Atheism in England

Sep 7, 2011 @ 13:22 by 25 Comments

Jonathan Wynne-Jones reports on Archbishop Rowan Williams’ plea to take it more directly to the new atheists:

Clergy are to be urged to be more vocal in countering the arguments put forward by a more hard-line group of atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have campaigned for a less tolerant attitude towards religion.

A report endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a period of “exceptional challenge”.

It expresses concern that Christians are facing hostility at work and says the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.

The rallying call comes amid fears that Christians are suffering from an increasing level of discrimination following a series of cases in which they have been punished for sharing their beliefs.

An example of which is the following, taken from Jerry Coyne’s blog. Jerry Coyne, a strong atheist, on James Wood’s critique of atheism:

“James Wood is a professor of English at Harvard who writes on literature for the New Yorker. I very much like his literary criticism, but for some reason he’s obsessed with attacking New Atheism (see here and here,with his response to my criticisms here).  His usual plaint is that the New Atheists provide only a cartoon characterization of faith, seeing it as a form of either Christian or Islamic fundamentalism, and ignore the nuances of other beliefs. (“Nuances” is another word that, when you see it, you should run, for faitheism or apologetics are in the offing.)  Although I’m not equipped to psychoanalyze Wood, I do note that while he admits he’s now an atheist, he grew up as a Biblical literalist.  I’ve often found that if you scratch an atheist who argues for the virtues of faith, you find someone who used to hold a faith.”

Filed Under: Uncategorized 25 Comments
About Scot McKnight

Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. McKnight, author of more than fifty books, is the Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL.

  • Adam

    ‎”Arrogance cannot be cured by greater arrogance, or ignorance by greater ignorance. To counter the ignorant use of knowledge and power, we have, I am afraid, only a proper humility, and this is laughable. But it is only partly laughable.” – Wendell Berry

  • ao

    I definitely think this is a serious issue and I’m glad that Williams is encouraging Christians to address it. But, why is it so important for the Church to maintain “its place at the centre of public life”? Is that even a good thing?

  • TSG

    To summarize Jerry Coyne’s statement- he hears James Wood’s hypothesis that his decription of the qualities and peculiarities of faith is not done with accuracy and care. His response is to run from it. And he defaults to the denunciation that Wood needs to be psychoanalyzed.

    I realize that Jerry Coyne believes that the diversity of life here is evidenced by natural selection. I concur. What about belief not being ideas but commitment? He cannot think about diversity of culture and its relationship to faith? What about human excellence and its relationship to commitment? He hasn’t read the implications in the greatest of literature to this and belief systems? He hasn’t thought about secular as a faith? Or sensual reality as intrinsically a pagan belief system?

    I would be an all-out Coynian if he could give me a secular environment. As Newbigin says, there is a lot of good in that. But he doesn’t and can’t, because men construct false gods. And I would be for a society run by the Gospel if you could give me a society of Christians. But you can’t because in large groups and even small, the majority are and remain refractory to the Spirit of Christ(even if all baptized and bearing the name). This is the reason for the need for science and faith. The one is the perpetual conscience of the other.

  • http://www.fivedills.com/blog.html FiveDills

    Dr. William Lane Craig’s UK tour in October will likely change everything. He has extended multiple invitations to both Hitchens and Dawkins to come debate with him, both of which have declined. I believe they are literally afraid of him. The fact is, atheism is slowly dying trumped perhaps by humanism. But, the evidence for intelligent design is certainly prevailing.

  • http://victorybythebloodofthelamb.blogspot.com. Dallas

    @ FiveDills
    The reason they wont debate Dr Craig is that Dr Craig would absolutely destroy them and they know it. Dr Craig is arguably the best debater on the planet, and would have no problem dismantling the absurd fallacies the so-called New Atheists promote, particularly their ad hominem attacks and refusal to interpret anything in context.

  • http://www.fivedills.com/blog.html FiveDills

    @ Dallas – Dr. Craig has stated that he will leave an available seat for Dawkins or any of the other New Atheists to come join him on the stage. I think that alone will make a HUGE statement, particularly if it remains empty.

  • http://ingles.homeunix.net/ Ray Ingles

    How precisely is Coyne ‘punishing’ Woods? By responding to his critique with a critique?

  • Nadine

    I’m glad Archbishop Williams is taking this direction. I think in the UK the
    celebrity atheists and ultra darwinists are much more in the public eye. There are panel shows, radio shows, and other TV shows that feature such people who take jabs at Christianity while they’re talking about whatever they’re talking about. BBC loves Richard Dawkins. I think he even had a spot on a Doctor Who episode. In the U.S., there’s much less programming (in proportion) that you can say this about. On the other hand, BBC has produced some of the best Christianity themed documentaries I’ve every seen.

