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Five questions for an atheist.
1.) I have many atheist friends who are atheist in the same way that they are meat eaters or people who prefer corduroy over denim or khakis. They don't make much noise about their atheism.
In recent years, though, there has been a new type of atheist in public life. In a December 3, 2006 essay, "A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion," two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winner and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof chastised New Atheists for being "snarky," "obnoxious," "militant," "in-your-face," "offensive," "acerbic," "intolerant," "mean," "contemptuous," "fundamentalist," and "dogmatic." Google "obnoxious atheists" or "angry atheists" and you find much discussion.
"Obnoxious atheists" is a significant enough of a trend that Nick Kristof needed to write about it. What do you make of this?
2.) One thing I like about the Judeo-Christian tradition is our emphasis on self-examination, confession, and conversion. The Old Testament prophets are always haranguing the Jews to examine themselves, confess their sins, and return to God. In the microcosm, in Catholicism, self-examination, confession and conversion are ritualized. In the macrocosm, the Vatican has issued statements like the December, 1999 "Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past."
Most remarkable for me is a November, 1965 letter from Polish bishops to German bishops. The Poles were horribly victimized by the Germans during World War II. And yet, in this letter, Polish Catholic bishops were able to say to Germans, quote, "We forgive and we ask for forgiveness." Given the context, this sentence alone takes my breath away.
There is a massive scholarly literature devoted to the Judeo-Christian emphasis on confession and renewal and its contribution to Western Civilization. Confession has been seen to be key in the Western emphasis on individualism, the invention of the novel, the concept of progress, etc. But really confession and renewal are necessary in any movement because, simply, human beings, no matter how good their intentions, screw up.
I don't see that same willingness to engage in self-examination, confession, and conversion among the atheists with whom I have spoken. In fact, I see the opposite. I encounter atheist who refuse to acknowledge atheism's flaws.
Atheists often toss off the poorly supported and certainly false cliche that "religion is responsible for more murder than any other cause." In fact, though, monsters, acting in accord with atheism-inspired ideas, have set the records for mass murder: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.
As Dostoyevsky said, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." This is not mere speculation. The philosophical foundations for mass murder, found in Madison Grant, Kenneth L. Roberts, Lothrop Stoddard, and Heinrich Himmler, include line after line attesting, paraphrase, "Now that we've gotten rid of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its idea of a God who loves everyone equally, we can start getting rid of the unfit." In the microcosm, you have murderers like Leopold and Loeb, who used atheist ideas to argue for their thrill murder of an acquaintance.
I would never suggest that my atheist friends have anything in common with Stalin or Nathan Leopold – they don't. Rather what I would like to see is their acknowledgment that ideas founded on atheism lead to murder. Without this kind of self-examination, confession, and conversion, yes, Atheism remains a potential weapon.
Do you have any comments on atheists' resistance, so far, to taking serious account of how atheism has had an impact on the real world?
3.) Along with the gifts of the Golden Age of ancient, Pagan Greece, the Judeo-Christian tradition is one of the major building blocks in the foundation of Western Civilization.
The Adam and Eve myth, for example, gave us the idea that God loves and values each individual life; it is from a Talmudic commentary on the Adam and Eve myth that we get the saying, "He who saves one life saves the entire world." This is a radical statement of the value of the individual, and it is truly a Judeo-Christian ideal.
"In Christ there is no male; there is no female." This biblical idea of respect for women was so revolutionary, according to Rodney Stark, it is why Christianity, an outcaste sect of losers, of "women, children and slaves" – all equally despicable to a proud Pagan like Celsus – was able to overturn the Roman Empire.
Christians, according to Stark, unlike their pagan neighbors, did not kill their female children, and allowed them to mature physically before giving birth. Simple demographics show that a female child born to a Judeo-Christian culture has a much better chance of survival than one born to a Muslim, Confucian, or Hindu culture.
The central, most compelling myth of the Old Testament is one in which God works to liberate slaves. This narrative was central to the Slavery Abolition and Civil Rights movements.
Nancy Pearcey, in "Soul of Science," argues that the Judeo-Christian conception of God and creation lead to the invention of science.
Our legal code is founded on Judeo-Christian concepts.
In the introduction to her book on world myth, scholar Barbara C. Sproul acknowledges all of this when she says that even if one does not believe in the Judeo-Christian God, if one grew up in the West, one probably believes in these very Judeo-Christian ideals.
Does jettisoning the Judeo-Christian tradition give you any pause? At what might be lost? At what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem – at what might come next?
4.) What do you like most, or find most attractive, about religious belief in general, or Christianity in particular?
I ask this specifically because of a comment made by an atheist internet friend, Jeanette. After Pope John Paul II died, she watched his funeral, and commented wistfully that she wished she could be part of that tradition.
5.) What do you find least attractive about atheism / atheists?
***
These are all genuine questions. Will post, as comments or as stand-alone posts, all civil and on-topic replies.
