An Atheist’s Journey

In a comment on my last blog post on miracles, the commenter, Stephen Parrish, wrote the following:

What is the common ground between the occurrence and the impossibility of miracles?  If a religion were based on the flatness of the Earth, or the geocentric theory, would you seek common ground with its followers?

You’re trying to find a path to something you don’t believe exists.  I don’t get it.

The issue is important enough that I want to devote an entire blog post to it.

I want to emphasize that I appreciate Mr. Parrish’s comment.  Comments such as his are exactly the kind of comments I seek from readers.  If everyone agreed with me, then this blogging would get very boring very quickly.  And in the spirit of finding common ground, I want to avoid the temptation of engaging in counterattack.  So I will use a parable (something I’m borrowing from the bible, by the way).

Let’s assume that there are flat earth believers and that we disagree with them, in particular we believe in a spherical earth revolving around the sun.  (Call us the “copernicans”, after Copernicus the scientist who gave us the current heliocentric view of the solar system, which by the way isn’t exactly correct either, given our solar system’s trajectory about the galaxy; but anyway…)

I argue that we should want to find a common ground between the flat-earth believers and the copernicans.

What is the alternative to finding a common ground?  Well, we could kill them all, and that would solve the problem of our differences.  But maybe they outnumber us significantly and would fight back.  Okay, then maybe we can wait until they all die off, perhaps a generation or two.  But they teach their children that the earth is flat, and so, as a culture, they’re not likely to die off.  Okay, maybe we can educate them in our public schools, or unleash people like Carl Sagan on them.  But we find that that doesn’t work.  We’ve aimed our telescopes skyward and have “proven” that the earth isn’t flat, and we’ve written books detailing those proofs, and Carl Sagan said, “billions and billions,” so many times that he was hoarse, but still they believe that the earth is flat.  We can write a zillion books on the subject, teach the heliocentric theory in our schools, and the flat earth believers will simply home-school their children.  They congregate in their flat earth buildings with their steeples.  And then we learn that they are plotting to do away with the non-believers, the copernicans!

We have failed miserably.

Who wins in the end?  Some might say that the truth will win out, that whoever holds the correct view will emerge as the winner.  I wonder whether that is really true.  People believe what they want to believe, sometimes irrespective of the truth.  And in any case, it could take a thousand years.

I argue that we must find a common ground with the flat earth believers.  Maybe there’s something good about believing in a flat earth.  The earth is locally flat anyway, right?  Maybe there’s a value in seeing the earth as flat.  Maybe in finding a common ground, we can overlook the superficial differences between us and rejoice in something higher.  I’m not sure what that is right now, but maybe it’s LOVE.

How can we love each other if we are hating each other’s beliefs?  Maybe LOVE is a good enough reason to overlook the details of each other’s beliefs as we move toward that common ground.

Why attempt to find a common ground?  Ultimately, we must find a common ground because there is value in each side’s position, and because, as a civilization, we cannot survive if either side is erradicated.  Science serves a useful purpose, and so does religion.  So rather than continue sniping back and forth, let’s figure out how to come together.

Who am I, and what do I stand for?  I’m a scientist and a mathematician.  I teach math at a community college.  I have a PhD in a scientific discipline, with a strong background in math and physics.

I seek to understand the universe in scientific terms.  Because of my background, I do not believe that a personal, omniscient, omnipotent, God exists.

However, I want to be very clear that I’m NOT anti-religion.  I disagree with atheists who would eliminate religion.

Why do I support religion and religious thinking?

The short answer: Because I think there’s something necessary to human civilization that religion provides, that without it we risk our own destruction.  And until we understand what that something is, we must be very careful about eliminating religion.

Religion is in trouble in western culture.  Religious peoples in the west are in a battle for their cultural survival.  Left unchecked, the advancement of science will totally destroy religion.  I have seen it in myself, and I understand how the psychology of scientific thinking dismembers and crushes religious impulses.  I have somehow found the strength to withstand the final annihilation of the religious impulse within me, but the atheistic army marches forward with great success.

It’s a battle between theism and atheism, and I stand in the middle, now unwilling to take sides.

I have been on both sides of the fence.  For the first 10-12 years of my life, I believed wholeheartedly in God.  I wanted to be a Catholic priest.  I attended Catholic grade school.  Then I discovered science.  I looked up at the night sky and decided that there was no room for God in the universe, that God was not necessary for its functioning or for our understanding of the universe.

But in the intervening years, I have come around to the idea that liberal thinking, often synonymous with life without God, presents a huge risk to our culture.  As a civilization, we are at that point when our tools and weapons are far more powerful than our moral skills.  In our hands we hold the means of our destruction, and we don’t know what to do.

