Reflections on Atheism and Faith

Robert Tulip 2 · Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 6:34 am Post subject: Reflections on Atheism and Faith

The debate on atheism tends to occur at a very crude level. For modern thinking, it is clear that major elements of traditional Christianity are obsolete, even dangerous. In this category I would put ideas of heaven and hell, supernaturalism, miracles, and the myths of Eden, virgin birth and the flood etc. These are all objectively false, and continued belief in them is a pathology, resulting in delusion and suffering. Hence the debate about creationism and intelligent design is tedious and pointless because it involves trying to talk sense with an ignorant throwback group who are opposed to the advance of knowledge. The debate should be about sociology and politics, not theory, ie why do creationists, this big group of otherwise modern rational people, believe things which are demonstrably false? And what are the dangers to our planet resulting from this widespread false consciousness? My view, discussed also at http://www.bautforum.com/questions-answers/65241-answering-creationist s.html#post1079126, is that Creationism is not really central to their supposed worldview, but essentially runs interference for the idea of Christ as Saviour. It is a smokescreen designed to protect fundamentalist beliefs regarding Christ, notably that he was a sacrificial substitute who was murdered by God as a ransom to forestall the divine wrath deserved by fallen sinful people. The problem with this whole fundamentalist ‘system’ is that creationists have turned Christ into a laughing stock.

The key task in my view is to set the creationist rubbish to one side in order to engage on theology, applying a modern set of scientific values to the stories of the Gospel. When this is done it can become possible to separate the wheat from the tares, in the terms of the parable at Matt 13:25, and extract the kernel of truth from the lies of the church. The Old Testament prophet Malachi put it well when he said (Mal 3:2) that God is like a refiner’s fire. This idea is highly Darwinian, indicating that life forms which adapt to reality will survive, while reality/God will weed out the maladaptive forms which in the long term will fail to procreate. Creationists just have it wrong about which ideas are adaptive – they think that belief in Jesus as Saviour, with the whole pile of false traditional accretions, is somehow sufficient to enable salvation, which they wrongly interpret in terms of the obsolete and selfish concept of individual afterlife. I would rather interpret salvation in planetary terms, as the necessary transformation of our political systems into a framework of global peace which will establish a framework for human flourishing. I maintain that this interpretation is completely Biblical.

As I have argued previously here, I see the essence of Christianity as entirely compatible with atheism, in that both demand an evidence based approach to life. My argument is that denial of evidence amounts to denial of Christ. Hence, the early Christians were castigated by Rome as atheists for exactly the same reason as modern atheists are disdained by US imperialism, that the empire is based on a lie which the atheists are seeking to expose in the name of truth. The social function played today by creationism was played in the Roman empire by pagan religion, which existed primarily to underpin social power rather than as a genuine theory of truth. Hence paganism responded with crucifixion when confronted by Jesus’ statement that he had come to bear witness to truth, a statement which in the modern world is highly atheistic. When Paul said he preached Christ crucified (1 Cor 1:23) he was presenting an effectively atheistic and subversive doctrine, undermining the old myth of messiah as temporal king. Paul was saying that to understand our predicament is to see that when truth appeared in our world this was our violent response. Jesus was the alarm bell, the canary in the coalmine - something is seriously wrong. Paul was saying that the evidence of history made the death of Christ the central story of the illegitimacy of Rome, and this undeniable fact took complete priority over any conceptual myths. Paul saw ‘through a glass darkly’ (1 Cor 13:12) and so believed some false ideas such as the physical resurrection at the eschaton (1 Cor 15:52) (an idea I am starting to interpret as the resurrection of the past in wikipedia’s revolutionary access to facts). Paul was just trying to understand Jesus, who himself was completely rigorous in his own commitment to truth.

