Perhaps what we’re seeing is a schism in the atheist church between the crushers and the appeasers. Prof. Dawkins loathes my own brand of happy-clappy, can’t-we-all-just-get-along atheism, which sees room in the world for the believer and the non-believer alike. “These vicarious second-order believers,” he writes in The God Delusion, “”¦ their zeal pumped up by ingratiating broad-mindedness.” If you want to infuriate him, just say, “I’m an atheist, but ”¦”
The thing is, if the crushers want to draw people to a life based on reason and not faith, you’d think they would learn from religion’s mistakes ”“ contempt and recrimination are not great seduction techniques. Much better to take a lesson from the Sunday Assembly, the atheist congregation in London, which wants people to “live better, help often and wonder more.” As long as they show up on time, that is: “Latecomers go straight to hell!” Now those are people I wouldn’t mind having over for dinner.
Read it all.
(Globe and Mail) Elizabeth Renzetti–Heavens, we atheists have become a smug, dreary lot
Perhaps what we’re seeing is a schism in the atheist church between the crushers and the appeasers. Prof. Dawkins loathes my own brand of happy-clappy, can’t-we-all-just-get-along atheism, which sees room in the world for the believer and the non-believer alike. “These vicarious second-order believers,” he writes in The God Delusion, “”¦ their zeal pumped up by ingratiating broad-mindedness.” If you want to infuriate him, just say, “I’m an atheist, but ”¦”
The thing is, if the crushers want to draw people to a life based on reason and not faith, you’d think they would learn from religion’s mistakes ”“ contempt and recrimination are not great seduction techniques. Much better to take a lesson from the Sunday Assembly, the atheist congregation in London, which wants people to “live better, help often and wonder more.” As long as they show up on time, that is: “Latecomers go straight to hell!” Now those are people I wouldn’t mind having over for dinner.
Read it all.