Atheist ideas endanger genuine pluralism
James MacMillan, one of the conductors of the BBC Philharmonic orchestra, said on September 30th, 08, at a lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Sandford St Martin Trust: "The ignorance-fuelled hostility to religion, widespread among secular liberal elites, is in danger of colouring society's value-free 'neutrality' in ways that are both bland and naïve. … They are also impractical, unattractive and, I suggest, oppressive. A true sense of difference, in which a genuine pluralism could thrive, is under threat of being reduced to a lowest common denominator of uniformity and conformity, where any non-secular contribution will automatically be regarded as socially divisive by definition. … The campaigning atheists, as opposed to the live-and-let-live variety, are raising their voices because they recognize that they are losing; the project to establish a narrow secular orthodoxy is failing. … A smug ignorance, a gross oversimplification and caricature that serves as an analytical understanding of religion, is the common intellectual currency. The bridge has to be built by Christians and others being firm in resisting increasingly aggressive attempts to still their voices."