Dave's Mormon Inquiry

Affirmation, Fellowship, and Transcendence

Last week I posted on the latest Pew Forum survey, arguing that the prevalent media summary of the survey -- that many people are drifting from faith to unbelief -- was misreading the data. Today there's an op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Defecting to Faith," suggesting the Pew Forum data show that most people raised to be atheists end up drifting into belief and participation in a faith community. What are they after?

Atheism on the March

Or so it seems. For this week's online essay, go read "Atheists With Attitude," a New Yorker piece by Anthony Gottlieb (also noted at this GR post). At the very least, it's nice to read an essay on religion that doesn't take Mormons to task; we don't even get mentioned in this one. How refreshing. I've posted on Sam Harris and Dawkins before (both covered in the essay), so this seems like a fair follow-up post. The essay does make the increasingly evident point that 9-11 has been a flashpoint for the public emergence of an anti-religious ideology. It somehow legitimizes attacks on religion ... all religion. Funny how secularists can paint Islam as a violent and evil religion, while many Christians bend over backwards to depict authentic Islam as a religion of peace. Yet those same secularists also claim the mantle of rational tolerance, while branding Christians as intolerant fanatics. These views seem strangely out of synch with the facts.

The New Atheism

Not new and improved, just new. For this week's online essay, go read Mohler's The New Atheism?, posted a couple of months ago when everyone was talking about the new books by Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris. He is responding to a Wired article entitled The New Atheism: The Church of the Non-Believers, in which each of the Big Three are interviewed.

Why I Am Not a Christian

That's the title of a famous talk given by Bertrand Russell, which I hereby designate my online essay of the week. You don't have to agree with him to enjoy his remarks, but if you read it, you might find yourself agreeing with more than you would expect. Russell is unhappy with Christian theology and orthodoxy, and more generally with Christendom and its early-20th-century politics. But Mormons aren't always happy with Christian orthodoxy or institutions either. Take for example the definition of a Christian.

Atheists in German Foxholes

For this week's online essay, go read Keeping Faith and Reading Kafka online at Sunstone. This short but thoughtful essay by a Mormon writer and scholar who has spent several years in Germany reflects on the difficulties of preaching religion, or even simply being religious, in Germany. The people are depicted not so much irreligious as post-religious, and that sentiment is likely familiar to anyone who served an LDS mission in Europe. Fine writing, by the way -- reflective and challenging prose, the kind of stuff that would never get through Correlation.