When Atheists and Christians Scandalously Agree

During my last post, I intentionally included the word “scandalous” throughout the article – because that sort of thing seems to increase viewership on Hannity’s and Bill Maher’s TV shows.  And, as a result of this strategy, I took a little bit of reasonable flak for calling the agreement of atheists and Christians scandalous, when it fact it is a perfectly benign and healthy part of life that – frankly – we could all use a little more of.

Now, a normal person would simply clarify that he didn’t mean the word “scandalous” to be taken seriously (I didn’t) and was only being rather intentionally silly and cheeky.  As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now:

I am not a normal person.

And thus rather than taking such an imminently reasonable strategy, I have instead included the offending word in the title of this post and justified its inclusion with the following graph, which I hope convinces you that the very survival of the Apologetic Professor depends on increasing scandalous language:

graph_scandalous language

No, seriously (I mean it this time!), to those of you who commented on my last post, I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion.  If you are just joining in, a few weeks ago we had a guest poster – an atheist! – named Grundy.  I have posted a series of rebuttals to his excellent article.  And I must say that Grundy has been an incredibly good sport in engaging my rebuttals with very reasonable and gracious replies.

This week, I continue my irritating (yet I hope mildly endearing) theme of pointing out some ways in which Grundy and I actually agree – and illustrating how those points do not really affect my own faith.  My goal here is not to put words in Grundy’s mouth – so I’d like to note that he wasn’t really trying to make an argument for atheism per se in his post.  Rather, my point is to simply illustrate how his article relates to my own faith.  So I hope the following comments are taken in that spirit!

[From the Apologetic Professor editorial staff:  We don’t think he succeeded in being conciliatory. Indeed, we are quite sure he did not really even try.  We here at the Apologetic Professor would like to express our sincere regrets for the pompous hypocrisy of the senior writer.  To paraphrase Dilbert, the man is like a huge insincere spider, weaving poorly-constructed, yet surprisingly-effective, webs of hypocrisy!  And we’re his friends! I’d hate to think what his enemies would say.]

Uh…huh.  Thanks, guys.  Anywho, as with my last couple of posts, I’ll list Grundy’s reasons for being an atheist and then my own responses.

Grundy’s reason for being an atheist: “I am comfortable with my eventual non-existence.”

Apologetic Professor response: So am I.  At least, I am as comfortable with it as Grundy is.  I suspect that both of us would sing a different tune if we were being held at gunpoint!

Indeed, more than just being comfortable with it, in those horrible, awful moments when I have suffered the indignity known as a kidney stone, I would definitely prefer non-existence to life.  Incredible pain has a way of offering some useful clarity.

Yet this isn’t just about comfort with non-existence in the abstract.  It’s rather about a desire for Heaven in the concrete.  I’m abstractly comfortable with my potential non-existence, in the same way I’m abstractly comfortable with the idea of not eating broccoli for the rest of my life.  But in the concrete, I still have a desire for food. Well, the Bible says God has “set eternity in the hearts of men.”  I think that’s true.  All else being equal, in a kidney-stone-free-state, I would rather live than die.  I’m not alone: That’s pretty much fundamental, as far as we can tell, for all species.  Life wants to go on living. If it didn’t, it would not be life for very long.

levitra on line http://secretworldchronicle.com/about/voice-talent-veronica-giguere/ Some men do not receive any benefit from external massage. Generics also play an enormous half in other sorts of drugs like here are the findings viagra prices. This process makes the vessels flexible and allows the design of future clinical trials with more accurate selection and stratification of the population under pfizer viagra mastercard investigation. Physically it leads you to many health issues sample of viagra and disorders amongst them one is erectile dysfunction. And to some degree that survival instinct, stretched across time, implies a desire for eternal life.  All else being equal, I would rather live forever in eternal bliss than I would not live at all.  So I may be comfortable with my non-existence, but there is a sense in which I (and probably, in varying degrees, everyone) have a motive to go on living, if I had a choice.

(Of course, I also, like any sane person, prefer non-existence to both kidney stones…and hell. We shoot horses when they are in pain and do not seem capable of recovering.  It’s hardly controversial to say that. But talking about hell is a different issue entirely, and one that I’m going to leave aside in this post.)

