From VoV "The Gift of Gifts"
In the gospel we have the gift of gifts containing the pinnacle of Wonder, Love, Power, and Wisdom.
When we lose sight of the wonder of the gospel, "he came below to raise me above; was born like me that I might become like him", then our hearts become restless and unsatisfied. The result is that we "grab for all the gusto" the world has to offer. We seek wonder in things that are not truly wonder-ful. there is a lack of contentment in our lives - individually or as a society.
This is where we are in our world today. God is small and man is big, but man can't sustain the spiritual and emotional weight we put on him (us). Apart from god man is just a cosmic accident void of wonder.
We were made for wonder and its ultimate measure is found in the mystery of the incarnation and the saving grace of God in Christ. Let that capture your heart and you'll find a deep well of contentment for your soul.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Some Little Contradictions and How They Grew
Another LOSER LETTER.
By Mary Eberstadt
Dear Atheist Sirs again,
I hope that by now You’ve all gotten my first Letter and that Everybody’s had a chance to read it and think over my points and suggestions. It was about sex (!), so I figured You’d all get to it. I know from Your books how interested atheists are in that subject! And no worries: You’ll definitely be hearing more about you-know-what from me in the future, especially once we get to my own personal atheist conversion story.
For now, though, this second Letter is about something else I think we really need to talk about if we Brights are ever going to get serious about pulling other people besides me away from the Loser. One other big problem facing us is this: atheists everywhere, not just You all but going way back into the very beginning of Our evolutionary leap into godlessness, keep talking about how Reason and Logic are totally in Our corner. And for reasons explained below, I think this kind of talk runs the risk of being very off-putting to certain other members of the Species — especially those who for whatever random reason have been exposed even a little to Reason and Logic themselves.
I know; I was one.
It didn’t start out that way. Like so many other Americans, I was what you might call a cradle Dull — a regular and unthinking believing churchgoer for as long as I lived in my parents’ home. There I endured the prayers and rituals and kitschy teachings that all seemed Natural and interesting enough at the time (though thanks to the way You Guys have explained it, I’m now horrified by such ritual child abuse!). I sang in choirs; read the Bible and other religious mumbo-jumbo on my own; attended one or another of Nietzsche’s tombs on Sundays together with biologically related members of my Species. During those years, I must stress again, I was not embarrassed or ashamed of any of this (most cradle Dulls are not), still less understanding of the damage it was doing.
Then came the first, if temporary, break with all that: I went off to an American university for four years (!). There I luxuriated for the first time in the fierce light of Bright ideas, and knew briefly that happy atheist disregard for a great many things that bothered me both before and since.
So far, so American-believer typical. But here’s where my story starts to get twisted. In my second year I was assigned by sheerest Chance to an academic advisor who started me astray. An “agnostic” rather than an “atheist” — a distinction I now know to be a warning bell, though I didn’t then! — this retrograde professor saw to it that I took something that in retrospect appears to be a real potential hassle for Our side: i.e. a class in formal, symbolic logic. Some of You know might know what I mean here: the system made up of “A” and “not-A” and soundness and validity and proofs and all the rest of that superstitious stuff started by Aristotle and buffed up by the medievals.
And this introduction to logic, I have no doubt in retrospect, was the beginning of my years of sliding away from the ideas of the Brights and back into the religious wilderness. The funny thing is, I wasn’t much interested in religion one way or another during those years. It’s just that some contrarian little reflex, apparently kick-started by that introduction to logic, kept twitching inside here and there whenever the subject of god vs. godlessness came up — and time and again it seemed to say that atheism wasn’t answering some pretty big questions.
Like, one contradiction that waved its hand whenever I thought about atheism starts what looks like a simple question: Where was all this God-believing business coming from in the first place? Why was it that — with the exceptions of a few Greeks, Spinoza, and a scattering of other atheist bravehearts whom one could easily name — practically all of human history has been inseparable from belief in some deity?
Now, this question of why human beings have been like this — always leaning toward gods, or “theotropic” as some of You like to say (I love Your big words!) — is trickier than it looks for Us. In fact it’s trickier I think than any of You Guys really understand, which is why it worries me so. For either one produces a satisfying reason for why, say, 99.99999999 percent of humanity has been wrong on that big issue while You have been right; or, failing that, one simply comes right out and says that the entire rest of the Species up to Oneself was stupid as a bag of rocks till the day before yesterday — a stance which does run the risk, or so I used to think, of looking just a teensy bit arrogant.
Not that that stops some atheists from risking it! Bertrand Russell, for one, argued pretty much just that in his famous essay, “Why I am Not a Christian.” He declared religion to be based “primarily and mainly upon fear….Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.” Many other Brights believe the same, I know, including some of You. “Fear, terror and anguish,” says major French atheist Michel Onfray, are “the devices designed to create divinities.”
It’s not like I’m saying He’s wrong, of course! But once again, if You’ll just let me explain from the point of view of a former Dull, it sounds to other people like what we Brights are really saying is, “If most of humanity has turned to religion out of fearfulness, then I must be an exceptionally brave and brilliant person to reject that way out.” Well, maybe Voltaire and Baron d’Holbach and Bertrand Russell were just such beasts, and maybe some of You are too (especially that Mr. Dawkins — grrrrr!). But speaking as someone who is not, it seemed to me better to give some sort of other explanation for theotropism — I mean, something other than the “I’m a universal genius MUHAHAHAHA and I see things that other mere ordinary mortals don’t” kind of explanation. You know, just to avoid this problem of being misconstrued as some unbelievable egomaniac head case or something.
Not that there’s anything wrong with putting oneself first, as Nature intended Us to! But the egomania thing does hurt us in the Dull trenches, especially with girls; trust me.
Anyway, so if that first atheist answer to why religion exists at all doesn’t satisfy, how about the second one that some of You get behind? According to this other explanation, religion is not so much a reaction to bad things as a vain search for good ones — i.e., religion supposedly answers some deep need we have for, say, the God of the Old or New Testament. That’s what big swinging Forebears like Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud would have said — that religious beliefs “are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, most urgent wishes of mankind,” as S.F. once put it. In other words, the Loser is really just Daddy with a bigger wallet and more treats.
Now here’s why I never went along with that other big line of atheist argument, which I tell you as only a former Dull could: because nothing about it rings true. Because that kind of god, i.e. the Judeo-Christian god, is not remotely the kind of deity that I personally would invent to watch over me.
I mean, just think. In Mr. Dawkins’s much-quoted description of the Old Testament God in particular, that particular deity was “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” He’s quite a piece of work! Even when I “believed” in “him,” I’d have grudgingly acknowledged that a list like that has a point.
But don’t You see the problem here? The very character of the Judeo-Christian God that has given You such a romp with the adjectives actually turns out a pretty big problem for the Atheist side. The point Everybody’s missing is that this particular god is hard to live with — so hard that the atheist idea of his having been made up just for the supposed “consolation” of it all is just too LOL. Even at his best, he’s not the sort of supernatural easily cuddled up to. As Graham Greene’s fallen whiskey priest puts it in The Power and the Glory, making the point that even god’s “love” is pretty scary stuff, “It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.” And a Female human like me, too. That’s how I felt even back then, the few times when I bothered to stop and think about it.
So You see, this very scariness of this Judeo-Christian god is seriously bad for Us — or at least bad for the atheist claim that he was invented by people to make them feel better. Because if the human purpose that keeps calling the Loser into existence is some deep search for comfort — if he is just supposed to be some big cosmic Prozac, or a blankie in the sky — I have to tell you this god is seriously not cutting it for me, and not just for me but for a lot of other people as well.
Now on the other hand, a deity who would let me smoke and drink as much as I want, drop five pounds without going a-rex again, string up that bee-ach judge from juvie court (long story), send my boyfriend packing on the grounds that we Humans aren’t “hardwired” to be married for life (so true! But more about that later): now there’s a god this former believer could have gotten her head around! Who turns bread into iPod minis and water into Grey Goose — now we’re getting somewhere! That’s what I’m talkin’ about, if You know what I mean.
But the Loser? That pathetic deity who does nothing but talk about laws, laws, laws, just about every one of which seems aimed at thwarting what I want most at any given moment — that is, when he’s not talking about how I’m supposed to love, love, love…my enemies, of all retarded things? No, that’s not the sort of ultimate “wish-fulfillment” I have in mind at all. I mean, WTF (don’t worry, I won’t spell out the F-word, it’s a condition of my Internet use in here). I hope I’m not getting too personal or giving too much away. But again, I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks the wish-fulfillment theory is a crock because of items like this.
And so is this standard atheist comeback: i.e., that this Judeo-Christian god promises eternity, and that eternity is what the wish-fulfillment is really about; after all, who wouldn’t want to live forever? But the problem here is that the eternity offer, at least the one in Judaism and Christianity, has such crappy strings attached. Who’d want it? Ask Yourself which is more dreamy — a world with no Forever in which you can do whatever you want for as long as you live here; or one with a Forever that you might spend badly if you blow it here? Hmmm, let’s think about that…not; the answer is pretty obvious if what you want most is fun and games in the here and now. You don’t have to be a Natural Scientist to get that one right!
