Round-up

Tom has also had a decent stab at explaining the meaning of life over at his blog - how's that for a "a more mature discourse", Mr Taylor?

I think the way forward in religious debate is to emphasise the inherent uncertainty and mystery of atheistic outlooks: We simply don't know why the universe came into being, and the best we can provide is informed speculation about how things came to be the way they are now. Nor can we really say where things are heading.

Worth checking out is this post over at Obscene Desserts, which follows a similar line of thinking:

If anything, it is a skeptical, secular and scientific outlook which tends against most kinds of fundamentalist optimism. This is not to say that improvement is impossible - it most certainly is - but so, of course, is historical change in the opposite direction.

Not only is a more clear-eyed look at reality - e.g., one involving neither supernatural beings nor progressive teleologies - rarely something which leads to heartwarming sense of optimism, but such a viewpoint is essential if some kinds of desirable - if incremental and always contingent - change can be won or even contemplated. If you look around, I'd say that most of those with a secular perspective are indeed concerned about religion; but they also tend to be concerned about a lot of other things as well, and I think that most of them have no illusions about the meaning of history.

Finally, I've only just discovered that Richard Dawkins has his own website, with articles and various resources for those interested in atheism. Dawkins is someone I've always been a bit wary of. Not because I disagree with him ('The Selfish Gene' really helped me sort out my views on life), but simply because he seems so confident in his own views. I'm still struggling to get mine into some kind of decent shape, and it's all too easy to get swept up in someone else's.