Brainwashing?

This is the new poster campaign from the British Humanist Society, it is a call to liberate children. Their call is for children to grow up in a theologically neutral envirnonment. They fail to recognise however that this is impossible and that they themselves effectively have religious views though they concern God not existing rather than his existing.

There is no such thing as a theological or philosophically neutral environment, just engage an atheist in discussion about whether God exists and you will see they are far from neutral. Indeed in the very act of publishing the poster they are trying to influence children and their upbringing in terms of beliefs.

The rise of militant atheism

I'm sure you've noticed that the last couple of years has seen the rise of a very aggressive atheism, Channel 4 has aired Richard Dawkins 'The Root of all Evil' where he sought to expose that religion is the root of all evil. And religion has definitely be a root of evil, none of us who watched the two plans fly into the Twin Towers could ever deny that, none of us would argue that religion has been the given reason for some evil.

But actually what Dawkins and other militant atheists do not understand is that following Jesus is not about being religious. In fact Jesus himself is almost as scathing as they are about religion.

The TV programme was then followed up by the book 'The God Delusion' in which Dawkins wanted to convert theists into atheists. More recently Christopher Hitchens has published 'God is not Great' the case against religion. So why is there suddenly this militant aggressive atheistic attack on religion, surely it flies in the face of cultures mantra of you have your beliefs and I have mine and they are all equally valid.

The key to understanding the publication of these books is peoples fear of extremism or fundamentalism. So what does that mean for us? Are Christians extremists? Fundamentalists? How should we explain it to our friends?