Monday, December 07, 2009

Are atheists really fundamentalists?

Interesting:

Are atheists really fundamentalists? - Telegraph
If you had to come up with a subject for a debate, one that would persuade more than a thousand people to leave their firesides on a wet winter evening to sit in a draughty sports hall, what would you plump for? It would have to be something pretty charged, you would imagine. Or at least salacious. About Katie Price, perhaps, or Tiger Woods.

But no. The motion that had them standing in the aisles and dangling from the rafters at Wellington College was: "Is atheism the new fundamentalism?" True, this was an Intelligence Squared debate, and there was a good line-up: Lord Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford, and Charles Moore of The Daily Telegraph for the motion, Professors A C Grayling and Richard Dawkins against. But still. Atheism? When did this become such a crowd-puller?


No comments: