The Atheist Thirteen

I have been tagged by Jean Kazez and Paulie to write something in The Atheist Thirteen meme that's going about now. 

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?

The answer No to the question, Does God exist?

Q2. Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?

My mother took me to the Anglican Church, and I went to Bible School for a bit.  She also got me a set of books with lots of bright pictures which retold the stories of the Old and New Testament for children, now and then quoting the King James.  I liked the stories about David best.  The Old Testament is a much better read than the New and I’m glad to have that background of knowledge – English literature is steeped in the Bible.  I was quite devout aged about eight and lost or possibly mislaid my beliefs when I was a teenager.

Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?

Anti-Occam.

Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?

Studies of the earth, like earthquakes and volcanoes as shown to me in nature programmes.  I was born in New Zealand which has a lot of geo-thermal activity and you can feel what a thin crust the surface of the earth is. The soil and vegetation are only the skin over a pulsing, pumping body whose workings you can’t see but can sense.  One day the magma under Yellowstone Park may explode and that will be the end of us all.

Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?

Is there such a community?  I have plenty of atheist friends but I wouldn’t say we formed a community.  The atheist community is like the Muslim “community” – you hear about noisy ones who may be atypical and the others just get on with their lives.

Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?

Whaaaaaat?  Christ! God! Oh sorry, I can’t say those words any more can I?

Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?

I haven’t got a favourite theistic argument. 

Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?

I don’t know if this is controversial or nor but I think we do need ceremony in our lives.  We have very little in our culture.  I am greatly moved by Remembrance Sunday, which is a partly religious ceremony.  I would like the Church of England to stay established and to do necessary ceremonies as someone has to do, just so long as the Archbishop of Canterbury would keep quiet about sharia law and everything else.  Shut up and intone, I say.

Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?

Hitchens is my favourite living writer especially his literary criticism but I didn’t care for God is not Great.  He represented the whole history of religion as an untruth exploited by knaves to be a trap for fools.  Dawkins I’ve only seen on television where he was unbearably arrogant.  I liked Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, which is genial in tone and takes the attitude that religion is a large human phenomenon which needs to be inquired into.

It’s not reading those guys that starts pushing me from agnosticism into atheism but idiotic pronouncements by the Archbishop of Canterbury, apologists for Islamism, people like Alain de Botton saying that it is “boring” if religion is true or not, any of those conservative writers who would like everyone to believe in religion as they think it would keep them in order and teach them morals, but who don’t believe in it themselves. 

Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?

A bloke I know who is an intelligent guy, a pillar of the community but whose devout group of like-minded Christians are always praying for each other.  They pray that members of their group will get a flat they have put in an offer for, or wow the panel at a job interview.  Nag, nag, nag.  I think it is unseemly and I wish they would stop.

In tagging as in many things it’s better to receive than give and I can’t think of anyone else I know on the blog who hasn’t been tagged already.  So no tags from me.  But thanks to Jean and Paulie for the tag – it was interesting answering these questions. I notice that I have thought more about this subject since I've been reading blogs like Butterflies and Wheels.

Comments

[Norman Lamont]

Best for me, as an atheistic religious practitioner, to stay out of these debates, but you might be interested in Ken MacLeod's recent comment on Hitchens:

'The Protestant translations of the Bible are not known as 'the Vulgate'. Christianity does not teach that Jesus had 'a human body but a nonhuman nature'. The title of William Paley's book on the design argument is not Natural Philosophy. The opposite of 'synoptic' is not 'apocryphal'. 'Q' is not the lost source of all four gospels. That the long ending of the Gospel of Mark is a later addition was not one of the 'more astonishing findings' of Bart Ehrman. Alpha Centauri is not the 'preferred origin' of supposed alien spacecraft. Marx, not Engels, wrote that human anatomy is the key to the anatomy of the ape. Not all Christian churches approved of slavery. Lysenko's theories did not lead to the deaths of millions. If you want to argue that Martin Luther King wasn't really a Christian, you don't clinch it by citing his refusal to hate his enemies.

That last is a lapse of understanding. The rest are matters of fact. None of these errors and misconceptions is important to Hitchens' argument in God is not Great. Getting the facts straight would have been easy - not just for a man of Hitchens' parts and learning, but for anyone with access to the Internet or a library and half an hour to spare.'

http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com/2008/06/horseman-of-apocrypha.html