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Who has done the most to advance atheism in 2007? Christopher Hitchens? Sam Harris, perhaps? They’ve done their share, all right, with a plethora of popular books and the requisite speaking engagements (including a Hitchens debate moderated by Marvin Olasky.) But Joel Belz argues that atheistic authors aren’t nearly as effective in advancing the faith of the godless as are those who simply ignore God when discussing crucial universal questions:
No example could be more telling than Time’s Dec. 3 issue, whose cover brashly announces the main article: “What Makes Us Good/Evil.”
It isn’t just that the article is terribly trivial and wrong-headed . . . [but that] the possibility that a meaningful God — or even a meaningless god, for that matter — is part of such a discussion gets not a single mention. In more than 3,000 words, the broad topic of “religion” is never suggested. There’s not a hint that anybody has ever talked about something called the “Fall.” It’s breathtaking, in fact, that Time could take on a cover story like “What Makes Us Good/Evil?” and leave out so much that seems so basic.
Read Joel’s column here. Who is the more efficacious atheist? The one who overtly argues against God, or the one who argues as if He simply doesn’t exist?
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efficacious? effective? effectual?
Simply ignoring gods sounds like a good idea, but I don’t think it works. We are all atheists when it comes to the other guy’s religion. I think ignoring Islam today, or Protestantism a few centuries ago, or Branch Davidians a decade or so ago would be or have been dangerous.
Gods have a way of making their presence known…
The subtle is always more dangerous than the blatant. That is why Jesus always warns about the “yeast”. Untruth spreads like yeast until it is bigger and bigger and soon looks like truth. Untruth can kill us as Arcadia points out. Francis Schaeffer talks about the snowflake landing precisely on top of a mountain, with half going on one side of the Alps and half on the other. It doesn’t seem far apart on the ridge of the mountain. OTOH, when it melts and reaches the bottom, it is miles and miles apart.
My father was an adorable, loving man, but his loud atheism got all of us kids thinking about God. And his vehemence–like Hitchens–made us wonder if it wasn’t so much that he didn’t believe in God than he was angry at God. And as wonderful as my father was he had no answers for us in times of family tragedy. He would clam up and retreat. What of ultimate justice? Why live honestly and graciously (he was both) if this life is all their is? We went looking for answers and, much to his chagrin, most of his children came to some kind of faith.
As the saying goes, “Me thinks thou dost protest too much.”
My disappointment with public schools is precisely for the reason mentioned here. I would rather send my kids to a class where they could discuss their beliefs with a teacher who didn’t share them that to a class where there is simply a presumption that educated people don’t bring up God.
And his vehemence–like Hitchens–made us wonder if it wasn’t so much that he didn’t believe in God than he was angry at God.
Or perhaps angry about what people do in the name of God. I think that’s where Hitchens is coming from … he does not believe in God and is angry that people who believe fervently can do so much harm. (The 9/11 hijackers were devout believers in God, remember … it’s not all specifically about Christianity.)
Arcadia makes a good point … every believer is an atheist about the gods of other religions. You all don’t “hate Allah,” you just don’t believe he exists, and may hate what some of those who do believe in Allah do.
I think the atheists who don’t really argue at all are the most efficacious.
#5 STEVEG
“You all don’t “hate Allah,” you just don’t believe he exists…”
Ah, but I DO believe he exists. I just know him by a different name,
Satan. This god of the muslims, is also the god of other religions; LDS comes to mind and of coure, the world.
Of course, practical atheism is also promoted by those who often speak of God, but who identify “God” most closely with idols.
It has become trendy in certain circles to talk about the need to have a “Christian worldview.” Yet this so-called Christian worldview typically amounts to nothing more than admonitions to practice a kind of moral-civic virtue. In that sense, this so-called Christian worldview is no different from the worldview of conservative deists, Buddhists, or Islamists.
If a “Christian worldview” has no room for a Christ who has met the righteous requirements of the Law on behalf of His elect, then that worldview is not Christian in any manner. It is just the godless, man-centered worldview of social traditionalists everywhere.
Hence, unrepentant idolaters may advance atheism far better than either avowed atheists or ignorant secularists.
According to Rom 1:18-21, there are no atheists, only unthankful people who oppose the obvious. They quite simply prefer to worship themselves more than their Maker (Rom 1:25).
Christianity isn’t threatened by atheists. These are a small minority of grumblers with little to offer, so they simply take potshots at the faith and snicker to themselves about how clever they are.
The real threat to the Truth is the Lie. There are the big cosmological lies which try to embarrass us, but worse are the lies which are counterfeits to actual faith. Televangelists and cults and extremes of the faith both liberal and ultra-conservative deviants (think Fred Phelps) which tarnish the name of Christ.
