300 years, yet atheism has not grown into a viable movement | Bart Campolo

[Whateverist]

Why does simple disbelief require a "movement," anyway?  All that's actually needed is to protect the rights of everyone, believers and non-believers alike, so that one's worldview can be expressed without negative consequences, and so that the laws of the land neither favour nor disfavour people on the basis of belief.

What you're espousing is secularism i.e. separation of church and state, etc. That's great but it doesn't address some problems such as:

1 - Some people (especially young people) want a more defined identity and ethos, than is provided by chaotic individualism.

2 - Deep community, with lifelong connections, is hard to find in atheism's individualistic anarchy, and requires a group with clearly definied identity and ethos.

3 - The survival and growth of atheism depends on the survival and growth of atheists. While we've had an upswing in the number of atheists leaving religion, those atheists are relatively less prone to making babies. So the future of the atheist movement is grim.

Why aren't atheists making babies? There's a few reasons, but one main reason is that atheists are not part of a cohesive movement that acknowledges that history is a story of group fitness, and only fit groups survive. Individualism dies. Unless atheism (humanism, more specifically) sees itself as just one group in a competitive world, then it will wither and die and be replaced with more organised/fit groups e.g. Islam, communist China, Putin's Russia, and maybe Christianity in some parts of the world, etc.

It's a big topic, and I've barely scratched the surface of it.

Suffice to say, atheism/humanism doesn't have a bright future unless it starts acting as a cohesive group. (Not that one homogeneous monoculture is the answer, probably a co-ordinated network of speciated atheist/humanist groups is the way to go).

Read some of Jonathan Haidt's research e.g. the most successful groups (in terms of longevity) are those that make the most demands on their followers.

We love our individualism, but individualism is not sustainable, from an evolutionary point of view.

The Western world is in decline and retreat. Muslims are invading Europe. China and Russia are expanding and will soon pose an existential threat to the US, as it declines. And at the heart of the Western world is a vacuum of identity. The West doesn't know who it is anymore, except for our treasured individualism. And so the West will wither and die because it has no core identity. We've left religion, but not replaced that with a strong enough identity to sustain Western civilisation. The West is being torn apart, because of vacuous atheism/humanism.

Evolution is a story of group fitness. Measure up, or we die.

Pretty grandiose to think you can help all the poor lesser evolved masses out this way, and condescending to think they need it.  One thing evolution has never been is the result of deliberate scheming.