This brings us to one more problem that not one of You guys has addressed no matter how many Dull critics complain about it: All this atheist talk of wish-fulfillment furthermore dumps a big problem of its own down on our Side. After all, if metaphysics is something that humanity just wishes on itself for deep unconscious this-thing-is-bigger-than-the-both-of-us kind of reasons, then where does that fact leave our worldview, i.e. atheism?
As that professor Alister McGrath — a former one of Us who has gone totally over to the other side (don’t worry, I have a whole Letter about those convert traitor problem cases coming later) — has pointed out, the trouble with wish-fulfillment is that it raises the question of what atheists wish for, too. In other words, do we Brights want to abolish the Loser for reasons of our own — because that lets us off the hook to do whatever we please in this world? Is it possible that — as that totally outrageous public enemy Dinesh D’Souza has said — “the reason many atheists are drawn to deny God, and especially the Christian God, is to avoid having to answer in the next life for their lack of moral restraint in this one”?
I hate it when the believers turn Our ideas on their heads that way, don’t You? But You have to admit, there’s a kooky kind of sense in that criticism! That kind of potential embarrassment is one more reason to downplay the wish-fulfillment “theory,” or so this former believer totally advises.
Another problem with learning a bit of logic was this: just as it helped in locating where a real contradiction might be skulking, so did it illuminate other claims as being not contradictory, valid, invalid, and so on. And here again, atheism lost some points in my book for a while.
Take what some Brights have been making of the fact that there are lots of different religions in the world saying plenty of different things. Many of You have been right out front, going on and on about how all this religious diversity somehow “proves” that not one of those religions can be correct. But of course this is what’s called a fallacious inference. The presence of other religions doesn’t affect the truth value of any one of them — any more than having twelve answers to a math problem tells you which one is right, say, or having ten pairs of Manolo Blahniks tells you which ones to wear with a cheetah leather skirt.
And just as one can’t argue against any particular religion by pointing out that another one exists, neither can You really argue with a straight face anyway that god’s existence is somehow “disproven” by the complications of a bureaucracy of saints and clergy, or by the many commandments and rituals of Christendom, no matter how twisted and stupid they may be. I know C.S. Lewis isn’t anybody’s favorite writer here (mine neither!), but I have to admit he got at least this point across. The problem with arguing that Christianity is too complicated to be true, he pointed out, is that the objection doesn’t conform with the evidence of our everyday senses. In real life, just about everything of interest is complicated; why should religion be different? And not only that:
Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match — all at equal distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go farther from the sun….Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity….it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.
Now back to our Movement! I bet that after all this constructive criticism of mine You’re all really starting to wonder how I learned to love atheism and ignore the contradictions! Aren’t You? I hope so!! Well, all I can say for now is that it goes to show that there are plenty of things in life that are more important than logic — and they don’t all come from a locked medicine cabinet, either! Not to worry Guys — as Michael says to Pop in The Godfather, “We’ll get there.”
Before that though, I want to take us on another detour into some other rhetoric that we atheists need to jettison and fast, because even the Dulls are beginning to realize how We’re handing them plenty of ammunition with it: i.e., what the losing Side would call the question of “good works.”
Adaptively (and Helpfully!) Yours,A.F. Christian
Another LOSER LETTER.
By Mary Eberstadt
Dear Atheist Sirs again,
I hope that by now You’ve all gotten my first Letter and that Everybody’s had a chance to read it and think over my points and suggestions. It was about sex (!), so I figured You’d all get to it. I know from Your books how interested atheists are in that subject! And no worries: You’ll definitely be hearing more about you-know-what from me in the future, especially once we get to my own personal atheist conversion story.
For now, though, this second Letter is about something else I think we really need to talk about if we Brights are ever going to get serious about pulling other people besides me away from the Loser. One other big problem facing us is this: atheists everywhere, not just You all but going way back into the very beginning of Our evolutionary leap into godlessness, keep talking about how Reason and Logic are totally in Our corner. And for reasons explained below, I think this kind of talk runs the risk of being very off-putting to certain other members of the Species — especially those who for whatever random reason have been exposed even a little to Reason and Logic themselves.
I know; I was one.
It didn’t start out that way. Like so many other Americans, I was what you might call a cradle Dull — a regular and unthinking believing churchgoer for as long as I lived in my parents’ home. There I endured the prayers and rituals and kitschy teachings that all seemed Natural and interesting enough at the time (though thanks to the way You Guys have explained it, I’m now horrified by such ritual child abuse!). I sang in choirs; read the Bible and other religious mumbo-jumbo on my own; attended one or another of Nietzsche’s tombs on Sundays together with biologically related members of my Species. During those years, I must stress again, I was not embarrassed or ashamed of any of this (most cradle Dulls are not), still less understanding of the damage it was doing.
Then came the first, if temporary, break with all that: I went off to an American university for four years (!). There I luxuriated for the first time in the fierce light of Bright ideas, and knew briefly that happy atheist disregard for a great many things that bothered me both before and since.
So far, so American-believer typical. But here’s where my story starts to get twisted. In my second year I was assigned by sheerest Chance to an academic advisor who started me astray. An “agnostic” rather than an “atheist” — a distinction I now know to be a warning bell, though I didn’t then! — this retrograde professor saw to it that I took something that in retrospect appears to be a real potential hassle for Our side: i.e. a class in formal, symbolic logic. Some of You know might know what I mean here: the system made up of “A” and “not-A” and soundness and validity and proofs and all the rest of that superstitious stuff started by Aristotle and buffed up by the medievals.
And this introduction to logic, I have no doubt in retrospect, was the beginning of my years of sliding away from the ideas of the Brights and back into the religious wilderness. The funny thing is, I wasn’t much interested in religion one way or another during those years. It’s just that some contrarian little reflex, apparently kick-started by that introduction to logic, kept twitching inside here and there whenever the subject of god vs. godlessness came up — and time and again it seemed to say that atheism wasn’t answering some pretty big questions.
Like, one contradiction that waved its hand whenever I thought about atheism starts what looks like a simple question: Where was all this God-believing business coming from in the first place? Why was it that — with the exceptions of a few Greeks, Spinoza, and a scattering of other atheist bravehearts whom one could easily name — practically all of human history has been inseparable from belief in some deity?
Now, this question of why human beings have been like this — always leaning toward gods, or “theotropic” as some of You like to say (I love Your big words!) — is trickier than it looks for Us. In fact it’s trickier I think than any of You Guys really understand, which is why it worries me so. For either one produces a satisfying reason for why, say, 99.99999999 percent of humanity has been wrong on that big issue while You have been right; or, failing that, one simply comes right out and says that the entire rest of the Species up to Oneself was stupid as a bag of rocks till the day before yesterday — a stance which does run the risk, or so I used to think, of looking just a teensy bit arrogant.
Not that that stops some atheists from risking it! Bertrand Russell, for one, argued pretty much just that in his famous essay, “Why I am Not a Christian.” He declared religion to be based “primarily and mainly upon fear….Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.” Many other Brights believe the same, I know, including some of You. “Fear, terror and anguish,” says major French atheist Michel Onfray, are “the devices designed to create divinities.”
It’s not like I’m saying He’s wrong, of course! But once again, if You’ll just let me explain from the point of view of a former Dull, it sounds to other people like what we Brights are really saying is, “If most of humanity has turned to religion out of fearfulness, then I must be an exceptionally brave and brilliant person to reject that way out.” Well, maybe Voltaire and Baron d’Holbach and Bertrand Russell were just such beasts, and maybe some of You are too (especially that Mr. Dawkins — grrrrr!). But speaking as someone who is not, it seemed to me better to give some sort of other explanation for theotropism — I mean, something other than the “I’m a universal genius MUHAHAHAHA and I see things that other mere ordinary mortals don’t” kind of explanation. You know, just to avoid this problem of being misconstrued as some unbelievable egomaniac head case or something.
Not that there’s anything wrong with putting oneself first, as Nature intended Us to! But the egomania thing does hurt us in the Dull trenches, especially with girls; trust me.
Anyway, so if that first atheist answer to why religion exists at all doesn’t satisfy, how about the second one that some of You get behind? According to this other explanation, religion is not so much a reaction to bad things as a vain search for good ones — i.e., religion supposedly answers some deep need we have for, say, the God of the Old or New Testament. That’s what big swinging Forebears like Ludwig Feuerbach and Sigmund Freud would have said — that religious beliefs “are illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, most urgent wishes of mankind,” as S.F. once put it. In other words, the Loser is really just Daddy with a bigger wallet and more treats.
Now here’s why I never went along with that other big line of atheist argument, which I tell you as only a former Dull could: because nothing about it rings true. Because that kind of god, i.e. the Judeo-Christian god, is not remotely the kind of deity that I personally would invent to watch over me.
