The section that slays me is this one:

As a man of faith, Bishop Hanson still has a key question for those who don’t believe in God.

“Where do you place your trust in times of need? Where do you place your hope in the time of a crisis of confidence?” Hanson said.

At first, I thought he was advising atheists to acquire faith as a resource for times of crisis, like a good 401(k) plan. Then I took it as curiosity – he genuinely does not know how people with no faith get through low points in their lives. I wish I could reply to him. I’d say we have lots of faith – in humanity. So in times of crisis, we get through by marshaling our resources and counting on people to come through for us (or not come through, as the case may be). We have faith that tomorrow will be different, better. We look outward, not (just) upward. And in our experience, we’ve found the results to be exactly the same as for those who believe in God.

What an agile mind you have.

Haha! Only if I weren’t losing it all the time… Have you seen it anywhere??

OMG, the atheists are coming from inside my house!!11!!

LOL! How about “inside my own head!” Now, that’s scary.

“‘…it’s safer for people who have struggled with faith, or don’t believe in God to be more forthright and honest about that,’ said Bishop Mark Hanson.”

“North Park College Professor Scott McKnight, himself a Christian, offers another reason for what he calls the new atheism.”

“Somewhere in the middle of it is a ‘humanistic Jewish’ congregation. ‘We celebrate our Judaism as our peoples’ cultural, history…’ said Rabbi Adam Chalom.”

“And religious scholars said some people who believe in God are also buying books written by atheists to see how the other side thinks…”

Next, I think I’ll do a story concerning the Republicans. Know any Democrats?

Lazy journalism.

Now must go build up my perimeter defenses… rumor has it there’s an ATHEIST NEXT DOOR – aayiiiiieeeee!

I’m glad to see positive stories. Maybe this will alleviate some of the fear and misconceptions about us. But ideally they’d come up with a title that doesn’t sound like something out of a B movie.

It’s risky to psychoanalyze people en mass but for at least a handful of Christians with whom I have had extended conversations, Linda’s idea seems to have merit.

I wasn’t psychoanalyzing a group of people to put them in a category. I was just looking at human nature as a whole, looking for commonalities. It was not an ‘us and them’ observation, if that’s how it sounded. I was thinking that perhaps we are not as different as we would like to think.

Consider this paradox:

I think people want to belong and be accepted and yet stand out and be unique at the same time. That’s why we are constantly organizing into groups and sub-groups and then separating ourselves from the whole. We want best of both worlds. We look for people who are like us, but when the likes become too many (say… three?), then the differences surface agin. Yet one is not an acceptable number. So like continues to attract like. Grow – split – grow – split – grow – split. hmmm….. sound familiar?

I think many people are Christian because they seek the certainty of belonging to a group, of being told how to behave, and (to a certain extent) of feeling superior to others. So if an intellingent, well spoken, decent (I’m flattering myself, but you get the point) person rationally argues against their faith, then they’re presented with the possibility that making that ‘leap of faith’ really isn’t necessary,and in fact doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

THAT makes a lot of sense. Especially point #2. I think people generally crave guidelines and instructions, because being free to think for ourselves is risky, unpredictable, and just too much work. Yes, and we would also lose the benefits of points #1 and #3. Freedom is a scary thing…