A friend and I drove up to Belmont College near Charlotte last night to hear Michael Novak deliver a lecture about his new book which counters atheism. It was a good chance to see the campus and learn more about the good things happening there. At these events it’s amazing how many people I meet who are readers of this blog.
Novak said that in his discussions and debates with atheist Christopher Hitchens, that Hitchens once said, “I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in the numinous. I believe in the Transcendent.” Duuh. That’s what theists actually think God is. (We think He is more than that, but he is certainly not less than that)
What amazes me about the new wave of aggressive atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens is how little they actually know about real religion, real theology. Do they deliberately mis-characterize religious people? Do they deliberately propose that all religious people are ignorant flat earther, conspiracy type wackos? Surely they are aware that there are many people who are otherwise sensible, intelligent, accomplished, sophisticated and articulate people who are also devout believers. How do they deal with these obvious facts?
I suppose they would say, “These people may be smart, educated, articulate and cultured, but they just have an unfortunate blind spot. In that particular area they’re just dumb.” But the problem with this argument (apart from blatant bigotry) is that it cuts both ways. The religious person may well say of Dawkins and Hitchens etc: “Well these guys are bright and articulate and witty and urbane and educated, but when it comes to spiritual matters they’ve got a blind spot. in that area of life they’re just dumb.”
When faced with the great beauties of religion, the unparalleled sublimity of a Mozart Mass, Chartres Cathedral or Kings’ College, Cambridge they are dolts. When faced with the complex masterpiece like the Ghent altarpiece, the humility of a hermit’s cell, or the humane comfort that a priest brings to the deathbed of a dying woman, the heroic sacrifices of countless priests and religious for the poor and downtrodden, when confronted with the profound antiquity and timeless beauty of the Mass, the simple beauty of the face of a young Missionary of Charity or the grandeur of the Roman Church these guys are like pinheads in an art gallery who simply yawn.
They’re like drug ridden rock and roll junkies at a concert of chamber music. Rather than being more sophisticated because of their atheism, they’re less. They’re like a junk food junkie who finds himself in a five star French restaurant. He would look at the exquisite menu in French and say, “This stuff is just dumb. I wanna hot dog and fries.” Like any boorish adolescent they then think themselves clever and smart for rejecting what more enlightened people have discovered to be transcendental and sublime.
In many ways the proper response to them is not to get angry or argue or debate. Instead perhaps we should simply treat them like we do the idiot cousin in the family: we are patient and good humored because we realize part of them is missing. We are also compassionate and kind because they too are part of the family.
I think you hit the nail on the head on this one. Our lord was kind to Thomas, and his need for a child-like evidence ona simplistic level. Likewise we should be patient with the Hitchens of the world but we do have to take them on.An Order of Preachers author wrote a book titled ‘God is no Delusion’ to counter Dawkins. I think I have commented here before about his book. His name currently escapes me. I thought it was wonderfully well done, and the author took on miany of the thorny scriptural issues that myself have struggled with and brought to bear the best of Thomas Aquinas and others to answer them. Check it out!
I’m an Abbey student–I saw you come into the Basilica and was pretty sure it was you but left before I could make my way through the crowd to speak to you. Good lecture, although his delivery wasn’t as effective as Kreeft (who spoke this summer at the Envoy Insitute here).
“Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.”
I once heard a young priest deliver a homily about belief in God (not about atheism) and the difficulty/impossibility of it for some, the ease of it for others. The bottom line was “You will believe in God when you want to bad enough.” Sounds trite, but if you think about it deeply, it’s profoundly true. Atheists don’t believe in God simply (and complicatedly, if you will) because they don’t want to bad enough.
