"Belief-less Christianity"

Is that a thing?  Apparently so.   Blogger and Presbyterian minister John Shuck writes that he does not believe in a supernatural God, and stories about Jesus are the stuff of legend.

 I think of Christianity as a culture. It has produced 2,000 years of artifacts: literature, music, art, ethics, architecture, and (yes) beliefs. But cultures evolve and Christianity will have to adapt in order to survive in the modern era.
.....

I believe one of the newer religious paths could be a “belief-less” Christianity. In this “sect,” one is not required to believe things. One learns and draws upon practices and products of our cultural tradition to create meaning in the present. ....

Belief-less Christianity is thriving right now, even as other forms of the faith are falling away rapidly. Many liberal or progressive Christians have already let go or de-emphasized belief in Heaven, that the Bible is literally true, that Jesus is supernatural, and that Christianity is the only way. Yet they still practice what they call Christianity. Instead of traditional beliefs, they emphasize social justice, personal integrity and resilience, and building community. The cultural artifacts serve as resources.
....

Personally, even though I don’t believe in God as a supernatural agent or force, many still do. I utilize the symbol “God” in worship. This may be viewed as cheating but since our cultural tradition is filled with images of God, it is near impossible to avoid. As a symbol, I’m not yet ready to let go of God. It is a product of myth-making — I know that — but the symbol incorporates many of our human aspirations. I find that “God” for me is shorthand for all the things for which I long: beauty, truth, healing, and justice. They’re all expressed by this symbol and and the stories about it.

 Now, I don't see how you can be a Christian pastor without, you know, believing in Christ.  But perhaps that's because my familiarity is with traditional trinitarian sacramental theology (e.g., Catholic and Episcopalian) .  I don't know how the Presby's rock.  But this does seem a bit.... unconventional.

Update:  We have talked quite a bit about being a secular Christian, and in many ways I am one.   So that doesn't faze me.  But what I find interesting is that he's a "professional" God-believer....being a pastor and all... yet considers God just a symbol he uses in worship.

Shuck isn't belief-less, he's just without a conventional belief in God.  He believes in lots of things, as he has indicated here.

He's perhaps not that far from Karen Armstrong.

The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.” The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

Or from me, for that matter.  But I'm not wearing a collar. 

New atheists, old atheists

John Gray in the Guardian takes on the fervant "evangelical atheism" of the "new atheists"

Roughly speaking, an atheist is anyone who has no use for the concept of God – the idea of a divine mind, which has created humankind and embodies in a perfect form the values that human beings cherish and strive to realise. Many who are atheists in this sense (including myself) regard the evangelical atheism that has emerged over the past few decades with bemusement. Why make a fuss over an idea that has no sense for you? There are untold multitudes who have no interest in waging war on beliefs that mean nothing to them. Throughout history, many have been happy to live their lives without bothering about ultimate questions. This sort of atheism is one of the perennial responses to the experience of being human.

I am with Gray.  Why do they fuss over religion, if it means nothing to them?

 ....beneath the fervour with which [missionary] atheism assaults religion there is an unmistakable mood of fear and anxiety. To a significant extent, the new atheism is the expression of a liberal moral panic. 

He sees in this a response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.  That would explain why prominent "new atheists" like Harris and Dawkins are so anti-Islam.

While moral behavior needn't rely on God, Gray argues that the IDEA of moral behavior may have its roots in monotheism.  That may be true, to some extent.  God and Jesus don't have to be REAL for their stories to have an effect on us.

Gray goes on to consider atheists like me, tolerant non-believers.

Above all, these unevangelical atheists accepted that religion is definitively human. Though not all human beings may attach great importance to them, every society contains practices that are recognisably religious. Why should religion be universal in this way? For atheist missionaries this is a decidedly awkward question. Invariably they claim to be followers of Darwin. Yet they never ask what evolutionary function this species-wide phenomenon serves. There is an irresolvable contradiction between viewing religion naturalistically – as a human adaptation to living in the world – and condemning it as a tissue of error and illusion. What if the upshot of scientific inquiry is that a need for illusion is built into in the human mind? If religions are natural for humans and give value to their lives, why spend your life trying to persuade others to give them up?

Why indeed?

The answer that will be given is that religion is implicated in many human evils. Of course this is true. Among other things, Christianity brought with it a type of sexual repression unknown in pagan times. Other religions have their own distinctive flaws. But the fault is not with religion, any more than science is to blame for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or medicine and psychology for the refinement of techniques of torture. The fault is in the intractable human animal. Like religion at its worst, contemporary atheism feeds the fantasy that human life can be remade by a conversion experience – in this case, conversion to unbelief.

I have often said that the "new" atheists  are practising a religion of non-belief.  And their intolerance and narrowness is just as offensive as the religion that they scorn.

David Brooks doesn't get it.

New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks secularists are disadvantaged compared to Christian and Jewish believers. Consider the tasks a person would have to perform to live secularism well:

Secular individuals have to build their own moral philosophies. Religious people inherit creeds that have evolved over centuries. Autonomous secular people are called upon to settle on their own individual sacred convictions.

Secular individuals have to build their own communities. Religions come equipped with covenantal rituals that bind people together, sacred practices that are beyond individual choice. Secular people have to choose their own communities and come up with their own practices to make them meaningful.

