Conversations with an Atheist April 22, 2007
When Religion Goes Bad I Corinthians 13
THE SOFT UNDERBELLY
You and I think about our faith in very positive terms. We know how much purpose and peace and fulfillment our faith brings into our lives. We might talk about the positive effects Christianity has had in areas like civil rights, social justice issues, slavery. This is certainly true in our Methodist history. But in each of these areas, an atheist sees the exact opposite. They see in the church and its beliefs system incredible injustice and a resource for violence. Let’s just take one example: slavery. While many anti-slavery workers were inspired by Christian faith (Quakers, Harriet Beecher Stowe, etc), the fact is that the Bible was used to justify slavery. Paul commands slaves to submit to their masters, not to jump on the underground railroad and take a ride to freedom. The Bible was used to justify slavery and this included many NT verses.
Richard Dawkins, who wrote The God Delusion, describes the God of the OT as: arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynistic homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal…. Well, no need to finish the quotation; you get the idea. Dawkins seems to have chosen God as his sworn enemy. Alvin Plantinga responds: ‘Let's hope for Dawkins' sake God doesn't return the compliment.’
WHEN RELIGION GOES BAD
A militant atheist would never talk about “When religion goes bad.” Religion is bad. The absolutes of religion produce intolerance and terrorism. Let me quote George Carlin
Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man – living in the sky – who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever until the end of time. . . But he loves you!
This comes from Dawkin’s book The God Delusion, and Dawkins truly thinks this is what religion is and does. Dawkins believes that all belief in God is exactly parallel to belief in Santa Claus; a delusion we hold on to in order to suit our longings. It is a babyish belief of infantile persons and a virus of the mind. Even atheists are very concerned with his arguments because of the dogmatism and his unwillingness to believe in any value to religious belief as many atheists will admit. But Christianity is not only delusional, it is dangerous.
ARMAGEDDON AND HELL
Sam Harris is of the same opinion. He writes of countless Christians, because of their biblical understanding of the “last days” would be thrilled by a great world calamity, as the precursor of the coming rule of Jesus.
It is not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver-lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen: the return of Christ. . . .The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.
For virtually Christians, a massive terrorist attack would be an event of unimaginable horror and dismay. Christian communities have been the first to respond with help and assistance. That is true Christianity. Perhaps, if God brings some ultimate victory over evil as a result, we would all rejoice.
Christian belief in hell is also parodied by the new militant atheists. Dawkins tells of letter he received from a woman who had two simultaneous traumatic experiences. She was fondled by her priest at the age of seven. She also had a close Protestant friend that died. The mental abuse of being told that her friend was in hell because she wasn’t Catholic was far worse than the sexual abuse.
Belief in Hell can be the source of incredible emotional agony. Dawkins writes about a church in
The pastor of the church was asked by Richard Dawkins whether he ever worries about causing children to have nightmares. He responded, “I would rather for them to understand that Hell is a place that they absolutely do not want to go. I would rather reach them with that message at twelve than to not reach them with that message and have them live a life of sin and to never find the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Sam Harris, in his book, End of Faith, goes so far as to argue that it is a form of child abuse for a parent of faith (any religion) to teach that religion to their children. Many other atheists strenuously disagree but the new militant atheism is growing. Why? Jill Mytton grew up in an Exclusive Brethren sect that was so severe, there are support groups for people who have escaped. She talks of being terrified of hell, and when she ‘escaped’ Christianity as an adult, she helps others to do the same. Yet the process of leaving these communities is very difficult. Certain atheists speak of it almost as a salvation experience, when they first began to doubt God’s existence. Atheists are quick to point out that Jesus himself taught in Mark 9:43, “And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off. It is better to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into hell, into the first that never is quenched, where the worm dieth not.”
WHAT WE CAN LEARN
Let’s be positive here. There is a sense in which we need to appreciate these atheists. As unfair as their criticism seems to be, I’m almost glad for it to be out there. You and I know that religion can get real wacky. My brother used to attend a church that I believe was spiritually abusive. Churches can be. Atheists believe that all religion necessarily is – to believe in hell and to teach hell to your children is spiritually abusive. I remember a special about faith healers who moved into
Interestingly, lots of groups that work with people coming out of spiritually abusive churches are also devoutly Christian. So concern about ‘religion gone bad’ is not the exclusive domain of the atheists. It is very good to be reminded that religious faith can motivate people to march with signs that say, “God hates fags.” It is good to be reminded that we do not seek to have a “Christian” nation in the sense that our opinions are foisted by law on other people. Interestingly, in my own case, my conversion to Christ made me much more understanding of people who have homosexual tendencies and it was my new Christian support group that urged me to stop using the word ‘fag.’
