I was looking forward to being challenged. I am comfortable being challenged, having my worldview stretched. I have found that whenever parts of my worldview fall apart, the perspective that rises from the ruins of that has been richer.
I have recently appreciated the eirenic, intelligent perspective brought by the “Cosmic Sceptic” (as he refers to himself), Alex O’Connor. I mentioned him explicitly in the recent conversation, Christian Revival? Alex is an atheist.
I have regularly stated that I think God often affirms of what is happening where the word “God” is never heard; and God often repudiates what is done “in God’s name” and where there is the over-frequent use of the word, “God”. And I can see so many situations where Jesus says: “You travel over land and sea to make one single convert. And when you have done so, you make that person twice as fit for hell as you yourself are!” (Matthew 23:15)
I had spotted Alex’s video, “This is why I don’t believe in God” (20 minutes above), but had left viewing it until now – I wanted to give it due attention, to allow it to challenge me.
And I was sorely disappointed.
Alex presents three reasons for his atheism:
1) The problem of Divine Hiddenness
2) The geographic predictability of religious beliefs
3) Gratuitous suffering
Let me briefly engage with each one.
The problem of Divine Hiddenness:
Alex describes his lengthy, deep, intense, intentional engagement with religion – from tertiary study to living with Christians. And, he says, he has not experienced God.
a) I wonder what Alex would understand as “experiencing God”? Does Alex see God as a “being” that exists alongside the different beings of this universe – a bigger, better, brighter being; the biggest, bestest being that impacts these alongside-and-different beings of this universe, with this impact being describable as “experiencing God”?
b) From a classic definition of “God”, is not beauty an experience of God? Is not truth? Is not goodness? Is Alex saying he has never experienced such things? And love?
c) Even if one has an “experience of God”, classic theology would underscore that such an “experience” is NOT God! Furthermore, there are lots of people who have “experienced God” deeply, intensely, and then lost their faith, finding a non-faith explanation for their “experience”.
d) I have long emphasised that we (especially) in the West need to underscore the apophatic – the stressing that God is NOT like this, God is NOT like that (in contrast to the Western stressing of the kataphatic, “God is like this only more so”). Let me also highlight that the kataphatic is not an experience of the negative, it is the negation of experience! I vividly remember when Mother Teresa’s book of her private writing was published, Come be my Light, with the revelation of the decades of lack of spiritual experience that she lived with till her death, the wide media response that clearly she was a fraud. So many people, I thought, misunderstood what faith is – and how it connects with experience, doubts, spiritual dryness, and even depression.
The geographic predictability of religious beliefs
Alex talks about some countries having, say, 95% of the population being monotheists, while another has 5%.
At one point, Alex even uses the term “saved”. Yes, if one holds that our eternal destiny is determined by a tick-box list of beliefs in one’s head (and you are destined to an eternity of suffering in hell if one of these boxes isn’t ticked!), that what is required is affirming “as many as six impossible things before breakfast“, then, yes, there is an issue that such tick-boxes are significantly tied to geography.
Yes, if I had been born in Saudi Arabia, I would most likely be a Muslim. If I had been born in Thailand, I would probably be a Buddhist. But again, as with issue (1), above, isn’t a significant part of the issue the understanding of the word and concept of “God”?
Exclusivists might see everyone who (even slightly) disagrees with them as being wrong. Inclusivists would see others as being right whenever there is agreement (a Christian Inclusivist sees a Muslim as worshipping the same God; and an Exclusivist Christian does not). A Pluralist would understand that people describe the same reality significantly differently – blind people feeling an elephant, different people climbing different sides of the same mountain (read further here).
Complementing this point, James Fowler’s Stage 6 of faith sees people being able to hold seemingly-conflicting positions (eg. God exists/God does not exist).
My first degree is mostly in Mathematics (and some Philosophy of Mathematics). Mathematics provides models of reality. Very often (mostly?!) reality itself is “inaccessible”, all we have are the models (the maps, if you like) of this reality. Example: people often disparage the model of the Sun moving around the Earth, happily claiming a heliocentric “belief” (the Earth moves around the Sun), and then many are shocked when they see a video of the Sun going around our Milky Way galaxy, dragging the planets, comet-like, in its wake.
Here’s the real shock: each of these three models is correct! Each simply depends on the “frame of reference”. If our model makes the Earth the stationary frame of reference, we can make the Sun move around the Earth, the Mathematical equations just become really complicated. Having the Sun as the stationary frame of reference just makes the equations so much simpler. Following a heliocentric model, a secondary school student with reasonable Maths skills can understand Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion.
When it comes to faith in “God”, I contend that there isn’t so much geographic disparity as a colonial, Western, European mapping of the “God” concept onto other languages and cultures. Inquire about what is sacred in one geographic location or another and I suspect that compassion, flourishing, meaning, and so forth, do not vary as significantly as Alex’s 5% to 95% disparity.
Gratuitous Suffering
Alex is not presenting the Problem of Evil as such (why do tragedies happen to the innocent) as he contends that this traditional “Problem of Evil” can lead to growth in individual goodness. Alex is denying God because we hurt ourselves stubbing our toe, or an innocent animal is caught under a fallen tree.
