A reader writes:
A friend (who is atheist) sent me an excerpt on 9/11 of some reflections by his favorite author, Sam Harris.
Here is a link, if you choose to spend your time reading the entire draft:
I wanted to just point out one particular section that reminded me of what you are always saying about ‘Climate Change’, how there doesn’t seem to be anything it *can’t* do. (The emphasis mine),
“Whatever else may be wrong with our world, it remains a fact that some of the most terrifying instances of human conflict and stupidity would be unthinkable without religion. And the other ideologies that inspire people to behave like monsters—Stalinism, fascism, etc.—are dangerous precisely because they so resemble religions. Sacrifice for the Dear Leader, however secular, is an act of cultic conformity and worship. Whenever human obsession is channeled in these ways, we can see the ancient framework upon which every religion was built. In our ignorance, fear, and craving for order, we created the gods. And ignorance, fear, and craving keep them with us.”
So, what have I learned from this? That even when religions aren’t responsible for all the bad stuff that has ever happened throughout the history of humankind, they actually are still responsible.
Yes. Hitchens tries much the same prestidigitation with Stalin and Mao, claiming that their atheistic ideologies are really somehow “religion” and therefore the fault of, you know, not atheism or anything. Silly.
One basic blunder atheists keep making is confusing faith in God with ideology. Ideology is an all-explaining theory of Everything. Everything is about sex. Everything is about economics. Everything is about power. Everything is about gender conflict. Everything is about class warfare, etc. It is the attempt to reduce a vast and varied world to a single thought, to imprison it in the clean and well-lit cell of a single idea.
Faith in God, properly understood, is faith in a God who is Mystery. The Church’s message is, in part, we don’t understand much, but we do know God exists and that he has told us a few truths (sketched in the Creed) which we believe. As to the rest of the huge and colorful pageant of life, the Church doesn’t provide one size fits all ideological explanations. Instead, it takes the attitude of Proverbs: “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, and the glory of kings to search a matter out.” Soviets actually punished “counter-revolutionary weather forecasting” because their forecasts included rain, cold and snow that got in the way of Stalin’s Five Year Plans. The Church doesn’t try to tell nature what to do, it receives nature as a part of God’s revelation. The Church doesn’t claim to know everything or to be able to explain everything. Indeed, religion, art and science all begin with wonder. Evangelical atheists feel an incorrigible need to claim that the religionist thinks he has all the answers. No healthy Christian I have ever met thinks that. Some diseased forms of Christian faith try to reduce the faith to an ideology, of course. But that’s not Christian faith as the Church understands it.
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Like I have said in the previous blog about atheists, that we can all over intellectualize on the tranendant, God we can never really know except God must be experienced in the most spiritual loving sense, of course God reveals himself through the spirit and Jesus . To wonder wonder and to wonder. Imagination is more important then raw knowledge it is the basis of all. God bless. Dr Thomas
Double Huzzah!
“Some diseased forms of Christian faith try to reduce the faith to an ideology, of course.”
Except Catholicism is defined by it’s ideologies, along with the other 38,000 or so different denominations of Christians.
The atheist mindset in this case seems to be the No True Scotsman fallacy. When evidence is presented that atheists can behave as badly as religious people are accused of behaving, they are labeled as not being a “true atheist.”
No, Catholicism is based on Truth. Divinely revealed Truth. 38,000 different denominations are based on the Catholic Church.
Except Catholicism is defined by it’s ideologies, along with the other 38,000 or so different denominations of Christians.
Thanks for that content-free retort. Catholic Faith is defined by the Creed, which is a remarkably circumscribed statement about a few cosmic and practical truths that does not, in the slightest, attempt an all-explaining Theory of Everything concerning science, evolution, economics, politics, electricity, sex, family, or whether the Twilight series sucks (it does, by the way). Ideologues feel a burning need to have authoritative answers to such matters and fit them all into The Grand Theory. Catholics, in contrast, agree about Everything while disagreeing about everything else.
