Off the top of my (bald) head, I can think of two groups which might be astounded by the latest "controversy" over faith. First, the great liberal theologians of the 19th century, who probably wouldn't know what to make of the early-21st-century atheists who think they're shocking someone by pointing out that A) God probably doesn't literally exist in the Big Bearded Guy Overlooking Everything sense, and B) the Bible is filled with contradictions. Their response would probably be 19th-century German for "Duh."
When atheists try to shock me with such information, I congratulate them for catching up, as a group, to the last 150 to 200 years of Protestant Bible scholarship. Not the answer they want to hear, but life can be like that sometimes.
And I think our Founding Fathers would lose faith in the future of our nation if they got a whiff of what certain fanatics make (or don't make) of the separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers, of course, were all for religious freedom--that's why they forbade the formation of a state church. This way, people are free to believe (or not to believe) as they choose. Great concept, and it's worked remarkably well.
In spite of this, certain idiots on the far right and the far left can't wait to toss out this idea. Oh, the guilty far-lefters pretend they're all for church/state separation, but only because they misperceive it as a tool for outlawing all expressions of faith. If they had their way, believers would be required by law to sign a statement prior to voting in any election--a promise that their faith has not, never has, and never will inform any of their voting decisions. All public mention of sacred texts or sacred texts--or the word "sacred" itself--would be outlawed. No problem with believing, so long as you don't do it outside of your cage.
Not the religious freedom the Founding Fathers had in mind, but why get technical?
Similarly, the far-righters want to force their views down everyone's throat. Except their views happen to be (more or less) religious. Leethinks that our brilliant Founding Fathers had both batches of cretins in mind way back when--such control freaks not being an invention of our time but a perennial bane of humanity.
At any rate, we're in the middle of a big "debate" about religion--a debate in which certain angry atheists, tired of having to be reminded that religion exists (oh, the pain!), toss out crude and ridiculous stereotypes about believers and then break out in sunspots the moment a believer dares to say, "Wait--we're not like that." At least, that's how it works at Huffington Post and at Amazon.com's review comment sections.
All Christians are the same, you understand--hyper-conservative, hyper-intolerant, and in love with Bush. We all voted for him, you know. Even liberal Christians voted for Bush. We had no choice--our ministers ordered us to. And God knows we can't think for ourselves. We dare not, because Hell's a-waitin' for us if we get to thinkin' our own thoughts.
This is the bizarre view of faith we find everywhere today, and I've come to a number of sometimes surprising conclusions regarding the whole sorry situation.
1) Obviously, conventional church services (with hymns, a sermon, Bible readings, etc.) are unknown to the majority of Americans. All they know is what they see on TV. They watch some lunatic screaming about damnation and those dang liberals, and they think that's what they'd encounter at the Methodist or Presbyterian church down the block. As some rocket scientist explained at Huff-Po, moderate believers rave on just like fundies--only at a lower volume. I suggested he was flat-out wrong, and he did what such geniuses always do--he ignored my input.
2) Similarly, moderate/mainline Christianity is unknown to most folks. Granted, TV ignores the Christian middle ground entirely--in spite of the fact that, at present, a number of moderate Christians are all over TV! You may have heard of some of them--Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards. And the dawkins-ites are foaming at the mouth over any and every mention of faith by these very folks, because they don't understand that religion isn't illegal in the United States.
If it ain't on TV, it don't exist.
3) Logical thinking is dead, at least on a popular level. How many times have I been informed that the majority of Christians voted for Bush in both elections? Tons of times. This, from the same folks who insist that unthinking, robotic, Bush-style believers are in the majority in the U.S.
Okay. So, by the most basic logic, Bush should have won by wide margins both times, assuming that all Christians voted for him, and that we make up a majority of the population. Right? So, how do they explain the fact that Bush got barely half the popular vote both times? Simple--they don't. Such people ignore anything they don't want to believe. While, of course, bashing believers endlessly for allegedly doing... just that. Yeah.
In the latest issue of The Christian Century, moderate and liberal Christians are urged to make our existence known--we have a duty to do so, the article says. Yes, well, I've been trying to do just that for the past year or two. And, frankly, I think I'd achieve better results for the Christian cause by sticking my head in the commode and gargling Mary Had a Little Lamb until I pass out. Not that I plan to. For one thing, our cats like to sample the water from that location, and I wouldn't want to get in their way.
If I had to choose the more clueless bunch, I'd go for the Huff-Po anti-believers (the bloggers and comment-leavers, both), if only because of their genteel conceit. Whereas the Amazon Bible-bashers are out to draw blood and don't intend to apologize for it, the HP'ers get genuinely offended whenever they receive unfavorable feedback for portraying believers as idiots, liars, and Nazis. Why, whatever did they say or do that might have rubbed us the wrong way? Like, what would the average believer find wrong with the use of "religion" as a metaphor for conformity, war-mongering, hostility toward women, hatred of liberals, and so on?
