Brown, Neil The New Atheism has been a remarkable marketing phenomenon of the first decade of this century. The various authors obviously struck a modern chord in the developed world, where a steadily increasing number of people describe themselves as belonging to no religion. They would seem also to be a radically secular response in the West to the rise of militant Islam, especially since the World Trade Center attack in 2001.

Brown, Neil The Twentieth Century began with Nietzsche's cry, 'God is dead', ringing in its ears. Peter Conrad's chronicle, Modern Times, Modern Places, traces the playing out of that announcement in the literature and arts of the succeeding hundred years, where, with only a few exceptions, such as Schoenberg and Eliot, atheism prevailed, with the result, according to Conrad, that the 'sky from which God was evicted is now thickly layered with data, and satellite dishes relay its messages.' Conrad confidently (...) assumes that at the end of the century God is not only dead, but also buried, and that modern culture has forgotten the place of his burial. (shrink)