How to be an atheist: A lesson in Muscularity

I begin this post with an excerpt from an essay in Denys Turner's excellent book 'Faith Seeking', which occurs at the conclusion of the Yale philosopher-theologian's challenge to contemporary atheists. Turner writes as follows right at the conclusion of his discussion:

'So, 'How to be an atheist?' It is not easy; you need to work at it. Be intellectually adult, get an education, get yourself a discipline; resist all temptation to ask such questions as you do not know in principle can be answered, being careful to suppress any which might seem to push thought off civilized limits; be reasonable, lest you find yourself being committed to an excessive rationality; and have the good manners to scratch no itches which occur in intellectually embarassing places - at least in public...if you want to be an atheist, then, it is necessary only to find that the world is to be a platitudinously dull fact. But, I warn you, to be as resolute as it takes in the conviction of such cosmic dullness requires much hard work, not a little training, and a powerful mental asceticism. Anything less resolute, and you run the risk of affliction by theological itches...' [Faith Seeking, p.22]

Perhaps the thing I like most about this description is its stern focus on the drab conformity of much atheism, which consists in its sweeping under the proverbial carpet of life's big questions. The image which comes most readily to my mind in this context is the desire of Adam and Eve to 'hide' from God in the garden of Eden, post fruit taking, a desire which - Paul assures us (1 Cor. 15:22) - leads only to death. In Christ, meanwhile, hiding is unnecessary. Being made alive involves coming out into the open; it involves countering and reacting against the drab conformity which life in hiding demands.

However, when light comes into the world, to evoke an image from John's Gospel, some people prefer to stay in the darkness. The darkness is comfort in numbers, the realm of uncontroversy and macho back slapping; the darkness is a world in which deaths are plotted, and where the demise of the wilfully unrecognised light is hoped for. The darkness refuses to stretch out its arms to its deliverer and instead reaches to its own deliverance, which it finds confirmed in others doing the same thing. Johannine imagery, for all its worth here, only takes us so far.

What Turner's comment invites us to understand is that 'atheism' - conceived in its opposition to Christian faith - thrives in its contemporary forms on being 'civilized', staying 'rational', and refusing to move into 'uncivilized' or 'irrational' circles or trains of thoughts. The complaint owes its urgency, I think, not only to the author's Marxist sympathies. It also comes out of a genuine understanding of how the Pharisaic legalism which the Gospels can so strongly protest against can work. Not, you will understand, that I think Jesus was 'out to get' the Pharisees or to rebel against 'Pharisaism' per se: it is more likely, certainly, that he saw in Pharisaism much that was worthy of admiration, much to be commended - but also the potential for abuse, serious abuse - and this was something, I think, which certain Pharisees were themselves not particularly given to seeing. In a way, Pharisaism in its negative guises (the guises which Jesus protested against) and Atheism (that is, Muscular, Legalistic, Atheism with a capital A) are natural bedfellows.

They both start from principles of order and rationality, on the need for being civilized. And they take strong exception to acts of dissidence or words of complaint against them. And if we return to Denys Turner's words, they both require a stringent intellectual regime to support them, in which asking certain questions is ruled out de rigueur - on the basis of some unstated, hidden, a priori reasoning. Christian faith, and Christian lives, are best realised very often as acts of dissidence, as sustained attempts to break through barriers of order and rationality which are constructed in the name of reason, order and being civilized. Love, and loving behaviour cannot be relied upon to conform to these expectations; the holy spirit, the spirit of love, is too unbridled for the harness of pure reason, pure order, pure civilization, as they are conceived by Muscular Atheists. For their constructions - made apart from a political stance which finds its origin in the desire for love of God and neighbour (does love consist above all in its rationality??) - miss the mark very profoundly. And this is so even while the most collegiate support for the atheist worldview is available among friendly peers who would also sweep a certain kind of question under the carpet as part of the intellectual training in rationality and being civilized which Good Atheist Thought relies upon.