It's one thing to slander those who don't agree with you. It's another to act surprised when they turn out not to like it.
At any rate, after a year or two of debating such folks, I reckon I would believe anything regarding the public's sheer ignorance about religion. I speak as one who, according to a couple of quizzes I've taken (one in the pages of Christian Century), apparently knows more about the Bible than most evangelicals. And any acquaintance I've had with that document started after I'd left home and joined the Navy. By all logic, I should score low in terms of Bible literacy, but it seems I'm ahead of the pack. No wonder most bashers of faith have no idea what they're bashing. But watch that not slow them down at all.
(Note to Ulo--I almost deleted your first comment--sorry! I was attempting to delete my own but got the wrong one. But I was able to save your comments by paging back and copying them--they're there, out of order, below. My sincere apologies!)
5 comments:
I'm so atheist that I can't even spell "spiritual transcendence".
Lee,
If I didn't know first hand that there was a God I wouldn't believe in Him/Her/It. The only proof of God's existence is his children--their kindness, wisdom, love and compassion. God's 'form' is His respendent virtues practiced by his children as a way of sharing His deepest endowment. The Chirst (not Jesus, but the Christ) as I see Him is an avatar--a manifestation of God in time, space and form.
As you know, there is not exactly a surplus of shared divine endowment in modern Judo-Christian America. Why?
When poeple choose to follow Christianity rather than Christ (believing, of course, they are one and the same), Islam rather than Muhammad, Buddhism rather than Buddha, they choose, as far as I am concerned, religion over revelation. They get into absurd tangles of dogma and myth that have grown up like barnacles around the original teaching.(Keep in mind that 10m Christians believe they will be whisked up into heaven on the day of rapture--no, make that rupture.)
Christ's central teaching is one of peace and nonviolence. He asks you to love your enemy no matter what because when you hate or strike him, you hate or strike yourself.
Yet the Pentagon is overrun by Christian zealots who see no contradiction between their being servants of an empire opposed to everything their teacher/guru/savior taught. "Resisteth not evil," he says--a tenet which only Gandhi and King lived--and alas--died for. If these soldiers were true followers of Christ they wouldn't be wearing military uniforms and sending our children to die in droves in every generation.
Maybe modern Protestantism is enlightened enough to see that God is not some "ill-invented thunderer" in bad need of a shave hurling frogs, locusts, bacilli and bolts of lightning at his truant kids. But those same enlightened Protestants like Rienhold Neihbur and Paul Tillich believed in and preached "just war" and open, existential defiance of Christ. As a result, America is now the resurgent Holy Romam Empire with chaplains ordered to bless aircraft carrying A-bombs to destroy cities--instead of asking God's forgiveness or refusing to do so--and daily STRICTLY DENOMINATIONAL bible study groups in the highest offices of our land.
Hey, sit in your church on Sunday morning singing those wonderful hymns. I'd like to join you some time. But make the rest of the week as much of a sabbath with manifestations of God's endowment of blessed virtues. And this doesn't just mean sending checks to Katrina victims, but seeing Gaza and Baghdad as equally ravaged by Huricane Americana, a cetegory 5 malestrom of greed and twisted morality now that run-amok Capitalism is the official state religion of this lost country.
Ulo,
I agree with your first paragraph entirely. I always hope that most people have evolved past the concept of God as a big sugar daddy out in space. Of course, I'm probably wrong! But I like to hope.
And, yes, I agree that people raised in a Bible-literalist tradition are often damaged by it--in fact, I think that anyone who believes his or her God is the ONLY God is missing the whole point of faith. (David says the same thing, I think, in his comments.) Then again, there are born-again, Christian literalists who are also scientists. Not a huge number, but enough to demonstrate that literal belief in miracles CAN exist side by side with respect for science. Though that's probably not the norm.
I'm not sure what you mean by reliable ethics in regard to math and logic, though I do agree that morality should never be based on a given text, religious or otherwise. Or, to put it a better way, we should be very careful what we choose as a system of morality, especially when we're talking about a collection of cultural myths.
Having said that, howere, there are truths to be extracted and applied from nearly any sacred text. As long as we keep in mind that the texts in question don't represent some ordered code of moral behavior. Religion as a system of morality is a misconception, in my view. It doesn't function as same. It helps people work toward the formation of same, but it doesn't provide it in any literal sense.
Human morality is a work in progress--it changes with time. So I can't see that there are any scientific or sociological constants on which to base it (or from which to derive it). dawkins, in particular, seems to believe morality is something determined by gene combinations (or memes, I think the word is), and I have to wonder what he's smoking.
