Chapter 2: Every Mighty Mild Seventies Child Beats Me
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't want a camel anywhere near my suit. Is this of governmental importance or have you just had too much caffeine?"
"I don't know, but it looks very important from where I'm standing."
In a landmark study published this month in the journal Politics and Religion by Cambridge University Press, political scientist Steve Kette
By: Atheism Daily
Published: May 23, 2025
In a landmark study published this month in the journal Politics and Religion by Cambridge University Press, political scientist Steve Kettell offers a comprehensive analysis of the trajectory of New Atheism in the United States. Titled “Whatever happened to new atheism? The rise and fall of the U.S. atheist movement,” Kettell’s research provides a nuanced look at the movement’s meteoric rise, its innovative use of internet technology, its resilience in a hostile cultural environment, and the internal conflicts that ultimately led to its decline. The findings have significant implications for the broader atheist movement and the cultural landscape of secularism in America.
The Rise of New Atheism: A Digital Revolution
Kettell’s study traces the origins of New Atheism to the early 2000s, a period marked by the publication of influential books such as Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion,” Sam Harris’ “The End of Faith,” and Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great.” These works, along with others, catalyzed a new wave of outspoken atheism that challenged religious dogma and promoted rational, evidence-based thinking. What set New Atheism apart from earlier secular movements was its embrace of internet technology. Online forums, blogs, YouTube channels, and social media platforms became vital tools for organizing, debating, and spreading atheist ideas.
Kettell highlights how the internet allowed atheists—often isolated in religiously conservative communities—to find solidarity, share resources, and build a sense of collective identity. The digital sphere enabled rapid mobilization and the creation of a vibrant, decentralized movement that could bypass traditional gatekeepers in media and academia. This technological edge was crucial in allowing New Atheism to thrive, even as it faced significant opposition from religious groups and mainstream culture.
Thriving in a Hostile Environment
One of the study’s most compelling findings is the movement’s ability to flourish in a society where atheism is often stigmatized. Kettell documents how New Atheists used facts, logic, and scientific reasoning to counter religious criticism and challenge the privileged status of faith in public discourse. The movement’s leaders and supporters were unapologetic in their advocacy for secularism, church-state separation, and freedom of thought. This assertiveness resonated with many Americans who felt marginalized by the dominance of religion in politics and culture.
Kettell also notes that New Atheism’s confrontational style—while effective in drawing attention—sometimes alienated potential allies. Nevertheless, the movement succeeded in bringing atheism into the mainstream conversation and inspiring a new generation of secular activists.
Internal Conflicts and the Decline of New Atheism
Despite its early successes, Kettell’s research reveals that New Atheism was ultimately undone by internal conflicts and the rise of identity politics. As the movement grew, it attracted a diverse array of participants with differing priorities and perspectives. Debates over issues such as feminism, social justice, and the role of religion in society led to factionalism and infighting. Some prominent figures were accused of intolerance or exclusion, while others sought to broaden the movement’s focus beyond criticism of religion.
Kettell argues that these internal divisions weakened the movement’s cohesion and made it vulnerable to external criticism. The fragmentation of New Atheism serves as a cautionary tale about the challenges of maintaining unity in a diverse social movement. However, Kettell also suggests that the debates sparked by New Atheism have had a lasting impact, encouraging greater reflection on the intersection of secularism, social justice, and cultural change.
Significance for the Broader Atheist Movement
The decline of New Atheism does not signal the end of secular activism in the United States. Kettell’s study emphasizes that the movement’s legacy endures in the form of increased visibility for atheists, greater acceptance of secular identities, and ongoing debates about the role of religion in public life. The lessons learned from New Atheism’s rise and fall can inform future efforts to build inclusive, resilient communities that champion reason, evidence, and human rights.
From a pro-Atheism perspective, Kettell’s findings underscore the importance of facts and logic in advancing secular causes. While critics have accused New Atheism of being strident or divisive, the movement’s commitment to rational discourse and critical inquiry remains a vital counterbalance to religious dogma. The study demonstrates that, even in the face of adversity, atheists can organize, advocate, and effect meaningful change.
Kettell’s analysis of New Atheism offers valuable insights into the opportunities and pitfalls facing secular movements in the 21st century. By understanding the factors that contributed to both the rise and decline of New Atheism, activists and scholars can better navigate the complexities of identity, technology, and social change. The full study is available at Cambridge University Press.