This brings me to the question of how we can develop an atheist doctrine of the trinity. I know people will laugh at this, but I am completely serious. The point is that Jesus, as the Son, sought to incarnate on this planet the universal energy of the cosmos. Effectively, he ‘was’ the cosmos speaking. In our corner of the cosmos, planet earth, the challenge of salvation is to preserve complexity against the imperial simplifying powers of destruction. As a piece of cosmic stardust, gathered together as coherent logos, Jesus gave voice to the spirit of the earth, Gaia. He was ‘the earth’ speaking truth to power. So, we have the universe, a.k.a. father, instantiated, ensouled and focused on our planet in the life of Jesus Christ, a.k.a. son. Because he was completely true to the cosmos, from the perspective of the human genome, Jesus represented the power of life against death. The harmonic depth of his relation to the cosmos continues to reverberate in our world with a spiritual energy today. This energy is often distorted by the false politics of the church, but is often real, a.k.a. holy spirit. So we have an atheist trinity: the cosmos, Jesus and their interaction are the physical expression of the traditional myth of father, son and spirit.

The implication of this sort of scientific faith is that the claim by Jesus to bring a unique redemptive message could be true, in real rather than magical terms. Hence the idea of a future kingdom of God can be interpreted as a rupture of our existing false consciousness, along the lines Paul explained in Romans 8:22, rather than the silly idea of rapture which is clearly fanciful and false. We are too used to thinking of the Second Coming as a bizarre piece of magic, and as a final apocalyptic end rather than a new beginning. As a result of the fundamentalist acceptance of the doctrine of rapture rather than rupture, the possibility of the real transformation of our planet into a global kingdom of love has somehow been placed outside the scope of public discussion. My view is that the Bible can be understood with these ideas as providing an elegant framework of history, and that the key point is that the modern empire, run by the USA, is a direct descendent of the dark imperial spirit of Rome. I explain some of my ideas on this topic in my article Theological Reflections on Empire www.wscfglobal.org/StudPDF/StudentWorld2507.pdf and in my unpublished papers www.geocities.com/rtulip2005/Theology/Complexity_Faith.htm on complexity and faith.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2007 4:50 pm Post subject:

RT2,

I hope to find the time to respond more fully to your post, in that I find a good deal we share common gound with; and some areas of real difference too.

Would you be interested in reading and discussing one of the following books? Considering what you've written above, I think you'd find them worth the effort. I've not read the first, but found Lash's "Easter In/Ordinary" to be a great challenge and a serious theological education. I have read the latter, and find Professor Caputo to be a brilliant delight to read...I think you might find his "religionless religion" very interesting.

Holiness, Speech and Silence: Reflections on the Question of God by Nicholas Lash http://www.amazon.com/Holiness-Speech-Silence-Reflections-Question/dp/ 0754650391/ref=pd_ybh_1?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=150 1&pf_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1E59DD4107HNE29GTM2E

The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event by John D. Caputo http://www.amazon.com/Weakness-God-Theology-Philosophy-Religion/dp/025 3218284/ref=pd_ybh_5?pf_rd_p=280800601&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_t=1501&p f_rd_i=ybh&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1E59DD4107HNE29GTM2E

Dissident Heart · Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 12:59 pm Post subject:

Robert Tulip 2 · Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2007 9:09 pm Post subject:

Hi DH. This degenerate confusion, which you have highlighted by depicting how creationists treat the god of love like a gangster, is so absurd that it shows why Christ has become a laughing stock for anyone with a modicum of reason. It is not Christ the creationists worship but a false invented idol. They are directly breaking commandments one and two from Exodus 20: You shall have no other gods before me; and You shall not make for yourselves an idol. Your comments show the selectivity and inconsistency of the so-called inerrancy doctrine – creationists are happy to be ‘inerrant’ when it comes to the power of God to break the laws of nature, but not when it comes to social transformation. The former (miraclism) serves imperial interests by reinforcing the hierarchical idea that social structures and ultimate reality are a mystery which ordinary people cannot understand and question, whereas the latter (transformatism) undermines imperial interests in the name of love. The only thing here that is unerring is the ability of creationists to pick and choose which parts of the Bible serve their economic and social interests. So, the natural reaction is to assume that theology as such is a con-job. As I argued above, this would be wrong, because I believe there is a redeeming power within Christianity that can still be recovered by discarding the dross of the church.