I mean, just think. In Mr. Dawkins’s much-quoted description of the Old Testament God in particular, that particular deity was “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” He’s quite a piece of work! Even when I “believed” in “him,” I’d have grudgingly acknowledged that a list like that has a point.
But don’t You see the problem here? The very character of the Judeo-Christian God that has given You such a romp with the adjectives actually turns out a pretty big problem for the Atheist side. The point Everybody’s missing is that this particular god is hard to live with — so hard that the atheist idea of his having been made up just for the supposed “consolation” of it all is just too LOL. Even at his best, he’s not the sort of supernatural easily cuddled up to. As Graham Greene’s fallen whiskey priest puts it in The Power and the Glory, making the point that even god’s “love” is pretty scary stuff, “It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.” And a Female human like me, too. That’s how I felt even back then, the few times when I bothered to stop and think about it.
So You see, this very scariness of this Judeo-Christian god is seriously bad for Us — or at least bad for the atheist claim that he was invented by people to make them feel better. Because if the human purpose that keeps calling the Loser into existence is some deep search for comfort — if he is just supposed to be some big cosmic Prozac, or a blankie in the sky — I have to tell you this god is seriously not cutting it for me, and not just for me but for a lot of other people as well.
Now on the other hand, a deity who would let me smoke and drink as much as I want, drop five pounds without going a-rex again, string up that bee-ach judge from juvie court (long story), send my boyfriend packing on the grounds that we Humans aren’t “hardwired” to be married for life (so true! But more about that later): now there’s a god this former believer could have gotten her head around! Who turns bread into iPod minis and water into Grey Goose — now we’re getting somewhere! That’s what I’m talkin’ about, if You know what I mean.
But the Loser? That pathetic deity who does nothing but talk about laws, laws, laws, just about every one of which seems aimed at thwarting what I want most at any given moment — that is, when he’s not talking about how I’m supposed to love, love, love…my enemies, of all retarded things? No, that’s not the sort of ultimate “wish-fulfillment” I have in mind at all. I mean, WTF (don’t worry, I won’t spell out the F-word, it’s a condition of my Internet use in here). I hope I’m not getting too personal or giving too much away. But again, I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks the wish-fulfillment theory is a crock because of items like this.
And so is this standard atheist comeback: i.e., that this Judeo-Christian god promises eternity, and that eternity is what the wish-fulfillment is really about; after all, who wouldn’t want to live forever? But the problem here is that the eternity offer, at least the one in Judaism and Christianity, has such crappy strings attached. Who’d want it? Ask Yourself which is more dreamy — a world with no Forever in which you can do whatever you want for as long as you live here; or one with a Forever that you might spend badly if you blow it here? Hmmm, let’s think about that…not; the answer is pretty obvious if what you want most is fun and games in the here and now. You don’t have to be a Natural Scientist to get that one right!
This brings us to one more problem that not one of You guys has addressed no matter how many Dull critics complain about it: All this atheist talk of wish-fulfillment furthermore dumps a big problem of its own down on our Side. After all, if metaphysics is something that humanity just wishes on itself for deep unconscious this-thing-is-bigger-than-the-both-of-us kind of reasons, then where does that fact leave our worldview, i.e. atheism?
As that professor Alister McGrath — a former one of Us who has gone totally over to the other side (don’t worry, I have a whole Letter about those convert traitor problem cases coming later) — has pointed out, the trouble with wish-fulfillment is that it raises the question of what atheists wish for, too. In other words, do we Brights want to abolish the Loser for reasons of our own — because that lets us off the hook to do whatever we please in this world? Is it possible that — as that totally outrageous public enemy Dinesh D’Souza has said — “the reason many atheists are drawn to deny God, and especially the Christian God, is to avoid having to answer in the next life for their lack of moral restraint in this one”?
I hate it when the believers turn Our ideas on their heads that way, don’t You? But You have to admit, there’s a kooky kind of sense in that criticism! That kind of potential embarrassment is one more reason to downplay the wish-fulfillment “theory,” or so this former believer totally advises.
Another problem with learning a bit of logic was this: just as it helped in locating where a real contradiction might be skulking, so did it illuminate other claims as being not contradictory, valid, invalid, and so on. And here again, atheism lost some points in my book for a while.
Take what some Brights have been making of the fact that there are lots of different religions in the world saying plenty of different things. Many of You have been right out front, going on and on about how all this religious diversity somehow “proves” that not one of those religions can be correct. But of course this is what’s called a fallacious inference. The presence of other religions doesn’t affect the truth value of any one of them — any more than having twelve answers to a math problem tells you which one is right, say, or having ten pairs of Manolo Blahniks tells you which ones to wear with a cheetah leather skirt.
And just as one can’t argue against any particular religion by pointing out that another one exists, neither can You really argue with a straight face anyway that god’s existence is somehow “disproven” by the complications of a bureaucracy of saints and clergy, or by the many commandments and rituals of Christendom, no matter how twisted and stupid they may be. I know C.S. Lewis isn’t anybody’s favorite writer here (mine neither!), but I have to admit he got at least this point across. The problem with arguing that Christianity is too complicated to be true, he pointed out, is that the objection doesn’t conform with the evidence of our everyday senses. In real life, just about everything of interest is complicated; why should religion be different? And not only that:
Besides being complicated, reality, in my experience is usually odd. It is not neat, not obvious, not what you expect. For instance, when you have grasped that the earth and the other planets all go round the sun, you would naturally expect that all the planets were made to match — all at equal distances from each other, say, or distances that regularly increased, or all the same size, or else getting bigger or smaller as you go farther from the sun….Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity….it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.
Now back to our Movement! I bet that after all this constructive criticism of mine You’re all really starting to wonder how I learned to love atheism and ignore the contradictions! Aren’t You? I hope so!! Well, all I can say for now is that it goes to show that there are plenty of things in life that are more important than logic — and they don’t all come from a locked medicine cabinet, either! Not to worry Guys — as Michael says to Pop in The Godfather, “We’ll get there.”
Before that though, I want to take us on another detour into some other rhetoric that we atheists need to jettison and fast, because even the Dulls are beginning to realize how We’re handing them plenty of ammunition with it: i.e., what the losing Side would call the question of “good works.”
Adaptively (and Helpfully!) Yours,A.F. Christian
An open letter to those spokesmen for the New Atheism who have labored mightily these last few years to sweep aside religion’s paralytic webs of superstition and prejudice, and to liberate the rest of our Species via Science and Enlightenment:
Dear Sirs,Speaking just for this Atheist convert, congratulations, Guys, You really did it! Thanks to all Your hard work, the rest of us know once and for all that the so-called “God” is everything You say he is: the biggest fraud of all time, cosmic Zero, ultimate no-show. And after all those centuries and promises, too. Like throwing the biggest rave ever, only to cancel at the last minute after everyone’d already bought tickets and drugs for it. What kind of Loser does that, anyway? If this were Facebook, no one would be friending him now.But You have to admit, that same Loser sure has been great for the book business! Including and especially all those books on the new atheism, I’m happy to say. Almost a million volumes sold in twelve month’s time; covers in every major newspaper and magazine; publicity on all the best talk shows and websites and campuses; national and international book awards out the wazoo: Talk about knowing how to make “something” ($$$) out of “nothing” (the Loser)! It really is marvelous — sorry; I almost said “miraculous” there (I’m new to the atheist party and hope you’ll pardon any slips) — how Your ideas have taken so much of the Western media by storm. You’d almost think atheism had friends in some pretty high places! Whatever, You probably think we atheists have earned the right to sit back and chill. I mean, it’s pretty clear we’ve won by now — isn’t it?Except, well, not — and that’s why I’m writing You this letter. Because there’s one thing that’s still missing from atheism’s final victory, and it’s something that just can’t be sugarcoated. Ahem: Apart from me, where is the testimony of anyone Your writings have actually convinced? After all, as one of You said somewhere and all of us want to believe, “If this book works as I intend, religious readers will be atheists when they put it down.” So where are the rest of them, I’m starting to wonder — these other converts (like me!) to the new godlessness? I’m not asking about the numbers to depress any of You.