This is not from the chior. My life-long atheism began when I was a small child who was forced to go to Sunday school. We sang hynms and I played the piano for the “big group”. Then we broke up into smaller groups for religious teaching. This teaching was conducted by kindly, “right thinking” people of our small community. The stories they asked us to accept as truth seemed, to my unformed mind, have the about the same level of believability as fairy tales. However, I’m sure I was a minority of one. A couple years later, in the 4th grade, I had the courage to raise the question “how do you know if God really exists”. Much to the delite of the rest of the class I was given a stern look and told, “well you’re here aren’t you?”. That same year, I was in an early morning accident that left me in a coma for about 12 hours. When I awoke it was as if those 12 hours didn’t exist. My first words were, “where’s breakfast?” Although that experience wasn’t the epiphany that started me on my road to atheism, I do often use it to explain my lack of belief in a “first cause”, and to explain why it is not necessary to fear death. There is much evidence to support the claim that the universe is infinite, it has no boundaries, it has always existed, and will continue to exist on into infinity. If you accept that, then you can only perceive your own existance as brief and finite. Once there, it is an easy step to accept extinction and to embrace the concept nothingness. Therefore you can now reject the promise of “rivers of honey”, “72 virgins”, Hell, everlasting torture, everylasting live, etc. Belief is a product of man’s ego and it exploits his fear of the unknown. If you reject belief you will be free of fear. “Absense of evidence is evidence of absense”.
Dear Oslavens,”You will believe in God when you want to bad enough.” It’s about desire, which means “of the father.” Perhaps he has not given you his desire. Yet I can’t help wondering why you’re reading this blog.
Dear Estiel: I’m 70 years old, I don’t know your age, but based upon your responce and your parroting of Fr. Longenecker’s inspirational plattitudes, you are either very young, and your life experience is limited, or you are an adult posing as a child. If it’s the former, then I addressed my remarks to the wrong person, and I don’t think this is a discussion I should persue with you. If it’s the latter then you are in serious need of psychiatric help and you should check yourself in.
oslavens, you mis- spelled ‘platitudes’.
Oslavens,I am 66 years old, and I hold three post-graduate degrees. I have loads of “life experiences.”
In response to both D. Longenecker and Estiel: Based upon Longenecker’s trite observation about my spelling I can only conclude that this is not an serious forum for exploring ideas. And Estiel’s asertion that he/she holds three post graduate degrees is transparently delusional as revealed by the silliness of the claim.
Your comment proves my point: People, including you, believe what they want to believe. You want to believe that I’m a child (lovely comment, really. I’ve always said that I want to grow up into childhood!) and that my three post-graduate degrees are “delusional.” But I know the truth about my age and education, of course, and you do not. Now, think about this. You make assertions about persons you don’t even know. I do not. Which of us is delusional? Or, another point: When you were a child, you were in a coma briefly (12 hours is not long), and you remember nothing about it. Because you have no memory of the experience, you conclude there is no God. You also have no memory of the doctor, your nurse, the bed in which you lay, not even of yourself. Do you also conclude that your lack of consciousness means that none of these things exists? Which of us reasons like a child?Let me suggest to you that you’re still in a coma, metaphorically, since you reason that if you’re not conscious of something, it isn’t real. Less metaphorically: If you do not “know” something via your own consciousness of it, it does not exist. What this means is that you are imprisoned by your consciousness, by your ego. We all are. It’s part of our finiteness. But, most of us, certainly by your age, have had sufficently humbling experiences to learn the limitations of our personal ego. My suspicion is that this is the cause of the bitterness I detect in your posts, the not-very-disguised anger. Perhaps you do not acknowledge it, and because other people don’t, you think *they* “need psychiatric help.” This is called “projection” of that which is ours that we do not want to own.I know this will sound simplistic to you, but let me suggest that you can escape this prison, you can leave it by just giving it up. It is you yourself who are imposing it on yourself. It’s your own choice, your decision. You do not have to live there. You can leave. And no, that isn’t death. It’s the prison that’s death. Leaving it is life. And God is that voice in you that encourages you to do just that, that wants you to live, to know joy, to know Him.