Richard Dawkins is so 1827

One could easily arrive at the view that a widespread, nearly universal indifference toward the doctrines of faith formerly regarded as essential has entered into the general religiousness of the public.

– G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1827)

What bugs me most about the New Atheists (Richard Dawkins, Christopher Whats-His-Face etc.) is their self-image. They present themselves as rebels. Christopher Whats-His-Face tells us how he has petrol and nails for breakfast, and their general stance is that they are saying something which is incredibly naughty, new and brave. I think Hegel, writing in 1827, would be confused as to why someone like Dawkins and Whats-His-Face get so much press for peddling such an old idea, and maybe amused at the irony of self-styled cutting-edge mavericks peddling an idea which was yesterdays news in 1827.

Intellectual Sloth

The most serious noetic effects of sin have to do with our knowledge of God. Were it not for sin and its effects, God’s presence and glory would be as obvious and uncontroversial to us all as the presence of other minds, physical objects, and the past. Like any cognitive process, however, the sensus divinatus (inherent sense of the divine) can malfunction; as a result of sin, it has been damaged. Our original knowledge of God and his glory is muffled and impaired; it has been replaced (by virtue of sin) by stupidity, dullness, blindness, inability to perceive God or to perceive him in his handiwork. Our knowledge of his character and his love toward us can be smothered: it can be transformed into a resentful thought that God is to be feared and mistrusted; we may see him as indifferent or even malignant.

In the traditional taxonomy of the seven deadly sins, this is sloth. Sloth is not simple laziness, like the inclination to lie down and watch television rather than go out and get the exercise you need; it is, instead, a kind of spiritual deadness, blindness, imperceptiveness, acedia, torpor, a failure to be aware of God’s presence, love, requirements.

– Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (2000), p.214-215

Christians often talk about sin. By this we can mean two things. The first is referring to the act of sinning, usually meaning morally reprehensible actions. The second is a more dark, elusive and mysterious use of the word, which refers to the brokeness and frailty of human nature and the world in which we live. The above remark is illustrative of how deep Christians believe the effects of sin (in the second sense) are felt.

Red Skies and Gnawing Questions

Was it just me, or did anyone else notice that the tongue-in-cheek references to ‘Armageddon’ and ‘The End of the World’ in Sydney on 23rd of September didn’t quite have their tongues completely in their cheeks?

As the dust storm swept through our city, a bunch of my friends, and a bunch of stuff I read and heard that day through the press, jokingly referred to Christian ideas of a final judgment, and then less jokingly remarked that climate change is rather serious, and we need to do better for our country and our children.

To my ears, this sounded like a secularization of the Christian idea of judgment. People are aware that their actions can have terrible consequences, people are aware that indulgent, selfish and reckless living can have terrible consequences on our world and our future, and people seem to believe that there may be a day when this becomes overwhelmingly obvious and perhaps even terrible – the sky will turn red, the seas will rise.

I’m not trying to make any kind of remark on climate change or environmental issues, but just pointing out how hard it is for people to really shake off the idea that there will be a day when their actions will have consequences and when they will be asked to give an account for what they did. Even a primarily secular community like the City of Sydney still has, from time to time, a moment when this thought in allowed to creep in.

Even if we ‘throw off’ ideas about a God and universal ethics, about a quaint Jew who supposedly rose from the dead and spoke a message of warning, it seems to be hard to avoid the gnawing question – ‘Will things one day fall apart for us because of the kind of lives we led?’, ‘Will it one day turn out that we were the cause of the centre not holding?‘

Liberal Hope

Lots of people in the eighteenth and nineteenth century…thought that hope of heaven was required to supply moral fibre and social glue – that there was little point, for example, in having an atheist swear to tell the whole truth in a court of law. As it turned out, however, willingness to endure suffering for the sake of future reward was transferable from individual rewards to social ones, from one’s hopes for paradise to one’s hope for one’s grandchildren.

– Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p. 85

Reading this quote crystallized two things for me.

First, people need hope. Richard Rorty is far from a sensitive critic of Christianity. In many parts of his writings he is quick to point out the ways in which Western society, as he reads it, has radically departed from Christianity, often coupled with a dry, vitriolic sneer. However, when he comes to the Christian idea of hope, he says nothing of this kind. He states that belief in ‘heaven’ is not the norm in Western societies, but does not then go on to say that this shows that humanity has entered into some better stage of maturity, or that ridding itself of this entire category of thought is a good thing for the West. Rather he simply notes the way in which the content of hope has changed over the last two hundred or so years. To hazard a broad generalization: this is because people need hope. Human beings always long after a better future, and this gives meaning and drive to the present.

Second, a hallmark of political liberalism and many contemporary societies is the way in which this hope has been secularized and transferred to a social context. Rorty’s remarks about heaven are not an accurate summary of the Christian view of heaven as the new creation, but even with his dodgy caricature the point he is suggesting seems very perceptive to me. The political philosophy which runs through the veins of the United States and which has a dominant role in most Western societies (political liberalism) asks people to hope. The recent election of Barack Obama, of course, illustrates this.

Rorty suggests that most people today are driven by a hope for their kids and for their grandkids. They hold onto a picture in which life is safer, more free, more comfortable, and less cruel for those who will come after them. Rorty suggests that this will lead many to be good citizens and to live a relatively moral life. It will lead many to sacrifice and to act kindly.

