IN THEORY:Why the uptick in atheism?

Several books about atheism are topping the best-seller lists. Some observers think it’s because of a growing resentment about the widening influence of religion in society. What’s your take on this rising interest in atheism?

The claim that only 2% of us say that we do not believe in God is absurd. It all depends on just how the question is asked, who asks it, and who is around to hear it. But mainly it depends on just how you define God. Many people say they believe in God while simply thinking of some force of nature that allowed life to start. Call it Mother Nature, if you will, but they certainly were not thinking of the vicious God of the Bible, as particularly noted in Deuteronomy. So if asked if they believe in the specific God of the Bible or the Koran or all the other religious books, the total percentage of believers would go way down. All those various Gods have different rules that are frequently incompatible, so deciding which particular God the government could support would be a real problem.

JERRY PARKS

People who are atheists suffer from a lack of intelligence. Religionists believe that a Creation demands a Creator. My temple office is in the Back Bay. If any person would find a $1,000 watch there, it would dictate that there was a designer and a craftsman who could make such a watch. Common reason illustrates that someone had to leave the watch there. So it is the case with the universe.

Religion solves the question of what came first, the chicken or the egg? The obvious answer is the chicken, because God created all its creatures. Many people mistakenly abandon religion because the world is billions of years old. You don’t have to accept the entire Bible to believe in God.

Those people who don’t believe in God have little meaning in life. Without a God, there is no morality or sense of social justice. What basis for these two principles would you follow? A sense of religion anchors you and gives you meaning. When something goes wrong with your life, you have something to fall back on. If one accepts that there is a God, then there are only two dilemmas in life: the problem of evil and pain. These are tough questions to answer. However, without a God or sense of religion, tougher questions arise — like a purpose in life. To the atheist, life is simply an accident without any purpose. If there is no God, then one must answer all the other questions that life poses.

RABBI MARC RUBENSTEIN

This is a natural reaction when religious people get too arrogant.

More souls are ambivalent than atheistic. People attend religious worship faithfully but are bored; they consistently read holy scripture but find much of it irrelevant; beloveds bind themselves inextricably to their faith but think some of the people who define it are odd. In an article prompted in part by Jonathan Miller’s three-part BBC series about atheism, “A History of Disbelief,” in the May 25 New York Times, David Brooks called these people “quasi-religious.” Quasi-religiousness breeds noteworthy accomplishments. Brooks cited Abraham Lincoln, Anglicans who built Victorian England, and Jews who helped shape 20th-century American culture.

The Barna Research Group has data showing that contemporary college students who attend religious worship regularly do better, work harder and are more engaged with campus life than those who don’t. On the average, those who come from faith communities that encourage dissent are more successful than students from those that do not.

Good counsel would seem to be: Try to be a questioning member and friendly dissident of a traditional faith. Discipline yourself in time-tested moral practice but champion modernization. Submit to the wisdom of the ages but with eyes open and intellect engaged.

Such advice applies equally well to those with faith in no God as it does to those of us with deep faith in the living and true God.

(THE VERY REV’D CANON) PETER D. HAYNES