Let me feature just some. The Psalmist put it this way: “I have chosen the way of truth” (Psalm 119:30). Plenty of proverbs speak to this, such as Proverbs 13:5: “The righteous hates falsehood” and Proverbs 29:27: “The righteous detest the dishonest.” So too Jesus: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

I hate to break it to you, but the time when Christians play games is over. The time for trivial pursuits is long over. The time for just trying to be ‘nice’ and ‘winsome’ and not rock the boat is well past its use-by date. Instead we are in desperate need of committed disciples of Jesus Christ to affirm truth – regardless of the reaction.
Of course the overwhelming need for courageous truth-tellers has always been with us, since lies are everywhere and at all times found. Plenty of champions for truth could be mentioned here. Let me feature just some. The Psalmist put it this way: “I have chosen the way of truth” (Psalm 119:30).
Plenty of proverbs speak to this, such as Proverbs 13:5: “The righteous hates falsehood” and Proverbs 29:27: “The righteous detest the dishonest.” So too Jesus: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
And again: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
A long line of more recent truth proponents could also be mentioned, such as:
“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.” G. K. Chesterton
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Aldous Huxley
“People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.” Malcolm Muggeridge
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” George Orwell
But fear of telling truth is an ever-present danger. One example of a spineless wonder who is so utterly fearful and paralysed by the woke mobs can be mentioned. Recently the uber-woke New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern stepped down. That was great news, but many of us wondered if her replacement would be any better. Well, now we know. Consider this short news item:
New Zealand’s new prime minister was left struggling for words at a news conference after a reporter asked him to define the term “woman”. Chris Hipkins, who took over after Jacinda Ardern’s resignation, was asked to explain how he and his government define the word. The politician appeared to need some time to think before giving his answer.
“Um… to be honest that question has come slightly out of left field for me,” Mr Hipkins replied. “Well biology, sex, gender. Um.” He then paused again before saying: “People define themselves, people define their own genders.” When pressed further Mr Hipkins said “people identify for themselves”. https://news.sky.com/story/new-zealand-pm-chris-hipkins-stumbles-when-asked-to-define-woman-12849593
He actually said this when the question was repeated: “It is not something that I have a preformulated answer on”. Good grief, what a useless wonder. If that is too hard for him to figure out, he should not be trying to run an entire nation. He needs to go back to kindergarten and learn a few basics about life.
Talk about being a mindless woke zombie. This is the madness of living a life of lies. BTW, Hipkins was married (to a WOMAN) for two years (but is now separated), and has two children. But he is totally clueless as to what a woman is. Maybe that is why they are separated! And maybe that is why the world is going to hell so fast with utter nincompoops like him running things.
Perhaps I can offer one more example. Someone commented on my site recently that as Christians we might be “rude” if we call people by their actual pronouns. I replied:
I and others just spent some time here trying to make the case that the most loving thing we can do for others is tell them the truth, and that allowing people to live in delusion, lies and deception is not only unloving, but sinful. So I am not at all worried about being “rude” in this case. I AM worried about people destroying themselves because we might be too afraid to speak much-needed truth to them.
So many have had to stand for truth even though it has been so very costly. Consider Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Writing from Moscow on February 12, 1974, just before he was exiled, he penned a short piece called “Live Not By Lies.” If that sounds vaguely familiar, it should. Rod Dreher used it as the title of his exceptionally important 2020 book. See my review of it here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2020/12/30/a-review-of-live-not-by-lies-by-rod-dreher/
The entire essay by Solzhenitsyn is well worth reading, but here are a few choice quotes:
Things have almost reached rock-bottom. A universal spiritual death has already touched us all and physical death will soon flare up and consume us and our children. But, as before, we still smile in a cowardly fashion and mumble with our tongues tied.
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This is the real stumbling block in Christianity. It is here that Jews, Muslims, Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many of those who feel the difficulties concerning the virgin birth, the miracles, the atonement, and the resurrection have come to grief. It is from misbelief, or at least inadequate belief, about the Incarnation that difficulties at other points in the gospel story usually spring. But once the Incarnation is grasped as a reality, these other difficulties dissolve.

The supreme mystery with which the gospel confronts us… lies not in the Good Friday message of atonement, nor in the Easter message of resurrection, but in the Christmas message of Incarnation. The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man — that the second person of the Godhead became the “second man” (1 Cor 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that he took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as he was human.
Here are two mysteries for the price of one — the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. “The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child.
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