Ask An Atheist: What faith leaders do you admire?

That’s an interesting question. Many religious people (now and in the past) are people whose dignity or insights or decency I can thoroughly respect and applaud. People like Bartolome de Las Casas (Catholic priest who openly protested the Conquistadors’ oppression of Native Americans) earns such a nod, and although I hardly agree with the current pope’s theology, his making waves to combat the cushy privileged lifestyle of the church elite warrants a thumbs up from me.

Since I don’t share their theological convictions, no matter how sincerely they do hold them, the arguments “faith/spiritual leaders” offer regarding their particular imaginary friend honestly don’t interest me any more than speculation on other imaginary things, be it unicorns or the occult tarot (clumsily hijacked from a perfectly good and still active card game).

I bump into the arguments of Kulturkampf conservative religious defenders more frequently in the course of studying the creation/evolution controversy (material now once again online at my new no frills page the “Troubles in Paradise” ‘Cuz the Bible Tells Me So section setting out my take on these matters at length), and so the William Lane Craigs and Norman Geislers of the world are of more direct interest to me in that they make claims about the empirically decidable universe that allows me to peek under their mental hood to see the workings of their thought processes.  I can’t honestly say I admire either Craig (who often debates with atheists, demonstrating his mastery of the circular argument) or Geisler (whose secondary influence on Kulturkampf characters from Kirk Cameron to David Limbaugh does not earn even a smidge of respect from me), either for their factual limitations or the self-referential “logic” of their religious apologetics, though I have no reason to think as people they’re not all perfectly pleasant ones.

More liberal theological thinkers don’t enter that analytical frame so readily, as many accept evolution (after a fashion) and acknowledge the unsightly crannies of their religion’s historical activities, and so I have less reason to probe how they arrive at their particular views regarding an entity that I don’t believe to be real, but as I mentioned in an earlier post on John Crossan’s Gonzaga appearance last year, I was impressed with the observations of his agile witty mind, though I’m sure we two would remain on opposite sides of the Christian God issue.