Julian Baggini on finding common ground

[turoldus]

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/nov/25/atheism-belief-articles-faith

It's part on an ongoing series in which Baggini examines the relationship between atheism and belief.

[unkleE]

I suppose it was a valiant attempt but shows he has little understanding of either atheists or christians.

As a christian, I don't want to believe something that isn't true, so could only accept his "de-mythologising" if that was the truth. But if there really is no God, or not a personal creator, why would I want to worship or obey a non-being instead of just living life? And I would guess most atheists feel much the same but with the opposite conclusion about what is actually true.

Surely there are better ways of finding common ground:

• Common cause on many social and ethical issues.
  
• Commitment to seeking truth.
  
• Respect for the person even if not for the opposing viewpoint, and acceptance (not just in theory, but in manners and courtesy) of people with opposing viewpoints.
  

[Mike D]

I wasn't too impressed, to be honest. Reading back through the series, his attempt to create common ground involved describing religion in the most vague and hand-wavey fashion (which curiously enough ended up being as prescriptive as any view that includes the supernatural).

That he wants to create common ground is commendable enough, but his attempt to do so would not be recognised as religion (or spirituality) by the vast majority of people who have some spiritual practice, I suspect.

I also question whether, for the vast majority of people (both believing and unbelieving), such a 'common ground' is necessary: I come from a family where one parent was theistic (in a fairly vague and mystical fashion) and one was an atheist: so certain topics would lead to incomprehension, but otherwise we just (as they say) got on with it. There were enough things that we shared in common that the fact that there were bits we didn't share seemed unremarkable. This seems to me likely to be true for many people 'in the middle' - the ones who need to find common ground are the ones at the extremes - those who believe that religion should be applied be state power and/or psychological coercion, or those who believe that religion just by being religion is a menace and all its adherents are mindless drones. Ironically enough (and obviously enough), they are the ones who would most back away from any sense of common ground.

[Deleted]

I read one and a half article and stopped. I got fed up with pontification and vagaries, so typical of the genre.