I had almost no church experience as a kid--all of my experience since the age of 20 or so has been in/with mainline Protestant churches and services. And the sermons, without fail, have dealt with asking (not dodging) questions, with questioning the nature of God, and with being thankful for progress (including scientific progress), for living in the now. The mainline Protestant tradition is not one of offering up all the Big Answers--quite the reverse, really. I wish this were true of ALL Christian churches and services, and I know it isn't. But there are significant numbers of believers whose beliefs and behavior are nothing remotely like the dawkins/harris stereotype. And folks like dawkins seem determined to theorize such believers out of existence. He seems to have no awareness of moderate Christianity.
I'm very sorry to hear about your cat, and I hope she shows up. There are few things more painful than losing a beloved pet.
I believe that, when we pray, we are linking to our own species. Not to a higher power, but to a sort of united human goodness. Religion is about community. Its mythology is shared mythology. Old ideas, new ideas, and ideas in progress. My foster mom recently made a wonderful point about the "truth" of any given religious passage or text--namely, that things can be true without being factual. Religion is one way of attempting to deal with pure truth. With essense. With meaning.
dawkins lives in a world in which meaning is material and materially derived. In which ideas that don't fit in a science text or which can't be put to use in a lab are, by definition, delusions. I don't think he could be more mistaken. Those who see nothing beyond the physical manifestations of existence are the deluded souls, in my view....
Anyway, thanks very much for your thoughtful comments. And for your civility! In my experience, most atheists are very cool people....
And I hope you find your cat. If it's O.K., I'll say a prayer in that regard. (<:
Lee
(My sincere apologies to Ulo--I was trying to delete the first draft of my comments and instead deleted Ulo's!!! Luckily, I was able to page back and copy the comments. Here they are. Sorry!!)
Ulo Oimu said....
I'm probably an atheist. I say probably because most of the time I think it defies reason that there is some supreme entity and arguments to the contrary inevitably include what-ifs (such as, "well where did the universe come from if there is no God?") It's not a reasoned foundation for prooving something exists.
And without evidence we have millions of people with thousands of different ideas about what God is, or what God says and so forth. Although many lovely people have a healthy idea of what God is all about (I would certainly count you as one of them), there are many people whose beliefs damage everyone around them.
One thing I object to is using religious beliefs as a basis for moral/ethical behaviour. Good behaviour should be based on reason. Reason and mathematics are verifiable and reliable -- ethics ought to be reliable as well. Religion is too subjective to be a sound reason to do the right thing.
In my many years of probably-being-an-atheist I have always felt a little sad that people find religion because with the answers to the big questions seemingly resolved, they stop looking. I do believe there are massive truths out there that can only be uncovered by the terrifying and perilous road of existential discovery and reflection. When someone finds a set of answers that are as very satisfying as those frequently available to the religious, they stop looking in a sense and all their enquiry is directed toward (what I believe is) a ruse.
Having said all this, I'd like to note that I do believe that each one of us makes a choice: "what sort of a world do I want to live in? a world with God in it, or one without God in it?" I would never blame anyone for choosing to live in a world with God in it -- it's a more beautiful and less bewildering world.
I do find myself at certain moments quietly attempting a communion with God. My 19 year old cat has gone missing and it doesn't look very hopeful. As I was driving to put up flyers at bus stops and shopping centres I would become a bit overwhelmed and say to God, "if you help me find her, I will never doubt you again" and then, realizing how unfair my demand was, thinking "I should never doubt you anyways."
I just wanted you to hear from an atheist who isn't out to score points on people by bashing religion. People like Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins could make their points (some of them very valid and practical) without trying to villainize the religiously inclined.
BTW Thanks for posting some truly great music. If I didn't know better, I'd say that I've had some moments of spiritual transendance listening to it.
Good on you for writing an interesting and unique blog.
Well said.
I would like to say that I have benefited from religion in some ways. Gospel music is one of them.
We did find our cat, unfortunately she had passed away. But it ended well. She was in decent shape when we found her and we were able to have a nice funeral for her. Its important to be able to say goodbye.
My wife, who is slightly more spiritually-inclined than I am asked me, knowing that I am an atheist, if I thought our cat had a soul. She was a most lovely cat and I had to say that I do think she had a soul. My wife asked me what I thought happened to this soul once after death and I said that whatever this soul happens to be -- let's say a cloud of electrons or some special subatomic particles -- leaves the body.
This cloud drifts about in the world, like a pocket of goodness. I think that when we feel particularly happy or alive that maybe we're sitting in one of these clouds. It's something I've thought ever since I was a kid and is a pretty handy little myth.
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