Imagine No Religion: How the New Atheist Movement Died
Interview with Bill Ligertwood
Bill Ligertwood was one of the largest organizers of atheist conferences in the world. He and his wife organized and managed the INR (Imagine No Religion) conferences, which took place in Canada.
Bill and I spoke about the demise of the New Atheist movement—the insane and baseless sexual accusations against him, the boycotters who wouldn’t attend because there weren’t enough black speakers, the individuals who told him they’d protest because Dawkins, Shermer, Harris, and myself were speaking, and the general insanity that overtook organized atheism.
Apart from atheism, we also discussed recent events in Canada, like Canada becoming the 51st US State (sorry, New Zealand!), Trump’s proposed tariffs, the trucker protests, trans issues, and US-Canada relations. Canada, like the rest of the Anglosphere, is around two years behind the US in the culture war. In other words, the crazies are still ascendant.
My opinion is that the new atheist movement imploded because so many of its participants were only interested in it insofar as they could use it as a cudgel against Christianity. They wanted to parrot atheist apologetics at their parents who forced them to go to Sunday school. When Christianity was sufficiently delegitimized, they went to the trough of woke and ate it all up because they never cared about rational thought in the first place. They used atheism as a moral/political tool rather than a rational one.
Me and many of my friends left the Humanist Atheist group in Vancouver, Canada when they went all woke and began saying that men could be women. Some of us were scientists and understand XX and XY and not going to accept men being in women's sports, washrooms with little girls or other female safe spaces. There was a division so we left.