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Before there was GamerGate, the "social justice" takeover of gaming, there was ElevatorGate, the "social justice" takeover of atheism. Which is testament to the fact that any organization or movement is vulnerable to invasion and hostle takeover by fundamentalist ideological lunatics.
Which history has proven – from journals publishing nonsense about brine shrimp to Disney burning billions turning the world's most popular boy brands into worthless princess brands – time and time again.
If you let them in the door, your organization dies. New Atheism was both the canary in the coalmine and the template for everything to come.
Trump and the first lady suffered an embarrassing moment when the escalator came to an abrupt stop as the couple stepped on ahead of the pre
Leftists: We run the UN.
Leftists: We use it to try and kill a world leader.
Leftists: He defunds us?!
Leftists: How dare he! Doesn't he realise we only want peace?!!!
You are a proud atheist in the emerging New Atheist movement attending one of the most impactful and energized conferences in your community
By: Thomas Sheedy
Published: Jun 3, 2021
You are a proud atheist in the emerging New Atheist movement attending one of the most impactful and energized conferences in your community. In June of 2011, you are in Dublin, Ireland, attending the World Atheist Convention, an event celebrating atheism, science advocacy, and secularism with some of the most famous freethinkers of the time. You enjoy the attendees and speakers so much that you stay up in conversation at the hotel bar until four in the morning. You see an attractive speaker retiring for the night, and you follow them to an elevator to ask them if they would like to join you for a cup of coffee. The speaker declines. You then go to your hotel room, alone. Afterward, the speaker that you were attracted to goes online to decry what you did. The speaker, and other extremists, denounce the New Atheist movement, a healthy and growing movement, as sexist. What you did becomes a catalyst for extremists to infiltrate and destroy the New Atheist movement.
This is not a hypothetical scenario; this happened. Starting in the early 2010s, extremist infiltrators painted the New Atheist movement as sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, and “islamophobic.” Much of the success of these infiltrators was fueled by feminist Rebecca Watson declining a polite request for “coffee” in an elevator. Now, ten years after “Elevatorgate,” the New Atheist movement has lost influence and has become a ghost of its former self.
A few weeks after the incident, Watson uploaded a video on YouTube describing what happened, stating:
“… All of you except for the one man who didn’t grasp, I think, what I was saying on the panel, because, at the bar later that night — actually at four in the morning, we were at the hotel bar, four a.m. I said, I’ve had enough guys, I’m exhausted, going to bed, so I walked to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more, would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?” Um, just a word to the wise here, guys, don’t do that. I don’t really know how else to explain that this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I’ll lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at four a.m., in a hotel elevator with you, just you. I, don’t invite me back to your hotel room right after I’ve finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.”
The idea that the New Atheist movement was systemically sexist is a blatant lie. No one denies that individual acts of sexual harassment occurred in the atheist community. Regarding Elevatorgate, it is wrong for someone to continue to express sexual interest in you after you have made it clear that you are not sexually interested in them. However, the person interested in Watson immediately accepted her denial, did not continue to express interest in her, and proceeded to his hotel room alone. Sexism was not at fault; instead, at most, maybe he misunderstood what she said. Claims like the ones these infiltrators have made over the years only hinder our community, a community that so many of us fought to develop. If anything, these infiltrators downplayed the problems of real systemic sexism that still exists in other parts of the world, as explained by Richard Dawkins in a sarcastic response to Watson, in what became known as the “Dear Muslima letter:.’’
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you? Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative. Your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one; she calls herself Skep” chick,” and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course, she said no, and of course, he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so . . .
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake, grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
To Richard’s point, he’s right! To add to his remarks, atheist circles downplayed the injustices of the Islamic world. Many of the extremist infiltrators have silenced or critiqued criticism of Islam by non-woke atheists. Those extremist infiltrators, those who called themselves atheists and secularists, defended religion in the name of their new religion: Critical Social Justice. I know this because I have seen it myself. The topic of Islam was not the only topic affected by the extremist infiltrators. After their success in taking over the movement five years later, several groups of atheists, the majority of the movement’s supporters, men and women alike, were seen as pariahs at atheist conferences.
