What do atheists mean when they talk about religion? [View all]

[struggle4progress]

Rowan Williams
ABC Religion and Ethics
13 Apr 2012

In Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, the tormented and indeterminate hero - or rather, anti-hero - Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin is asked at one point whether he believes in god or not, and his reply is characteristically inconclusive. But, he says, what troubles him is that the atheist always seems to be talking about "something else."

"The essence of religious feeling does not fall under the province of any reasoning, or any crimes and misdemeanours, or any atheist doctrines; there's something else here, and it will always be something else, there is something that atheist doctrines will eternally glide over and they will eternally be speaking of 'something else'."

I want to try here to identify what that "something else" is that atheists seem to be talking about. In other words, what do they think it is that they are talking about when they talk about religious belief and practice? Because I don't think it is very much use carrying on with the current discussion unless we have clarified what they think they mean.

Let me suggest that there are two things that atheists think they are talking about, and two ways in which they construe the notion of religious belief and practice. The first is that religion is a kind of strategy; the second is that religion is a kind of explanation ...

http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2012/04/13/3476269.htm

This article was referenced in the article linked in another OP here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/121825688