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FRAyaan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins embrace after their debate (UnHerd)
Alex O'Connor
June 19, 2024 7 mins
In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus condemns those who “(either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree”. A regular critique of the nominally religious is that they claim to believe in, say, Christianity, but fail to act in accordance with its demanding message of love and compassion. They love the tree, but can’t quite swallow the fruit. More recently, however, a strange reverse phenomenon is emerging: a class of thinkers who, unable to rationally assent to the actual truth of Christianity, and yet disillusioned with the politics of “new atheism”, and fearful of the various religious and pseudo-religious ideas that have filled the vacuum it created, find themselves in the tough spot of being hungry for the fruit but unable to believe in the existence of the tree.
These so-called “cultural Christians” are appearing in droves: Douglas Murray, Tom Holland (not that one), Konstantin Kisin, Jordan Peterson (depending on what you mean by “Christian” and “cultural” and “and”); even Richard Dawkins — the archetypal modern atheist who has done more to confront organised religion than perhaps any other identifiable person in a generation — happily adopts this paradoxical moniker for himself.
Paradoxical because, of course, Christianity is more than just an affinity for evensong, disappointment with secular architecture, and suspicion of Islam. St Paul wrote in no uncertain terms to the Corinthians that “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith”, and the vague, à la carte approach to the religion displayed by the “cultural Christian” which doesn’t seem to care about, much less affirm, the historicity of the extraordinary events of Easter Sunday is the kind of attitude that would see you condemned as heretical by the founders of the orthodox church.
Yet Christianity is experiencing a popular makeover, from an affirmative doctrine of truth-claims to a sort of protective garment to be worn as a practical measure against the equal and opposite destabilising forces of radical political religiosity and cynical nihilism which continue to claw away at the souls of those without a firm spiritual conviction.
In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus condemns those who “(either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree”. A regular critique of the nominally religious is that they claim to believe in, say, Christianity, but fail to act in accordance with its demanding message of love and compassion. They love the tree, but can’t quite swallow the fruit. More recently, however, a strange reverse phenomenon is emerging: a class of thinkers who, unable to rationally assent to the actual truth of Christianity, and yet disillusioned with the politics of “new atheism”, and fearful of the various religious and pseudo-religious ideas that have filled the vacuum it created, find themselves in the tough spot of being hungry for the fruit but unable to believe in the existence of the tree.
These so-called “cultural Christians” are appearing in droves: Douglas Murray, Tom Holland (not that one), Konstantin Kisin, Jordan Peterson (depending on what you mean by “Christian” and “cultural” and “and”); even Richard Dawkins — the archetypal modern atheist who has done more to confront organised religion than perhaps any other identifiable person in a generation — happily adopts this paradoxical moniker for himself.
Paradoxical because, of course, Christianity is more than just an affinity for evensong, disappointment with secular architecture, and suspicion of Islam. St Paul wrote in no uncertain terms to the Corinthians that “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith”, and the vague, à la carte approach to the religion displayed by the “cultural Christian” which doesn’t seem to care about, much less affirm, the historicity of the extraordinary events of Easter Sunday is the kind of attitude that would see you condemned as heretical by the founders of the orthodox church.
Yet Christianity is experiencing a popular makeover, from an affirmative doctrine of truth-claims to a sort of protective garment to be worn as a practical measure against the equal and opposite destabilising forces of radical political religiosity and cynical nihilism which continue to claw away at the souls of those without a firm spiritual conviction.
This metamorphosis of the Christian religion in is many ways indebted to Tom Holland — not the actor, though perhaps an actor, in that he seems content to live as if Christianity were true — whose “Dominion” thesis has convinced a not insignificant number of intellectuals that the bulk of our celebrated Western ethics is ultimately the product of Christianity, an ideology which has so successfully embedded itself in our culture that we do not even notice it anymore.
This leads our cultural Christians, often those with a special interest in safeguarding Western civilisation, to cozy up to an ideology that they can’t quite adopt without qualification due to their rather inconvenient conviction that it isn’t true.
Enter Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Re-enter, I should say, as this brave apostate from Islam won successful prominence as an atheist writer and speaker for many years since the early 2000s, before recently announcing that she had embraced Christianity. Indeed, she had originally been scheduled to participate in that famed discussion in Washington D.C. in 2007 which gave birth to the “four horsemen” of new atheism — Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. So news of the “almost fifth’s” conversion was met with widespread surprise, joy, and speculation.
Perhaps the most widely read response came from Dawkins, in an open letter whose first sentence contained a rather less than charitable: “Seriously, Ayaan? You, a Christian? You are no more Christian than I am.”
Why? Because Hirsi Ali’s article, while passionate and detailed, suffered from the exclusion of anything resembling an argument for the existence of God, or for the theological supremacy of the Christian religion over others (or even over atheism). Instead, it is a political treatise: it begins with her experiences as a Muslim, touching on 9/11, the Muslim Brotherhood, and antisemitism, before asking: “So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?”
She answers: “Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces,” which she identifies as Russian/Chinese authoritarianism, Islamism, and wokeism. All of which are distinctly political considerations and so hardly serve as a theological defence of Christianity. Then, referring to Tom Holland, she tells us that the “story of the West” is a civilisation built on the “Judeo-Christian tradition”. That is to say, She is ticking all the boxes of a merely cultural Christian.
Yet she later writes, as if anticipating this objection, “I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes.” It’s a promising interjection, which seems to ready us for an apolitical testimony that might justify her exclusion of the “cultural” in labelling her new Christian identity.
Here, Hirsi Ali begins to describe her personal struggles as an atheist. “I have… found life without any spiritual solace unendurable,” she writes, claiming that the “God hole” left behind after her deconversion was not filled with reason and intelligent humanism, as atheists like Betrand Russell had predicted, but instead left painfully vacant.
“In this nihilistic vacuum, the challenge before us becomes civilisational,” she continues. “We can’t withstand China, Russia and Iran if we can’t explain to our populations why it matters that we do.” In explaining, then, her reasons for becoming Christian apart from her desire to defeat her political foes, she tells us that she was struggling with a nihilistic vacuum that was… insufficient for defeating her political foes. Once again, the motivation seems political.
Thus Richard Dawkins and his assessment, “you are no more a Christian than I am”. The funny thing is, Ayaan Hirsi Ali endorses this sentiment. Dawkins has, of late, been airing his misgivings about gender theorists and Islamists, and constantly reaffirms his admiration for Christian art, architecture and music. These political and aesthetic preferences inspired her to refer to Dawkins at one point as one of “the most Christian” people that she knows. Strangely, then, they could find initial agreement on one point: their being just as Christian as each other.
This uneasy equilibrium provided the mise en scène for an eagerly awaited conversation between the two, which took place in Brooklyn last month. Dawkins tells us at one point that he showed up fully prepared to explain to Hirsi Ali why she is not a Christian: “The idea,” he says, “that the Universe has lurking beneath it an intelligence a supernatural intelligence that invented the laws of physics it invented mathematics […] is a stupendous idea (if it’s true) and to me that simply dwarfs all talk of nobility and morality and comfort and that sort of thing.”
