Sure this might make it harder to attack Christianity, but I would rather attack specific wrong or evil beliefs of individual believers, rather than a nebulous umbrella concept anyway.

As for believers taking responsibility for their churches – yes perhaps this would help – on the other hand the laity may often be worse than the clergy. I just wish people would take responsibility for their beliefs.

Neuroskeptic: Ah yes, that traditional fallback for the apathetic, telling people what it is or isn’t “normal” or “healthy” to be bothered about, and claiming for oneself membership of “the rest of us”. Charming.

The problem is, this stuff does affect everyone. Faith schools are funded by our – and your – tax money, and religious lobbying often has a significant impact on the law, enabling the religious to exert their moralising over everyone, religious or otherwise. Whilst these things are still the case in a supposedly broadly secular society, then yes, sorry, I am going to be bothered about it.

My feeling is that those people who want to be part of an activist “community” – religious or atheist – should be left to it, and those of us not obsessed by God should let them get on with it and not pay too much attention.

it’s like if a couple at a dinner party are bickering. Just look at them awkwardly and get on with your conversation.

“The new new atheism would be self-confident, not too concerned about what people think and far more concerned about how people act (yes, the two are related but no, the two are not causal). It wouldn’t tolerate the sort of argument advanced by Bunting above, but it would at the same time accept that a lack of religion by itself can never be a substitute for an ethical system.”

..sounds very much like the way I see the strand of atheism running through Hitchens, Dawkins, Grayling et al at the moment. I think what you’re really saying is that you’d like Humanism to mature a bit, stop focussing on Not Being A Theistic Religion, and develop some of its own moral thoughts. Which is fair enough, but it’s not really anything to do with atheism. Which you admit in the post. So I suppose I’m just arguing with your title, really.

Wit and wisdom: The question is not whether there is “much of merit” in religion, but whether any of what it produces of merit is necessarily predicated on the existence of an activist god. Meanwhile, what *does* depend on the various gods of many world religions is the authority to tell women they must cover themselves up, that gay people are an abomination, etc, because those things are far from obvious and wouldn’t have a leg to stand on without a god. It ought to be possible to assert any sensible moral sentiment without recourse the authority of a god.

Also, given the first three paragraphs of your comment, I am utterly mystified as to what the meaning of your claim to be “a member of the Church of England” is. The C of E may be less of an outfit of nutters and “It’s-just-cultural”-look-the-other-wayers than the Catholic church, but it still has a definite set of beliefs summed up, as James mentioned, in the Nicene creed. I don’t see how this is consistent with your exhortation to “don’t rule anything in and don’t rule anything out. Keep it fuzzy and just be happy.” The latter is an agnostic position, (meaningful) membership of the C of E isn’t.

I chose my words deliberately carefully when I said that evolution refutes theism. I wasn’t talking about the deism that Hywel is emphasising. There are lots of other theological models that are not inconsistent with Darwinism and panentheism (while silly) offers a lot of Christians a get-out-of-jail-free card. I’m not particularly interested in whether believers in the Divine see no inconsistency – it doesn’t mean there isn’t any, just that they prefer to look the other way. That’s fine, and they are perfectly welcome to do it, but it doesn’t make them right.

As for anthropomorphism, well, the Bible is the source for that (Gen 1:26). Indeed, Christianity itself goes further than the other semitic religions by having God literally incarnate in the form of a man. It daubs its temples with images of God in a man-like image.

This isn’t about fundamentalists and creationists who insist that every word in the Bible is literally true. You simply cannot be a Christian and refute the Nicene Creed, which has anthopomorphism at its very heart. I accept many modern Christians (who should perhaps more accurately be described as post-Christians) essentially do, but that is their problem, not the atheists struggling to keep up with a belief system that shifts from year to year, from person to person.

If a Catholic chooses to believe that transubstantiation, say, should only be read figuratively, that is their choice. But why should anyone respect and argument that doesn’t even cohere to its own internal logic, let alone anything else?

wit and wisdom: What you appear to be arguing for is a soggy post-modernist moral relativism. No thanks. That way madness lies. Nor do I accept your description of Dawkins as “imbecilic.” While I take issue with some of his, particularly later, writing and am sceptical about the veneration that some people hold him by, 90% of his work is brilliant. Read the Blind Watchmaker (or River Out of Eden if you’re feeling lazy) before telling me he is an “imbecile.”

Nothing in evolution provides an answer to the initial creation of life or the creation of the Universe. It certainly refutes the idea that God created man in his own image but that’s not the beginning and end of theism.

From this general recognition that there seems to be some merit in religion and various related belief systems such as buddhism as a guide to life you can build a general sense of what is right and wrong but crucially you don’t need to believe in a god to adopt generally ‘good’ ways of living.

The bottom line is: don’t rule anything in and don’t rule anything out. Keep it fuzzy and just be happy.

I’m a member of the Church of England – as non-committal as you like but with a basic set of standards which most people would struggle to be offended by.

No, it isn’t! If evolution actually defines theism out of existence, then it isn’t a valid scientific theory. If it refutes theism, then it does it empirically, and not ‘by definition’. I’m afraid this indicates a lack of understanding of how science works.

There are plenty of people around (including most Catholics, as it happens) who find no inconsistency in both believing in God and acknowledging that evolution provides the best explanatory framework for the development of species.

The problem is that atheists describe, and then attempt to destroy, an anthropomorphic version of theism that very few theists actually recognise. True there are creationists out there who inhabit a world that is cut off from most intellectual life, but there are far fewer than you might think.