Freethinkers wanted

MAN: Oh look, this isn't an argument.

ARGUER: Yes it is.

MAN: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.

ARGUER: No it isn't.

MAN: … An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.

ARGUER: No it isn't.

MAN: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.

ARGUER: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.

MAN: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'

ARGUER: Yes it is!

MAN: No it isn't!

ARGUER: Yes it is!

MAN: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.

(short pause)

ARGUER: No it isn't.

— Monty Python's "The Argument Sketch"

It's good to see the ongoing, vigorous conversation stemming from an earlier post on the "Blasphemy Challenge" ("Bloody Mary Candyman").

That post wasn't about atheism per se as much as a complaint about the disappointingly impoverished brand of atheism the BC seemed to be promoting. It strikes me as what I think of as sectarian atheism, a wholly reactive rejection of a particular narrow set of sectarian notions that produces a correspondingly restrictive opposite point of view.

This narrow, nominal atheism is weak tea. I prefer a more bracing, robust atheism, the sort that lives up to Tom Paine's preferred term, "freethinking."

When theists such as myself engage in conversation with sectarian atheists, we learn nothing new about ourselves or the world around us. We are introduced to no new ideas or new perspectives, only to contradiction.

But conversation with a true freethinker is always challenging and rewarding. It requires me to interact with a different perspective, with someone whose thinking is not proscribed by all of the same premises and presuppositions I bring to the table. That's invaluable, not just for insight into their perspective(s), but into my own. If you want to know what water is like, don't ask a fish.

In other words, we need to listen to each other. Each. Other. None of us is smart enough, big enough or old enough to have seen and thought of everything, to have settled or dismissed everything. And none of us is so fully self-aware that we can't benefit from listening to someone who's not swimming in the same water we spend our lives in.

This same don't-ask-a-fish principle is part of why we Christians emphasize the importance of cross-cultural fellowship and ministry. Culture, like religious faith, provides a host of premises and presuppositions, many of which might be held unaware or unexamined. Sorting the presuppositions of culture from the tenets of faith can be a tricky thing. Tricky but important, because we don't want to elevate something we've simply absorbed as a cultural more to the level of religious or ethical dogma

We've all been swimming in our own particular cultures too long to easily recognize those things we believe, or assume, or neglect because of them. We need help from outsiders — from those who do not share our particular assumptions and blindspots. We'll never know what we're missing — or even that we're missing it — if we do not speak with and listen to people whose perspective is very different from our own.

This is also why religious believers need to interact with and listen to outsiders — to those who do not share our particular religious assumptions. By outsiders here I mean both those of different religious faith, and those with no particular religious faith at all.

We Christians, in other words, need to listen to atheists. And if all of the above is true, then atheists probably also need to listen to us. Robust conversation is good. No one who wants to think freely can afford to avoid it.

This is, not to get all group-huggy about it, one of the things I treasure about the remarkably diverse group of commenters who contribute here. You folks are cool like that.