Secular individuals have to build their own Sabbaths. Religious people are commanded to drop worldly concerns. Secular people have to create their own set times for when to pull back and reflect on spiritual matters.

Secular people have to fashion their own moral motivation. It’s not enough to want to be a decent person. You have to be powerfully motivated to behave well. Religious people are motivated by their love for God and their fervent desire to please Him. Secularists have to come up with their own powerful drive that will compel sacrifice and service.

This is nonsense. First of all, there is a deep history of understanding justice and morality that is not connected to Judeo-Christian practice -- all ancient cultures had a set of rules and the commonality of those rules indicates that they speak to something clearly deeply human. He goes on,

The point is not that secular people should become religious. You either believe in God or you don’t. Neither is the point that religious people are better than secular people. That defies social science evidence and common observation. The point is that an age of mass secularization is an age in which millions of people have put unprecedented moral burdens upon themselves. People who don’t know how to take up these burdens don’t turn bad, but they drift. They suffer from a loss of meaning and an unconscious boredom with their own lives.

What complete rubbish. People who don't know how to take up burdens...as if we have to re-invent a moral and ethical framework from scratch?  That's clearly wrong.

 Daniel Maguire also takes him on, arguing in a twist that Christian ethics don't require a belief in God--rather, they can be viewed as a cultural inheritance that many of us share.

That epic moral vision that was birthed in ancient Israel and echoed into Christianity doesn’t require deity or afterlife beliefs

Indeed many professing Christians might be dogmatically orthodox moral heretics. They take the dogmatic legends literally and fervidly but are less enthused about the moral demands of the tradition. Thus they would smite you for not taking literally such metaphors as Exodus, Virgin Birth, and Resurrection but will not join Isaiah in saying that the only route to peace is through the absolute elimination of poverty. (Isaiah 32;17). Nor are they, as was Jesus, “good news for the poor” or “peacemakers.” (Luke 4:18: Matt. 5:9)

In a splendid irony, secularists who walk the walk on these ideals might be more “Christian” than the “dogmatically” pure.

For Brooks, to be religious you have to believe in “God,” which is way off the mark. Religion is a response to the sacred—whether the sacred is understood theistically or not.

Paul Kowalewski at the Desert Retreat House disagrees with Brooks as well, particularly over his binary of "you believe in God or you don't":

From my perspective, "God" is essentially a Great Riddle, an unknowable mystery, an Abiding Presence at the core of everting that is. From time to time, in the thin places of life, I experience that Holy Presence, but I can never explain it and I never think of God as some sort of separated superior super person. In that sense atheists and I both don't believe in the same imaginary being.

When it comes to religion, I find great value in being connected with my ancestors in a tradition of faith carried on over the ages. I also believe that being in relationship with other persons of faith strengthens me. ....

And yes, I do love the stories in the Bible and yes I think they are mostly legends and myths filled with metaphor and poetry - but that's the kind of language that is always used whenever we try to talk about great mysteries. So, while my beliefs may appear to be paradoxical, I do not at all think that they contradict one another- that's what "both-and" thinking is all about.

And finally, I like this quote from Karen Armstrong:

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”   The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness 

The idea of the value of religion being less about faith per se and more about a shared cultural community of myth and meaning resonates with me, as I continue my own journey. 

 

A Year without God = atheist ?

A former Seventh Day Adventist Pastor, Ryan Bell, decided to spend a year without God and found out at the end of it that he no longer believed in God.

Well, of course, coming from that tradition, once doubt creeps in, the ediface crumbles.  He writes,for example,

While science has yet to answer every question about our existence and our place in the universe, it has gone a remarkable way toward that end. I expect there will always be mysteries waiting to be investigated, but the scientific method has served us well. Coming as I have from a Christian tradition that flatly refuses to acknowledge the discoveries of science, my faith has limited my understanding of the world and my pursuit of truth. I cannot live in this way any longer. I feel much more confident leaving questions of our physical world and the cosmos to science. I understand that some Christians can reconcile their faith with the scientific account of our origins, but I see no reason for this approach at this time.

I've argued before that I think the rigidity of the Evangelical tradition is its weakness for just this reason.

Notice how he refers with some disdain to "some Christians"... meaning mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics, who do not deny science.

On New Atheists and Anti-theists

I have long argued that there is a difference between atheism and anti-theism,  a movement that is not so much atheist as anti-religion.  You know, Dawkins and his ilk.  I have little time for people who define as atheists just to bash religion.  Fine, faith not your bag.  No problem, but what's it to you if some people spend Sunday in a cloud of incense?

Reza Aslan is on the same page :

What Harris, Dawkins and their ilk are preaching is a polemic that has been around since the 18th century – one properly termed, anti-theism.

The earliest known English record of the term “anti-theist” dates back to 1788, but the first citation of the word can be found in the 1833 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, where it is defined as “one opposed to belief in the existence of a god” (italics mine). In other words, while an atheist believes there is no god and so follows no religion, an anti-theist opposes the very idea of religious belief, often viewing religion as an insidious force that must be rooted from society – forcibly if necessary..... 

Anti-theism is a relatively new phenomenon. But atheism is as old as theism itself. For wherever we find belief in gods we find those who reject such beliefs.....

So where does the anti-theist come from?

