Akeel Bilgrami is the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and a fellow Atheist. He was interviewed for rediff news. The Interview, What Osama is demanding is on the lips of almost every ordinary Muslim, is different and therefore interesting. I thought I would share.
You are an atheist, but, unlike many other atheists, including the Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins, whose bestselling book, The God Delusion, condemns religion in every aspect, you say we ought to understand the community-oriented dimension of religion. You also feel that Gandhi understood this side of religion. Could you talk more about this?
Let us talk about people like Dawkins, first. He is right when he opposes creationism. Creationism is a false hypothesis about a scientific question about the origins of the universe because the world was not created in just six days a few thousand years ago.
I'm going to need some time to process this. I am interested in what the rest of the Atheist world has to think.
