Recently, I discovered Epinoia Cafe, a very interesting online thingie (conversation, magazine, community…). It’s an “emergent” conversation, whatever that means. I don’t want that label, but I followed a link there and appreciated this article: An Atheist’s Version of Hell, by Angela Harms. Leaving aside her thoughts about hell, for now, consider this reaction: “…when I see Richard Dawkins’ book (The God Delusion), my stomach knots up and I want to vomit, or scream. (I feel like screaming right this moment, as I write this.)”
Wow. Why? Because
When I was a little girl, I was completely freaked out by the scientistic worldview, that the universe is a cold, dark place, with no God-love holding it together. Determinism was a literal nightmare. I found the idea of hell silly, but the idea of a god-less, cold universe seemed very plausible, and I was terrified of it. I thought if that were true, I should kill myself…
I…but sometimes lost hope, especially when all the “smart” people (like Penn Jillette and Richard Dawkins) seemed so sure.
So, while I can work up empathy for almost anyone, I haven’t got there yet with Richard Dawkins. He published a book intended to destroy people’s faith, get people to teach their children about the hell he thinks the universe is. I am so angry. So damned angry.
Oh, mercy. I haven’t read writing like that since Traveling Mercies.
Then today I read an article about how Douglass Murray lost his religion and glibbly popped out an atheist without much sign of thought or struggle.
He writes,
Many people hold on to belief as an unquestioned part of their make-up. They never have to confront the source of their belief, and as long as nothing actively pushes them into addressing it, they keep it as something which rarely does much harm and might actually do some good… Like a lot of believers, I knew that there were parts of my belief that wouldn’t stand up to analysis. But that was fine. I didn’t need to analyse them. I only lost faith when I was forced to.
He’d been living a lie for years, yet he doesn’t stop to question his own judgment in surmising that, therefore, God must not exist. Actually, he seems to see himself as an expert (he’s published…).
One has faith like a green branch that bends and slaps you awake; the other dry and lifeless goes with a quiet snap and a puff of dust.
Well, I guess I’m off to the library for Traveling Mercies.
Have you noticed how everyone has an opinion on faith or lack of? Be it theistic or atheistic everyone has their own story and actively seem to seek out people to validate their decisions.
Now for something quite difficult, to not tell you about my views
One of my favorite author once wrote that people pass each other all the time on crowded sidewalks without ever saying a word, but it’s rare to pass someone on a trek through the mountains without exchanging a few words and stories.
You’re right about staying silent though. It’s a difficult discipline that I need to practice much more.
Angela – I think you’ll like Anne Lamott. She’s quite a trip. She’s certainly not TC (theologically correct), and she drops F-bombs with a rare passion, but she’s a great writer worth spending some time with.
Angela Harms must not be too familiar with Dawkins’ work. Never once does he assert that he thinks the universe is hell. He merely rationalizes that it IS a cold, uncaring place, whatever you do with that information, whether you shrivel into a fetal position in fear or try to make the most of this precious life and enjoy every minute for what it’s worth, is up to you.
Big fan of your work Andrew, always have been
How easy it is for atheists to conflate Islam, Christianity, and all other types of religion (either accidentally or for their own book deals)
If I was to falsely conflate the moral philosophies of Kant and Mill I would be laughed at in philosophical circles, but atheists (and the media) enjoy applauding such acts of stereotyping and discrimination (not to mention sloppy academic + journalistic work)
Nathan – I think what bothered Murray was that Christians tend to conflate all other religions as “them” versus “us” and then, with one broad stroke, assume their religions are all based on myths. What is lacking is the self-awareness to questions our own foundational stories. The truth is that other types of religion may have a lot in common with Christianity (God, revelation from God, miracles, etc.).
Stephanie – I think Angela meant that Dawkins’ vision of life is hellish. It’s as bad (or worse than) hell as described in the Bible. If the world is cold, pointless, and devoid of transcending love, then we are just an accidental spark of light. In that case, we may as well live in the moment. We can pretend that “reality” is the spark of “light” (the exception) we’re living in and put aside thoughts of the Reality of darkness that is about to swallow us up without a trace. But the brave, like Dawkins, will stare into the void and, perhaps, make a kind of religion out of that.