Some would argue that it is the great religions of the world themselves, embodied by such people as George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden, that present the risk, that liberals are peaceful people and wouldn’t hurt a flea.  There is some truth in this view, but it ignores the terrible moral relativism that liberals advocate.  There is a price to pay for liberalism, paid by the people who commit suicide, paid by the homeless, paid by the single mothers, paid in the form of the stark loneliness of the disconnected in our vast society.  I’m one of those disconnected, even surrounded as I am by friends.  I find myself contemplating suicide on a daily basis.  Why?  Because I don’t know why I’m here.

It is an oversimplification to say that Christians are conservative and atheists are liberal.  And anyway I don’t think that it boils down to liberal versus conservative.  I DON’T know what it boils down to.  But I do know that there is something of value in religion, in the bible, even in the tele-evangelists who unscrupulously profit from people’s need of religion.  I don’t know what it is, but I want to explore and find out.

I’m open to anything in this search.  Maybe I will come to believe in God, though I think that if that happens too easily, then I will have failed.  I believe that I serve a useful purpose by being in the middle, a sympathetic atheist in search of what “God” can offer Man, that to convert too quickly (should that be my eventual fate) would do a dis-service to the needs of Christians and atheists alike.

I challenge both to look at the other and ask, “Why?  Why are you the way you are?”  And to ask this without dismissing the answer.  Because the truth is in the answer, even if we don’t yet understand what that answer looks like.

I once took the following oath: “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine.” The oath was a line from the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn (rhymes with “mine”) Rand.  It’s the oath that one must swear by in the novel in order to gain entry to the secret valley (heaven?).  By swearing this oath one affirmed that he would live his life according to the principles of “rational self-interest,” i.e., for his own selfish purpose.  Seven of us high school students took the oath.  That oath came to define my relationships and my life for years to come.

Ayn Rand was an atheist.  Her novels could be regarded as atheist manifestos, revealing what a world without God, what individuals without God, could look like.  And I bought into the vision of such a world and such a person.  For Rand (permit me to paraphrase and summarize, as I have read all of her fiction and nonfiction books), God is a figment of Man’s imagination, the result of Man’s irrational superstition and fear, his lowest vision of himself (weak and dependent) in the face of an irrational and inexplicable universe.  For Rand, the theist (a believer in God) was at the same level as the scummiest politicians who line their own pockets with money stolen from citizens.

I was a Randian, a follower of Ayn Rand, until one day in college when I met Burt, a PhD student in computer science, who patiently explained to me the flaws in Randianism.  At the top of Burt’s list of flaws of Randianism was that Rand and her movement were dogmatic.

After much “soul”-searching, I realized that Burt was right!  The charge might have been hard to prove from Rand’s fiction writing alone (not so with her nonfiction).  But in her public life, Rand was known to be merciless with interviewers, publishers, critics, and anyone else who crossed her path.  Even among her followers she allowed no questioning, no doubt, no interpretation that was not sanctioned by the hierarchy of the Objectivist movement (the philosophical movement that she founded and led based on her brand of atheism and metaphysics).  She was an angry woman, unforgiving and intolerant.  While her novels are still popular and command a cult following, I’m sure she would hold most of her readers in low regard.

But dogmatism was for me also a primary criticism of Christianity.  There are probably as many Christian dogmas as there are Christians.  Christians hold dogmatic beliefs of many bizarre and unprovable notions, from the likes of purgatory, to God’s infinite power, to original sin, to my sinfulness for being an atheist (wouldn’t God be more forgiving?), to the primacy of Christianity over other religions, to all the rituals, and on and on.  If you find yourself on the wrong side of a discussion on any of these points with a dogmatic Christian, you risk ostracism or worse.

So I found myself between two worlds, the dogmatic theistic world of Christianity and the dogmatic atheistic world envisioned by Rand.  Thus began my search for meaning in life and for a possible role for spirit or the divine in my corporeal existence on this planet.

If I seem conflicted, or contradictory, or indecisive, or unwilling to commit, then maybe it’s just my unwillingness to become dogmatic.  When it comes to religion, I don’t want to “finally have all the answers”, because that would mean I had finally settled into that dogmatic mode that I hate so much.

Like most churches nowadays, Journey IFC encourages hugging between its members.  Rick the minister will say, “Find somebody you don’t know and make them feel welcome,” and then the congregation will scatter and the hugging will commence.  Hugging strangers, and even friends, has always made me uncomfortable.

As a kid in the Catholic Church, I remember the introduction of the tradition of turning to your neighbor and wishing them a “Peace be with you.”  It seemed odd at the time and made me uncomfortable.  How that Church tradition got started, I’ll never know, but it probably had something to do with the liberalization of the sixties, or maybe something to do with Vatican II.  Even acknowledging your neighbor and opening your mouth to speak in the sacred church seemed like a sacrilege.