Bill Maher type Liberals
Secular Libertarians and Conservatives
Ex Muslims
Those accused of harassment without evidence
Anyone who questioned the Atheism+ narrative (criticism was constantly conflated with harassment and ‘cyberstalking’)
Women who disagreed with radical feminists (they were charged with ‘parroting misogynistic thought’ and ‘internalized misogyny’)
In a short span of five years, from 2011 to 2016, movement employees, executives, and board members allowed extremists into their organizations to guide them to see the “sexism” that they did not know existed in their organizations. In 2012, extremist infiltrators pressured several atheist movement leaders to condemn the many ordinary atheists who didn’t believe in the false narrative of systemic sexism in the movement, disguised as “Hate Directed at Women.” People like Watson and other infiltrators wore special goggles to see alleged hatred that normal people could not notice. The atheist movement paid the price in 2016 at the second Reason Rally, where instead of 30,000 atheists in the rain like the first Rally four years prior, we likely had only between five hundred to almost a few thousand, all because of weakness; wokeness in the atheist movement that began with Elevatorgate.
Unlike other organizations who tolerated such infiltration and subversion of the movement, Atheists for Liberty will not make the same mistake. It is because of the weakening of the movement that Atheists for Liberty exist in the first place!
Over the past eight years, I have seen:
Millions of dollars once belonging to world-renowned atheist organizations were lost.
Conferences, some once having numbers in the hundreds, if not thousands, dead.
Some of the most horrific and superstitious belief systems defended in the name of wokeness
Organizers of events facing real harassment because they dared to have “politically incorrect” speakers, speakers who were seen as ordinary, non-sexist, New Atheist types just a few years prior
The movement’s professionalism fade away in the name of this infiltration
Ex Muslims disregarded by movement organizers in the United States
A friend’s life, once respected as a bold, national figure in the movement, is destroyed by false allegations lobbed against him. He nearly committed suicide.
And as of 2021, I am only 23…
Ten years ago, we allowed an ideology to consume a movement that could have changed the world.
Elevatorgate was one of the Borg-like origin points of modern wokeness. It is only together that we can rebuild what was lost and ensure that silly events like this one never hinder atheist activism again. This is what I am going to dedicate my life to.
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Sheedy is being exceedingly generous here where I will not. Let's be completely clear: we have literally no reason to think that Rebecca Watson's purported incident even actually happened. None. She provided no evidence, someone attempted to determine if elevator CCTV footage existed or could be accessed to corroborate the story but was bullied for not unquestioningly believing the claim. Watson herself lamely and conveniently claimed to be suffering prosopagnosia (face blindness), and both her and her acolytes called anyone who was, ahem, skeptical, about the claim in the absence of any evidence every istaphobe name under the sun. Eerily the same as bible-thumping preachers commanding you to believe or be condemned to eternal hellfire.
Which is suspicious for people purporting to be skeptics, particularly Watson who styled herself as the "Skepchick." Jussie Smollett's case had fewer holes.
It's the irreligious equivalent of First Corinthians:
1 Corinthians 15:6
After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.
This was the day Rebecca Watson, single-handedly lead the intersectional collapse of New Atheism and ushered in the first woke ideological takeover. Whether it was deliberate and calculated or accidental through her own stupidity and hubris is, by this point, irrelevant.
Queen Bey is known for her poise and seemingly effortless ability to keep her chill up with the most regal of English monarchs. She is unbothered. She is not amused.
And we saw that put to the test during Jay Z’s ass whuppin the event famously known as Elevatorgate. Elevatorgate not only reminds us how our culture of surveillance is farther reaching than just the entertainment-valued mass media, but also how security surveillance contributes to the production of entertainment mass media. And how individuals surveilling surveillance are active in this entire set-up.
So lemme lay out how we finna do this: Firsta all, we goan talk bout how Solange played host to the spirits of Ryu and ChungLi from Street Fighter when they be fuckin’ them cars up in the mini-game. She basically snatched Jay’s crusty edges the same way Nicki be coming for edges but wind up takin’ scalps because the force is strong in that fish.
And we goan talk about the way Bey just stood there like a British toothbrush-helmet havin’ ass palace guard.
