The so-called New (or “Gnu”) Athe­ism arrived at a time when fear, anger, and con­fu­sion over extrem­ist reli­gion had hit a fever pitch. Sud­den­ly, peo­ple who didn’t pay much atten­tion to religion—their own or any­one else’s—became intense­ly inter­est­ed in reli­gious crit­i­cism and debate; it was the per­fect cli­mate for a pub­lish­ing storm, and that’s essen­tial­ly how the move­ment began. It was also, of course, pre­dat­ed by thou­sands of years of philo­soph­i­cal athe­ism of some vari­ety or anoth­er, but “new” athe­ism had some­thing dif­fer­ent to offer: while its pro­po­nents large­ly hailed from the same worlds as their intel­lec­tu­al predecessors—the arts, polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism and activism, the sci­ences and aca­d­e­m­ic philosophy—after Sep­tem­ber 11, these same peo­ple took the dis­cus­sion to the pop­u­lar press and a pro­lif­er­a­tion of inter­net out­lets and well-orga­nized con­fer­ences, debates, and meet­ings. And their expres­sions were uncom­pro­mis­ing and polem­i­cal (though not “militant”—no shots were fired nor bombs det­o­nat­ed).

In the wake of over a decade of con­tro­ver­sy unleashed by “new athe­ism,” a new film The Unbe­liev­ers (trail­er above) fol­lows two promi­nent sci­en­tists and stars of the movement–evolutionary biol­o­gist Richard Dawkins and the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Lawrence Krauss—as they trek across the globe and explain their views. Dawkins and Krauss receive sup­port from a cast of celebri­ty inter­vie­wees includ­ing Ricky Ger­vais, Wern­er Her­zog, Woody Allen, Cor­mac McCarthy, Sarah Sil­ver­man, Ayaan Hir­si-Ali, and sev­er­al more. The film’s web­site has no offi­cial release date (oth­er than “2013”), but it does fea­ture links to online buzz, both glib—Krankie snarks that the trail­er makes it look like Dawkins and Krauss have packed in the sci­ence and start­ed a band—and sub­dued; the evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Post does lit­tle but quote from the press pack­age.

These cham­pi­ons of rea­son-over-reli­gion have always had pow­er­ful crit­ics, even among those who might oth­er­wise seem sym­pa­thet­ic (take Marx­ist lit­er­ary crit­ic Ter­ry Eagleton’s charge that new athe­ism is noth­ing but counter-fun­da­men­tal­ism). Then there is the host of reli­gious detrac­tors, many of them respect­ed sci­en­tists and philoso­phers them­selves. One notable name in this camp is famed geneti­cist Fran­cis Collins, who head­ed the Human Genome Project. Obvi­ous­ly no denier of the explana­to­ry pow­er of sci­ence, Collins nonethe­less argues for faith as a dis­tinct kind of knowl­edge, as he does in the inter­view excerpt below from an appear­ance on The Char­lie Rose Show.

The debates seem like they could rage on inter­minably, and prob­a­bly will. I, for one, am grate­ful they can hap­pen open­ly and in rel­a­tive peace in so many places. But as the same sets of issues arise, some of the ques­tions become just a bit more nuanced. British pre­sen­ter Nicky Camp­bell, for exam­ple, recent­ly presided over a large debate among sev­er­al promi­nent sci­en­tists and cler­gy about whether or not all reli­gions should accept evo­lu­tion (below). While Dawkins and Krauss ulti­mate­ly advo­cate a world with­out reli­gion, the par­tic­i­pants of this debate try to shift the terms to how sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery and reli­gious iden­ti­ty can coex­ist with min­i­mal fric­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

Some­thing from Noth­ing? Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss Dis­cuss Cos­mol­o­gy, Ori­gins of Life & Reli­gion Before a Packed Crowd

Alain de Bot­ton Wants a Reli­gion for Athe­ists: Intro­duc­ing Athe­ism 2.0

Josh Jones is a writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness