Wonderful article by Alastair Roberts on Atheism and Christianity. Every paragraph's a winner, how about this to whet your appetite:
The target of much atheist protest is the god that secures all meaning and makes sense of the world, the religion that serves as a crutch and underwrites the social order, the faith that inures one to truth and reality and gives birth to dulling and enslaving illusion. This is the god in whom they don’t believe. They might be surprised to find that Christians stand alongside them in attacking this deity: we don’t believe in that god either.
Read the whole thing here.
And Happy New Year!
That's always a pretty good tact to take with atheists..."Tell me a bit about the god you don't believe in...chances are I don't believe in that god, either."
Great post.
Yes, I finally got around to reading the God Delusion over the Christmas period and I have to confess that it was really devotionally moving. I expected it to be quite light-weight and annoying, on the basis of what others have said about it, but in fact I found it had many powerful sections that really moved me. I found myself led into genuine worship of the LORD Jesus at several key parts and I have to say it might be in my top five books of 2011.
I always leaned too heavily on Feurbach for my references to the atheist tradition, but I think that Dawkins might replace some of my favourite Feurbach quotes. He is not so weighty, but he has a certain punch that is more popularly accessible.
The big disappointment for me was the way that Richard treats the entire scientific tradition and the rationality of the universe as simply a kind of 'given'!
Eberhard Jungel's book "God as the Mystery of the World" is a wonderful look at the theological depth of atheism and why it is a distinctly Christian tradition.
Without knowledge of God, as there is in the cross of Christ, a.k.a., the "tree of life", Christians and atheists are synonymous.
Looks very good - I have saved it to read properly! Thanks - David
Christians and atheists are the part of one life and they are the two sides of coin.people are become atheists because they can not understand the God properly or the true meaning of God and the other side is people who believe and understand the true love of that God.