Leading up to my turning 50, I reread the farewell discourse of Jesus found in John 13-17. As read it, I thought of many of new (gnu) atheists and my trouble with them. They, in reading them, describe a different god that I experience in Scripture and my life. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, the so-called Four Horsemen of the movement, all describe a god that made people mean and I can see why they would fight such a god. But like a wife being married to a wonderful spouse who is kind and thoughtful, and then suddenly being told that that person is in reality a rapist, murderer and torturer, and trying to square it with what she lives with each day, the disconnect makes no sense. Their god does not make sense to me, compared to the god every day.
The more I read in John 13-17, the more I felt this. The God that calls us to love one another is the God whose love was best expressed by foot washing. I felt the presence of the Triune God as I reflected on this. Setting up for my party and greeting those that came to mourn the passing of my youth, the more God presented God self in the beauty of life. All became grace. In the eyes of people I love, I kept finding the living Jesus, resurrected and loving. I thank all who came and saw them as a gift from God. The truth of the Gospel, of God becoming man to save us from our own darkness was shown in the July sun as we shared stories and heard about each other’s life. Good food and Huckleberry Margaritas made the kindness of God real. In many ways I can see the point of the gnu atheists as they see a vengeful God demand worship.
If I experience a similar God, I too would fight that idol. Yet, as I turn into the long decline still full of life and as I watch my son grow and see the people in my life, I can feel the gentle hand of God washing the muck of my feet. I may have stepped in dung, but God is washing it off. Love one another as I love you, Jesus sums up his Gospel before submitting to the violence of Rome, Empire and man’s vainglory that the cross represents. Love one another, triumphs over the violence of man.
Ernesto,
Reading your article, I was struck by both the eloquence of your words, and your deep misunderstanding of the atheist worldview. Atheism, as I practice it, is not a choice, but rather it is a consequence of a choice. I choose to apply basic standards of evidence-based reasoning to religious texts and teachings. In so doing, I come to the conclusion that magical, supernatural creatures (God, the devil, Jesus, the Angel that spoke to Mohammad, a flying Buddhist monk etc.) are not amenable to evidence, since their supernatural powers exempt them from the laws of cause and effect. I therefore conclude that human superstition is a more likely explanation for many biblical stories than is magic.
You think that we atheists oppose God. We do not. We oppose ignorance and self-deception. The story of Jesus is a way that humans have found to make sense of the world, but in our fearful desire for certainty, too many of us cling to these stories as if they are literally, historically true. What makes me an atheist is not that I deny the truth of these stories, but rather that I deny that these stories meet any meaningful standard of evidence by which one can measure truth.
Does this mean that these stories they have no value? No. Stories are among the most powerful tools that we humans use for creating meaning and value in our lives, but this is not the same thing as saying that the truth value of the claims of a story are beyond reproach, and so, as an atheist it is my duty to reproach them. THIS is the ignorance and self-deception that I oppose: It is ignorance and self-deception to believe that you hold knowledge when in fact you are deciding a story is true based on the political power it gives you, or the way it makes you feel. We humans are experts at self-deception, especially where our interests are concerned. This is true of me and it is true of you. Do no deny this.
This insight leads me to the same epistemological stance that most atheists take. This epistemological stance flows from a MORAL desire to avoid the harm that so often comes from holding wrong beliefs. Evidence based reasoning is the gold standard of human knowledge. Evidence-based knowledge is tentative, changeable and based on facts. What facts do we know about God?
1) We know for a fact that “God” is a word and like most words, the word “God” means different things to different people. What’s more, I have observed that for MANY people the word “God means different things to the SAME person at different times.
2) We know for a fact that the word God often refers to a character in a story, and that this character is reputed to have mysterious and magical powers
3) We know for a fact that many, many people take these stories about God very, very personally, but that there are many, many disagreements about this character.
4) We know for a fact that people like to divide themselves up into teams, tribes, organizations, congregations and nations based on which of these stories humans believe in or which of them they find important.
5) We know for a fact that people use these stories to justify power and privilege for themselves, often at the expense of others, and that people also use these stories to negotiate and make sense of their experience of themselves and of their relationship with their family and community.
If God exists as most Christians imagine him, he has magical superpowers, powers that allow him to ignore cause and effect. I am human though. I cannot ignore cause and effect. I MUST USE cause and effect to tell truth from falsehood. This is not a limit of your God, it is a limit on how human knowledge works. It is beyond the ability of reason to prove or disprove the existence of God.
If you look at my list of facts above, you might notice that very quickly, knowledge of God becomes knowledge of humanity. My best guess about this is that God is a reflection of humanity. An expression of an unconscious need to subjugate ourselves to a loving parental figure. I find it comforting to know that so many people worship a loving God as opposed to the wrathful old sociopath in the Old Testament. I suppose that’s a form of human moral progress of a sort, although one might argue that the New Testament idea of hell erases all the good that the story of Jesus has done and more.
It is NOT beyond the ability of reason to explain BELIEF in God however. Belief is a human psychological state, and one that many people use to take comfort, build community and obtain political and economic power. It is this political and economic power that we atheists oppose. After all, how often have believers in one god or another rationalized away their violent behavior on the basis of their divine justification? How often are non-believers excluded from conversation, debate or privileged status? How often do we assume that people who believe differently than us are morally our inferiors?
Your description of the foot washing comes down to two things that I can identify with – Absolution and Humility. It may surprise you to learn that I have practices that I use for both of these needs, and that I engage in these practices without a relationship to a divine authority figure. I practice apology and forgiveness, and I practice making amends. Through these practices I seek and find absolution.
As for humility, you say your God humbles himself by washing the feet of his followers. How would it humble you to admit that you CANNOT know that your God exists? It is vanity to say that you know something that you cannot know. This is the insight that leads to atheism. Belief in God is vanity. Humility is the soul of atheism.
Nice reply and insight Paul Susac.
Paul, first forgive the late reply. On your points, I have to say my post was not at atheists in general but at a particular group that self named Gnu Atheists. My point being their description of what is God doesn’t seem to fit my experience of God. Nothing more, nor nothing less. The title of the post was not mine. On the moral view of Christianity, all I can say is that many Christians have been guilty of
… being hypocritical. You are right in people dividing themselves in tribes and groups, but elimination of faith would not solve this problem. Republican/Democrat Zags/Huskies, we would find a way of dividing ourselves and then turning violent. That is that one of myths of the Gnu Atheist movement that we can purify our dark impulses by elimination religion. Unfortunately, this is a pipe dream. Only 12 percent of all the wars had a religious reason, and the largest ones (WWI WWII Russian Revolution) had nothing to do with religion.
On your last point, I can’t say God doesn’t exists anymore than say the sky doesn’t exists. My experience of the presence of God is too real for me to deny. When my son was in the hospital in Children, the Spirit of Love was so dominate that to say it couldn’t be real is deny the truth of my life. This certainly is not a attempt at making you believe or have faith, I can just share my faith and you have all the right to call poppycock. I can tell you out my relationship to God and others and not out of some promise of heaven. On your practices, I can only encourage you to continue. I live my life in an attempt to love God and others. Others live to make others agree with certain propositions, as agreement was the highest good. (this is common to humanity and not limited to religious people.)
I think of Lincoln’s wise words to a broken nation: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
During my years as an “Agnostic”, I resented God’s power and the requirement of submission to such strength. I was created in God’s image, and thus possess a measure of egocentric views I have yet to earn. Not until I witnessed the birth of a child gifted to me by Our Lord did I finally comprehend a power so great, and so generous, as the one who allowed me a place in the generations of God’s Universe. Thanks be to God.