untheism: a more coherent version
I made a hash of whatever I was trying to say yesterday. I'm going to make a different hash of it today, in an attempt to get closer to the kernel.
What was upsetting me was that I had suddenly noticed how prevalent a certain kind of atheism is: the kind that is specifically anti-god, rather than simply not religious.
There are many things to be anti, as far as religion goes. Organised religion is too often narrow-minded, cruel and oppressive. Treasured doctrines turn out to be out-dated and socially inappropriate. Religious wars are an all-too-common theme of history.
But then there are exciting things. Communities. Liberals. Inter-faith dialogue. (I'm looking forward to going back to the inter-faith group in fourth year and perhaps being able to contribute a bit. Last year, with no faith whatsoever, I sat and listened and it was lovely to listen but I felt adrift.)
So what if I believe god is love and manifest in the relations between people and perhaps has no existence beyond that but is still, must be the most important thing? So what if someone else believes in a bearded god who made earth with his own two hands, and someone else believes in a déesse, and someone else believes there was never any god at all?
Our beliefs shape the way we act towards each other, agreed. But we don't have to have the same beliefs about god to treat each other the same as human beings.
To name the clichés: Gandhi and MLK (as well as my beloved liberation theologians) were religious and motivated by religion. But they were motivated to make a change for humankind, they were motivated to act in the here and now.
Religion can be a crutch, a chance to forget about this world by concentrating on the next world. But god isn't the only escape hatch. Nihilism, for example, can lead equally surely to ineffectiveness.
When you act towards other people, you act by the dictates of your conscience and your credo. But when you interact with other people, you needn't judge them, treat them differently, on the basis of whether they believe in the same god or absence of god that you do. There's no need to cut all people to the same size before you can treat them as equals. Religion is no better or worse than the lack of it - it depends on the human being whose hands it is in.
God doesn't exist. All right, if you say so. Between you and me there need be no god. God's reality needn't be a focus-point for us to argue round. God is love is another way of saying love is the ultimate imperative, and if for me there's more to it than that, all you need to know is that I love you. For me the two are synonyms, but maybe that's not it - they're equivalent words in different languages, and let's keep speaking the language we share.
I also buy into an equally assertive picture of what god is and what he says at CICCU and various other evangelical Christian things. You may set the framework. I'm grateful - and I mean it, it makes me cry - that you are trying to save my soul. Those breakfasts before StAG in second year were really precious, because, although StAG hurt, it was intended so nicely. My perception of what god is or isn't needn't blind me to what you are feeling for me and giving me.
I do struggle with anything beyond an abstract concept of god. (Love is a very powerful abstract.) Possibly because it'll take years to shake the beard-in-the-sky images of childhood. I don't know whether there's a life after this one, nor am I bothered about knowing: but I know that belief in love transforms how I live in this one. I find organised religion useful because it's what I grew up with, and I feel at home, and it is a home, it's a community, but I would hate to see it imposed.
I think basically yesterday's blah and today's comes from being a little naive, and a little shell-shocked, to realise how common evangelical atheism is and, despite my very wonky beliefs, feeling upset and attacked.