There's an op-ed in today's NYT which echoes a lot of the sentiment I have with regard to atheists. I think atheists miss the boat when they dismiss religion wholesale, and actually become the mirror image of hardcore religionists when they refuse to consider any positive aspect of religion, just as religious fundamentalists refuse to countenance any questioning of their precepts. But rather than write a whole lot on the subject, I will excerpt some parts of the op-ed, and leave you to read the rest on the NYT website.
“The error of modern atheism has been to overlook how many aspects of the faiths remain relevant even after their central tenets have been dismissed,” - Alain de Botton, author of "Religion for Atheists"
“Organized religions preside over the rites of passage, from birth to maturity, from marriage to death. Beliefs in immortality and ultimate divine justice give priceless comfort, and they steel resolution and bravery in difficult times. For millennia, organized religions have been the source of much of the best in the creative arts.” - Edward O. Wilson, Harvard biologist
Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia psychology professor, also focuses on the unifying power of faith in his new book, “The Righteous Mind.” Haidt, an atheist since his teens, argues that scientists often misunderstand religion because they home in on individuals rather than on the way faith can bind a community.
“The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship,” Haidt writes.
You can read the entire op-ed post here.
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