One of the things I love about our Side — the winning Side, the atheist Side! — is we get that it’s good enough just being in everybody’s face about “God” not existing, even if no one but me was persuaded despite a few million more books in circulation. And I know that it wouldn’t be the first time that atheism fell short on the convert count. “It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly),” as our most illustrious Forebear Charles Darwin once put it, “that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public.” And He should certainly know!Even so, as Your convert, in fact as maybe your one and only convert, I worry for Us. Sooner or later, one of the believers will come along and point out a fact they’ll think is damaging to this new atheism — I mean, that it hasn’t actually convinced anyone. In other words, they’re going to paint our Side as somehow intellectually Unfit. And the idea of being called Unfit, to this newly minted atheist, is just too much to bear. Back when I was a Christian, I was taught to embrace those kind of people — you know what I mean, the maladaptives. But as an Atheist, even a new one, I’ve learned to despise them all as Nature’s mistakes. Being put on the losing side would be what You might call a personal Devolution for me, something gross and Unnatural. Like having an opposable thumb and not even texting with it!And so, to protect Us atheists from that charge before our religious enemies even get to it, I’ve gone ahead and written the following Letters to You. They offer up the earnest confession of one who — as someone once said of our fellow atheist Allen Ginsberg —“did not come back from Hell empty-handed.” I mean Hell figuratively, of course! Little joke there! But seriously. I’ve ascended from the darkness of the believers by clinging to each and every one of Your words — and I bring with me recent firsthand knowledge of them and their ways that I want to share with You.About the reasons for my conversion to atheism, I’ll have lots more to say in what follows. But let me first thank some of You for introducing that amped word, “Brights,” to describe our Side. It’s meant to distinguish the “vigorous” and “healthy” souls of atheists, as one of You put it somewhere, from those of the believers (sorry on “souls” BTW). In these pages I want to take that logic of “Brights” to another level — because of course if there are Brights, then by necessity our adversaries, a.k.a. the Christians, must be known by the opposite descriptive, “Dulls.” And so they will be in the Letters ahead. In short, I offer to You my own conversion story — that of a former Christian who has Adapted at last to Atheism. It’s a personal tale, by the way, not a point-by-point engagement with all of Your arguments and themes. After all, I’m no theologian. (And neither are any of You of course!). But before getting into all that, I’ll start at the beginning: by explaining what kept me — and not only me, but a great many other potential converts for our side — away from atheism for as long I did.Above all, I want all my Letters to be useful. I was taught by Marxist Leninist Atheists at college a while back, back before they all went to wherever all the Marxist Leninist Atheists went. And I have to confess, at times I really miss their verve! Don’t You? Especially their sense of how the highest purpose is to be Useful.Well, I think the most Useful thing I can do here is to show You something of how the Dulls really think from the inside, so You can see what we’re truly up against in trying to convert them. Just think of me as your own private Project Runway or What Not to Wear — someone who just wants us atheists to be all we can be.I do hope everyone reads my story of personal Evolution through. After all, it’s the only one You have, at least so far. But don’t let the numbers bother You much.
One down, and just a few billion more to go!
Your huge fan,A.F. Christian***
LETTER ONE: “The Trouble with Experience
”Dear Sirs,
First let’s talk about something You atheist Guys all like to talk about (judging by those latest books especially!!!), which is sex and the role that it plays in separating the benighted believers from the enlightened rest of Us. As I get it, Our atheist position on sex boils down to this: the believers with their tard regulations are all wrong about it, while we Brights have been — I’m reaching here for the words that You Guys might use — so groovy and hip by throwing out the Christian rule book on all that stuff. Or to put it another way, thanks to atheism and secularism more generally, words like privacy, consenting adults, and behind closed doors are in; and ones like monogamy, self-restraint, and staying together for the kids are out. If there’s anything We Brights are all on the same page about — and again, I’ve read all those pages of yours pretty carefully! — it would seem to be this; am I right?Now, as a fresh convert myself who is in a more or less delirious state at all times just thinking about what my new atheism will mean for my personal life now that I’ve been freed from all those commandments (!), I’m certainly not here to argue with You about the appeal of doing what comes Naturally. At the same time, though, I have to warn You about something. A lot of what the new atheism says about sex strikes me as strategically dangerous to Us — the kind of talk that runs the risk of turning off some of the very believers, especially the younger believers, who might otherwise be tempted to switch over to our Side. Let’s start with that generational difference between You new atheists and some of the rest of us. Did Your parents ever leave home for the weekend when any of You were kids, putting You in the care of teenage siblings? Do You still remember the two-day nonstop party, and the expressions on Your parents’ faces Sunday night when they saw the overflowing ashtrays and empty kegs and someone else’s underwear in the laundry and throw-up in the fish tank? Well You should know that’s pretty much what it was like for those of us who went through life after You baby boomers did, a decade or so after what might be called the Godless Generation swept through first.And this brings us to why atheists run the risk of losing among this younger generation when You talk about sex the way new atheists all have so far: because everybody on the godless team writes about sex and freedom from the religious moral rules as if all the years from 1960 on never even existed. As if the Sexual Revolution hadn’t been staggering along for nearly a half century now! Hello? Well for better or worse from the point of view of our Side, it has. And what that means is that all kinds of people now know that if we try and make a selling point out of trashing Christian sexual morality — as atheists have been doing since the beginning — a whole lot of Dulls today are going to raise their hands and call us losers again on the subject of sex and say that we don’t know what we’re talking about.
So in this Letter I’d like to draw Your attention to just some of the legacy of the sexual revolution, in the hopes of making our Movement less vulnerable to the unfortunate Facts.We can begin where most Americans really begin to learn about sex, i.e. on the typical American campus of the past few decades. To live it is to see up close and personal that Dostoevsky’s mantra — when God is gone, everything is permitted — is not some lame old literary prophesy, but a vibrating social fact. Of course by saying “everything” is permitted on campus I don’t literally mean everything, after all; these upper middle-class children, some still wearing braces and nearly all still depending on their doting parents for every library fine, have for the most part proved unlikely to take up mass murder or grand theft auto. But the part of “everything” that involves everybody’s favorite something, i.e. risk-and-supposedly-consequence-free sex (or at least the promise thereof), has been different. Looking back to my own years in the university, I’d say that if the place had had to choose a motto in English, likely the Fittest would have been “Let copulation thrive!” If You know what I mean (and I bet You do!). And the connection between all this furtive fun behind doors and the absence of any public religiosity was quite obvious, at least to this former Christian. It wasn’t just the deity who’d taken a hike off the quad, of course; authority in practically any form had disappeared along with the Loser. But there’s no doubt that god above all just wasn’t done. In four years, I met one student who openly attended church, and the subsequent number I have uncovered were doing so more or less samizdat. That’s what I’m trying to explain about this. The place was as pure as any atheist’s dream, as deity-free as the Bravo Channel on Sunday morn (or any other time!).Now why is any of this a problem for the atheist side? Duh. First, the fact of what’s been happening on campus all these years means that we Brights can’t very well go around like the communists always tried to, and say that the problem with our vision is that it “hasn’t really been tried.” No, secularism/atheism when it comes to sexual mores anyway has been tried, is being tried, and the empirical Fact is that what’s happening on campuses is what sex and “romance” look like when we Brights get our way and dispose of all those silly religious rules — two, three, many Charlotte Simmonses.And if the campuses don’t do it for you, take a look at what secular sex is doing in post-Christian Western Europe! Pornography is everywhere, over-the-counter medicines for STDs are front and center in every convenience store, red-light districts showcase poorer and younger people (mostly from the East) being paid for every possible combination of sex by richer and older people (mostly from the West), the age of consent keeps getting pushed lower — and marriage and children and families are disappearing. Please don’t misunderstand me here — I’m not saying it isn’t all fantastic! I’m just saying something none of You mentioned when you talked about sex, which is that this is what things look like when We atheists get our way.See? That’s secularism for you; that’s what it does. You can stand on your hind feet like a proud biped and applaud it; you can pretend it is something other than what it is; you can say with a straight face that you’re happy to send your own daughters into that kind of world, that you don’t care how many men or women or even what species she sleeps with — or what her partner devours for hours on end in the computer when she’s asleep, say — as long as they are all somehow “responsible” about it; but that’s pretty much the limit of what the Facts will allow us to do.
What You can’t do, any more than I could back in my Christian days, is to pretend that this atmosphere on campus, anymore than the sterility of Western Europe today, was somehow accidental to the absence of religious practice. Of course the two are glued together. Secularism is as secularism does.The second point I’d urge You all to consider — and again, it’s not the kind of thing Guys of your age might know if you’ll pardon my saying so — is that when we atheists say with a straight face that deep-sixing the old sex rules will make everybody happy, we’re dissing the experience of most people who have passed through college since the Godless Generation. I mean to say, that’s pretty much everyone under the age of 50. The Gen-Xers on down have all seen firsthand the same things this former Christian did — that all this rutting and strutting and getting free contraceptives and living for the moment was not exactly the way atheists all paint it in their books, i.e. as some fantastic liberation from the sexually repressive hand of the doddering Church. Oh snap! In fact and to the contrary, throwing out all the rules has actually been making a lot of people very miserable indeed — to say nothing of how miserable plenty of them were making other people. Maybe You somehow weren’t around for all the hangovers and de-toxing, the panicked trips to the shrinks and the clinics, the door slammings and crying jags and suicide threats that so many of us think about when we think about college; but some of the rest of Us saw enough to get pretty sick of all that, and tempted to think that a rule or two about how some members of the Species ought to treat others might not be all bad. It was mostly worse for the women than for the men, I’m thinking — which reminds me of something else that’s the subject of a later Letter: You all do know some women, don’t you? — but it wasn’t so great for plenty of the guys, either.So You see, one other reason for my own former resistance to secularism and atheism — and a big reason why many other believers resist Us, too — was just this: it seemed plain as the ring in my nose that the so-called sexual revolution, which is celebrated to a man (again, not a typo! More on that later too) by every atheist, turned out not to be the benign bacchanal Everyone said it would be; it was not the nonstop party of so many panting descriptions; it was not even the Loveshack of the B-52’s; it was instead, from the point of view of many of the believers, proof that secular so-called morality once unleashed would do some real damage in the world.I mean, even Christians can count on their fingers — You know, about things like the number of peers from broken homes who seemed to have “issues” that the ones from intact homes didn’t; the number of girlfriends unhappy about their abortions, their sexually transmitted diseases, their inability to treat men as disposably as they were treated themselves; the number of men who turned out to make particularly crappy boyfriends because they’d been around the block one or ten or twenty too many times; the number of marriages split by the kinds of things consenting adults do when they’re consenting with people outside of it. Just for instance.
