As I read celebrity atheist Christopher Hitchens’s recent Newsweek attack on the pope in particular and Roman Catholicism in general, I remembered an incident that happened when I was in the U.K. in early January. Walking out of London’s Victoria Station, I was stopped by a TV reporter who asked me what I thought about the British atheists’ newest ad campaign. It was one of those typical man-in-the-street interviews, with a reporter and a cameraman buttonholing passersby to find a snappy quote for the evening news.
In England, which has long been a cultural template for the U.S., the atheists, after years of calling themselves humanists, have finally come out of the closet. With strong support from the renowned Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins, the new campaign has splashed an ad on the side of 800 British buses proclaiming, “There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Immediately following the ads came an announcement from the BBC early last month that it would add atheists to the list of various people of faith who are invited to offer the three-minute “Thought for the Day” on the influential Radio 4.
Britain has actually recognized atheism for some time now. As a country with an officially established church, it requires all its state primary schools to include religious-education classes. The classes often reflect the ethnic and religious composition of the schools’ surrounding neighborhoods, so that those in heavily Muslim or Hindu communities will focus largely on non-Western religious traditions. Yet one mandate of all these classes involves introducing students to religious diversity and pluralism rather than teaching any specific dogma. In 2004, the government decided that pluralism requires that all schools include some instruction on atheism.
I’ve always had a suspicion that militant atheists are railing against a Deity which doesn’t exist. The god they portray so vividly is one no one in their right mind would believe in. The church they despise doesn’t exist either. It is so often the worst aspects of the “institutional” church they reject and so has every reformer who has ever been raised up. In recognizing the sins of the church many reformers throw out the essential with the corrupt. Militant atheists take that to its absurd conclusion.
Where they are right in that which they identify, Christians should be humble enough to listen. And then, in humility and without triumphalism, we should pray that the true God will take over their passions and turn them into redeeming love.
PS When I was a lad in England we tackled atheism and non Christian religions in a spirit of enquiry while studying a set Gospel and Acts in depth, separately. Granted I was taught by Anglican priests who I think were fair and objective in the information we were given but who did not hide their firm orthodoxy.
Would that we could have such pluralistic religion classes in our U.S. schools. I think a study and knowledge of world religions should be as mandatory as math.
“And if we truly believe that an open, vigorous marketplace of ideas will establish value and truth as clearly as honest and open economic markets, shouldn’t we encourage everyone to enter that market?” Atheism competing with Christianity is like adding aerobics to exercise. It will increase the lactate threshold.