The Facts: Atheism is Dying Out April 8, 2015 by: Fr. Dwight Longenecker We often hear from atheists how religion is dying out as mankind comes to see the clear light of reason. Atheist “intellectuals” speak disparagingly about religion and predict that mankind is on the cusp of a new age in which religion will simply disappear as science, technology and reason are in the ascendant. The facts indicate exactly the opposite. It is religion which continues to grow around the world while the statistics indicate that agnosticism and atheism are dying out. A new report by Pew Research chronicled here at the Daily Telegraph tells a very interesting story. While the numbers of those who are “religiously unaffiliated” is predicted to rise in Western Europe and the United States, in global terms their numbers are shrinking as Christianity and Islam continue to wrestle for spiritual domination in the world. The huge growth rate will be among Christians in Africa. Furthermore, while the rise of Islam is looked on with dismay, by 2050 Christianity will still be predominant. Click here for the rest of the article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2015/04/the-facts-atheism-is-dying-out.html
Atheism puts a ceiling on one's thinking and imagination (and demands that one does not question what is beyond this ceiling). It makes sense that it can only survive up to a point. I find atheism lacking intellectual honesty as well.
It sometimes seems that contemporary secular atheism no longer engages in honest intellectual debate or discussion. Rather it adopts a stance which it declares atheism to be the truth the whole truth and that nothing else has truth, and within the confines of a narrow existentialism and assumes that there is nothing more. To my mind this position is more gnostic - declaring an absolute certainty, and we must be acknowledged along the way people have held positions of faith in the same way - and it often has seemed rather ugly. Faith, I believe, requires an element of doubt, an element of struggle, and in some sense requires all to be a little agnostic. Whilst in my own life I know my experienced things that have given me to believe. It is also not simply existential, for I live within a pedagogical faith community, and the pedagogical western tradition. I can learn what people who went before me thought, and this can inform my conclusions. For me one of the great strengths of the Anglican tradition is that I am required not to leave my brains in the narthex but to bring them to bear on the whole matter of life including faith. That having been said, I must hasten to add that it is not simply an intellectual pursuit, that is just one part of it. It also embraces my emotions, and the way my life in expressed within my culture. I find it hard to learn from anyone who has nothing to learn for themselves. Faith requires us to be on a journey, whilst atheism assumes there is nowhere to go.
Of course faith involves overcoming a certain amount of doubt, otherwise it becomes a science! Faith requires choice