Delving into dangerous waters here, but all the buzz about New Atheism generated by this excellent Gary Wolf article [via kottke] is leading me straight into temptation.

Like the weak-minded fence-sitters whom the New Athiests bemoan, I tend to call myself agnostic, though the truth is that I wobble about among agnosticism, (old) atheism, and an odd, made-up pantheism (but never panetheism)—my only consistency is fascination for theology of all flavors. All that wavering probably makes me a true agnostic rather than a scared, closeted athiest—and I don't think I'll ever be calling myself a New Athiest.

Anyway, I was shocked by this passage in Wolf's article, probably because I come from an open-minded, topsy-turvy, and religiously indeterminate interfaith family:

At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. "Who here is an atheist?" I ask.

Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, "I am!"

But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: "You would be."

"Why?"

"Because you enjoy pissing people off."

"Well, that's true."

This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious. Most of these people call themselves agnostic, but they don't harbor much suspicion that God is real. They tell me they reject atheism not out of piety but out of politeness. As one said, "Atheism is like telling somebody, 'The very thing you hinge your life on, I totally dismiss.'" This is the type of statement she would never want to make.

Before reading this passage I probably would've volunteered myself as an atheist if asked (now of course I'll watch my mouth in mixed company). To me it's not an attack on believers, but a statement that what works for them doesn't work for me, which is probably what they'd say (if they're nice) if I told them that bunnies hopping through grassy fields is entirely equivalent to the ultimate power of the universe.

Needless to say, I'm far too soft for Dawkinsian intolerance of religious beliefs. The only thing I can't tolerate (in terms of religion here—there're a lot of other intolerables out there) is extremism, and the solution to that is certainly not adding another extremist religious group into the mix, even if it doesn't have a god concept. These subscribers to the religion of rationalism should know (rational as they are) that alienating moderates just adds more centuries to the struggle against fanaticism.