All Believers Are Atheists, All Atheists Are Believers

The quote from Mark Russell comes from an article which asks whether the “new atheists” are making old mistakes. The above is just one of several memorable quotes in the article. Another is when Russell writes, “I began to wonder if the New Atheists were combatting fundamentalism by duplicating its mistakes.”

Or related interest, approaching this from the other side, Jeremy Myers wrote in a recent blog post:

Many atheists, I believe, have rightly declared their non-belief in a god that truly does not exist.They have gone looking for a god that does not exist, and, having failed to find him (and how could they?), have declared that god does not exist. Christians take offense to this, and come up with all sorts of arguments for the existence of God, but fail to recognize that they too are arguing (in many cases) for the existence of a god that does not actually exist.In such cases, it is the atheists who are the true worshipers of the true God, for they have recognized the non-existence of the non-god.

Click through to see how he gets there, and where he goes with it.

See also Jerry Coyne saying things such as that the Bible refutes apophatic theology because it contains anthropomorphisms. Seriously.

And, by way of contrast, Paul Flesher suggests that religion not being rational is not the insightful criticism some think. See (or rather, hear) also the conversation between Jim Bradley and Michael Ruse on religion and science.

Here are some other posts related to the topic of religionless Christianity and religious naturalism, which I meant to share several months ago but never managed to until now:

Richard Beck blogged about Bonhoffer’s religionless Christianity.

Jerry Coyne showed his inability to understand religious naturalism, and suggested that even rational religion is “doing it wrong.” Larry Moran’s thoughts on the conflict between reason and superstition are also relevant. But see on the other hand Chet Raymo on religious naturalism, and John Wilkins on primary and secondary causality.