Hi All--
My hat is off to Humphrys for the simple fact that even though his views are at least agnostic, he speaks out against the arrogant attitudes which so often accompany the no-God argument. Of course, the arrogance factor doesn’t appear to me to be limited only to those whom Humphrys characterizes as “militant” atheists. There are arrogant believers, too.
Encarta’s online definition of “arrogant” reads as follows
: proudly contemptuous:feeling or showing self-importance and contempt or disregard for others.
When intellectual deficiency is cited by athiests as the catalyst to faith, I’d say that qualifies as arrogance. I’d also say that when a believer refuses to acknowledge that some of what the athiest presents is the product of diligent research and contains elements of merit, that is also arrogant. But it continues to happen on a regular basis. I guess the classic lessons surrounding hubris are just not easily learned until experienced by the individual, and even then they often seem to be quickly forgotten.
Personally, I think arrogance is most often born of insecurity. In other words, sometimes I think we work and work at trying to understand things to the best of our abilities, and we may have managed a pretty good rough draft in our heads—then someone with an opposing viewpoint comes along and interjects something that might suggest a rewrite on a couple of points, and we do not want to hear it because we worked so hard on that last idea and we are tired!
Is it that we really are that uncomfortable with doubt? Maybe. But like Snoopy pointed out, doubt leads to questions which can lead to answers. There are some here in C-R who strongly disagree with me, but I think a good mystery has intrinsic value. For me, it is not so much the questions I have that make me uncomfortable, but the fact that sometimes I cannot prove the answers I receive to anyone else. And that really should not bother me—I would hope that everyone receives answers that are their own personal revelations. Perhaps I just know from experience that eventually, somewhere down the line, I might say something about mine, and someone will call me “stupid” or “lazy” and I will probably hate that!
I guess my point is that if we spent less time trying to convince “the other guy” that we are more intelligent or clever than he is, we might actually learn from one another. After all, both athiests and believers have based their opinions on a preponderance of “evidence” of some kind or another. A willingness on the part of each to understand the nature of that evidence could go a long way toward reducing the endless waves of condescension that flow between athiests and believers.
Thanks for the link, bananabrain. Dawkin’s review of Christopher Hitchens on that page is interesting, as well.
InPeace,
InLove 
