# Four Horsemen The collective name for the four canonical figures of [New Atheism](/codex/new-atheism/), **[Richard Dawkins](/codex/richard-dawkins/)**, **[Christopher Hitchens](/codex/christopher-hitchens/)**, **[Sam Harris](/codex/sam-harris/)**, and **[Daniel Dennett](/codex/daniel-dennett/)**, formalized by a **2007 RDFRS-recorded conversation** in Hitchens's Washington, D.C. apartment. The two-hour roundtable was published as a video by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS) and later as a printed book: *The Four Horsemen: The Discussion That Sparked an Atheist Revolution* (Bantam, 2019), with foreword by Stephen Fry. The label, borrowed from [Revelation 6](/codex/revelation-6/) ("the four horsemen of the Apocalypse") and ironically modified to "Non-Apocalypse", was first used informally by Dawkins, then adopted by the press, then embraced by the movement itself. The labeling crystallized New Atheism as a recognizable movement with shared commitments: scientific materialism, anti-religious polemic, defense of free expression against religious censure, and the conviction that religion is not merely false but actively harmful to human flourishing. ## The 2007 conversation | | | |---|---| | **Date** | 30 September 2007 | | **Location** | Christopher Hitchens's Washington, D.C. apartment | | **Length** | ~120 minutes | | **Producer** | Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science | | **Format** | Unstructured roundtable; no moderator | | **Recording released** | November 2007, initially on RDFRS website + DVD; later YouTube | | **Book publication** | 2019 (Bantam), full transcript + new forewords by the surviving three + Stephen Fry | The conversation occurred just after the publication of all four canonical New-Atheism books: - **2004**, Sam Harris, *The End of Faith* - **2006**, Richard Dawkins, *The God Delusion* - **2006**, Daniel Dennett, *Breaking the Spell* - **2007**, Christopher Hitchens, *God Is Not Great* The Four Horsemen video became a foundational text of the movement, referenced, excerpted, mocked, and analyzed across the next decade-plus of atheism / theism / religion debate. ## The four, at-a-glance | Person | Specialty | Canonical New-Atheism work | Distinctive contribution | |---|---|---|---| | **[Richard Dawkins](/codex/richard-dawkins/)** (b. 1941) | Evolutionary biology (Oxford) | *The God Delusion* (2006) | The most public face; the scientific-naturalism flagship; the "God hypothesis is unnecessary" argument | | **[Christopher Hitchens](/codex/christopher-hitchens/)** (1949-2011) | Journalism / polemics | *God Is Not Great* (2007) | The rhetorical force-multiplier; the "religion poisons everything" thesis; Hitchens's razor (*"what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"*) | | **[Sam Harris](/codex/sam-harris/)** (b. 1967) | Neuroscience / philosophy | *The End of Faith* (2004); *The Moral Landscape* (2010) | The originating book; the moral-landscape (harm-reduction-utilitarian) ethics; the religious-moderation-legitimizes-extremism argument | | **[Daniel Dennett](/codex/daniel-dennett/)** (1942-2024) | Philosophy of mind (Tufts) | *Breaking the Spell* (2006) | The most analytically philosophical; naturalistic account of religion as evolutionary byproduct; the most respected by Christian philosophical interlocutors | ## What unified the four The Four shared (with internal variations) five commitments: 1. **Scientific naturalism**, only matter / energy / physical-law are real; the natural sciences exhaust legitimate explanation. 2. **Evolutionary biology as worldview-shaper**, *On the Origin of Species* explains the appearance of design without recourse to a designer; theism's design-arguments are pre-Darwinian relics. 3. **Anti-religion polemic**, religion is not merely false but actively harmful (Hitchens's "poisons everything"; Harris's claim that religious moderation legitimizes religious extremism); the *normative-cultural* claim that the world would be better with less religion. 4. **Free expression / anti-blasphemy**, defense of the right to mock, criticize, and ridicule religious claims; opposition to blasphemy laws and "respect for religion" social norms; the Mohammed cartoon controversy (2005-06) as a defining moment. 5. **Cultural-political activism**, atheism not merely as private belief but as a political program: secular public square, removal of religious symbols from government, restriction of religious accommodation. ## Differences among the four Despite the shared core, the Four differed in significant ways: - **On Islam.** Harris and Hitchens were aggressively critical of Islam specifically (Harris notoriously so, drawing accusations of Islamophobia). Dawkins was critical but more diffuse. Dennett took the analytic-philosophical distance. - **On metaphysics of mind.