Arts & Culture
How Atheism Poisons Everything
By Rabbi Robert Levine / October 24, 2008
Celebrity atheists abound these days. They move a lot of literary product and enrich themselves by selling something in which they do not believe. I sincerely wish their books would talk about God, but they really do not. In fact, their titles sometimes give their agenda away. The highest profile of them all belongs to the celebrated writer Christopher Hitchens who titles his classic work: God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Search far and dig deep into the volume and you will find precious little discussion about God. Rather, Hitchens is obsessed with what extremist religions stand for.
In my book, What God Can Do For You Now: For Seekers Who Want To Believe, written to help people overcome the obstacles to God-belief as well as refute the atheists who shift the subject away from God, I respond:
GOD IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THAT PEOPLE DO IN THE NAME OF GOD.
RELIGION IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT PEOPLE DO IN THE NAME OF RELIGION.
Another superstar atheist, Sam Harris, spills his ink marrying God to Islamic terrorists: "We must not overlook the fact that a significant percentage of the world’s Muslims believe that the men who brought down the World Trade Center are now seated at the right hand of God amid ‘Rivers of Purist Water.’"
When atheists deign to talk about God, they paint a picture of a deity no one would want to embrace. A third comrade in arms, Richard Dawkins, creates this subtle portrait:
The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, blood-thirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist and infanticidal, genocidal, malevolent bully.(R. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 2006)
Don’t you wish Dawkins would tell us how he really feels? He’s real subtle. Even those atheists who do talk about God and are a little less vituperative present this irony: they have the exact same view of God as the fundamentalists: a control freak, an ogre who tells people what they must think, believe and do, who punishes those who stray and who leaves no room for women input or dissent.
I firmly believe that one of the reasons some people have trouble believing in God is that they inadvertently buy into their God concept which is extremist and which is a false picture of the Bible’s viewpoint. According to the Bible God seeks a covenant, a relationship which is a two-sided agreement. God expects our input and, moreover, needs us as a partner to do together what neither of us can do alone.
Don’t take my word for it. Many authoritative figures have their own concept of God. To Maimonides, anticipating modern physics, God is the unmoved mover who set the universe in motion. To Martin Buber, God is an Eternal Thou, always available in personal relationship. For Mordechai Kaplan God is not a transcendent power, but a naturalist force in the universe inspiring us toward the good.
Don’t be defeated in your spiritual search by false information. Judaism offers a broad range of theological views to draw from. If you tell me that you are not sure you believe in God I will show you a God concept you will find compelling. My best advice is never to buy your God concept from an atheist. They spend too much time not telling you what they do not believe.
Rabbi Robert Levine, author of What God Can Do for You Now, spent the past week guest-blogging on Jewcy. Want more? Buy his book!
POST A COMMENT
One God, no God, many gods, this God, that God, theism, deism, atheism, pantheism, humanism…. What ever happened to the notion of ‘live and let live’? I think every person ought to have the right to come to their own conclusions through their own experiences and believe whatever they find most personally convincing and/or coherent and/or authentic. This desire by so many to attack those who hold particular beliefs about religion because said beliefs aren’t in accordance with one’s own system of beliefs ultimately strikes me as having little to do with religion and everything to do with 1) an unwillingness/inability to acknowledge the scope/tremendous diversity of human perception, and 2) an outright rejection of pluralism. Free speech should never be hampered, but I do think all sides need to reconsider the manner in which they address the beliefs of others in regard to religion. I haven’t read any of Richard Dawkins’ work, but I find it very unfortunate that he chose (for the book, "The God Delusion") a title which so cruelly and explicitly assaults and demeans the entire religious community. But ironically, as different as your views on religion undoubtedly are from those of Dawkins, the title you’ve chosen for this article demonstrates that the two of you are very much united in a willingness to resort to the same abusive and divisive tactics which denigrate, demean, deride, and villify anyone whose conception of religion is at variance with your own. Why is it so difficult to express an opinion without attacking everyone who feels differently? Because when you think about it, this kind of cheap personal assault is not only disrespectful, but it is counterproductive to your own cause. Perhaps if Dawkins had expressed himself without attacking others, his book could have actually resonated with some religious people and changed their minds. Likewise, (and I mean no disrespect by this) perhaps if you had chosen to address this subject from a less divisive and more tolerant angle, your article could have resonated with some atheists and changed their minds.
That’s my two cents.
"If you tell me that you are not sure you believe in God I will show you a God
concept you will find compelling."
This is precisely the problem with modern religion: it’s bullshit. Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit offers a great definition, which is that bullshit is the type of speech where it doesn’t matter if the statements are true or not. Is YHVH the prime mover? Is it a force for good and/or evil in the universe? Is it a single, jealous force or a vague collection of separate entities? Does it care about you as an individual or even have intercessory powers? The point is, it doesn’t matter, because there’s always some "authoritative figures" with "their own concept of God" which you can find personally fulfilling. God is a spiritual buffet, ready to cure your ailments. (Religion researchers call this "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."
Theists believe in a God of their own creation because the idea of a god provides some kind order in the face of a chaotic universe. Atheists disbelieve in all gods–even the really nice ones–and see the universe as working from the bottom up, not from the top-down. Atheism says, what is is real, and anyone telling you differently is trying to sell something.
Word on what Waletzky said.
Not sure the majority of atheists are as vitriolic as the examples you chose. Most of us simply believe that we’ve been given a mind (by whomever or whatever) that we are intended to use, and honesty is paramount. If I honestly believe that G-d wallows in hatred like Fred Phelps, then in his Westboro Baptist Church is where I belong. If I honestly believe that G-d wants me to examine the choices I’m faced with and choose the one that feels most truthful to me, then I belong with the Unitarian Universalists. Any codified set of beliefs that calls out to my soul as honest; that is where I should be. Atheists do not generally spend "too much time telling you what they do not believe." Rather, we spend a lot of time trying to find a group who believes as we do, that the universe is far more complex than we could ever know and our final authority is our own conscience.
Obviously, Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens are discussing fundamentalism for the most part. However, even the more nuanced view you’ve cobbled together still requires a basic belief in magic.
Tell me, Rabbi, how do you decide which passages of the Torah to ignore? The violent parts? The dietary parts?
Of course, the statement, "never to buy your God concept from an atheist" overlooks the fact that most of us by far were once theists.
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