DIALOGUE WITH ATHEISM #1
“FOUNDING FATHERS:
ATHEISTS, DEISTS, OR BELIEVERS?”
Part I
It all happened an October in California. Our daughter, Elizabeth, said she wanted for her birthday, most of all, for her parents to come with her and her two San Francisco sisters to the wine country. We were only too happy to oblige, of course, and our daughter reserved a long weekend for us at beautiful Meadowwood Resort in St. Helena.
On a perfect California afternoon, Sara and I and our three daughters were lounging by the absolutely beautiful swimming pool. Between laps I was reading the book by professed atheist, Christopher Hitchens. It was titled, God Is Not Great and subtitled, How Religion Poisons Everything.
On the lounge next to me was a gentleman also reading his book. It turns out he was an artist and of course he learned I was a minister and sometime college instructor in theology. He said, “I couldn’t help but notice the book you are reading.” “Yes,” I said, “It’s very interesting.”
He then added after a polite pause, “Why is it that you, being a minister, would read a book by an atheist?” In my reply I quipped, “Well, I need to know what the competition is thinking! Besides,” I added, “atheists have been getting a lot of press lately. Sam Harris with his two books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, along with Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, added to Hitchen’s book, had been attracting lots of attention in newspapers, magazines and talk shows.” I said to the artist acquaintance that I wanted to know more about their thinking.
He then asked me a minister, what seemed to be an impertinent question. “Do you believe in God?” To the surprise of my daughters, I hesitated in my response. Eventually I answered “yes,” but added that it depends on the kind of God you are talking about. And that is the key question in our dialogue with atheism. What kind of God are atheists and believers talking about?
Well, the atheists mentioned are talking primarily about the God of the Bible, and the Muslim Holy Book, The Koran, which draws heavily from the Bible. And part of the appeal of the atheists’ books is the breezy self-assurance with which they are written and the incisive moral critique they make of religion.
Here are some random quotes: Dawkins says, “The oldest of the three Abrahamic religions, and the clear ancestor of the other two, is Judaism: originally a tribal cult of a single fiercely unpleasant God morbidly obsessed with sexual restrictions, with the smell of charred flesh, with his own superiority over rival gods and with the exclusiveness of his own chosen desert tribe.” (The God Delusion, p. 58)
Sam Harris quotes Deuteronomy 13: 7-11 which advises how to treat heretics. It says in part: “you must kill him…you must stone him to death, since he has tried to divert you from Yahweh your God…” The End of Faith, p. 18) Harris says that the “God of Abraham is not only unworthy of the immensity of creation” he is unworthy even of man” (Ibid, p. 226) partly because he sometimes requires ritual murder as in the case of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac.
Harris adds that the rite of circumcision seems to be a substitute for child sacrifice and that God’s “thirst for the blood of animals, as well as His attentiveness to the niceties of their slaughter and holocaust (sacred burning), is almost impossible to exaggerate.” Letter to a Christian Nation, p. 97)
Christopher Hitchens agrees. He adds that the sacrifice of Isaac indicates a God of barbaric, bloodthirsty tastes. He then moved to the New Testament to descry a God that would demand the blood of a man like Jesus as atonement for sin. Hitches chides Jews and Christians for their allegiance to such a barbaric, bloodthirsty God. (God Is Not Great, pp.’s. 6, 53, 109, 231, 280, 282, 223 – 6,205 – 8, 212 and in lectures at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, MI) And they leave Muslims not far behind in their ritual murder of infidels, (meaning American Christians and Jews) such as on 9/11 and years since in their fanatic adherence to a bloodthirsty God.
Even so, the atheists often write with amazing flair and certainty. Christopher Hitchens, both in writing and speaking, has a rapier wit and entertaining style. We heard him debate his theist younger brother, Peter, at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, MI. As older brother, Christopher clearly had the upper hand in the debate.
And in Hitchen’s book, God Is Not Great, some of the chapter titles are intriguing in themselves. Here are some examples: “The Nightmare of the Old Testament”, “The New Testament Exceeds The Evil of The ‘Old’ One”, “Religion As Original Sin”, “Is Religion Child Abuse?”, i.e. as in the genital mutilation of circumcision, clitoris excision, and sexual abuse of children by priests who rarely are convicted but only reassigned.
As you can see, Hitchens is totally unaffected by political correctness. And ironically, I find most of the atheist writers both troubling and refreshing. Troubling because they rightly deal with profound and complex issues, but refreshing because they remind me of the prophets and Jesus.
After all, it was the prophet Amos in 750 B.C. speaking for God, said of the prosperous organized religion of his time: “I hate, I despise your festivals, and take no delight in your solemn assemblies.”
Amos then descries the burnt offerings and animal sacrifices and noisy religious songs. He then adds the famous words echoed by other prophets and Jesus: “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5: 21 – 24)
And it was Jesus who said, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees (organized religion), you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 5:20)
(to be continued)
