A Deeper Faith and Stronger Spirit

What Do We Say about,... Atheism?

2012-01-27T11:58:00.000-08:00

Acts17:16-34

January 22, 2012

While Paul waswaiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city wasfull of idols. So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devoutpersons, and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to bethere. Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said,“What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimerof foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news aboutJesus and the resurrection.) So they took him and brought him to the Areopagusand asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” Nowall the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time innothing but telling or hearing something new.

Then Paul stood infront of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious youare in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at theobjects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘Toan unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven andearth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by humanhands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals lifeand breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit thewhole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries ofthe places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhapsgrope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poetshave said, ‘For we too are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, weought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an imageformed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked thetimes of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged inrighteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has givenassurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

When they heard ofthe resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear youagain about this.” At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined himand became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman namedDamaris, and others with them.

Forthe past several months, knowing that I’d be doing this sermon this morning, Ibegan reading what atheists have to say about religion and Christianity. Overwhelmingly, I came across quotes likethese that show little but disdain for those of us who are religions. Forexample, Abu’l-Ala-Al-Ma’arri, a tenth-century philosopher wrote this, a quotethat appears on many modern atheism t-shirts, mugs, hats, and websites: "The world holds two classes of men—intelligentmen without religion, and religious men without intelligence." Also,Douglas Adams, the writer of the popular sci-fi novel, The Hitchhiker’sGuide to the Galaxy, wrote, "I find the whole business of religionprofoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligentpeople take it seriously."

So,what do we respond to folks who say things like this? What do we say to people who are thisconvinced that we Christians and religious people are all so stupid? What do we say to people whose basic attitudetoward us seems to be that we’re all superstitious, misguided, naïve,hypocritical, and dumb, and that we don’t even know that we’re so dumb?

I dounderstand them a bit because I dabbled with atheism back in college. I had become discouraged with Christianityspecifically and religion in general, although I’m not sure if I wasdiscouraged because of my own insights, or because I was mimicking theculture. Back when I was a teen and acollege student, the anti-Christianity and religion movement was beginning togrow. Today it’s grown to be very strongamong younger people, with it almost becoming an accepted fact thatChristianity and religion are bad things.

Whatkept me from becoming a permanent atheist wasn’t that I was getting dumber as Igot older. Instead, it was that as Istudied more and more about everything, I found that I didn’t like limiting mythinking the way atheism demands that we do. I had too much curiosity about life to just dismiss everything aboutfaith and religion as pious nonsense. Ididn’t want to limit my thinking to some sort of rigid, reductionistic way ofthinking that can only see life from one perspective. I wanted to understand life from many perspectivesbecause I wanted to grow.

Mostatheists would never admit this, but they’re generally the ones who aren’topen-minded, even though they often see themselves as being brilliantlyopen-minded. Because they deny a wholeway of seeing, experiencing, and thinking about life and the cosmos, they shutdown the possibility of knowing and experiencing life in a different way. It would be very similar to saying that wewill no longer listen to music or look at art because they lackrationality.

WhatI’ve noticed is that many atheists, if not most, suffer from three basicproblems when it comes to their thinking about religion. First is that they have put so much of theirfaith in human rational thinking that they’ve become what I call rationalistfundamentalists. To understandwhat that means, you have to first understand what it means to be afundamentalist. I believe that in ourmodern age, fundamentalism is one of the biggest threats we face. Every religion and movement has itsfundamentalists who try to hijack that faith. Fundamentalism is the attempt to reduce truth to basic “fundamentals”—simplisticideals and concepts that give followers a sense of clarity about life and howto live it. By adhering to basic, simplefundamentals, and renouncing and diminishing all other beliefs and ways ofthinking, they simplify their lives, even if they do so by creating conflictwith all those who believe differently from them. Fundamentalists always denigrate and diminish those who think differently fromthem.

Youfind this kind of reductionism and diminishment of all other belief systemsamong Christian fundamentalists. Theydeny much of scientific thinking, they diminish other religions and theirbelief systems, and they denigrate any who disagree with their basicfundamentals (fundamentalism got its name with the rise of Christianfundamentalism in the 19^th century, which outlined a set of“fundamental” Christian truths that one must adhere to in order to besaved). You also have Islamicfundamentalists, such as the terrorists of 9/11 as well as the Taliban. Like all fundamentalists, they believe somuch in the purity of their thought that it excuses all the violence theydo. You also find Jewish fundamentalistsin Israel, many of whom live in the occupied territories and refuse to leave,believing that they have a divine right to these territories and that they are actuallyhastening the coming of the Messiah by provoking conflict with Muslims.

