Interesting Stuff Thread

“We no longer have reason to fear the invisible policeman,” declares A.C. Grayling defiantly. One of the world's most revered philosophers and the first Master of London's recently-established New College of the Humanities, the author of more than 30 books, a director of the acclaimed Prospect Magazine and a frequent contributor to many newspapers, Grayling was giving the first in a series of lectures organised by Atheist Ireland. Grayling observed that it was the atrocities of 9-11 that reawakened the world to the dangers of intolerant religious ideologies. Since then the atheist campaign has become a media circus and attracted a glittering collection of eminences, including Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have deployed political and scientific arguments against religion with varying degrees of success.

While most of their arguments have been as notable for their rancour and vitriol as their intellectual rigour, Grayling's approach has been different. Instead he is quiet, concentrated and conscious of the full implications of what he says, and it's because of this that his philosophical case for atheism is more impressive than any other. Grayling seeks to advance the atheist position by providing cast-iron intellectual justification for not believing in a supreme being - rather than by simply depicting his opponents as fools, charlatans and bigots. Grayling also upholds the value of an entirely secular world because he believes that, for a whole range of moral and ethical reasons, it would be a far better place to live.

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