There is a bit of a trend I’ve noticed in recent years. The trend involves belittling Christians for believing in God, and is usually a video of a comedian or an intellectual going into reasons why Christianity is a fools worldview.
While an intellect is on full display, a wisdom is severely lacking. Their arguments against Christianity are not without merit, but a rebuke of Christianity, to my mind, fails to offer up any evidence for the non-existence of a deity. The entire exercise seems a kin to Don Quixote chasing after windmills. If you present an argument against Christianity… your argument is a refutation of Christianity, nothing more.
I’d like to relate to you a metaphor, and from this metaphor I will derive two questions for you. Here’s the metaphor: Two grasshoppers stand on an abandoned railroad track in, let’s say, Boulder, CO. One grasshopper turns to the other and says, “I don’t believe in trains.” Simultaneously, there are two microbes up the rectum of one of these grasshoppers. As these microbes are chowing down on particles of grasshopper feces, one of them pauses for a moment, turns to the other and says, “I don’t believe in God.”
Okay, the two questions I now have for you are as follows…
The first relates to the two grasshoppers:
Does a creative deity have a responsibility to His creation to revisit His created and assure it of His existence?
I’m compelled to answer the question above with a, “No”. Looking back at our two grasshoppers — a train leaving Cleveland and headed to Orlando can definitely divert it’s planned route, navigate to the abandoned piece of track in Boulder, and prove to the two grasshoppers that trains exist; but is such an action worth the effort? I think any reasonable person would say, “no”. Relating this tale to our quandary above — Isn’t human ego the only thing compelling us to suggest that a creative deity must be inclined to circle back, love and adore His creation? To somehow assume that God needs to be known is to project the very human trait of ego on a creative deity. Based on the mere reality I perceive, the assumption is incorrect.
Anyone who yearns for a God to reveal himself to them is a kin to the child in a crib, crying for it’s mother. Again, this boils down to human ego. The child is self-focused… this is all an infant knows, really. In it’s world, the experiences s/he is feeling are the only experiences that exist… weather it be hunger, or pain, or fear… it’s only frame of reference is the self, and so; to the child… the mother’s only reason for existing is to resolve the issues it experiences. Ego in perhaps it’s purest form.
Now lets turn our attention to the two microbes in our metaphor. Considering these two, let me ask you:
Who among the human race is even remotely qualified to say, “There is no God (or vice versa)” with any degree of authority?
I would argue that there are none, and yet there are several who have taken on the mantle of evangelical atheism — “saving” anyone who will listen from organized religion. To me, the evangelical Christian and the evangelical atheist are two sides of the same coin. Both personalities not only ask the question, “Is there a God”, but consider themselves somehow qualified to provide an answer. To my mind, human ego is the only reason someone might seek an answer to the question. Remove human ego from the equation and the question of whether there is a god or not becomes benign and uninteresting… a kin to questions like, “Where is the best place to buy mustard in Perth, Australia?” — perhaps there’s an answer, but the question itself isn’t interesting enough to pursue an answer (Especially if you live worlds away from Perth as I do!). I honestly don’t understand why there aren’t more individuals that not only confess that they don’t know if there’s a god or not, but don’t care one way or the other.
I consider myself to be somewhat of a realist, and as such I’m quite comfortable sitting with unanswerable questions. I’ve found holding on to ideas with an open palm rather than a clinched fist is a much more comfortable place to be. As Marcus Aurelius once wrote:
You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can’t control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.
~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
I’d rather not hold to an opinion about God, simply because my perceived station in the universe relegates me to an intellect unsuited for the subject.
So, having reasoned atheists (all atheists) to have an ego substantially larger than their actual station in the universe, I’m a bit perplexed as to how to respond to such personalities. I don’t know that I’ve ever met an atheist that is not obstinately so. I’m of the opinion that the universe really doesn’t care whether we believe in a deity or not. I’m inclined to respond to this ambivalence in kind.
For decades I considered the question, “Is there a god?” to be a ponderance worthy of my time and energy. Having stared at it for so long now, I consider it to be a great place to start on one’s own existential journey; but I have found peace in the letting go of the question all together. Atheism and organized religion have been enjoyable musings along my own existential path, but for me, both are decidedly lacking as a final destination.
In my next post, I’ll attempt to describe the gradual co-opting of my Christian faith and how I made it my own.