Does any of this sound familiar? I’m sure it doesn’t, because it’s a part of sexual reality that atheists never mention! But that’s exactly why I’m harping on it. If our Movement is really going to go around arguing that the sooner we get rid of all those rules, the happier humanity is going to be, we’re going to get blown away by this kind of counterevidence. It’s enough to make You envy Bertrand Russell and all the atheists who came before Us, isn’t it? Who were able to paint a happy face around all those things that didn’t exist yet? Well, unfortunately We in the 21st century can’t pretend we don’t know.Third and plus which, it’s another very bad Fact for our side that if people actually followed Dull sexual teaching, this would probably be a better and happier world than one in which they don’t. (Note that I’m not including myself in there! As St. Augustine should have said, “Make them good, God, not me!” But You have to admit, there’s a lot to be said for having the rest of the Species play by the rules.) Even worse, it suggests to some of them that the Dulls are on to something with this notion of natural law. Of course we atheists should call it Unnatural Law, since nothing could be more foreign to our biological imperatives! But the odd thing is, again, that if everyone lived under their Unnatural Law, an awful lot of people would seems to be better off than they are now — and this is even true of the most controversial teachings, the ones You all most enjoy snickering at.Like, if you had asked me back in my Christian days questions like: Would those girls have been better off without those abortions? Or: Would those kids happier being raised by both biological parents? Or: Do guys who have already slept with a hundred women make worse boyfriends than those who haven’t? Or: — hit me where I really used to live! — Which set of rules, atheism’s or religion’s, would you want your own hypothetical children to live by? I’d have said the answers to all those and more were no-brainers — no-brainers that made points for the religious side, that is. I’ll confess a terrible weakness here and say that even now, after I’ve Evolved so far, I still want to reach for the Xanax just thinking about an Atheist like any of You dating my theoretical daughter — as opposed to, say, a nice, anti-abortion, save-sex for marriage Christian. I know it’s terribly Unfit; but is that just me? The bottom line is, after everything that’s happened since the sexual revolution, I’m telling you that we atheists really need to knock off all the happy talk about how fantabulously liberating sex is. Privacy, privacy, privacy, Everybody mantras — as if that word settles anything at all! It’s messed up, isn’t it, when you think of how otherwise puritanical our own times are, that the church’s notion of sexual discipline should seem so funny to so many people? After all, it’s the only kind of discipline that’s out of bounds! We all know that people who eat too much are pigs, people who drink too much are drunks, people who don’t exercise are slobs and parasites on the body politic what with all their health costs, and people who smoke are just as disgusting as it’s possible to be, like an old person crossed with a fat one wearing a fur coat and eating venison and cake at the same time or something — and the rest of us are all really put out at every one single of those kinds of people for being such slobs and so hard on our own eyes and wallets. You know?Yet sex behind closed doors, just as the Dulls point out, has more serious consequences for the world than any of these other kinds of piggishness. It’s those “private acts” outside of marriage that have sent the illegitimacy soaring and put so many kids in the rough hands of mom’s rotating boyfriends. It’s consenting adults who have turned AIDS and STDs into global health problems. All this is to say nothing of the consequences that are harder to measure of all those mature adults doing as they please “in private.” And kids know all about those kinds of consequences, as You can see if You ever look at their music and movies and Facebook pages. There’s a backlash out there that none of You seem to know about — one you might call Ozzie and Harriet, come back — All is forgiven! I would go even farther, based on what I saw as a Dull, and say that this notion of sexual discipline and its importance is not only serious rather than unserious; it is also what pulls many of the Dulls into practicing or even turning to religion the first place, because they feel somehow better about life when it's lived inside of those rules.
Please understand that I’m not criticizing here! Cheering for pornography and omnivorous sex and by extension, broken homes and abused and screwed up kids and all the rest of the revolution’s fallout may not be everyone’s thing; but most of You new atheist Guys have definitely made it Yours. I respect all that! I’m just saying for now that we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that the believers’ sexual codes are an unmitigated bad on them and a plus for Us, when most evidence suggests it’s quite the other way around. Meanwhile, while we’re still on this subject of what doesn’t and doesn’t work for us when it comes to bringing others round to godlessness, let me bring up a related point that You’ve been indulging to our possible long-term detriment (though not just You! The Enlightenment started it!). That is the argument that Reason itself is also on the atheist Side. As I’ll explain in the next Letter, that’s one potato we really need to drop before Somebody gets burned by it.
Yours Pretty Faithfully,A. F. Christian
Mary Eberstadt is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Home-Alone America.
Dear Sirs,Speaking just for this Atheist convert, congratulations, Guys, You really did it! Thanks to all Your hard work, the rest of us know once and for all that the so-called “God” is everything You say he is: the biggest fraud of all time, cosmic Zero, ultimate no-show. And after all those centuries and promises, too. Like throwing the biggest rave ever, only to cancel at the last minute after everyone’d already bought tickets and drugs for it. What kind of Loser does that, anyway? If this were Facebook, no one would be friending him now.But You have to admit, that same Loser sure has been great for the book business! Including and especially all those books on the new atheism, I’m happy to say. Almost a million volumes sold in twelve month’s time; covers in every major newspaper and magazine; publicity on all the best talk shows and websites and campuses; national and international book awards out the wazoo: Talk about knowing how to make “something” ($$$) out of “nothing” (the Loser)! It really is marvelous — sorry; I almost said “miraculous” there (I’m new to the atheist party and hope you’ll pardon any slips) — how Your ideas have taken so much of the Western media by storm. You’d almost think atheism had friends in some pretty high places! Whatever, You probably think we atheists have earned the right to sit back and chill. I mean, it’s pretty clear we’ve won by now — isn’t it?Except, well, not — and that’s why I’m writing You this letter. Because there’s one thing that’s still missing from atheism’s final victory, and it’s something that just can’t be sugarcoated. Ahem: Apart from me, where is the testimony of anyone Your writings have actually convinced? After all, as one of You said somewhere and all of us want to believe, “If this book works as I intend, religious readers will be atheists when they put it down.” So where are the rest of them, I’m starting to wonder — these other converts (like me!) to the new godlessness? I’m not asking about the numbers to depress any of You.
One of the things I love about our Side — the winning Side, the atheist Side! — is we get that it’s good enough just being in everybody’s face about “God” not existing, even if no one but me was persuaded despite a few million more books in circulation. And I know that it wouldn’t be the first time that atheism fell short on the convert count. “It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly),” as our most illustrious Forebear Charles Darwin once put it, “that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public.” And He should certainly know!Even so, as Your convert, in fact as maybe your one and only convert, I worry for Us. Sooner or later, one of the believers will come along and point out a fact they’ll think is damaging to this new atheism — I mean, that it hasn’t actually convinced anyone. In other words, they’re going to paint our Side as somehow intellectually Unfit. And the idea of being called Unfit, to this newly minted atheist, is just too much to bear. Back when I was a Christian, I was taught to embrace those kind of people — you know what I mean, the maladaptives. But as an Atheist, even a new one, I’ve learned to despise them all as Nature’s mistakes. Being put on the losing side would be what You might call a personal Devolution for me, something gross and Unnatural. Like having an opposable thumb and not even texting with it!And so, to protect Us atheists from that charge before our religious enemies even get to it, I’ve gone ahead and written the following Letters to You. They offer up the earnest confession of one who — as someone once said of our fellow atheist Allen Ginsberg —“did not come back from Hell empty-handed.” I mean Hell figuratively, of course! Little joke there! But seriously. I’ve ascended from the darkness of the believers by clinging to each and every one of Your words — and I bring with me recent firsthand knowledge of them and their ways that I want to share with You.About the reasons for my conversion to atheism, I’ll have lots more to say in what follows. But let me first thank some of You for introducing that amped word, “Brights,” to describe our Side. It’s meant to distinguish the “vigorous” and “healthy” souls of atheists, as one of You put it somewhere, from those of the believers (sorry on “souls” BTW). In these pages I want to take that logic of “Brights” to another level — because of course if there are Brights, then by necessity our adversaries, a.k.a. the Christians, must be known by the opposite descriptive, “Dulls.” And so they will be in the Letters ahead. In short, I offer to You my own conversion story — that of a former Christian who has Adapted at last to Atheism. It’s a personal tale, by the way, not a point-by-point engagement with all of Your arguments and themes. After all, I’m no theologian. (And neither are any of You of course!). But before getting into all that, I’ll start at the beginning: by explaining what kept me — and not only me, but a great many other potential converts for our side — away from atheism for as long I did.Above all, I want all my Letters to be useful. I was taught by Marxist Leninist Atheists at college a while back, back before they all went to wherever all the Marxist Leninist Atheists went. And I have to confess, at times I really miss their verve! Don’t You? Especially their sense of how the highest purpose is to be Useful.Well, I think the most Useful thing I can do here is to show You something of how the Dulls really think from the inside, so You can see what we’re truly up against in trying to convert them. Just think of me as your own private Project Runway or What Not to Wear — someone who just wants us atheists to be all we can be.I do hope everyone reads my story of personal Evolution through. After all, it’s the only one You have, at least so far. But don’t let the numbers bother You much.
