Yes. I just finished reading this book by Rene Guenon called 'The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the times'. He shows how the process that has been going on for the last 300 years, of western scientific rationalism and materialism laid the groundwork in eliminating religion from the minds of westerners, thereby bringing about an inversion of values in the west, and creating a foundation for the emergence of the anti-christ. It certainly seems like westerners will be the great followers of the anti-christ, they've embraced all these new age/occult pseudo satanic groups, or liberal ideologies like feminism en masse, and the ones who haven't, have become nihilistic consumers. All this sets the stage for the anti-christ to emerge and white people will be his most ardent supporters, no doubt many of these brown sahab modernist muslims will follow him too. The purpose for atheism's popularity (it is being popularised, this isn't spontaneous) is that it sweeps away the old religion, that is what these guys like dawkins aim for. To get rid of christianity. This has been mostly completed now, for it creates a vacuum which an 'inverted' religion can step into. This is the message of the new age movement, instead of serving God, like in the old religions, the new age tells you that you are god, and that everything that was haram in the old religions, is now good and that you should do it. We can see gleams of this in the liberal ideologies around today, in feminism, transsexualism, socialism/communism, atheism. (side note, ever noticed why most atheists are hardline liberals? pro homosexual, pro abortion etc?) All these ideologies preach the opposite of traditional values and beliefs. It's basically the exact opposite of christianity and islam. So the antichrist will preach something like this.