A Guy in the Pew

Cross-posted at Episcopal Cafe today: The Campaign for Senate in North Carolina is close, and Senator Dole has decided to win the race by making false allegations about her opponent's alleged atheism. Here is the ad that Dole has been running: The response by Kay Hagen, an elder at a local Presbyterian Church where she teaches Sunday school was quick, and effective: At least one analyst, J.P. Green, thinks that Dole just lost the election by resorting to this tactic: It appears that Sen. Liddy Dole (R-NC) has lost either her marbles or control of her campaign. Dole has unleashed a ridiculously bombastic ad that tries to slime her opponent, Kay Hagan as "Godless." Hagan has put in time as both a Sunday school teacher and church elder in a Greensboro Presbyterian church her family has attended for more than a century. . . . It's a huge blunder. No doubt Dole hopes to fire up her evangelical base for the home stretch. But Dole's absurd allegations are easily rebu...

Francis Wilkinson has an interesting post at the New York Times noting that while neither McCain nor Obama are making any efforts to gain the atheist vote, this was not true of past campaigns: White evangelical and born-again Christians account for nearly one fourth of the electorate — a prize understandably worth fighting over. However, what we won’t see, yet again, this year is either candidate acknowledge — let alone pander to — the 16 percent of Americans categorized by the Pew Forum on Religion and Society as atheist, agnostic or free-range “nothing in particular.” It seems American politicians scarcely think twice about sidling up to the religious fringe — Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama each has had the odd preacher in the attic. But, fearing the wrath of the righteous, they’d rather be struck by lightning than show a glimmer of respect for nonbelievers. Their forebears on the campaign trail were not all so skittish. At the end of the 19th century, Robert Ingersoll was the most notor...

I am quite taken with the writings of John Haught--particularly on how our concepts of God must change to account for evolution. A self-described "religious naturalist" (and great writer!) Chet Raymo, however, makes a good point--Haught's analysis of faith can only get him so far: Why believe in the absence of convincing evidence? Says Haught: "Theology, unlike scientism, wagers that we can contact the deepest truths only by relaxing the will to control and allowing ourselves to be grasped by a deeper dimension of reality than ordinary experience or science can access by itself. The state of allowing ourselves to be grasped and carried away by this dimension of depth is at least part of what theology means by 'faith.'" If this means we have an intuition of a depth to creation that for the moment -- and possibly forever -- eludes scientific explanation, then I would be the last to take issue. Art, poetry, even what we might call the mystical experience, ...

Professor James McGrath knows a lot more about theology than I do. It also appears that his Christianity is bit less orthodox than me. (Not that there is anything wrong with that!) In the past week there has been a very interesting dialogue on several blogs between McGrath (and other progressive Christians) and some atheists about progressive theology. McGrath tries to explain the necessity to use metaphor to talk about the ultimate. The atheists keep telling him to speak more plainly. Actually, it is a great dialogue. And a great tutorial about som erecent theologians to boot. Here is a sample of McGrath's efforts to explain progressive theology: Paul Tillich, one of the great and extremely influential theologians of the 20th century, spoke of God as Being itself rather than "a being". In other words, the discussion is not about a certain type of being (immoral, invisible, omniscient and omnipotent and presumably omnivorous as well) that exists in the universe, whether h...

Utilitarian focused philosopher Peter Singer comes back to the oldest of questions: why does God allow pain. Not much new here, but it does offer a backdrop for discussion and thought. Here are some highlights: Do we live in a world that was created by a god who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all good? Christians think we do. Yet a powerful reason for doubting this confronts us every day: the world contains a vast amount of pain and suffering. If God is all-knowing, he knows how much suffering there is. If he is all-powerful, he could have created a world without so much of it - and he would have done so if he were all good. Christians usually respond that God bestowed on us the gift of free will, and hence is not responsible for the evil we do. But this reply fails to deal with the suffering of those who drown in floods, are burned alive in forest fires caused by lightning, or die of hunger or thirst during a drought. Christians sometimes attempt to explain this suffering by saying...

David Brooks has a fascinating column in today's New York Times that makes some provocative claims about the effect of cognitive science on our understanding of God. Here are some highlights: The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world. And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow. The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible. Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called em...

As readers of this blog know, I read blogs in the atheosphere and, from time to time, have had fruitful dialogues with atheist bloggers. A good example is this post . I therefore found this essay by Father Martin Smith quite interesting: What kind of conversation should there be between Christians and atheists? One way of looking at that question is to consider this to be an invitation to a kind of interfaith dialogue, and one that serious Christians should equip themselves to conduct. . . . Think of serious agnosticism and atheism as a stance of faith. Its adherents believe human beings can and must create for themselves lives that are worth living, that we must forge values that work now without the claims of a supernatural source. It believes that though human beings enjoy only a few decades of existence and our species is destined for extinction, yet the adventure of human existence is sufficiently glorious to be lived well. Now, as the late Bishop Krister Stendhal has reminded...

