On Faith and Doubt

Last night Incarnation hosted a conversation on faith and doubt.  The group of 15 people included atheists, agnostics, those who think of themselves as spiritual, and some of us committed to a religious tradition.  The goal was to explore some large questions about God, doubt, and religious commitment with persons who are at different places in life.  We weren’t interested in academic debate, but in conversation about how these questions have shaped our own lives.

I introduced some of the major issues raised by some recent “New Atheist” writings.  Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens are up to something interesting.  They argue for a confident, robust form of atheism.  They think it’s high time for atheists to proudly come out of the closet.  So there is an energy and edge to this writing.  They’re seizing a moment.  And they do a decent job of laying out some of the main reasons why faith is difficult in our culture.  Some of their main arguments are as follows:

1. Science, not religion, tells us the truth about the world.  Neuroscience and evolutionary biology explain everything that religion has attempted to explain in the past.  We don’t need god/religion any more.

2. Religious institutions are harmful and oppressive.

3. Religious texts are manufactured, intolerant of others, and therefore dangerous.

4. Religion is a kind of psychological malfunction -- either wish fulfillment, or a fear of pleasure.

5. The sheer quantity and intensity of pain and suffering count against there being a good god who authors and guides it all towards flourishing.

Why do the New Atheists write with such energy and passion?  They are responding to the rise of two fundamentalisms - one Muslim and one Christian.  They see the attacks of 9/11 as a wake up call to the dangers of a violent form of Islam.  They worry about a religious tradition with a track record of issuing death warrants on writer Salman Rushdie, keeping women in burqas, and responding with violence to Danish cartoons involving Muhammed.  As for conservative Christianity (primarily in the U.S.), they detect an aggressive over-confidence that manifests itself in the continual spinning of scientific sounding arguments for the existence of God.  They are angered by the demand of some conservatives that creationism and intelligent design be taught as science in schools and text books.  

Whatever your position on the dangers of fundamentalism, these are real worries for many people.  I’m thankful for the New Atheists.  They can be welcomed by religious people as prophets who puncture the silliness and violence of much that passes for real religion.  Unfortunately, many in our culture assume that once you’ve rejected the fundamentalist god, you have rejected the God whose life is narrated in Scripture.  That’s why generous conversations about large questions can be a wonderful way that Christian communities like ours can serve others.

If God is the one who goes into exile with Israel.  If God is the one who goes into the far country of our suffering and despair in the death of Jesus.  The least we can do as God’s people is to sit and listen to our friends and neighbors who cannot see any light.  We can choose the difficult way of being present with them in their experience of a world that looks godforsaken.  Perhaps (but only perhaps) in our sitting with them and hearing what the world looks like to them, we can bear it all without loosing hope, and in that bearing something may be born.

This is what Incarnation is all about.  To be honest, this kind of conversation requires fearlessness.  To invite the dissent and disbelief to be heard in full, you have to be completely beyond the desire to win, to secure your own self-regard,.  But we believe that God is at work in the corners of the world and in the corners of people’s lives to bring healing and renewal.  If Jesus himself had such a difficult time finding people who wanted God’s kingdom more than anything else, who are we to think it will be any easier?  To put it crassly, if the infinitely beautiful and attractive Creator of all that is cannot lure the world towards the light -- then that’s God’s problem, not ours.  Our calling is to live with gladness as a community learning to organize our lives around Jesus Christ.  That is a tall enough order for now.