A neat post at Mere Comments by S. M. Hutchens.
Every year I enjoy receiving Christmas greetings in the mail, but this year an atheist friend sent me something new: an Anti-Christmas card in which he gave us felicitations of the winter solstice, inviting us to join our pre-Christian forebears in celebrating its prospects. He takes a Nietzschean view of Christianity: it is a myth in which the spiritually and mentally weak take refuge, a platform from which to make cowardly and self-righteous assaults on those who have the courage to deny the truth of these fairy-stories and live in a demystified reality.
I am sympathetic to his charges, since I find them true from a perspective I understand, and do not find unreasonable, but have chosen not to adopt because I do not myself wish to be judged on my worst points. It is by no means difficult, however, to find representatives of Christianity against whom they are perfectly plausible. If someone concentrates his sight on these, defining the faith by its worst professors--who loom exceedingly large in the view of many through no fault of their own--then it is indeed every bad thing that so many wounded freethinkers accuse it of being.
I rarely find these people unlovely--in fact, the contrary has usually been true. Many of them seem full of love, not only for people, but for God’s other handiwork--and they are lovers of truth so far as they are able to perceive it as unconnected to orthodox religion. Are they really atheists? God knows, but I am not willing to affirm it.
The post comes up for some thoughtful criticism in the comments, and thoughtful defense too -- the whole thread is worth reading.
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