Seconda all, we goan murrinate on how there’s cameras every muhfckn where you go and how Bey taught us to remain in charge at all times least we be revealed to not be perfect statuesque-ass goddesses like her (which everybody know that even tho we flawless, we still got flaws and all.) MOVING ON. We goan get into what YOU can do to keep that ass polished and out of trouble when nukkas eyes get digital, if you know what I mean…
Unbothered as an Englishman
I reference the English stereotype in this post a lot because, as Americans see it, the Victorian English(wo)men (at least if the American in question only knows about Victorian virtues) were more emotionally reserved than Americans at generally any point in our history. For reference, see here:
Bullets are whistling, shells are exploding, panicked soldiers dash here and there splattered with mud and blood, the air is thick with shouted commands and the rich stench of death! And yet our hero is smoking a pipe, sipping his tea, and doing theTimes Crossword Puzzle, for he is an Imperturbable Englishman.
–“Stiff Upper Lip”, TvTropes.com
If this don’t sound just like our Bey! While Solange was over here ringin the alarm, Beyoncé was like “nope. NOAP. NUUUUPPPPPEEEE.” She only moved her dress out of the way because she wasn’t about to pay for it if it were damaged. (Most outfits are rented by the celebrities, donchaknow?)
Now, this elevator ride is assumed to be a very private space in time. We rarely even think about the cameras when we ride up and down the shafts, let alone that someone is actively watching. As Solange did what she was doing, Bey remained complicit in the action. She just stood there. I like to think it was all a set up and she knew and everybody was in on the action, but that’s the 4-Loco in me. In reality, I think it’s more that Beyoncé is aware of how far-reaching her fame is and that security cameras aren’t unable to make their way out (how do you think we get those hilarious videos of Walmart parking lot shenanigans?) of the Closed Circuit TV systems.
Our world is like a giant eyeball that has the ability to look inside of itself. If you live in London, there are cameras on the streets. In most if not all commercial property and financial and government institutions, there are security cameras to record everything that goes on. Even where there are no “official cameras”, a person with a phone on their camera *cough*EVERYONE*cough* is just as able to take a selfie as they are to see Sharkeisha wrecking your shit.
Beyoncé is well aware of this and doesn’t compromise her image in the slightest. Were we with her and she explained her reasoning for not getting involved, we might have called her a conspiracy theorist at the time, but she was right: A person used a cellphone to snatch the video from a security camera feed and sent it to a prominent station that rips makes its millions from publicizing unfortunate celebrity occurrences.
Imagine if Beyoncé had thrown some bows. What would we have thought? Don’t answer. We would have criticized her for “doing such human activities.”
How to Channel Your Inner Bey and Keep Calm
While I wrote a post centered around Carey-calmness, Bey meditation should not be overlooked, especially with Elevatorgate in question. This is important because if you have an image or a personal brand that you present yourself under in public, and word gets out that you are another way in private… That’s your integrity at stake. You immediately look like a phony. If you have a business, it’s in jeopardy. If you work for someone, you’re in a real dangerous place. Here’s how to carry on even if you have to fake it.
First thing’s first: You truly have to be at peace. Even if you have to flare your nostrils to breathe extra deep to make sure you are keeping all of the good in and expelling all of the bad, actual calmness is the best way to fake calmness. It doesn’t matter if you can beat someone’s ass, you don’t have to prove it during an age where that shit will be uploaded on Youtube wirelessly over an 18G network.
Secondly, have presence. The fact that there are cameras around you at all times and you never know when they’re going off truly calls for you to step your game up. If you’re supposedly a fashion icon in the making and you decide to go to the mall to pick something up in sweatpants and some fashion blogger thinks it’s hilariously funny and tapes you from afar to post on their blog, can you imagine the uproar when the community (maybe you both have overlapping fans) discovers that it’s you?
Not saying you can never be comfortable, but you need to realize what is at stake here and make every choice accordingly. Personal example: I sometimes speak at schools. I hadn’t realized that kids love their cellphone cameras and will have any excuse to take them out—even against the teachers’ wishes. I literally had to be on my game and at my most dynamic in case I misspoke or rambled or said something off-topic and dumb (which I’m prone to do.) There are youtube videos I’m in that I don’t even know about. Hella sure there are facebook vids.
Pro-Tip: Stars fake authenticity all the time; now you can too!
Finally, feel free to disregard everything I’ve told you in this post. I can hear you asking now well, then why did you write it? The answer is simple: I was bored. Kidding, but seriously, as much as it pays to take caution, it also pays to take accountability. I was joking about disregarding everything completely, but I am serious about the accountability. Know what you’re doing and don’t try to fake it if you fuck up and get caught. Apologize or explain and move on with your life. It will take an entirely different kind of calmness to deal with reconciling from humiliation, but the calmness I talked about in step 1 is a great start.