Again, sorry Alex, I’m surprised by the issue.
a) A bit like issue (1) above, this seems to be based on a straw-man “God”, a sky-fairy who should intervene to prevent such gratuitous suffering. The problem with seeking faith in such a straw-god (!) is that it would lead directly to the traditional “Problem of Evil” (if the Almighty God can intervene to prevent innocent suffering, why doesn’t he? – and, yes, such an interventionist sky-fairy is normally a “he”).
b) What Alex appears to want, in this issue, is an inconsistent universe. Concrete and stone should be solid and firm when used to build a house, building, or road, but suddenly, magically, sky-fairily, concrete and stone should become soft when our big toe strikes it so that no hurt happens. In such a universe, of course, morality becomes impossible: no one can hurt another. Anything I do can never have a bad effect on another. It makes no difference if I do good or “evil”, for if I hit you over the head with a brick, it suddenly becomes soft, because, in this Alex universe, that’s what bricks do when they come into contact with people. And a log can be used to firmly weigh down tent guy ropes, but the same log won’t pin down a deer’s leg.
Just as (see above) my purpose is not to convert Alex, I’m pretty sure he has no goal of destroying my faith. As a Christian, I have doubts. I wonder if Alex, as an atheist, has doubts, and if his doubts are bigger, deeper, stronger than mine as a Christian? Or at another level: if Alex’s doubts as an atheist would be smaller, shallower, and weaker than if he were a Christian.
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‘I vividly remember when Mother Teresa’s book of her private writing was published, Come be my Light, with the revelation of the decades of lack of spiritual experience that she lived with till her death, the wide media response that clearly she was a fraud.’
And she knew it would be so. ‘Destroy my writings’ she said, yet they were published and torn to shreds instead. Isn’t that what we used to say equals the devil, the undermining and attempt to disfigure or destroy any good intention or outcome?!
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The latest public figure to decide to represent Jesus in the US is discredited former politician Donald Trump, whose ego could not take the learning experience of US democracy and instead has (funded by the super-rich agenda) decided to overturn it. In the debate with President Biden last night, this grand old party wannabe ranted dishonesty and obnoxious attitudes and accusations. The President was notably disarmed, dismayed and appalled. Guess what the newspapers reported today? -Biden’s ‘performance’ was less than Trump’s!
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You know what I think, re the atheism claims, Bosco? It’s a modern human phenomenon that any fame is better than no fame. Express any opinion rather than remain silent.
As for the concept of ‘saved’. Jesus said ‘not everyone who calls on me Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ How do we do that, enter God’s realm? Care for the poor and downtrodden- ‘whatever you did for the least you did to me.’
Keep the faith Bosco, as will I, though I am increasingly exhausted, and no Mother Theresa!
For a Christian the reference for our model is compassion. Nothing else will do.
Thanks, as always, Tracy.
I met Mother Teresa in Christchurch before she was “famous”, and visited her home in Kolkata (then known as Calcutta). And, yes, I watched the USA “debate” yesterday – it did not cheer me up! I recently watched the film Abbé Pierre – if you get a chance, do watch it; it’s unusual to find a quality “faith” film, and it is all about compassion (and its current relevance) and a Christianity without all the hype and attempts to generate an “experience” of “God”. Blessings.
That’s a beautiful experience, you have had many haven’t you?! She served Bosco, and encouraged others to serve and show compassion, in a time and place where many others looked away.
Donald Trump is currently about the furthest thing from service or Christ-following, unless he changes significantly, first of which would be stepping down from the public stage and taking responsibility for his many inappropriate unkind words and actions. He never apologizes to any of the people whose lives he overturns or tramples.
The fact that people will so easily be mislead by ‘convincers’ though is troubling to me. Mr Trump’s religious mentor in Texas (Robert Morris) just resigned from a mega-church in Texas after admitting a ‘moral failure’ (his words) which turned out to be sexually abusing a child. Something he had apparently preached about, having been ‘saved’, but not the full details or taking full responsibility.
There’s just too much hypocrisy and hubris in human behavior to combine politics and religion and it be spiritual, but listening to Alex O’Connor it’s just another set of apologetics. As to how anyone can read Psalm 139 (and all the other spiritual writings he cites) and be unaffected by deep perceptions of ‘God’ ‘because it does not reach him personally’… it’s just arrogance. ‘Someway his fault’? Maybe, that’s usually the basis for humility and personal transformation and spiritual growth.
‘The geographical predictability of religious belief’ is something many of us have discussed from the perspective of interfaith over many years, because of course ‘God’ is everywhere and represented variously via culture and personal experience. That doesn’t mean ‘God’ is wrong, it means the concept of ‘saved’ O’Connor suggests is wrong, something many theologians have discussed. It’s the biggest weakness of apologetic dialectic. Or as Carl Barth put it ‘I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.’
In the Catholic Church we acknowledge unanswered questions and ‘Divine Mystery’, in Judaism talking around a topic opens it up for ever deeper study, just two examples, but each religion has its own insights and blind spots also. Any interfaith dialogue reveals that, and that we are all experiencing the same things variously.
I am uncertain the purpose or intention of Alex O’Connor in going all-out to convince others of atheism, is he intending to reduce religious persecution or improve human experience or compassion, via his work, for example? He talks about the suffering of animals, is he helping animals? Ie. what his his intended personal service here?
What he says here seems to be yet another ‘flattening of the narrative’ as you have called before many other attempts to over-simplify. Maybe he would be more convincing if he were out in the world demonstrating compassion among the poor and suffering, fueled by his own beliefs. It would be more interesting or compelling to listen to for me.