Sunday Sermonette: Falling Sparrows
Atheism is not a faith. No one was ever struck down on the road to Damascus with the blinding realization that there probably is no God. A friend described his deconversion this way: “A slow gradual process including cognitive dissonance and mental agony, finally culminating in the inevitable recognition of the rational poverty of theism.” Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about how I came to the faith I held for fifty years. Today, I’d like to write about why I no longer hold it.
It is impossible to read a story like the tale of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac without considerable cognitive dissonance. What is the sane and rational response to an instruction by God to “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of...” ? Not just no, but Hell, No! There is no possible moral justification for sacrificing a child. It is evil, and it makes no difference who commands it.
Most religious people, sensing that this train of thought leads to Infidel Station, jump off here. “Well, God was only testing Abraham’s faith...” One day, I stayed on board for a little longer. I came to the conclusion that, by any moral standard, Abraham is a failure and a psychopath. Could my morality be a higher standard than God?
This particular dilemma has been around since Socrates. Is it moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it is moral? If the former, God is arbitrary. If the latter, God is subject to morality.
Lewis’s Argument from Moral Law that I spoke of last week toppled. First, it was based on a false premise: all peoples do NOT hold to the same moral precepts. Not long ago, a 75-year-old woman was sentenced to forty lashes in Saudi Arabia for allowing two unrelated men in her house. There are clerics who preach that blowing up oneself and as many civilians as possible is holy martyrdom; and so on ad nauseam. Such things are indisputably immoral. Second, the lawmaker cannot be above the law. It is unjust.
A century after Socrates’ hemlock nightcap, Epicurus pointed out what has always been painfully obvious: the existence of an omniscient, omni-benevolent, and omnipotent god cannot be reconciled with the evil so manifestly present in the world. David Hume paraphrased Epicurus as follows:
If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able
Then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.
If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?
If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?
Why indeed. The cracks in my faith were growing wider.
There is a branch of theology dedicated to such questions. It’s called “theodicy”, and consists of theologians and divines tying themselves in knots to reconcile three impossible attributes of an intangible, invisible being. It is intellectually dishonest to address theodicy without admitting the possibility that there is no God, but faith makes liars of us all. I did my best to arm myself against apostasy with the best arguments of the ages, but they all crumbled.
The inescapable conclusion was that my faith was simply wish-fulfillment. I believed because I wanted it to be true. An invisible, transcendent God bears a striking resemblance to a non-existent one. It was nice to feel all warm and fuzzy when the soaring music plays and the thurible belches out its clouds of incense, but it was make-believe. The only reason left to believe was that other people believed, but it didn’t take long to discover that everyone’s belief is different. Look at how many American Christians are crypto-Universalists. Their church’s creeds and traditions say theirs is the one true Path and all others will spend eternity in hell, but according to a Pew survey, most don’t believe a word of it. They believe in that believing is a good thing.
I could not agree. What you believe determines how you perceive the world and how you act in it. I could no longer believe the teachings of my church. Leaving it was not unlike a divorce, accompanied by anger and sadness, but also a sense of freedom. Life is good. I thrill to consider my life, at how very unlikely it is that I somehow came to be for a short time, and then will cease. There is no heaven, there is no hell, there are no gods or angels, there is only us, so very fragile and finite. It is enough. There is no mission, there is no quest, there is no grand design or purpose other than what I create for myself. It is enough. There is no salvation, there is no damnation, there is no exaltation save for those transcendent moments of love with my wife. It is enough. It is more than enough.
It is impossible to read a story like the tale of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac without considerable cognitive dissonance. What is the sane and rational response to an instruction by God to “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of...” ? Not just no, but Hell, No! There is no possible moral justification for sacrificing a child. It is evil, and it makes no difference who commands it.
Most religious people, sensing that this train of thought leads to Infidel Station, jump off here. “Well, God was only testing Abraham’s faith...” One day, I stayed on board for a little longer. I came to the conclusion that, by any moral standard, Abraham is a failure and a psychopath. Could my morality be a higher standard than God?
This particular dilemma has been around since Socrates. Is it moral because God commands it, or does God command it because it is moral? If the former, God is arbitrary. If the latter, God is subject to morality.
Lewis’s Argument from Moral Law that I spoke of last week toppled. First, it was based on a false premise: all peoples do NOT hold to the same moral precepts. Not long ago, a 75-year-old woman was sentenced to forty lashes in Saudi Arabia for allowing two unrelated men in her house. There are clerics who preach that blowing up oneself and as many civilians as possible is holy martyrdom; and so on ad nauseam. Such things are indisputably immoral. Second, the lawmaker cannot be above the law. It is unjust.
A century after Socrates’ hemlock nightcap, Epicurus pointed out what has always been painfully obvious: the existence of an omniscient, omni-benevolent, and omnipotent god cannot be reconciled with the evil so manifestly present in the world. David Hume paraphrased Epicurus as follows:
If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able
Then He is not omnipotent.
If He is able, but not willing
Then He is malevolent.
If He is both able and willing
Then whence cometh evil?
If He is neither able nor willing
Then why call Him God?
Why indeed. The cracks in my faith were growing wider.
There is a branch of theology dedicated to such questions. It’s called “theodicy”, and consists of theologians and divines tying themselves in knots to reconcile three impossible attributes of an intangible, invisible being. It is intellectually dishonest to address theodicy without admitting the possibility that there is no God, but faith makes liars of us all. I did my best to arm myself against apostasy with the best arguments of the ages, but they all crumbled.
The inescapable conclusion was that my faith was simply wish-fulfillment. I believed because I wanted it to be true. An invisible, transcendent God bears a striking resemblance to a non-existent one. It was nice to feel all warm and fuzzy when the soaring music plays and the thurible belches out its clouds of incense, but it was make-believe. The only reason left to believe was that other people believed, but it didn’t take long to discover that everyone’s belief is different. Look at how many American Christians are crypto-Universalists. Their church’s creeds and traditions say theirs is the one true Path and all others will spend eternity in hell, but according to a Pew survey, most don’t believe a word of it. They believe in that believing is a good thing.
I could not agree. What you believe determines how you perceive the world and how you act in it. I could no longer believe the teachings of my church. Leaving it was not unlike a divorce, accompanied by anger and sadness, but also a sense of freedom. Life is good. I thrill to consider my life, at how very unlikely it is that I somehow came to be for a short time, and then will cease. There is no heaven, there is no hell, there are no gods or angels, there is only us, so very fragile and finite. It is enough. There is no mission, there is no quest, there is no grand design or purpose other than what I create for myself. It is enough. There is no salvation, there is no damnation, there is no exaltation save for those transcendent moments of love with my wife. It is enough. It is more than enough.