He was, therefore, taken quite unawares, as were many of us, when he asked (or rather told) her, “You don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead, surely?” and she confidently replied, “I choose to believe that Jesus rose from the dead. And that is a matter of choice.” This, for Dawkins (as for me), changes the game. While throughout the event she had no hesitation in repeating her political grievances, in New York, she finally addressed the truth claims of Christianity, and appeared to confess a belief in them. “I came here prepared to persuade you, Ayaan, you’re not a Christian,” Dawkins told her, before correcting himself: “I think you are a Christian,” and — being Richard Dawkins — he added, “and I think Christianity is nonsense.”
This extraordinary event began with Hirsi Ali recounting her conversion: “I lived for about a decade with intense depression and anxiety self-loathing. I hit rock bottom. I went to a place where I actually didn’t want to live anymore but wasn’t brave enough to take my own life.” Through prayer, she managed to escape that hole. “My zest for life is back,” she declared to a healthy applause, indicative of the one thing that everyone can agree on: it is wonderful to hear that Ayaan is happy again.
After finishing this personal narrative, she could only look at Dawkins and shrug slightly. The audience laughed, in anticipation of something of a shift in tone. I did think there was something comical about following such a moving story of escape from depression and anxiety with, “But do you really think Jesus was born of a virgin?” Dawkins’s decision to do so, however, can hardly be blamed: as touching as his former colleague’s story may be, if he is right that God’s existence is a scientific question, then we should remember that bringing personal narrative into the laboratory is as inappropriate an approach as bringing a microscope into a poetry seminar. It should be no more an insult to say that Hirsi Ali’s emotional struggles are irrelevant to the question of God’s existence than it would be to say to say that scientific observations are irrelevant to the study of Keats.
As Dawkins himself put it, responding to Hirsi Ali’s fear that an atheistic universe doesn’t offer us any way to connect with each other and the cosmos: “Suppose it were true that atheism doesn’t offer anything. So what? why should it offer anything?” Further applause.
“Faith offers you something, obviously. That’s very very very clear,” he says at one point. “But it doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t make the existence claims of Christianity true.” More clapping. Given that such a claim is hardly extraordinary or controversial, this reception seemed to be less in support of the point, and more of Dawkins’s willingness to make it plain.
Yet it is worth remembering that believing something for non-rational reasons is not unusual. Our beliefs are quite often formed by our surrounding environment, rather than some kind of perfect logic and analysis of abstract syllogisms. Most people know this. Hirsi Ali is happy to admit it. You may think it imperfect, but it is not unique to her.
This means that any surge in Christian interest we may notice among our public intellectuals is unlikely to be due to a renewed interest in Biblical scholarship or the figure of the crucified Nazarene. It is instead likely a product of their environment. Cultural Christianity, then, is in many ways a political movement disguised as a religious one, reacting not to arguments for God’s existence, but concerns about the practical shortcomings of atheism and alternative religions. The kind of Christianity adopted by Hirsi Ali goes further in asserting its truth, but not very much further in its justification.
Therefore, those celebrating some alleged resurgence of Christianity ought be cautious: it would certainly be a happy day for them if their favourite intellectuals began discovering a relationship with Jesus, but if they begin converting to Christianity principally as an ideological bulwark, we may witness the return not of a meek and mild community of believers, but of a more strong-armed, aggressive Christianity that has historically been a touch more controversial.
But Ayaan does seem genuinely transformed by her new faith: she looks happy, speaks humbly, and seems genuinely uninterested in point-scoring or winning any arguments. It troubles me not at all to admit that I found myself applauding her more than Richard Dawkins. It transpired in Brooklyn that her conversion, which at first appeared mostly political, was more a result of her personal battle with nihilism. This is hardly going to convince anybody else to become Christian, but such personal experience isn’t ever supposed to.
Atheists are often told that they are plagued with a “God-shaped hole”. Hirsi Ali appears to have developed for herself a hole-shaped God. But despite the probability of at least an element of motivated reasoning in this conversion, I’m genuinely happy for her. We should keep in mind, too, as her story evolves, that our ideas are the most unclear to us when they are new, and Ayaan is a new Christian. While we are all trying to work out what she really believes, she is probably trying to work out the same thing. She, however, has the unusual courage to do it out loud.
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SubscribeI identify as a cultural Huītzilōpōchtlist; I don’t really believe Left-Handed Hummingbird exists, I’m just in it for the human sacrifice.
Fair enough. Everyone is entitled to have a hobby.
This (very badly edited) article throws up only one serious question, in my opinion: why should any of us take any more notice of what Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Richard Dawkins or any other of the “names” thrown into the ring in this and other articles choose to believe, or not?
We each have own paths in life; our own experiences. If we’ve reflected upon that path, those experiences, we’re quite capable of reaching our own conclusions. Mine is that i find religious belief impossible to countenance whilst acknowledging (and participating fully in) the spiritual dimensions of being alive, and conscious of it.
If others choose to follow organised religious doctrines, that’s entirely up to them. Ayaan Hirsi Ali finding herself happier through adopting the tenets of Christianity is fine by me, but no more important than if she decided to become a vegetarian after a lifetime of meat consumption. Good for her.
Finally, as far as i’m concerned, there is no “God-shaped hole”. When a parent dies, for instance, we can miss them, but that doesn’t mean we should seek out a replacement parent. Hopefully, we’ll have grown up sufficiently to understand the cycle of life and death in all biology. This is the status i’d hope for everyone at a certain point in their lives, without needing the support of a religious doctrine to bolster them. I appreciate that perhaps a majority of people alive are yet unable to confront this without support.
LL, from what I’ve read of you, and do not take offence to this, you have a terrible understanding of religion as a concept.
As all animals, we are born, we reproduce, and die. Our meaning of life and purpose, according to scientific understanding, is compulsive reproduction, much like an ameba. For whatever bizarre reason, humans are unwilling to accept this, and as such, create grand concepts justifying both their behaviour and their ideals, prized metaphysical concepts, stories, and behavioural patterns. This is known as “religion”, and in certain contexts, “ideology”.
Atheists, like Mr. O’Connor, almost certainly have a certain religion or ideology, in his case, Liberalism, including laughable superstitions, like “progress” or “human rights”, invented by narcissistic Europeans a couple hundred years ago. I, for instance, prize weird stories involving some Jewish hippie being crucified a couple thousand years ago.
Tl;Dr: It’s not at all about “coping with parents dying” or any other reductionism. It’s about making sense of life and what you prize. I wage 99.9% you’re religious/an ideologue since you post frequently to articles here and is yet to kill yourself over nihilistic depression.