[Scholars] trace the emergence of atheism as a distinct worldview to the end of the Enlightenment era, which, not coincidentally, is also the time that anti-theism first arose. The Enlightenment’s emphasis on skepticism, reason and scientific advancement posed a direct challenge to religion in general, and Christianity in particular.

But here's the kicker:

That makes sense when you consider that Christianity was not only the sole religion with which many Enlightenment thinkers had any familiarity. It was an all-encompassing political presence in the lives of most Europeans, which is why the atheism of the Enlightenment was grounded less in denying the existence of God than in trying to liberate humanity from religion’s grip on earthly power.

And that's the crux.  Once  Christianity became entangled in the power of the State, resistance to that power became entangled in the language of belief.

[I]n the century that followed the Enlightenment, a stridently militant form of atheism arose that merged the Enlightenment’s criticism of institutional religion with the strict empiricism of the scientific revolution to not only reject belief in God, but to actively oppose it. By the middle of the 19th century, this movement was given its own name – anti-theism – specifically to differentiate it from atheism.

He points out that Stalin and Mao were not atheists, but anti-theists.  A pushback against the identification of religion with power.  And in our era, I think very much a pushback against fundamentalist Islam and fundamentalist CHristianity, with its own form of fundamentalism.

Like religious fundamentalism, New Atheism is primarily a reactionary phenomenon, one that responds to religion with the same venomous ire with which religious fundamentalists respond to atheism. What one finds in the writings of anti-theist ideologues like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens is the same sense of utter certainty, the same claim to a monopoly on truth, the same close-mindedness that views one’s own position as unequivocally good and one’s opponent’s views as not just wrong but irrational and even stupid, the same intolerance for alternative explanations, the same rabid adherents (as anyone who has dared criticize Dawkins or Harris on social media can attest), and, most shockingly, the same proselytizing fervor that one sees in any fundamentalist community.

Exactly. The anti-theists have a made a religion out of opposing religion.   I know some of these people, and they burn with the fire of a fanatic in their opposition to religion.  But by far the majroity of non-believers simply don't care.

One can certainly be both an atheist and an anti-theist. But the point is that the vast majority of atheists – 85 percent according to one poll – are not anti-theists and should not be lumped into the same category as the anti-theist ideologues that inundate the media landscape. (A diverse community being defined by its loudest voices? Imagine that). In fact, let’s stop calling New Atheism, “atheism,” and start calling it what it is: anti-theism.

Here's the thing, though.  The religious fundamentalists  in the US punch way above their weight, and attempt to push their religious view into the secular polis.  You know, opposing reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and environmental skepticism.  This generates a backlash. We know that the largest increases in religious identity is the Nones, and we also know that the Dones are a looming class, those being the people who have left religion.  Indeed, ex-Roman Catholics would be the 2nd or 3rd largest denomination in the country. 

I'm not a fan of the New a(nti)theists, being a church-going atheist myself, but I certainly understand from whence comes their frustration.

Check this out for the 6 kinds of atheists.

Atheists cannot enlist in the military.

Apparently being an atheist is worse than being gay, in the eyes of the Christianists in Congress.  At least gays get to serve in the military.

Or is that the Christianists in the Air Force.  The Wall STreet journal:

An atheist airman stationed at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada was denied reenlistment for refusing to sign an oath with the words “so help me God,” provoking protest from a legal advocacy group that represents atheists in religious freedom cases..... 

“The government cannot compel a nonbeliever to take an oath that affirms the existence of a supreme being,” Ms. Miller told the Air Force Times. “Numerous cases affirm that atheists have the right to omit theistic language from enlistment or reenlistment contracts.”..... 

An Air Force spokeswoman [said]  that it cannot make “so help me God” optional without congressional authorization. “Reciting ‘So help me God’ in the reenlistment and commissioning oaths is a statutory requirement under Title 10 USC 502,” Air Force spokeswoman Rose Richeson said.

Eugene Volokh disagrees.

10 U.S.C. § 502 expressly says that each person may swear or affirm. Likewise, 1 U.S.C. § 1 expressly says that an oath includes an affirmation. And an affirmation means precisely a pledge without reference to a supreme being. Given this context, it seems to me quite clear that “So help me God” in the statute should be read as an optional component, to be used for the great bulk of people who swear, but should be omitted for those who exercise their expressly statutorily provided option to affirm — because that’s what affirming means (omitting reference to a supreme being).

Even looking at the statute standing alone, then, the Air Force thus has no business denying people the ability to affirm, which is to say to omit “so help me God.” 

I am SO TIRED of the constant intrusion of certain people's religion into our public life.  THis is the kind of thing that makes even a good-tempered atheist start to rave about the flying spaghetti monster and invisible pink unicorns.

Politics, not science, makes atheists

Interesting article in Politico makes the case that the loss of religious belief in Europe is directly linked to a history of corrupt churches as part of the political power structure,  not a conflict between science and religion.

In reality, the growth of atheism in Europe and America has much more to do with politics and, in particular, ecclesiastically backed politics, than it has with science, something that is clear even from its earliest days. The first person we can unequivocally call an atheist in modern Europe was a French Catholic priest who died in 1729. Jean Meslier led an unremarkable life at Étrépigny, in Champagne. On his death, however, friends discovered a manuscript, his “Testament,” which denounced all belief, all God and all religion with a frenzied anger that makes Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion seem like a work of reasoned scholarship.