In the end though, Christ’s church will be built anyway and the gates of hell won’t prevail. (Matt 16:18)
When I got that issue of TIME from my mailbox–I haven’t yet opened it–I thought, I could have spared the writers a lot of trouble: Genesis 1-3. I knew, though, that they probably “didn’t go there.”
Year ago TIME had a cover story on why single women were staying single. The singles they profiled weren’t really “single” in any meaningful way. They lived with boyfriends, had sex regularly, etc. They weren’t unmarried women who might or might not marry someday; they were hybrids between singles and married women: men whenever they wanted them, no commitment.
The possibility of a woman living as a single, in chastity, until marriage, wasn’t even mentioned. This sentence was telling: “Experiences vary widely, from women who go through long periods without sexual relationships to others who have regular, casual flings.”
I wrote them a letter, pointing out how odd it was to have a major magazine do a cover story on singleness and not even mention chastity. They didn’t publish it, nor did they publish any other letters pointing out their “oversight.”
In TIME’s worldview, if you ignore something (God, virgins, people who have good reasons for opposing some form of immorality such as abortion or homosexuality), then it doesn’t exist.
I think we’re going to have to get used to not being debated, but being ignored.
To Joel’s point, I find it extremely interesting how quickly people around the globe use the Lord’s name in vain. Why does this curse flow so easily from lips?
Has a study been done about swearing in different cultures? Are references to God in the form of a curse universal? That would be a fascinating study. I wonder if we could get a government grant.
This is exactly why I am puzzled by Christians who make a big deal of Pullman’s The Golden Compass being “anti-God” but don’t make the same complaint about the many books/movies that ignore God completely.
Cheryl … Time may not have covered chastity in that particular article, but they have not ignored it. Here is one article they did a few years ago.
I think the criticism is unfounded. The Time article is about the science of moral behavior, including neurochemistry and psychology.
Unless you all want to deny that that’s false and the myth in Genesis is the truth … which I guess some of you do … there’s nothing “atheist” about the article. It doesn’t talk about religious ideas pro or con, because it’s not about that.
Arcadia and Stevg - You are terribly mistaken about people being “atheists” about any god other than their own.
An atheist believes that there is no god at all. None. A person who believes in a particular deity and not other deities is not an atheist in any sense of the word.
I am a Christian and believe in God. I am not an atheist about Islam, or Hindu deities, or those of the Greeks, Romans of Norsemen. I still believe in God, and I think that thoe other religions are holding to a false belief in false deities rather than belief in the one, true God. There is a very big difference.
I couldn’t read the World article without being a paid subscriber (a choice of little interest or attraction to me).
The Time article I read on line.
I doubt very much there is a God, though as I can’t “prove” it, I don’t worry much about it.
I find myself more or less in agreement with the article. I believe humans are capable of great evil and great good. I consider the Garden of Evil a myth. I consider the concept of “humans being fallen” accurate as a metaphor, but as an explanation I find the myth unconvincing and offensive.
I think most human “good” behavior and most human “bad” behavior has roots in our biological and social evolution. I agree with the article that the trait we call “empathy” is probably at the root of our better behavior.
I don’t believe there are “absolute” values in the universe created by a perfect “God.” I have a concept of right and wrong. It is a product of my biology and my culture and the choices I make as an individual. Christians are capable of being good or bad people. Atheists are capable of being good or bad people.
When I die, which will be sooner rather than later (as I am 63, though reasonably healthy at the moment), I will not be rewarded if I accept Jesus’ sacrifice and I will not be punished for not believing. I will simply cease to exist.
I think I am coming to terms with that realization. I imagine the closest term for it is stoicism.
On the other hand, I may be gibbering in terror or praying desperately to God. We’ll just see.
And then we won’t.
Steve G:
I went to the link, read some. But still, the question of whether to teach kids to abstain from sex is generally treated only as abstaining until they’re “ready,” not till they’re married, at least by those reporting such teaching, and often by those doing the teaching. The idea of expecting chastity from a 25-year-old woman who’s stable, ready for kids or smart enough to use birth control consistently, is an “old-fashioned” one today. Even expecting chastity from 14-year-olds is considered antiquated; an adult who is chaste is considered frigid or homosexual.
And it’s these societal “norms” that are killers.
Cheryl: And it’s these societal “norms” that are killers. Indeed.
Fortunately, we have groups such as the one of young people at Princeton, which states its purposr as follows:
The Anscombe Society believes in the inherent dignity of every human person. We, furthermore, look to what sociology, psychology, medicine, philosophy, theology, and human experience agree works for the good and health of the person and for the common good and flourishing of society. In this way we have been led to take stated positions on the family, marriage, sexual ethics, chastity, and sexuality. We believe that these positions protect human dignity, the individual and common good, and the healthy and flourishing society, for which all people must endeavor.
