The next thing exercising me is the question "how tolerant should I, as a tolerant atheist, be?" - and this is where I have an inner struggle fit to delight any Christian on the road to enlightenment.

In the US, I gather, the Constitution guarantees freedom FROM enforced religion, and prevents public money and facilities being ued for the promulgation of religions. Hence religion cannot be taught in a public school, altough I guess that religions can be even-handedly discussed, say in ethics or social anthropology classes for instance

Sadly, this is not the case in the UK, and public money can be used to support a variety of faith-based organisations, including "Faith Schools"

That is to say, in my view, my government uses my money to assist those who wish to indoctrinate children with any one of a number of sets of beliefs, which do not stand up to critical enquiry, and which indoctrination may not be balanced by the alternatives.

Some aspects of this I can tolerate, if the system tends to produce decent, non-harmful, citizens. In the case of children in the UK, there is at least a good chance that they will eventually have the opportunity to examine the alternatives and discuss them

However, my tolerance begins to creak in some special cases, such as the teaching of any form of creationism postulating an Earth younger than the age shown by the geological and scientific evidence. Young earth creationists are (in my opinion) at worst lying; at best so ignorant of scientific and philosophical method that they should not be allowed near impressionable young minds, "Creation Science" has been thoroughly rebutted in every aspect, from highly technical arguments about polonium haloes in granites, to rather silly arguments about the amount of salt in the seas.

The "Anthropic Principle" type of creationism is different. It incorporates and accepts (provisionally at least) the scientifically respectable theories of the creation of the universe; observes that a very special set of conditions arose in that process, which conditions allowed life-as-we-know-it to evolve, and postulate that a Creator arranged it so, since any tiny deviation from these conditions would not allow us to exist. This cannot be proved or disproved, in the current state of knowledge, so as a tolerant atheist I must allow its promulgation as a theory.

(It seems there is a huge number of people out there who will believe any number of incredible things, not all concerned with religion. One only has to look at the James Randi Educational Forum website to get a flavour of this.)

As a tolerant atheist, then, at what point does it behove me to come out of my grumpy-corner, and begin to strain every sinew against those who disseminate untruth?

I probably have no right to rail against that which I cannot prove to be wrong - but have I a duty to fight that which is proven to be wrong?

I am comforted by this. My children attended a Church-assisted primary school (it was nearest) They were exposed to even more religion than the average lower-middle-class English WASP kids. Now teenagers, and with no pressure from anyone, they too are tokerant atheists, and argue their case clearly. Mind you, one is a vegetarian too, so they aren't all perfect. The comfort is, average youngsters are quite capable of arriving at rational views, given exposure to enough sources of information. In ensuring that exposure, I have done my atheist duty by them.

How far and deep does my duty extend to the rest of society?

All teh best

Wow – another batch of excellent questions. You really must enjoy getting lengthy replies to your e-mails .

At best, I can give you my opinion on these subjects. I hope that by doing so and giving you insight into my thinking, it might help you work through your own feelings on this matter.

To start off with, you ask how tolerant a tolerant atheist should be. I think this is a "your right to swing your fist ends at my face" situation. Someone who is convinced that there must be a deity is, by that criteria alone, at worst wrong. I’m wrong at times myself, so I can’t condemn someone for being, in my opinion, incorrect.

Past this, whether or not I am intolerant of someone has nothing to do with whether they are religious. For example, I don’t want my child’s teacher to promote religion. Then again, I don’t want my child’s teacher to promote a political party, either. This isn’t an issue of religion or politics, it’s an issue of proper education. Another example would be that I don’t think anyone should have to be a certain religion to hold public office. I also think they should not have to be a certain gender or of a specific ancestry. This is because I’m against bigotry, not because of religion, feminism, and anti-racism as separate issues.

The U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee separation of church and state. However, this is a sticky subject that needs to be looked at very carefully. As I understand it, the Constitution works like this:

• The government cannot promote or discourage any religion. Where we get into difficulty in the U.S. is that some people would add to this, "so long as you have some kind of religion." I feel that this is why our money still mentions God on it. There is also a difficulty in separating public funding for religious items from public funding for historical items. I’d say that the government should not pay for a statue of the ten commandments outside of a courthouse. On the other hand, the Supreme Court building has a mural which includes the ten commandments in the context of important historical documents, and this is fine with me because the mural is historical and plays no religious favorites.


