Great post. I was interested to hear about the Austin clinic bomber, but since I hadn’t heard about it before, I had not yet assigned the blame to Christians yet. In all honesty, however, if I had known I would have blamed Christian extremism. Brain cysts are not the default explanation for me as in “why would somebody do that? Oh, he must have a brain cyst…” What human beings do, even with themselves, is work things out in terms of evidence and inference (also pet peeves, the colour purple and the logic of the dirty laundry.) Thus, since most of the people who talk about the dangers of abortion are Christians (in the U.S.) and since most of the people who denounce abortion publicly do so on the basis of their Christian beliefs, and further since these people explain that abortion providers are not merely misguided, but also acting contrary to the will of God, well then, when an abortion provider encounters a bloody end, my mind immediately thinks “the Christians got him.” It isn’t unreasonable. When the federal building in Oklahoma was bombed, my first reaction was to hope it wasn’t a Muslim who had done it, because frankly it would have cemented prejudice against Muslims as people who do things like that. (No one had any problems believing the Twin Tower bombers were Muslims.)

Furthermore, if there are atheists out there who think that the absence of religion is somehow a)the absence of violence b)the absence of irrationality or c)the absence of any other kind of negativity, they have obviously been at the whisky bottle again. This is simply a stupid thing to think. However (should I mention now that I am an atheist?) it is reasonable to say that some extremely injurious actions have been undertaken on the basis of one extremist understanding of belief and God or another. It doesn’t matter which religious idea it is, it is bound to have been associated with some suspect goings-on at one time or another, and more so if it has a set of written “rules” that everybody has to adhere to. It is another set of laws, and it creates a corresponding set of inevitable criminals (atheists and everybody else who is an atheist relative to that specific belief. That’s the old “we are all atheists in respect to something…” saw.) Depending on the recommended punishment for these criminals –religiously speaking– we should be variously stoned, killed, wiped out, etc. etc. etc.

This leads to two related ideas: the first is that were this platform removed at least it wouldn’t continue to provide this handy an excuse to be violent to others and the second is that the religious extremism which most concerns me exists because it has a textual foundation.

The problem isn’t that I think, even for a lonesome second, that, in the main, religious people are going to go off their heads and shoot me, or bomb me, or actually do anything except be my neighbours, friends, teachers and grocers. The problem is that as long as it is okay for you to think that the Bible is the Word of God, then you and I are hardly in a position to say that the scarier imperatives found in the Bible (I won’t go into them, I”m sure you know the ones I mean) are “less” the Word of God than the nice bits about loving your neighbour and feeding the hungry.

Which is to say that the notion of “Holiness” gives an indiscriminate authority to everything in the Bible, and is thus open to every person reading it, and to every interpretation of every person reading it. Think what patriarchy, for example, has used it for. Sexists can quote chapter and verse with the best of them. Since we can’t actually tell them that it isn’t in the Bible, then we have to scuttle about and fight and argue and insist to everybody else that ALTHOUGH it is in the Bible, it is nevertheless wrong.

It seems more efficient to say that the Bible is not holy. However, there are some very worthwhile ideas in the Bible and of course, following those ideas is highly recommended. The Bible doesn’t need to be sacred or special in order for you to find the good in it that there is–I frequently find wonderful things in the Bible myself and I don’t find it any more sacred than Shakespeare’s plays. But it DOES have to be sacred or special in order for you to act in ways that you would otherwise find irrational, perverse or just otherwise horrible, as otherwise you would dismiss them.

Atheists are militating against the idea of the Bible or any other sacred text, or sacred anything for that matter, getting a free pass from logic, common sense and common morality.

Hello NM, thanks for your comments.

I’m not going to respond to everything you mentioned (I’m at work), but I will address what I feel to be the overall sentiment of your comment.

There are always going to be problems with any sort of belief system. Christianity has both a great and tragic history. The same can be said of Islam, and every other religion in this world. Even non-belief in anything but science can be traced back to both great and appalling things.

It’s easy to thumb through the Bible or the Koran or any other religious text and say, “Wow. That’s complete bullshit.” It’s a deal breaker for a lot of people. I understand that.

But what do we know, really. We don’t know for sure how exactly these texts were written. We don’t know if there was a pillar of fire in the desert. Or if Jesus really did resurrect. What I do know is that my heart is at peace with the idea, just like your heart so staunchly affirms that what you know about the Bible and science to be true — the degree of our faith in belief or non-belief is not about the sanity of our mind, but rather the torrent of questions raging inside our hearts.

