Atheists can be pretty dumb!

I don't decry anyone's right to be an atheist what I often find extraordinary is their critique of the "religious" as being narrow and bigoted when they often appear to be incredibly prejudiced against the faintest whiff of faith. Hence a letter I penned to the Advertiser yesterday

I never failed to be amazed by the contradictory nature of the comments of the many dogmatic atheists who declare all religious belief to be irrational, without any substantial analysis or argument. Their comments are so often based on sweeping generalisations such as "the religious ....can't distinguish between reality and fantasy" and "the world would be better off without them" (The Advertiser 29th October).

When we start declaring who we would be better off without we are in the realm of something quite sinister.

They would seem to know little of the disciplines of theology and textual criticism. If they did they would realise that religious thinkers are meticulous in their scrutiny of discipline, argument and theory and are not in the least inclined to live in the world of fantasy. They are at the very least trying to recognise that the world is complex and profound, it is spiritual as well as material.

In a world where universal tolerance is a declared value, it seems the atheists' dogma (and I use that term advisedly) is that we should tolerate everything except religion. Doesn't seem particularly rational to me