Tolerance advances atheism. The idea we tolerate everything means nothing has exclusive control of truth. Money advances atheism. The wealthy have less to fear and therefore will seek less protection in God. Apathy of course always wins.
Well, I guess Joel wouldn’t like me. I’m one of the “quiet ones”.
In fact, I can’t stand Hitchens. He’s a horse’s rear, and gives atheism a bad name. Of course, I wouldn’t say that I’m an atheist. I’m more of a Class A Skeptic.
It really seems like Joel is angry, almost like he’s upset that conservative Christianity wasn’t named as Time’s “Man of the Year”.
Christians will need to get used to the idea that not all of the world speaks their “language”. And fewer Americans speak the language anymore either. Getting mad because we ignore you or don’t speak your language isn’t going to convince us to listen to you. Christians are going to have to find another way to engage the rest of us, including Time.
CherylD: The idea of expecting chastity from a 25-year-old woman who’s stable, ready for kids or smart enough to use birth control consistently, is an “old-fashioned” one today.
Well that’s true, it is. Still, there is nothing that stops a woman who prefers to live her life that way from doing so.
Christians are going to have to accept the fact that the way they see the world and the way they think people should live is only one idea among many.
You guys are so funny, no really. Atheism isn’t “advanced”. You aren’t “indoctrinate” into atheism. It’s the other way around. Everyone is “born” atheist naturally. You have to be indoctrinated into the “supernatural” and the “occult”. These things wouldn’t even occur to you if people you trusted didn’t convince there was some basis in fact.
In fact, if you were older and already past “gullible, you couldn’t be convinced of a “God” that appeared as a “dove” and a “burning bush”. You would laugh. The ONLY way you can be convinced these fantasitcl stories are true is if you learn them at the same age you still believed in St. Nick, you know, the round and jolly guy that left you gifts every winter? Or the bunny that leaves you chocolet eggs. Remember how you thought the quarter got under your pillow?
I always viewed the reluctance of some Christians to partake in the childhood stories of St. Nick, the easter bunny and the tooth fairy, is the fear of competition.
Anlir, “… Hitchens. He’s a horse’s rear”
I heard a more elegant version of that, which you may freely take and use, “… the south end of a horse going north”.
HRW - We did not do the Santa or Easter Bunny thing because it involved deception. We always wanted to tell our children the truth. And it took away from the true meaning of the birth and death of Christ.
The world is happy to IGNORE the true meaning of the “holy days”, by replacing them with counterfeits. As a Christian, I am happy to IGNORE these pagan rituals and focus on the true meaning.
When I traveled to Japan, there were Christmas trees everywhere and the malls were packed with shoppers, probably none of whom where Christian.
The word Easter is named for a fertility goddess from whom we get the word ‘estrogen’. Why would we want to celebrate fertility with eggs and propagating like rabbits? What does that have to do with the most important event in history, the death, burial and resurrection of the Savior of mankind?
I don’t criticize Christians for participating in those things, but I think we would be better off IGNORING worldly counterfeits right back.
I understand the syncretism involved here. The Polish Catholic ritual of blessing Easter eggs on Sunday morning with holy water just screamed fertility ritual when I first observed it. But on some level, ressurection or rebirth corresponds well to spring fertility rituals where life is born anew, to give the Catholics an excuse.
Santa Claus is a 19th Century American invention loosely based on the Dutch St. Nicholas which in turn was derived from Spanish sources who derived it from Greeks in present day Turkey in the 4th C. The gift giving although present in the context of charity probably has its origins in the Roman celebration of the equinox. The Christmas tree is derived from ancient Germanic religions.
As for the tooth fairy I’m guessing Celtic.
KRM: Yours is a distinction without a difference.
If one truly believes in a god or gods, others who do not so believe are, with respect to that person, atheists. After all, for a true believer in the Christian Faith there is only one possible god. And if one does not believe in the only possible god he is an atheist, is he not?
Actually, it is kind of interesting that in one of the commandments the Christian God does seem to allow at least for the existence of “other gods”. I wonder how many.
#25: We did not do the Santa or Easter Bunny thing because it involved deception.
As opposed to “true” stories such as the underage girl who became impregnated with God power and three smart guys who brought gifs of perfume and other good smelling things were led to the baby the occult means.
Or the story of the magical wooden boat filled with “millions” of different animals.
Yea, I can see it now.
#28
Beat me to it.
Three smart guys - LOL. RDean, the least you could have done is put down, “Three wise guys”!