The cycle of disgruntledness
Read that plz. Kay. Firstly, the poster (hereafter referred to as “he” because girls don’t exist on Craigslist) makes some fairly good points.
One, I have no doubt that Christians often attack atheists in ways that they don’t organized religions. I think there are explanations that he hasn’t explored however, not the least of which is the fact that a lot of Christians, particularly ones that stay at home and splorg about it on the internet I’d like to posit, are people that have little exposure with other organized religions. There are some people who I know who are Christian but struggle with the belief that all other religions are wrong, and there are some who I know have explored other religions to decide if other religions coincide with their beliefs or not. There are some people who would say this is blatant blasphemy and the temptation of the devil, but the majority of the people who I relate to would embrace them back into Christianity if they came back around, and if they didn’t they’d get prayed for all the same (as a complete tangent, in this book which I enjoyed greatly the author talks about his interest in other religions as a result of his embitterment with Christianity because he wants more tangible results, and his experience is interesting). While I’m sure a lot of Christians can’t identify with those religions except as vague stereotypes, atheists are strictly defined in a simple sentence: “People who don’t believe in God.” So yes, they are diametrically opposed, as atheists are to any other religion, at least ones with deities/a deity. I realize I’m throwing out the word “belief,” but don’t worry your pretty head I’ll come back to that. The other obvious factor that directly relates to the slander against atheists as opposed to organized religions is the fact that atheists are only an amalgamation of people, but other religions are organizations we are told not to discriminate against, and they are protected both in that sense of ideology and by the law, whereas atheists have no such protection because they are not part of a “church” (or synagogue or what have you).
I don’t disagree with him there, I’d just like to add those points. This is all, of course, wildly generalizing. I know Christians who struggle with atheists because they aren’t just people who are “different,” they’re people who openly criticize Christian core beliefs, and Christians think they are trying to save these people, so any attack made against Christianity by atheists is viewed by Christians as being magnified by that much.
<Personal rant>
There are people who have made some remarks which I thought were pretty callous. Here’s a thought exercise I’d like you to endure for a second. Consider my outlook as someone who is a Christian at heart and believes that, through Christ, you can attain an outlook that not only is morally correct, but also leads to greater personal happiness. I have no doubt that evil does exist, and though I find it extremely difficult to call other human beings evil, through Christ one can find salvation. Now consider how painful it is to hear a friend slander these things, whether by disregarding the bible as hypocritical hate speech, by saying that the divine is an illogical impossibility, or by calling Christians a bunch of tyrannical, bigoted, idiots. Imagine how it feels to hear these thoughts dispensed without thought for the fact that I feel it is necessary to believe in Christ, something greater than ourselves, for your soul to attain salvation. I’ll sum up how it makes me feel: Pretty fucking shitty.
One of the things that upsets me about atheism is how this idea is perpetrated. On a personal level, I know atheists who have had their own revelations which have led them to Christianity, and I personally hope that people can find God in their own way, and I don’t believe that me cramming bibles down the throats of others will help convert many people. And there are a lot of people who do that, and I disagree with them and I think plenty of Christians would agree that evangelism becomes tyrannical at a point. You have to admire some people a little bit for how zealous they are, but there’s a fine line between devoted and loony. See this for a documentary that considers that issue.
But I would like to consider myself a fairly moderate devotee in that respect. I think anyone reading this knows that I have no problem arguing on basically anything, and I have no problem being hostile when I think someone is being stupid, but I challenge you to state an instance when I was truly vehement in response to coarse statements made about this topic. I hope that helps to illustrate my sincerity and how seriously I take the topic.
</Personal, yet relevant, rant>
So, for all the attacks that atheism endures, I don’t think anyone would disagree that atheists do the same thing back at Christians. Feel free to read through the comments here if you need an example of the Jonathan Gabriel theory against both sides I’m sure. There are plenty of examples of one side slinging mud at the other. For Christians, it’s the fact that we want to burn gays, Jews, Muslims, and pretty much everyone else except ourselves at the stake and that we believe in something that makes no sense. For atheists, it’s the fact that they are a bunch of heartless, emotionally deficient bastards that are agents of Satan. Realistically, very few people from either category exist, but they certainly do get more press than normal people. That almost sort of segues into a thought I think is important.
The writer of that post doesn’t examine why atheists get defensive or upset about Christian ideals, and that’s understandable because he’s reacting to people being morally outraged towards his beliefs and attacking him for it, but I think if you want to examine Christian thought as taking offense on a more subconscious level, the same should be done for atheism. The Christian faith relies on the principle that someone honestly not only believes that Christ exists, but that He is within them and can be felt everywhere. Some Christians often attest to feeling His guidance and that through him they find meaning in their lives.
Now, if Christians feel His divine guidance, that infers atheists do not feel this presence. I believe there are Christians who make this conclusion, and thus consider atheists to be not only morally deficient, arrogant, and stubborn, but somehow missing an integral part of what said Christians consider substantial to spirituality: faith (”Therefore, it does not take faith to be an atheist”). Without faith, not only on a spiritual level but also towards other people, atheists are portrayed as trustless, cynical, and mean-spirited. Fortunately, I know enough atheists to know this is not the case, but I’d like to think other people aren’t as forgiving as me, or at least more assuming. This is also part of why Christians are offended by atheists. Some Christians view the thought of God being non-present in our lives as parallel to “If all we have is here and our existence is only a chance occurrence, then we are only sacks of meat or animals.” This is also why many Christians are so opposed to evolution, a point thoroughly and “colorfully” explained by a certain video series I can’t remember the name of but I hope Char will leave a comment reminding me what is called. The same video commented that this is the kind of attitude which is the cause of crime and violence, because if all we have is here and now and there is no fear or justifiable reason for why we should seek to be moral beings, then people feel like their actions are inconsequential.