I’d venture to suggest (since you do) that my “understanding of religion” is more advanced than yours; although it doesn’t surprise me you might think otherwise.
My experience of spiritual joy is more than sufficient to sustain me, and others as it happens. This is nothing to do with anything remotely connected to a deity.
I would further suggest that those whose religious life requires a deity to underpin it are not only fooling themselves (a common human trait) but denying themselves something even more profound.
My sincere hope is that humanity can overcome this aberration (religion) and move towards a more complete understanding, not only of ourselves, but of how we can proceed with far greater prospects than that offered by any religion or ideology, which are proving to be the most nihilistic excresence of the human imagination so far.
Well said, thank you for that.
So Lad’s claim of “spiritual joy” makes complete sense to you, yet you report to be baffled and dismayed by the asserted difference beween religious (formal or ritual worship) or spiritual (more spontaneous, less structured belief) practice?
I still have trouble with the word “spiritual” being bandied about, because I’m not sure what the definition of it really is. However, I think I understood the feeling that Lad was trying to describe experiencing, so for want of a better word I accepted it in his comment.
Not really, it’s just pretensious writings without any substance. The very defining trait of atheist ideology.
I doubt you very much understand religion. This is always a common claim by atheists who then go onto to demonstrate their ignorance by telling Christians that they aren’t living by Christianity because some eat pork, get tattoos or wear mixed textiles, failing to realise who the Old Covenant was for and what the New Covenant is.
My hope is you realise the delusion and arrogance of a purely materialistic worldview and of atheism which is truly the most narcissistic and nihilistic excretion of human imagination so far.
Atheists always claim to have everything figured out but when pressed, produce terrible science fiction books disguised as science like Lawrence Krauss’ “A Universe From Nothing” which ironically requires more blind faith than any religion.
Why do people so need to insist to atheists that they have an ‘ideology’ or ‘religion’? A-theism is just a word for lack of belief. It simply means ‘without god or gods’. The next thing they throw at us is that we can only be agnostics because we don’t know.
Well of course we don’t ‘know’. No one does. The difference is that atheists don’t substitute a belief system for that lack of knowledge. Others have beliefs or stories that make sense to them and satisfy a need in them. And that is fine. I just don’t share the belief. So it’s annoying that believers in ‘something or other’ seem to want call my lack of belief an ‘ideology’. Why is it so difficult to accept that some people just don’t believe stuff. Why be rude about that? Pascal’s Wager – and Ayaan herself – notwithstanding, not everyone can ‘choose to believe’. And not everyone wants or needs to.
Because atheists bang on about atheism and how intelligent it is more than people bang on about their faith. I have yet to come across an atheist who truly understands faith, but who nevertheless forms an opinion on it. Like you thinking that we substitute a belief system for a lack of knowledge.
Religion teaches the cycle of life, death and even suffering in life very well. It’s normally atheists who don’t understand them and often, showing their intellectual immaturity, ask, “why is life so unfair?”
Atheists themselves need the support of a doctrine that bolster them, which is why many turn to atheist leaders and their particular ideological brand of atheism.
I appreciate that atheists are yet to realise their own religioisity and their own appeal to authority. You haven’t figured out the universe by not believing in God so stop trying to present disbelief as a superior stance or a fact when nothing in science even supports atheism or the pure naturalistic belief of a universe from true nothingness.
Atheists don’t go around bleating about life being unfair or feeling superior. Or at least I don’t know any who do. We don’t need a ‘doctrine’ or ‘atheist leaders’ – what are you talking about? It’s a non belief in a god or gods. That’s all. I’m puzzled that it irks you so & that you find it necessary to be so rude. We just live our lives as if there isn’t a god. As for science not ‘supporting’ non-belief, that makes no sense. Atheism isn’t about being better at ‘figuring out the universe’. It’s just a-theist.
In fairness, how many Christians can, with complete honesty, say they have considered and fully, and literally, accept the Resurrection, the triune nature of God, etc.?
I would suggest most Christians will at least pay lip service to doctrine, but fundamentally they just want to believe in something at an emotional level, and they want to be part of a belief community which is typically the spiritual community of their birth.
How many Materialists can, with complete honesty, say they have considered and fully and literally accept the scientistic account of free-will, consciousness, subjectivity, the Self, memory, love, beauty, human dignity or any of the other utterly foundational concepts that govern, constitute and circumscribe our day to day experience of lived life?
Nietzsche alone had the courage to stare manfully into that abyss. And it eventually led him, weeping, to the neck of the Turin Horse.
Like more than a few of my generation, I suspect, it was reading the evolutionary just-so stories of Prof. Dawkins and the negationist question-begging of Prof. Daniel Dennett’s account of consciousness which first led me to turn again and engage in good faith with the Christian scriptures.
None of this needs be contrived if one believes in the workings of the Holy Ghost. One cannot ‘want to believe in something’ in a Christian sense at all. One prays to God to give one belief. It is not in anyones power to belive ‘of themselves’.
“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him” – John 6:44
God works through us to all good ends.
Jesus is not just the Truth and the Life but he is, before those two ambrosial consolations, the Way.
Yet his offered prayer begins “Our Father” not “Dear me”. I do not think Jesus refers to himself in the same way when talking to the public as to his disciples. Nor do I trust the later Gospel of John, with its abstract symbology, in the same way I do the synoptic texts of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.
Scientistical minds have their own pieties, usually unacknowledged. But certain mysteries and wonders are opened–whether though an Authorized or Promethean door–by seemingly independent acts of intellect and reason.
Many have used their inherited lights to deny that inheritance. Who can see the source of their own portion of light, or be certain that his or her lenses–the doors of perception–have been cleansed?
On the subject of Nietzsche, I have just bought a t-shirt featuring a picture of him, with the caption “I gazed into the abyss, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”.
Are we talking about Christians, or are we talking about people that sign in the term “Christian” in the census?
Be judged by what you do, not what you say (or write, or type), though they all do involve ‘doing’.
Or is it, judge others by what they do, not what they say. And what they say they will do, that’s even more difficult to judge.
The mistake is to believe, unquestionly, in someone else’s god.
J you speak as one who has no knowledge or understanding of the New Testament and spiritual rebirth. Being born again is real. The letters of Paul and the other writers teach on and bear witness of an experience that hundreds of millions of Christian believers share. We received new life in Christ at a real conversion experience. Paul’s letters resonate with me because I live them. I meditate on them daily to get deeper understanding. I identify with them. They are part of who I am, as the Bible as a whole is like a lens to understand God.
Scientifically, I believe in God as Creator through my knowledge of mathematics, and my study of Intelligent Design; morally, I believe in the teachings of Christ as the sublime forgiver of human sin; intellectually believe in the facts of the Virgin Birth and Resurrection because the historical evidence is overwhelming, experientially I believe Jesus because He lives up to everything that His word promises. Is that enough evidence?
No.
I know any number of people who have reported very similar experiences following the consumption of large doses of psychedelic drugs.
