Martin Marty on 'Religion for Atheists' ...

I saw this item from Martin Marty this morning, whose twice-weekly newsletter I receive and usually read.

I haven't read either the book [Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion] nor the articles he references; they're going on a very long list of when-I-get-to-it stuff to peruse.

But for all who contemplate both the past and future of Unitarian Universalism, our recurrent debates over whether we can expect to really become, in the words of our president, "the religion for our times," and the perpetual sorting-out of whether we are too syncretic, too rootless, too vague, or too-whatever... the Marty essay and the issues as well as the readings to which he points seem highly relevant to the conversation.

'A Church for Atheists'

The Rev. Andy Pakula explains in a very nice post how Unitarian/UU churches welcome atheists as well as theists.

It reminds me of a story I heard from an Englishman (Andy happens to be in England, too, but he is originally from the U.S.) when I was at my Church-Away-From-Home sometime last year.

My English acquaintance told me of his friend who had moved in retirement from London to a small community up in the North of England.

As the retiree got to be known in the community, someone realized his general acumen and approached him about joining the vestry of the local Anglican church.

Flattered, the retiree nonetheless demurred. "I'm an atheist," he explained, apologetically.

His inviter was unperturbed. With a shrug and a wave of his hand, he responded, "Oh, that doesn't matter!"

My Episcopalian mother, and one of the priests at her church, found this story as funny as I and the man who told it to me did.

Dawkins reconsidered, some

Pagan/UU Blogger John Franc of "Under the Ancient Oaks" has a thoughtful review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion up just now. Like him, I am frustrated with the narrow definition of God and Religion that Dawkins and other New Atheists apply in their critique of both. But Franc also points out the many things that Dawkins gets right. And he's getting me to rethink my tendancy to dismiss Dawkins et al as "fundamentalist atheists." Dawkins defends his passion on the grounds that (as Franc quotes him)

It is because the evidence for evolution is overwhelmingly strong and I am passionately distressed that my opponent can’t see it – or, more usually, refuses to look at it because it contradicts his holy book.

Interestingly, though, the most ardent fundamentalists eager to convert the rest of us operate from a similar passion. As my own UU church's minister says, they are absolutely convinced your house is on fire and that your life depends on your escaping that burning house -- regardless of whether you perceive it that way or not.

Atheism, Me, and a Book I want to read

I've never been able to make the intellectual/faith leap to confident atheism, and I know I've made posts here that are at least mildly critical of the most dogmatic among the so-called New Atheists.

But I also have no interest in arguing with the Atheists or trying to "prove them wrong." (If you don't know why, read this.)

Frankly, I don't believe in a god who says that anyone who doesn't believe in him/her/it is consigned to some kind of eternal torture and punishment. I do think the New Atheists are doing important work in forcing us to confront our religious assumptions, although I get frustrated when they fall back on the same kind of Biblical literalism as the Fundamentalists, and when they diss or dismiss liberal religion.

All that is by way of long-winded introduction to a link: An Atheist Defends Religion is a book I want to add to my ever-growing reading list...

Update:

I got to thinking about the prospect of a book by a theist or other religious person defending atheism.

Michael Dowd sort of fits, I guess, with the caveat that he considers himself neither theist nor atheist.

And here's a book that, while a rejoinder to Sam Harris' Letter to a Christian Nation, in many ways sides with the new atheists' critique of fundamentalism.

As an aside: I read the above, A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists, sometime earlier this year or late last year. Came away from it basically liking its approach. But I'd forgotten the title when I was trying to prepare this update and did some fruitless searching on Google and Amazon until I finally located it, but not until I encountered a lot of tendentious works attempting to rebut Harris, Dawkins, et al. Reminded me of that video I linked to the other day.

Rasslin' Science & Religion

We pause in our discussions of Thank God for Evolution to send you over to this video at "Inner Light, Radiant Life".

Michael Dowd's God (Updated)

Update: Readers are urged to see Dowd's own further clarification in the comments.

Tell me about the God you don't believe in. I probably don't believe in that God either.

~Attributed to various people, including the late Rev. Forrest Church,
Michael Dowd, and others...

The closet Christian

That's what Ada Calhoun, writing at Salon, calls herself. (Thanks to DairyStateMom for the link.)

Regarding that story about the atheist some were trying to bar from office...

A letter writer to Andrew Sullivan calls it a manufactured controversy.

Fish in a barrel, No. 1

Mathew Staver, dean of Liberty University's law school in Lynchburg, Va., finds a holiday season bus ad campaign that denies god "insensitive and mean." This about an ad with the benign tagline of "Be good for goodness' sake."

I'm sorry, but I can't muster up any sympathy for someone who is part of a religious community that tells me, and the rest of the world, that we will burn in hell for eternity for not accepting their particular definition of who Jesus was and what his purpose was on Earth.