What strikes me with people like Dawkins et al is that they seem to have a very limited idea of God – anthropomorphic, an angry old man in the sky. That’s the idea of God I had for a long time and it revolted me; stories like the Flood, the wiping out of billions of lives, do indeed make this the God of the Gas Chambers. But what if those ideas of God are just ridiculous, nothing like the creator? I should add at this point that I am not Christian, nor do I follow any other religion. Belief in divinity, the creator, whatever you wish to call it, doesn’t mean one has to follow a religion.

The other thing about atheism – at least the angry, vociferous variety that gets the headlines – is that it seems predicated on the notion that the material, measurable world is all there is. It seems one is not allowed to ask, “But what if it isn’t? What if there is more? What if you are wrong?” In the Dawkins brigade’s thinking, that makes one a veritable traitor and certainly lacking in intelligence. Look at his attacks on agnostics, or Stephen Jay Gould, for instance.

Which brings me back to the original post. Yes, there is a good point in not just doing undergraduate name-calling in these matters. How is telling someone they are an idiot if they don’t agree with you going to get anyone listening? I’ve seen Dawkins described elsewhere as the school bully, the kid who proclaimed that all the kids in his gang are cool and everyone else is uncool. Is his labelling of “Brights” any different, really? Is saying belief shows you are essentially stupid or deluded not the height of arrogance? Look at all the most wonderful minds of history – most of them had some sort of theistic belief.

The gas chambers, it’s pointed out, are not comformable with the notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing God who is also proposed as being maximally good. Faced with the observed set of facts which have included, among much else, the separation of children from their parents as an administrative convenience before gassing them in separate chambers, the good-hearted atheist prefers no deny the existence of a divine supervisor of this state of affairs.

Such a notion is indeed rationally based; but so is another proposed idea: that there exists an all-powerful creator God who is either wholly indifferent to, or indeed actively takes pleasure in, the distress of his creatures; a God Of The Gas Chambers, in fact.

This notion appalls me, and doubtless appalls any other right-thinking person.

But — as the rational atheist will be the first to remind us — being appalled by a situation does not mean that it does not exist. Revolting though it may appear, the observed facts fit as well with the notion of an all- powerful and remorselessly cruel deity as they do with the notion of no deity at all.

Why, then, have atheists chosen the one belief over the other, in the absence of any argument whatever in favour of either? I put it to you that the answer is precisely the same for atheism as it is for optimistic religion: an absolute terror and revulsion for the idea that a God may exist in whose hands we all lie without recourse and who, in fact, delights in our pain and fear.

It will not be until atheism recognises this — with the corollary that atheism is no more ‘rationally based’ than any other cult belief — that all of us can move the argument forward and out of its present cul-de-sac.

There is of course nothing necessarily wrong with irrationally-based beliefs. It is just that atheism would do well to realise that it is just such a belief-system, like any other.

With regards,

Dr. Martin Woodhouse

Drawing a line that limits the extent of a critic, or the strength of assertion of one’s ideas can be dangerous – especially when that line takes into consideration someone being offended.
I clarify what I mean. I’m not against people expressing racist ideas, but I want the right to openly say that I despise them, and that I think the world would be better off without such people. I would never favor a law prohibiting the publication of horoscopes, but I want the liberty to say that I think that they are stupid and sometimes harmful superstitions. Some people feel hurt and offended when I tell them that the homeopathic preparations that they take are, in fact, just plain water: if I add that they are being fooled and are fooling themselves the offense really becomes serious for them.

Some persons will probably feel offended by the fact that I am implicitly comparing racism, astrology and homeopathy to their belief in god. And it seems like the opinion of Mr’ Shermer is alike, and we should be very careful in granting equal status to the words of Einstein and to the words of Ratzinger. I’m sorry, I don’t.

Hatred? A little bit, when people’s rights are taken away in the name of a religion, a superstition or an ideology.
Bitterness? Yes, sometimes it feels bitter to know that people still lead their life according to racist ideas, middle ages superstitions, or bronze-age mythology.