I struck by your simple phrase “sketched in the Creed”. Kinda of ‘wow’ moment I had not considered before now. The Creed is only the beginning of our faith and there is so much more….something to pray over for the next few days - thanks!
Great article Mark. It shows why humility is a requirement for a Catholic outlook on life.
“Catholics, in contrast, agree about Everything while disagreeing about everything else.”
I am sure my heart will still be laughing as I receive the Holy Eucharist tomorrow! If this is, indeed, thine own statement it is worthy of a Chesterton Award! If not thank you, kindly, for passing it on; my meager mind needs such tidbits.
Mark
Catholics, in contrast, agree about Everything while disagreeing about everything else.
A comment worthy of the great G.K. Chesterton! I might start calling you Uncle Chestnut:)
(even the combox image agrees with me! it says “indeed” LOL)
When someone has to constantly repeat that they are more logical than you are, it’s because you would never think so otherwise. The same with being more educated, more intelligent, more knowledgeable, etc.
Mark Shea,
Thanks for making my point for me. An ideology is a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group or culture…. A systematic body of concepts especially about human life or culture. The creed is an ideological statement.
This relates to CS Lewis’s tetrachotomy exercise:
Take the four fields of religion, science, technology and magic (the alchemy and divining variety, not the white tigers and scantily clad assistants variety). Split them into two groups of two similar fields.
Most people today group science and technology together, and religion and magic together. The former involve the natural world, the latter the supernatural, so this is understandable.
But Lewis pointed out a more profound split: grouping religion and science together, and magic and technology together. The former are both ways of conforming one’s mind to reality (either natural or supernatural). The latter are both ways of, given one’s own desires, conforming reality to satiate those desires. Conforming reality to one’s mind.
Religion is accounted for. Ideology clearly falls in the second camp though. It is a particular idea or worldview, to which everything is then judged against and must be conformed to.
It is certainly possible to take precepts of religion as ideologies. But that activity itself is no longer religion.
In terms of realities, the Church only proposes, not imposes. Someone Great once said that…
..“It is a particular idea or worldview, to which everything is then judged against and must be conformed to”....
“Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and moral values.” —(Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973) via wikipedia.
Who is this Geertz fellow, and why should I believe him?
Maureen,
Whether or not you “believe” Geertz is up to you.
He was a major cultural anthropologist, and he, along with Victor Turner and Mary Douglas, were quite influential a couple of decades ago.
“Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and moral values.” —(Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System, 1973) via wikipedia.
In short, atheism is a religion. True. But the above does not establish that the Catholic Faith is an ideology (i.e., a reductionistic attempt at an All-Explaining theory of Everything). Indeed, “religion” is such a hugely diverse phenomenon that even defining it is tough. Buddhism, for instance, gets called a religion, despite the fact there is no god to worship. You could just as soon replace the word “religion” with “culture”, “philosophy”, “politics”, “myth” or “art” in that definition and it would apply.
JR:
It not mine. I stole it from Chesterton.
Kevin:
Yeah, Right and the various other Evangelical Atheist who turn up to preen on their superior intellect invariably demonstrate that those who worship the intellect do not use it. On a previous thread, one of them emitted vast quantities of ASCII like a panicked squid to try to concoct a basis for morality in a world of mindless time, space, matter and energy. When he was all done, zillions of posts later, it all came down to “Might makes Right.” And yet he remained immovably convinced of his superiority to the theistic human herd. Embarrassing.
“The Church’s message is, in part, we don’t understand much, but we do know God exists and that he has told us a few truths (sketched in the Creed) which we believe.”
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I don’t even understand that much. This is why I am an agnostic.
—-
Atheists can be very good people, or very bad people. The only requirement for atheism is the denial or disbelief in any God or gods. It may be able to be argued that this sort of atheism makes some people worse, but it seems to make some people better. My agnosticism has certainly helped me to live a happier and more virtuous and positive life; the same must be true for some atheists. The problem is not in the religion. It’s not in the ideology. It’s in the human being. The problem is us.
