Atheism - A Primer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7818980.stm

After reading the BBC story linked above, I got angry for the umpteenth time about something that has been niggling me ever since this campaign started. It's quite simple people, if you believe in a God, you're a theist, more than one, a polytheist, and if you believe there is not even a single God, then you are an atheist. Pretty simple, right?

Evidently not. Everyone from the BBC to the individuals responsible to the ads are referring to them as ads for Atheism. Let’s check again what they actually say. ‘There’s probably no God.’ Enter Thomas Henry Huxley. For those of you who are unfamiliar, I strongly recommend reading the following http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley. This great man, a bastion of the scientific community, coined the term agnostic and to this day it is perhaps best described in his own words:

‘When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.’

Personally, I am tired of individuals describing those signs as Atheistic. They are not. If anything they represent a weak agnosticism founded upon doubt. What surprises me about the complaint made against them is that they are the best thing that could have happened to the church. Most individuals who see those signs will not be readily influenced by them, however, a significant number of people will see them and begin to think. This thought will lead them to their vicar, to the bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, or to their preferred religious format, whatever that may be. As a result, it is not an advertisement that wins the argument, simply one that raises its profile, calling out the troops on either side in the search for truth. Personally, as many of you will know, I am an agnostic, but should new evidence emerge, I will always be willing to listen.