I think it’s okay to look at my own faith and have questions and doubts. I think that people who throw out their faith at that point never really encountered God (or simply forgot those instances). When I feel doubt, then I don’t cling to easy answers but fall back on a sense of awe and wonder at the center of my faith. I remember those times when I encountered the presence of God in some way. I consider the reality of God as Love. I pray without words, so to speak. Heh. And I accept that there is mystery. I don’t know everything — not even close — about how God works. The Bible says that God revealed Himself (in Christ) as perfect love, and finally I put my trust in that.
A friend of mine once said that if one tiny detail about the Bible was “wrong,” he wouldn’t be able to believe any of it. I felt bad for him. His starkly black and white way of seeing seemed very limiting, and I think it resulted in him imagining God (and life) in a “box” small enough for him to understand and explain. (I think the Bible reflects both it’s many human authors and perspectives AND God inspiring and crafting it as a trustworthy revelation and guide.)
Knowing God as Love expressed in history and mediated in Christ is personal and holistic (concerning myself and the whole of life in this world with justice and compassion). But I hold everything with a sense of mystery. Acknowledging mystery doesn’t diminish my faith or hold me back from action, but it’s a dose of humility. It means letting God be God — bigger than any box.
“It means letting God be God — bigger than any box.”
That is such a difficult thing for us to do, isn’t it?
I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but I think I may be the “friend” to which Andy is referring here, and I would stand by my assertions to which he refers, while not granting, Andy, your “box” point at all. I think I have as much mystery in my faith as you do, yet I find it difficult to say that God has erred in things I can look into (historical assertions for example) while trusting him for things I cannot verify (spiritual realities like salvation and the way to find it, or Jesus’ assertion that he is, in fact, the Son of God). I experience it as true that the knowledge of God is “unsearchable and his ways beyond finding out.”
I would say that many of the Puritans, who had, by today’s standards, starkly “black and white” convictions, believed in far more mystery than I or you do. They believed in this mystery NOT because they distrusted any word the Bible said as false or misleading, but because they believed absolutely every single word of it as inspired and inerrant, and therefore they could take God at his Word and ponder the mysteries He has revealed.
So I believe, Andy, that you have erected a false dichotomy between mystery and believing in the total truthfulness and inerrancy of the Bible. Knowing you personally, I am confident that I wrestle with questions about my faith just as surely as you do. We all wrestle in our own ways. But it is no sign of humility to say that the Bible contains errors. It may turn out to contain errors, but there is no less humility in my taking the evidence against such a view at this point in my faith journey. I’m not “clinging” to some kind of rigid faith while you are open and free. I’m free to believe the Bible has errors, but you seem completely UN-free to believe that it doesn’t. And might it not be putting God in a box to say that you can’t “put him in a box?”
By the way, my wife has really enjoyed reading Anne Lamott.
Ah, caught. I have great respect for you Mike, and we often “see” (as in perceive/understand) things differently. I’m very intuitive but sometimes circular in my logic (and don’t mind, because I don’t think I can trust logic as the final authority anyway). You are more rigorous in your thinking, but I’ve seen how difficult it can be when it gets you in a corner. Sorry about the word “clinging” though. Literary excess…
I don’t believe the Bible contains errors. That would assume it was meant to be different than it is, and that it came up short. I think the Bible came out as intended, as a Divinely inspired compilation of writings that passed through many human hands but still serves as an infallible guide to truth. It tells us what we need to know while not masking the troubled times in which it was written, or the messy people who wrote it.
Anyway, you are much more of a scholar on the nuances of these words than I am. This isn’t intended as a “position,” which I don’t have or find necessary. My faith is grounded in what it says in the Bible, but where I’ve gone with my faith has been an ongoing process of looking at the Bible (word) and knowing and walking with Jesus (the Word) in real life. (Again, that’s not a position, just my best attempt to say something before my hair dries and gets stuck in this position.)