1.) I have many atheist friends who are atheist in the same way that they are meat eaters or people who prefer corduroy over denim or khakis. They don't make much noise about their atheism.
In recent years, though, there has been a new type of atheist in public life. In a December 3, 2006 essay, "A Modest Proposal for a Truce on Religion," two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winner and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof chastised New Atheists for being "snarky," "obnoxious," "militant," "in-your-face," "offensive," "acerbic," "intolerant," "mean," "contemptuous," "fundamentalist," and "dogmatic." Google "obnoxious atheists" or "angry atheists" and you find much discussion.
"Obnoxious atheists" is a significant enough of a trend that Nick Kristof needed to write about it. What do you make of this?
2.) One thing I like about the Judeo-Christian tradition is our emphasis on self-examination, confession, and conversion. The Old Testament prophets are always haranguing the Jews to examine themselves, confess their sins, and return to God. In the microcosm, in Catholicism, self-examination, confession and conversion are ritualized. In the macrocosm, the Vatican has issued statements like the December, 1999 "Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past."
Most remarkable for me is a November, 1965 letter from Polish bishops to German bishops. The Poles were horribly victimized by the Germans during World War II. And yet, in this letter, Polish Catholic bishops were able to say to Germans, quote, "We forgive and we ask for forgiveness." Given the context, this sentence alone takes my breath away.
There is a massive scholarly literature devoted to the Judeo-Christian emphasis on confession and renewal and its contribution to Western Civilization. Confession has been seen to be key in the Western emphasis on individualism, the invention of the novel, the concept of progress, etc. But really confession and renewal are necessary in any movement because, simply, human beings, no matter how good their intentions, screw up.
I don't see that same willingness to engage in self-examination, confession, and conversion among the atheists with whom I have spoken. In fact, I see the opposite. I encounter atheist who refuse to acknowledge atheism's flaws.
Atheists often toss off the poorly supported and certainly false cliche that "religion is responsible for more murder than any other cause." In fact, though, monsters, acting in accord with atheism-inspired ideas, have set the records for mass murder: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.
As Dostoyevsky said, "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." This is not mere speculation. The philosophical foundations for mass murder, found in Madison Grant, Kenneth L. Roberts, Lothrop Stoddard, and Heinrich Himmler, include line after line attesting, paraphrase, "Now that we've gotten rid of the Judeo-Christian tradition and its idea of a God who loves everyone equally, we can start getting rid of the unfit." In the microcosm, you have murderers like Leopold and Loeb, who used atheist ideas to argue for their thrill murder of an acquaintance.
I would never suggest that my atheist friends have anything in common with Stalin or Nathan Leopold – they don't. Rather what I would like to see is their acknowledgment that ideas founded on atheism lead to murder. Without this kind of self-examination, confession, and conversion, yes, Atheism remains a potential weapon.
Do you have any comments on atheists' resistance, so far, to taking serious account of how atheism has had an impact on the real world?
3.) Along with the gifts of the Golden Age of ancient, Pagan Greece, the Judeo-Christian tradition is one of the major building blocks in the foundation of Western Civilization.
The Adam and Eve myth, for example, gave us the idea that God loves and values each individual life; it is from a Talmudic commentary on the Adam and Eve myth that we get the saying, "He who saves one life saves the entire world." This is a radical statement of the value of the individual, and it is truly a Judeo-Christian ideal.
"In Christ there is no male; there is no female." This biblical idea of respect for women was so revolutionary, according to Rodney Stark, it is why Christianity, an outcaste sect of losers, of "women, children and slaves" – all equally despicable to a proud Pagan like Celsus – was able to overturn the Roman Empire.
Christians, according to Stark, unlike their pagan neighbors, did not kill their female children, and allowed them to mature physically before giving birth. Simple demographics show that a female child born to a Judeo-Christian culture has a much better chance of survival than one born to a Muslim, Confucian, or Hindu culture.
The central, most compelling myth of the Old Testament is one in which God works to liberate slaves. This narrative was central to the Slavery Abolition and Civil Rights movements.
Nancy Pearcey, in "Soul of Science," argues that the Judeo-Christian conception of God and creation lead to the invention of science.
Our legal code is founded on Judeo-Christian concepts.
In the introduction to her book on world myth, scholar Barbara C. Sproul acknowledges all of this when she says that even if one does not believe in the Judeo-Christian God, if one grew up in the West, one probably believes in these very Judeo-Christian ideals.
Does jettisoning the Judeo-Christian tradition give you any pause? At what might be lost? At what rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem – at what might come next?
4.) What do you like most, or find most attractive, about religious belief in general, or Christianity in particular?
I ask this specifically because of a comment made by an atheist internet friend, Jeanette. After Pope John Paul II died, she watched his funeral, and commented wistfully that she wished she could be part of that tradition.
5.) What do you find least attractive about atheism / atheists?
***
These are all genuine questions. Will post, as comments or as stand-alone posts, all civil and on-topic replies.
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