As for Christianity, meanwhile, the only wisdom, the only reason, consists in the love of God and of neighbour (which is like it). And here, a point which many Christians themselves miss needs to be made: to love as Christ demands is not to sit cosily in intellectual communion, with regimes of reason and order comfortably in place. For that is what the Pharisees and the Atheists do. To love is to believe, to be Christlike, and to pick up our crosses and follow: to love is to do what is right and to feel and think it throught doing it. And doing means challenging, overturning, reinventing, creating. This means, very often, doing what the legalists would have you not do: it involves overthrowing their tables, cracking the intellectual whip and breaking down the barriers of order and reason which they construct to maintain their communities of cosy control and peer support. God's love seeks people out: it won't let them hide. It's a lesson many Christians - myself included - need constantly to remind ourselves of.

A Sermon I gave [4]

If we accept that to be human is, whether we like it or not, to have ‘gods’ – whether they are microscopes or electrons or chromosomes, as in the case of the scientistic fundamentalists I have been describing – or football players, popstars or film actors, as in the case of many of the rest of us, it’s worth entering seriously into the business of thinking about the kind of God or gods we in our heart of hearts really want to have. And here, I think, the Christian Gospel offers us some vital insights. Crucially, it insists that the thing about most so-called gods is that they are dead. Not dead in some bare physical sense: David Beckham is very much alive and well, of course, as are many of the other gods of stage and screen whose lives we are tempted to mould ours around, both in terms of the money we apportion to them and in terms of our efforts to look and be more like them. But they are certainly dead nonetheless, and it is important to appreciate how this is so. They are dead, I think, because what they offer to their devotees is so often offered only in exchange for some reward: it is a form of pay packet, in other words, or some other form of gratification for an ailing sense of self esteem.

The radical thing about the Christian God is that he is not motivated by these things – he doesn’t need a paypacket and his self-esteem does not need to be bolstered. And gods who need paypackets or bolstered self esteem aren’t, I would suggest, in spite of appearances, particularly powerful or even interesting gods. It’s not that such gods are wholly bad or evil or conceited: that’s not it. It’s just that what they really are is human, all too human, just like us: which, to be clear, is not to say wholly bad or evil or conceited but just enough of each to make worshipping them a morally dubious activity, curiously similar in character, I would wager, to worshipping oneself or one’s own sense of ‘Reasoning’. And even if these ‘human’ gods can be very good at singing a song or bending a football over a wall, they’re still not – in the big scheme of things – worth climbing trees to see.

For they would let you look at them for a while but sooner or later would demand a pay packet or some words of eulogy to enhance their deficient senses of self esteem. They might, it is true, tell you that you’re worth a million dollars and that you ought to think more of yourself – even deserve to do so – just like they think they do; I’m thinking here of the Gok Wans and Trinny and Susannahs of this world – people who despite the best assurances and their brash and confident public exteriors nonetheless exude – at least in the eyes of the more perceptive media commentators – a real and nagging lack of self esteem. If some of us find ourselves being taken on board by the message of self fulfilment and self realisation of a Gok or a Trinny, do we really find the gospel they offer, upon reflection, a satisfactory one?

Would Trinny advise us to hold off on the expensive hand bags and necklaces and embrace us in a new light for having sold half our goods to the poor, as Jesus does in the story of Zacchaeus? Would Gok advise us to seek out the needy – as opposed to the local John Lewis – in our search for a renewed sense of life’s meaning?

Even if Gok and Trinny profess to care about the decisions we might make in the absence of their involvement (and here, I think, we can reasonably doubt their sincerity), there is no reason to suppose that the decision to do things such as these – which play no discernible part in their self improving teachings – would be regarded as anything other than at best strange, at worst stupid. For Trinny and Gok, giving your money and attention to them and to designer shoemakers and store managers, rather than to the poor, the outcast, the sick and the spiritually weak and vulnerable is how best to reach a satisfactory sense of self love.

