LAST TIME I POINTED OUT that the motivation behind atheism—that is, behind the reason that we bother to even mention the fact that we don't believe in God—has got to be something more important than the existence or non-existence of a fictional character.
"It's writ so large in them, and so contradicts orthodox (read authoritarian) Christian theology that it's easy to miss."
I went on to hint that the motivation behind Atheism contains a commonality with the life and teaching of Jesus.
What is it about the God-idea that makes it, in an atheist's mind, more dangerous than the Donald Duck idea? What makes it a matter worth thinking about?
It's the fact that many people who hold to the God idea think that gives them the authority—both the right and the responsibility—to control how others live.
The God idea, as it exists in our culture, is typically authoritarian, typically hierarchical.
If you accept it, you also accept the idea that those who "know" more about God than you do get to tell you what is "right" and what is "wrong".
You also accept the idea that you can and should tell others what is right and wrong, and that if they don't listen you should use whatever power—political or social or in some cases violent—whatever power you have to make them listen.
A corollary to this authoritarian world-view is that everyone gives this kind of power to someone or something—hence the belief, buried in the first quote, that the atheist must worship something.
But I would suggest that this simply isn't so: that the motivating factor for most atheists is a rejection of authority of that kind in general, not a substitution of some other authoritative source.
Yes, it's true that a great deal of what the atheist accepts comes from books and teachers, just as most of what the theist accepts comes from books and teachers. But the whole point of science is that the knowledge in those books does not rest, finally, on authority.
It rests on things like reason and repeatable experiments. It rests on constant questioning and constant rethinking of the issues.
And this, I think, is where the second quote goes wrong. The underlying motivation of atheism isn't so much about the kind of information—supernatural information—those books contain as it is about the nature of the process which produces that information.
That process, by its nature, does not give any single authority the final say. Science is a group effort, rooted in a common search for truth. The scientific bias of atheism is, at root, an egalitarian bias.
Which is where Jesus comes in.
He lived in a different time and place—a culture quite different from ours. We can't be too certain about what he really did or really taught because all we really have are some records, written by early Christians, some time after his death.
But it strikes me that there is one thing that those various records agree on. It's writ so large in them, and so contradicts orthodox (read authoritarian) Christian theology that it's easy to miss.
Next time, Jesus' surprising belief...