Most of them atheists undoubtedly since to accept atheism’s conclusions of a universe from nothing as truth, you’d have to be high on psychedelic drugs.
I imagine the author of “A Universe From Nothing”, Lawrence Krauss, was high on drugs when he wrote that book. Rightfully it was rejected by all other physicists as nothing more than a work of faith.
Faith in what?
Everyone is entitled to their own delusional thinking and the conclusions they reach
Yeah, I say that about atheists all the time since the conclusions of atheism are completely delusional.
Atheists come to no conclusions. That’s the point. We accept that we don’t know. To believe in deities has consequences, often dangerous ones. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East is the proof. All based on what each other’s ’gods’ have supposedly promised.
Surveys, averaged out across all Catholics in all parts of the world put the number to your question at about 70%. Roughly the same number who accept the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Look, if you actually believe in God, the resurrection is very easy to accept; its a snack, actually.
“But do you really think Jesus was born of a virgin?”
The gospels state that Mary was a “parthenos” – a virgin, maiden, girl, or young woman. Given the normal age for women to have their first child in the first century Roman empire I would have thought it quite reasonable to believe that Mary was a “parthenos” as described.
Mary is visited by an angel who informs her that God will give her a child – the method is not described (although Mary asks “how?”), but as proof that he (the angel) isn’t winding her up, he tells her that her relative, who is too old to conceive, is now pregnant – there is no suggestion that this other baby is the (literal) son of God and not the child of its mother’s husband.
Similarly in the Old Testament, God enables Abraham’s wife Sarah to give birth when she is by some estimates 90 years old. The child, Isaac, is the son of Abraham not the son of God. The God of the Old Testament quite frequently generates miraculous pregnacies (or replacements for dead children, as in Job) without being the father of the resulting infants – the father is the spouse of the pregnant mother, even when natural conception appears to have been impossible.
Jesus himself is pretty unclear on the subject, regularly describing himself as “the son of man” and evidently regarding God as the father of all mankind: “Our Father…”
Dawkins should be clearer about the difference between the foundational texts of Christianity and creeds that were agreed far later by only part of the Church – Orthodox and Catholic Christians have somewhat different definitions of Christ’s status.
With respect, Christ never lacks clarity, it is we who see through a glass darkly.
Your engagement with the issue appears to be diverging into Adoptionism and the conversation around that, from the Early Church to our own day, is on the open record for anyone interested. Any orthodox Trinitarian Christians reading should be aware that it has been considered a standard heresy for a very long time.
Jesus does indeed refer to himself as the “Son of Man” more times than any other title. Intriguingly, this is actually a claim to be God – see Daniel chapter 7 – 13 “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man,[a] coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.
There is no difference between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics regarding Christ’s status. The difference is regarding the Holy Spirit; whether it proceeds only from the Father or simultaneously from the Father and the Son.
Is it also time to revive the classic medieval argument of transubstantiation vs. consubstantiation?
And I’m still waiting for someone to determine how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
I was not commenting on the question in order to revive it, I just corrected a factually incorrect statement about catholic-orthodox difference made by the commenter called Point of Information.
P.S Regarding the angels on the head of a pin, there actually was no contention, since more or less all medieval theologians agreed that the number was infinite, since angels are non-spatial. D.S.
Well, one point settled, then.
One might ask how many it would take to screw in a light bulb.
I know how many drummers it takes to screw in a lightbulb – twenty. One to hold the lightbulb, and the other nineteen to keep drinking until the room starts spinning round.
Funny.
Don’t believe everything you read. If this story was in the NYP would you believe it?
We have extra biblical evidence not only confirming that Jesus existed but accounts from 1st century historians such as Tactius, Josephus, Pliny etc that affirm the validity of the gospels.
Meanwhile atheism is wishful thinking in a universe from nothing which is impossible. And if you think The Big Bang theory proves that, you misunderstand what The Big Bang theory is including the fact that it actually supports theism. Fred Hoyle recognised this which is why he opposed it arguing that it “brings religious implications to physics by implying the universe had a beginning and therefore a creator.”
Questions of “where did God come from?” are just moving the goal post. The Prime Mover argument already addressed this. Atheism, when followed by deductive reasoning has nothing to support it. Its own hope in “something from nothing” can be used against it thereby making it a self refuting position.
What’s ‘biblical evidence’? Can we also use Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?
Great seeing Alex on Unherd.
Christopher Hitchens called believers that take bible literally as the only believers that are intellectually honest. Or something like that. Couldn’t agree more. Listening to all others as to why Christianity is true or how they interpret the bible is white noise.
I wonder which part of the bible Hitchens thought believers should take literally. The bible (Hebrew and Christian testaments) is a compilation of complex stories, teachings, prayers, doctrines.
Excactly. Christopher Hitchens specialism was polemics but the guy didn’t know Jack Shit about the Bible.
His reputation & arguments are much diminished in recent years.
Maybe they should take Methuselah literally. Living to 969 is entirely plausible
There was a day not long ago when a person living to 100 was an astonishing impossibility.
Exceedingly rare but not unheard of since ancient times.
It was rare but not impossible. Modern science hasn’t really pushed out the maximum age we can live, life expectancy has risen simply because more of us are reaching old age
Do you think it could ever extend beyond 125-135 or so, apart from some transhumanist nightmare fantasy?
And do we want it to?
Aye. What sort of years are we talking about and will there be room for all those ultra-aged people no longer making room for posterity?
We probably could (replace various organs as they fail etc) but I don’t think it would be much of a life. You’d still be stuck with a decrepit body and a failing brain
Not true. Some people did live to be a hundred a long time ago. Now more do, kept alive by science, but usually with poor quality of life.
Do you know or believe people lived past 100 in ancient times? And what is the evidence that supports it? Do we have birth certificates? It is amazing what we take on ‘faith’ when we want to.
A long time ago is different than “ancient times”.
An excellent argument for why you probably shouldn’t take Christopher Hitchens seriously.
He clearly didn’t know much about the Bible if that was his stance.
He knew about polemics, true, but not the subject matter it relates to here.
He may have skimmed the Bible with an eye toward being able to dismiss and discredit in it more detail.
It’s really not necessary to read the bible to know that there is no such thing as god.
It’s only necessary to have a powerful experience of presence–or two–to know there is Something. Now, that knowing is no more, or less, demonstrably factual than your fixed certainty to the contrary. I can certainly understand remaining unconvinced or uncertain of a higher power but to declare certainly in the opposite direction, given our created or at least “non-self-generated” condition, strikes me as a militancy comparable to some forms of fanatical orthodoxy.
If a belief in “something” gets you through the night, AJ, far be it for me to take that comfort away from you.
Finally! Thanks for the indulgence, Clare.
And if you derive some benefit from an adamantine belief in sheer Nothingness beyond the the empirical and material world–which we both agree can be beautiful and astonishing–then I won’t try to take that assurance from you–I might if I thought you were budgeable!