But then, Meslier did have a great deal to be angry about.... The monarch ruled with absolute power that was justified by a fabulously wealthy and notoriously intolerant church. People were still being publically tortured and executed for ‘religious’ crimes as late as the 1760s. ... Europe’s first public atheists were driven from mere scepticism and anti-clericalism to full-blown unbelief not by reason or scientific progress but primarily by a venal and violent theo-political settlement.

The author contrasts this situation with Britain, which was much more tolerant, religiously and initellectually, and with the US, in which the separation of church from temporal state power also paradoxically helped it survive.

He then moves into the 20th century and points out that the violence of the explicitly atheist communist regimes also provided a pro-religion backlash that strengthened religious expression in the US.

He concludes

In the last decades of the 20th century, history veered off script. The world stopped secularising, and some religious groups, most famously evangelicals in America and Shias in Iran—two groups not usually bracketed together—found a political voice that had heretofore been muted. The results were often troubling and sometimes grotesque, and all of a sudden the wells of moral indignation were overflowing once more. Today, atheism is resurgent, in America and elsewhere, confidently predicting God’s imminent death and uncritically retelling the creation myth of atheism’s progress on science’s back.

The irony of the truth was sadly lost in the shouting: Atheism is indeed rejuvenating—but only because God is back. 

 And not in a good way.  All you have to do is read the comments following any religiously themed article in the mainstream press to see an upwelling of anger against religion and the religious, which is very much linked to the political over-reach of the right wing. The irony in all this  is that the biggest driver against religious belief is  those who express it, because they are politicizing it.  The Founding Fathers were on to something.  Too bad we don't seem able to figure it out any more.

On science and faith, again

A profile of physicist-turned priest John Polkinghorne, from a few years ago.

 I love this analogy!!

Science and religion are not mutually exclusive, Polkinghorne argues. In fact, both are necessary to our understanding of the world. “Science asks how things happen. But there are questions of meaning and value and purpose which science does not address. Religion asks why. And it is my belief that we can and should ask both questions about the same event.” 

As a for-instance, Polkinghorne points to the homey phenomenon of a tea kettle boiling merrily on the stove. 

“Science tells us that burning gas heats the water and makes the kettle boil,” he says.
But science doesn’t explain the “why” question. “The kettle is boiling because I want to make a cup of tea; would you like some?

How vs why.  Nicely explained.

I don't know that religion per se is necessary but as a species, we clearly have a desire to explain the "why" of the world in some way. But I've realized I have a real tin ear on philosophy and why-ness.  Some scientists may get all philosophical these days, but all i really care about is which recepter is doing what, so to speak.  I'm too much of a literalist.  The rest is just too woo-woo for me!

As to the question of which has the clearer view of reality—faith or science?— Polkinghorne answers that it’s a false question. “You have to be two-eyed about it. If we had only one eye, then we could say it’s religion, because it relates to the deepest value of being human. Science doesn’t plumb the depths that religion does. Atheists aren’t stupid—they just explain less.” 

Put another way, atheists explain what can be explained by facts and observation, and don't try to explain what cannot.

i like this next bit, too.

Ultimately, people of faith should not be afraid of science because both pursue truth. “Because people of faith worship the God of Truth, they should welcome truth from whatever source it comes,” Polkinghorne says. “Not all truth comes from science, but some does. It grieves me when I see Christian people turning their backs on science in a willful way, not taking seriously the insights it has to offer. All truth interacts with each other, and all truth is helpful.” 

Likewise, people of science do not need to be afraid of faith. “Science doesn’t tell you everything. Those who think it does take a very diminished and arid form or view of life.”
For Polkinghorne, science made his faith stronger, and that faith made him a better scientist. Both approaches fulfill one of his favorite verses in scripture, I Thessalonians 5:21, which the esteemed physicist paraphrases: Test everything. Hold fast to what is true.

My kind of guy.

A "God-believing atheist"?

Frank Shaeffer has a new book out, called "The God Believing Atheist".  Well, he's not an atheist--but he argues for a more pantheist view. In an interview, he wrestles with the concept of faith in this way:

I do not always believe, let alone know, if God exists. I do not always know he, she, or it does not exist either, though there are long patches in my life when it seems God never did exist. What I know is that I see the Creator in Jesus or nowhere. What I know is that I see Jesus in my children and grandchildren’s love. What I know is that I rediscover hope again and again through my wife Genie’s love. What I know is that Mother Maria loved unto death. What I know is that sometimes something too good to be true, is true.

He goes on,

Maybe we need a new category other than theism, atheism, or agnosticism that takes paradox and unknowing into account. I believe that life evolved by natural selection. I believe that evolutionary psychology explains away altruism and debunks love and that brain chemistry undermines my illusion of free will and personhood. I also believe that the spiritual reality hovering over, in, and through me calls me to love, trust, and hear the voice of my Creator. It seems to me that there is an off-stage and an on-stage quality to my existence. I live on-stage, but I sense another crew working off stage. Sometimes I hear their voices singing in a way that’s as eerily beautiful as the off-stage chorus in an opera.....

The interview ends like this:

So what are we left with? “It all comes back to stories,” says Schaeffer. “We are living a story."

