"If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted." - Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; ANY kind of life is logically compatible with atheism”. – Dr John Dickson, Director of the Centre for Public Christianity and Senior Research Fellow of the Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University.

Atheists can be ethical, altruistic, kind, considerate, tolerant .... OR Machiavellian, egoistic, Nietzschean, elitist, callous, you name it. Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot aren't a particularly compatible set of bedfellows - are they?

Atheism, like life, is what you make it. With no external "superego" looking over your shoulder, you can decide or make up whatever you like. Good or evil. Of course, postmodernists are into the disconcerting habit of denying that good and evil, beautiful and ugly, have any valid meaning at all - all is relative. Quicksand!

As Nietzsche's Madman in 'Parable on the Death of God' (1882) screams, as he runs into the marketplace:

“How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Where is it moving now? Where are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left?”

In The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo declaims to the Council of Elrond: “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost...." So it is indeed with religious faith. Previous sages like Lao Tze and the Buddha could be called wanderers who were not lost. I certainly believe though that plenty of "wanderers" ARE lost. How can you tell? Hmm ... someone who certainly wasn't lost said "By their fruit you will know them."

YEAST RELIGIONS, Well that is the name I give to those religions that propagate the idea of go forth and multiply and to have their infallible leaders ban contraceptives for their members. This is to breed like yeast till you have no food left or die in your own excrement. Recently when a leader of a yeast religion came to Australia, the Australian newspaper was full of articles on how the world can support many more people. Atheists may hopefully see a problem with this. Religious Members of our Parliament impose their ideals on the world at large eg a ex Senator who held the balance in the senate used this position to prevent the distribution of contraceptives in developing countries by NGOs. Perhaps a real separation of State and religion needs to be implemented in Australia, eg no prayers in Parliament. More Atheists in Parliament please.

pelican,
>>atheists should not think themselves superior<<
I agree, and would add that neither should Christians (or “theists” in general) think themselves superior as they used in the past (and some “leftovers” still do).

In case of Christians that feeling of superiority is expressed by “denigrating atheists as lacking a value system”, in case of atheists it is expressed by “denigrating Christians as being irrational (even illogical), lacking an understanding of science” etc. There are immoral atheists as there are irrational Christians, and vice versa. There are believers as well as unbelievers among ethicists as they are among logicians and scientists.

You cannot speak about Western morals ignoring the concepts of religion and God, if only for historical reasons. However, I think it is silly if a Christian (ethicist) wants to discuss ethics with an atheist (ethicist) starting with the assumption that religion (e.g. the Bible) is “God-inspired”. I also think that Christian scientists have already learned this: Laplace’s reply to Napoleon “je n'ai pas eu besoin de cette hypotheses”, expressing the irrelevance of religious beliefs (about the metaphysics of reality) to scientific theories is now implicitly accepted by most scientists, both atheist and Christian.

>>Religion will eventually have less significance particularly in Western democracies.<<
This is what my Marx-Leninist teachers also believed. I think neither you nor I shall see to what extent this will transpire, although I can share your hope if you mean that religion (religious world-views) will evolve into something more sophisticated than how we know it now. Well, so will, science, mathematics, information technology etc.

There is always the old joke - Nietzsche: God is dead … (a couple of years later) … God: Nietzsche is dead.

"Atheism can unite people in a movement of human, compassionate and thoughtful ideals."

That is a rather vague and meaningless statement from our author. What exactly does Human and Thoughtful actually mean in this context?

Atheists are currently attempting to invent a new religion without the concept of God but that has already been done. There is already a compassionate way of living in the world which does not include concept of God - its called Buddhism. Whats wrong with that?
No, atheists really want moral relativism and a consequences free belief system which is why Buddhism is also rejected as an alternative.

In the final analysis atheism makes no sense. It has at its heart the need to escape responsibility for actions which must lead to anarchy and chaos.

Ultimately, all such arguments are irrelevant anyway because what humans believe has no bearing on whether or not God exists.

*sigh*.... As an agnostic dyslexic insomniac, I stay up all night, every night, wondering if there really is a Dog.... *sigh*...

"It’s clear that no self-respecting so-called atheist is 100 per cent sure that God doesn’t exist."

It's a nice article, but I wish we could get rid of this silly caveat. If the words '100% sure' mean anything at all, then we can be 100% sure that God doesn't exist, and for exactly the same reasons we can be 100% sure of everything else. Why am I 100% sure that I live in Australia? Because all of the empirical evidence I have confirms that belief and none of the empirical evidence I have disconfirms it. Exactly the same applies to my disbelief in God.

To go on making the concession that we are only '99% sure' is silly and misleading: it suggests that we are doubtful when we are only trying to be tolerant. Let's be honest: many of us are 100% sure, certain, absolutely rock-solid positive that there is no God, and it's about time we said so.