Faith and Doubt events - Part III

The 1st day at the Faith and Doubt event.

After the surprising effect of that first quote, mentioned in our last post, the real interesting part of the speech began. One could almost say it matched the very definition posts about atheism that this blog contains, specifically, the ones that are labeled under definitions, and that covered, theism, atheism, agnosticism, and so on...

It was with satisfaction and some excitement that I witnessed a totally accurate description of that all these terms mean.

Unfortunately, it all changed when the the quotes of atheists were brought into the spotlight.

As the speaker would bring each carefully chosen quote of the most popular atheists, the highlight was on the words that would describe Christianity in the worst possible way. All the reasoning leading up to such adjectives and claims were totally left aside.
Was that inevitable or intentional? Perhaps. After all, showing some good reasons in support of religion's failures would probably defeat the whole purpose of preaching for it in the first place.

Still, the chosen quotes did stir a negative sentiment towards atheists, and specifically, the militant ones.

At this point, I expected nothing else other that seeing all militant atheists being painted as a real threat to religion. Some of them are such. Some aren't. And that is exactly what it should have been said.

Atheism is an individual achievement.

Even though Faith can be too, Religion can't.

A Religion and its followers are bound by a set of beliefs, therefore we can expect accuracy in describing some behaviors and/or beliefs when grouping people by faith.

Atheism does not have a belief set, nor a set of reasons that all atheists share (or are supposed to share) to support their disbelief.

Therefore, one cannot expect a good enough precision in grouping atheists as one can expect when grouping religious people.

In this event, portraying all atheists fairly was not only very hard with the amount of time available, but it was impossible. I was in a church after all.

Too bad Peter never asked his followers to also ask Atheists about the reasons for their lack of faith. :)

He just asked Christians to be kind and respectful to those who inquire about the reasons for faith.

I took that quote seriously, and I did point out a few things to the speaker afterwards.

Let's just say that the next post will show how hard and complicated things can really get.