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Where Atheism Goes Astray
Science, reason and the divine in nature
In 1600, the renegade monk Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church, thus becoming a martyr for science. He had been found guilty of preaching the Copernican heresy that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Copernicus himself had avoided this fate by waiting until he was on his deathbed before publishing his controversial book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. It was clear back then that science and religion were at odds with each other. Is that still the case?
Science is rooted in reason, which flies in the face of superstition and all things supernatural. That is why so many secular thinkers call themselves atheists or avoid God-talk altogether.
There is no rational argument — never enough empirical evidence — to convince a true believer of any religion that their long-held assumptions about how the natural world is organized are wrong. The same goes for atheists.
Sexed-up Atheism
The self-proclaimed atheist Richard Dawkins made a frontal attack on the supernatural in his book, The God Delusion. Before getting down to business, though, he felt it necessary to dismiss pantheism — the belief that God and nature are one in the same:
Pantheists don’t believe…
