God is dependable
I heard part of an old Wire Tap the other day, about a family of atheists deciding to have a religious funeral for an atheist relative (for a social reason). They find the church the late atheist relative had once occasionally attended, and talk to the preacher there, who seems very relaxed and human and understanding, including of their atheism – then at the funeral itself he confounds them by shouting about eternal torment and flames of hell. They were angry but too cowardly to confront him, but on Wire Tap the storyteller (Adam Davidson) phones him to ask some questions. They are important questions, which don’t get asked enough. He asked if he had it right – the preacher really believed that people who don’t believe in this god will burn in hell for eternity; the preacher affirmed that he did. So Davidson asked (paraphrasing from memory) ‘If you really believe all that how can you be so calm? You should be screaming at me, telling me to save myself.’ The preacher says he stays calm because it is God who decides. Then the preacher goes off on a little rant, not of the ‘repent or burn’ variety but of the ‘how do atheists do it?’ variety. He can’t even conceive of it – it must be so bleak – if this is all there is – with no one to turn to. Davidson says, mildly, ‘We have each other.’ The preacher says, in a pitying voice, ‘But human beings are not…dependable.’
And at that point I turned it off, in the familiar exasperation. Now I kind of wish I’d heard him to the end, partly because I’m curious whether Davidson managed a decent response.
But what interests me about the preacher’s view is how incredibly back to front it is. Oh poor atheists, with no one to turn to, lucky theists, having dependable old God to turn to.
But what are they turning to? What is this dependable God that theists love and worship and can turn to? It is one that burns people forever because they don’t believe there is such a god. It is a monster – a worse monster than any human has ever been. It is grossly unjust, and cruel to a degree that we can’t even wrap our heads around. Yet the preacher thinks this God is a source of comfort and the absence of it is so bleak that he can’t even imagine doing without it.
That’s a terrible thing, properly considered. Most people who believe in God believe in a god of that kind, and they love and worship it. That’s both tragic and frightening.
“It is a monster – a worse monster than any human has ever been.”
Exactly right. If there is a traditional Hell, the only being in heaven and earth who deserves to go there is the god who created it.
“Most people who believe in God believe in a god of that kind”
I wonder if that’s really true? Certainly most people who believe in a god believe, at least nominally in a god as described in the Bible/Torah/Koran but I wonder what proportion of them really believe in a god vengeful towards non-believers for no reason other than their unbelief? I suspect most people who think they believe in a god, don’t really ask themselves the question.
Indeed, it was when I started to ask the “why would god set the world up this way? to what end? why would god care so much about why we believe in it’s existence?” kinds of question, at around the age of 12 or 13, that I began my drift towards my current atheism…
But you’re forgetting the bit about how accepting this god means you get to be all special and chosen and safe and secure. And that wouldn’t be so special if there weren’t a nasty and scary alternative, and you wouldn’t be so special if there weren’t the sinners to be better than. It’s perverse.
I can’t understand those folks who say that life without a god is so inconceivably bleak. They must live such horribly miserable lives. They don’t just say that their god adds more to an already good life — which would mean they thought life here in this world has some value — they say that life without their god is inconceivably bleak. Can they really find nothing in this world worth living for? Do they really have no one in their lives who is at all dependable? I feel so very sad for them, but I’m glad they have found a way to deal with their misery.
Patrick – well it’s at least true that most believers belong to religions or denominations that officially believe that. But how many of them opt out of that particular belief, of course I don’t know.
The clergy of those denominations of course don’t have that option – so we do get to blame them for believing (and preaching) what they do.
“They must live such horribly miserable lives.”
I know – it was so odd, listening to that preacher – there was such passion in his voice – he apparently does have a horribly miserable life.
Even if ones life were horribly miserable, how is it a consolation to think that after death one might be even more horribly miserable for all eternity?
No it’s other people who will be tortured for all eternity. This isn’t Calvinism – it’s simpler than that – just believe and you’re saved. (And I think saying you believe is seen as identical to actually believing.)
Maybe there is some kind of mathematical law where the inverse of how much punishment god is willing to meter out, plus the square of how many others are sinners, is how much relief and righteousness one feels at getting to go to heaven? Kind of like a metaphysical banging of one’s head against a brick wall: you just do it to yourself to feel the relief when it stops. Seems like there might be less convoluted ways to enjoy life.
Human beings are not dependable, but your imaginary friend IS and has super powers. Isn’t that every kid’s fantasy?
Convoluted is right.
I spend hours as a child trying to resolve this problem: X is love but X says you will suffer. Meanwhile back at the ranch X might request you to kill your child or X might drown you or turn you to a pillar of salt. It was just plain unresolvable so I played the denial game that I suspect many believers play – the bad stuff isn’t really true, no one would do that even X, it’s just a story, and (the winner) that bad stuff doesn’t apply to me. (Or my mother or my sisters, but to bad sinners and Communists but WAIT A MINUTE it would apply to my dad. . .)
It led to many sleepless nights and many fits of crying big salt tears.
I stopped paying attention, then explained one of my denial games to the sunday school teachers who kicked me out, then I spent a few years fearing the lightning strike. Then I blew it the fuck off. I’d have been better off putting my energies into learning arithmetic.