One down, and just a few billion more to go!
Your huge fan,A.F. Christian***
LETTER ONE: “The Trouble with Experience
”Dear Sirs,
First let’s talk about something You atheist Guys all like to talk about (judging by those latest books especially!!!), which is sex and the role that it plays in separating the benighted believers from the enlightened rest of Us. As I get it, Our atheist position on sex boils down to this: the believers with their tard regulations are all wrong about it, while we Brights have been — I’m reaching here for the words that You Guys might use — so groovy and hip by throwing out the Christian rule book on all that stuff. Or to put it another way, thanks to atheism and secularism more generally, words like privacy, consenting adults, and behind closed doors are in; and ones like monogamy, self-restraint, and staying together for the kids are out. If there’s anything We Brights are all on the same page about — and again, I’ve read all those pages of yours pretty carefully! — it would seem to be this; am I right?Now, as a fresh convert myself who is in a more or less delirious state at all times just thinking about what my new atheism will mean for my personal life now that I’ve been freed from all those commandments (!), I’m certainly not here to argue with You about the appeal of doing what comes Naturally. At the same time, though, I have to warn You about something. A lot of what the new atheism says about sex strikes me as strategically dangerous to Us — the kind of talk that runs the risk of turning off some of the very believers, especially the younger believers, who might otherwise be tempted to switch over to our Side. Let’s start with that generational difference between You new atheists and some of the rest of us. Did Your parents ever leave home for the weekend when any of You were kids, putting You in the care of teenage siblings? Do You still remember the two-day nonstop party, and the expressions on Your parents’ faces Sunday night when they saw the overflowing ashtrays and empty kegs and someone else’s underwear in the laundry and throw-up in the fish tank? Well You should know that’s pretty much what it was like for those of us who went through life after You baby boomers did, a decade or so after what might be called the Godless Generation swept through first.And this brings us to why atheists run the risk of losing among this younger generation when You talk about sex the way new atheists all have so far: because everybody on the godless team writes about sex and freedom from the religious moral rules as if all the years from 1960 on never even existed. As if the Sexual Revolution hadn’t been staggering along for nearly a half century now! Hello? Well for better or worse from the point of view of our Side, it has. And what that means is that all kinds of people now know that if we try and make a selling point out of trashing Christian sexual morality — as atheists have been doing since the beginning — a whole lot of Dulls today are going to raise their hands and call us losers again on the subject of sex and say that we don’t know what we’re talking about.
So in this Letter I’d like to draw Your attention to just some of the legacy of the sexual revolution, in the hopes of making our Movement less vulnerable to the unfortunate Facts.We can begin where most Americans really begin to learn about sex, i.e. on the typical American campus of the past few decades. To live it is to see up close and personal that Dostoevsky’s mantra — when God is gone, everything is permitted — is not some lame old literary prophesy, but a vibrating social fact. Of course by saying “everything” is permitted on campus I don’t literally mean everything, after all; these upper middle-class children, some still wearing braces and nearly all still depending on their doting parents for every library fine, have for the most part proved unlikely to take up mass murder or grand theft auto. But the part of “everything” that involves everybody’s favorite something, i.e. risk-and-supposedly-consequence-free sex (or at least the promise thereof), has been different. Looking back to my own years in the university, I’d say that if the place had had to choose a motto in English, likely the Fittest would have been “Let copulation thrive!” If You know what I mean (and I bet You do!). And the connection between all this furtive fun behind doors and the absence of any public religiosity was quite obvious, at least to this former Christian. It wasn’t just the deity who’d taken a hike off the quad, of course; authority in practically any form had disappeared along with the Loser. But there’s no doubt that god above all just wasn’t done. In four years, I met one student who openly attended church, and the subsequent number I have uncovered were doing so more or less samizdat. That’s what I’m trying to explain about this. The place was as pure as any atheist’s dream, as deity-free as the Bravo Channel on Sunday morn (or any other time!).Now why is any of this a problem for the atheist side? Duh. First, the fact of what’s been happening on campus all these years means that we Brights can’t very well go around like the communists always tried to, and say that the problem with our vision is that it “hasn’t really been tried.” No, secularism/atheism when it comes to sexual mores anyway has been tried, is being tried, and the empirical Fact is that what’s happening on campuses is what sex and “romance” look like when we Brights get our way and dispose of all those silly religious rules — two, three, many Charlotte Simmonses.And if the campuses don’t do it for you, take a look at what secular sex is doing in post-Christian Western Europe! Pornography is everywhere, over-the-counter medicines for STDs are front and center in every convenience store, red-light districts showcase poorer and younger people (mostly from the East) being paid for every possible combination of sex by richer and older people (mostly from the West), the age of consent keeps getting pushed lower — and marriage and children and families are disappearing. Please don’t misunderstand me here — I’m not saying it isn’t all fantastic! I’m just saying something none of You mentioned when you talked about sex, which is that this is what things look like when We atheists get our way.See? That’s secularism for you; that’s what it does. You can stand on your hind feet like a proud biped and applaud it; you can pretend it is something other than what it is; you can say with a straight face that you’re happy to send your own daughters into that kind of world, that you don’t care how many men or women or even what species she sleeps with — or what her partner devours for hours on end in the computer when she’s asleep, say — as long as they are all somehow “responsible” about it; but that’s pretty much the limit of what the Facts will allow us to do.
What You can’t do, any more than I could back in my Christian days, is to pretend that this atmosphere on campus, anymore than the sterility of Western Europe today, was somehow accidental to the absence of religious practice. Of course the two are glued together. Secularism is as secularism does.The second point I’d urge You all to consider — and again, it’s not the kind of thing Guys of your age might know if you’ll pardon my saying so — is that when we atheists say with a straight face that deep-sixing the old sex rules will make everybody happy, we’re dissing the experience of most people who have passed through college since the Godless Generation. I mean to say, that’s pretty much everyone under the age of 50. The Gen-Xers on down have all seen firsthand the same things this former Christian did — that all this rutting and strutting and getting free contraceptives and living for the moment was not exactly the way atheists all paint it in their books, i.e. as some fantastic liberation from the sexually repressive hand of the doddering Church. Oh snap! In fact and to the contrary, throwing out all the rules has actually been making a lot of people very miserable indeed — to say nothing of how miserable plenty of them were making other people. Maybe You somehow weren’t around for all the hangovers and de-toxing, the panicked trips to the shrinks and the clinics, the door slammings and crying jags and suicide threats that so many of us think about when we think about college; but some of the rest of Us saw enough to get pretty sick of all that, and tempted to think that a rule or two about how some members of the Species ought to treat others might not be all bad. It was mostly worse for the women than for the men, I’m thinking — which reminds me of something else that’s the subject of a later Letter: You all do know some women, don’t you? — but it wasn’t so great for plenty of the guys, either.So You see, one other reason for my own former resistance to secularism and atheism — and a big reason why many other believers resist Us, too — was just this: it seemed plain as the ring in my nose that the so-called sexual revolution, which is celebrated to a man (again, not a typo! More on that later too) by every atheist, turned out not to be the benign bacchanal Everyone said it would be; it was not the nonstop party of so many panting descriptions; it was not even the Loveshack of the B-52’s; it was instead, from the point of view of many of the believers, proof that secular so-called morality once unleashed would do some real damage in the world.I mean, even Christians can count on their fingers — You know, about things like the number of peers from broken homes who seemed to have “issues” that the ones from intact homes didn’t; the number of girlfriends unhappy about their abortions, their sexually transmitted diseases, their inability to treat men as disposably as they were treated themselves; the number of men who turned out to make particularly crappy boyfriends because they’d been around the block one or ten or twenty too many times; the number of marriages split by the kinds of things consenting adults do when they’re consenting with people outside of it. Just for instance.