We can regard one another as mutually unbudgeable when it comes to a personal belief in Providence, or a fierce lack thereof.
But I agree with you on many things and I hope we’ll not ridicule or dismiss each for our respective points of view. This one is an impasse between us and we should both seek more fertile fields.
Of course we can beg to differ although I don’t feel it’s a matter of being stubborn. Speaking for myself it’s experiential not a belief.
Or rather, to believe there is ‘something’. The human brain is excellent at throwing shapes & deceiving us with shadows. How we interpret them is key.
You know there is no god? Funny how you atheists have yet to prove that position. If you know, that means you have evidence. Oh right, you don’t.
Truth is, atheism is completely false. When you study physics, it becomes apparent that God exists and that atheism is just wishful thinking.
A universe from nothingness is an impossibility, it defies not only observational evidence but it also defies the scientific law of casuality. How would nothingness even do something in the first place?
You claim to know, you claim to have evidence…well go ahead and show it and wow the world. Or just admit the truth that your “claim” is just blind faith on your part.
No! Yet again, there is this stubborn insistence that atheism claims to ‘know’. A-theism is simply from the Greek meaninghaving no god. It’s a state of unbelief, not a statement of fact. When it comes to facts we are all agnostics, because none of us knows. But some people have some beliefs, and good luck to them.
Or rather, not to believe it..
Hardly. Something happened. Then the account was transmitted by word of mouth, selected, written down, and recopied. Christianity without any miracles may not count as Christianity, but there is nothing dishonest in believing that something miraculous happened, even if you do not believe all the details of the written record.
Aye. I don’t think a phenomenon should have to break the known laws of physics to count as a miracle.
Why not? What is your definition of a miracle?
It resists definition. But, to indulge you: An occurrence or force of great power, so unlikely, transformative, or enduring that no rational explanation–available or not–could ever capture it or explain it away.
Quite a good definition. But isn’t breaking the laws of physics kind of part of it?
Again, not to me. For example, recovering from cancer when you’re given zero or a one-in-ten-thousand chance is a form of miracle: a glorious deliverance that points to a Power beyond ourselves.
*I accept that the primary and more common definition involves something beyond known physical laws.
Perhaps a misdiagnosis?
Clearly, when zero chance was allowed. Also a “misdiagnosis” of reality, which remains well beyond our full understanding or control.
And misdiagnosis can work both ways, as when someone is given the all-clear & then succumbs a month later. Transformative & powerful but not in a good way…
Good answer. I think the meaning of Miracle as breaking the laws of nature is still important, but I admit that I also use miracle in the sense you mentioned above. Maybe the philosophicaly stringent should use the terms miracle type a and miracle type b.
The Laws of Physics can be an entirely odd thing. Matter materialises out of nothing, and disappears back to nothing, all the time.
I’ve seen magic tricks like that.
Sure, reduce it to that if you must.
Thank you, I will!!
Haha! Upvoted.
The irony is Clare, as an atheist believes in the ultimate magic trick: a universe from nothing.
Their “evidence?” The Big Bang theory…or at least misunderstanding the theory because that doesn’t actually say where the universe came from. In fact, The Big Bang theory aligns with what we theists have been saying all along…that the universe had a beginning.
Atheists will catch up someday. One day, they’ll understand casuality next.
There is much value in interpretation. Pope Francis himself does not believe the Bible completely literally, as he believes in evolution. People who have non-literal interpretations of the Bible have often thought about and analyzed philosophical topics more than many atheists and literal believers. Alex is a notable exception, of course, being an atheist who reflects constantly on religious philosophy. Yet I am sure he would agree with me that there is value in interpretation, given how much time he has spent listening to and engaging with people whose interpretations of the scriptures are not necessarily literal (e.g. Peterson and Shapiro).
Quite a lot of the early church fathers didn’t take the creation narrative, and if I remember correctly, neither did Calvin. Most of them interpreted it as being historical but not in a literalistical way.
I think many biblical literalists of today would be dismayed at how many earlier Christian and Jews–even the human authors of many books in what is bound together as the Bible–viewed the supernatural and otherworldly aspects of the texts as something figurative or still unknown.
He is not the first pope to believe evolution is compatible with Christianity. Pope PiusXII claimed the same thing in Humani Generis. Other Christian’s who thought evolution compatible with Christianity without being “liberal” or “modernist” where CS Lewis and Billy Graham. None of them would have thought you could be Christian within believing in the resurrection.
Christopher Hitchens was also an idiot. As per usual, like every other atheist, he could never give a good argument or evidence for a universe from true nothingness.
Atheism falls apart when you actually study physics and logic. It goes against casuality namely.
The one atheist who did try to prove atheism’s natural conclusion, Lawrence Krauss, wrote a book called “A Universe From Nothing” which was rightfully dismissed by all other physicists as speculative fiction and ironically blind faith. Like Hitchens, Dawkins etc…he presented no evidence.
Truth is, you either believe in a impossibility “something from nothing” (which if true, can easily be applied to God) or an eternal source which doesn’t contradict casuality. The question then becomes “is that eternal source conscious?” but either way, that source is “God.” If you then choose to believe that consciousness can only exist inside the universe and not outside, well that’s really your own problem. If consciousness can exist inside the universe, nobody can rule out consciousness existing outside the universe. Furthermore, mindlessness doesn’t account for the fine tuned universe model in physics.
You believe in a god – I get it. You have beliefs. You don’t need proof. Fine. But you have an uninformed & simplistic view of atheism. I make no claims. I just don’t do belief.
As for science, it seeks knowledge through thesis, experiment, extrapolation. It’s an ongoing process of discovery, whatever the beliefs of the person performing the job. And anyone claiming that a ‘mind’ created the ‘fine-tuned universe model in physics’ should really show their workings, don’t you think? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
”It should be no more an insult to say that Hirsi Ali’s emotional struggles are irrelevant to the question of God’s existence than it would be to say to say that scientific observations are irrelevant to the study of Keats.”
This part has been repeated and needs re-editing,
But the writer is getting a bit mixed up here. God is not a quantifiable, empirically verifiable truth-claim, or merely a scientific hypothesis.
It is more in the realm of the poetic. And treating it as a scientific hypothesis is comparable to bringing microscopes and test-tubes into poetry seminars.
This is why Skepticism sharpens Christianity. For the most part, everything Alex said is valid (although I’m not sure why he cited a gnostic gospel). But while valid and interesting as an observation, its also just a critique of the doctrinal practioners not the doctrine.
The God of the Bible doesn’t claim to be material. He claims to have shaped the material world and its processes.
So any “debate” is basically one group relying exclusively on indirect/second hand evidence and the other group saying it won’t accept any indirect evidence. Any failure of modern Christians is the failure to provide overwhelming indirect evidence. I find overwhelming indirect evidence in the utility provided by a doctrine that correctly pinpoints human nature. Now some people may not agree or think that’s abstract and we can argue about that…but at the end of the day choosing to believe or not believe in anything wholeheartedly is a question of faith.