Morality, faith, and the South

Another study (from Pew) has come out showing that the US is a major outlier compared to other first-world countries, in that a substantial proportion of our population believes that atheists can't be moral.  Never mind that atheists are under-represented in prisons, less likely to divorce, more highly educated, etc etc.

Writing in Salon, CJ Werelman  puts this down to the religiosity of the Southern US.

Essentially, the Republican Party has convinced tens of millions of Southerners that a vote for a public display of the Ten Commandments is more important to a Christian’s needs than a vote against cuts in education spending, food stamp reductions, the elimination of school lunches and the abolition of healthcare programs. 

....While the Republican Party retains its monolithic hold on the South, the rest of America remains deprived of universal healthcare, electric cars, sensible gun control laws, carbon emission bans, a progressive tax structure that underpins massive public investment, and collective bargaining laws that would compress the income inequality gap. In other words, without the South’s religiosity, “America” would again look like a developed, secular country, a country where it’s probable for an atheist to be elected into public office, and where the other 50 million law-abiding atheists wouldn’t be looked upon as rapists, thieves and murders.

We discussed "what's wrong with the South" a few days ago.   Can we lay it all at the feet of religious fervor?

Christian aesthetics

Recently, Bruce Springsteen said that he had an appreciation for the language and music he learned growing up Catholic, even if he doesn't agree with the theology and doctrine

And it was a wonderful source of metaphor when you went to write about the world and about your inner life and it served me. I suppose looking back on it, I would like to change some things but I wouldn’t have had that any other way in that it’s served me very, very well and continues to do so. 

Writer TJ Holland points out that über atheist Richard Dawkins also expressed a fondness for the aesthetic aspects of Anglicanism. He writes,

What should Christians make of such (unexpected?) appreciation for the aesthetics, sensibilities, and cultural contributions of our faith, while the substance behind those contributions is largely or wholly dismissed? Is this good, to an extent? Or is it entirely bad, with the dismissal of the substance canceling out any possible value in the appreciation for the aesthetic? 

I have two hands, so I’ll make a point for each and leave it at that. 

On the one hand, appreciating the aesthetic beauty of Christianity—awe-inspiring architecture or gospel music or liturgy or what have you—is certainly not the same thing as embracing Christianity itself. (Many of us, from various Christian traditions, would do well to be reminded of that from time to time.) 

On the other hand, could it be that for some, the Spirit uses aesthetics to woo even those who for various reasons have found certain claims and/or norms of the faith to be stumbling blocks?

Hmmmm.....

More musings from church-going atheists

These from an atheist Quaker:

If you are really going to be part of a community, just showing up for the main meal is not enough: you need to help cook and clean up. So it has been with me and the Quakers: I’m concerned with how my community works, and so I’ve served on committees (Quakerism is all about committees). There’s pastoral care to accomplish, a building to maintain, First-Day School (Quakerese for Sunday School) to organise. And there’s the matter of how we as a religious community will bring our witness into the world. Perhaps this language sounds odd coming from a non-theist, but as I hope I’ve shown, I’m not a non-theist first. I’ve been involved in prison visiting, and have been struck at the variety of religious attitudes among volunteers: some for whom the visiting is in itself ministry, and others for whom it’s simply social action towards justice (the programme grew out of visiting conscientious objectors in the Vietnam era). The point is: theological differences are not necessarily an issue when there’s work to be done.

This goes back to our recurring theme on this blog of the place of the non-believers amongst those who believe.

The writer goes on,

I love facts and theories, the stuff of the world.....We don’t need to tell lies about the real world in order to make it magical. But we do still need impossible magic for our own irrational selves. At any rate, I do. 

Because I don’t feel stuff-and-logic-based explanations deep down in my toes. There are no miracle stories of flying children there, or brothers reborn into the land where the sagas come from. The language of ‘stuff is all there is’ tells me that I can — even ought to — be rational and sensible, but it doesn’t make me want to be. ‘Atheism’ tells me what I am not, and I yearn to know what I am. .... 

Maybe there is no god but God... or maybe there just is no God. And maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe we just tell stories that ring true to us and say up-front that we know they are fiction. We can let people love these stories or hate them. Maybe imagining impossible things — such as flying, the land where sagas come from, God — is what is needed. Maybe we don’t need the gods to be real. Maybe all we need is to trust more leaps of the imagination.

Musings of the friendly atheist: it's the community

People of late seem to find me interesting, how I can be an avowed non-believer and yet be a willing participant in the life of the church.

My mother doesn’t get it. “You’ll be announcing any day now that you are officially Episcopalian,” she accuses. (Mom is probably at best vaguely deist at this point, having grown up Episcopalian, converting to Roman Catholic when she married, and drifting away from any church ever since. She definitely is not an organized religion person.) I point out that I’ve always liked classical polyphony even in my most angry-atheist phase; and what student of art or music could fail to notice that religion inspired many of the most significant pieces in history? And the level of performance of both music and liturgy at a Cathedral is certainly appealing to a theatrical buff like me. She “gets” that intellectual component, much more than my sense of community being fulfilled.

Friends don’t get it. “I just don’t understand why YOU go to church,” said a new neighbor, who is trying to wrap her head around it. “When they start talking Jesus this and Jesus that….” I explain that with a degree in literature, I’m perfectly comfortable dealing with metaphor and similar devices. Mythos, you might say. And the rhythm of the liturgy has an odd comfort to it, because those words were ingrained in me as a child growing up Roman Catholic.