Do you agree with Rorty’s diagnosis of this feature of contemporary social life? If so, how ought Christians be trying to communicate what they believe about Jesus and hope into this context? In an environment of widespread liberal hope, is there room left for a distinctively Christian hope? Ought Christians hold that this secularized, social hope is necessarily a bad or harmful thing?

Atheism is So Last Year

There is an interesting opinion piece in today’s Sydney Morning Herald in which Gerard Henderson suggests that popular atheism is not nearly as radical or dangerous as some of it’s chief protagonists like to think it is. Here’s a brief excerpt:

The Age columnist Catherine Deveny mocks Christianity without an attempt at scholarship or analysis. She cannot concede that some of the finest minds in Western civilisation were followers of Christ. Nor can she demonstrate how it is that able politicians such as Rudd or Costello are mere fools when it comes to their religious beliefs.

Knee-jerk atheism is predictable, boring, unadventurous and common. Investigating religion for yourself and not treating those who profess a faith as deluded simpletons is new, exciting and sophisticated. Actually, it’s not that new. But it is exciting and sophisticated. Read the whole piece here.  Also, check out this other opinion piece in today’s Herald to see a philosopher at work. Pun intended.

Atheism vs. Theism: The Wrong Paradigm?

 

Controversy over Christianity is almost never conducted in the terms in which it is usually discussed by professional apologists, namely, “theism versus atheism”. The options are far wider that these anachronistic choices – choices that smack of Enlightenment-era European debates. To be sure, one might encounter nowadays a discussion between a theist and an atheist, but the theist could well be a Muslim, a Sikh, or a Hindu and the atheist a Thervadin Buddhist, philosophical Confucianist, or postmodern pragmatist. More commonly, however, the question is not, “Do you believe in God?” but “Which God or gods do you believe in?” – John Stackhouse Jr., Humble Apologetics (2002), p. 12

“Are you an atheist or a theist?” In the above excerpt, John Stackhouse suggests that this question is not as important as is usually thought. Debates about religion, faith, philosophy and worldview often come back to this question, assuming that it is the fundamental question that needs to be answered, and that it therefore ought to have a kind of priority over other questions. The thought goes: if we can just sort out whether you are an atheist or a theist and why, then we will be in a better position to move forward, or will know the right kinds of questions to be asking one another. Stackhouse calls this whole paradigm into question, suggesting that this kind of foundationalist thinking is a relic from Enlightenment-era thinking, which we need not see as the best way to discuss worldview and faith.

Stackhouse is saying that although atheism is a more abstract category than Marxism, and theism is a more abstract concept than Christianity, it need not be given a priority as the first issue that needs to be settled, and it need not take up residence as the focus of the debate between worldviews. This thought resonates with me because I see atheism and theism as being commitments which are entailed in other ideologies, where the ideologies themselves are more commonly the objects of decision. To overstate things – it is more common, and perhaps more natural, for people to choose an ideology first, and then to discover that atheistic or theistic commitments are bound up in what they have chosen, and to choose this ideology for reasons not necessarily linked with the atheism vs. theism debate. Most people choose Christianity (or whatever) not because they have first been convinced of theism, and most people choose Marxism (or whatever) not because they have first been convinced of atheism.

To dig a little deeper, perhaps this is because atheism and theism are too abstract to set real agendas, but too large to be ignored. If this is so, it explains why almost all worldviews have something to say about atheism or theism, and goes someway to explaining the plurality within each camp. To focus just on atheism: In a world without God, Marxists are able argue for the unique importance of the political and the urgent need for economic and social change; Feminists are able to argue for the contingency of the status quo and in some cases the fluidity of gender; Continental philosophers are able to argue for the relativity of value; Analytic philosophers are helped in arguing for empiricism as the most reliable way of knowing; and popular individualist consumerism in able to hold comfortably to beliefs in happiness as the supreme good, and the self as being of supreme importance.

This is all very cursory, but the point I’m gesturing towards is that atheism or theism can be employed for various worldviews and philosophies to bolster their own ideology. The five approaches I have just mentioned are starkly different – Marxists are not renowned for getting along with individualist-consumerists and Analytic philosophers are not renowned for getting along with Continental philosophers. It is not that these approaches have reached a consensus that God does not exist, but that atheism is a helpful, but by no means dominant, facet of their worldviews which are ultimately driven by other agendas.

Given this, Christian apologetics and conversation with others ought not to proceed by trying to settle the atheism/theism debate as though the whole ball game was riding on it. Much better to attempt to get inside of another worldview, and compare it’s beliefs, hopes and agenda with the words and works of Jesus of Nazareth. This makes the potential apologetic conversation much more complex, as the discussion has moved from comparing two abstract ideas, to comparing one worldview (Christianity) with a seemingly infinite plurality of others. It makes the conversation more exciting, since if atheism vs. theism is not the foundational issue, then it means you may begin to get towards the heart of things – the reasons people have chosen one ideology over another, and why they have done this. For a funny take on all this – check out how quickly the comedian Rick Gervais was able to dismiss Christianity once the conversation was framed in terms of atheism or theism, rather than the agenda, beliefs and hopes of Christianity compared with another ideology.