The "Humbleness" Of Atheism

Andrew Wagener has an interesting piece explaining atheism that I found interesting enough to post a few of my thoughts. He seems intent on showing how much more humility there is in atheism than religion.

 

Now frankly, many of us religious folks could take that claim more seriously if atheists didn't go out of their way to question our intelligence from the get-go.

 

 

Even Wagener suggests religion "thrives on ignorance," as if there are few scholars or serious thinkers among the religious.

That's just not the case.

 

How humble is it for atheists to suggest that most of their fellow humans - past and present - are their intellectual inferiors?

 

Anyway, Wagener writes:

 

The religious contend that they are the humblest of people because they are as nothing before their god. But if they believe that the allmighty creator of the universe has a relationship with them as individuals, its not very humble,  is it? The atheist on the other hand sees himself as a higher order primate and a total insignificant speck in the context of the cosmos and geological time. That's humility.

 

But suppose a Divine Intelligence purposed to create intelligent creatures who could respond to and interact with Him/Her/It  and provided an environment for them (something like the poet Keats' "vale of soul-making") that would serve that end - would it not then be the proper thing (and not unhumble at all) to respond to and interact with this Intelligence?

 

And if (and I do emphasize the if) that were the case, the atheist's claim to be "a total insignificant speck" would then not be humility so much as copping out? 

 

Wagener goes on in this same vein when he writes:

 

The good deeds that religions do are to be applauded though. Every soup kitchen and every jersey knitted for a child is wonderful, but the motive is immoral if the idea is to buy timeshare in heaven or gain more converts.  These people will never know the intense satisfaction derived from doing a good deed out of an innate sense of morality and not because it is dictated from outside by some god.

 

That is an oversimplification atheists seem prone to make - even those who were once religious believers and should know better.  

 

Religious believers think of that "innate sense of morality" as coming from the moral law written by God on the human heart. Again, responding to that innate sense of morality is right and proper thing to do, 

 

What God adds to the picture is this: now doing good deeds becomes a matter of duty, rather than something one may choose to do in order to obtain that "intense satisfaction."

 

I'm not arguing here that the religious worldview is the correct one, just suggesting that in explaining atheism Mr. Wagener has misrepresented religious believers.

Mr. Dake And I

We had a troubled "relationship."

By the time I was in my late teens my Christian faith was a bit in disarray. I was having questions about my childhood faith. Perhaps, I thought, I did not understand things deeply enough. It was along about this time that I stumbled upon the writings of fundamentalist Pentecostal Bible scholar (for awhile he was actually affiliated with the Christian denomination ( The Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee)  to which my family belonged.

I'm speaking of the Reverend Finis Jennings Dake (1902-1987).

First I obtained a copy of his massive Bible study course God's Plan For Man. I found it deep (or looking back, maybe dense would be more accurate) and I devoured it hungrily. In short order I got his commentary on the Book of Revelation and finally hinted around enough that I was given a copy of his crowning achievement, The Dake's Annotated Study Bible, as a Christmas present.

I wanted answers and Dake's copiously annotated study Bible certainly provided them. In good fundamentalist fashion Dake's stated rule of biblical interpretation, as expressed in the introduction was:

Take the Bible literally wherein it is at all possible; if symbolic, figurative or typical language is used, then look for the literal truth it intends to convey.

All I can say is that it seemed a good idea at the time, but now, many years later, I see the foolishness of such a course. I will go further: I think my study of Dake - especially concerning God - actually laid the intellectual groundwork for my later falling away from religious Theism, or at least my intellectual difficulty with the concept.

Rev. Dake's rabid literalism led me away from Classical Theism teaching about God to a rather shallow, crude anthropomorphic understanding of the God concept that is fantastical and - I must add - the understanding of God most atheists want to employ to de-intelectualize theism and ridicule believers.

It is one thing to use anthropomorphic language to give a bit form to the God concept and make it more easily digestible; it is quite another to rigidly press that anthropomorphism into actual truth claims.

For example, Dake taught that God is not only personal but God is a person with "a personal spirit body, a personal soul, and a personal spirit, like that of angels and like that of man except His body is of spirit substance instead of flesh and bones"  (emphasis mine).

Dake pressed hard, as in another note in his Bible, that "God's body is like that of a man, for man was created in His likeness and His image bodily." Perhaps more shockingly, he suggests God is "described as being like a man from His loins downward" (referencing a vision of the Prophet Ezekiel's, Ezekiel 1:26,27). 

Moreover, when the Bible speaks of God having parts, such as "back parts," as when that was shown to Moses, or a heart, hands and fingers, mouth, lips and a tongue, feet, eyes, ears and so forth, according to Dake, that isn't anthropomorphic language used to relate God to man in way that is easily understood, it is instead a literal description.

Therefore, it isn't surprising that in a note in his annotated Bible Dake states "heaven is a real and a material planet like the earth - not an invisible, intangible place or some spiritual state into which men go."
   

Another example of how Dake's excessive literalism is troubling is when it is applied to God's emotions. In another of his Bible's notes he states: "God is capable of all feelings, emotions, and right desires as we are."

Not that this matter is trouble-free for Classical Theism and its idea of God as a being that is the absolute metaphysical ultimate, but Dake's hyper-literalism lead me down what I believe was a false path.

You see, I found that the more anthropomorphically I thought about God, the more difficult it became for me to make sense of it. Was God just an alpha male, a glorified man with magical powers?

