Richard Bewes, until recently the Rector of All Souls Church in London, has written up seven steps atheists should take to make their message more convincing. It’s directed largely at the wave of high-profile atheists who’ve been in the media eye this year—people like Richard Dawkins and Philip Pulman.
Bewes’ thoughts echo my own on this issue (although he’s much more eloquent than I). I posted a link to a Peter Berkowitz essay last month that hits on a lot of the same points. There’s an obvious sarcastic edge to Bewes’ essay, but the challenge is perfectly serious and, I think, made in a spirit of good faith: if atheists want Christians to take their arguments seriously, they need to come up with more compelling (and positive) reasons than what we’ve seen in recent years.
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August 12, 2007 at 04:17
People are not dismissing what these high profile atheists are saying. Sam Harris has been particularly effective in communicating his message.
Atheism isn’t a group of beliefs. Its non-belief. The current rise of atheism is a reaction to Christianity using politics to gain its own ends. Sam Harris did not label himself an athiest until called that by theists.
One can use reason to point out the error of something without knowing what the right answer is. One can say don’t go that way, stop, its dangerous without needing another direction to go. Sometimes its a good idea to stay where you are until you can find a more plausable direction.
Christians want to group atheists into one group. There is such a wide variety of reasons why people are atheists that it simply impossible to generalize atheism in that manner.
One of the basic things that I hear from athists is they feel that reason is a better basis for choice than reading and trying to decode the wishes of God from some ancient book. The Bible certainly hasn’t prevented bad things from happening. In fact, the most religious followers of the book have often been the most violent.
Reason would tell us that maybe we might want to come up with a better solution. Lets refine our knowlege and quit doing stuff that doesn’t work. Let’s quit believing stuff that creates shame, blame, bigotry, and intolerance. Let’s work things out based on something other than trying to decode some iron age book.
I heard Sam Harris say that he respects and admires many of the teachings of Jesus. He finds them reasonable and insightful without having to believe that the Bible is the inerrant word of God or that Jesus is God or a whole slew of things that atheism finds very unlikely.
So, rather than these questions to atheists being serious reasons, they simply reveal the ignorance of the Christian community on the atheism. They are interpreting atheism as if it were organized on the same grounds as a religion.
Its not. I has no sacred book. It has no revelation. It has no agreement on a set of doctrines. Its members may come to find some ideas probable, but not certain. This is not belief because it can change based on evidence.
If one could guess on what most atheists agree on is that they wished theists would stop grouping atheists with child molestors and misrepresenting them as a group. I think they tend to be rather pragmatic about that and assume that it probably won’t happen in their lifetime.
August 13, 2007 at 16:35
I would add another step: Create more holidays than April Fools’ Day. No one even gets a day off work for that one, let alone April Fools’ Eve.