{"id":551,"date":"2011-02-08T21:03:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T21:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/02\/church-of-england-declares-war-on-new-atheism.html"},"modified":"2011-02-08T21:03:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T21:03:00","slug":"church-of-england-declares-war-on-new-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/02\/church-of-england-declares-war-on-new-atheism.html","title":{"rendered":"Church Of England Declares War On New Atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has given his backing to\u00a0 a draft report calling upon clergy to take on the new atheists<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What scares them so much about the new, more vocal arguments of the new atheists?\u00a0 They fear loss of power.\u00a0\u00a0Yes, even the Church of England, that de-clawed and de-fanged remnant, is afraid of losing more ground:<\/p>\n

[The report] expresses concern that\u2026the Church could lose its place at the centre of public life unless it challenges attempts to marginalise religious belief.<\/p>\n

It is religion\u2019s ongoing quest for real power that forced these so-called new atheists to become more vocal in the first place.\u00a0 Let\u2019s face it, if religions were just sitting on the sidelines singing hymns and praises, no one would care.\u00a0 If they were simply offering up opinions about what\u2019s right and wrong, limited in authority to their own flocks, Dawkins, Hitchens & Co. wouldn\u2019t find a reason, or desire, to be quite so loud.<\/p>\n

But theists and their religious movements don\u2019t behave this way.\u00a0 They don\u2019t simply express a point of view.\u00a0 They claim a privileged position in the world based upon privileged access to ultimate truth.\u00a0 They hold out this point of view as the word and authority of the creator of everything.\u00a0 This is what gets Dawkins worked up.\u00a0 This is what causes Hitchens to declare (even if a tad hyperbolically) that religion poisons EVERYTHING.<\/p>\n

And remember that this report is coming from the mild-mannered Church of England.\u00a0 As it finds itself floating in a sea of unbelieving Britons and ever-increasing Islamists, it makes you wonder how they have the cheek to say this:<\/p>\n

There is still work to be done to counter the prevailing tendency of treating faith as a private matter which should not impact on what happens in the public realm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is this attitude that riled up the new atheists in the first place.\u00a0 How can faith be anything but a private matter?\u00a0 Religions don\u2019t agree among each other on what should happen in the public realm.\u00a0 While the Church of England is busy battling the new atheists, what has it to say about the Pope of Rome or the Ayatollah of Iran?\u00a0 What gives Canterbury more credibility than them?\u00a0 Is it not painfully obvious why we must allow no faith \u2013 nor faith itself \u2013 to be specially favored?<\/p>\n

The entire enterprise of religion, to the extent that it has utilitarian value (and it does), must be reduced to a purely non-theistic cultural concern.\u00a0 This will not come without defeating the prevalent forms of theistic religion that generally plague the world today.<\/p>\n

I say, \u201cGo forth, New Atheists, and defeat them.\u201d\u00a0 In the meantime, we non-theistic religious types will keep working on their replacement.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has given his backing to\u00a0 a draft report calling upon clergy to take on 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,8,19,25,30,34],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-atheism","tag-catholicism","tag-islam","tag-liberal-religions-and-theologies","tag-non-theism","tag-post-theistic-religion"],"yoast_head":"\nChurch Of England Declares War On New Atheism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has given his backing to\u00a0 a draft report calling upon clergy to take on the new atheists: Clergy are to be urged\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/02\/church-of-england-declares-war-on-new-atheism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Church Of England Declares War On New Atheism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has given his backing to\u00a0 a draft report calling upon clergy to take on the new atheists: Clergy are to be urged\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/02\/church-of-england-declares-war-on-new-atheism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-02-08T21:03:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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