Paul:
I’ve never seen the embrace of atheism by former theists make them better people. Typically, it turns them from angry unpleasant theistic fundamentalists to angry unpleasant atheistic fundamentalists who obsessively ride the hobby horse of their hatred of their now-despised former culture. Happily such people are a minority. Most people who leave theism drift away and remain, like you, agnostic, not sure of what they think and therefore not bent on avenging themselves since they have no idea what they believe or whether they think it’s true. Passionate atheists have set themselves the task of heaping contempt, not just on God, but on the majority of the human race who believe in God or gods. So they are bound to suffer from tedious and boring Supermen of Whom the Untermenschen are Unworthy complexes that make them crashing bores. Agnostics, not so cock sure of themselves, tend to be much more pleasant company. You are, however, dead right that the problem is us. This is one of the many things evangelical atheists forget when they pass effortlessly from saying there is no God to railing at him for the way he made the world.
Thanks for this - I have been confronted quite a bit by students and friends who are having serious doubts, or coming from atheistic perspectives. I think that Sam Harris actually highlights the problems with a concept called “religion” - culturally, many things fit with atheists’ and others’ views of “religion” in that they have ritual practices and beliefs and so on. Civic America is also a “religion” in this sense. And so the term ultimately ends up meaning so very little that it would be better not to blame something called “religion” for most, or all, of the wars and other evil things that have happened. (To say this is not the same thing as recognizing that CHristians, individually and as a group, have perpetrated evils - just not inherently more so than others.)
Jana: When Professional Atheists denounce “religion” what they usually mean is “Abrahamic Religion, which is all alike, especially Christianity”. It’s the transcendence thing. Professional atheists have an irrational fear of it and deem the most unformed and irrational intuitions to carry the weight of divine revelation—because they emerged from the sacred three pound piece of meat behind their eyes. Hitchens decided he was an atheist when he was *nine*, saying that he “just knew” theism was wrong. The rest of us are supposed to bow before the summary intuition of that nine year old boy and ignore St. Thomas. Cuz that’s rational, doncha know.
Jana Bennett! I know you! Worth de-lurking to say hi. Ahem, now to something pertinent and substantive… yes. Mark, thanks for this post. Just one of the problems with the new atheists (NAs) is their suspicious proclivity to label anything they don’t like “religion.” I’ve read all of that book of Geertz mentioned above, and lots of others proferring definitions of religions and guess what? Nobody agrees on a definition! Basically it’s something like “that part of culture that is less than or equal to all of culture and concerns meaning or sacredness or supernaturality… or something…” Well, to the NAs religion is “whatever I don’t like.” Including forms of atheism itself, if necessary in order to make one’s rhetorical point. In general, I think we need to stop looking at the NAs like they are “thinkers” at all (though I am not at all trying to disparage their mental abilities, only properly describe their social roles), and more like they are demagogues with a socio-political agenda to marginalize religion. This is no philosophical movement, it is a power-grab dressed up to look good.
@ Paul:
What one ought to evaluate is the end result of what that system of belief(or non-belief) will accomplish *if carried out to the fullest*. Look at the best examples that a group can produce.
Evaluating the “goodness” of Christians versus the “goodness” of Atheists in practice is pointless: There are committed and effective Atheists as well as those who fall into it without the slightest knowledge of what it entails - too busy watching TV to care to sort out all this “God business”.
There are committed and effective Christians as well…(etc.)
This makes for an awful lot of Christians and Atheists who look exactly the same when one witnesses the lives of either.
In recent decades Catholicism has produced Mother Theresa, Baptists have Martin Luther King Jr., Hinduism produced Mohandas Gandhi, Buddhism has Thich Quang Duc.
What pinnacles of virtue represent a life of ardent Atheism?
Mao Zedong - China does a great job of repressing religion.
Benito Mussolini - declared his atheism from his youth.
Gene Roddenberry - I admire for his work, but he’s no shining example of virtue.
Any system is capable of producing muck, but only solid ones can produce solid folks.
