Give me a reasonable believer over an uncompromising atheist any day

In a coalition of the reasonable, I might have more fruitful dialogue with an evangelical or Catholic than a fellow atheist

There are two equal and opposite pathologies of the common ground. One is the refusal to share any, to maintain clear divisions between yourself and those you disagree with. The other is to pretend or imagine people have more in common with you than they do, latching on to any kind of similarity as evidence of sameness.

To find the right mean between the two we need to be honest about what our similarities and differences are – but, more fundamentally, be clear as to what the point of trying to establish common ground is. Do we seek shared territory because we want the world to be a lovely, friendly place where deep disagreements are rare and no one holds stupid, ignorant or deluded beliefs? Whatever our psychological motivations, I think there are two sets of good reasons for at least trying to establish a common ground, ones that help identify where it is to be found.

The first set is pragmatically political and social. It's just not good to have families, streets, neighbourhoods or nations divided by faith, or lack of it. It's worth trying to find something in common even with those we totally disagree with, simply to grease the wheels of social interaction. This is fine as far as it goes, but when tolerance, engagement and respect are based on nothing other than our need to get on, the peace that results is unstable, lacking deep roots.



By charity, I mean the effort to try to understand the views and arguments of those we disagree with in the most sympathetic form we can, being critical of their strongest versions, not their weakest ones or straw man caricatures.

By modesty I simply mean some real sense that we are all limited in our understanding and that no matter how sure we are, we could be mistaken. Even when others go very wrong indeed, we can recognise that there for either the grace of God or the luck of chance go I. This kind of modesty is not incompatible with having strongly held beliefs and certainly doesn't require agnosticism.

In looking to form a "coalition of the reasonable" of atheists and religious believers, it is to virtues like these that we should look, not more substantive beliefs about how the world is. One of the most important things I have learned over this series is that attempting to forge an alliance between people of "liberal" faith and atheists based on shared beliefs results in a very small club indeed: worth joining, but unlikely to make much impact.

Although it's probably true that almost everyone claims the virtues of sincerity, charity and modesty for themselves, in practice many fall short. We should ask of those who claim to be part of the coalition of the reasonable: do they take any individuals or texts to be infallible sources of knowledge? If the answer is yes, they fail the test of sincerity. Do we see the principle of charity at work in how they actually criticise and discuss people of other faiths or none? And do they show any sign of genuinely being open to being wrong?

One reason why this coalition matters is for the political goal of co-existence. I don't think anyone who genuinely embraced sincerity, charity and modesty could be intolerant or divisive. On the other hand, those who do not display these virtues are just the kind of people who would advocate separate schools for people of different faiths, demonise those with different views and see compromise as an inexcusable sell-out of principle.

Of course, in reality there is no neat divide between the reasonable and the unreasonable: it's a case or more/less, not either/or. But divisions are real even when the boundaries between them are fuzzy, and I really do think that the most important divide in the religion debate is not between believers or non-believers, but between those who show the virtues of reasonableness and those who do not. That's why I've often had more fruitful dialogues with some Catholics and evangelicals than I have with some fellow atheists. Our allies should be all those who don't just proclaim the virtues of reasonableness, but live by them, whether atheist or agnostic – or any stripe of religion.

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