However, this hasn’t happened as advertised. As the Pew study proves, religion is on the rise, and the emergence of the more strident and outspoken “new atheists” may be in fact a reaction to the persistence and even resurgence of vibrant religion.4 Nor is the flourishing of faith happening only among less educated people. Over the last generation philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Alvin Plantinga have produced a major body of scholarly work supporting belief in God and critiquing modern secularism in ways that are not easy to answer.
