I had the chance this week to head along to JCU’s Soci­ety of Athe­ist Phi­los­o­phy (SOAP) meet­ing where Dave Walker was invited to speak on the rea­sons he’s not an atheist.

The meet­ing itself had all the trap­pings of a Chris­t­ian meet­ing. It had a nice pos­i­tive tone.

Dave did a great job. I’m hop­ing he’ll turn his three rea­sons into guest posts.

But here are six areas I think Chris­tians and athe­ists should agree.

1. The sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is a good thing
   One of the big brand­ing prob­lems fac­ing Chris­tian­ity, and one of the major prob­lems athe­ists have with Chris­tians, is that we’re incon­sis­tent in our approach to politics.

   We can’t want to impose Chris­t­ian moral­ity on peo­ple through the legal sys­tem unless we’re happy for an athe­ist gov­ern­ment, or Islamic gov­ern­ment to do the same to us. If we all believe we’re right and every­body else is wrong we need to make accom­mo­da­tions for this in the way we deal with each other.

2. Free­dom of speech
   I’m a bit shocked at how Chris­tians respond when athe­ists want to adver­tise or gather. This week two athe­ist web­sites were hacked — prob­a­bly by crazy Chris­tians. Com­plaints flood in every time an athe­ist asso­ci­a­tion puts up a bill­board or adver­tises on a bus.

   If we want to be free to dis­cuss and pro­mote our beliefs we need to uphold the rights of oth­ers to do the same. Even if we don’t like what they’re saying.

3. Most reli­gious beliefs are crazy
   I think it was Peter Jensen who said that athe­ists are the clos­est group philo­soph­i­cally to Chris­tians because we’ve both made a delib­er­ate deci­sion regard­ing the exis­tence of God. We believe there is one, they believe there is none, the rest of soci­ety is either unde­cided, plu­ral­is­tic, or quasi-spiritual.In most cases we’ve applied logic and rea­son to the rejec­tion of other Gods. We shouldn’t be overly upset when athe­ists do that to us. Even if we think they’ve dis­counted one God too many.

   There are also a lot of sub­sets of Chris­tian­ity that fit the crazy bill. Any­one who bases a dis­tinc­tive on one verse in a part of a gospel that is not even in all the orig­i­nal man­u­scripts (like the snake hold­ers and poi­son drinkers do) should be con­sid­ered crazy.

   Most peo­ple who read Rev­e­la­tion as though it’s a lit­eral descrip­tion of what’s going to hap­pen (even though it is intro­duced as a vision) can also rightly be labeled crazy.

4. Plu­ral­is­tic rel­a­tivism is a dumb idea
   If there’s one idea that truly unites athe­ists and Chris­tians it’s the idea that we can’t all be right. Both groups make absolute claims. All reli­gions make con­tra­dic­tory claims. Even the monothe­is­tic Abra­hamic reli­gions that are the­o­ret­i­cally fol­low­ing the same God make claims that can not be rec­on­ciled. Islam teaches Jesus didn’t die. Judaism teaches Jesus isn’t the Mes­siah, and that he didn’t rise. We can’t all be right. We can’t pre­tend that we are.
5. Moral­ity is not depen­dent on belief in God
   Athe­ists are capa­ble of doing good things. The group con­tribut­ing the most money to devel­op­ing small busi­nesses in devel­op­ing coun­tries on Kiva is an athe­ist society.

   Chris­t­ian state­ments about moral­ity are slightly con­fused, which in turn con­fuses athe­ists. There are two def­i­n­i­tions of good at play in the Bible. One describes actions. It’s “good” to feed the hun­gry. The other describes our nature. Where nobody can be “good enough” for God.

   It’s true that Chris­tians believe that all good­ness, and good actions of peo­ple come from God. Whether you’re a Chris­t­ian or an athe­ist. And that good athe­ist actions come because they too are made in the image of God.

   But you don’t have to believe in God to be good.

   To throw fur­ther con­fu­sion into the mix — not even Chris­tians are “good” in the com­plete sense. And nobody is good (or right­eous) except Jesus.

6. Sci­ence is a great tool for under­stand­ing the world
   Christianity’s stance on sci­ence (par­tic­u­larly in Amer­ica) is con­fused and con­fus­ing. Sci­ence has no scope to prove or dis­prove God, unless you think the Bible (writ­ten before the sci­en­tific method was devel­oped) some­how seeks to be a sci­en­tific textbook.

   Sci­ence teaches us about the way God does things. It reveals more about the world we live in. Chris­tians should love sci­ence. Not fear it. The rea­son some Chris­tians fear it is the same rea­son some­one attacked by a vicious dog fears all dogs. Sci­ence han­dled badly is dangerous.

   What Chris­tians shouldn’t like (and one of Dave’s points) is the idea of nat­u­ral­ism — that only what we can sense and test is real. This is a phi­los­o­phy that embraces sci­ence as a sword. It’s not science.

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Author: Nathan Campbell

Nathan runs St Eutychus. He is currently a student at the Queensland Theological College. In a previous professional life he worked in public relations for an economic development and tourism marketing organisation. He is married to Robyn. He likes coffee and the internet.

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