The gospel these celebrity gods most usually preach is the Gospel of the cultivation of self, without reference to or emphasis on the importance of the cultivation of others. That this gospel stands in ideological contradistinction to the Christian gospel is so obvious as to be hardly worth saying. But it can nonetheless never be said enough that the Christian gospel’s leading idea is that the most pressing concern of humans is the love of God and the love of neighbour. And the love of self, insofar as it is important, is important only insofar as these other loves are in view. The kind of self love, then, which separates itself off from the business of loving God and of loving one’s neighbour on this view radically misses the mark. As, for that matter, does the kind of neighbour love which separates itself off from the business of loving God. For it is only through attempting to love our neighbours and attempting to love God at the same time in our innermost being that we can experience the love of God for us.

The God of Jesus Christ exemplifies this divine love, which takes the form of the gift of salvation to those who don’t have it. This gift is not an empty one: it is above all a gift of freedom from dead gods and an introduction to life with a living one through his forgiveness and our repentance, and the interchange of these in the life of the church. God’s gift is an invitation to experience and participate in a creative energy which works remorselessly and creatively in and through people – not for its own gain, but gratuitously, for their sake. It can be a guide as we proceed in the difficult, challenging and uncomfortable directions it leads us in, directions which defy even our most earnest attempts to impose regimes of ‘order’ on what is going on. And in the context of the gratuitous relationships which it opens up, we begin to discover that we are known and loved in ways we previously had not thought to know and love ourselves. For God comes to our houses while we are tax collectors and sinners, before we have begun to understand what his love is really like and before we have begun our attempts to exemplify it in our lives.

And as the third chapter of the book of Revelation, my other text this evening, asserts in the plainest possible terms, when he comes to our houses, God says: ‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me’. As for dead gods, they don’t knock. They are themselves, like us, the unwilling subjects of this true God’s saving action: for like us, they are unwilling to open the door to let in true love, as opposed to the merely self gratifying and misguided love which they can find already inside their houses. The tragic pedicament of these gods is that they and their followers have not yet found outside the love and life which Zacchaeus, the tax collector who wanted to see and know the truth and who climbed his tree and opened his door, found there.
Amen.

A Sermon I gave [3]

Continued again...
Above all, I would suggest, we see Zacchaeus going through a number of the motions which characterise much of the devotional activity which goes on across the whole spectrum of cultural activity in human societies, both in the world of Luke’s Gospel and in our own. In the story, one person – Jesus – becomes an object of interest to another, Zacchaeus, whose eagerness to see Jesus has him make special provisions to do so. At the risk of offering a mundane comparison, an obvious parallel in the contemporary world are those who show up early and queue at celebrity book signing events. Forward planning is essential: the competition to meet the interesting and famous person concerned is always strong. Another aspect of the Zacchaeus story which is worth emphasising is that he wants above all to see Jesus – to have a good view of him – and it is in order to achieve this aim that he makes his special provisions. Again, one understands his inclinations. Seeing interesting and famous people is one of the best ways of enhancing one’s experience of their interest or fame. And fame fascinates; it captures the imagination. Live appearances are invariably more exciting than ones which are experienced second hand through the medium of another person’s account. Seeing for oneself is more satisfying. And when it comes to seeing interesting people, box office seats are often preferable, whether at football games, comedy shows, the theatre, the opera, or even the visit of a prophet, as in the case of Zacchaeus: they give you a better view, even if, perhaps, you have to sacrifice something in terms of atmosphere when you sit in them.