Either you put your faith in the idea that everyone is created in the image of God or in some kind of cooperative anthropological theory with speculative assumptions about man’s evolution. There’s a reason John Locke’s conception of human nature produced infinitely more prosperity and freedom than Rousseau’s. It’s not because Locke was some Christian apologist. It’s because unlike Rousseau he ascribed to a biblical view of Human Nature.
The beauty of Christianity is that you can see it working through non-believers. You see it in Alex, Dawkins and even Harris. Christianity has remained strong because Cultural Christians have historically defended real believers. They’ve done this out of reciprocity or utility because they know Christians will also stand up for them in the face of unjust persecution. So the interests of Scientific Atheists actually dovetails perfectly with the Christian ethic which is an honest and sincere pursuit of truth. I would guess there is little difference between Alex’s view of “justice” and that of a Christian. Alex is absolutely informed by Christian precepts even if he rejects God.
The horsemen are getting some fundamentals incorrect about human nature and it’s not because they aren’t brilliant. It’s because they’re unwilling to question their own assumptions about human nature because of their own intelligence.
Great comment.
Interesting comment. It makes me wonder where I fit in. Both my parents were at various times Christian (my father was a lay preacher in his young adulthood, and my mother was a devout Lutheran to her death). At no point however could I have said that I was in any way Christian. Even as a small child accompanying my mother to Church, I thought “there is nothing in this place for me”. I would defend Christians of any stripe not because I believe that there is any merit in Christianity as it is practised in the 21st Century, but because I believe individual freedom is important. To deflect any notion that I might be a Cultural Christian, I should say that I loathe Christmas, and always go overseas at that time, mostly to a non-Christian country (Nepal last year, India this year).
I was like that by the time I was an adult. I’m not sure what happened but at some point (after getting interested in meditation and some eastern ideas) I realised that what I had thought was Christianity (informed by going to Church with parents once every couple of years, school and from hollywood) was interpreted into a flat, materialistic ontology. I didn’t quite understand it at first, and in fact I ran away from it for several years (looking for ‘fun’ instead), but once I started going to Catholic mass each weak and spent a “holy hour” each week in silence, it all started to click.
There are many layers of assumption in the modern mindset, about what is real especially. It’s a kind of positivist materialism after positivism has been refuted, a kind of relativism even though relativism is just a type of nihilism that makes the very objects and laws of science upon which it is grounded become trivial. If any of this was true, then sure, lets have the full, raw truth ugly as it may be. But ultimately the assumptions are fairly absurd; that the works of Shakespeare were in effect written at the point of the Big Bang, that the fine tuning of hundreds of aspects of physics was just lottery win after lottery win after lottery win (or invent trillions of universes for no other reason), that there is something rather than nothing as brute fact, that it’s all intelligible to us hairless monkeys on a spec in a galactic backwater.
The best mathematicians accept a platonic idea of maths, that new elements are discovered not created. Science couldn’t function without an essentially platonic understanding of the objects and laws it studies, and willingly adopts hierarchical taxonomies to describe nature. Yet we still teach in schools an assumed flat ontology after 700 years of making the same anti-platonic assumptions. To be honest it’s a surprise that anyone believed in Christianity with these assumptions. Add “Songs of Praise” as the main religious content on TV and it can must be a miracle…
I have always thought two things about Christianity: 1) If it were invented today, it would be quite a hard sell from a marketing perspective, and 2) If the historical Jesus Christ came back to earth now, and looked at the Church created in his name, he would say “You morons! You misunderstood everything I said!”
Your belief that individual freedom is important comes 100% from Christianity.
No it doesn’t.
It does, if the only two choices are faith or the abyss.
I don’t think that is right. It might come from something said by the historical Jesus of Nazareth (although I’m sure the concept predated him), but its validity does not derive from said Jesus being the Son of God, or from his having died on the cross, and risen from the dead.
I don’t think MM was referring to your personal notions, but rather to documented history, which is another matter entirely.
Bravo. Well said. Lots of atheists I’ve read and talked to rejected Christianity as teens. They claim to be true seekers but then have done little more investigation. Dawkins in embarrassingly ignorant of Christian doctrine and especially the nature of God. They seem like intelligent people scorning their teenage understanding of the faith.
I am still waiting for the definitive answer from “god” on why if there is only one god, there are so many religions in tbe world seemingly opposed to each other. When I get an answer, I might believe in “god”, but never a virgin birth or a reserrection! I dont need a “god” to be ethical and moral because so many religious people are neithse and so never a good example .
‘ethicaand moral’ – that is what Christianity brings – ethics and morality.
Without this Christian standard everything can be ‘ethical and moral’ if a person believes it, such as believing that theft is ok and murder is ok if they don’t agree with you.
Wrong. Read Steven Pinker’s Blank Slate: he sets out truths universal to all human societies (not just Christian ones) – murder and theft are ALWAYS wrong, and condemned. Christianity has no more of a claim, let alone a monopoly, on ethics and morality than it does over slam dunks.
So your position is that the writers of the Old and New Testaments were unaware of Polytheism and expected all would convert to belief in the God of the two books without creating their own golden calf?
One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh- Robert Heinlein
“They seem like intelligent people scorning their teenage understanding of the faith.”
Very true.
They have not investigated what they were told a a child, think it is childish what they were told about Christianity and don’t seem to understand that they were told things at a childish level because they were children back then.
They need to investigate Christianity at an adult level now that they are adults.
‘They’ve done this out of reciprocity or utility because they know Christians will also stand up for them in the face of unjust persecution. ‘
There’s very little evidence for that statement. History shows Christians have been more than happy to commit murder against those they considered guilty of apostasy or unbelief.
Yes. The relative tolerance of most present-day Christians is subject to a descent into zealotry or some reversion to a coercive National Faith.
You provided zero context. What are we talking about here? The Salem Witch Trials, the Spanish Inquisition or some other period of time where a small number of people were persecuted by an overzealous, reportedly “Christian” authority.
If we’re going to be that historically lazy than we have to treat the horrors of Communism and the Italian/German Socialist outgrowths as a by-product of Atheism. Marx said himself that Communism starts with Atheism. My guess is that you’re not willing to pin the horrors of the 20th century on Atheism. For the record, neither am I which is why I think your argument is lazy and biased. Treat the two concepts with impartiality.
I wasn’t making an explicit comparison with Marxist regimes. I was pointing out that Christians have a fairly extensive record of being persecutors as well as resisters of oppression. Especially as regards other Christians. And the Jews.
You still haven’t been specific. Regardless, my point is that you’re clearly equating specific regimes with Christianity and not conflating Marxism with Atheism.
Why are you making Christianity the cause of one oppression but letting Atheism off the hook for the ongoing horrors of Marxism?
