The first lesson I hear is the real dividing line is not between theists and atheists, but between the reasonable and unreasonable people in both camps. It's the same in the political realm.

The next lesson I hear is that the true source of such divisiveness is not religion or atheism, not this or that philosophy, but thought itself.

We can observe how every ideology ever invented has inevitably sub-divided in to competing internal factions. This sometimes murderous sub-division process has very clearly unfolded even within Christianity, an ideology explicitly about bringing people together in peace. Catholics are routinely in conflict with each other all over the net as the traditionals and progressives battle for influence over various hot button topics.

The universality of this conflict generating division process in every ideology suggests the source of the division is something that all ideologies have in common, which can only be thought.

If this analysis is correct, then a battle over who has the best "one true way" philosophy is essentially pointless, as all philosophies are made of thought, the source of the problem.

What the New Atheists might inadvertently teach us is to shift some of our focus away from the content of thought, towards an inquiry in to the nature of thought, towards a deeper investigation of how thought works.

What the 2,000 year long history of Catholicism should teach us is that it's not possible to cure division and conflict at the level of thought content. Catholics are a very intelligent people and they dominated western culture to a degree unimaginable today for 1,000 years. And even that didn't bring peace, even within their own congregation.

Everyone is trying to solve the problem at the surface level, in the content of thought, and that never works because the problem arises from a deeper level, from the nature of thought itself.

Religious people typically make this mistake, as do the New Atheists, in that they are united, much to their horror I suppose.

I've gone from accepting atheists to thinking that the safest bet is that atheists are terrible people not to be trusted, at least until they prove otherwise. Is that prejudice? Well it's based on experience and what philosophers have been writing about it since Before Christ.

If New Atheism is a cult, does it make sense to judge an entire group by the thoughts of a cult. Jim Jones founded the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, and eventually led all of his followers to commit suicide. Should we judge all of Christianity by his cult or Westboro Baptist Church? Isn't that the core mistake of the New Atheists that you are making yourself? I agree that God is a rational concept though not without problems, but aren't you one heck of a hypocrite complaining about bigotry with this in your comment? It's hard to take anyone seriously about rationality when they display such irrationality in a post. Obviously your statement is emotionalism due to hateful comments by atheists (understandable) but rational people are quick to recognize this and back off.

God's a rational concept, they'll just have to get used to it.

Do you think a faithful Muslim agrees that a trinity is a rational concept of God? How about a devout Jew?

Mike

I am also a former atheist, and I'm very glad I got away from it. God's a rational concept, they'll have to get used to it. Christianity is a more complex subject (I'm one of those too) but the hostility of the New Atheist movement toward Christianity justifies hostilty toward them. Note hate, but definite mistrust and if not contempt for them as people contempt for their views. Not their atheism, but their screaming religious bigotry.

Some way of coping are good, some are not.

Good for you. On the other hand, watching sitcoms and reading helps me cope with my problems. So I guess that's as bad as alcoholism too.

If it helps them cope, isn't that aspect of religion good?

I spent several years coping with my problems by getting drunk every night.

If it helps them cope, isn't that aspect of religion good? On exorcism, I have not really heard or seen one. I read/watched (a lot) of news about teenagers who were reportedly "possessed" but were not entertained by priests and instead referred those cases to psychiatrists. However, I do not think that such would be the case if it was handled by a fundamentalist christian which is a very small minority (priests from our country tend to be liberal christians).