Well, since we are talking about morality, science and faith today, I thought I would also post on what Richard Harries, the former Bishop of Oxford wrote in response to Richard Dawkins had to say about the ability of human beings to be moral in the absence of faith. Like me, he agrees that an atheist can be an upstanding, altrustic moral person without a faith in God. Heck, I know legions of atheists that fit this description. Harries, however, while agreeing with this point argues that the connection between morality and religion are more complex than Dawkins seems to understand: Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov said: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.' Sartre agreed. Dawkins disagrees. Morality belongs to us as human beings. I agree too. I do not believe that a society without a religious basis for its morality will always collapse. But I do think that the relationship between morality and religion is more complex than either Dawkins or religious believer...

This morning's New York Times Sunday Book Review includes a review of Temple University mathematician John Allen Poulus' new book, Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up . In the book, Poulus takes on the traditional "proofs" of God and not surprisingly (since even most theologians share his view) finds them wanting. The review argues that Poulus misses the point: The classic arguments for the existence of God have few friends these days. Theologians scorn them, insisting that they “objectify” a Supreme Being that can be known only through self-revelation. Philosophers make a parlor game of dissecting their logic. (In the 1994 book “God and the Philosophers,” edited by Thomas V. Morris, none of the 20 philosophers who discussed their religious faith said they came to it through logic; typically, it was a matter of experiencing what they felt to be the love of God in their lives.) And ordinary believers have never heard of them...

I was recently very critical of Romney's speech because rather than argue for the separation of church and state, he embrased the conservative theocratic arguments against such a separation. I was also critical because his speech seemed to put atheists and agnostics outside the scope of good Americans. To be fair to Romney, after the speech, he answered some questions by Tim Russett about atheists in public light that takes a different view: MR. RUSSERT: But when you say freedom requires religion, can you be a moral person and be an atheist? GOV. ROMNEY: Oh, oh, of course. Oh, of course. MR. RUSSERT: And participate in freedom? GOV. ROMNEY: Oh, of course. Yes, this... MR. RUSSERT: So freedom doesn't require religion? GOV. ROMNEY: Well, this--the, the context was talking about the, the founding of the nation and the, the sense in this case of John Adams describing the fact that our constitutional form of government and this American experiment required morality, which i...

Rod Dreher is a social conservative and a Christian (Orthodox) believer. He had a column on the entire issue of faith and politics in America that is well worth reading. Here are some highlights. First, while he believes that Mormonism is not Christian, he does not believe that social conservative Christians should use this as an excuse to reject Romney: 1. Mormons aren't Christians. I don't mean that as a criticism, only as a descriptive phrase. When Mormons claim Jesus Christ as their savior, there's no reason to doubt their sincerity and good will, or even to deny that they are in some way followers of Christ. Yet Mormonism rejects foundational doctrines of traditional Christian orthodoxy, such that it is impossible to reconcile with normative Christianity. . . . 3. Theologically, this is a big deal. But politically, so what? Mormons vote like Southern Baptists and come down on the same side of most issues of public morality like conservative Christians do. If you're...

Have you checked out the Ship of Fools " 12 Days of Kitschmas?" It offers some real gems of Christian kitsch such as the Virgin Mary Memory Stick , and has been making the rounds in the faith blogosphere. Perhaps the most interesting commentary about all this, however, has been by Andrew Brown, an who argues in the Guardian blog that the willigness of Christians to make fun of their faith is one reason why it has so much staying power: Which is the more disgusting, a bear called Muhammad , or a bear with a zip up the back, which opens to reveal a cavity for storing your loved one's ashes? The huggable urn bear won third prize in the Ship of Fools Christmas kitsch contest this year, which means that there were two contestants judged even more disgusting. For the record, they were a St Sebastian pincushion , and a transparent plastic Virgin Mary with a red LED that blinks like a throbbing sacred heart when the memory stick inside is working. I would buy one of these, ex...

I don't agree with everything that Theo Hobson writes today in the Guardian 's Comment is Free group blog--in particular, I think that we need to stop talking about "militant atheists", and listen with respect to what they have to say. Nonetheless, he captures well, my view of prayer--one that many atheist may not appreciate: Prayer is a bit like masturbation. It is more widely practised than public discourse acknowledges. Apparently, 42% of us sometimes pray, according to a survey published last week. To the atheist, it's evidence that there's no room for complacency in the war on dangerous superstition. But is prayer either dangerous or superstitious? To the atheist it's like this. A person acquires the delusion that God exists, and so starts talking to this imagined being, in the hope of influencing its will. He persists in this, despite having no firm evidence that prayer works. Probably the believer is so pathetically lonely that he can't bear to ...

