Word.ws English Dictionary

new atheism

new atheism noun: a form of atheism that promotes active opposition to religion, rather than toleration.

Noun

new atheism (uncountable)

  1. A form of atheism that promotes active opposition to religion, rather than toleration.
    • Although it had since become less influential, one geeky online subculture that started to move to the right and shared many characteristics of the contemporary alt-right was ‘new atheism’.2017, Angela Nagle, chapter 7, in Kill All Normies, Zero Books, →ISBN

Forms of new atheism

alternative formNew Atheism
alternative formGnu Atheism

Origin of new atheism

Coined by journalist Gary Wolf in 2006.

Questions about new atheism

What does new atheism mean?
New atheism means a form of atheism that promotes active opposition to religion, rather than toleration.
What part of speech is new atheism?
New atheism is a noun.

Words near new atheism in the dictionary

  1. New Antique
  2. New Aquitaine
  3. New Ash Green
  4. New Ashford
  5. New Asturias
  6. new atheism
  7. new atheist
  8. new atheists
  9. New Athos
  10. New Augusta
  11. new Australian

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: new atheism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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