By AUSTIN DACEY - THE WASHINGTON POST
Added: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 UTC

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/10/the_secularist_case_against_atheism_30.html

A new, milder "Atheism 3.0" is on the market, teaching a more forgiving attitude towards faith. Bruce Sheiman, author of An Atheist Defends Religion, maintains that humanity is better off with it than without it. Although a recent Religion News Service classifies me and my book The Secular Conscience among the 3.0s, I have to say that I'm not all that happy with the taxonomy.

I'll not mention that this "truth-must-lie-somewhere-in-between" narrative trips all too easily off of journalistic fingers. Should we agree that God is half dead? Nor will I dwell on the implicit assumption that Atheisms 1.0 and 2.0 have passed into planned obsolescence and that 3.0 constitutes some kind of scheduled improvement on them both. I'll be damned if I can imagine an upgrade to Hume or Baron d'Holbach, and Hitchens is no slouch either.

For me, the interesting thought is not so much that God does not exist, it is that he need not exist. The pertinent question is not whether we are we better off with or without religion, but whether religion matters quite as much as either answer would have us suppose. To take this stance is neither to correct atheism nor to reject religion. It is to change the subject to secularism.
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TAGGED: ATHEISM, COMMENTARY