Atheists have been among the most abused parties in the history of the church. I agree.

Because many groups have recognized what might be called a “religious way of life as normative, those who have challenged those norms, or the implications of those norms,” have had to do battle against more than just philosophical or theological stances. Specifically, such stances backed by hegemonic social entities, namely the church, the state and conflations of both.

As a United Methodist pastor, I do not speak for the whole of religious people or even United Methodists, but let me be among the many that emphatically declare that such treatment of any person is wholly sinful. And while I think that atheism can be an honest, legitimate and praiseworthy stance, I hope that readers of both Mr. Ueda’s columns and mine recognize that theism can be an equally intellectual and laudable stance as well.

Ueda problematizes the analogy that theism is to certainty about God’s existence as atheism is tocertainty that God does not exist. He clarifies that “Atheist simply means one who does not believe that God exists.” As such, most atheists would not attribute certainty as a moniker to describe the quality of their knowledge about the non-existence of God. Since certainty is predicated upon the appropriation of the results of a scientific investigation into natural phenomenon, the existence of something supernatural, by definition, can never be certain.

So when Ueda says that, “most atheists would not go so far as to say, with the same level of certainty that religious people claim, that God does not exist and it is somewhat scientifically indefensible to say with that level of certainty,” he suggests that many religious people illogically attribute the quality of certainty to their knowledge of the existence of God.

As Ueda describes the agnostic, there are those who do not certainly know that God exists, but hold that God does just as there are those who lack the same certainty and hold that God does not exist.

If one follows the premise that certainty cannot be ascribed to knowledge about the supernatural or extra-natural, then the theist’s knowledge of God can at most be a strong conviction or belief. In this sense an atheist or “one who does not believe that God exists,” is most definitely the opposite of a theist or one who does believe that God exists. The question of certainty is a moot point because it only applies to those things that participate in a manner scientifically observable in the natural world.

Not all theists are in the same boat in regards to the quality of their convictions or beliefs. There is great variety in the reasons why theists choose to hold to the existence of God despite the absence of scientific evidence. Some theists claim personal experience, while others do so because it is simply a matter of tradition and custom. But choosing to surmise all such beliefs as “somewhat intellectually dishonest” and of a character that is “extremely dangerous and something that should be resisted ” is more an ad hominem attack on theism as a philosophy or theology than a logical assessment of the history of religion.

In fact, the intellectual project known as the Enlightenment encouraged theists and atheists alike not to necessarily abandon convictions that remain beyond the scope of science, but rather to critically consider the nature, function and implications of all things. To expand on Kant, the Enlightenment dared us to know and to know critically.

The study of knowledge about God (theology), knowledge about customs (ethics), and knowledge about human ways of being (anthropology) are just a few intellectual disciplines that critically investigate matters that sometimes are beyond the scope of science, yet still aspire to do so in an intellectually honest way.

In other words, many theists are among the company of critics that realize that epistemic standards vary contingently upon the matter of the phenomena being investigated. An, albeit, pithy example would be that one does not employ science to choose a spouse, but one would be wise not to leave the matter up to indiscriminate chance.

The Enlightenment encourages us not to simply think, but to consider how we are thinking. In fact, is that not what a university education is all about? Perhaps because I am Wesleyan, I cannot help but see SMU as an institution that has the potential to facilitate the joining of “knowledge and vital piety” if students, faculty, and staff make a commitment to honestly explore both. And when we do so, perhaps some of us will be led to theism and others of us will be led to atheism, but in either case, let us make the most of this institution by openly and lovingly engaging with each other so that we may grow more steadfast in our pursuit of knowledge.

Richard Newton is a student at the Perkins School of Theology. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].