Peter Bowden, Philo Agora Convenor will be presenting a talk to The Sydney Atheist Meetup.

This Sunday, 11 October at 6 pm, at The Clarendon Hotel, 156 Devonshire Street  Surrey Hills.

"The New Atheists - A Near-Total Failure?"

Peter Bowden describes himself as a Huxley Agnostic, although  tending largely to agree with Richard Dawkins. Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s bulldog, coined the term agnosticism, presumably from the Greek, agnostos, unknown or unknowing. He stated that we do not know whether God exists or not. Peter Bowden  certainly does not know. Nor that we can prove it either way. But he does believe that an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God who listens to our prayers is highly unlikely.  Even logically impossible.
 
The new atheists are Dawkins along with Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris The Four Horsemen they call themselves and the can be found on the web. Adding in Michel Onfray and his  recent publication, The Atheist Manifesto only extends the concern that they are all barking up a dead end canal.
 
The reason is that they show a complete ignorance of human nature. Even if they correctly identify the reasons why human beings came to develop a God or Gods , and religion, they do not recognise the messages behind the stories  that they themselves are telling.
 
And until they do they will continue to be voices crying in the wilderness. Except that they do not appear to be even part way to accepting their own messages.