Quodlibeta

From the CADRE Blog, BK has an quotation about the intellectual decline of atheism. Of course, you do not need to tell me that many atheists on the internet are not exactly intellectual giants but the point about Anthony Flew and Dan Barker is also instructive. Flew is an esteemed, though very old, philosopher who has recently been having something of a crisis of faith over his atheism. Dan Barker is a musician who writes low brow books about how he hates Christianity.

Of course, you could retort that many Christians are not exactly brilliant intellects either. True indeed, but I'd suggest that this doesn't matter much. At root, Christianity does not claim to be an intellectual movement but a religion for everyone whether they are packing high calibre brains or not. And sure enough there are enough high calibre brains to make a mockery of any claim that Christians cannot be that clever.

Atheism however claims to be based on reason, rationality and logic. It is almost entirely an intellectual movement and consequently if it is losing the philosophical conflict it loses everything. The rude health of Christian philosophy and the decline of atheist thought is a much bigger threat to the later than it would be to the former. Atheism risks becoming something that people of a certain age and mind set grab onto instinctively (largely because it makes them feel intellectually superior) but will drop when it turns out that actually the clever guys are all in the other camp. I don't want to declare victory too early but the signs look good.

Of course, after the defeat of atheism, the much more difficult job will be the defeat of apathy.