  • http://restoringsoul.blogspot.com Ann F-R

    Coyne made an interesting contention, here: I’ve often found that if you scratch an atheist who argues for the virtues of faith, you find someone who used to hold a faith.

    I’ve had a different experience: that if you scratch an atheist who is extremely opposed to faith, you find someone who used to hold a faith, and was disillusioned or harmed in some way. I’ve yet to encounter an atheist who “argues for the virtues of faith.” Agnostics, yes.

  • http://restoringsoul.blogspot.com Ann F-R

    Ray, the punishment referenced in the 1st article referred to situations such as this: In recent years, a number of Christians have taken legal action against local councils and hospital trusts after being disciplined for expressing their faith by wearing crosses or refusing to act against their orthodox beliefs.

  • phil_style

    @FiveDills “Dr. William Lane Craig’s UK tour in October will likely change everything.”

    No, I doubt this. I didn’t even know WLC was doing a “tour” until you wrote that comment. This event has no mainstream press, and I think most of the UK public really don’t care, to be honest. No matter how good WLC’s debating may or may not be, the British public don’t really go for that kind of thing.

    Anecdotal, I’ve seen many commuters reading “the god delusion” on the train in the morning. Never have I seen anyone reading a critique of that work. For whatever reason, people aren’t interested to hear arguments that promote, or defend faith. Maybe faith is being seen as a social ill, and it will have to be eliminated from society before the popular imagination realises that war, intolerance, poverty and abuse will go on with, or without it.

  • http://www.fivedills.com/blog.html FiveDills

    @ phil_style – I agree in most part that today’s post-moderns are spending more time reading about science, humanism, and atheism. But, I also know they like to see a good fight when the opportunity presents itself. Every time Dawkins, Hitchens, and even Craig host a debate, the auditorium is packed full, standing room only. The good news is that even though Dawkins and Hitchens refuse to debate, Craig will still be lecturing on creationism and likely spending a good amount of time refuting the New Atheists. With empty chairs on the stage, it speaks volumes that atheism has no reasonable defense. Even atheists are dismayed with Dawkins.

  • Ana Mullan

    It is indeed very arrogant to think that because they don’t believe in God, they don’t have a set of beliefs that are as religious as any other religious person. Also, like it or not, they are doing exactly what they fight against, “evangelizing” “brain washing” to gain followers. The other thing is, if one spends so much time, thinking, arguing and trying to destroy somebody else’s beliefs, it makes me think that that religious, belief is actually very important and it is actually shaping them. Most people don’t spend time and energy on something that it is of no consequence.

  • phil_style

    “It is indeed very arrogant to think that because they don’t believe in God, they don’t have a set of beliefs that are as religious as any other religious person”

    I’ve seen this idea bandied around, but I don’t think it’s fair to place faith IN the supernatural on the same footing as faith in “the natural alone”. One posits positive existence of something WITHOUT empirically testable evidence, the other posits that such claims cannot be made until such evidence is produced. Whilst both are philosophical positions, one of these two requires “extras” which the other does not.

  • phil_style

    “It is indeed very arrogant to think that because they don’t believe in God, they don’t have a set of beliefs that are as religious as any other religious person”

    Oh, and arrogance has nothing to do with whether they are right or not. I don’t care if one of the “sides” is arrogant, I care about which is right…

  • phil_style

    “I’ve often found that if you scratch an atheist who argues for the virtues of faith, you find someone who used to hold a faith”

    This is odd from Coyne. Who cares what he’s “often” found? His observation is no different from me saying that I’ve “often” found the opposite. If he’s going to run his broader argumentation (atheism) based on empiricism, logic and science then he needs to have some study evidence to back these claims up. Exactly what % of atheists who argue for the virtue of faith used to hold a faith? And in what? What exactly is Coyne hoping to argue for by stating this?

    It’s also rather telling that Coyne won’t even let the debate become nuanced – writing off nuance (when employed by theism) as “apologetics” and “faitheism”. That tactic looks awfully like a shortcut to dictating the terms of engagement to me.

  • Joel

    Actually, “Faitheist” is Jerry’s silly word for an atheist who doesn’t absolutely hate religion and doesn’t actively try to antagonize people.