What I’d like to emphasize here is this: Yet again, I completely agree with Grundy on pretty much all these points, and yet again I’m completely unaffected in my belief in Christ.  So if we’re asking the question – and that is the primary question these debates are about – of whether or not God exists, to me my own comfort with my non-existence is essentially irrelevant.

(For the next point, I think it’s useful to give Grundy’s entire quote, so that I’m not misrepresenting what he said.)

Grundy’s reason for being an atheist: “I am uncomfortable with absolute authority. If there is anything we can learn from history, it’s that leaders often do horrible things when no checks or balances are in place. In fact, there is no one there to tell them what they are doing is horrible–because if anyone did, something horrible would happen to them. This is a function of relative power and authority. God, if He exists, has ultimate power and authority. The authors of the bible knew this and have depicted Yahweh and/or Jehovah accordingly. Both experience and scripture inform my aversion to absolute authority, but it doesn’t contribute to my disbelief in God. It contributes to why I wouldn’t worship Him even if He did exist.”

Apologetic Professor response: This is trickier.  On the one hand, you could probably search the earth and stars, and you’d be hard pressed to find someone more uncomfortable with absolute authority than yours truly.  I hate people telling me what to do, just because they happen to be in charge.  Pretty much anyone that knows me knows that you can basically never get me to do anything by simply telling me to do it.  I’m funny that way.  [Apologetic Professor editorial staff: It’s actually not that funny.]

Indeed, one of the reasons Jesus appeals to me is that He was (and is) leading a kind of rebellion against established religious authority.  Essentially the only group of people He consistently railed on was the religious establishment.  He walked into their primary Temple and threw them out, for crying out loud!  You gotta love His chutzpah.  I’ve often felt Jesus is at the fore of an eternal revolution – a revolution against the darker part of my own nature, against the darker part of secular culture…and against the darker part of claimed religious authority.  I imagine that if He showed up today, some of the people who would be most shocked at his rebukes would be Christian leaders! (And in fact, that’s almost word-for-word what He says will happen in the Bible – a lot of people are going to be surprised when He comes).

So I’m with Grundy on this one up to a point.  I also agree with the sentiment that absolute authority in human hands is terrible – I’ve said on this blog before that I think the Church has historically been at her worst when she’s had the most political power.

But…well, look.  All that being said, (1) it really doesn’t matter one whit whether or not Grundy and I are comfortable with absolute authority – it only matters if that authority exists.  To be fair, Grundy said explicitly that he wasn’t using this as an argument against God’s existence, only that He would not worship a God who had absolute power.  Granted – but since we are arguing about God’s existence in the main here, I’d like to point out that our comfort level, one way or the other, may be irrelevant to the truth of the matter.

More importantly, (2) I don’t think Grundy’s implication that you should not worship someone just because they have authority is very sensible.  I don’t worship God because He is in control; I worship Him because He is good.  Both Hitler and Gandhi had power; my reason for disrespecting Hitler and respecting Gandhi is because I think one largely bad and one largely good; not because one had power and one didn’t.

In fact, I think of this question somewhat the other way around: If I could choose, would I want a universe that (a) was completely amoral, run by nothing, meaning nothing, and essentially chaotic, (b) was run by some guiding Power that was completely good and had my best interests at heart, or (c) was run by an evil guiding power?  And I think answer c absolutely sucks – I’d pick “a” to that.  But it’s not clear that “a” is better than “b.”  I mean, my problem with a Kingship isn’t that the King has power – the President has power, too.  My problem is that the King might be bad, and I don’t want that much power, unchecked, in the hands of a bad person.  Democracy is a kind of antidote against bad people running amok for a long time.  But even in a democracy, power is ceded; democracy is just a way to try and be sure the power doesn’t end up in bad hands permanently.  If it were always in good hands de facto, democracy would be unnecessary.

My point is not to debate political philosophy, but rather to simply say this: If God is perfect, loving, good, and just, as Christians have always claimed, then I’m not particularly uncomfortable with Him running the universe.  I don’t worship Him because He runs the universe – I worship Him because He is the kind of God that, in spite of having all claims to absolute power, gave that power up in order to save my soul.  As the Bible says, Jesus, despite being God, “did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped.”

Thus I worship Him because He is good, and because He is good, I’m fine with Him having power – yes, even absolute power.

