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Welcome to the Podcast Think Bivocally, Conversations on Faith and Culture.

I'm your host, Sean McDowell, Professor of Apologetics at Taubet School of Theology,

Biola University.

And I'm your co-host, Scott Ray, Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Christian Ethics,

also at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University.

Today we're here with the guests that I am thrilled is joining us. I've been following his writings on a range of issues for a number of years.

Dr. Christian Smith has written in a just a range of different issues from social theory, culture, capitalism, one of my favorite books he wrote on

the intersection of kind of youth younger millennials known as soul searching.

But today we're going to talk about a very interesting book that he recently wrote with Oxford University press called atheist overreach.

Now before we jump into the particulars of this, thank you for coming on the show Dr Smith.

Yeah, thank you for having me on. I'm really curious what motivated you as a

sociologist to write a book addressing the nature of the dialogue between secularism and religion in America today.

Yeah, good question. I mean, I am a sociologist first and foremost, but I'm also very interested in philosophical questions and I've done a lot of theological thinking and I read in history and political science so I'm pretty interdisciplinary and in sociology I primarily study religion I'm a

sociologist of religion and there's been a obviously the new atheist movement

has been a huge force in the world and in the United States

we sociologists have noted that there's a significant growth of non-religious

...