I’m not doing any of those things. You’re being silly.
What “history shows,” about two billion people, over the course of two millennia, cannot be so glibly summarized. Particular now that Christianity’s global center of gravity has moved so far south.
I’ve added this to the collection of quotes about faith (secular and religious) forming part of the Newcreate.org website. Thank you T Bone.
“Any failure of modern Christians is the failure to provide overwhelming indirect evidence.”
The early church’s “indirect evidence”, however, was apparently sufficiently convincing to making an impact on society:
“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:46-47)
Yes!
Having a “God-shaped hole” is one thing, but I have never seen why that must necessarily be filled by the Judeo-Christian God. I asked an uncle of mine (a Lutheran Minister) this once, and he was unable to provide a satisfactory answer. I have always thought that if one must fill that supposed hole, one would be better off going for a religion with a bit of “zap” and “zing. Listening to a boring guy drone on about what it says in the Bible, and singing dreary hymns, was never for me.
A quick disembowelment with steaming innards held up to the sun at the apex of a pyramid?
Yep, that’ll do! Message me with the details of their next meeting!
I always found a Saturday afternoon of atrocious lower league football, a dozen lagers and a slightly ropey late night liaison filled the God shaped hole in my life quite nicely. I certainly wasn’t getting up for a Sunday service after that lot
If there really is a god shaped hole, shaped that way because there is a real God meant to fill it, then it should be filled by the real God. Deciding whether the Christian God is the answer to filling it thus goes together with deciding if Christianity is true.
Sure, but my point is that many people through history have found that other gods fitted perfectly well.
I’ve always thought we all have a questioning, restless nature which makes us feel empty at times – but in my case, this intermittent hole definitely isn’t ‘God-shaped’.
I explained to a Christian that as a non-believer I take life on the chin and she replied “thank you for your service” which I thought was hilarious.
Yes. Isn’t that what Americans say to returned servicemen.
Exactly.
Thanks Alex, your comments are always intriguing and give rise to more thoughtful discussions in the over-crowded intellectual sphere. Perhaps, to put it more succinctly, you seem to air and give voice to a more ‘common’ crowd which usually is not heard. Please pardon my pun. Not meant to be offensive.
I say not to write this ‘movement’ totally off yet though. Perhaps there is a movement, or more possibly openness to thought, the unseen and unspoken musings which in many ways cannot be named. A re-look if you like. Perhaps this moment has ‘given permission’ to those who privately have pondered and wondered to themselves, without wanting to voice what they have been querying or questioning – that which lacks. The longing of connection to all things ‘real’.
I think Elizabeth in the Unherd night out you spoke of, voiced a truth and a reality that is so rarely fully given its total merit and due. This very embodiment of relational truth speaks to something much deeper and soulful that words do not usually adequately provide. Or more truthfully, we have lost the beauty and eloquence of the original meaning and historical roots. Therefore we have lost ‘words’ original source of power. Source being the operative word. Source being that which binds us all. As we move further away from it, to its outer reaches, it is logical, is it not, that a gnawing for its opposite grows in equal measure.
Could it be that in fact we have in our race for enlightenment and ever greater technological advances that we in fact have lost the meaning of its true ‘language’ that our forebearers once had. To be so literal in fact is the anti-thesis of everything that Christianity stands for.
The aliveness of reality. What’s living.
Beautiful comment
A scientific fact is one which is falsifiable. In other words the scientific theory only holds provided there is no evidence that contradicts it. The fact of the Virgin birth is not contradicted by the absence of similar events precisely because it is regarded as miraculous and abnormal. The evidence regarding the birth, death and resurrection of Christ exists in testimony but is not falsifiable in a scientific sense. We can’t run the experiment again to show that what is claimed did not or could not happen. Like any testimony we can only believe or disbelieve it.
In a murder trial we hear the evidence and believe beyond reasonable doubt that the accused committed the crime but subsequent evidence such as new DNA evidence may make it clear that our belief was flawed. So far there there is no compelling reason to disbelieve the testimony of the witnesses to the story of Christianity even if some are not convinced of its truth and consider the hearsay evidence unsatisfactory to prove it in a scientific sense. The Christian, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, believes because they chose to believe in the same way that the member of the jury chooses to believe the evidence despite the fact that they can not know and their belief may be contradicted subsequently by compelling contrary evidence.
The recent film ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ sets this out. The protagonist, a fourteen year old blind boy, is confronted with the death of his father in a fall in the house he and his mother also live in, and only the three of them are present, along with a dog.
The mother could have pushed his father – she has motives – and as much as he tries, he cannot prove definitively that she did not.
Faced with that uncertainty, but with his decision being critical to the trial outcome, he has to take his mother on faith, and chooses to.
‘ A scientific fact is one which is falsifiable. In other words the scientific theory only holds provided there is no evidence that contradicts it. The fact of the Virgin birth is not contradicted by the absence of similar events precisely because it is regarded as miraculous and abnormal. The evidence regarding the birth, death and resurrection of Christ exists in testimony but is not falsifiable in a scientific sense. We can’t run the experiment again to show that what is claimed did not or could not happen. Like any testimony we can only believe or disbelieve it.’
Surely plausibility comes into play here? Your argument is basically there’s no evidence that it DIDN’T happen, therefore it did. There’s no evidence my next door neighbour isn’t secretly an alien masquerading as a human but I’d be a bit cracked to believe such a thing. However when it’s Jesus we’re talking about well that’s obviously different….
There is lots of first-hand testimony that Christ rose from the dead, recorded by people who were subject to persecution and even execution for making that claim. I do not think first-hand testimony is irrefutable obviously, but it places divinity claims in a different category than pure speculation. After all, are you willing to put your life on the line to defend your neighbor’s alien status? (Check out ‘They Flew’ a recent book on the difficulty of how historians should interpret widely-attested reports of saintly miracles.)
Thank you I will.
It rather depends what evidence you have that your neighbour is an alien masquerading as a human.
Have there been numerous recordings of him doing stuff that humans normally can’t do and has he made any claims to alien status and provided supporting evidence? Why does he claim to be alien and what is his motive for doing so? Do you have other neighbours who believe his evidence that he is an alien and prepared to suffer ridicule or persecution in support of that belief?
Of course in the absence of any such evidence in favour of your neighbour being an alien you would indeed be more than a bit cracked to suddenly believe he was one.
The divinity of Christ rests on rather more than a lack of contrary evidence. It is not irrational not to believe it but neither is such belief exactly the same status as an evidence free belief that your neighbour is an alien.
A fair point.
It has been said that faith cannot lay a finger on science, but also that science cannot lay a finger on faith.
Excellent, well reasoned essay, but I disagree with the premise. You can be Christian and believe in God without actually believing Christ rose from the dead.
Yes. One cannot be a fundamentalist Christian who reads scripture as literal perhaps but of course it’s not intended to be interpreted that way in the first place. IMHO anyway…
Many Christians would disagree with that statement.
