In a debate that has been full of controversy and rancour, there is one assertion that surely most can agree with without dispute: the God wars have reached a tedious impasse, with all sides resorting to repetition of the same old arguments, which are met with familiar, unsatisfactory responses. This is a stalemate, with the emphasis firmly on "stale". My heart sinks whenever I am invited to talk or write about the existence of God, whether science is compatible with faith, or whether religion is the root of all evil. I struggle to say something new, knowing that this is such well-trodden ground, the earth is packed too firmly for any new light to get in. The only hope is to start digging it up.

I do not blame the quagmire on the intransigence of any of the three sides in the debate – believers, atheists and agnostics – but on all of them. Broadly speaking, the problem is that the religious mainstream establishment maintains a Janus-faced commitment to both medieval doctrines and public pronouncements about inclusivity and moderation; agnostics and more liberal believers promote an intellectualised version of religion, which both reduces faith to a thin gruel and fails to reflect the reality of faith on the ground; while the new atheists are spiritually tone-deaf, fixated on the superstitious side of religion to the exclusion of its more interesting and valuable aspects.

A plague on all their houses: all are guilty of becoming entrenched in unsustainable positions. For there to be movement, all are going to have to recognise their failings and shift somewhat. The battlelines need to be redrawn so that futile skirmishes can be avoided and the real fights can be fought. This is the first in a series of articles which together will attempt to do just this. Over the coming months, I'll be fleshing out the charges I have made and suggesting what the right responses to them should be.

This is a journey I've been itching to embark on for some time. I've had plenty of thoughts about what route to take and where I might end up, but if this is to be a genuine intellectual exploration, as I intend it to be, I can't know in advance exactly where I'll finish up or what I'll learn on the way. I'll certainly be needing direction and advice, and I very much hope the Comment is free community will provide plenty of both, in the form of criticism (constructive of course) as well as support.

As a querulous member of the atheist camp, one of my aims is to end up with a richer, more constructive vision for what should follow the "new atheism", which may well have been needed, but does not appear capable of taking us much further. To use another military analogy, the new atheism seems designed for effective invasion, but not long-term occupation.

One key characteristic of this new, new atheism must be more modesty. Although it was not intended to be a boast, advocacy of the noun "bright" to describe atheists illustrates how they have too often come over as smug and over-confident. So with gentle self-deprecation, I propose reclaiming "heathen". This is not simply a rebranding exercise, however, but a genuine repositioning: I will be trying to put together a new heathen manifesto to affirm what non-belief should entail for the moderate, mainstream atheist today.

I understand that there may be scepticism about how well-conceived this secular pilgrimage really is. On the one hand, I talk a good talk about moderation and reasonableness. But on the other, I have brusquely dismissed all sides as wrong and resorted to military metaphors more than once. Am I not extending a velvet-gloved hand while clenching an iron first held behind my back?

Not surprisingly, it's a charge I reject. The case for my defence rests on the difference between being robust and militant, convinced and dogmatic. As I'll argue next week, understanding this difference is vital if we are to get beyond name-calling and move this debate forward.