That does conveniently lead to the thinking that if man is so awesome a creature that a divine creator was necessary in order to explain him then it is just as logical to ask "who made God."

A Classical Theist would see that as meaningless, wrong-headed question.

The problem of evil very early became a problem for my faith (and I think every religious believer has to seriously grapple with it soon or later), and my adoption of much of Dake's thinking about God only exacerbated that: how to relate God's capability of having all our "feelings, emotions and right desires" to an Alpha Male in the sky who, as Camus famously put it, "sits in silence"?

I will stop here. I wrote this post as part of my continuing spiritual journey narrative. Fair enough, I believe, to express how my slide began. How I am even still trying to work my through that comprise a large part of my current writing.

One last note is in order. The above shouldn't be viewed as an attack on Finis Jennings Dake. His writings greatly stimulated my thought processes. If I can say he eventually led me down a false path, I can also state he brought me face-to-face with so many issues that I needed to investigate in order to mature spiritually.

Dake is not the originator of Theistic Personalism, but certainly his writings give about as thorough an exposition of it as one could desire. His interpretations, I think, represents the logical outcome of the fundamentalist apologetic consistently applied.

Do Atheists Desire State-Sponsored Atheism?

Sure, it does seem to be that case that almost all the time there is a legislature somewhere in this country trying "smuggle creationism" into the science curricula of our taxpayer-funded schools. I don't agree with that. But here's something that caught my attention yesterday.

Jerry Coyne has a popular science blog called Why Evolution Is True. Mr. Coyne is a biologist and a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. And if you click this link it will take you to an item on his blog where he comments on a BBC story about a "Jewish girls school in Hackney [that] has been redacting questions on evolution on science exam papers because they do not fit with their beliefs."

In Coyne's commentary he writes:

It’s time for Britain to get rid of its state-supported faith schools. Given that parents can (unfortunately) legally proselytize their children at home, there is no justification for publicly supporting religious education outside the home. Really, my British readers, why do you tolerate this? After all, you’re supposed to be more enlightened, and less marinated in faith, than us Americans. Yes, I know you have no First Amendment, but you didn’t have to pass laws allowing such schools!

Am I reading Coyne wrong or is he actually suggesting that parents shouldn't have a legal right to teach their children their religious faith? It seems to me he is clearly indicating it is unfortunate that parents can do this legally.

This calls to my mind comments another well-known biologist made last year. I'm speaking of Richard Dawkins, who said:

There is a value in teaching children about religion. You cannot really appreciate a lot of literature without knowing about religion. But we must not indoctrinate our children.

Dawkins even went so far as to say:

What a child should never be taught is that you are a Catholic or Muslim child, therefore that is what you believe. That's child abuse.

It's fair to ask where that attitude might lead. Our government will and should keep God out of the science classes in our schools. But will the day come when it will be used to root God out of our homes? That would seem to be reasonable and desirable if teaching religion to children really is child abuse.

Will freedom loving atheists speak out against their brothers and sisters who seem to be moving in that direction? 

Ideas, Not Dogmata

Especially over this past year I have been reconnecting with inner religious impulse. I was wondering in spiritual limbo for a long, long time, and the way back has been anything but smooth. My blog traffic is down (although part of that might be do to my less frequent posts) Perhaps my "dribblings" about my journey back and attempt to understand just where I do stand has run off some of my readers (I am aware of at least one case of that), and perhaps it has been a bit off-putting for my readers who aren't religious.  

 

Reconnecting doesn't mean - for me at least - going back to where I started. Religious fundamentalism, a mindless dive into the realms of "revealed" religion holds no attraction for me whatsoever. In fact, that, I feel, is one of the main sources of religious misuse and abuse. The other source is when political leaders and leaders of nation attempt to use religion as a source of control of the people they represent.

 

While sorting everything out I my head, upon reflection, it seemed to me that I had slowly lapsed from mere questions and doubts about whether the God hypothesis is true or makes sense into an unfair ridiculing of those who do take stock in it.

 

The downside of that is it blinded to me to concerns about things that really matter to me.

 

Let me be clear about where I do stand lest anyone misunderstand and credit me with the baggage that religious fundamentalists must claim.

 

First, I'm not big on proofs of God's existence. For me it is more of an instinctive matter, suggested to my mind by the orderliness of the Cosmos. Second, I believe the human religious impulse is universal and that from the beginning of recorded time has been well documented. Third, I believe that there does exist something like an inner moral law that all healthy minds recognize. In other words, I might suggest that the so-called Golden Rule wasn't created so much as discovered inside the conscience of every normal human psyche.  

 

All that doesn't take a great deal of faith. At least I don't feel it does. I don't insist I'm right and those who strictly hold to the scientific worldview are wrong. I do confess to having more than a bit of trouble imagining how science - which is limited to what is within the system - can pronounce on things - if anything there is - outside the system.

 

Lastly, I believe the religious impulse gives a firm foundation for transforming the Golden Rule from a useful suggestion into a moral "ought." If (and note I do say if ) indeed the source of the religious impulse lies outside the system science cannot provide us with a true moral compass.

 

Let me emphasize that the above is a statement of ideas I embrace, not dogmata I seek to impose on others. I think it proper to provide such a statement in order to provide a clear context for other things I would like to post about, including my personal spiritual journey.