  • D. Foster

    Phil #14,

    “I’ve seen this idea bandied around, but I don’t think it’s fair to place faith IN the supernatural on the same footing as faith in ‘the natural alone’. One posits positive existence of something WITHOUT empirically testable evidence, the other posits that such claims cannot be made until such evidence is produced. Whilst both are philosophical positions, one of these two requires “extras” which the other does not.”

    I’m with you that “faith” isn’t the right word to use for Naturalism. But I don’t think belief in the supernatural as “something extra” either. We in the West are conditioned to think this way because we live an Empiricist-oriented culture that allows physical impressions into our thinking as “objective” and screens out everything else as “subjective.”

    If I watch a sunrise and sense that some great power is behind or within it, my natural tendency is to think about the physical rising of the Sun as an objective experience from without, and the sense of a great power as a subjective response from within.

    In reality, I never experience the physical world as it really is: I experience translations of physical impressions into electrical signals in my nervous system that are subsequently interpreted as experiences within my brain. My entire world exists “in here,” inside my head. And if that’s the case, why should I think that the physical impressions are objective and the sense that there’s a power behind it as subjective if both are happening “in here”?

    So I don’t think it’s correct to think of belief in the supernatural as believing in something “extra,” as if the philosophy we’re conditioned to fall back on (Empiricism) is somehow the objective default and everything else is up for grabs. It’s only extra in the sense that it’s less narrow than science. And we may very well be screening out impressions that give us insight into the nature of reality, however different those impressions may be from sensual experience. A Zen Buddhist would say our whole problem is that we put so much stock in our physical senses in the first place!

    ~Derek

  • Amos Paul

    Phil_Style,

    I would argue that complete faith in the verity of the natural world, your senses, and personal interpretation of things *is* the same as faith in a Divine Character behind it all. Indeed, faith in pure naturalism and empiricism actually places *more* faith in one’s analyses than does faith in the Divine–because faith in the Divine actually gives us some rational justification for trusting ourselves and our conclusions to any meaningful extent.

    On purely empiricist grounds, it doesn’t matter how much ‘evidence’ once observes and interprets–you’re still trusting in the verity of your own understanding, observation, and interpreation above any and everything else. I believe that’s a very real criticism to ask, “What justifies your belief in this method to begin with?” For it is a belief held on faith.

  • Robert

    The empty charges and accusatory rhetoric of the New Atheists is self-defeating. Until they gear up and respond to theistic critics their baseless texts will continue to be received poorly.

    Few scientists want anything to do with Dawkins and can easily see through his charade. When he has debated someone who is informed he is consistently out down.

  • http://ingles.homeunix.net/ Ray Ingles

    Ann F-R – So, Coyne is not “An example of which…” as Scot says?

  • http://ingles.homeunix.net/ Ray Ingles

    Joel –

    Actually, “Faitheist” is Jerry’s silly word for an atheist who doesn’t absolutely hate religion and doesn’t actively try to antagonize people.

    Or you could see what Coyne himself has to say.

    Basically, it’s people who don’t believe in God themselves, but think people believing in god(s) is a good thing.

  • http://ingles.homeunix.net/ Ray Ingles

    Amos Paul – I would argue that complete faith in the verity of the natural world, your senses, and personal interpretation of things *is* the same as faith in a Divine Character behind it all.

    And I’d argue the opposite.

    Just because you can’t use evidence to decide on fundamental axioms doesn’t mean all possible axioms are equal, that there’s no principled way to choose among them. There is at least one distinction that can be made among such ‘candidate axioms’: Some propositions fall into the category of “unfalsifiable… but useless”.

    It’s possible to have pragmatic grounds for selecting certain ‘axioms’, specific ‘properly basic beleifs’. I can’t prove fundamental notions like ‘my reason has the potential to be effective’ and ‘my senses relay information correlated with an external reality’ and ‘the simplest explanation that covers the facts should be preferred’. And yet… it’s not whimsy or prejudice that drives me to accept these ideas. It’s the fact that not assuming them automatically means ‘game over’.

    The “Divine Character” axiom doesn’t have that property.

    (And why do you assume atheists have “complete faith” in such ideas, rather than just seeing them as ‘most probable’ or such?)

  • Joel

    Ray – admittedly, I was exagerrating somewhat and it was based more off what I’ve seen of the word “faitheist” around the internet than what I’ve read from Jerry specifically (he coined the term, but perhaps some people use it more than he does). Still, Jerry’s definition of faitheists as people who are “soft on faith” or “accomadationist” seems broader than you suggest.

  • Joel

    Well, technically he didn’t coin the term – the contest winner did – but you know what I mean.


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