http://www.stnews.org/Commentary-2422.htm

Is atheism dying?

http://www.stnews.org/Commentary-2422.htm

Is atheism dying?

Science & Theology News asked some leading thinkers to share their
views about the future of atheism

By Matt Donnelly
(December 9, 2005)


Atheism is far from dying. Quite the contrary: if anything, it is bound
to grow as the stigma attached to atheism is challenged by scientists,
journalists and philosophers. In the industrialized world the trend has
been toward secularism for 250 years, though admittedly it has made no
inroads in various backwards part of the world.
- Steven Pinker

No, of course not. Atheists are just not talking about their atheism,
some because they are not eager to make a scene, and others because it
just isn't a topic worth talking about. Most atheists of my
acquaintance-and that is probably 95% of the people I know
well!-find the topic simply boring and unimportant. But with the
aggressive advertisements of the religious now becoming somewhat
offensive, I think-I hope-this will change. I have urged all
brights to be more candid about their atheism or agnosticism.
- Daniel Dennett

I don't think it can be dying, but I would go so far as to say that the
atheist community is undergoing a crisis which, among other effects,
has made religion attractive to many people, even people who do not
actually believe their favorite religion's doctrines.

The crisis is the failure to incorporate into the atheistic worldview
an objective conception of morality. I don't mean agreeing on what is
right - after all, religions, too, have not achieved that, even
within any religion let alone between them. But religions do agree that
there is such a thing as right and wrong, independently of cultural
traditions and individual preferences. Atheists generically deny this.

Ironically, their error is to swallow one of the commonest
misconceptions of the religious mindset, namely that if moral
assertions have no supernatural justification then they are arbitrary.
In my opinion the opposite is true: a moral system with any
supernatural component must be arbitrary. For how should I choose
between rival religions' opinions of which supernatural entity provides
the true morality? Using religion to answer that question is circular
- and gives a different answer for different people. Using reason
concedes that the proper arbiter of moral issues is not supernatural
after all.
- David Deutsch