And touching in church, whether it be a handshake or a hug, seemed unnatural.

My parents didn’t hug me as a child.  Anyway, not that I remember.  I was the oldest of four boys, and it was all my parents could do to keep us from killing each other.  Affection didn’t exist.  Even into college and beyond, the concept of hugging someone who wasn’t my sexual partner seemed weird.  Later, I learned (through the movies or television perhaps) that hugging was permitted, even expected.  I had thought that everyone felt about hugging the same way I did.  Now I think maybe hugging has been around forever, and it was just my particular family that didn’t do it.

So now I attend a church that hugs.  I can sort of fake it when I hug the women.  A woman is a potential sexual partner, after all.  Peggy comes up to me and says hello, and then she gives me a big hug.  She’s a big woman anyway, and then she wraps her arms around me and squeezes tight.  “How are you?  Have you had a good week?” she will say as she crushes the breath out of me.  “Fine!” I squeak faintly, gasping for air.

Most of the other women are more reserved, if they even hug me at all, understanding that a full body hug is probably not appropriate.  Or maybe they just read my body language and back off, wondering what my problem is and why I don’t get into the religiousness of the pressing of two bodies together.

Then there’s the “man hug”.  It has become kind of a joke.  The method for hugging a man is the following:  First you lean in, hesitating a little, perhaps verbally acknowledging the awkwardness of the situation.  Then you shake hands.  As you shake his hand, you move in closer and bump your right shoulder to his right shoulder.  Now, right shoulders touching, you put your left hand on his right shoulder.

That keeps the number of points of contact at a minimum for a hug, three points.  It’s not possible for other body parts to accidently bump together with the man hug.

But Rick the minister doesn’t employ the “man hug”.  He gives a real hug, a real face-the-person-and-wrap-arms-around-them hug.  The weird thing is that I like it.  Does that make me weird?  And I reciprocate in kind.

Learning to hug strangers and friends, whether women or men, has been part of my journey to learning to love those around me.  It doesn’t seem religious to me, but I would miss it if I left the church.

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“This morning, our pastor said, ‘Religion is Man’s search for God.  Christianity is God’s search for Man.’  I like that.  I think it’s a big part of why I dislike the term ‘religious’ and feel I must distinguish between being ‘religious’ and being a ‘Christian.’”

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The above was written to me in an email by Melissa, a friend of mine, on a recent Sunday,  I haven’t known how to respond.  It’s one of those sophist kind of statements that sounds interesting, and may actually mean something interesting, but instead has just confused me more.

Being the sophist that I am, perhaps I can respond in kind.

Is Christianity really God’s search for Man?  And what does that mean?  If God is all-powerful, why does God need to search for Man?  I would hope that God doesn’t need to search for Man.  Man searches for God, perhaps, but the other way around?

And what about the statement that religion is Man’s search for God?  That sounds more reasonable.  But if that’s true, if religion is Man’s search for God, what is so bad about that?  In my bible study sessions, practically every Sunday Rick suggests that we are searching for God.  If finding God is so easy, then why is a whole planet searching?  And if God exists, shouldn’t a person want to find Him?  Wouldn’t God want Man to find Him?

I’m not even going to get into the whole “Science Versus Religion” debate.  Not today anyway.  I have friends (more than one) who have told me that they have seen Jesus.  I don’t discount their stories on scientific grounds.  Indeed, if there is a God, then pretty much anything is possible, and visions of any or all of the Holy Trinity will occur.

However, is a vision of God or Jesus the same thing as finding God?  What does it mean to find God?  Obviously not the same thing as locating the deity in a bounded region of space.  Do you even have to believe in God to find him?  I have a younger brother who has argued for Pantheism, the belief that everything is God.  My brother would argue that I’m God, you’re God, and that rock over there is God.  That would make God relatively easy to find.

But a pantheistic God would diminish the nature of God as understood by Christians, as I’m sure my Christian friends will not hesitate to point out to me.  Pantheism is just a confusion about the nature of matter and energy, about the universe.  If there is a God, an understanding of Him must somehow contribute to one’s life more than just labeling rocks.

If you read between the lines, you will see that my search for God isn’t going well.  Maybe I can’t claim that I’m searching for God.  I don’t believe in God.  I guess I’m searching for what the idea of God represents to those who believe in Him.  Having that idea in my mind wouldn’t be bad for an atheist, would it?

Melissa, thank you for caring about me enough to write me emails about religion, Christianity, and God.  Thank you for being patient with me.  Thank you for adding some goodness to the world.  And keep praying for me.  I don’t know how that can help me, but it can’t hurt.