I am at least as committed to helping people escape fundamentalist, cult, and unhealthy spirituality as those in what is termed the exvangelical movement. And I’m committed to providing frameworks that help people to not go there in the first place.
I appreciate what Promise Backlund does online (she goes under the handle “Eve Was Framed”). Promise left a cult – complete with American-style purity culture – and speaks and writes about her move to atheism. But a recent video (below) highlights what I think often happens: the primary understanding of the concept “God” does not shift. In the move from fundamentalism to atheism, “God” simply moves from being scary to being silly.
The video mocks anyone with a belief in God as if it is no different to belief in a Pink Unicorn Goddess. The problem with Promise’s approach here is that it assumes God HAS existence as an attribute, as if God can be added to other objects in the universe and thereby increase the number of things by one [add this plate to this cup – we now have two things; if we add God, do we now have three things?]
In the history of the development of the concept and understanding of God, there was a decisive turning point when John Duns Scotus argued that being (ens) is said univocally of God and creatures. God thereby becomes A being, albeit the highest one. Existence becomes something that can be predicated of God. William of Ockham with his Nominalism pushed the trajectory further. And this is the unexamined, uncritiqued assumption undergirding much exvangelicalism and atheist missionaries.
This was a shift from the Early and High Middle Ages where philosophically the concept of God was developed that God IS existence. God is ipsum esse subsistens — subsistent being itself. This particular expression of Thomas Aquinas looks back to Exodus 3:14 – Ego sum qui sum (“I am who I am”), Augustine (God as Being in contrast to mutable creatures), Pseudo-Dionysius, Boethius, and so on.
Exvangelicals like Promise not only do not change or grow in their understanding of the term “God” – simply moving within a binary of for or against; with God, as I said, going from being scary to being silly – but the approach to worldview as being absolutely certain their view is correct (James Fowler’s Stage 4 or less) is also unchanged. As is their proselytising drive: before, others must be convinced that their viewpoint is the one to hold; after: others must be convinced that their viewpoint is the one to hold.
The primary point of this post is to highlight that intelligent theism, with a positive, healthy spirituality, exists. Just as I would encourage respectful friendship and partnership with caring atheists, so I urge atheists to be respectful of our position rather than mocking it as if all theists have low IQ, and atheists simply believe in one less god than monotheists.
I was intrigued recently to watch a video of an atheist who is against seeking to change the mind of theists, arguing that if the belief in God provided meaning to someone’s life it is immoral to undermine this.
Where theism is unhealthy, cultish, we can work together to help people move towards a more healthy worldview. Where atheism is unhealthy, we can similarly do so. We can do better than mocking each other and creating straw persons. We can encourage partnership rather than polarisation.
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