Interesting Investgating Atheism Website
Cambridge University Department of Divinity has an investigating atheism website. As befits an esteemed scholarly and academic institution, it seems to me to be impartial and unbiased (as far as these things are possible).
It covers atheist history, arguments for atheism, atheist views on morality, meaning, violence and science and has a particular focus on the ‘new atheism’ of Dawkins, Hitchens et al. If you check it out, let me know what you think.
Popularity: 59% [?]
Atheists and Religious Tribalism
It’s funny, but even though I’m not a believer, I still retain a degree of affection for my former faith. I’m not alone in this, Irish comedian Dara O’Briain shares my feelings. From a recent stand-up tour:
I’m not a religious man. I don’t even believe in God. But still Catholic.
Maybe I’m wrong to do this. Well, actually I don’t think that there’s a maybe in there. But I genuinely hold no dislike for it. I enjoyed my upbringing, which was only moderately religious, and the local religious community that we worshipped with.
I didn’t de-convert as much as I simply realised that I didn’t believe and probably never really had. Like many people, I didn’t have a bad experience realising that Father Christmas (probably) wasn’t real, and it felt exactly the same to realise that God (probably) doesn’t exist.
My feelings are a little like the converse of the famous quote from The Godfather, except that it’s “if you mess with my family, you mess with me”, and my family are my ex-co-religionists.
But, religious tribalism is one of the really, really bad things about religion. Arbitrarily splitting people into Us and Them is not good for society, and I think, deeply unhealthy. So I should probably get over it.
I wonder if, with the space of time, my religious tribalism will decrease. Since only the older generations of my family are now religious, perhaps once they die I will no longer feel a sense of belonging. That would be a little sad, I do like belonging, and I do like them. But it would probably be better not to think tribally.
Popularity: 25% [?]