• The government may not fund religious organizations so far as they are doing religious work. A church may not receive government funds (although they are exempt from taxes) unless those funds are for a specific secular purpose, such as aiding disaster victims. I disagree about taxation, but have no problem with funding charitable efforts so long as religion is not a qualification for receiving either funding or charity and there is no religious component to the charity (e.g., prosthelatizing to people in a soup kitchen).


• There should be no religious test to qualify for use of public facilities. Some people say that a school classroom should not be allowed to be used after hours for Bible study. I disagree with this – so long as there is equal access, I don’t see a problem. Where we get a problem is when a Bible study class is allowed but an atheist philosophy club is not. I also think that students should be allowed to express their religious views, read religious books on school property, pray before a test, etc., so long as the rights of others are not being infringed upon. Again, some would disagree with me on this, but in general the law tends to swing this way.


• Public education must not favor one religion over another. Theoretically, this means that a high school-level comparative religion or Bible as literature class would be fine. The problem is that if such a class is taught with academic honesty and neutrality, some religious people protest that their faith is being attacked, so such classes tend to have short lives. I find this sad.


• Laws cannot be passed that have no secular purpose. You can’t legislate prayer, for example. Fine with me.

Teaching of creationism should not be done in public schools, but in my opinion the reason it shouldn’t be taught is that it’s bad science. The religious origin of the theory is irrelevant. Creationism should be out for the same reason that dowsing, for example, should be out.

So at this point what I’m saying is that as an atheist you should probably be very tolerant of religion, but very intolerant of certain kinds of bad or damaging social behavior, some of which happens to be an outgrowth of religion.

You mention James Randi, and that is a great excuse for me to talk about one of my largest philosophical goals. To me, the biggest danger in religious thinking is that it can be a doorway to magical (or otherwise non-skeptical) thinking in a variety of areas. If someone thinks miracles happen, then mightn’t that person be more likely to believe that a fraudulent faith healer is real? Or that a curse needs to be removed by a gypsy? And how can a religious person tell a true religion from a false one if faith is good and reason is bad.

This is why I encourage all people, religious or not, to examine their beliefs and their system of evaluating evidence very carefully. Anyone with a personal philosophy should be able to at least explain their reason for preferring that philosophy – even if that reason is "because I feel in my heart that this is true." Looking at your own beliefs in this way can help you see how compelling those beliefs should be to others, and how much you can judge others for not sharing your beliefs.

For example, if someone believes in the Christian God because they feel in their heart that He exists, that’s fine. But they can’t condemn someone who believes in the God of Islam for the same reason, because then they would be condemning their own way of thinking. And if someone is religious for scientific reasons, they should be willing to say that, as a scientific person, they will give up their belief in God if given sufficient evidence. If they are not willing, then they need to admit that they have emotional reasons for belief. There’s no shame in that, but there should be shame in being intellectually dishonest about what has to be one of the most important concepts in life.

Now, about coming out of your grumpy corner and fighting untruth. I say that you should fight untruth and promote logical thinking everywhere. You only need to draw the line when you find yourself fighting not untruth but difference of opinion. You can fight against dowsing or homeopathy or astrology or the medical efficacy of prayer because science provides you with ample evidence that such things are incorrect. You cannot fight against the belief in a creator because there is no way to prove that such a thing doesn’t exist, no matter how unlikely. You can argue that religion should not be put into law, but not that anything is bad if it is religious.

I am pleased to hear that your children are doing well philosophically despite their public education. I am curious why you say that your vegetarian child isn’t perfect – my son decided to become vegetarian at age 5 because he didn’t want to harm animals, has stuck with it, and does not condemn those who do not share his practices (I’m not a vegetarian myself). I would put vegetarianism in the realm of things that are matters of opinion and should not be condemned. Of course, the behavior of some vegetarians should be condemned, but in that case it’s not their eating habits that are the problem.