Reply #143: Well, it sounds like a book that an Archbishop would like... [View All]

Actually, I have few direct problems with the Archbishop or a number of other bishops, though I don't agree with their theology, and don't think that they should be sitting in the legislature. Nor am I worried about a theological book that criticizes atheist *ideas*, any more than one that criticizes religious ideas. Though I haven't read the book, and am not sure that I will.

It is those who use religion (or other ideology) to campaign for right-wing policies; the people who call secularism immoral or responsible for current social evils; those who cry 'persecution' if they cannot ban homosexuality and abortion; those who speak of 'dictatorship of moral relativism' and the like; those who think that atheists are unworthy individuals - it is all these to whom I object. The people who worry me are right-wing religious leaders and campaigners like Michael Nazir Ali and Andrea Minichiello Williams (leaders of Christian Concern for Our Nation); anti-secularist journalists like Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens and Cristina Odone; and Christian Right politicians like Nadine Dorries and David Burrowes and Ian Duncan Smith (and Tony Blair!), and their mostly still worse American counterparts from Palin and Santorum onwards.