An interesting comment discussion I've been having with Lane (who I think is my only surviving reader) has brought me back to the premise behind the new 'evangelical atheism' movement, pitched not just by Christopher Hitchens in "God is not Great," but also by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Bobby Henderson (via his Flying Spaghetti Monster.)
These folks will occasionally take on the more serious and profound theologians (although I haven't read it, Hitchens reportedly takes on Aquinas during the course of "God is not Great.") But usually they don't.
Take Dawkins; I am always astounded this man has a following. He is to atheism what Chomsky is to liberal politics; where Chomsky is a linguist who is mistaken for an expert on politics, Dawkins is an ethologist and biologist who is mistaken for an expert on religion, anthropology, and cosmology.
One of his noted quotes:
"Nevertheless, it is a telling fact that, the world over, the vast majority of children follow the religion of their parents rather than any of the other available religions. Instructions to genuflect, to bow towards Mecca, to nod one's head rhythmically towards the wall, to shake like a maniac, to 'speak in tongues' - the list of such arbitrary and pointless motor patterns offered by religion alone is extensive --- are obeyed, if not slavishly, at least with some reasonably high statistical probability."
This is a typical line of thought for Dawkins. As a biologist, he sees religion not through real understanding, but through the eyes of a behaviourist. He is all about the exhibited symptoms, the patterns: Christians who raise Christian children, Jews who stay Jews through the generations, and the continuity of practice from generation to generation. It was Dawkins who coined the term 'meme' to deal with what he calls cultural transmission (which a cynic might dismiss as simply an update of social darwinism.)
Nowhere in Dawkins work does he ever examine the import of these behaviours - what the experience of it actually is. Dawkins is likely quite familiar with the practice of Catholics fingering rosary beads. He would have no problem of following the formula, I'm sure... ten Haily Marys, one Our Father for each decade.
But could he understand contemplative prayer itself? The speaking of the ninety nine names of God by a Sufi? I doubt it, personally. All he is able to see in that is the release of seratonin, memes, trained behaviour. Experiential religion is alien, and the thing not understood, the thing feared, must become the thing abolished.
Someone like Dawkins needs fundamentalists - in his documentary, "The Root of All Evil", who does he take on? Not the Pope, the Dalai Lama, Aga Khan or any religious intellectual and peer. He takes on Ted Haggard. Haggard he can understand because, in many respects, he is a kindred soul.
Fundamentalism - be it religious fundamentalism or areligious fundamentalism - is not open to the transcendant.
A 'fundamentalist' Christianity can accept language that includes a transfigured Christ, because the word 'transfigured' can be found in Matthew 17. But a fundamentalist Christianity cannot really embrace the Cosmic Christ implied by Matthew 17, or John 1:1... the word of God through which creation is spoken into existence, and sustained (as Augustine says.) The words hint at it, but they don't come out and say it - they tease, "Who do you say that I am?"
The fundamentalist and aggressively evangelical form of atheism proposed by Dawkins needs that kind of Christianity: that kind of Christianity is contained entirely and completely in the texts of the bible. It is easy to take apart a text, point out its apparent logical inconsistencies. A transcendant, mystical Christianity is an ephemeral and difficult target to hit. But the kind of faith contained entirely in a book in the Hotel room dresser? That makes a much better target.
I've often thought - fundamentalists are all a lot more like one another than they are like any of the rest of us. "What is truth?" Pilate asked.
We weren't meant to find the answer to that question easy.... (unless the answer is 42.)
2 comments:
I guess I kind of knowing what you mean... Some atheists I personally know learn about religions from... fellow atheists, as opposed to challenging themselves with reading theologians. It's such a shame many people don't get to take the wonderful theology seminar I had my freshman year of college, where we read and genuinely struggled with the theologians of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also some of the most intellectual atheists. It seems that religions with which most fundamentalists are presented (be they religious or atheists) is of an extremely simplified kind. I, for one, don't see how it's possible to see the complexity of religion and reduce to a few black-and-white syllogisms.
I wish I had had a course of that kind available to take... which is odd because my university had once been a seminary.
There are certainly atheist intellectuals who can make me think: Nietzsche for instance. Or Freud. And always, I'd much rather think than shout. :)
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