Youre An Atheist? Thats Good!
Thursday, March 8, 2012 2:20
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I notice that more and more people are calling themselves atheists these days—unashamedly. Well, that’s fine with me. You see, in most cases, these people have simply rejected silly, outmoded ideas or concepts of God which weren’t God in any event. After all, the word is never the thing, as Krishnamurti kept telling us. The good thing about giving up belief in God is that there is then a real chance you may find the real God—which is the very livingness, oneness and self-givingness of life itself.
A Columbia University student once went to see Dr Harry Emerson Fosdick (pictured left), who was then the minister of Riverside Church in New York. Fosdick was perhaps the greatest Christian thinker of his day—and the leading Modernist in Protestant Christianity. The student was very agitated. Before he had time to sit down he announced to Fosdick that he didn’t believe in God. ‘So, you’re an atheist,’ said Fosdick. ‘Please describe for me the God you don’t believe in.’ The student did a good job of picturing a fairly traditional Judeo-Christian God as a venerable but vindictive bookkeeper who was forever taking notes of everyone’s good and bad deeds. When the student had finished Fosdick said to him, ‘Well, if that is the God you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in that God either. So, we are both atheists. Nevertheless, we still have the universe on our hands. What do you make of it—its formation, its meaning?’
Fosdick will always be one of my ‘gurus,’ although I hate that word. Fosdick once wrote this:
The way parents lie to their children in matters of religion is to me a constant and shocking astonishment. Here is a mother who tells me that in answer to her four-year-old’s question as to where God is she has said, ‘In heaven’; and in reply to the further inquiry as to where heaven is she has said, ‘In the sky.’ This mother has now waked up to the fact that these heedless answers were downright falsehoods. She did not believe what she said. And she did not, apparently, comprehend that teaching the child an idea of God set in such an incredible framework of imagination was the surest way to have that child say some day that she did not believe in God.
Dr Fosdick went on to say, ‘The New Testament says that God is love; that where love is, God is also, dwelling in those who are lovers of their fellows; that God is spirit, surrounding and interpenetrating us so that God lives in us and we in God.’ Now that is a more sensible—and entirely Biblical—concept of God.
I recall that Dr Fosdick also wrote, ‘Better believe in no God than to believe in a cruel God, a tribal God, a sectarian God. belief in God is one of the most dangerous beliefs a person can cherish. … Some of the people who do not believe in God at all are more merciful, truth-loving, and just than are some who do.’ Once, at the Sydney Town Hall, before the start of an important debate between Dr William Lane Craig and Dr Peter Slezak on the topic of the existence of God I read out those immortal words of Fosdick, having been asked by the debate organisers, St Barnabas Anglican Church, Broadway, to say a few words. (I had been involved in the selection of the atheist—Peter Slezak—to debate Craig.) The video tape of the debate produced by the church did not contain the words of Fosdick. They were edited out by the then assistant minister of the church. I was disgusted. I was soon to learn that debating—and even interacting with—with so-called ‘Bible-believing Christians’ could ve a very unpleasant experience. I will have more to say about that below.
Now, back to the topic. Recently I communicated by email with a lawyer whose daughter has Down syndrome. The father said he was an atheist. I suspect—although I can’t be sure of this—that ‘part’ of this man’s atheism is an emotional reaction to having a child with Down syndrome. I also suspect—although again I can’t be sure of it—that this man’s parents, or the church he may have attended as a child, told him ‘downright falsehoods’—Fosdick’s words—about the nature of God.
I detest religious fundamentalists because they do terrible things to religion. They destroy it by imposing upon it an ideology, that is, an artificial construct which was never part of the original teachings. They turn many people into atheists.
I also detest the ‘new atheists’—people such as Richard Dawkins (pictured right), Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens—at least when it comes to their attacks on conventional religion and the existence of God.