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4 Responses to When Atheists and Christians Scandalously Agree

  1. Jachifflett says:

    My grasp of theology is no doubt limited, but I thought God was to be worshiped (a) because He’s God and (b) because it’s His desire/command that we worship Him? If we worship God because He’s “good”–aren’t we placing “good” (whatever we mean by that) above God? Don’t get me wrong; I’d be all for that, I just didn’t think it was the Judeo-Christian teaching.

  2. The Apologetic Professor says:

    Thanks, Jack!

    Actually, despite all my bluster, my grasp of the history of theology is pretty limited, too. My feeling from what I have read/heard is that this is actually a matter of debate amongst Christian theological schools. Some people say what your hypothetical theologians said; some people say what I said.

    C.S. Lewis, for example, argued that when the Bible says that God “demands” praise, it means it more like a fine piece of art “demands” it (e.g., it calls it out spontaneously if it is seen because of its qualities) than like a dictator “demands” it.

    I get the logical point about saying I worship Him because He is good = I’m putting a “standard” on God that’s above Him; I’ve heard that before; I think that’s the most typical argument from the camp you mentioned. But I think it’s kind of like the logic of the ontological argument: In one sense, I suppose its true, strictly speaking. But in another sense, I think it’s simply a false dichotomy that doesn’t exactly have much to do with reality as it actually is. If God were perfectly good and completely all-powerful, then to relate to Him at all correctly would be to relate to Him as perfectly good and all-powerful — like a pristine and awe-inspiring giant mountain. If He were going to command us to do anything in that regard, it would be to worship Him. As someone once said, “if there were something better than God, God would command us to worship that.” So in a world where God is the best thing going, Him commanding us to acknowledge that He is the best thing going is not really incongruent with the idea that He IS the best thing going.

    And anyway, God either doesn’t exist or isn’t the kind of being to “command” praise in the dictator sense — because if He wanted to simply command it from everyone, He isn’t doing a very good job of it. It seems obvious to me that God wants something else besides superficial praise out of sheer forced obedience.

    Having said that, I certainly do see and appreciate your point. To get to the larger question of Judeo-Christian teaching, I think either view has historically been held by a lot of Christians (and probably most Christians don’t really frame the issue in this way — I’d guess most people don’t really see the problem to begin with). So I don’t know if mine is the majority view within the faith or not — but I do feel confident it is an acceptable view within Christianity. (“View” is too strong — mostly, in this case, I was just describing my own reasons and experiences to go alongside of Grundy’s reasons and experiences). And personally, I find it hard to read the Bible and imagine that God does not want me to worship Him because He is good. I respect His power, but I LOVE His goodness. I respect the fact that He could kick me out of His house anytime He wants; but what makes me love Him is that, when I left of my own accord, ruined my life, and came back He…was running to greet me with open arms.

    Thanks as always for your thoughtful comment!

  3. Luke: for an atheist, I sure seem to have a lot to say about God, don’t I?

    I agree with you that the biblical God wants more than “superficial praise out of sheer forced obedience”–he famously and explicitly wants the entirety of our love and of our lives, and while he may be no “dictator,” he certainly issues a good many non-negotiable demands (“commandments,” I believe they’re called). Mr. Lewis’ sophisticated explanation of how we should understand “demands” in this context might be persuasive if only (a) there was anything close to universal agreement about what constitutes “a fine piece of art” and (b) failure to appreciate said art was punishable by eternal torment. If God “demands” worship only in the sense that the Mona Lisa or a Beethoven symphony “demands” admiration–I for one prefer Picasso and Elvis Presley, and I don’t believe I should burn in hell for that preference.

    The biblical God may well be good–but as the tale of Abraham & Isaac makes clear, he is first and foremost God (the Book of Job makes the same point at greater length). The implicit claim that we would be entitled to cease worshiping God if he ceased to be good–however unlikely or unfathomable that event–is, if I’m not mistaken, the essence of Adam & Eve’s “fall”: claiming, that is, to be able to discern “good” and “evil” for ourselves–and, worse, subjecting God himself to our discernment. The biblical God was reported to have done, and to have countenanced, an awful lot of things that no moral person of the 21st century would consider “good”.

    Which isn’t to discount your personal experience, of course–I speak similarly, with gratitude and wonder, of the many people who have, over the years, forgiven my prodigal ways and restored me to myself; I give them credit and even praise–which, for a Christian, properly belong to a God who is self-admittedly jealous and who will no doubt punish my misdirected gratitude.

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