Peace, bro’.
Thanks, bro. I respect you as well, particularly your life of faith lived. I should hope that my faith would lead to the kind of love and faithfulness you have shown in your own life; and at the end of the day, it is “faith working itself out in love,” that will be the test of our lives.
What a bunch of “cutsie pie” comments about faith and the bible. Here’s the truth:the universe was perfect til Eve and the talking snake. Then we have 4000 galaxies visible from earth. We have 350,000 classes of beatles. We (homo sapiens) were down to a few thousand before we left Sahara region to more comfortable part of the globe. Homo sapiens has been around for between 100,000 and 250,000 years, yet god only made herself known 4000 years ago. After god had a change of heart, she stopped advising jews to do genocide and had romans murder her son sadistically. Then she had a few million more murdered in world war II and Jeffrey Dohmer, the sacred book hasn’t been published yet of that symbolic mythology. She’s feeling very merciful and really wants us to come back to her, so the holy book has to be written just right this time. By the way, that high school football team won, that prayed so earnestly to god. Apparently the opposing team didn’t pray correctly. Oh well, god IS mysterious you know.
“Cutsie pie”?
You’re right in implying that those of us who have faith do so in the face of troubling questions and apparent contradictions. Of course, with a shift in perspective faith suddenly seems like the logical response to life.
Cherry Pie – Eat a good piece of cherry pie and tell me there isn’t a God.
Cute Baby – Look up close at a newborn baby cracking a smile and tell me you don’t feel a surge of real faith in that moment.
It’s easy to doubt, just as it’s easy to hold an unexamined, uncritical faith. What’s harder and more rewarding, I believe, is to live with real hope and love with your eyes wide open in this world that seemingly hovers between senseless chaos and infinite beauty.
My friend Mike, who has commented above, as more of a literalist than I could write pages and pages in response to the issues you raise. I’m sure he has serious thoughts about all these issues, and he would make some sense out of them.
Personally, I can live with lots of contradictions. We live in a world of apparent contradictions that bother us tremendously, and perhaps behind them all is the truth we seek. If I could fit them all together and explain them, then perhaps that would indicate there is no God — if the world and history really were so small. But I’ve found in experience that God is revealed in countless small and large ways, and I hold my faith in the God revealed in Christ with gratitude as a kind of miracle I’ve received.
Andy, I appreciate your approach to discussing this very serious subject. You are very polite. The reason I use “Cutsie pie” about the comments is that while talking about a subject as crucial as to whether there is/isn’t a god, it isn’t Romper Room. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are laced with dangerous, guilt-designed brainwashing, the outcome is eternal murders in this life, not the next. You call your god loving, I call all three of those gods murderous and it is not a mystery, and it is definitely not harmless. It isn’t O.K. to fill your sloppy imaginations with brainwashing that always leads to murder.
One said she had once thought the idea of hell was “silly”. It’s much more of a ridiculous idea than “silly”. Dawkins description of life isn’t hellish, it’s balanced and backed by falsifiable scientific facts.
Andy, you compared not using faith as falling back on the easy way. No, having “faith” any time you don’t understand something and applying something good to it, (no matter what evidence is staring you in the face), is the easy way out. I don’t understand how 99% of the plants and animals that have once been on this planet are now extinct, yet I don’t throw up both my hands and say I’ll just deal with what the New Testament says and forget about understanding.
And it isn’t the easy way out.
Your group of comments talk about love and transcendent love
and speak as if you feel that from your faith. I guess these comments are honest. I’m sorry, I’ve read a lot of the bible and listened sincerely in church and that isn’t love. Even Forest Gump knows what love is. Every honest person reading the old testament, between sheep and goats and stoning women and genocide, would clearly see a god that was a complete, violent asshole. Love? Trancendent love? But she is mysterious and after all we did wander away from her grace.
