A/theism: -isms are not the point

I like this because it's good to find an atheist who recognises that behind some of the crassness of the New Atheism there lie some methodological problems. But before looking at that, there's a look at what is faith is about, quoting Giles Fraser:

 “Theology is faith seeking understanding. Understanding is not the basis on which one has faith but it is what one does to try to understand the faith one has.”

I think that's pretty much where I'm at. I was introduced to the Latin tag fides quaerens intellectum when I was studying postgraduate theology under Dick McKinney in Nottingham. It's worth listening to Giles' bit on the podcast, because it helps to grasp what that might mean in a human life. It's an important starting place in the sense that it enables us to notice something that is fundamental, it seems, to human being; we all believe stuff and much of our beliefs are not directly empirically-based but there is a much more complex arrangement of assumptions, tested hypotheses, assessments of plausibility and implausibility, trust in coherences and lines of deduction and socially-recognised investment in the positions held. The problem is that too many New Atheists are too naive about this complex, deluded by thinking that the part of their world view that they think is empirically based is the whole or at least the most significant AND they do not notice how their own thinking has many beliefs entwined in it that are not empirically based (whatever that means -and not noticing that it is a problem is part of their issue).

Anyway, Dominic Lukes notes that in practice those who are becoming scientists operate rather similarly to religious believers:

... Graduate students are told to question everything but they soon learn that this questioning is only good as long as it doesn’t disrupt the research paradigm. Their careers and livelihoods depend on not questioning much of anything. In practice, this is not very different from the personal reading of the Bible

That at least recognises something of the complexity I mentioned above.
There is some useful noting of the way that stories function also for atheists and a note that, in effect,

John Gray can provide a useful perspective: “The ‘essence’ is an apologetic invention that someone comes up with later to try and preserve the core of an idea [like Christianity or Marxism] from criticism.”

What this is implying strongly, of course, is the epistemological, observation that for anyone to 'know' something, they first have to 'believe' something; everything we know is faith-based in the end.
Gray's bit of the conversation referred to, points out that the history of atheism is quite messy and convoluted in respect of relationship to political ideas and projects and even to humanism (which started out as a Christian project).

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