This Sunday... Sunday... Sunday... get ready to rumble - it's the Atheist vs. Christian Intellectual Death Match!
That is, it is the death of intellectualism in debates between Western folk caught up in their personal conflict over Christianity and atheism, which then feeds into various social and political debates. I am aware that there are extremely bright, well-educated, and reasonable people on either "side" of such debates, but they really can't compete with vicious vulgar mudslinging. That doesn't make for good entertainment. We want our egos stroked in small, easily digestible pieces that make us feel superior and clearly define a dangerous opponent that must be defeated at all costs. Now that sells!
Into this free-for-all, which has spilled over into popular literature (considering what I just wrote, ponder for yourself what it is that really sells such books) but which has been long incubated on the Internet in various discussion boards and list serves, let me inject a few observations (taken from my own humble attempts at engagement on such issues)...
(Collected and edited excerpts)
For me, atheism is merely one of the two position one takes when one accepts the validity of the question "Is there a God?" You don't have to be pro-science, pro-skepticism, or pro-rationality to qualify as an atheist, nor do you have to be anti-spiritual, anti-religious, or anti-faith. In fact, the atheist tent technically includes such a huge variety of people with their own unique views (for example, take the Raelians - PLEASE!) that it is no more valid to talk about atheists as a monolithic group than it is to talk about Christians or Buddhists as monolithic groups (and some in the latter camp also identify as atheist as well).
Neither is Christianity is a monolithic movement in which everyone thinks and acts the same way, or belongs to the same organization or culture or era, hence, not all Christians can be fairly lumped together through guilt by association any more than we can condemn all atheists by lumping them together with movements or individuals that just happened to be anti-religious such as Mao Tse-tung and the massacres he authorized.
Views that are often associated with and (frequently and mistakenly) conflated as identical with atheism include (but are not limited to): scientism, humanism, spiritual cynicism, anti-theism, anti-religionism, and anti-fideism. While one could subscribe to atheism and scientism, or atheism and humanism and anti-theism, or other combinations, they do not necessarily have to go together nor do they imply a movement in and of themselves. Similarly overly simplistic associations are often made with views that are associated with either theism or religion, theistic religions, or all religions. And so people talk about things such as the "atheistic agenda".
If we want to be accurate and actually discuss atheism in terms of “goals” or “agendas”, for example, we need to identify an actual political or social movement that is centred on atheism first and then assess whether it is proactive or reactionary in any particular area. For example, many people who do not identify as atheists do position themselves in opposition to YEC, Intelligent Design, homosexual discrimination, etc and champion the use of reason, so simply saying that “atheists” represent or favour these positions doesn’t really get us anywhere. There are huge numbers of theists, including Christians, who are in this political camp. Nor does being an atheist mean you are going to have a progressive political agenda. To illustrate, one good reason for using the term New Atheist to refer to the authors and fans of a recent collection of anti-religious essays and books is to identify a particular strain of an active socio-political ideology that heavily identifies itself with atheism. Yet it does not "speak for" or "represent" all atheists any more than Oral Roberts or Pat Robertson "speaks for" all Christians. However, we could look at those two as being figureheads for a particular socio-political ideology that identifies with Christianity.
Moreover, there is more and more scholarship being produced looking at how fundamenalism (broad usage) arose as a reaction to modernism, and how current forms of atheism arose as a reaction to fundamentalism. So being reactionary is nothing new. But Christianity is more than just theism. It also offers more than just sanctimonious moralism as well. Like all major religions, it offers a map of how to live a complete and meaningful life as a human being. Atheism, strictly speaking, does no such thing. Humanism potentially can, though. If we really want to compare apples to apples, Humanism should be compared and contrasted to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. I am not looking to do so (again) right now, but for the sake of meaningful comparison, all of atheism versus all of Christianity is not really suitable.
Zeroing in on a particular group, which some have dubbed Evangelical Atheists, this may include some but doesn't necessarily all of those we might identify as New Atheists, whose message boils down to "We're atheists/Christianity (and therefore all religion) sucks/abandon religion". The focus is on trying to make Christianity (and religion in general) seem as absurd and dangerous as possible in order to generate disgust and fear towards religion and hence to persuade people to become anti-religious (which again is often conflated in such circles with atheism). Hence the irony I see is that many of these atheists have the same grasp of theology and history that Creationists have of science and hence these atheists end up making similarly specious arguments with vacuous support and inane bridging arguments. It's as painful for me to read much of what passes as "serious intellectual atheism" in those circles as it is to read the moondust arguments and other "scientific evidences" for a 6,000 year-old Earth.