Would I be going to church without my wife? No, I wouldn’t. But the woman I married has a deep and abiding faith; it’s a very important part of who she is, and a major job as a spouse is to support my wife. People ask how we can be so compatible when our beliefs are 180° opposite. It's because we respect the difference while always loving one another. Let’s remember that she’s an Episcopalian now because I laid siege to her for years, and once she officially swam across the Thames, what could I do but travel with her?

But let’s also not forget that I do get something out of it, and I don't just mean the music. I get that community of thoughtful, engaged people who are smart, and funny, and warm. And this is a community that we met together and joined together; not my friends, or her friends, but truly our friends. That also makes it special.

The six kinds of atheists

A column by Andrew Brown directed me to this fascinating study looking at different flavors of non belief (also on Facebook).

 Intellectual Atheist/Agnostic (Academics) ... proactively seek to educate themselves through intellectual association, and proactively acquire knowledge on various topics relating to ontology (the search for Truth) and non-belief. They enjoy … healthy democratic debate and discussions, and are intrinsically motivated to do so… 

Activist (AAA) Activist Atheist/Agnostics… seek to be both vocal and proactive regarding current issues in the atheist and/or agnostic socio-political sphere. This sphere can include such egalitarian issues, but is not limited to: concerns of humanism, feminism, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgendered (LGBT) issues, social or political concerns, human rights themes, environmental concerns, animal rights, and controversies such as the separation of church and state. ...

 Seeker-Agnostics (SA)  recognize the limitation of human knowledge and experience. They actively search for and respond to knowledge and evidence, either supporting or disconfirming truth claims. They also understand, or at least recognize, the qualitative complexities of experiences in the formation of personal meaning. Seeker- Agnostics do not hold a firm ideological position but always search for the scientifically wondrous, and experientially profound confirmation of life’s meaning....  

 Anti-Theists view religion as ignorance and see any individual or institution associated with it as backward and socially detrimental. The Anti-Theist has a clear and – in their view, superior – understanding of the limitations and danger of religions. They view the logical fallacies of religion as an outdated worldview that is not only detrimental to social cohesion and peace, but also to technological advancement and civilized evolution as a whole. They are compelled to share their view and want to educate others into their ideological position and attempt to do so when and where the opportunity arises. …  

Non-Theist ...is non-active in terms of involving themselves in social or intellectual pursuits having to do with religion or anti-religion. A Non-Theist simply does not concern him or herself with religion. Religion plays no role or issue in one’s consciousness or worldview; nor does a Non- Theist have concern for the atheist or agnostic movement. … 

 Ritual Atheist/Agnostic (RAA) ...perceives ceremonies and rituals as producing personal meaning within life. This meaning can be an artistic or cultural appreciation of human systems of meaning while knowing there is no higher reality other than the observable reality of the mundane world…While RAA may celebrate their association with ritualistic organizations or call themselves cultural practitioners of a faith-based practice, they are open and honest about their ontological position and do not hide their lack of belief in the metaphysical or divine… 

Here's the breakdown of their sample (which was skewed towards the south so may not be accurate more broadly):

I can see aspects of myself in several of these.

They also looked at various psychological and behavioral traits.

Fortunately, one of the many questions our empirical research was able to address was, “are all atheists angry, argumentative and dogmatic”? Our results lead us to answer that question with a resounding “absolutely not”! If any subset of our non-belief sample fit the “angry, argumentative, dogmatic” stereotype, it is the Anti-Theists. This group scored the highest amongst our other typologies on empirical psychometric measures of anger, autonomy, agreeableness, narcissism, and dogmatism while scoring lowest on measures of positive relations with others.

For example,

Scale	Lowest Score	Highest Score
Autonomy	Agnostics	Anti-Theists
Positive Relations with Others	Anti-Theists	Ritual Atheists
Narcissism	Activists	Anti-Theists
Dogmatism	Ritual Atheists	Anti-Theists
Multidimensional Anger Inventory	Academics	Anti-Theists
Agreeableness	Antitheists	Multiple

Notice that the Anti-Theists describe an extreme in EVERY category.  And in 2/6 cases are diametrically opposed to the Ritual Atheists, who are probably the most religiously-friendly.

 What do you think?

Newer Atheists

Those of us who are friendly but without faith have long taken umbrage at being lumped in with the anti-religion polemics of Richard Dawkins and his friends.  As a church-going non believer, I have avoided the A word  to point at coinages such as "gratheist",  or "cultural Christian"  or "secular Christian" or "Christian atheist"  in my extensive musings on the subject.

Dawkins recently jumped the shark but good, with an anti-Islamic Twitter rant.  But his star is already on the wane. Writing in the Spectator, Theo Hobson points to a reaction against the crude fundamentalism of Dawkins and his followers, in a more nuanced form of atheism that is ready to have a conversation.