This is no philosophical movement, it is a power-grab dressed up to look good.
Good insight. However, I suspect that what’s going on is that the NA’s are working out the metaphysic of a liberal democracy that is considered “absolute”. That is, if you consider liberal, individualistic, democratic society to be the best (or only) way to live, that belief needs a certain theory to back it up. The NA’s have done a certain amount of thinking on this score and have worked their way back to the presuppositions that are implied by modern, liberal, democratic society.
For Christians, ideas like “modern political freedom” are not and cannot be absolute. (Really, for any human being they can’t be absolute, but most people in Western society haven’t picked up on this fact yet.) We recognize that our current political and social freedom is contingent on the common acceptance of certain, basic, society-wide values and norms - specifically Christian ones. Given society-wide acceptance of those values and norms, there can be quite a lot of freedom for individuals to choose ways of worship, certain moral values, etc, without threatening the structured peace of society. It’s perfectly fine, then, from a political point of view, to have atheists in your society and allow them to not go to church, but only as long as they’re Christian atheists.
If, however, you take modern political and social freedom as an absolute, then there cannot be a Higher Being who has created us and determines what is right and wrong for us to do, personally and socially. The NA’s recognize that if there is a God who has created, then what he says goes. But what he says can’t go (or else modern liberal democracy isn’t absolute). Therefore, there is no God. If A then B. Not B, therefore not A.
Richard Dawkins is fascinating because his main argument is almost entirely a moral one. The “science” is just a smoke screen. (Not that I think for a second he isn’t convinced that Science disproves God.) But Dawkins basically says, “Religion disables a community from considering modern democratic political and social freedom from being an absolute. But they are absolute. Therefore, religion is bad.”
You sure this is not the same person writing to himself to drum up a bunch of boring over intellectual bull. Please this was a blog on faith and wonder you people seem tp lack spirit and soul. I mean you have souls and spirit but you would not know it by all your writings. Please feel free to discuss Faith and wonder or go to Starbucks. God bless, Dr Thomas
Looks like everybody went to Starbucks…good job Doctor Smartypants.
well if they all went to starbucks perhaps they can think about the original subject of faith and wonder. I will take that as a compliment . Remember Imagination is more important then knowledge , oh to wonder wonder and wonder. God bless and Pax. Dr Thomas aka Dr smarty pants??
All right Doctor Tom! (Is it all right if I call you that?) Please take everything as a compliment. You killed this thread (with unintentionally hilarious style I might add) and now you are just the man to kick start its heart back to life. Just like a Doctor!
I’ve been wondering a few things about you. Do you wonder more about our eternal destiny or where you put your car keys? Do you wonder at the stars or what’s so great about Starbucks? If you find your keys will you go to Starbucks? If you go to Starbucks and see Jon W, Paul Rimmer, and Mark Shea there discussing “a bunch of boring over intellectual bull” will you tell them to: a) grow up, b) stick to the topic, or c) get you a latte? Will you accuse them of being “the same person writing to himself” then? What does your mind spend more time doing; wondering…or wandering? Is there a differnce? Don’t be shy. No wrong answers. Just “spirit and soul” and iiiimaaaaaaginaaaation.
P.S. God Bless you too.
Yes. Hitchens tries much the same prestidigitation with Stalin and Mao, claiming that their atheistic ideologies are really somehow “religion” and therefore the fault of, you know, not atheism or anything. Silly
_ _
Nazism and Communism are both Christian heresies, so the writer is, at bottom, on the mark. They are both movements which seek redemption and salvation by the coming of a kingdom of justice and peace; but both try to obtain it in a man-centred way, so disaster follows.
Nazism has an Austrian Christ and a Germanic Chosen People or Volk; Lebensraum is their *shalom*; the extermination of the Jews is the extermination of the Canaanites in city after city; the Thousand-Year Reich of the Messiah is the Thousand-Year Reign of the Fuhrer, destroyer, like the Messiah, of the enemies of God’s Chosen (German) People.