Somany atheists have become rational fundamentalists who believe religiously in human rationalthinking. They’ve reduced all ways ofknowing to basic rationalistic principles (fundamentals) that become the basisfor all their arguments. Like allfundamentalists, they demand that we see the world only from their perspective, and that our thinking follow only their lines of logic. As Karen Armstrong, one of the best writerstoday on understanding religion, has written in her book, A Case for God, that “Typicalof the fundamentalist mind-set is the belief that there is only one way ofinterpreting reality. For the new atheists, scientism alone can lead us totruth. But science depends upon faith, intuition, and aesthetic vision as wellas on reason.” She’s pointing outthat atheistic faith in rationalism is a religious faith. I think it’s a fundamentalist faith.

Second,most of the atheists I hear arguing in public (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, StephenHawking, Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens—who just died) have little more thanan elementaryschool understanding of religion. When they argue against religion, their understanding of how we thinkand live is somewhat juvenile. And tocompound it, they tend to treat all of us as though we are fundamentalists,too. When they argue against religion,they assume that all of us are biblical literalists. Ironically, in their arguments they treat theBible in a more literalistic way than Christian fundamentalists do.

Ibelieve that the problems they have with religion is a problem many people havewhen they grow up in the church but leave the church after being confirmed. They become like high school dropouts, movingthrough life with a ninth-grade religious education. They may go on to college and study business,science, literature, or engineering, and become very sophisticated in thosefields, their religious knowledge remains at a ninth-grade level. When I hear these atheists argue aboutreligion, I hear ninth-grade level arguments. They think they have a sophisticated understanding, but having themlecture us on religion would be like having a ninth-grade school dropout lecturea biology class in a college.

Asa person who has studied for nine years of post-graduate education in religiousareas, I can tell you that there is SOOOO much more out there to know aboutreligion and faith than any of them ever suspect. For my master degrees and Ph.D., it’s notlike we sat around and twiddled our thumbs, waiting to have our degreesconferred on us. But I hear so manyatheists say, “I grew up in the church, so I know what I’m talking about.” Not really, any more than having taken aclass in Chemistry in high school makes me an expert on discussing the natureof chemical amalgamations and transformations.

Third,when arguing against religion, so many atheists tend to present Christianity at it’sworst, and atheism at its best. I see this consistently. Theylook at the worst things that have been done in the name of religion, and thengeneralize this to everything we are and do. They don’t pay attention to all the good that is done. Even more, they make arguments that from arational perspective can’t be supported. For instance, you’ve heard many atheists say that religion has causedmore wars than any other source. Really? How do you test thattheory? Do you have a comparison groupthat has been persistently non-religious? And how do you factor out human nature as a cause of war in thatcomment? How do you know that religionis the cause, and not human nature? Ishuman nature basically non-violent until it becomes religious?

I dothink there is some comparison we can do. Let’s look at the record of atheistic nations in terms of violence andwar. For example, look at the howatheistic Soviet Union treated people under Stalin. He had 25 million people killed (many becauseof their religious beliefs), and in war the Soviet Union was particularlybrutal. In atheistic China, Mao had 15million Chinese killed. In atheisticCambodia under Pol Pot, 1.5 million were killed. Nazi Germany, which was run by an atheistic Hitlerand his minions, acting out of their weird nationalistic, atheistic ideology,exterminated 6 million Jews. If atheistslook to the best of themselves and the worst of ourselves, why shouldn’t we beable to do the same? By the way, you canadd up all the people who have been killed in supposedly religious wars, andthey don’t come anywhere near the 47.5 million killed under those 4 atheisticregimes.