Except the guy who created the Christianity we know today says you can’t.
You mean St. Paul, born Saul of Tarsus?
Being a Christian is not the same thing as being a mere theist. That belief in the resurrection is what really makes you a Christian is something apostle Paul, the Greek church fathers,the Latin church fathers, the medieval scholastic theologians, the Protestant reformers and all the popes agree on. It is the difference between Christianity and not Christianity.
But I don’t see how following the known teachings of Jesus of Nazareth necessitates that belief. Nor how possessing that belief necessitates any true adherence to his teachings.
That of course depends on what you consider part of His teachings. There are sayings in the Gospels where He talks about His resurrection before His death. And from the Christian perspective, what He said about it after the resurrection is as important as what He said before.
Anyway, the point was the definition of “Christian”. Mahatma Gandhi was a great admirer of Jesus, and put His ethical teachings into practice far better than most christians, but he remained an Hindu.
I’d say that is far more in the spirit of the teachings than saying his name a lot or assigning miraculous or godly powers to him.
“These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me”
“Not every one who says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven, be he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven”
This is what Jesus declared most important in the Hebrew faith wherein he was raised:
‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
While I believe Jesus transcends any orthodox letter of the Law–let alone the exactarianism of the Pharisees or the status-minded skepticism of the Sadducees–he was a Jew and his offered prayer begins: “Our Father”.
I hope you’ll excuse my responding emphatically and at such length, but I stand in fierce, heartfelt disagreement with those who think any supernatural or otherworldly aspect of the Gospels is the most important part.
But He also talks a lot of His own supernatural importance in the gospels. You are simply picking what seems congenial to you. Which of course you can. But it is not Christianity. This sub thread began with commenter Jim Veenbaas saying that you could be a Christian without believing in the deity of, or resurrection of Christ. You seems to agree with him, but I think the both of you are doing a category mistake. You should rather say that you think Christianity was a mistake and misunderstanding of Jesus, and that you think a non-Christian religion based on some of the teachings of Jesus would be better, and more faithful to the historical Jesus, than Christianity.
No, it isn’t. I admit that. But I maintain what you to some extent seem to allow: the sprit and message of the teacher may nevertheless be made flesh in sincere followers of the Life and Teachings. I see the Message and Sacrifice as real and vital for this troubled world, more than the next one, whatever that may or may not be. And I am using capitals for those nouns to indicate that I hold them to be sacred and singular in the case of the Nazarene.
The direct teachings of Jesus are not Christianity either. Because Jesus was not a Christian. Much of the Christology comes from Paul, and the later highly symbolic and abstract Gospel of John (admittedly, not all of it does). I confess that I don’t trust every word in any Gospel, but most in all of them, especially when the words are attributed to the living Source.
My position is not to deny any supernatural or otherworldly aspects of the Gospels, but to announce that I consider them secondary, and unimportant to me personally at this time. (I used to be some kind of definitional Christian, those I was born to ex-Catholic hippies who retained no formal religion).
To the extent the word is made flesh in their lives–that the tree bears good fruit in this world–I celebrate institutional Christians of any stripe. I should spend more time keeping the inside of my own cup clean rather than preaching my idiosyncratic beliefs to others. I sense you are a sincere Christian of the better sort and I wish you well.
Thanks for the good-faith exchange. See you on the next board.
*And please take the last word here, if so inclined.
Thank you too. In theworld today conversations in good faith is far to rare, especially online. It is something in the very nature of the internet that often turns people, myself included, into their worst selves. And I will admit, that while I keep to what I have said about the meaning of Christianity, your perspective is a very good corrective that all traditional Christians should take to heart.
‘ even Richard Dawkins — the archetypal modern atheist who has done more to confront organised religion than perhaps any other identifiable person in a generation — happily adopts this paradoxical moniker for himself.’
I’m not sure that’s true at all. In his recent debate with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Dawkins seemed to reluctantly concede that he enjoys forms of Christian art and moral philosophy, but his argument seems to be that he doesn’t class those philosophies as strictly Christian but part of a broader western / European tradition.
Its probably a more accurate description of Ali, who when pressed effectively admitted she doesn’t believe the bible or its stories are literally true, and appears to have adopted Christianity due to a personal crisis and mental health struggles.
I heard her say she thought the bible stories were true, and believed the miracles and the resurrection. It’s clear she has adopted Christianity as a comfort which, as Dawkins said, is all fine and dandy but it still doesn’t make it true.
As an atheist, I too enjoy the music and art of Christianity. Singing Christmas carols is delightful, particularly the pagan ones. I’ll take beauty wherever I can find it.
I’d be careful with Tom Holland. I started being suspicious after he thoroughly took on the thesis of the Cathars’ non existence on his Rest is History podcast, which, tho it is a serious thesis, is controversial at best – and by no means supported across the spectrum.
eg, where did writings like the Lyons Cathar ritual come from, if there were no Cathars ?? It is obviously the product of an organised system.
And on Islam there are a number of claims Holland hasn’t addressed, and where he seems guilty of the sloppy scholarship he has condemned in others :
https://drjonathanbrown.com/2015/tom-holland-the-five-daily-prayers-and-they-hypocrisy-of-revisionism/
I read one of his books and would classify it as ‘popular history ‘. This is not a put-down but I was irritated by the tone which at times veered to the over-racy in an attempt to make some eye-catching statement.
I am not sure I would classify it as history at all. Having read his books on Rome, it seems to me he takes all the available written sources completely at face value and then turns them into a good highly embellished yarn. I would view his writing as historical novels which are to be fair entertaining although definitely not in the same class as Hilary Mantel.
With the Cathars he maybe had the issue of having to pick a side, since the issue of whether there were real Cathars – at least as we would understand them – is a live issue, and has been since 2014.
But it’s not a mature issue – the protagonists are still at the sniping stage – and it’s not yet at the point where it’s ready to be be told as an embellished yarn.
I find this essay unconvincing. 1. God’s existence is patently _not_ a scientific question, 2. I’ve heard Hirsi Ali in interview expressing her profound belief in the doctrines of Christianity – above all the doctrine of love, 3. the crucified Nazarene is the ultimate symbol of that doctrine.
Those of us who grew up taking this foundation for granted, then ‘growing out of it’ when we became too clever by half, have missed the point completely. Faith is not rational and needn’t be: it is much less Dawkins, much more Keats’ ‘Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.’
Finally, given we _all_ believe in something: Dawkins in the supremacy of the intellect, others in gender ideology or the sacredness of minorities, others in their own status / power, Islam in submission and conversion (another way of saying status / power), the burning question for me has become: which faith should one _work_ to adopt? Give me the doctrine of love, humility and forgiveness any day of the week – for both myself and my society.
Keats’ negative capability is just as applicable to a position of non-belief, arguably more so, as Christianity claims to provide answers.
Agnosticism perhaps; atheism no way!