another post on my site that you may like is from someone who shared your Catholic faith. I do not know about his orthodoxy, but he was nonetheless one of the most influential thinkers of our time:
http://cyclewalabanda.blogspot.com/2007/05/slenderest-knowledge-by-ef-schumacher.html

The further suggestion that perhaps this faculty was not fully developed in atheists almost made the poor man’s head explode.

That is so funny.

And I certainly agree that the majority of atheists don’t like to be reminded that their own views may be flawed. I do recall the discussion I once had with the aforementioned Dr. Machel in which I suggested that perhaps humanity had evolved not religion itself, but the necessary faculties to perceive the very real divinity that exists within and behind the visible universe. The further suggestion that perhaps this faculty was not fully developed in atheists almost made the poor man’s head explode.

Green: Thanks for the link and the note. We believers do have to keep up the good work of spreading not only the Word of God, but the rational defense thereof as well.

I will give your post a read in short order.

Thank you.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and offer something that I think I’ve noticed.

It seems to me that evangelical atheists, like Dawkins or Hitchens or even your internet interlocutors are reacting against a sketchy, strawman, simplistic version of God. It’s a version that I outgrew somewhere in my teens.

When you consider that most atheists have “mythical origin” stories about casting off the “indoctrination” that was imposed on them in their childhood, and that most such stories involve an their having their epiphany in their teens, the conclusion I reach is that many atheists have gone into a stasis where their ideas of religion have not progressed beyond that of a child.

I certainly think that they are honestly describing their true experiences. Childhood is all about indoctrination. Children are taught not to lie, to share the toys, to go to school, to say their prayers etc. on the basis of the authority of parents and adults. As we grow older, it is to be hoped that we develop a mature understanding of the reasons for the edicts that we were given. Some people obviously never progress beyond the black and white world of childhood, including a lot of religious believers.

Where atheists go wrong is to project and universalize their childhood experience onto others who have developed a mature faith. However, given the fact that they are frozen into an immature stage of development with respect to understanding religion, they may literally be unable to imagine something so far outside of their experience.

One thing I’ve also noticed is that nothing attracts a blogswarm of atheist responses than a post suggesting that atheism is in any way flawed or that atheists suffer the same human impediments that they like to attribute to non-atheists.