Atheist.
The word embodies a certain, and not small amount of, hostility, don’t you think? It can inadvertently be hissed when spoken, resembling an act of mild aggression. It’s a title certainly, almost an epithet. I, the atheist. Yet to be an atheist is not really to be a something or a someone, and I do not mean that to be demeaning. To be an atheist by definition it is to be a not something. It is a negation. If theists are defined as people of God, or believers, atheists are not the antithesis unbelievers. Atheists are virtually people of not-god.
I don’t like that. There is more to absolutely everyone than merely what they are not. Atheists are more than what they are not. Do atheists believe in the human spirit? They surely cannot be people of not-spirit. Are atheists not-spirit too?
I believe in such a thing as a human spirit, but then, I would. I am a theist, and a Christian. However, I don’t believe the human spirit is inextricably linked to my Christian God. I think it can be extricated and attached to whatever a person chooses, or to nothing at all. I think it would be a great shame if an atheist went all out and denied that spirituality existed as well as god, because spirit could turn out to be something we – the people of-God, and the people of not-god – all have in common.
And if we all need anything, it’s certainly not more evidence for the existence or non-existence of God. The last thing human beings need is one more reason to be different or to disagree. What we need is something in common.
What I dislike about the word atheist is not that it implies the non-existence of God. It’s the felt hostility, the implied difference and the inferred opposition. I personally couldn’t care less about whether other people believe God exists or not. I know how I came to the conclusion He does. I’ve given it a lot of thought. It was not something anyone trained me to do, talked me into or taught me from a book. (My past churchgoing and history of religious practice is another story.) When it comes to God not actually existing, atheists could be right for all I know – but the evidence for the non-existence of God doesn’t change things for me one bit. I believe. Because it suits me.
My spirituality is not based on evidence, facts or the physical reality of God or not-god. I don’t believe in God because I need answers – I believe in God because I like questions. I crave mystery. I want not to know. Whilst I seek security and knowledge and stability, I still long to be confounded and overwhelmed. I want there to be something bigger than me, an unknowable, an inconceivable. I like it.
Whilst study, learning, reading and science is what my brain does for fun, myth, mystery, prayer, worship and meditation is what my spirit does for fun. I can do all this concurrently and it’s never a problem. My love for mystery and situation in reality don’t fight for my attention.
In case it matters, as someone who believes in God, I stopped worrying about heaven and hell a while ago. I found it distracting. I believe in living in the moment. This day has the best of me. These people I am with now have the best of me. I don’t agree with being indifferent and unkind to people now in the hopes of getting into someplace more restful and more exclusive away from them all later. You can’t really live that way. It makes you crazy.
While there is more to life than worrying about getting to be somewhere restful when you die, it troubles me when atheists dismiss outright as idiots and fools those who sometimes – or all the time – permit their spiritual desire for mystery and myth overwhelm their intellectual desire for facts and evidence. Many believers don’t believe simply as a fallback for not being able to understand facts and evidence. Theism is not a catch-all for stupid people. We believe because believing is sometimes – inexplicably – better for us and far more satisfying than knowing is.
And this is why truth is subjective. For some, truth is the evidence, the reality, the tangible and the provable. For others, truth is the unknowable, the intangible, the unreal and the mysterious. I can’t reconcile science and faith, because I don’t try to. Both leave me in awe, both leave me mystified, both make me fall back in wonder. The unknowable things in God and science keeps things in perspective for me. I like to be overwhelmed. It keeps me busy.
I don’t object to the right of the atheist to live with not-god. They may live in the world of facts and evidence, if that’s what makes them happy. Unfortunately, I have observed a great many atheists don’t seem to be happy. A great many are, but I frequently seem to encounter ones who are not. I can tell the ones who are not. They have trouble being succinct. A lot of big words can make a person very tired.
I really, really hope not all atheists deny the existence of spirit as well as the existence of god. I really, really want there to be something we all have in common, something we can actually talk about other than what we don’t agree on. Sadly, just being human isn’t enough to make us all get along.
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The God-Shaped Hole
It troubles me when atheists dismiss outright as idiots and fools those who sometimes – or all the time – permit their spiritual desire for mystery and myth overwhelm their intellectual desire for facts and evidence.
The problem is not the desire for mystery and myth. The problem is that a lot of religious people use faith, mystery, and myth to actively justify things that you (I hope) and I would consider, well, bad. A lot of religious people believe that women should be subordinate to men, that women and their bodies are the property of their fathers or husbands, the poor and weak should be subordinate to the rich and powerful, that homosexuality is an abomination, that people of color are inherently inferior to white people, that non-Westerners are inherently inferior to Western Europeans, etc. ad nauseam.
A lot of people use faith, mystery, and myth to justify resistance to science, and a lie in the defense of a higher truth is no lie at all. So they lie about the evidence for evolution, they lie about the medical evidence about abortion, they lie about the medical evidence for vaccination. The important thing is to convince people about the greater truth, the “subjective” truth they know through faith; and Satan fools our eyes (as they know through faith), so lying about the evidence is just rejecting Satan’s ruses, which can be only for the good. Indeed, if truth is subjective, it is impossible to lie: whatever I say I believe really is true.
A lot of people use faith, mystery, and myth to protect and defend abominable acts by members of their clergy. It is more important, they say, to protect the reputation of the church than to subject its clergy to the sovereignty of democratic, secular law.
A lot of religious people think these things are all good, that it’s good to oppress women, that it’s good to convince people that evolution has no scientific basis, that it’s good to protect a pedophile priest, and moreover they believe that they have a duty and obligation to ensure that everyone else believes that these things are good, or, failing that, to ensure that everyone behaves as though these things are good. The higher truth, that they know through faith, is what matters, is all that matters.
Atheists attack these beliefs not at the surface but at the root. Not because faith always leads to evil, but because faith can make any belief, good or bad, immune to criticism. So when atheists criticize the faith that is at the root of a lot of bad beliefs, believers who use faith to justify good beliefs feel the root of their own beliefs is under attack. We know this happens, and that’s just too bad.
A lot of religious people are, well, jerks, and it’s plain (to us) that their jerkiness is very intimately related to their faith. So we attack the faith.
We don’t have much sympathy even for “moderate” faith. If all faith were “moderate”, we wouldn’t attack it (we don’t care how you live your private life), but we wouldn’t admire your faith. We would keep our opinion to ourselves out of politeness, but we would still believe your faith was silly and a little weak. So the fact that your faith suffers when we attack the faith of jerks doesn’t deter us much.
When jerkiness stops being a huge part and parcel of religion, when jerks stop justifying their jerkiness through faith, and insisting that faith renders their jerkiness immune from criticism, we can have a new conversation about faith. If the “moderate” religious actually succeed in pulling the jerkiness out of religion and still keeping the faith, mystery, and myth, we can have a new conversation about religion. But until then, we’re going to attack what we see as the root of these evils, which is that faith can be used to justify anything, and we are not going to protect your faith at the cost of protecting theirs.
Larry, I sincerely thank you for coming by, for reading my post, and for taking the time to address these issues so thoughtfully. I really appreciate it, and enjoyed reading your thoughts immensely. I also hope we can begin some new conversations. I look forward to those.