Pew Research released an analysis this week of how the American public views different religious faiths. As you can see from the graphic above, a majority have unfavorable views about atheists, and sizable minorities have unfavorable views about both Muslims and Mormons. One interesting fact is that Evangelicals are viewed far less favorably than Jews or Catholics--which is likely the result of political activity by prominant Evangelical leaders in the past. Here is the analysis: The Muslim and Mormon religions have gained increasing national visibility in recent years. Yet most Americans say they know little or nothing about either religion's practices, and large majorities say that their own religion is very different from Islam and the Mormon religion. A new national survey reveals some notable similarities, as well as major differences, in the ways that Americans view these faiths and their followers. Public impressions of both religions are hazy – 58% say they know little o...

I must admit that I have grown very tired of all the articles, blog posts, etc. on the so-called New Atheism." So I was not very enthusiastic when I heard that the Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" blog was devoted to a response to the following claim by Christopher Hitchens: "Religion is violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children." Not surprisingly, Chicago professor Marty Martin actually had something interesting to say: Most societies and polities throughout history were shaped or influenced by some form or other of religion: Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Native American, etc. They were all mixed bags, since everything human is some sort of mixed bag. We in the United States lucked out because we live in a republic that used religion (of the Enlightenment=Deism and some forms of Christianity variety) ...

Chris Tilling is a young English theologian now doing postgraduate work in Germany. On his blog today, he makes some observations after reading New Atheists Dawkins and Harris. He loves the Harris book, but is disappointed in the Dawkins book. Nonetheless, he thinks that the arguments in these books are important for theologians: Nevertheless, I think it is very important for Christian theologians to grapple with the arguments of antitheists. And Dawkins in particular is doing much that is worthwhile. To be honest, I think I kind of like the guy - and I certainly sympathised with much of what he said in his clash with Ted Haggard. In actual fact, though it would need to be judged case by case, a good volume of Dawkins or Harris could be the tonic a Christian Fundamentalist needs to progress in faith. These antitheist arguments must be digested and understood, and I am convinced that an honest grappling with antitheism will help to strip away illusions and bring the Christian back to th...

My atheist friend, The Exterminator, is taking me to task here about not listening to his concerns about the increasing discussion of faith by Democratic candidates. His comments have caused me to think about the core issue--what is the appropriate discussion of faith in the public square?. As an initial matter, I think all of us should take seriously the concerns of the secularists (I use this term because I suspect that the concerns expressed by the Exterminator are shared by those who would not call themselves atheists) as they watch the Democratic candidates talk about faith. For them, the Republican party has become a hostile force, and secularists' only home among the two major parties has been the Democratic Party. When Obama, Edwards and Clinton start talking repeatedly about their faith, a secularist has to wonder: "Am I about to be thrown off the bus." (Much like our GLBT friends in the Episcopal Church wonder whether the House of Bishops will throw them under ...

Dr. Francis Collins is a renowned scientists--he headed the human genome project. He is also an Evangelical Christian. He recently written a book The Language of God that describes his own faith journey from atheism to faith in Christ. He also uses the book to defend evolution--and attack creationism and intelligent design--largely to an evangelical audience. I have written several posts about both Dr. Collins and his book. You can find all of my posts here . While I am critical of some aspects of the book, I otherwise found much to admire. A Christian scientist that supports evolution in a book targeted to fellow Christians--what's not to like? Well, Sam Harris, one of the so-called "New Atheist" (and author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation ) thinks that Collins is a danger to mankind--and lumps him with Islamic fundamentalists in a remarkable letter to Nature : An Editorial announcing the publication of Francis Collins' book, The Language of Go...

Okay, this is simply too rich not to post--plus it will attract my diverse regular readership of atheists and Anglicans. This is from Christopher Hitchens' diary in Vanity Fair: June 10, Washington, D.C.: It's been weeks on the road, and after a grueling swing through Canada I am finally home. I tell the wife and daughter that's it: no more god talk for a bit—let's get lunch at the fashionable Café Milano, in Georgetown. Signor Franco leads us to a nice table outside and I sit down—right next to the Archbishop of Canterbury. O.K., then, this must have been meant to happen. I lean over. "My Lord Archbishop? It's Christopher Hitchens." "Good gracious," he responds, gesturing at his guest—"we were just discussing your book." The archbishop's church is about to undergo a schism. More than 10 conservative congregations in Virginia have seceded, along with some African bishops, to protest the ordination of a gay bishop in New England. I a...

The great scholar of all things religous, Martin Marty, has a column in the Christian Century about how Christians should respond to the so-called "New Atheism." While I do not agree with all that he says, I do think he offers some very good advice. Here are some highlights: Having written "The Uses of Infidelity" (1956), >The Infidel: Freethought and American Religion (1961) and Varieties of Unbelief (1964) back when I was on the trail of atheists and their kin, I am often asked: When are you going to comment on the media's discovery of "the new atheism"? The term refers to writings by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel C. Dennett, Samuel Harris, Michel Onfray, Victor J. Stenger and other best-selling defenders of atheism and attackers of religion as something evil and needing to be banished. Answer: Maybe someday. Meanwhile, here is advice to myself and anyone else who cares: Keep cool . America has seen cycles like these before and ...