Dear Atheist (pt. 2),
Another Reach Back Across the Aisle
Well, I seem to have rustled some jimmies.
Nothing else I’ve written has gotten so many responses, either vitriolic or supportive. Not to appeal strictly to the emotionality that it elicits, but it is a curious point.
Why should someone’s belief in a Creator tug your short-n-curlies so ruthlessly, especially mine?
I mean, I might understand if I was a Joel Osteen-type, making empty promises in exchange for “mustard seed faith money” from the vulnerable and impoverished, but I only just cracked 100 followers on this platform. Although I’ve always appreciated tips ever since I was a pizza delivery guy, I’m not going to promise God will return your money tenfold or anything.
How does promoting a lack of belief in divinity or spirituality benefit humanity as a whole, or you as an individual?
Now, admittedly, I’ve been a speculator, finger-pointer, and pot-stirrer as well.
I’m neither blind nor oblivious to my confusing stance. My views have evolved, and continue doing so, since writing either of the above articles, but I’m including them as reference points.
I’m keenly aware of my own hypocrisies and struggles between flesh & spirit. In the words of Paul: “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.”
— Romans 7:24–25
However, I know from my own experience how little weight it holds to quote scripture to a nonbeliever.
I still regularly wrestle with my free will, dissonance over whether or not free will even exists, overintellectualizing my past and current experiences, what’s a habit vs. an addiction, etc. Hardly a fun way to live, I know — but certainly a better way to die than hedonism, self-worship, and wantonly satiating my own “fleshly desires” without concern for their consequences.
“Desire is the root of all suffering,” and what-have-you.
Moderation can be nice, though. I like a drink or two…but six or seven? Hard pass, don’t need it.
Admittedly, I may have “missionary” in my blood — both my maternal and paternal grandparents have gone overseas to spread the Gospel, to China and Africa respectively.
Personally, I’m less concerned with witnessing to those who’ve never heard of Christ, as they might be graded on a curve (as others have speculated pretty compellingly, thanks Arnau Perez Ninot!), whereas hearing the Gospel and dying in rejection of it seems…less likely to have so much grace. Whatever dying in that rejection looks or feels like, I sincerely and profoundly hope it’s significantly more peaceful than what I experienced in my early 20s.
Hopefully, that really was just a “bad trip”, and that’s not a reality any human soul will experience eternally after physical death, buuuut I’m certainly not the final authority on the matter.
I do want to address a few of the points brought up in response to my last “Dear Atheist” piece to expand on that brief outreach. As alluded to in the piece linked above, this article should not be construed as some sort of evangelistic “BELIEVE OR BURN!” positioning of myself as either a harbinger of Hell, or a saintly figure of righteousness and piety. I’m neither.
But who knows what’s what in this topsy-turvy world anymore?
I do want to help, if I may. It’s certainly not my intention or dissuade anyone from making scientific developments by suggesting we do so from a spiritually-minded position.
“God of the Gaps” Fallacy
A couple responses pointed out that my first article somewhat peripherally makes an appeal to the “God of the Gaps” fallacy.
It’s true, I don’t have all the answers. I freely admit I’m not omniscient, nor would I wish to be.
The amount of information I’m currently aware of and have access to is already more complicated than what’s necessary or beneficial to my general functioning in the world in which I exist.
Does it help me write more eloquently or compellingly (or even just answer phone calls more politely in my day job) to be aware of the latest Hamas attack, quantum computing developments, or the process of mitosis?
Hardly. And while I certainly don’t claim to have a functional or applicable knowledge of these things, the information age inundates us with more than we’re intended to handle, and people with power benefit from it.
Distract, consume, accumulate, distance yourself from yourself…what’s the worst that could happen, right?
Certainty does feel nice, though! When I was utterly convinced that when my neurons quit firing and blood quit pumping, it’d be no more complicated than “Lights out! Show’s over!”, that was a much simpler way to go through life than my decisions having potentially eternally reverberating consequences.
Fine Tuning Analogy Gone Wrong
In the previous post, I made an attempt at making a loose metaphor for the fine tuning argument, invoking J. R. R. Tolkien and a million monkeys with typewriters. While I was trying to be a bit silly in the hopes of making readers both laugh and think (see my bio!) by conjuring this mental picture, it was profoundly misunderstood by enough responders, so I think it deserves a little revisiting.
One certainly can marvel at the beauty of the golden ratio in nature without ascribing an intelligent Creator to it but, at least to me, it does seem a little preposterous to just chalk it all up to dumb luck, or natural selection.
The coolest thing about this, in my personal opinion, is that it points to STEM fields to be not only compatible but complementary with spirituality, rather than diametrically opposed as they’re often presented.
“Why do you address atheists only?”
Why not Hindus, why not Muslims, why not agnostics, or humanists, or this, or that?
Because, as I mentioned earlier within this piece, I’m less worried about evangelizing to those with existing alternative frameworks of spiritual wellbeing, and more with encouraging those who’ve abandoned it altogether in favor of material and/or intellectual pursuits to rethink that position while they still draw breath.
Agnostics, like everyone else, are still welcome at Jesus’ table, but also seemingly more likely to click on an article titled “Dear Atheist” than “Dear Christian”.
(See the eloquently expressed Jesus Wants To Make You Breakfast by I. M. Koen)
“Anecdotes and Feelings Are Not Proof!”
“Proof” is ostensibly a mathematical concept. Or a rapper from Detroit.
As it applies to life, though, most of us function day-to-day from evidentiary positions.
I have no proof that my mom or dad love me.
I have no proof that WW3 isn’t going to kick off in 2025.
I have no proof that I’m not in a mental ward experiencing a very compelling hallucination.
But it does me no good, either now or in the future, to function from a lack of proof implying otherwise.
However, getting caught up in the semantic nitty-gritty of this point is philosophically moot.
If you came home looking forward to enjoying a bag of chips, but found your roommate passed out on the couch smelling like a freshly-smoked bowl, surrounded by salt-n-vinegar crumbs, you’d be well within reason to confront them about whether or not they ate them, despite not having video footage or the serial number of the bag of chips in question. It’d be very silly to assume that you were just mistaken in expecting your bag of chips to be where you left it under these circumstances, and your roommate would likewise be very silly to demand you produce irrefutable proof that he ate them, knowing full well he threw the bag away outside.
Presumptions of Trump Support???
While some of the experiential reasonings contained in my 3-minute-read article are being accused of being preposterous and fallacious, I can’t help but scratch my head at several responders seeming to have made the leap in logic that because I believe God is real that I must also be a MAGA-hatted Trump supporter.
While I do understand that the Evangelicals overwhelmingly support Trump due to their conditioning towards an external savior (not to suggest we should try to redeem ourselves from our sins, as this would be an impossible task) I’d be hard-pressed not to address this as being precisely the kind of presumption that’s made me reluctant to “identify as” a Christian.
Finally, I think one of the biggest missteps Christianity has made is claiming a monopoly on truth. While I do personally believe at this point that Christ is and was the Way, the Truth, and the Life, I also recognize that practically all cultures contain truth, wisdom, and beauty in their traditions, and Christians have not done a stellar job honoring or respecting that, to say the least.
The finality of the Heaven/Hell dichotomy has always troubled me for its implication of a permanent separation from our loved ones who choose differently in matters of spirituality. The alternatives of reincarnation in this same plane of existence, or a permanent “lights out” pose their own issues and sour implications.
The bottom line is we all shuffle off this mortal coil at some point, and relying solely on our own faculties and intelligence either to delay this inevitability or to try to mitigate it entirely would inherently be as imperfect as we are.
I’d rather put my faith in a perfectly loving and merciful Creator.