Whatmakes so many atheists limited in their thinking is that they assume thatrational thinking is the only legitimate kind of human thinking and knowing. They criticize us for having faith inunprovable assumptions, despite their faith in unprovable assumption that theycan achieve objectivity. They can’t, asthe German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenbergpointed out in his well-known principle, the uncertainty principle. Thisprinciple is that when observing any kind of experimental event, “the moreprecisely one property is measured [such as the position or momentum of aproperty of a particle], the less precisely the other can be controlled,determined, or known” (Wikepedia). Inother words, no matter how objective an observer is, his or her observationalways changes what it being observed. That’s a very technical way of saying that we can never be purelyobjective about anything because once we put our attention to it we become partof it and change the nature of it. Atheists can’t be rationally objective about religion because theirbeliefs change the nature of how they see religion. In other words, by adopting atheisticbeliefs, they no longer have the ability to be objective about religion. We religious aren’t objective either, butthen we never claim to be. We base ourbeliefs on subjective experience, not objectivity.

Thebiggest problem among atheist’s criticism of religious people like us is thatthey assume we have no legitimate reason for being religious. Andin the process they dismiss the onereason so many of us are religious and have faith, which is that we have experiences of God and the Holy. Despite whatatheists think about us, most of us aren’t religious because we love religious tradition,we’re superstitious, or we’re ignorant. We come to church on Sundays because we’ve experienced God somehow inthe music, in the sermon, in our prayers, or in the sacraments. And we form our faith because we’veexperienced God and the divine in life—all throughout life. In fact, those who are most committed toreligion generally are those who’ve had the most consistent experiences of Godin their lives.

Theirony among atheists is that they will accept as valid anyone’s experience ofGod’s absence, but not theirexperiences of God’s presence. Why is it that not experiencing God inlife is a valid experience, but experiencing God in life isn’t? I will tell you that I’m religious and a Christianbecause of my experiences of God over the years. I’m a pastor because of my profound andpersistent experiences of God in my life. These aren’t delusional experiences. They are deep and transforming ones.

So,what do we say about atheism? What I’ve learned over the years is that we oftencan’t say anything to an atheist because we won’t be heard, but we have a lotto say about atheism.

First,we’re not Christian or religious because we are naïve, weak, or stupid. We are Christian and religious because faithdeepens and expands our lives, and we experience that on a constant basis. And we share our faith and evangelize becausewe want others to experience what we’ve experienced. It’s kind of like when we see a really goodmovie or read a really good book. Wetell others because we want them to share our experiences. Many atheists are similar in this way. They want to share their experience of God’sabsence, although I can honestly say that my experiences of God’s presence aremore energizing and transforming.

Second,if atheism is going to be true to it’s rationalistic, scientific understandingof life, it needs to be a bit more empirical in it’s understanding of religion. They need to test their experiences bygetting out of the armchair and empirically testing the validity of religionfrom the inside. Something I’ve said toagnostics and atheists over the years is that if they really want to testwhether God is real or not, run an experiment based on Christianexperience. Take forty days and praythree times a day. And during thatprayer, ask God to reveal God’s self. Ifat the end of forty days nothing happens, so be it. But I will tell you the experience of ourassociate pastor, Connie Frierson. Fourteen years ago she came to Calvin Presbyterian Church as anagnostic. She met with me, and we talkedabout religion and faith. I suggested toher that she do the forty-day thing, and she did. The result? She not only experienced God, but felt a need to learn more. It led her eventually to go to seminary, andfrom there to become a pastor. Thisexperiment can be dangerous because you never know what it may lead to.

Paulcalled on the Athenians in our passage to do something similar. Paul challenged them to experience God. As weread in the passage, “When they heard ofthe resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear youagain about this.” At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined himand became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman namedDamaris, and others with them.”

I’dlike to close by quoting Karen Armstrong again, and to let her have the finalword. She says, “We have become used to thinking that religion should provide us withinformation. Is there a God? How did the world come into being? But this is amodern preoccupation. Religion was never supposed to provide answers toquestions that lay within the reach of human reason… Religion’s task, closelyallied to that of art, was to help us to live creatively, peacefully, and evenjoyously with realities for which there were no easy explanations and problemsthat we could not solve: mortality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at theinjustice and cruelty of life.”

Amen.

What Do We Say About,... Science?

2012-01-20T10:11:00.001-08:00

A Deeper Faith and Stronger Spirit

What Do We Say about,... Atheism?

What Do We Say About,... Science?

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