Does any of this sound familiar? I’m sure it doesn’t, because it’s a part of sexual reality that atheists never mention! But that’s exactly why I’m harping on it. If our Movement is really going to go around arguing that the sooner we get rid of all those rules, the happier humanity is going to be, we’re going to get blown away by this kind of counterevidence. It’s enough to make You envy Bertrand Russell and all the atheists who came before Us, isn’t it? Who were able to paint a happy face around all those things that didn’t exist yet? Well, unfortunately We in the 21st century can’t pretend we don’t know.Third and plus which, it’s another very bad Fact for our side that if people actually followed Dull sexual teaching, this would probably be a better and happier world than one in which they don’t. (Note that I’m not including myself in there! As St. Augustine should have said, “Make them good, God, not me!” But You have to admit, there’s a lot to be said for having the rest of the Species play by the rules.) Even worse, it suggests to some of them that the Dulls are on to something with this notion of natural law. Of course we atheists should call it Unnatural Law, since nothing could be more foreign to our biological imperatives! But the odd thing is, again, that if everyone lived under their Unnatural Law, an awful lot of people would seems to be better off than they are now — and this is even true of the most controversial teachings, the ones You all most enjoy snickering at.Like, if you had asked me back in my Christian days questions like: Would those girls have been better off without those abortions? Or: Would those kids happier being raised by both biological parents? Or: Do guys who have already slept with a hundred women make worse boyfriends than those who haven’t? Or: — hit me where I really used to live! — Which set of rules, atheism’s or religion’s, would you want your own hypothetical children to live by? I’d have said the answers to all those and more were no-brainers — no-brainers that made points for the religious side, that is. I’ll confess a terrible weakness here and say that even now, after I’ve Evolved so far, I still want to reach for the Xanax just thinking about an Atheist like any of You dating my theoretical daughter — as opposed to, say, a nice, anti-abortion, save-sex for marriage Christian. I know it’s terribly Unfit; but is that just me? The bottom line is, after everything that’s happened since the sexual revolution, I’m telling you that we atheists really need to knock off all the happy talk about how fantabulously liberating sex is. Privacy, privacy, privacy, Everybody mantras — as if that word settles anything at all! It’s messed up, isn’t it, when you think of how otherwise puritanical our own times are, that the church’s notion of sexual discipline should seem so funny to so many people? After all, it’s the only kind of discipline that’s out of bounds! We all know that people who eat too much are pigs, people who drink too much are drunks, people who don’t exercise are slobs and parasites on the body politic what with all their health costs, and people who smoke are just as disgusting as it’s possible to be, like an old person crossed with a fat one wearing a fur coat and eating venison and cake at the same time or something — and the rest of us are all really put out at every one single of those kinds of people for being such slobs and so hard on our own eyes and wallets. You know?Yet sex behind closed doors, just as the Dulls point out, has more serious consequences for the world than any of these other kinds of piggishness. It’s those “private acts” outside of marriage that have sent the illegitimacy soaring and put so many kids in the rough hands of mom’s rotating boyfriends. It’s consenting adults who have turned AIDS and STDs into global health problems. All this is to say nothing of the consequences that are harder to measure of all those mature adults doing as they please “in private.” And kids know all about those kinds of consequences, as You can see if You ever look at their music and movies and Facebook pages. There’s a backlash out there that none of You seem to know about — one you might call Ozzie and Harriet, come back — All is forgiven! I would go even farther, based on what I saw as a Dull, and say that this notion of sexual discipline and its importance is not only serious rather than unserious; it is also what pulls many of the Dulls into practicing or even turning to religion the first place, because they feel somehow better about life when it's lived inside of those rules.
Please understand that I’m not criticizing here! Cheering for pornography and omnivorous sex and by extension, broken homes and abused and screwed up kids and all the rest of the revolution’s fallout may not be everyone’s thing; but most of You new atheist Guys have definitely made it Yours. I respect all that! I’m just saying for now that we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking that the believers’ sexual codes are an unmitigated bad on them and a plus for Us, when most evidence suggests it’s quite the other way around. Meanwhile, while we’re still on this subject of what doesn’t and doesn’t work for us when it comes to bringing others round to godlessness, let me bring up a related point that You’ve been indulging to our possible long-term detriment (though not just You! The Enlightenment started it!). That is the argument that Reason itself is also on the atheist Side. As I’ll explain in the next Letter, that’s one potato we really need to drop before Somebody gets burned by it.
Yours Pretty Faithfully,A. F. Christian
Mary Eberstadt is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of Home-Alone America.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Friday, May 23, 2008
I'm listening to a C.J. Mahaney talk on The Soul of Modesty, which is primarily for the benefit of women and it struck me...."how odd or ironic that scripture typically exhorts men, not women, to avoid the fleshly lusts and sexual sin yet it typically exhorts women to dress modestly."
It seems that women, who don't "struggle" with sexual sin in the same way that men do are particularly tempted to dress in a way that is not modest, i.e. in a way that provokes the lustful response in men. Part of the irony is that the sin that women tend to really dislike in men is our tendency toward sexual sin of heart, mind, and body. While hating that sinful tendency in men women, it seems, are still tempted to immodest dress.
Is it that there is simply a sort of blindness about this? yes and no.
I need to get back to listening to the rest of the message.
It seems that women, who don't "struggle" with sexual sin in the same way that men do are particularly tempted to dress in a way that is not modest, i.e. in a way that provokes the lustful response in men. Part of the irony is that the sin that women tend to really dislike in men is our tendency toward sexual sin of heart, mind, and body. While hating that sinful tendency in men women, it seems, are still tempted to immodest dress.
Is it that there is simply a sort of blindness about this? yes and no.
I need to get back to listening to the rest of the message.
In the VoV prayer "The prayer of Love"
it reads..."and mercy never wearies in bestowing benefits"
WOW. I have to ask, "Do I really believe that? Do I live like I believe it?"
How unlike me and so many believers. I/we grow weary quickly of bestowing benefits. I live as if mercy must be hoarded lest we run out. God never runs out of mercy. That is great news for us sinners.
it reads..."and mercy never wearies in bestowing benefits"
WOW. I have to ask, "Do I really believe that? Do I live like I believe it?"
How unlike me and so many believers. I/we grow weary quickly of bestowing benefits. I live as if mercy must be hoarded lest we run out. God never runs out of mercy. That is great news for us sinners.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
In an ideal world one might say that the believer who "seriously sins" against us should pursue repentance on his/her own as the fruit of this repentance.
This is not an ideal world and we can’t really fault him /her for not running hard after this since we rarely run hard after repentance for less "serious" sins.
The movie Amadeus tells a story of Salieri who is bitterly jealous of Mozart. Much of it may be fictional, but it is a great film. Salieri is angry at God for making him so mediocre compared to Mozart; he rebels against God and becomes his enemy.
At the end of the film, years after Mozart's death, he mocks God saying to a priest, " Your merciful god. He killed his beloved (Mozart) rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of his glory" (he Salieri was "the mediocrity")
All he wanted was just a small part of his glory and he didn't get it.
That comment speaks to what sin is all about - wanting God's glory for ourselves.
The gospel irony of it all is that
God killed His Beloved in order to give us His glory. No other God is like this.
Jesus is willing to give up glory so that we might receive it.
At the end of the film, years after Mozart's death, he mocks God saying to a priest, " Your merciful god. He killed his beloved (Mozart) rather than let a mediocrity share in the smallest part of his glory" (he Salieri was "the mediocrity")
All he wanted was just a small part of his glory and he didn't get it.
That comment speaks to what sin is all about - wanting God's glory for ourselves.
The gospel irony of it all is that
God killed His Beloved in order to give us His glory. No other God is like this.
Jesus is willing to give up glory so that we might receive it.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The flesh is allergic to repentance and to forgiveness, the two things we need to do well in the Christian life. Isn't it odd that the flesh resists both? Whether we are to repent or forgive, the flesh fights back. The flesh battles against the spirit, and in this case the Holy Spirit is constantly whispering "repent and forgive" to our hearts.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
My original idea with this blog was to interact with the Valley of Vision prayers so I'll try to do more of that. Those dead Puritans have been my counselors for years with their gospel centered prayers of repentance and hope.
BHO has nothing on them when it comes to "the audacity of hope." It is Christians who have a real audacious hope - a living hope that has been laid up for us in heaven (1 Pet 1; Col 1).
BHO has nothing on them when it comes to "the audacity of hope." It is Christians who have a real audacious hope - a living hope that has been laid up for us in heaven (1 Pet 1; Col 1).
I recently hear this in a sermon by CJ Mahaney (Cravings and Conflicts)
The text is James 4:1-2. in the sermon CJ says…– I had a quarrel with my wife and became generally aware of my sin- pride, anger, bitterness…so I said to her…
“Carolyn, I am aware in general that in attitude and speech I have sinned against you, but I am not sufficiently convicted. I could as a matter of procedure ask you to forgive me right now, but to my shame what I’m sure is obvious to you is not obvious to me. According to James 2:1-2 this is worse than I think so to ask for forgiveness right now would be premature. I need time to examine my heart and to seek God’s evaluation of my sin and of what just took place. As I prayed I saw it was worse than I thought.”
I don’t know about you but I think that is very powerful – powerfully frightening because I hear that and know that I should be so open, vunlerable and honest, but it is scary. Once we read this we can never again tell ourselves, “I just don’t know the right words to use to go to my wife, co-worker, child, parent, fellow church member, etc.”
