Madelaine Bunting on the New Atheists

Real debates about faith are drowned by the New Atheists' foghorn voices. Guardian 7 April 2009.

They [philosopher John Gray and historian of religion Karen Armstrong] see the New Atheists mirroring a particular strain of fundamentalist Christianity with no knowledge of the vast variety of other forms of religious faith. In common with their Christian opponents, they share "the inner glow of complete certainty" [...]

Armstrong and Gray converge again on where they pinpoint the key mistake. Belief came to be understood in western Christianity as a proposition at which you arrive intellectually, but Armstrong argues that this has been a profound misunderstanding that, in recent decades, has also infected other faiths. What "belief" used to mean, and still does in some traditions, is the idea of "love", "commitment", "loyalty": saying you believe in Jesus or God or Allah is a statement of commitment. Faith is not supposed to be about signing up to a set of propositions but practising a set of principles. Faith is something you do, and you learn by practice not by studying a manual, argues Armstrong.[...]

The author Mark Vernon [...] argues that the most interesting conversations about faith are among those just outside religious traditions and those just inside - along the borders of belief, if you like.

I've long felt that those on both extremes can't abide those of us on the boundaries. Our lack of dogmatism is seen as not legitimate.