The launch of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies \u201d\u201c which the founders have agreed to shorten to the abbreviated AHS \u201d\u201c is the latest in a series of pro-secular movements that have sprung up to oppose what they believe is a growing pandering towards religious groups.<\/p>\n
With scientists and rationalists celebrating the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth this year, the timing is more than apt. But the creation of this latest manifestation of atheism reveals a renaissance over the past three years for secular and humanist ideals that began with Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion and only recently manifested itself in the popular atheist bus campaign, in which double deckers carried the message: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”<\/p>\n
There was once a time when those ideals were, of course, commonplace. Two centuries ago, progressive intellectuals of the post-Enlightenment age were all too happy to predict the end of religion, that the triumph of science and reason would win out and that man would turn away from God. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, meanwhile, student atheist groups were a vibrant and influential part of university life. Thinking the battle had been won, they largely died out two decades ago .<\/p>\n
But, as religious conflict spreads once again throughout the world, throwing the Western world into a so-called clash of civilisations with radical Islam, the time is ripe, according to secularists, for a new religion \u201d\u201c a live-and-let-live brand of soft atheism.<\/p>\n