Monday, March 3, 2008
A little angrier than expected - and so am I!
Well, the book was a surprise to me. It's angrier than I expected. Some of it is funny, and some asks good questions. Of course there are differences from what I believe throughout the book - but that's OK. I'm not one to think everyone needs to think like me (although I am the smartest man I know - just ask my wife!), so that's OK. I was surprised by some of what I'd consider mean-spirited-ness in the book. But the more I reflect on what his experience with Christians has been it seems to support why my brother the Atheist has a real issue with Christians. So many Christians seem to miss the boat on the whole evangelism thing. Yes, you should spread the word of God. Yes, you should share your beliefs. I'm in total agreement here. No, you should not SCARE anyone into believing what you believe. No, you should not HARASS anyone if they don't believe what you believe. No, you should not become a BAD EXAMPLE and forget that Jesus is about loving everyone... man, Christians and others who feel like it's a contest to get someone to "be saved" drive me crazy! Notches on your belt; points of light; saved souls; you're not being judged by how many names you come home with after being out in the world. You're being judged by being true to your beliefs and faith. You're being judged by being Godly in your daily walk. You're being judged by your willingness to follow Christ. I can tell from his book that the Christians he's run into where some bizarre number crunching zealots who pushed and pushed him and his wife until they get tired of the rhetoric. When they politely said "no thanks" the backlash began. It reminds me of the old time track people used to leave for me before I was saved - the one with the picture of Hell on the back and the warning to repent today "lest ye be cast into the burning lake for eternity". While I believe in Hell and Heaven, what's the point in scaring someone or pissing them off (that's going to make my wife happy)? Man, what's wrong with people? It reminds me of Michelle's favorite bumper sticker (seen a lot in Colorado Springs near Focus on the Family) - "Lord, protect me from your followers". How real is that? Dudes on TV (Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Benny Hin, John Ankerberg, etc) that make our lives harder. They say wacky stuff, say they're the spokes person for all of us, and then we're left to clean up their messes. Just shut up and let us be real people to real people and maybe through relationship non-Christians will see we're pretty much like them. Sometimes confused, sometimes not good, sometimes scared, sometimes we don't have all of the answers (again not me - refer to the smartest man comment)... most of us are normal people with normal problems and normal issues. Where people after all. And all people are flawed. I'd love to actually live my life showing the world what kind of a man I am, and then when asked I can tell them what I believe. Heck, I might even share it with someone as I'm building a relationship with them. But forcing my beliefs on someone is not going to be well received. I don't like tomatoes. Never have. No amount of pressure from some dude on the street selling tomato's is going to change my mind. However if a friend, or brother, or my wife says "try a tomato", it carries some weight and I just might try it (of course tomatoes are a bad example since they're pretty slimy inside - but hopefully you get my very simple point). Well, I could rant all day about this but I'm going to take a break, maybe I'll have a beer, and then I'll write a little more about the book and my thoughts.
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I think the book is great. I disagree with it wholeheartedly, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Before discussing my disagreements, I would like to point out its greatness. It’s a fun read that pokes fun at all belief systems, but specifically my own (Christianity) without the ham-fisted diatribes and utterly nonsensical inaccuracies of the Christopher Hitchens book. The cartoons are pretty hilarious and it made me laugh at myself about 100 times.
My disagreement comes in two parts, and is similar to my disagreements with the Sam Harris book. While the Christopher Hitchens book is amateurish – as opposed to juvenile, which I would apply lovingly to Thom’s book – Thom’s and Sam Harris’s books both present serious criticisms of religious faith. Unfortunately, I find that they are both coming from a place of reaction rather than representing a real evolving dialogue.
No one took the bible literally until the Enlightenment, at least not in the sense that we take it to mean today. The reason is not that Medieval Christians were somehow more generous than today’s Fundamentalists – a casual look at the inhumanities of the Crusades would belie that hypothesis. The reason they didn’t need to take every phrase literally is that there were other heresies to purge.
With the arrival of Galileo and Newton, the Church felt threatened and started down a path of dialectical opposition to the alternative religious point-of-view offered by science: a devout and dogmatic religious fervor that we would today call “Atheism.” Not all Christians felt this way. It is notable that Martin Luther, a founding father of Protestantism, dismissed several parts of the Canon that he felt were contradictory to Christ’s teaching. Such a method of biblical interpretation gives historical precedence to a Protestant theological tendency to understand the Bible is something greater than a literal history or science text. The Bible is not the “Word of God,” but is instead a tribal witness to the experience of the Word of God written by frail and wounded people who often did not hesitate to insert their own biases and hatred in amongst the inspired words. The Word of God was made flesh and everything else, including the Bible, is a guess at what to do once you’ve seen that. Taking the Bible literally – Thom’s main criticism – is indeed a sin on par with Baalistic idolatry.
The triumph of the Newtonian, mechanistic religious mindset came with the Industrial Revolution. It was clear to scientists – and especially the greedy capitalists who emerged in that period -- that the Universe was a machine to be tamed for the benefit of at least some humans. Even those scholars who still felt the breakthrough of the numinous deep in their hearts turned to Deism and started to see God as a great clockmaker, not as a personal deity. Fundamentalism arose in the early 20th century to address this threat to Christendom. It was a reaction to scientific Atheism, which at the time was the best science had to offer.
Unfortunately, many modern Atheists – Harris and Thom included – are still mired in the Newtonian, mechanistic worldview of the past. Physics has moved on, but many Atheists haven’t. (Carl Sagan did). We now think that the Universe is not a giant machine, but is instead a vast sea of light and electrical energy. By clinging desperately to the Newtonian worldview, I think Thom and Sam Harris are as reactionary as the Fundamentalists of last century. They are reacting to Fundamentalism, just as the Fundamentalists reacted to them. Both are meant to protect an outdated worldview.
The book is terrific. A delight. But it would be vastly improved by either: a) an admission that the book’s narrow target is the original reaction of Fundamentalism and not a second, re-reaction, or b) by considering the flaws of continuing to apply Newtonian physics as an outdated mode of describing experience. Such flaws are numerous. If Christianity is responsible for the tragedies of the Crusades, the Inquisition and more, then it can fairly be argued that the so-called Enlightenment brought us the modern tragedies of capitalistic greed, irrational fear of scarcity and materialistic enslavement. Perhaps the book isn’t meant to answer any of these questions, but I would have enjoyed seeing Thom turn his considerable intellect and wit to matters of greater importance than skewering certain sects of Christianity. Although, I enjoyed the skewering nonetheless.
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