... Crucially, atheism’s younger advocates are reluctant to compete for the role of Dawkins’s disciple. They are more likely to bemoan the new atheist approach and call for large injections of nuance. A good example is the pop-philosopher Julian Baggini. He is a stalwart atheist who likes a bit of a scrap with believers, but he’s also able to admit that religion has its virtues, that humanism needs to learn from it. For example, he has observed that a sense of gratitude is problematically lacking in secular culture, and suggested that humanists should consider ritual practices such as fasting. This is also the approach of the pop-philosopher king, Alain de Botton. His recent book Religion for Atheists rejects the ‘boring’ question of religion’s truth or falsity, and calls for ‘a selective reverence for religious rituals and concepts’. If you can take his faux-earnest prose style, he has some interesting insights into religion’s basis in community, practice, habit.
….
At one point [de Botton] commends the Christian perspective, that we are ‘at heart desperate, fragile, vulnerable, sinful creatures, a good deal less wise than we are knowledgeable, always on the verge of anxiety, tortured by our relationships, terrified of death — and most of all in need of God’. Is this mere posturing at depth, for ultimately he does not affirm the idea of our need of God in a sustained, serious way? Yes and no: it is also a mark of the intelligent humanist’s desire to avoid simplistic ideologising and attempt some honesty about the human condition. The key novelty of the newer atheism, perhaps, is its attentiveness to human frailty. 

The religious believer might say: we do not need humanism to tell us this. Indeed not, but it might not hurt non-believers, inoculated against all religious talk, to hear of it.

Well, nice to know they are catching up with me!

How Skeptics and Believers Can Connect

Great article in the NY Times by anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann.  If you can get behind the paywall to read the whole thing, this is worth it.

I do not call myself a Christian. So maybe I should not have been surprised when I went on my first Christian radio show, a year ago, and the host set out to save me .... 

I was on the show to discuss my recent book, which explains the way evangelicals learn to experience themselves in conversation with God....  over a decade of research, I found myself more open to the idea of God, and more aware of the fragile human grasp on the real. 

So it was a shock to have my host grill me about the state of my soul. It reminded me that one of the things that makes mutual respect between believers and nonbelievers difficult is that there is a kind of line in the sand, and you’re either on one side of it or on the other. ...

The in-your-face confrontation makes it that much harder to connect. The more my interviewer pressed me, the more my faith — such as it is — grew strained. I had come to live (theologically speaking) in a messy in-between. My interviewer wanted clarity. The more he put me on the spot, the more I wanted to say that I shared nothing with him and that his beliefs were flimsy dreams. ...

Anthropologists have a term for this racheting-up of opposition: schismogenesis....

I think that schismogenesis is responsible for the striking increase in the number of people who say that they are not affiliated with any religion. ...We know that most of these people still believe in God or a higher power, whatever they mean by that. It’s just that they are no longer willing to describe themselves as associated with a religion. They’ve seen that line in the sand, and they’re not willing to step over it. 

Yet believers and nonbelievers are not so different from one another, news that is sometimes a surprise to both. When I arrived at one church I had come to study, I thought that I would stick out like a sore thumb. I did not. Instead, I saw my own doubts, anxieties and yearnings reflected in those around me. People were willing to utter sentences — like “I believe in God” — that I was not, but many of those I met spoke openly and comfortably about times of uncertainty, even doubt. Many of my skeptical friends think of themselves as secular, sometimes profoundly so. Yet these secular friends often hover on the edge of faith. They meditate. They keep journals. They go on retreats. They just don’t know what to do with their spiritual yearnings. 

 It's hard for those of us who live in the messy muddle of the middle, if those around us live by absolutes. I think there are a lot of people who are somewhat like me--more than you may think.

On science and religion, and angry fundamentalists

After a Christian student was relieved to hear that his faith was okay with evolution, physicist Max Tegmark wondered whether religion really is unfriendly to science.

This gave me the idea to start the MIT Survey on Science, Religion and Origins,.... We found that only 11 percent of Americans belong to religions openly rejecting evolution or our Big Bang. So if someone you know has the same stressful predicament as my student, chances are that they can relax as well....

So is there a conflict between science and religion? The religious organizations representing most Americans clearly don't think so. Interestingly, the science organizations representing most American scientists don't think so either: For example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science states that science and religion "live together quite comfortably, including in the minds of many scientists." This shows that the main divide in the U.S. origins debate isn't between science and religion, but between a small fundamentalist minority and mainstream religious communities who embrace science.

In a followup, Max describes how he was prepared for an angry response to his news that most faith groups are actually pretty okay with evolution.

The vitriolic responses poured in as predicted. But to my amazement, most of them didn't come from religious people, but from angry atheists!...I have three criticisms of these angry atheists:

1) They help religious fundamentalists:
A key point I wanted to make with our survey is that there are two interesting science-religion controversies: a) Between religion & atheism b) Between religious groups who do & don't attack science.

Some forces pushing for creationism in US schools try to conflate the two so that they can pretend to represent the majority, and taunting religious groups that don't attack science can play into their hands. In contrast, I think that drawing attention to b) is the most effective way to weaken the anti-scientific fringe and improve the prospects for future generations.… 

2) They could use more modesty: 
If I've learned anything as a physicist, it's how little we know with certainty. ... 

3) They should practice what they preach: 
Most atheists advocate for replacing fundamentalism, superstition and intolerance by careful and thoughtful scientific discourse. Yet after we posted our survey report, ad hominem attacks abounded, and most of the caustic comments I got (including one from a fellow physics professor) revealed that their authors hadn't even bothered reading the report they were criticizing.

