Schism! Denial! Infighting! Name calling! And that's just among the atheists...

Michael Ruse, an atheist and professor of philosophy and zoology at Florida State University, doesn't quite believe in the disbelief of some of his fellow non-believers:

Second, unlike the new atheists, I take scholarship seriously. I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, "What caused God?" as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery. Dawkins was indignant when, on the grounds that inanimate objects cannot have emotions, philosophers like Mary Midgley criticised his metaphorical notion of a selfish gene. Sauce for the biological goose is sauce for the atheist gander. There are a lot of very bright and well informed Christian theologians. We atheists should demand no less.

Third, how dare we be so condescending? I don't have faith. I really don't. Rowan Williams does as do many of my fellow philosophers like Alvin Plantinga (a Protestant) and Ernan McMullin (a Catholic). I think they are wrong; they think I am wrong. But they are not stupid or bad or whatever. If I needed advice about everyday matters, I would turn without hesitation to these men. We are caught in opposing Kuhnian paradigms. I can explain their faith claims in terms of psychology; they can explain my lack of faith claims also probably partly through psychology and probably theology also. (Plantinga, a Calvinist, would refer to original sin.) I just keep hearing Cromwell to the Scots. "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." I don't think I am wrong, but the worth and integrity of so many believers makes me modest in my unbelief.

Read the entire column, from The Guardian.

• Oh my, I do love the cool, calm, and rational thinking... (Oct. 30, 2009)
• Professor Dawkins and the Origins of Religion | Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P. | From God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Dawkins' Delusions | An interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P.
• The Source of Certitude | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• Atheism and the Purely "Human" Ethic | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• A Short Introduction to Atheism | Carl E. Olson
• What I Learned From Henry Morgentaler | Carl E. Olson
• Dark Ages and Secularist Rages: A Response to Professor A.C. Grayling | Carl E. Olson
• Is Religion Evil? Secularism's Pride and Irrational Prejudice | Carl E. Olson

Comments

[Ed Peters]

"Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them..." Yup, that's my distinct impression of seeing D in several lengthy interviews.

The way D seizes with smug glee on sophist lines, it reminds me of an adolescent taking his first steps in logic, but assuming he can immediately reason out conundrums that have challenged great thinkers for millenia.

Such arrogance.

Be still, little man, and know that I am God.