The bible, god’s word? Since she had already let humanity suffer for at least 96,000 years before interfering, why not wait a few hundred years and have Shakespeare write it?
At least there was no hell in the old testament. Tender, sweet Jesus brought us that. Jesus, who threw people out of the church for selling stuff, and now the vatican owns the most real estate on the planet, and even scientology is tax exempt. Jesus, born of a virgin. So x chromosomes from Mary and y chromosomes from god, or is it the other way round? Walks on water, turns water into wine, changes blindness into 20/20 vision, turns the other cheek (unless you sell stuff in church), rises from the dead in three days (I guess one day or two would have drawn too much attention), yet, yet he didn’t want to confuse the symbolism by just having the romans cut out all the bullshit. Do god chromosomes bleed? What did god have against Brazil and one billion Chinese, (give or take several thousand), that only the Middle East got to hear about this change of heart from god? Oh yeah, that comes in Revelations, so they’ll just have to wait. Contradictions from the loving god, wrestling with my faith.
Your faith is started by tweaking your imagination only. Either it was tweaked by a family member, a preacher, a book, peers, or etc. Andy, you mentioned a new born baby: you bring into it faith. Does that faith mean that baby is already guilty? Do you need to oppress that baby with guilt?
Is that baby responsible for Eve and a talking snake, for Jesus’ brutal murder (since he didn’t use his god chromosomes until three days later)? No. My faith says the baby had no responsibility about Eve nor Jesus. I have faith based on my experience that every baby would live a “just fine” life and be good in every necessary detail, without tweaking the baby’s imagination with anecdotal stories from very ignorant subjective tales 2000 years old. Only psychopaths and sociopaths do anything that needs tweaking and there aren’t even 1% of any population that could possibly be born that guilty.
Damn dude, do you really need Zeus or some other god to enjoy cherry pie? :^{D
Living is easy with eyes closed. Andy, you mention uncritical faith. That is just redundant. The only way to even entertain those three over-simplified and sociopathic ideologies is to be uncritical. Jesus could have used only a tiny miracle to stop the crucifixion, like flicking of a tiny mosquito and I don’t really care. I wasn’t there and I don’t need some scape goat to pile my sins on and drive out into the desert. Besides my sins wouldn’t even raise Ann Landers eyebrows and even so I didn’t have any when I was born, whether or not I was a smiling baby.
Just last night on The Daily Show, your Christian:John Bolton was talking seriously about bombing Iran. I guess he’s just taking his faith into his own hands. God helps those who help themselves. Thow shalt not kill? Woops, there go those humans wandering again. Onward Christian soldiers.
I know, I know: it’s just us sinful humans. I guess I’ll just have to pray about it. Or maybe I’ll take a little of my tithe and send it to Jerry Fallwell’s people.
I understand what you’re saying. Knowing the kinds of things that happen in Christianity and in all forms of religion, I would hesitate to try and talk you out of your anger or rejection of all that.
Honestly, if you knew me well you’d find we agree on many points, starting with your rejection of religion. Most religion that I’ve seen has been man-made systems of guilt and obligations in exchange for some form of acceptance.
I’ve known people of faith and love within Christian religion, but I don’t equate claiming that religion with knowing or following Jesus. If someone claims to be a Christian, that doesn’t mean much to me on the surface, and it’s angering to me when people whose gods are really power and money claim the label. Personally, I’d rather give up the label and let people be known by the way they live — and then their faith will out as it is.
So John Bolten or Jerry Falwell are not “my” Christians. Wherever they stand spiritually speaking is between them and God.
Obviously, the Bible bothers you a lot, especially the violence in the Old Testament and hell in the New Testament. That’s too huge of a topic for these comments, but I’d be happy to exchange some thoughts by email (online-at-thisdomain). My bottom-line belief is that God is love, and anyone who loves knows God, as it says in 1 John. Putting that in the context of the whole Bible, both OT and NT, is admittedly a daunting proposal. It may involve looking at the Bible in a different perspective as well.