** Dennett held a strong materialist-functionalist position (consciousness is a "user illusion"). Harris developed a quasi-mysterian view (consciousness is irreducibly first-personal yet naturalistic). Dawkins and Hitchens did not engage the philosophy of mind in depth. - **On political alignment.** Hitchens supported the 2003 Iraq War (alienating left-wing atheists); Harris has held idiosyncratic positions (defending torture in narrow cases, criticizing the regressive left). Dennett and Dawkins were broadly left-liberal but academic-detached. The political coherence of the movement was always fragile. - **On the "religion question."** Dennett was most open to dialogue with religion-as-cultural-phenomenon (his "spell-breaking" project); Hitchens was most absolute in opposition; Harris most interested in recovering religion-adjacent experiential content (mindfulness, contemplative practice); Dawkins most focused on the science-vs-religion polemic. ## The "Fifth Horsewoman" question Christian apologists and movement-observers sometimes ask why the Four were all white men. The most commonly named "Fifth Horseman" / "Horsewoman" candidates: **[Bart Ehrman](/codex/bart-ehrman/)** (skeptical NT scholar; massively influential but explicitly not anti-religious in the New-Atheism polemical sense); **Lawrence Krauss** (theoretical physicist; *A Universe from Nothing*, 2012; later disqualified by 2018 misconduct allegations); **Ayaan Hirsi Ali** (Somali-born ex-Muslim atheist; *Infidel*, 2007; later converted to Christianity in 2023, dramatically removing her from the list); **Greta Christina** (atheism-as-identity activist); **Susan Jacoby** (*Freethinkers*, 2004); **Jennifer Michael Hecht** (*Doubt: A History*, 2003). None achieved the canonical-Four status. ## Decline and dissolution The Four Horsemen as a unified movement effectively dissolved: - **2011**, Christopher Hitchens dies of esophageal cancer. The rhetorical center of gravity is lost. - **2012**, The Atheism+ schism (Jen McCreight) fractures the movement over social-justice alignment. - **2015-2020**, Sustained criticism of Harris (over Islam, consciousness, racism allegations) and Dawkins (over transgender tweets, Islam comments) erodes their public standing in progressive cultural space. - **2017-2024**, The "Intellectual Dark Web" migration absorbs much of the Four's adjacent space; the theism-vs-atheism axis ceases to be the central polemical axis. - **2023**, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a frequent Four-Horsemen adjacent figure, publicly converts to Christianity. - **2024**, Daniel Dennett dies in April. The last of the original Four. By the mid-2020s the Four Horsemen as a unified movement is historical. Its rhetorical patterns persist diffusely across secular discourse (atheist Twitter / X; r/atheism; podcast culture) but the *movement* with its conferences, its identity, and its sense of historical mission has largely dispersed. ## Christian engagement with the Four Principal Christian responses, mapped to the targets: - **vs Dawkins**, Alister McGrath, *The Dawkins Delusion?* (2007); John Lennox, *God's Undertaker* (2007); *Gunning for God* (2011); William Lane Craig vs Dawkins (the 2011 Oxford no-show by Dawkins; the Mexico 2010 confrontation) - **vs Harris**, William Lane Craig vs Harris (Notre Dame 2011 debate, *"Is the Foundation of Morality Natural or Supernatural?"*, widely judged Craig-win); responses to *Moral Landscape* by Russell DiSilvestro, William Lane Craig, et al. - **vs Hitchens**, Douglas Wilson, *Is Christianity Good for the World?* (2008, debate compilation); William Lane Craig debate (2009 Biola); John Lennox debate (2009 Birmingham) - **vs Dennett**, Alvin Plantinga's exchange (Dennett-Plantinga, *Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?*, 2011); Daniel Came's analytic responses - **vs the movement broadly**, [David Bentley Hart](/codex/david-bentley-hart/), *Atheist Delusions* (2009); Tom Holland, *Dominion* (2019); David Berlinski, *The Devil's Delusion* (2008); Edgar Andrews, *Who Made God?* (2009) ## See also - [Atheism](/codex/atheism/), parent concept - Atheism Roadmap, single-page super-index - [New Atheism](/codex/new-atheism/), the broader movement - [Richard Dawkins](/codex/richard-dawkins/) / [Christopher Hitchens](/codex/christopher-hitchens/) / [Sam Harris](/codex/sam-harris/) / [Daniel Dennett](/codex/daniel-dennett/), individual hubs - [Atheism as Religion](/codex/is-atheism-a-religion/), the meta-classification argument - [Atheism is a Belief](/codex/argument-from-science-as-faith-based-guillen/), the etymology / burden-of-proof argument - [William Lane Craig](/codex/william-lane-craig/), principal Christian debate-counterpart - [David Bentley Hart](/codex/david-bentley-hart/), principal Christian cultural-historical counter - [Bart Ehrman](/codex/bart-ehrman/), adjacent but not technically a Horseman - [Cumulative Case for Christian Theism](/codex/cumulative-case-for-christian-theism/), broader apologetic frame