I’d just like to question your claim OB, that clergy don’t have the option. That’s a widely held view, and is certainly true in the Roman Catholic Church, where the teaching authority of the church spells out in exact terms what their clergy are committed to. Transgress that, and like Hans Kung or Uta Ranke-Heinemann, you’ll be sacked. The same goes for many fundamentalist denominations.
In the Anglican Communion, however – until quite recently – to take one example – priests had to sign the 39 Articles of Religion when they were ordained, but this is no longer a requirement in most places (says he, hopefully), and many Anglican clergy (though perhaps not so many now) tend to have more liberal views, sometimes arguably atheist views, where the words ‘god’ and ‘christ’ are used as symbols (on a par with the Olypians) rather than referring expressions. Don Cupitt’s ‘non-realism’ is an example of this way of understanding theological terms.
Such liberal ‘believers’ give a kind of plausible respectability to religion, and therefore implicitly underwrite extremist beliefs, which shelter in their shade. The same thing occurs, of course, in Islam, Judaism or Hinduism. But very few contemporary liberal Christians believe in hell, and most of them do not really believe in heaven either. Religious myths are treated, in the way that Feuerbach suggested, as human creations, as imaginative ways of understanding the human condition. Richard Holloway’s recent book, Between the Monster and the Saint, is an example of this kind of religious ‘believing.’ I think it would be helpful if non-believers recognised this, and, in their criticism of religion, they held liberal ‘believers’ more strictly to account.
The example you cite is a stunning example of primitive belief, and provides a good reason for liberals to re-examine the diverse madnesses that their apparent faith tends to validate. Had I been a family member in such a situation, I should have called a halt to the proceedings, and suggested that we reconvene at the cemetery, where people could celebrate the deceased as he deserved to be celebrated. I have, on occasion, left churches with the ‘preacher’ (how I hate that word!) in mid-sentence, deliberately and visibly protesting by my departure. On one occasion, where the door was not on a hydraulic shutener, I slammed the big door as hard as I could when I left. (The preacher was antisemitic, and made it clear that she was.)
Religion, however, makes people stupid. Milbank’s Theology and Social Theory or Stanley Hauerwas’s With the Grain of the Universe (the latter comprise the Gifford Lectures of 2000-2001) are good examples of theological pyrotechnics which remain amazingly empty of content. Alister McGrath is a genius of idiocy. They still think that religious beliefs make sense in the universe as we know it. Clever, but stupid.
Eric, I didn’t say ‘clergy don’t have the option,’ I said ‘The clergy of those denominations don’t have that option’ – those denominations being the ones that officially believe in eternal torment for unbelievers. I was limiting the claim, on purpose. The Anglican communion is a very small communion though…the big and growing ones are pretty much all of the eternal torment variety. This is a fact that depresses the hell out of me.
But I’m overlooking your larger point in saying that. (It’s been a…lively morning, which has rattled my brain. Sorry.) Yes quite. What I left out of the post was that the church was a Baptist one – I could be wrong but I don’t think there are many liberal Baptist churches. In a way it was quite naive of the family to be suprised at what the preacher said. (And the first part of the phone conversation was quite interesting, because Davidson said he thought funeral sermons were probably supposed to offer comfort and the preacher said yes and Davidson said well er um how do you reconcile that with roaring about the flames of hell for unbelievers? The preacher said his goal was to combine comfort with the saving of souls. Ah.) But perhaps the liberal churches give people the impression that all churches are like that really, and won’t rant about hell at a funeral for an atheist.
Always a risk in these online conversations. There is so much to read and so little time – if you’re going to do anything else at all – I don’t know how you do it! I didn’t notice the qualification. It’s not so much reading comprehension, as speed reading. Sorry.
There are, as a matter of fact, some quite liberal Baptists, and a very strong tradition (at one time) in the United States of a Baptist social gospel. One American Baptist theologian, Kenneth Kauthen, is extremely liberal, and quite sensible, too, on a number of issues.
However, it’s perhaps worth adding that, as a matter of fact, the Anglican Communion is the third largest denomination in the world, after the RCC and the Orthodox churches. Not that this is something to crow about. It just happens to be true. It is, however, a lot more conservative now than it was, and is growing more so by the day.
Hey, please don’t forget our small-but-irritatingly “established” Church Of Scotland (which I got out of aged 13, thankfully), which is about to go through its own potentially-schismatic internal strife over a gay ‘meenister’.
We’re a small country, but awfy annoying when we want tae be…
:-)
No apologies required! The reading comprehension jibe was on another thread, and referred to a much more basic (and irritating) misreading.
The Anglican communion is the third largest? There are more Anglicans than Baptists or Methodists? I didn’t know. I thought I’d read somewhere that the Anglican church was small and shrinking – my mistake. Wrong about Baptists, too. Thanks for the info.
The reading comprehension lark was on another thread, but I fell into the trap on that one too. It’s easier to follow the thread than the go back to the original post. My mea culpas pertained to that as well. I read what you said about Himmler. It made perfect sense in context, and I did comprehend the point, but then didn’t go back when I was reading through the post. Speed reading.
Of course, returning to theme, since the Southern Baptists became the flag carrier for the Baptists in the US, the whole tenour of their gospel may have changed. Baptists were originally very individualist, and it came out in the diversity of their theology. But since they became the GOP at prayer, perhaps there’s less latitude for individual expression.
Hinduism is a cool religion that is also oriented towards peace and prosperity.:`~