People don’t believe in anything because there is sound scientific evidence. It contradicts the very definition of “faith.”

I wish I could believe in grand ideas of logic and common sense and the big one, common morality. But from what I’ve observed about the world, such things will be impossible to achieve. You will never get the entire world to agree that murder for any reason is wrong. No, murder is right in some cases and wrong in others. What about revenge, or rape, or incest, or if we don’t, the mother will die. Is murder wrong in every case, or do we change our definition of murder?

This thought process could be applied to any facet of “common morality.” Who decides what is common?

These are some of the issues I wrestle with when trying to understand atheism and those who ascribe to it.

Hi again.

I started to think about your question about common morality, and I have some further suggestions. Suggestion is making it sound far too sensible, though. Let’s say I have some further reflections. But when I had written it I saw it was quite long and removed it: blogging on other people’s blogs is just bad manners. Instead, I thought I would ask you if you would like to see it, since I am not going to feel in the least offended if you declined (I can’t take it personally, not knowing you and all!)
If you don’t, I’ll just thank you now for sharing your thoughts with me, and I’ll be back to read what you have to write from time to time.
Regards.
N

Nina, feel free to do any of the following. You can post your comment here. You can post it in the “conversations” part of the blog (right sidebar) or you can email them to me. Thanks for your thoughts. I enjoy them.

Oops, sorry. I sent a comment to the wrong post, I think. Really sorry. Delete it if you like: I’ve used up a lot of your space. I want to thank you again for letting me think through all this on your time, so to speak. It helped a lot.
NM

I like to read. Before I got married my wife and I read a good book about love languages. Basically, the author believed everyone had a different language to communicate the same feelings, thoughts, and emotions.

Last weekend I picked up “Letter to a Christian Nation” by Sam Harris at the library. It’s my first real atheist’s literature. It really has made angry at times and sad at others. Something I realized is I speak “Christianize” and Harris only seems to have taken a couple of high school classes in the language (ha-ha). Seriously, he is an angry writer and probably for the right reasons (in many cases). I don’t agree with everything he has to say (probably disagree 95%), but I do hate the impression faith has had on mankind. No matter where your faith is centered – no faith was birthed to kill, steal, and destroy. Muhammad didn’t call for car bombs, Jains don’t advocate violent protest, and Jesus did call for His followers to fight against people’s rights. I’m sure most leaders of faith movements would be disappointed in what has come of their movement.

As for me I chose Jesus. I don’t like the title “Christian” because of what it comes with (history, preconceived notions, leadership), but I do consider myself a believer in the Jesus of the Bible. I can’t prove in a debate He exists or that He will actually return for me, but no one can disprove my experience with Him. It’s here that Mr. Harris and I speak different languages because Science doesn’t value experience. Harris missed used scripture and rightfully so because He doesn’t understand the value of the Bible and its language (hell, most people don’t appreciate its language). It’s just another book to him and used to support evidence and facts. Faith in an unexplainable God is nonsense to Him as much as his faith in science and logic is nonsense to me. We speak different languages. Our words carry different value.

I think Jesus knew we would always have this problem – disbelief in God has always existed. Jesus’ message wasn’t one of “Go and make disciples with force, if they don’t convert take their rights away or force them to obey…”Although some of His disciples would have liked that command. His message was - Go and Show them. Jesus didn’t have to tell someone He was the Christ, He simply healed, loved, spoke peace, called nature into order, offered freedom to the oppressed. I know that sounds crazy sense traditionally Christians have used force and misguided actions.

Can I prove Jesus did healed the sick, raised the dead, controlled nature – NO – but you can’t convince me He didn’t because something inside us all says He did. That is our journey and burden.

I’m reading McLaren and Onfray together (I just thought that I would put them in dialogue in my head.) May I have other suggestions for an-atheist-who-wants-to-understand, please? I’m not overly intellectual, but I’ve read some theology and I have read some post-modern theory and I’ve done some work on post-colonialism. What works would anyone recommend that I turn my attention to next? Thanks in advance.
N

Good subject bro.

I’ve been spending a little time with atheist friends as well. Those who are members of the Ethical Society of Boston might challenge your question on the origin of a moral code apart from religious dictate.