The 1990s and early 2000s saw the rise in the English-speaking world of the so-called New Atheists—strident thinkers like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris who saw religion not only as benighted and false, but as a source of evil. Although they had far fewer followers in the U.S. than in the UK, their American acolytes were often vocal and enthusiastic. Yet, their cultural cache and the popularity of their ideas has declined steeply over the past decade. Stefani McDade examines qualitative and quantitative data to detect the newer trends among nonbelievers:

In contrast to activist atheists, a more temperate type of atheist thinker seems to have emerged over the past five years or so, explains Jim Stump. Stump is vice president of programs for Biologos, a Christian think tank in the U.S. . . . Instead of frontal attacks on religion as a “cancer” to society, he says, this “new wave” is more subtle. Whereas New Atheists say religion is dangerous “and we need to go out and combat it,” Stump said, some of these dispassionate atheists simply dismiss religion as “irrelevant.”

“There’s kind of a second wave of books that are coming out by people who are atheists and have no love of religion—but their approach is different,” Stump said. The 2011 bestseller Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, On the Origin of Time by Thomas Hertog, and many similar books offer naturalistic origin stories for humankind that account for the development of morality and religion. While these temperate atheist authors may still be “anti-religion,” they are more likely to acknowledge reasons why so many people today hold to religious worldviews.

Some of the best apologists for Christian humanism today aren’t even Christian. That’s because, along with the decline of “angry” activist atheists and the rise of “temperate” atheists has come the advent of what we might call “amicable” atheists. Most of them do not believe in God, but, unlike the temperate atheists, they are publicly pro-religion and may even advocate for Christianity’s benefits for society.

For instance, Jonathan Haidt, author of the best-selling book The Righteous Mind, is a moral psychologist who considers himself an atheist but believes religion is good for humankind. In an interview for the Atlantic in 2020, Haidt said he “believes that religion is part of human nature, is generally a good part of human nature, and an essential part of who we are and how we became a civilized species.” He also shares a critical commonality with Christians: believing there is a “God-shaped hole in everyone’s heart” that must be filled.

On the same day the cease-fire went into effect along the Israel-Lebanon border, rebel forces launched an unexpected offensive, and within a few days captured much of Aleppo. This lightening advance originated in the northwestern part of the country, which has been relatively quiet over the past four years, since Bashar al-Assad effectively gave up on restoring control over the remaining rebel enclaves in the area. The fighting comes at an inopportune moment for the powers that Damascus has called on for help in the past: Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and Hizballah has been shattered.

But the situation is extremely complex. David Wurmser points to the dangers that lie ahead:

The desolation wrought on Hizballah by Israel, and the humiliation inflicted on Iran, has not only left the Iranian axis exposed to Israeli power and further withering. It has altered the strategic tectonics of the Middle East. The story is not just Iran anymore. The region is showing the first signs of tremendous geopolitical change. And the plates are beginning to move.

The removal of the religious-totalitarian tyranny of the Iranian regime remains the greatest strategic imperative in the region for the United States and its allies, foremost among whom stands Israel. . . . However, as Iran’s regime descends into the graveyard of history, it is important not to neglect the emergence of other, new threats. navigating the new reality taking shape.

The retreat of the Syrian Assad regime from Aleppo in the face of Turkish-backed, partly Islamist rebels made from remnants of Islamic State is an early skirmish in this new strategic reality. Aleppo is falling to the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS—a descendant of Nusra Front led by Abu Mohammed al-Julani, himself a graduate of al-Qaeda’s system and cobbled together of IS elements. Behind this force is the power of nearby Turkey.