One can even see Hitler prophesied in Psalm 110 - parts of it are far more appropriate to the painter from Braunau than to the carpenter from Nazareth.
Hitler was also the Saviour of Germany, its renewer, and its Redeemer from the Jews. He makes a convincing Nazi Jesus; & like the real Jesus, he was the object of religious devotion. Hitler is Jesus without the Cross, the Messiah who rules by force & violence. Without the Cross, he is is a totalitarian genocidal tyrant, an apostle of the devil. Hitler is the sort of Jesus one gets if Jesus had done homage to Satan for all the kingdoms of the earth.
As for Communism, that is where seeking for the Kingship of God (while excluding God from His Kingship) gets us. The Kingdom comes, but Satan is Lord, so his will is done. “He is a murderer from the beginning” - so murder is the fruit of his kingdom.
Atheism is religious, despite itself, in that any rejection of God is by definition a religious act. That doesn’t make atheism a religion - it’s not. It’s like a negative number - it’s not a positive number, but it is related to number even so.
From another POV, Nazism & Communism are both forms of Fundamentalism - the ideological structures are the same as in in the more familar kind, though the subject-matter is different. The Papacy has also had its Fundamentalist and totalitarian moments.
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http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/sieg.htm
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Background: This material comes from a quite remarkable book that can only be compared to religious devotional literature. The editor wrote to a range of people asking them to say what Adolf Hitler meant to them. The result is language one would ordinarily apply to God. The book runs 205 pages. I translate about eighteen pages here, which is enough to give the flavor. At least 120,000 copies were published.
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The source: Günter d’Alquen, Das ist der Sieg! Briefe des Glaubens in Aufbruch und Krieg (Berlin: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1941).
Hitler was perhaps also helped by ideas about a Leader in the last days whom God would raise up to save Germany - a modern Frederick Barbarossa (1120-90). Barbarossa was believed to be sleeping in the Kyffhauser Mountains, until just such a time. It may be significant that Operation Barbarossa was the name given to the invasion of the USSR. Germans & Slavs had a long history of enmity - it would have been surprising if Hitler had not attacked the USSR and the countries west of it.
As for the idolisation of Stalin and Mao - that’s a matter of record.
whao…manticore…you just blew my mind
Thank you for the blessing. Well,if I found my car keys I would drive to the dollar store to get my coffee. I would wander a bit then pray that I will have experience to wonder. This morning i will go to Mass, then bring Eucharist to the hospital. The characters you describe at starbucks I would talk with them and if they exhibted spirit maybe I would asked them what they love. I might go flyfishing early this eve , good hatch.God is to be experienced never really known, revealed by the magic of the Holy Spirit and known through the humanity of Jesus. All I meant to say about the thread it felt the two were the same writing to each other rather cold and empy of the original intent of the thread . That was faith and wonder. I am sure they have read Descartes to Derrida and I suppose that makes them smart, but like I have said all men seek God . God bless you, much love. Dr Thomas
Thank you for your kind response. I can see now why you would get exasperated with all the looooong boring posts. God has blessed you. Please pray for us.
Thank you so much i have been on these threads for over a month now and it seems that the discussions are highly intelligent but seems to miss the point. Thank you for the kind words, an by the way I saved all the threads to give to students of mine to discuss about God Atheists Faith wonder first causes and of course metaphysics. It is a start for those who are still evolving. God bless, Dr Thomas
Yeah? Well, I wrote my comment while drinking coffee, watching a sunrise, and making love to a beautiful woman, so there.
You can’t even hit the trifecta in the hedonism hit list (sex, drugs, and rock and roll) and you’re bragging about it? You didn’t even score two out of three because coffee is only is worth half a point. Is it any wonder that the good Doctor grieves for you?
Um, that’s not hedonism. That’s just enjoying life.
It was also *cough* a little bit of a joke. I didn’t know this was a competition.
@ Jon W
sorry man…sometimes I have hard time thinking straight when I’m frying on acid, listening to Mastadon, and typing with one hand.
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