Dissident Heart · Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 12:12 pm Post subject:

I don't think we can let ourselves off the hook so easily. Selectivity is not simply a fundamentalist phenomenom: all of us perform an exegesis of the text that highlights some elements and leaves out others...as well as reads into and projects onto it our favorite meanings, hopes, and fears. I don't think this has to result in sheer subjectivism: but none of us escape eisegesis when practicing exegesis. Atheist, agnostic, baptist, congregationalist, methodist, roman catholic...all of us engage the text from where we are: there is no unadulterated objective place to read from. As Paul, and you remind us, we see through a glass darkly.

Still, there are some, I believe, who simply choose not to see at all. For these, there is no conflict in the text: no contradiction and confusion, all is seamless and sure...total certainty and complete explanation regarding every dotted i and crossed t. And some who go the opposite direction: nothing but deception and stupidity, everything worthless and wasted...a similar certainty, but instead of adoration- disgust.

Rabbi Michael Lerner describes a Jewish tradition of reading the Bible with two notions of God in mind: the right hand and left hand of God. The right hand reflects the wrath, vengeance, punishing, martial, and destructive side of God in the text; and the left is the forgiving, compassionate, generous, loving and healing side of God in the text.

If we approach the text in hope we highlight the left hand of God; if we approach the text in fear, the right. Lerner explains that the production of the Bible was by men and women living in hope and in fear, and their experiences with God are captured in the text within the context that hope and fear. The right hand of God reflects the angers and frustrations of traumatized people seeking protection and justice: wanting some sort of advocate and defender in a terribly violent world. The left hand represents traumatized folk as well, but these people are wanting to stop the cycle of violence and the compulsion to repeat the trauma they receieved onto others. Thus, the passion for vengeance and forgiveness in the same text.

Lerner argues that the right hand of God is the distortion of God's true nature: the healing, generous, transformative, loving force of the universe that is constantly making possible a new future and fueling the hope of people to repair and mend the wounds of the world. This is Tikkun.

It makes sense that the Gospel would be transformed from a narrative of liberatory grace to imperial force. Surviving on this planet is a bloody affair, full of violence and treachery and dissimulation. A question I have is: why would Science require we go either direction: i.e., what about science would have us choose (using Lerner's model) the Right Hand or the Left Hand of God within the text?

Frank 013 · Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 3:03 pm Post subject:

As an atheist and someone who has read the bible without any prior indoctrination from any religion I will say this about the text. There is truth in the bible but no more than in any other epic human story.

What I find confusing is that so many people ignore (or don’t know about) the ghastly portions (incest, the condoning of slavery, genocide and the subjection of women to mention but a few) and focus solely on the good which is far less common throughout the book; and then to claim that this book is the source of morality… pure bunk.

Many people are currently trying to make religion seem more tolerable to secular minds by changing its meaning. In another thread that DH started some author is calling it love. This does not change anything, I can be in love and have passions and not be religious or believe in gods. Just because one silly man says that all love is a love of god does not make it so.

I personally think that any book as flawed as the bible can never be reconciled with atheism except as fable, and trying to alter the meaning to make it seem more tolerable to the more secular minded people is not only a waste of effort but insulting to believers as well.

Later

Dissident Heart · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 12:46 pm Post subject:

Frank 013 · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 2:38 pm Post subject:

Dissident Heart · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 6:44 pm Post subject:

Robert Tulip 2 · Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:54 am Post subject:

Dissident Heart · Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 11:06 am Post subject:

Robert Tulip 2 · Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2007 7:42 am Post subject:


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