I can embrace new scientific theories about human origins, without being saddled with the belief that a god created everything. This is precisely why we should set out our stall to be more tolerant and inclusive. But perhaps we are misjudging this atheist. The Exchange is a part of CT's Believing in a god is fine by me, if it is important to you. A Look at 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, Leadership Lessons from a Pandemic: The Responsive Approach to Strategy. 12/13/2014 04:31 pm ET Updated Dec 06, 2017 I was raised as a devout Evangelical Christian. That gunk the New Atheists scrub at so assiduously is the inevitable matter of human culture, of imagination. Atheism has been regarded as compatible with agnosticism, but has also been contrasted with it. While exposing us to objects of importance, they nevertheless seem unable to frame these in a way that links them powerfully to our inner needs. A good approach here is not to try to stop the revelation argument from going round and round but to ask a different question, thus: given that there probably is no God, where did all this stuff come from? We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Subscribe and get one year free.The views of the blogger do not necessarily reflect those of Christianity Today. If you are atheist, you are most likely to have been raised in a religious home. The atheist movement is already modeling ourselves in many ways on the LGBT movement. Religions are intermittently too useful, effective and intelligent to be abandoned to the religious alone. 2. When A Word Is Worth A Thousand Complaints (and When It Isn’t), Why There Are So Many ‘Miraculous’ Stories of Bibles Surviving Disaster, What is the Gospel? The Exchange with Ed Stetzer (Weekly) The Exchange newsletter is a weekly digest of … I’m fascinated by this rise of atheist churches, and I think there is a very important lesson Christian parents can take from it: We have to make sure our kids are attracted to Jesus and not just the church. I told the church I would post it here today so, if you have not already seen it, check it out: I thought Penn, an atheist, shared some important things that Christians need to hear. But, in practice, art museums abdicate much of their potential to function as new churches (places of consolation, meaning, community and redemption) through the way they handle the collections entrusted to them. As a result, “God” becomes incredible. It is the next move in the religious enterprise that gets interesting. Beyond all this, Lauren and her husband Justin have become dear friends. If you don’t do religion, you don’t get it. This post-Christian puritanism, largely oblivious now of its history, is highly visible in the New Atheism of the 1990s and 2000s, and especially in Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion. Sure, they were atheists (i.e. But apart from those of us who share many of their goals, is there anything we can learn from their success?I've already highlighted one lesson: that appearances matter.In this post, I want to look at what we might learn from their structure. By Hemant Mehta. As children, we are extremely susceptible and prone to learning, which means that what we learn may be hard to shake. They both insisted that God was not another being and that you could not even say that He (ridiculous pronoun!) Atheism isn't any sort of belief, which means that it can't be a belief system, which in turn means it can't possibly be a religion on its own. It was an “initiation” (musterion), which introduced Greek-speaking early Christians to a new way of thinking about the divine, a meditative exercise in which the mind swung in a disciplined way from what you thought you knew about God to the ineffable reality. Usually religion is about doing things and it is hard work. Atheists should learn to rescue some of what is beautiful, touching and wise from all that no longer seems true. So Sunday, a Southern Baptist preacher and a NYC Jewish atheist took the platform together! So it’s a mistake to do what most unbelievers usually do at this point, which is to dismiss them as fairy tales and thereby deprive themselves of a rich resource for exploring the heights and depths of the human condition. “Let me have none of your popish stuff,” he said firmly. “Good morning.” Score one to Paine for exiting the world without compromising his convictions, yet what he said had made, on the face of it, no sense. Don’t shy away from the term. I'd like to see us take at least two lessons away from the discussion. This is not only nonsense, but intellectually lazy. Therapy is hidden, unbranded, depressing in its outward appearance. Of course I want them to come to faith in Christ. He was suggesting, in one charged and revealing insult, that the original Protestant critique of Catholicism should be extended to the whole of historic Christianity. This website uses cookies to help us give you the best experience when you visit our website. I shared my pulpit with an atheist. But what I, and many other atheists, take issue with is the arrogant attitude that religious faith is the only means of providing us with a moral compass – that society dissolves without faith into a hedonistic, anarchic, amoral, self-gratifying decadence. We are not going to hell if we don't repent, and never were. How ironic that an atheist believes in revival more than most Christians! See more. This makes no sense. 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