Evangelicals and Atheists...Good Bedfellows?

The most recent show topic on Interfaith Voices radio program is entitled "Evangelicals and Atheists...Good Bedfellows?" Maureen Fiedler interviews Frank Schaeffer who has written a book called Patience with God: Faith for People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism).

In the past, Schaeffer helped build up the religious right and was part of this movement until he discovered it was full of fanatics. After leaving the religious right movement he has argued that the religious fundamentalists and the extremist atheists in our culture have a whole lot in common.

Listen to the program at Interfaith Voices.

Do Atheists Borrow Religion's Morality?

Here is an interesting and thought-provoking essay addressing the issue of the new Atheistic movement and to what extent these individuals are influenced by the morality espoused by religions.

This is my favorite part of the piece:

"... if [atheists are] right (and in a raw, pure and absolutist form atheism is unpalatable to most people), then that might be an indication that there is something to all this “religion stuff” besides the temporary emotional analgesic he describes. Maybe, if wanting meaning is the way people are, and we are part of nature, then those feelings—however they express themselves—might indicate something true about the reality of nature and the way it actually is, rather than just signaling an emotional need for religious therapy."

I believe this to be a decent argument for the ligitimacy for religious belief and practice. Since most people naturally desire meaning in the form of religious and spiritual practice rather than nihilistic atheism, and this want is part and parcel of the nature of the world (since we're part and parcel of the nature of the world), then this quest for meaning via religion and religious morality may say something true about us as human beings.

Read the entire article for more.

Purpose-Dirven Atheism

Frank Schaeffer writes an article in Religion Dispatches about the new anti-religion movement forwarded by self-avowed atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens. The piece poses the question as to what extent these positions are just as fundamentalistic as the religious views they critique. Schaeffer suggests that Dawkins, Harris, etc. are indeed extremist and radical versions of fundamentalism, only from the opposite side of the spectrum from that of the religious type.

Read the entire article here.

(Image courtesy of flikr user 18romaire via Religion Dispatches)