Open-Minded Atheists!

In 1996, after a meeting of an organisation now known as the Council for Secular Humanism, and as a project of the Free Inquiry Group of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, a summer camp, known as Camp Quest, was held in Kentucky "specifically for irreligious children or the children of non-theistic parents (including atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, sceptics (non-theistic), rationalists, freethinkers, brights, anti-religionists, and others who hold a naturalistic worldview) . . . a godless alternative to traditional religious summer camps". Subsequently such camps have been held in other parts of North America and the first in the United Kingdom was held in Somerset in July 2009 for 24 children between 7 and 15.

The Camp Quest movement is "dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government". It teaches children "that ethical behaviour is not dependent on religious belief and doctrines, that religious belief and doctrines are sometimes a hindrance to ethical and moral behaviour, and that irreligious persons are also good and capable of living a happy and meaningful life". The "centrepiece of the camp's approach is the encouragement of critical thinking". Claiming not to have an "atheist agenda", Camp Quest's aim is said to be "to get campers thinking and asking themselves questions, while equipping them with the tools to go off and come to their own conclusions about a wide range of topics". It claims to "adopt a critical, scientific approach as opposed to a ‘faith-based' approach".

Unsurprisingly, Professor Richard Dawkins and his The God Delusion have been influential in the lives of leaders of the UK Camp Quest, who have his full support. When one examines their professedly open-minded approach one finds the same arrogant assertion of freedom from assumptions, prejudices and presuppositions which characterises Dawkins. They assume that rejection of the existence of God, of the possibility of revelation and of the validity of faith, is the conclusion to which any person will have to come who accepts the evidence as it appears to the unprejudiced mind. They believe that there can be no evidence for the existence of God since their "critical and scientific" method can find no evidence.

They fail to recognise that they begin rather than end their "search for truth" with the conclusion that there is no God and that this is due to their mind being closed for other reasons to the existence of God and because they have assumed that their professedly critical and scientific method is the means of comprehending all that can be known. They reject out of hand the idea that, when it comes to God and the origin and reason of things, it is "through faith we understand" (Heb 11:3). They deny that the ability of science to under¬stand the things which are seen is because of the existence of the realities understood by faith – as many of the ground-breaking scientists of the past and present have acknowledged.

The Bible explains the cause of such rejection of God, although that which may be known of God has been manifested in the human constitution and in creation at large, in terms of sinners disliking to acknowledge God, closing their minds to the truth from enmity to God. It describes the consequences of such dislike as being given over to a reprobate mind with disastrous con¬sequences seen not only in ungodliness but in immorality of all kinds (Rom 1). When the effect of the fear of God wears off a generation, the ethical and social consequences of theoretical or practical atheism soon appear. (Quotations above are from Camp Quest literature.)

HMC