Just as it would be unfair to blame all religious people for what some fundamentalists do, I'm obviously not implying that all anti-religious people are mean-spirited or intolerant. However, I can't help being struck by how some people on both the religious and anti-religious extremes of the spectrum share disturbing similarities in debating style. 

You think? I'm not surprised, there is considerable anti-religion antipathy in some of more-rabid atheists. But frankly most of us are happy to live and let live, and don't really care what you believe as long as you don't inflict your beliefs upon us.

And then there's the angry Christian fundamentalists. When erstwhile religious dating site e-Harmony were sued and so put together a same-sex site, says their founder,Neil Clark Warren

we literally had to hire guards to protect our lives because the people were so hurt and angry with us, were Christian people, who feel that it's a violation to scripture. 

 Yup, nothing says Jesus-follower like death threats.

Fundamentalism is by its nature intolerant.  We see this lack of tolerance and respect throughout society, ranging from anti-gay to anti-Islam....to anti religion.  But the step beyond that into threats of violence, is deeply, deeply disturbing.  And it boggles the mind that followers of the "prince of peace" ever resort to  violent rhetoric  (previous examples here here and here ), when confronted by anyone different.

Mixed Marriages

A story from NPR discusses a couple of mixed-faith, he an atheist, she a believer (lutheran).

Our readers will recognize that your blogger is in the same situation:  I'm a non-believer, my wife an Episcopalian.   We've talked about that a lot. I'm an ex Catholic who happily is part of an Episcopal Community.

On the comments to the NPR story, many people said that this mixed-identity would be a "deal-breaker" for a relationship for them.

I don't get that.  But then, I've matured from my anti-religious phase to my post-religious phase.  I've come to recognize myself as a cultural Christian who goes to Mass or even better, evensong to enjoy the aesthetics of cultural faith. Regardless of the God-thing, I get the community, and share the values.

I think that BP and I, as a couple, are  much more fulfilled now that we have found a place that welcomes us both where we are. And they do welcome us, and cheerfully include both of us in their life.  I suspect that some conservatives would be uncomfortable with that.  On the other hand, when BP was Roman Catholic, I was completely excluded because I could not find a modus vivendi with those people, and I was obviously not welcome At All.

Further, the essence of making a relationship work is mutual respect.  If I did not respect that my wife has an experience (faith) that i do not, or if she (or her church)  tried to convert me, OR ELSE,  this would be a problem.  But it isn't a problem...because we have mutual respect, and because the Episcopal Church finds a place for our complexity. They want not just BP, but me.  Pretty amazing feeling.

Thank you for that.

Indeed, I think it would be far more problematic if one of us were a tea-party Republican while the other a liberal Democrat.  Now THAT wouldn't work at all.  ;-)

Christmas victims?

It's Christmas, which means that the right wing evangelical types are portraying themselves as victims in the "war on Christmas".  So VERY tiresome.  There are countries where Christians are persecuted but this isn't one of them.

But try being an atheist.  From Yahoo News:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Atheists and other religious skeptics suffer persecution or discrimination in many parts of the world and in at least seven nations can be executed if their beliefs become known, according to a report issued on Monday. 

The study, from the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), showed that "unbelievers" in Islamic countries face the most severe - sometimes brutal - treatment at the hands of the state and adherents of the official religion. 

But it also points to policies in some European countries and the United States which favor the religious and their organizations and treat atheists and humanists as outsiders.
....
While freedom of religion and speech is protected in the United States, the report said, a social and political climate prevails "in which atheists and the non-religious are made to feel like lesser Americans, or non-Americans." 

In at least seven U.S. states, constitutional provisions are in place that bar atheists from public office and one state, Arkansas, has a law that bars an atheist from testifying as a witness at a trial, the report said.

This is not uniform, obviously.  In the culture where i work (academe), it's more challenging to be a church goer than not.  (How's that for irony: I'm an atheist who goes to church).  But our ivory tower is a rarified place, and Out There, the opposite is true.

Do you think it's easier to "come out" as gay, or as a churchgoer?

The electoral demographic no one talks about

We've heard a lot about the GOP's Latino problem, meaning that Latinos "broke" for the Democrats and rejected the Republicans. And about the GOP's lack of appeal for women. We've also heard that the LGBT community went heavily for Obama. But have we heard about THIS problem?

Imagine a demographic that has doubled its share of the population over the past two decades, is up by 25 percent over the past four years alone, and now accounts for as many as one in five Americans. Imagine that this demographic votes disproportionately for one political party—to the tune of 70 percent for Obama versus 26 percent for Romney in the 2012 election. Sounds like a demographic that ought to be of interest to politicians, journalists, and activists, right?

That demographic consists of people who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or religiously unaffiliated—the “nones,” as they’re sometimes called. And it hasn’t attracted anywhere near the attention it deserves in the postgame analysis of the 2012 election....

Like any group of this size, the religiously unaffiliated aren’t monolithic.....They are spread fairly evenly across education and income levels. And they’re politically diverse when it comes to economic ideas. But they do seem to largely agree on one thing: that mixing religion with politics is a bad idea.

....Others on the right, like the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, did get it: “It’s not that our message—we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong—didn’t get out. It did get out...It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed. An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.”

Exactly.  But of course, once the media DOES catch on, they will miss the fact that Albert Mohler does not define Christianity.   There are a lot of alliances that can be built between progressive Christians and the "Faitheists", electorally and otherwise.