Humans as a rule tend to form an image first and then find whatever support they feel is "strong" (religious, scientific, etc) and selectively argue their case to justify their opinion. I don't deny this is true, and in fact, it's one reason why I grew really weary of talking to people on most message boards about religion and spirituality. It has been my observation that most atheists who debate this kind of thing online base their critiques (fair or unfair, friendly or hostile, sensible or foolish) on the image presented by the more outspoken theists. That is, their ideas of the nature of God, of the use or meaning of sacred texts or sacraments, of the political and moral implications of the aforementioned areas, are rooted in what the more outrageous theists say and do.
Hence much of what the "evangelical" atheists, as some have dubbed them, claim is idiotic or harmful about religion stems from an impression gleaned from the fanatics with an ideological agenda and a superficial spirituality. That is not to say that some (I repeat, some) of these types of atheists don't then come up with other specious arguments, but these still feed off of and add-on to the original proto-image of the theists as uneducated, bigoted troglodytes at worst or soft-skulled, well-intentioned but duped simpletons at best. While it isn't depicted as such in most offline venues for conversation, in some places this out in the open. Of course, the most charitable reading of the strongest variety of such atheists, the anti-theists, is that most religious folks are just innocent but naive victims to the more predatory pastors, priest, clerics, and other clergy-folk. And again, this comes from magnifying and exaggerating the worst examples from billions of theists worldwide -a intentionally skewed sampling.
I am not suggesting such caricatures and strawmen are justified. But there is always some small kernel of truth being distorted and abused in every harmful stereotype. But that doesn't limit polemic theists or atheists from making such stereotypes, nor does it keep them from attempting to take their half-assed and antagonizing tunnel vision and applying it in news and amazingly stupid ways. Here are two examples taken from callers to the Allen Colmes radio program this past Friday night:
One caller complained about religion in politics (I am a fan of separating church and state myself) and then cited a verse where Jesus says he is not here to abolish the old Jewish law (Matthew 5:17-20). Hence, in the context of the conversation, which was about politicians caught in adultery, the caller surmises that even Jesus (and presumably then his self-identified followers) would be in agreement with the Old Testament passage the advocates stoning adulterers. I am guessing the caller must have missed John 8:3-11 in his "selective reading"...
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and
when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, Master, this woman was
taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such
should be stoned: but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they
might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on
the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he
lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him
first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one
by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone,
and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw
none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers?
hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her,
Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.
Apparently this caller never wondered how Jesus viewed "the Law" and seems to have missed the whole bit about how in the eyes of many rabbis as well as Jesus, all of the various laws and rules concerning purity and obedience were subordinate to the commandment to love God and others above all, as expressed in Mark 12:28-34....
One of the teachers of religious law was standing there listening to the debate.
He realized that Jesus had answered well, so he asked, “Of all the commandments,
which is the most important?”Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is
this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must
love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and
all your strength.’The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as
yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”The teacher of religious
law replied, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth by saying that there
is only one God and no other. And I know it is important to love him with all my
heart and all my understanding and all my strength, and to love my neighbor as
myself. This is more important than to offer all of the burnt offerings and
sacrifices required in the law.”Realizing how much the man understood, Jesus
said to him, “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” And after that, no one
dared to ask him any more questions.
Which is of course, what frustrated Jesus about the Pharisees. They were so concerned with being pure and holy that they couldn't be bothered with compassion. Which is in turn why the Pharisees were so threatened and annoyed by Jesus, because he would rather identify and eat with sinners and heal the poor than keep to their narrow and judgmental interpretation of their precious rules. I mean, this isn't a very deep exegesis, and you don't have to believe in it to grasp it, but there you go, the caller affirmed his view that Jesus would support a theocratic state which executes people for things such as adultery.
Then a few minutes later another "Biblical scholar" called in to imply perversity in the Eucharist and suggesting that (paraphrasing) "Jesus wanted to be eaten by people who were stronger than him."
I rest my case.
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