New Atheist Campaign

In a move not entirely unrelated to my last post, a new poster campaign from the British Humanist Association has been unveiled.



The posters follow their previous 'bus' campaign which stated 'There's probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.' They seem to be part of a campaign to get rid of faith schools.

Richard Dawkins said on Radio 2 today that it was a consciousness raising exercise, to encourage the media and others not to label children as 'Christian', 'Muslim' etc. People should not assume that children automatically follow the faith of their parents. They should just say 'children of Christian parents', 'children of Muslim parents' and so on. Dawkins said he was not wanting to interfere with the way parents bring up their children, what values and beliefs they pass on etc, but this is a little hard to swallow.

Bishop Nick Baines and Kevin Brewster have already done a better job than I can at showing some of the flaws in the views of the poster campaign, of which there are many.

Children are not a blank slate religiously, until they grow up. To think this completely buys into the myth of religious neutrality. They are like sponges absorbing and learning all the time. They are bombarded from all sides with messages and images, ideas and worldviews, many of which are antithetical to the Christian faith. As Bishop Nick rightly says 'to not tell a child that there is a God is not to leave that child philosophically neutral, but to positively indoctrinate the child into the assumption that there is no God. Why is that more rational or less bad?'

It also strikes me as rampantly individualistic. It denies the reality of the Christian family, or the Muslim family. It is my Christian belief that William and Emily can be full members of the Christian family, the covenant community, the church. (This touches on debates about infant baptism, but I'm not going there now!). I'm sure Muslims and Jews feel the same way about their children in their respective faith communities. The idea that children are just autonomous, free-thinking, individuals whose minds we should 'leave alone' is naive beyond belief.

What is interesting is that there have been a variety of Christian responses. Jonathan Bartley at Ekklesia seems to firmly support the campaign, largely in connection with the faith schools issue. I'm not sure if Jonathan is completely against faith schools or just against the idea of them (or at least CofE ones) having selective admissions policies. (I would agree with this second complaint). In their article Ekklesia says that the Bible Society thinktank Theos gave money to the campaign. If this is true, then I think it can only be because they think it will start discussion. They completely disavow the ideas involved in their own article on the subject. Ekklesia also say that Bishop Nick Baines welcomed the campaign, which is true in so far as he thinks it will generate discussion, but is selective quoting considering he also slams the views involved.

The Evangelical Alliance also say they welcome the campaign, being glad that the humanists agree with evangelicals that children have to make their own decisions about faith. What, I wonder, do they consider children of Christian parents to be until they have made this decision. Neutral? Outside of the church? Pagans?

Finally, there is the response of Jan Ainsworth, who is the Church of England's Chief Education Officer, who obviously thinks the whole campaign is misguided, and I tend to agree with her.

Atheist Fundamentalism?

I got into a bit of a debate recently on twitter with someone who objected to my use of the term 'atheist fundamentalists'. My use of the phrase was in something of an offhand remark (as is the nature of twitter) to an article in the Guardian in which atheist philosopher Michael Ruse argued that the 'New Atheists', the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens etc, bring atheism into disrepute. I thought it was quite a reasonable and refreshing article but some of the comments showed that Ruse had touched on a raw nerve. These comments, to my mind, exhibited the classic behaviour of fundamentalism. By fundamentalism I meant an unthinking, narrow-minded, dogmatism, unwilling to see the other's point of view, and absolutely convinced of its own correctness. There is no such thing, my objector insisted, it is a misnomer. For one thing atheists, it is claimed, have no fundamental beliefs. For another thing, the term 'fundamentalist' has a particular provenance within a certain section of American Protestant Christianity. It is insulting, it was claimed, to genuine fundamentalists, to apply this term, willy-nilly, to people of other worldviews, of other faiths, or no faith.

On the one hand, I have to acknowledge that it was a bit of a cheap shot. Fundamentalist has become such a pejorative term that it is basically only used as an insult. I certainly wouldn't like to be called a fundamentalist, and by the rules that I claim to live by I thereby shouldn't apply this label to other people. I admit that part of my reason for calling some atheists 'fundamentalists' is that I know that it will wind them up. However, I would like to push back a little on my claim that atheists can be 'fundamentalists' as much as 'religious' folk.

Firstly, I have to disagree with the view that atheists have no fundamental beliefs. Whether you say atheists hold the view that there is no god or, as many atheists prefer to phrase it, they hold the view that there is not enough evidence to convince them of the the existence of god, this is a belief. Science is unable to adjudicate on the existence of God.

Secondly, like it or not, the word 'fundamentalist' has entered the popular discourse. 'Fundamentalist' is regularly applied to narrow-minded and dogmatic people of many different religions and worldviews. This may be unfair to the North American Christians who self-identify as fundamentalist but that is too bad. We talk of 'Islamic fundamentalists' or 'freemarket fundamentalists' and it is usually clearly understood what is being said. We don't have to be wooden literalists about the use of the word 'fundamentalist'

Thirdly, I'm in good company (in my opinion) as Alistair McGrath (who is nothing but gracious in his interactions with Dawkins et al) has labelled the viewpoint of 'the new atheists' as 'atheist fundamentalism'. See the subtitle of his response to Dawkins


'Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine'

It is perhaps not a coincidence that Michael Ruse supplies the blurb on the front cover of this book - 'The God Delusion makes me embarrassed to be an atheist, and the McGraths show why'. It is no wonder that Ruse has become anathema in some atheist circles. He has denied the faith.

Lastly, the 'New Atheists' themselves acknowledge that atheists can act religiously. When Hitchens is reminded in debates of the atrocities committed by prominent atheists in the 20th century he says 'ah, but they were acting religiously. They learnt all of their worst tricks from religion etc, etc.' I tend to agree, because I believe that all human beings are religious at heart. If people do not worship God they will devote themselves to something else and this can include worldviews. Atheists are just as capable of being narrow-minded and dogmatic as 'religious' people. That's what I saw in some of the responses to Ruse and, it seems to me, is something akin to fundamentalism.

So what do people think? Is there such a thing as an 'atheist fundamentalist'? Is it acceptable to apply the label fundamentalist to other people, or is it too much of a pejorative insult?