Harris’s memes, in contrast, are infecting the minds not of right wing and religious cranks but of smart, knowledgeable people. Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer, when he hosted a recent talk by Harris at Caltech, praised him for “cutting through all the obfuscation and getting straight to the point” about free will in his new book.

To be fair, Shermer was on Harris' side before Harris had a side to be one. You could think of Shermer as a proto-neo-atheist – a set of writers specializing in skepticism who were harping on many of the themes that the Four Hoursemen would pick up, before it was really profitable to do so.

It's interesting to me, because there's this perception that the "New Atheists" hold a lot of sway. From talking to people, though, it seems to me that there are a few different camps. There are, for one, people who find a lot to agree with in their books, but who haven't spent much time thinking about the parts that they didn't already believe. That group is made up mostly of private atheists (as opposed to public intellectuals) who feel a moderate amount of resentment, antagonism, or disgust at religion (or, at least, aspects of it), but who don't necessarily see it as an apocalyptic situation.

Similarly, there are people who were, prior to reading the New Atheists, fence-riders or closet atheists. Their biggest takeaway from the books of Harris and company was the confidence of their convictions – to break once and for all with religion and own their designation as atheists. Often, their gratitude will incline them to overlook the defects of the New Atheist arguments, but on the whole I'd say these are atheist's in the process of developing their non-religious identities, and there's no guarantee that they'll still think highly of the Horsemen five or ten years down the road.

Then there are more radical, "rationalist" atheists who will bend over backwards to defend the arguments (and, often, reputations) of their New Atheist heroes. They've pretty much always believed that religion is a threat to civilization, and the publication successes of the New Atheist books have energized them. It's easy to get the sense that there are more of these defenders than there really are, in no small part because, like radical or polemical religious advocates, they tend to be vocal out of all proportion to their numbers.

And then there's everyone else. And everyone else is still the biggest category. I still talk to people who have no idea who Harris and Dennett are, or who think of Hitchens as a political writer (which, even to the end, was his real environment) or of Dawkins as a biologist (though, realistically, I'd call him a popularizer and advocate, more than a working biologist). There was a four or five year window of opportunity there when it was possible for the New Atheist books to draw in really large crowds, but that window has been gradually falling shut. I'd be surprised to hear that Harris' latest book has sold nearly as much as The Moral Landscape's initial run, or that of The End of Faith before it. And pointing to Shermer – who definitely falls into the third camp – as proof that "smart, knowledgeable people" are paying attention is like saying Shaq is paying attention to Kobe Bryant. Given that they've both been, at one time or another, Lakers, that's hardly surprising.