Through the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church asserts the importance of religious liberty for every individual and believes that one is entitled to live out one’s faith. Thus, through Dignitatis Humanae, the Church has revealed its intention to create inter-religious dialogues and to encourage respect for the positive values of different religions. This raises a question as to whether such dialogues and respect as voiced in Dignitatis Humanae are applicable when it comes to the issue of atheism, a pressing issue faced by the Church today. This article explores the engagement of such a document with atheism. Since atheism covers various views coming from a number of authors, this current article focuses only on atheism as promoted by Richard Dawkins. Building his atheism upon science, Dawkins’ views are worthy of our attention in today’s world, which is characterized by unending scientific revolutions.Kristiatmo, Thomas. (2023). Religious Liberty and Atheism: The Case of Richard Dawkins. MELINTAS. 38. 47-59. 10.26593/mel.v38i1.7099.
Toward a Dialogue Now we can turn to what DH says concerning religious liberty, which might also include atheism, in this case, that of Dawkins. This declaration had undergone a very long process before being promulgated in the second Vatican Council.18 Thus, DH is a declaration resulted from a careful and profound re ection on many other issues that could touch religious liberty. The process shows that through the council, the Church is gradually becoming more listening to the world. The voices brought by the fathers of the council mirrored the contextual situation. Therefore, in the process of producing the document, we see great efforts in achieving a prudent way of dealing with the concrete situation of the contemporary world. According to DH, the religious liberty is based on human dignity. It states that the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself.
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This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. [A]ll men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power [T] he right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself (DH 2). This implies that all men have the dignity, which is from God himself (Cf. Genesis 1:27). This dignity does not depend on hypotheses about the process of the creation of man. This dignity is universal in that every man possesses it, simply because she or he is a human being. Therefore, this dignity is to be acknowledged and to be protected at all costs. 53
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Melintas Vol. 38, No. 1, 2022 Moreover, the Church maintains that human dignity is always in relation to Gods call to be in communion with Him. Through her pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes, it is clear that The root reason for human dignity lies in mans call to communion with God. From the very circumstance of his origin man is already invited to converse with God. For man would not exist were he not created by Gods love and constantly preserved by it; and he cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and devotes himself to His Creator (GS 19).
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The human dignity is of divine origin. Since the very beginning of creation, notwithstanding any other theories of this beginning such as that of Darwinian evolutionist theory, God has willed that human be in a communion with him. The fathers of the second Vatican council declare perfectly, Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God (see Col. 1:15, 1Tim. 1:17) out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends (see Ex. 33:11; John 15:14-15) and lives among them (see Bar. 3:38), so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself (DV 2). The universal salvi c will of God is directed so that man lives in eternal happiness with Him.
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