Now I’m going to be knit-picky about his post. As a preface, I did like it, and he makes some good points, but he makes a lot of what I consider to be mistakes which are often repeated by both sides of the debate.
Atheism has no implied moral imperative. The important connotation of atheist is a lack of “belief” in God. The idea that here and now is all we have, and that people need to band together and forget prejudice (though that’s not the best wording of the notion), is secular humanism. I don’t know if it really counts as a belief or an ideal or what, but the word “atheism” has zero moral implication.
“Secular” is a word which is often extended beyond its original meaning, and that’s fine but only if its original intent is understood. America’s government is constitutionally “secular” in that its religious institutions are privatized. The OED has a lot of definitions on the word, but a reading of John Locke’s works will show that the colonial understanding of secular was that the government may not take a prescriptive stance on religion, not that religion is excluded from all constitutional thought. The separation of church and state was not intended as a method to keep religious thought out of politics, it was created to protect the rights of the religious. It is also worth noting that Locke, who proposed these ideas, was an avid Christian.
My other real beef with his post is that he does generalize, and there’s no real avoiding that, but Christianity is the largest religion in the world, at least when it comes to core beliefs. I know, Islam is, if one would like to consider all sects similar enough, technically the largest, but I have trouble with that assertion. I don’t know enough about Islamic beliefs, but it seems like the different groups are different enough that they are almost separate religions, but that’s open to debate.
Christianity however does make a lot of distinctions between different sects, and while a lot of them may appear to be semantic, minor differences can lead to people taking radically different approaches. Accepting gays and staging protests against gay marriage may be only one topic of difference between two churches, but it’s really a pretty big difference. In this general vein, the Catholic church is fairly liberal minded, and functionally they have to be. As one of the oldest institutions and one with a lot of mud on their boots, they need to keep moving to avoid being torn down. Catholicism has never said evolution is impossible, for example. I think it’s safe to say that a large portion of Catholics do believe evolution was either the work of God or didn’t happen, and that the church doesn’t like evolution too much, but they do try to keep a morally-bound, yet liberally-framed, stance, because they don’t want to piss everybody off. My point here is that between churches in Christianity there are large differences, and it is impossible to account for all these differences in attitudes and methods under one categorization
As I said before, Christian ideals often make the implication that atheists are flawed in their thinking because they are not receptive to faith, or are too stubborn to recognize it. It is understandable that this upsets atheists, because it implies they are inferior, either morally or mentally. However, the same thought could be applied to atheist thought about Christians. The staple atheist concept is that there is no logical evidence to support the existence of God. Now, from my perspective, this implies two things about Christians which is generally upsetting when this explanation is given in their presence, without mentioning other religions because I don’t know much about them. One, that Christians either don’t take the time to consider the possibilities, or are just logically deficient (in fact, that’s the common insult thrown from atheists at Christians), and two, that Christians should base their beliefs on logical persuasion, separate from their faith ideals.
Christianity’s main concept is that we were all evil until the son of God died for our sins and then came back to life. To associate that with logical understanding is like comparing apples to ducks, and I don’t think most Christians would say its supposed to make sense, because most are looking for explanations of things that seem beyond human beings. There are some Christians who treat The Bible as an accurate history (don’t get me started on the actual meaning of that word). Most don’t. The atheist treatment of The Bible as a text full of contradiction and irrational things is always viewed as an offensive notion to Christians not only because it is a core text and people messing with it is scary, but also because trying to take it literal seems completely crazy. And is that an evasive and slippery way of defending The Bible? You bet, but so far, it seems to have worked fairly well. As brief as that is, I hope it’s clearer why associating logic with “belief” to a Christian is an offensive notion.
Finally, the notion of atheist thought using the word “belief” is one which is very confusing to me. This seems mostly to be an issue of word confusion, and an effect of the fact that people differ in opinion as to whether or not atheism is truly a “belief” or not. From my perspective, even if you are choosing to steadfastly “believe” nothing exists, that implies that you hold a belief. If you believe there is no evidence to point to the existence of God, you believe in a empirical sense of understanding. A lot of this problem has to do with the fact that there is really no common expression agreement for the word “believe”.
Recently, I had a bit of a personal revelation, and I spent a lot of time reflecting on it. I’m not about to spout something that personal on the internet, but talking to people about it really makes me feel good, and I would talk about it if anyone cares to hear it. Suffice to say, religion has become a bigger part of my life, and not for only one reason or another, and consequently I’ve grown more aware of the tension between the “religious,” “non-religious,” and “atheist” ideas, and I believe that until these notions are addressed by both groups, that tension will not be resolved.
Well, that isn’t completely true, because that tension will never be resolved in the same manner that there will always be racists and bigots and people who just outright don’t like each other. However, I think that by considering these thoughts, everything can be made a lot more tolerable for all parties involved. When it comes to something as personally relevant as religion, it’s easy to upset, and I hope some of what has been mentioned is at least food for thought.
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