Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

This week I presented a lecture on Progressive Christianity to the local Atheist society in Melbourne, Australia. Progressive Christians have redefined God from an all-powerful being to a pervasive essence; Jesus is now an ancient insightful sage; and the Bible is no longer the word of God but a source of personal inspiration. And they still call themselves Christians!

Atheists should learn from this. Stop being narrowly typecasted into a role of god rejection: join the majority of the population as a Practical Atheist.

For a start a practical atheist is one who lives life with the working assumption of no god. For practical atheists a god plays no role in the way they conduct daily affairs – work, family, local community and broader society. Church attendences are restricted to purely cultural or social activities – weddings, funerals and the like. They are essentially cultural Christians only: God, Jesus and the Bible have no practical meaning in their lives – they are not needed. Ironically their children may even go to a Christian school. But that was an educational decision.

This position could be reflective or unreflective, the latter being the majority I suspect. In fact if asked “are you an atheist?” they would almost certainly say “no” or if asked “do you believe in god?”, they would say “yes” with some hesitation.

But, in practice, their working assumption is that they don’t believe in god. They are practical atheists.

For those who do reflect on beliefs, this will vary considerably:

• Definite rejection of the theist god. Though reasonable from everyday experience, this is philosophically hard to argue. That is why theists love to box us this way.
• Disbelief of the theist god - no convincing reasons to believe. This is an eminently defensible position.
• Disbelief of all supernatural existences – god, ghosts, spirits, souls and anything to do with an after-life. Still a very defensible position.
• Acceptance of a physical world only and with a progressive, humanist view, often referred to as naturalism.  It gets controversal when discussing free-will, consciousness and the universality of morality and mathematical concepts. This is unreservedly my position.

Avoid being boxed, cleverly by Christians apologists, into the rejection motif with the “prove-it” response and  talk about how people really act. We are all practical atheists.

Alex McCullie