But it is because of our belief in the gospel that we support this. We would find it fundamentally un-Christian to seek a militant Christian state. It is good to be reminded that the Old Testament portrayal of God is deeply disturbing. None of us would advocate the draconian laws of Deuteronomy, but we reject this specifically because we are Christians. Christians believe the law was fulfilled in Christ and has no modern application other that pointing to Christ. We would all be horrified to find laws enacted that had Hindus and Buddhists stoned according to the laws of Deuteronomy. But we do this as Christians, based on Christian teaching, not as secularists based on secular dogmas.
OH HELL!
It is good to be reminded how manipulating some depictions of hell can be. I used to be a part of a church that had a Halloween Hell Play. I find these kinds of things deeply manipulative and whatever kind of faith they spawn, it will be a diseased form of Christianity. What? Fear of hell is no motivation to love God! We should be very concerned that we don’t traumatize children. What a diseased kind of religion a child would have who was scared into faith by fear of hell. What a demonic God to serve!
While hell can be a terrifying thought, it can be also a comforting one. It is comforting to know that the Adolf Eichmanns of the world, the Joseph Stalins, the Idi Amins, will receive their just punishment. The NT presents the wrath of God in many places as simply this: God allowing people to simply get what they are asking for. Hell is simply the extension of the principle that we reap what we sow. I’ve found this view of wrath in Paul and in the OT: wrath and even hell, is simply the logical progression of events. Why would Dawkins want to go to live forever with a God which he himself declares to be deeply evil. If you want a world without God, you get it. But everything good comes from God. There is pleasure in hell; the perverse pleasure in knowing you got your own way. Dawkins will live forever with the distinct pleasure that he resisted God to the end. His heaven would be our hell. I believe that hell can be a loving extension of the grace of God. I believe it can be perfectly compatible to say, “God sends people to hell” and “God is a God of perfect love.” But hell, in the NT understanding, is simply the eternal ramification of chosen earthly action.
ATHEIST INTOLERANCE
The unique belief of the new militant atheists is that all religious instruction and belief is necessarily destructive to human welfare. A fundamental claim of Dawkins is that religious belief leads to violence and intolerance. Whether it is belief in the end times, jihad or hell, religion and its adherents are destructive. The title of Harris’ book tells it all: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. He writes, "Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity--a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible. "
The fact is, if atheists like Sam Harris came into power, I think the result could be just as horrifying as if Randall Terry had his Christian nation. Here is a huge blind-spot for atheism of this sort. Dawkins completely airbrushes this out of his picture – Atheists would never do this. He lives in la-la land. We’ve seen militant atheism before: first atheist state was called Soviet era Communism that produced the Gulags in which millions of Christians died for their faith. 90% of churches closed and 90% of priests liquidated. Look at Joseph Stalin. He was an atheist and 18 millions died while he sought perfect equality for all. Look at the North Koreans. That is an atheist government. The government of
All humans have a tendency to violence, not just Christians. Atheists have a horrid track record. Violence often transpires when people feel strongly about big ideas. We all need to consider why we tend to kill each other. But two things. Atheists like Dawkins, to get their religion-free world, would require acts of violence to get what they need. Secondly, Christians follow a teacher named Jesus Christ who is the clearest world example of a person choosing non-violence; “put away your sword.” Atheists have no sacred texts with such power. They’ve behaved accordingly.
AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANITY
To really critique Christianity, to be fair, you need to critique it in terms of its truest and best self. It is easy enough to poke fun, or to criticize the trauma caused by the many diseased forms of faith. There are certainly many and we would be just as concerned. But to say that all religion is irrationality and necessarily leads to intolerance and endangers our public welfare seems to be deeply unfair and uncharitable. Atheists, in this case, seems to believe they have the corner on not only the reasonable thinking market but also the moral judgment market.
When Rabbi Hillel was asked what was the center of all the law, he said, “Love God. Love others. The rest is commentary.” If that is the center of the law, then it is hard to imagine how this could be so corrosive as atheists think. Paul apparently agrees and in I Corinthians 13, the love chapter, he says so. “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love. . .” And here is the real blind spot of atheists like Harris. While they completely understand the problems caused by certain religions beliefs like Armeggedon and Hell, they completely misunderstand the powerful potential of faith for doing good. Churches, both conservative and liberal, are great sources of public good. There are more relief workers with World Vision in many third world nations that all the workers with the United Nations. Methodist was the source of tremendous social justice and improvement. Christian history is embarrassing at points and exhilarating in other ways.
I Corinthians 13 makes the claim that the whole point of the law and the spirit, the whole thrust of the covenantal plan, the climax of Christian values, is on a life transformed by the love of God in Christ, transformed by the presence of the spirit, that it expends itself in love toward others. We live to bless others. Sometimes we need an atheist to remind us of who we really are.