IVP - Strangely Dim

Atheists Are from Mars, Theists Are from Venus

Wired Magazine has run a feature article on the New Atheists. The new breed are more zealous, more militant, than your friendly neighborhood atheist. Here's the lowdown:

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

The New Atheists argue, for all practical purposes, that there is no real meeting between belief and unbelief. There are blue states of consciousness, and there are red states of consciousness; there can be no purple. The author of the article strikes a militant tone with the "atheist's prayer":

that our reason will subjugate our superstition, that our intelligence will check our illusions, that we will be able to hold at bay the evil temptation of faith.

The chief hurdle in the New Atheist agenda--taking over the world, or something like that--is the fact that they sound so smug about it. Atheist activist Clark Adams claims that they are "predominant among the upper 5 percent" of the population--they're the best of the best. They're the navy seals of the cosmos, the philospher-kings of the new republic; why don't the rest of us get our heads out of the clouds and bow down to them?

Not all atheists are so self-assured, of course. An episode in the most recent season of Thirty Days required an avowed atheist to live among devoutly evangelistic evangelicals for a month, and exposed the sociological complications of life as a 5 percent minority. In a democracy, strength is found in numbers, which makes a democracy perhaps inherently uncomfortable: the majority must respect the rights, but not necessarily anything else, of those who believe otherwise.

But to be honest, it's difficult to respect the beliefs of the New Atheism if you're among the lower 95 percent. Chief among their contentions is that religion is not just not good for you, it's actually bad for you--and for them, and for everybody else. Mere semantics and social controls separate your friendly neighborhood evangelical, for instance, from Osama bin Laden: adherence to an extrasensory, unprovable and illogical system of beliefs is dangerous; indoctrinating children into such a system of beliefs is immoral.

The very first book in the Likewise line involves a conversation between a friendly neighborhood evangelical and the lead singer of the New Atheists: Greg Graffin. He's profiled in the Wired article as an evolutionary biologist and lead singer of Bad Religion. History professor Preston Jones takes up an extended e-mailed conversation with him in Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant? It's a nice venture into purple territory, where New Atheists and evangelicals alike show themselves to be fundamentally human. I guess we're just wired that way.

Can You Smell What the Press Is Cookin'?

Peter Mayer with Bert the Donkey. I smell Oscar!

Likewise Reunion

Several friends of Likewise attended the Catalyst Conference; here we all are catching up over sugar.

Who Are You Wearing?

The Catalyst Conference was held in a large arena in Gwinnett; attenders were shuttled to the red carpet by SUV limos, where they were greated to a soundtrack by the Killers ("Comin' out of my cage--you know I'm feeling just fine!"), freshly prepared omelets, ice sculptures and paparazzi.

Gotta Be Gwinnett to Win It

The Catalyst Conference took place in the northeast suburbs of Atlanta, in a town called Gwinnett. They have two watertowers, which probably explains why they feel justified in making the bold claims "Success Lives Here" and "Gwinnett Is Great!"

Go and Booth

Likewise was a sponsor of the preconference labs for the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta; here's what our booth looked like. More pictures to come.

All the Days Run Together

I went to Atlanta for the Catalyst conference last week. It was quite possibly the worst travel day ever: all the stoplights between my home and the airport had stopped working, so we got to the airport late and missed our flight. Fortunately we got on to another flight that left an hour later, but when we arrived in Atlanta we couldn’t find the rental cars. Fortunately we wandered around confusedly long enough that we found ourselves in the shadow of a Budget shuttle, so we were able to get to our car. But when we arrived at our hotel, we found out that (1) our room was booked for only two nights instead of three, (b) our room had only one bed instead of two, and thirdly, there were no rooms at our inn or all the other inns surrounding us. Fortunately we were put in touch with a hotel some distance away that could put us up Thursday night, and they gave me a rollaway bed so I didn’t have to get all biblical with my coworker.

But the really funny thing is that we had Friday’s for lunch and Ruby Tuesday’s for dinner. I wanted sundaes for dessert, but that joke will have to wait for another day.

We had a great time at Catalyst. We had a little reunion with some of our Likewise Gathering friends, and I had a little reunion with Andy Crouch, whom I’ve met twice but who’s rapidly becoming an idol of mine. Shame on him. He’s actually working on a book for InterVarsity Press, which I expect to read eagerly and underline prolifically.

Likewise sponsored the preconference labs at Catalyst, so everybody there got a sneak peek at five Likewise books. Incidentally, it’s now been recommended to me by two different people that we name the Likewise donkey Hotey. (Like Don Quixote, get it?!?) Pretty clever; one of them elaborated on the suggestion as follows:

dictionary.com defines quixotic as "extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable" or "impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.". I think that either of these works. Huh, almost food for thought. Kudos to IVP for really stretching into new avenues.

I like that. It reminds me of a novel I read last year: Quixote, by Michael Oeming and Bryan Glass, an extention of the Don Quixote mythology into a present-day context. One man’s justice is another man’s impulsive impracticality, so to speak. Anyway, so far Donkey Hotey leads the pack in the pin-the-name-on-the-donkey game, so if you don’t like it, better come up with something better. Photos from Catalyst will show up just as soon as we digitize the film from our disposable camera—ah, modernity. Come back McSoon.