Hi everyone,
Here is a essay of today from BBC about atheism and religion.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34054057***************************************************************************
We tend to understand atheism as a war between religion and science - but in earlier times atheism was both more complex and more rich, says philosopher John Gray.
In recent years we've come to think of atheism as an evangelical creed not unlike Christianity. An atheist, we tend to assume, is someone who thinks science should be the basis of our beliefs and tries to convert others to this view of things. In the type of atheism that's making the most noise today, religion is a primitive theory of how the world works - an intellectual error without human value, which we'd be better without.
But this isn't the only kind of atheism. History shows that atheism can have a complexity that reaches well beyond our currently dominant version. Though many today seem unaware of the fact, by no means all atheists have wanted to convert others to unbelief. Some have actually been friendly to religion. Nor have atheists in the past always turned to science for inspiration.
The predominant strand of contemporary unbelief, which aims to convert the world to a scientific view of things, is only one way of living without an idea of God. It's worth looking back to other kinds of atheism, far richer and subtler than the version we're familiar with, that aren't just evangelical religion turned upside down.
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Cheers.
Sriram
