Sellick, what about writing an article on the Nature of God as you see it, rather than focusing on atheism and atheists. The atheist bit is a red herring into what you are actually saying, the real nature of God is not the pagan like God worshipped, by ‘many if not most Christians’.

It would be a very interesting to follow a vigorous thread between fellow Christians. Your differences are not with atheists, but with other Christians.

You state: ‘modern day Christians can similarly be accused of atheism because they do not believe in the God delivered to us by 17th and 18th century scientists/theologians’.

The traditional churches, with enormous bodies of scholarship are emptying,, but churches with a very simple concept of God, and a rigid reading of the bible with perhaps some bible study where a person with limited education ‘explains difficult passages’ as if dealing with some incomprehensible post modernist poetry, are filling up. To me that show that many prefer that 17th century God.

On another note: I cannot understand how you reconcile the notion of a personal relationship with God with the concept of God as I think you express Him. The Christians I know all claim to have personal relationships with God. He may or may not answer their prayers with a miracle, but that is explained away in a most facile manner.

I echo Anansi's request. I too would like to understand Peter's understanding of God. I am agnostic about the Universe. It seems to me that there must be a first cause and that maybe it has been for ever, but I don't think we shall ever be able to understand that. But putting this big issue aside as something that we can only be agnostic about, there is something about love in community which, though maybe only an epiphenomenon of human existence, is a pretty powerful idea. Is it this kind of idea that Peter calls God? This idea bubbles through the old traditions, scriptures, and theological formulations which sadly objectify God and thus mislead people. Peter obviously feels a need to use the scriptures and traditions in talking about this God because maybe those who have gone before were struggling to express the idea though in the theological terms of their day. I am not Christian but I think I can subscribe to the idea that the most worthwhile, powerful and enduring force or idea is love - universal good will. Is that what you mean by God Peter?

Clem, I think you are merely underlining the fact that religions of all sorts are human constructs, created to serve the needs of the societies in which they arise. Consequently there is no one 'true' religion, and far from 'God' being universal, isolated groups such as New Guinea tribes or Australian Aborigines had never heard of God or Christianity but had their own quite different and satisfying world view. And of course now we all know about everyone else's 'religion' it becomes apparent that they are just comforting fictions and more and more people realise that they can stand on their own two feet without the crutch of superstition and the supernatural.

I do get annoyed by assertions such 'God is Love', which try to hijack normal human emotions into the service of religion, and don't actually make any sense. There is only one thing that is love, and it is love itself.

Peter,

A real atheist doesn't waste his time reading the bible other than to gain material to have a verbal stoush with the god-botherers.

There is nothing dark about being an atheist. The whole idea of dead is dead is so much lighter than eternal afterlife which could be full of suffering depending on the whim of a god. Indeed the concept of a finite life forces you to make the most out of it and puts you firmly in control instead of living an unfulfilled life in fear of hell and damnation.

Perhaps you could write an article on an omnipotent god and freewill or perhaps explain the Calvinist concept of the elect that are predetermined to enter heaven.

Maybe the renaissance popes and clergy really understood Catholicism , party till you drop, to hell with celibacy and get the peasants to fund your lifestyle through taxes that promise them direct entry to heaven.

Altruism and goodness exist in peoples hearts because we have evolved to live in social groups, not because god put it there. Morals and the potential for good and evil exists in everyone; non-atheists don't have a monopoly on it.

Sellick,

Your article is again playing the "God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob" against the "God of (some) philosophers and scientists", a distinction intelligible only within the Christian (and indirectly any Abrahamic) cultural context. We already had discussions along these lines and you know I see it differently. Nevertheless, thanks for a new insight into your way of seeing things.

However, this is not the point I wanted to make, but rather to ask - along with Anansi and Fencepost - why you had to include attacks on atheism, leading to the kind of emotional responses that you received (which does not mean you would not get them from certain people even if you restricted your article to a discussion of different Christian ways of understanding God).

In one another forum (on Dawkins) I found the following comment: "When someone explains to me what I believe and then step by step explains why I am stupid to believe it, I tend to get irritated. Dawkins comes across to me like that". Cannot atheists complain the same way if we pass judgement about their world view without trying to understand what they mean by the term "atheist"?

I know, it is not easy, because of the emotions involved. For instance, I learned from a thread on this OLO that most of those participating in these exchanges of views (and/or emotions) define atheism as "absence (or lack) of belief", just replacing the undefined (undefinable?) term "God" (as in “I do not believe in God”) by the undefined term "belief".

I was actually tempted to contribute here with a whole article analysing the possible meanings of the term "atheist", however I refrained from doing it for three reasons: the first, and least important, was that I did not want to receive the same kind of abusive responses that you keep on receiving; secondly, because one should first agree on what one means by “belief in God” (which is not as simple as it used to be when only the Judaeo-Chistian context was considered), and thirdly because of the recently discovered article http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2009-4.pdf. (ctd)

(ctd) That article includes, as one possible definition, also “lack of belief”. Unfortunately, the author is unable to keep his rational analysis of all available (and possible) meanings of the term away from his apology of atheism (which he defines as a rejection of the “belief in a specific god” of the Abrahamic religions) and criticism - even ridicule - of positions incompatible with atheism. Truly, this applies to most essays that involve religion, perceived positively or negatively: e.g. there are only a few descriptions of what Christianity is all about without an apology for - or denigration of - its tenets.

Besides, also Richard Dawkins seems to prefer atheism as comprising a positive belief: “An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles - except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don't yet understand.” (The God Delusion).

To my understanding this is like when I believe that my house will not be burglarized, my credit card stolen etc. This is a justified belief unless (or until) I have a “life experience” that shatters my belief. On the other hand it can also be seen as the belief that I will never win a million in Tattslotto, hence I never buy a ticket. Even he/she who buys his/her ticket regularly has mostly only the thrill every week of a possible win, and these thrills are probably all he/she gets. But there is a hope, a possibility, that beside these thrills one day he/she will win...

This corresponds to two categories of Christians who reject Dawkins’ belief: the Christian who is over-cautious lest he be “burglarized“ and lives in fear, and the Chritsian who is thrilled “every week” hoping for a “big win sometimes in the far away future”.

Well, this is already apology, not analysis, so I better leave it at that.