GrahamY

"What I don't understand about this thread is the hatred that many of the posters have towards Christianity specifically."

Substitute the word "Islam" for "Christianity", Graham and see if your sentiment changes.

"The lack of tolerance that I see from some avowedly atheistic posters doesn't speak well for atheism as a force for good."

Again, substitute the word "Christian" for "atheistic" and "atheism" respectively, and see if your sentiment changes.

"I'm not going to characterise atheism by the behaviour of a few of its adherents, anymore than I would Christianity on the same basis."

Spot on, Graham. But it's worth contemplating why so many OLO posters seem to need to vent their hatred so regularly.

Come on Graham, you make it sound like I go around sneering at Christians, just because they're Christians. It may appear that I am contemptuous of Christians, but I am only contemptuous of obvious superstitious thinking. That most Christians take any attack on their faith generally as an attack on them personally is not my problem.

You never said that atheists don't do good, no, but appeared to say that you do believe that Christian belief deserves respect because it leads some Christians to do good? Has it occurred to you that there isn't much of a link between doing good and religion, and that the attribution of doing good to ones religion or belief system is actually a product of fallacious thinking? You know, the type of fallacy that leads millions of people into thinking that homeopathy does good also, when in fact it's another (and more interesting) phenomenon altogether. Presence or absence of Religion in people's lives is not much of a predictor that they would do good, look after their families, neighbours etc.

Anyone can have faith about anything and find that it will do them 'good'. I personally have found that all one needs to get up in morning is faith that the future will be better than the past and that it is part of my job to try and make that so. But I am under no illusions that that faith is based (or even needs to be based) on anything other than my wish to make it so. The illusion that your religion and every other religion on the planet is that you think that it is and needs to be based on something. Hence, the ancient shepherding tribes book of legends, it's as good as any I suppose.

Graham

"I'm not going to characterise atheism by the behaviour of a few of its adherents, anymore than I would Christianity on the same basis."

"...why can't you just leave Christians alone to believe what they like?..."

I'll accept your claim as stated. However, we ARE affected by religion everyday:

1. Homosexuals
2. Status of Women (is the Pope a man?)
3. Reproductive Rights (Abbot and Pell for example)
3. Tax breaks for schools, land and businesses run by religious groups
4. Enforced closure of business on particular 'holy' days
5. The imposition of chaplains and religious classes in secular schools

I have no doubt others could add to this list of religious (particularly Christian in this country) imposition on other citizens.

And finally, maybe you personally don't tell others how to live but a great number of your brethren do.

You're running a straw-man case yourself, Graham: that posters here hate Christianity. I hate no religion, and there are a number of moderate Christians who post here who attract no anger whatsoever.

What's "hated" is the behaviour of fundamentalists who would roll back the Enlightenment and turn Australia into an Antipodean version of Saudi Arabia rather than confront their fears of mortality and uncertainty. There is no spiritual aspect to their belief. For them, Christianity is simply a convenient ideological box to hide in, where their ego is shielded from the doubt and challenges associated with living in a large and complex world.

I'm sure you've noticed the ongoing crusade against the theory of evolution. But where is the argument against the heliocentric theory of astronomy, or the theory of a spherical earth? All three of those scientific discoveries contradict the Bible, but only one infringes on the belief that humans are the special creations of god, which is why it's attacked so stridently.

We cannot tolerate attempts to destroy everything Western society has achieved in the last thousand years simply because some people are frightened of complexity. As long as we share our community with people whose attitudes are no different to the Taliban's, you shouldn't need to ask why their views are "hated".

Dear fellow OLOers

As Woody Allen said so entertainingly, "God almost certainly doesn't exist, but you can't prove it - you've just got to take it on faith".

Or as Margaret Thatcher is supposed to have said in Parliament one day, arguing the case for something or other "As God said, and I think He was right ...."

Bugsy,
>> I am only contemptuous of obvious superstitious thinking. That most Christians take any attack on their faith generally as an attack on them personally is not my problem.<<

Well, would you then be happy with this concatenation of two sentences:
"I am only contemptuous of obviously naive and irrational thinking. That most atheists take any attack on their atheism generally as an attack on them personally is not my problem."?

I read most of the atheist contributions (here and elsewhere) as statements not about religion, Islam, Christainity, the Pope etc. but as statements about the author of the post. Reading them, and trying to understand what makes the author tick, makes me also better understand my own world-view. Like learning a foreign language might be a fun on itself, but also helps you to better understand (e.g. the grammar of) your mother tongue.

This is one thing. Another thing is to make derisive and offensive statements about what I think makes somebody else tick, be he/she a self-proclaimed atheist, Muslim, Christian or what . As I used to tell my (maths) students: I cannot mark you on what I think you think, only on what you write down. Well, in this case replace "mark" by "try to understand".

pelican
>>Some believe in a supernatural entity some don't. ... I would love a psychological and philosophical article on this subject if it was possible.<<

Of course, there are volumes written attempting to answer your question on both the psychological and philosophical (two very different approaches) levels. As you might remember I myself have been trying to write something on these topics here a couple of times, struggling to sqeeze what I wanted to say into 350 words. The most frequent reaction I got was that I was condescending, engaging in mental qymnastics etc.

Besides, I would reformulate your sentence as >>Some believe that “the Cosmos is all that there is or ever was or ever will be” (Carl Sagan, Cosmos 1980), some don’t<<.