Now, it’s not that I am against atheists or atheism. Not at all. By traditional definitions of God, I am an atheist, and I am proud of what I achieved when I was president of both the Humanist Society of New South Wales and the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. I am proud that I debated several prominent Sydney Anglican clerics, exposing what I saw—and still see—as the weaknesses in their Christian apologetics, not to mention the corrupt version of Christianity which they present. I also found a couple of these clerics hopelessly duplicitous and disingenuous. They thought it was quite OK to lie for the sake of Jesus (cf 1 Cor 9:19-23). For example, I would meet with my opponent before the debate, and we would ‘agree’—at least I thought we had reached an agreement—on how to debate the particular topic (eg the existencve of God or the physical resurrection of Jesus) and on definitions (eg ‘God’). However, during the debate I would often find my ‘Christian’ opponent turning their back on what we had agreed upon previously. They were certainly ‘as shrewd as snakes’ but in no way ‘as gentle as doves’ (cf Mt 10:16).
Actually, I am a panentheist, but be that as it may let it be known and widely celebrated that atheism is not, in itself, a bad thing and—at the risk of sounding patronising (which is not my intention)—it can even be a very good thing. Yes, positive atheism is, or at least can be, an inspiring, sensible and courageous philosophy and life stance. However, the ‘new atheists’ are dangerous people. They are fundamentalists, and they are militant.
First, the ‘new atheists’ are fundamentalists because:
• they are utterly convinced of the ‘fundamentals’ of their position and their arguments—which is the very essence of the ideology known as fundamentalism!
• their assertions all too often are a facile attack on a form or religious belief that we all hate and which, in any event, is a perversion and corruption of true religious belief
• they are all too often childishly unaware and ignorant of the true nature of world affairs
• they demonise whole peoples, especially Muslims and evangelical Christians
• they are so rigid, inflexible and dogmatic in their thinking, for just as the Christian fundamentalist divides the world into the saved and the unsaved, so the fundamentalist atheist divides people up into the rational and the irrational, the enlightened and the unenlightened (the latter being those who believe in God, fairies, elves and angels), thus embracing a belief system that is as intolerant, chauvinistic and bigoted as that of religious fundamentalists (whether Christian, Islamic or otherwise)
• their approach is to ridicule, belittle and—as already mentioned—demonise
• they see only one truth – their truth – with all other values and belief systems being dismissed as fantasy and superstition
• just like Christian and Islamic fundamentalists they impose upon sacred scripture an artificial construct, and a rigid ideology, that shows a complete ignorance of the Bible, the Qur’an and other sacred texts, and they cannot distinguish between religious myth and factual narrative
• like Christian fundamentalists, in particular, they are out to convert others to their point of view and posess an evangelical and obsessive zeal to proselytise
• they are simplistic, often naïve, and anti-intellectual, rejecting intellectual investigations into the true nature of religion, the various world religions, and the various reasons (social, cultural and otherwise) why people hold and maintain religious beliefs and views.
Secondly, the New Atheists are militant because:
• they are driven by a hatred and hostility toward any kind of religion … without distinction
• they attack a repugnant version of religion and use it to condemn all religion
• they blame God, or all religious people, for the sins of irrational religion and religious zealots
• they blame a ‘straw God’ for all the ills of the world and for the evils in the world – for example, Dawkins defines ‘God’ as follows: ‘He not only created the universe; he is a personal God dwelling in it, or perhaps outside it (whatever that might mean), possessing the unpleasantly human qualities to which I have alluded’ – now, only a fool would believe in such a god!
• they generalise ad nauseam about religion, but they are, in fact, evangelists for their own peculiar form of secular religion they even advocate the use of extreme violence (including murder) against certain religious extremists who they regard as being the enemies of civilization – these people ‘should be beaten and killed and defeated, and I don’t make any apology for it’ (Christopher Hitchens).
The ‘new atheists’ are, as already mentioned, dangerous people. They are totally irrational in their attacks upon religion and religious people. They overstate their case. They totally misunderstand the nature of religious faith. They are blissfully ignorant of religion and theology, and they are fanatics. Some of them have even advocated the use of violence, even extreme violence, against other human beings.
