Competition winner!
Thanks for all the entries to the “Atheism is a faith position too” competition.
I have thought long and hard, and come up with the following decision. The winner is:
Austin Cline, for this example from Rowan Williams and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor:
Many secularist commentators argue that the growing role of faith in society represents a dangerous development.
However, they fail to recognise that public atheism is itself an intolerant faith position.
This is from the foreword of a report called “Doing God” available here. I went to the original source to check and I could not find a single argument in the entire document to support the contention that “public atheism is itself an intolerant faith position.”
As part of a public joint statement by the heads of the Catholic and Anglican churches in the UK, offered without any justification whatsoever, it scores very highly for being irritating, and gains some extra points for being slightly sinister!
Austin – email me your postal address.
Judge’s decision is final, of course.
Thanks for the link to the report. Something that I think the internet “requires” in all articles is a nice, clear pointer to ones sources. The BBC website usually infuriates me with its general inability to do this.Back to the topic: Not sure what they mean by “public” atheism. Should I be keeping my atheism down the back of the sofa? I shall have a read of the report; I just hope it won’t contain any bizarre “defining God to be anything that stops you being able to pick holes in it” verbal gymnastics.On another note: What do you think about Rowan Williams’ apparent unwillingness to just “come out” and say to some of his flock “your views on homosexuality are outdated and simply wrong”? A Christian friend of mine claims that Dr Williams might be trying to keep his trap shut to avoid ending up with a split in the church that would be “worse” in the long run than the intolerance that is being shown towards people who are told they are bad simply for fancying members of their own sex.My response was that Jesus himself didn’t seem to be reported as giving much of a damn about keeping his mouth shut. Where would all those Christian arguments be now if Jesus hadn’t been scratching in the sand and making pithy comments?
Congratulations to Austin. Good prize, too. I’m waiting until the paperback comes out. Is there any difference between the hardback and paperback?
Grrrr… Oh, is this on? Congratulations, Austin. 🙂
If you’re still collecting instances, here’s another good one: http://shanekastler.typepad.com/pastor_shanes_blog/2007/05/the_faith_of_at.html“>The ‘Faith’ of Atheism: Believing In The Absurd, To Avoid The Obvious
Congrats to Austin……I’m a big fan of his.