So I wondered into a website today. It is called Positive Atheism (www.positiveatheism.org) and it is interesting. I like to read the thoughts and reasonings of atheists and agnostics. Some are earnestly open and seeking truth. Others are as, or even more, dogmatic than any catholic monk or Bible-belt pulpit-thumper.

My first thought when I saw the name of the web site was that this was a positive look at atheism. Not positive as in happy or pleasant, but positive as in defining atheism with positive evidence, rather than simply defining itself as opposed to religious institutions and everything that they believe. This site did not live up to my hopes. But this is not suprising, as atheism is in itself a negative belief; that there is no god. I liken it to something Einstein said about this theory of relativity, "No number of experiments could prove me right, but one could prove me wrong."

For this reason, I have always found agnostism a more intellectual honest approach. And in fact, even being a "theist" myself, I think that a certain amount of agnostism is a good thing. The Jewish zealots thought that the Messiah was coming to free them from Roman oppression. The fact that Jesus came to free them from a completely different and deeper oppression, I suspect, caused a large number of them to miss out on what Jesus came to offer. If only they could have tuned into what God was doing, rather than their interpretation of what God said through the Scriptures. That's why I tend to stay away from the obsession to pour over Revelations and Daniel to peice together what God will do in the End Times. Chances are even if God put it in there, I would miss it or mis-interpret it badly.

But turning back to this website, it seems to me, from this and most past experience with atheists, that atheists attack the Church itself, and in particular, the Catholic Church, rather than the tenants of the christian faith. In this, there is, unfortunately, far too much ammunition. The Inquistion, the Crusades, subjectation of women, corruption, sexual abuse, selfish political manuevering, ectera ad infinatum. However, it is strictly an Ad Homminum attack. For those of you who did not take Logical Fallicies 101, Ad Homminum is latin for "against the man" and involves attacking a person's character rather than a person's arguements.

This site devotes a lot of space for quotes. Quotes can be fun, but typically do little or nothing to further a logical discussion. In fact, it can often reduce a reasonable debate to mindless sloganeering and fanboy one-up-mans-ship. Quotes can pose ideas. Then can even argue points to a degree, but they tend to be trimmed down to such a degree that they can only be used to state one person's opinion. What Samuel Clemens said about the Bible can only be used as evidence in an arguement about what Samuel Clemens beleived.

It does cover a little (actually a disappointly scant little) of statements from Biblical text. There is certainly a lot in the Bible (particularly in the Old Testemnt) that is offensive to our modern western mind; slavery, women's rights, corpeal and capital punishment, etc. But the arguements are strictly one-sided and do not address the vast cultural differences between then and now. The points they bring up seem to indicate a very cursory view of the Bible. By that, I only mean that there are many more shocking elements from the Old Testament than are mentioned there. So if the effort is to alienate the world of the Old Testament, there is more and better points to make.