SSO- From where do we draw our non-officer spouses?

Major Stephen Poxon shared recently in his Comment section of the Salvationist, ”I think of a cartoon in my office, showing a man in a hospital bed whose wife is explaining to the chaplain: ‘I’m sorry, Minister. He’s changed his mind and he’s asking for Richard Dawkins.’

Jokes tend to work best when they contain at least a grain of truth. This cartoon is no exception – it’s the easiest thing in the world for an intellectual fad to challenge faith.”

On which side of the debate does the patient, if still kicking, stand today on hearing that Professor Richard Dawkins, described as the world’s most notorious atheist, on Feb 28, 2012, dismissed his hard-earned reputation as a militant atheist - admitting that he is actually agnostic as he can't prove God doesn't exist. “The country's foremost champion of the Darwinist evolution, who wrote The God Delusion, stunned audience members when he made the confession during a lively debate on the origins of the universe with the Archbishop of Canterbury.” The Daily Mail

Just how far has this fad taken a naïve, apathetic, faith-challenged society?

A 12 week module was recently introduced in Leeds offering students a course on how to lose faith in religion while learning to believe in a new atheism and humanism. Similar courses are popping up on college curriculum offerings from Oxford, to San Diego. “…both (new) atheism and non-religion are significant (and increasing) aspects of global socio-religious culture. For example, one recent, conservative estimate suggests that there are between 500 and 750 million 'atheists, agnostics, and non-believers in God' worldwide.” Centre for

(Philosophical and Religious Studies - Department of Theology and Religious Studies - University of Leeds)*

If these statistics are true one can then deduce that there are:

·      Fifty eight times as many atheists as there are Mormons

·      Forty one times as many atheists as there are Sikhs

·      Two times as many atheists as there are Buddhists.

·      Seven hundred times as many atheist as Salvationists

Nonbelievers in God as a group come in fourth place after Christianity (2 billion), Islam (1.2 billion), and Hinduism (900 million) in terms of global ranking of commonly held belief systems. (Zuckerman 2007: 55)

Closer to home, the 2008 British Social Attitudes Survey reported that fully 43% of the population consider themselves as belonging to 'no religion' (a figure only 7% less than all the Christian categories combined). When asked if they believe in God, 18% replied that they did not, with a further 19% answering that they did not know if there was a God or not, and know no way of finding out. That so many people do not believe in God, and do not consider themselves to be religious, should surely be of interest to students of religion(s)—as too, therefore, should their reasons, motivations, other belief and attitudes, and demographic characteristics. (In precisely the same way, political scientists take a great deal of interest in those who have no interest in politics, and/or who do not participate in elections.) Related to this, is the fact that popular and media discourse surrounding atheism and unbelief tends to be overly simplistic and unhelpful, often focusing on the perceived 'arrogance' or 'aggressiveness' of unbelievers (depicted as a homogeneous group).

Recent research from the United States, moreover, suggests that atheists are the country's least trusted social grouping, and are subject to various forms of discrimination (Edgell et al. 2006; Cragun, forthcoming).

Mats Selander, a teacher at the CredoAcademy, an apologetic study center in Stockholm, Sweden, and renowned expert on the New Atheist movement, wrote in Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet - "The outspoken men like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and in our country Christer Sturmark have for a decade been a powerful voice in the public debate about faith and religion; powerful, but also surprisingly aggressive. A study of these central spokesmen clearly shows that the modern atheists’ foremost representatives had adopted an astoundingly intolerant, sometimes it's (even a) more totalitarian approach.

Lt. Peter Baronowsky, SA Regional Commander, Latvia, shared in his widely read blog today that; “Earlier this week I was in Stockholm’s Clapham Institute attending the combined Board and Annual meeting. 
Claphaminstitutet is an institute for Christian advocacy… We are a think tank and research institute that researches, writes, and publishes materials in the form of reports, articles and books… 


The Clapham Institutes’ annual meeting was honored by the visit of Lars Adaktusson, and his subject was "Christian advocacy". In the presentation he pointed out that advocacy takes time. There is a lengthy process of creating public opinion. Who the message’s exponent is factors greatly into how the message is received. A prerequisite in being successful opinion leaders is to have a message that you believe worthy of arguing and even fighting for.”

One of the core New Atheist assertions, endlessly and uncritically repeated on New Atheist websites, is Richard Dawkins's dogmatic statement that faith is "blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence."

Blind faith is generally defined as: belief without true understanding, perception, or discrimination. For Dawkins, this means that faith counts as a "form of mental illness." This nasty intellectual perversion is limited to religious people. "Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion."

At least four fundamentally important viewpoints can be gleaned from the above:

·      The new atheists’ message is found appealing to a large and growing percentage of the population crossing cultural and societal lines

·      Many Christian and non-believers waver because their belief lacks true understanding, perception, or discrimination and they are susceptible to ‘new’, dogmatic and critical outcries.

·      The new atheist and humanist representatives employ an astoundingly intolerant, (even a) totalitarian effective approach.

·      This fad has moved society into a gray area of non-belief where mass indifference rules; a type of  "societal collapse", and with it, the disappearance of the cohesiveness a theist society and culture represent as a civil institution.

Are people moving away from the church because of the convincing arguments based on scientific insights? Are the loud voices of humanists and atheists drawing followers from those rejecting weak Christianity? 

We are at the stage where history more than ever is divided between two great religious communities; the City of God and the city of man. The latter relish in a cyclical pattern of growth while the City of God prays for a cyclical revival.

What's our next step?

Dr. Sven Ljungholm
Birkenhead Corps
UK