Madam, – Donald Clarke manages to offend atheists and believers alike (“Atheists who protest too much risk affirming what they oppose”, Opinion, June 18th). While never quite coming clean, his desire to see belief in God vanish from the face of the earth is manifest. His repeated insistence that such belief is equivalent to belief in pixies would cause one to wonder why Marx, Freud and Nietzsche even bothered.
Mind you, his exclusive, continuous references to the “New Atheists” would equally cause one to ask whether Mr Clarke has any awareness of the history of the debate into which he has now ventured. He and his pixies, whom we can only assume he has brought with him for company from the film pages, display none. Cobblers and lasts come to mind. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Donald Clarke (Opinion, June 18th) made a valid point about atheists who protest too much, but he displayed a common and frustrating, shallow view of what religious faith is really all about. We do not believe in pixies or fairies and we are not still in the nursery in our intellectual development. Sadly, too many sceptics have an infantile view of religion. The riposte of “pixieland” and “here be dragons” is demeaning and degrading. It ignores the presence of believers of high intelligence as well as oceans of reflection and scholarship through the ages on the mysteries of the faith. There is a depth and a sublimity that some non-believers fail to grasp.
Some of the epistemology of the atheists runs on the tracks of “the God of the gaps”. We therefore only believe in something supernatural because we do not have a natural explanation yet, or do not understand one if it exists (doh!) Thus faith equals superstition and medieval ignorance. Many believe in the spiritual realm because they cannot reduce all of the wonder, complexity and compassion in life to the material constituents. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The physical sciences are a blunt instrument for investigating certain dimensions of our existence. We are back to the depth question again.
Furthermore, God is not seen as another thing, or as a superbeing, but as the Ground of our Being. God as First Cause is beyond the universe and is a “no thing”. Things come into existence from this mysterious Presence or Depth. God is not a spook or a pixie but the incredible Awe that pulsates through our cosmos and in our innermost selves. To affirm God is not to have explained the universe, merely to have grounded it in value and ultimate purpose.
How creation begins, why and wherefore are still incredible mysteries and always will remain so, to some extent, this side of the grave. Faith and metaphysics are more like poetry here than natural scientific calculation. We need both approaches in this life.
Religious belief is far more complex than many atheists dare allow. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Donald Clarke suggests that if atheists ignore God, “He might just go away”. Mr Clarke doesn’t understand. Theists’ gods aren’t the problem; they tend not to raise their heads to bother us. The problem is that those who believe in the supernatural retain control over most schools in the State. Until we have a choice in the type of education our children can get, atheists can’t just ignore the problem that religions still control vast swathes of our State. – Yours, etc,
EOIN O’MALLEY,
Philipsburgh Terrace,
Marino, Dublin 3.
A chara, – So 52 per cent of Catholics in Northern Ireland and nine out of 10 Protestants want the North to stay in the United Kingdom (Home News, June 20th). Any chance we could get the percentage for atheists? – Is mise,
ALEX STAVELEY,
Turvey Walk,
Donabate,
Co Dublin.