CJ Mahaney has given us a great approach What it requires is faith in Christ and the power of the gospel so that we’re willing to honestly face our own sin.
The text is James 4:1-2. in the sermon CJ says…– I had a quarrel with my wife and became generally aware of my sin- pride, anger, bitterness…so I said to her…
“Carolyn, I am aware in general that in attitude and speech I have sinned against you, but I am not sufficiently convicted. I could as a matter of procedure ask you to forgive me right now, but to my shame what I’m sure is obvious to you is not obvious to me. According to James 2:1-2 this is worse than I think so to ask for forgiveness right now would be premature. I need time to examine my heart and to seek God’s evaluation of my sin and of what just took place. As I prayed I saw it was worse than I thought.”
I don’t know about you but I think that is very powerful – powerfully frightening because I hear that and know that I should be so open, vunlerable and honest, but it is scary. Once we read this we can never again tell ourselves, “I just don’t know the right words to use to go to my wife, co-worker, child, parent, fellow church member, etc.”
CJ Mahaney has given us a great approach What it requires is faith in Christ and the power of the gospel so that we’re willing to honestly face our own sin.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Here is an adapted version of a men's group format by Gary Yagel. Check out his resources at www.familybuildersinc.org
Questions for Brothers in the Battle
1. Encouragement for the battle
How has your week gone?
What has been encouraging?
What has been frustrating?
2. Staying Sharp
Have you arranged to have some quality time with God this week?
If so, share something you learned from scripture.
If not, what got in the way?
(Optional question)
What do you need to do to make time with God a priority?
3. Fighting for our Families
What has been the most difficult part of being the spiritual leader lately?
What do you think you need to focus on most at home right now?
(Optional question)
Are there any unresolved conflicts in your family that you need to address by leading with repentance?
4. Fight spiritual battles
What spiritual battles can I help you fight by praying for you?
(Optional questions)
Which fruit of the Spirit have you been needing the most lately?
What is it that you don’t want to tell anyone? Find a safe friend that you can talk to about it.
Questions for Brothers in the Battle
1. Encouragement for the battle
How has your week gone?
What has been encouraging?
What has been frustrating?
2. Staying Sharp
Have you arranged to have some quality time with God this week?
If so, share something you learned from scripture.
If not, what got in the way?
(Optional question)
What do you need to do to make time with God a priority?
3. Fighting for our Families
What has been the most difficult part of being the spiritual leader lately?
What do you think you need to focus on most at home right now?
(Optional question)
Are there any unresolved conflicts in your family that you need to address by leading with repentance?
4. Fight spiritual battles
What spiritual battles can I help you fight by praying for you?
(Optional questions)
Which fruit of the Spirit have you been needing the most lately?
What is it that you don’t want to tell anyone? Find a safe friend that you can talk to about it.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Here are a couple of hymns I've recently come across. They are quite moving. As far as I know, the last two are not put to music. The first, "Weary of Wandering from My God" can be heard at
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=217881
This is the site of my daughter Katie's fiance, Jered McKenna. He and Katie sing the song; Jered wrote the music.
Weary of wandering from my God - Charles Wesley
Weary of wandering from my God, And now made willing to returnI
hear and bow me to the rod For thee, not without hope, I mourn:
I have an Advocate above A Friend before the throne of love.
O Jesus, full of truth and grace More full of grace than I of sin
Yet once again I seek Thy face:Open Thine arms and take me in
And freely my backslidings heal And love the faithless sinner still.
Thou know’st the way to bring me back My fallen spirit to restore.
O for Thy truth and mercy’s sake,Forgive, and bid me sin no more:
The ruins of my soul repair And make my heart a house of prayer.
The stone to flesh again convert,The veil of sin again remove;
Sprinkle Thy blood upon my heart,And melt it by Thy dying love;
]This rebel heart by love subdue, And make it soft, and make it new.
Give to mine eyes refreshing tears,And kindle my relentings now;
Fill my whole soul with filial fears,To Thy sweet yoke my spirit bow;
Bend by Thy grace, O bend or break,The iron sinew in my neck!
Ah! give me, Lord, the tender heart That trembles at the approach of sin;
A godly fear of sin impart,Implant, and root it deep within,
That I may dread Thy gracious power,And never dare to offend Thee more
Horatius Bonar, 1856
I see the crowd in Pilate's hall
I see the crowd in Pilate's hall,
Their furious cries I hear;
Their shouts of "Crucify!" appall,
Their curses fill mine ear.
And of that shouting multitude
I feel that I am one,
And in that din of voices rude
I recognize my own.
2. I see the scourgers rend the flesh
Of God's beloved Son;
And as they smite I feel afresh
That I of them am one.
Around the Cross the throng I see
That mock the Sufferer's groan,
Yet still my voice it seems to be,
As if I mocked alone.
3. 'Twas I that shed that sacred Blood,
I nailed him to the Tree,
I crucified the Christ of God,
I joined the mockery.
Yet not the less that Blood avails
To cleanse me from sin,
And not the less that Cross prevails
To give me peace within.
John Newton:
Hymn 57
Looking at the cross.
In evil long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear;
Till a new object struck my sight,
And stopped my wild career.
I saw one hanging on a tree,
In agonies and blood;
Who fixed his languid eyes on me,
As near his cross I stood.
Sure, never till my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with his death,
Though not a word he spoke.
My conscience felt, and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair;
I saw my sins his blood had spilt,
And helped to nail him there.
Alas! I knew not what I did,
But now my tears are vain;
Where shall my trembling soul be hid?
For I the LORD have slain.
A second look he gave, which said,
“I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid,
I die, that thou may’st live.”
Thus, while his death my sin displays,
In all its blackest hue;
(Such is the mystery of grace)
It seals my pardon too.
With pleasing grief and mournful joy,
My spirit now is filled;
That I should such a life destroy,
Yet live by him I killed.
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=217881
This is the site of my daughter Katie's fiance, Jered McKenna. He and Katie sing the song; Jered wrote the music.
Weary of wandering from my God - Charles Wesley
Weary of wandering from my God, And now made willing to returnI
hear and bow me to the rod For thee, not without hope, I mourn:
I have an Advocate above A Friend before the throne of love.
O Jesus, full of truth and grace More full of grace than I of sin
Yet once again I seek Thy face:Open Thine arms and take me in
And freely my backslidings heal And love the faithless sinner still.
Thou know’st the way to bring me back My fallen spirit to restore.
O for Thy truth and mercy’s sake,Forgive, and bid me sin no more:
The ruins of my soul repair And make my heart a house of prayer.
The stone to flesh again convert,The veil of sin again remove;
Sprinkle Thy blood upon my heart,And melt it by Thy dying love;
]This rebel heart by love subdue, And make it soft, and make it new.
Give to mine eyes refreshing tears,And kindle my relentings now;
Fill my whole soul with filial fears,To Thy sweet yoke my spirit bow;
Bend by Thy grace, O bend or break,The iron sinew in my neck!
Ah! give me, Lord, the tender heart That trembles at the approach of sin;
A godly fear of sin impart,Implant, and root it deep within,
That I may dread Thy gracious power,And never dare to offend Thee more
Horatius Bonar, 1856
I see the crowd in Pilate's hall
I see the crowd in Pilate's hall,
Their furious cries I hear;
Their shouts of "Crucify!" appall,
Their curses fill mine ear.
And of that shouting multitude
I feel that I am one,
And in that din of voices rude
I recognize my own.
2. I see the scourgers rend the flesh
Of God's beloved Son;
And as they smite I feel afresh
That I of them am one.
Around the Cross the throng I see
That mock the Sufferer's groan,
Yet still my voice it seems to be,
As if I mocked alone.
3. 'Twas I that shed that sacred Blood,
I nailed him to the Tree,
I crucified the Christ of God,
I joined the mockery.
Yet not the less that Blood avails
To cleanse me from sin,
And not the less that Cross prevails
To give me peace within.
John Newton:
Hymn 57
Looking at the cross.
In evil long I took delight,
Unawed by shame or fear;
Till a new object struck my sight,
And stopped my wild career.
I saw one hanging on a tree,
In agonies and blood;
Who fixed his languid eyes on me,
As near his cross I stood.
Sure, never till my latest breath,
Can I forget that look;
It seemed to charge me with his death,
Though not a word he spoke.
My conscience felt, and owned the guilt,
And plunged me in despair;
I saw my sins his blood had spilt,
And helped to nail him there.
Alas! I knew not what I did,
But now my tears are vain;
Where shall my trembling soul be hid?
For I the LORD have slain.
A second look he gave, which said,
“I freely all forgive;
This blood is for thy ransom paid,
I die, that thou may’st live.”
Thus, while his death my sin displays,
In all its blackest hue;
(Such is the mystery of grace)
It seals my pardon too.
With pleasing grief and mournful joy,
My spirit now is filled;
That I should such a life destroy,
Yet live by him I killed.
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