The really sad thing about these so-called ‘new atheists’ is that there is absolutely nothing ‘new’ about them at all. For the most part, their books just rehash dry, tired old British rationalism of the 19th century—which itself was based on outmoded thinking and thought forms even way back then. My good friend, John Zerilli, who is a philosopher, lawyer and writer—and, I am very proud to say, a former law student of mine (and one of the very best I had the pleasure to teach)—has written in his insightful book The Economic Imperative, ‘[Richard] Dawkins is epistemologically trapped somewhere between Pisa and Paris, somewhere between 1600 and 1650 AD.’
Exactly. This man Dawkins knows next to nothing about religion, theology and related topics. If ever there was a solid argument against having a state Church one need only look at Great Britain. The Church of England, in Britain, is almost dead—which may well turn out to be a damn good thing. Some 70 or more years ago, one Dr Henry Wilson, then the Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford, declared that Christianity in England was crumbling, and was then only a minority religion. Wilson wrote that Christianity was ‘hanging by a thread in this country.’ That was 70 or more years ago. Well, since then someone ‘jerked the thread,’ so to speak, such that the Church of England is little more than rubble in the not-so-great Britain. What was that got to do with Dawkins, Hitchens and the like? Everything. Only a church which promulgated nonsense—with the blessing of the State—could have produced a theological vacuum which provided such a fertile breeding ground for the spawning of a militant and toxic form of atheism.
So, who or what is God? Well, Fosdick pointed to the New Testament descriptions of God as Love and Spirit, the latter referring to the very livingness of life itself, that is, the ground of being. I endorse those ideas. I also love the New Testament description of a God ‘in whom we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). Now, that is a very ‘big’ God indeed, for no matter how we conceive of God, the reality of God will always be so much bigger.
Look around you, and what do you see? Living things living out their livingness. And it seems self-evident to me that the life which lives out its livingness in and as you is the very same life which lives out its livingness in and as me. I take that to be self-evident and axiomatic. Others may not do so, but that is their choice. For me, all life is interconnected and interdependent, although I reject strict monism and the so-called Gaia hypothesis. And another thing we see all around us—life constantly gives of itself, to itself, in order to perpetuate itself. Is that self-givingness of life nothing other than love in action?
Life, Truth and Love—God, if you wish.
Are you an atheist? If so, I am not trying to turn you into something else, let alone an orthodox theist—heaven forbid! We must reject all this nonsense that you have to believe in a conventional God in order to be a ‘moral’ and ‘decent’ (whatever that might mean) human being. That’s crap, but it’s the sort of crap regularly promulgated by the Christian churches which has helped produce the current lot of ‘new atheists’ and their many followers. It’s all rather sad—indeed, quite pathetic. However, until the mainstream Christian churches discover the real God of the Bible—the one I have referred to above—we will see more and more people identifying as atheists. That may not be a bad thing. At least we may see the death of mainstream Christianity, which would not, in my submission, be a bad thing, for out of its ashes there might arise, Phoenix-like, a new understanding of the All-in-All and of what it means to have one’s being in God.
Read more at Dr Ian Ellis-Jones … Mindfulness Training
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“I notice that more and more people are calling themselves atheists these days—unashamedly. ”
I seriously question why you would use a word like “unashamedly”. Because you are implying that Atheism is something to be ashamed about. I am proud of the fact I can see through the hypnotic charms of snake oil salesman, the suffocating disempowering dark age codswallop evangelists, and the BS from ego-masterbaters, ie. self appointed gurus.
We are all gods, now get off your knees and go practice your god powers. Ie Walk your talk, ACTUALLY do something about the evil in the world.
lol @ “We are all gods,”
Did you read the entire article or just the first sentence? I know you like to get the first word in on all these religious pages to spread your hate and superiority. The first paragraph explained the meaning behind the opening statement. It was saying people like you make comments like the one you just did basically.
Bless you, jmoo. You have a good brain, and what’s more, you use it. You will go far. I appreciate your words. Ian EJ.