CADRE Comments

The old saying is that it's not polite to discuss religion and politics. However, the problem isn't discussing these issues, it has become discussing these issues politely. Regardless of whether it is religion or politics being discussed, it often degrades into an exchange of insults using the coarsest language that the parties can dredge up to throw at each other. Discussions between Christians and atheists have turned every bit as ugly as the discussions between Republicans and Democrats. Certainly, since I began engaging in Christian apologetics the conversations have certainly become much more contentious and the volume level has risen sharply. In the area of religion, I personally put much of the blame for the negative turn on the New Atheists and their take-no-prisoners approach to attacking religion and religious belief. After all, it is hard to have a calm, lucid conversation with someone when their position (as advocated by people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Har...

A couple of months ago, Julian Baggini presented a proposal for a "Heathen Manifesto" in the electronic (and maybe print) pages of the United Kingdom magazine The Guardian . Having recently heard of it, and reading it through, I have very few complaints, none of them more than trivial--except of course where we principly disagree on metaphysics, as supernaturalist theists and naturalistic atheists logically do. I warmly recommend readers check out the article at the link above; and then click on the jump for some commentary.