Finally in my list of generic characteristics of Zacchaeus’ behaviour, there’s his actual encounter with Jesus: in the encounter, Zacchaeus ends up doing what he knows will be pleasing to Jesus. He acts in a radically morally upstanding way, which not only justifies Jesus’ singling him out for visitation in spite of his past misdeeds and in spite of the criticism Jesus receives for doing so. Zacchaeus also ends up exemplifying something of Jesus’ own character by exhibiting a special concern for the plight of the poor. In the latter case, what we clearly have is, at least on one level, classic fanlike adoration. Emulation of one’s heroes is just a standard feature of our behaviour as humans. As creatures of habit and imitation, the desire to emulate comes naturally to us – and the people we find to be the most impressive, attractive and interesting, or, from a more sinister perspective, the most powerful, are the ones we often do our best to emulate. This desire – whether it is consciously felt or expressed or not – motivates us as we go about our daily lives; it serves to shape how we think and behave in a wide variety of ways, from how we have our hair cut to how we pronounce our words and how we think about our personal relationships, and the ideological stances we adopt in the context of those relationships and in the context of the world at large.

Even if it seems uncomfortable for some people to admit it, we all have our heroes, whether we acknowledge them as such or not. Even for the person who adamantly maintains that they have no heroes, certain ideas and people nonetheless end up playing privileged and pivotal roles in shaping their lives. The fact is unavoidable. The determined individualist may be absolutely his own authority in his own mind but he is still implicitly paying homage to the philosophical and cultural currents which made his very individual viewpoint intellectually conceivable and/or respectable. Whether he acknowledges them or not, then, he has his heroes, in the sense of the creative forces which have served to shape his being. And the point can be extended in the context of discussions with atheists and agnostics: one can say simply ‘you have your gods, whether you acknowledge them or not. We all do’. And for most of us, having our gods means taking an interest in certain other people, such that we wish to see and hear about them in order to shape ourselves around who they are and what they are like. It’s an inescapable fact of our human situation.

Now the dyed in the wool atheist may recognise all this. And it is true that none of it may faze him. Yes, he will say, I have my gods – although I in my detached rationalism know better than to think of them in reference to this strange and defunct word, ‘god’ which you mistakenly use – and I prefer them to yours. Well, one might answer, this may be so for you and for others with such an anodyne sense of effortless wisdom. But isn’t it rather disturbing, I would continue, that many who would invoke the respectability of your view seem to have such a hard time abandoning this language of divinity, and the habits of worship which usually accompany it – whether in the context of how they think about beautiful or impressive people, or of those that do a particularly good job at beating others in sporting competitions. Is it obvious, after all, that a regime of thinking which has given rise to forms of worship which are markedly similar to the long abandoned Graeco-Roman and celtic polytheisms of our ancestors – with their exotic and unpredictable gods, and their locally oriented mythologies and folktales – represents a step forward into a new and rational post-Christian age? I can envisage the kinds of protest which such a question might engender. But I would counter them by maintaining that the sort of inane and naive mysticism of the scientistic rationalist who expects everyone to appreciate the beauty of the universe through the lens of a microscope or telescope and who eschews the idea of corporate worship stands too far removed from the visceral world of social reality to be itself worthy of serious consideration. The debate is between the different forms of corporate worship which society allows to exist – not, at least so far as I can see, with the possibility that we might one day be rid of this awkward beast, ‘religion’, altogether. For corporate worship will continue to happen in churches or in stadiums, in shops or in nightclubs.

Beautiful words from Henri De Lubac

‘Among philosophers there are some who do not want to see the problems of existence: witness a whole genealogical tree of rationalists. There are some who simply declare such problems to be already solved; such is the whole spiritual family that has a so-called ‘mystical’ tendency. Then there are some who do not want to have any solutions for them; such are many agnostics and also numerous existentialists who make this decision as a matter of principle. There are some who want to solve these problems only with the tools of reason. And there are some who, out of sheer despair of reason, blithely impute to it what they take to be faith. Finally, there are some who see and admit that what is involved here is more than just great problems. With them reason can do its proper work; but from the bottom of their hearts the cry always explodes: ‘I stretch out my arms to my deliverer’.

I don't think he wrote anything which strikes home as truly as this passage from his Paradoxes of Faith. The sense of stretching one's arms out to one's deliverer from the bottom of one's heart is the sense which, for me above all, captures the essence of the Christian yearning for God which needs to be seen at the root of - and in spite of - all attempts at philosophical or anti-theological 'systematizing'.