Just to make it complicated ....
SolusCado said:
To summarize - and to be a bit more specific - why have I found so many more atheists on this site full of ridicule and offensive comments than the theists? I get that the theists, in the less educated world, are the ones that are full of ridicule and offensive comments, but shouldn't "enlightenment" lead us all to communicate about ideas without the need to insult those presenting the ideas?
I don't mean this as a condescending question: How old are you?
The reason I ask is because I look back on the period of my life and recall the contemptuous manner in which many Christians have long treated other people. Whether it is forced acculturation, paradoxical arguments that one's religious freedom is violated because another's is respected, or even the damnable argument that young people need to be shielded from rock and roll or fiction literature because they are too stupid to know what they are hearing or reading, many people have come to perceive this influential, even dominant strain of Christianity as patronizing, dishonest, petty, and, ultimately, ignorant.
It's a perception. It might be true or false; perhaps it's a matter of degrees. But the atheists, nihilists, magickers, witches, and even Satanists I knew in my youth all seemed to agree on this image. Most of that dabbling, exploration, and so on came about, in my corner of the Universe, at least, as an anti-identification, an attempt to create, recognize, or reinforce separation between the self and the Christian body politic. Censorship, sexual prudery, science: the resposne of the vocal faithful was always a trite quote from the Bible, or some seemingly insane, faith-based assertion. And, yes, here we see the seeds of at least two of the components of the phenomenon you refer to.
For some, it was a matter of trying to speak the language. Take the debate about homosexuality, for instance: the Christian voice calls down the Old Testament Jehovah, and appeals to the Pauline evangelism—Christ himself is absent from their rhetoric. Or anti-abortion rhetoric: actually looking up the bits from Jeremiah and the Psalms that assert life at conception is enlightening, as these phrases speak instead to God's timeless knowledge.
For others, it was part of their university experience, learning more about history than not only their high school textbooks taught, but also their parents and preachers and Bible camp counselors.
In either case, the journey often leads to academic examinations of doctrine and faith. Why are there only four Gospels? Quite literally, it is because there are four compass points; sure, we might think Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon (d. 202 CE) silly and superstitious by modern standards, but he was influential in the persecution of Gnostics, and such logic was good enough for those who canonized the New Testament. Many people know that genuine literalism is impossible with the Bible; the search for context also leads people to greater understanding of the dimensions and mechanisms of Christian faith. This is part of the reason many infidels seem to know more about Christianity than the faithful.
But at the same time, people are people. Among the things I disdain about the atheist movement of late are that it is intellectually lazy and resists genuine communication. It is almost a fundamentalist inversion of faith.
It is certainly easier to simply match the dimwitted voices of Christian faith than to transcend them. And in an habitual context, this leads to a circumstance whereby one group of people lets another set the terms of debate. This can often lead to seemingly paradoxical outcomes, and such is the case here. To wit: these fundamentalist yahoos are moronic hypocrites. Okay, so ... why let
them exemplify what Christian faith actually is? If they're
idiots, then why do we presume they are good representatives of "religion"?
Well, because it's easier. The modern voice of atheism is still an anti-identification; it identifies itself
against something instead of according to its own dimensions. And, accordingly, it is easier to create, recognize, or reinforce separation by simply matching the ignorant than it is to advance any affirmative understanding. Certainly, there are still lessons that Christian faith can teach us, but so—to use a fairly sharp example—are there things that Steven Brust's fictional Hungarian assassin living in a world of sorcerous elves can teach us, too. True, the Taltos cycle isn't high literature, while the Bible can be viewed in that context, but the point still holds.
If the faithful are all ignorant hatemongers, there is no point in understanding any "real" Christianity. It's just easier.
And this is no conspiracy of hate; rather, it's just a sad human outcome.
A question that I sometimes put before atheists:
If you were to witness the conversion of a Christian away from faith, what moral structures could you advise him toward in order to fill the void where God once existed? After all, to turn one's back on God is to forsake the linchpin of a moral configuration. How does one replace that structure? How does one define moral priorities, or arrange moral components? What is the foundation for understanding the difference between right and wrong, once God's say-so is no longer valid?
One would think the question would be easy enough to
recognize. True, it's a tough one to answer. But I've encountered surprising resistance from my atheistic neighbors to even acknowledging the question. It's almost as if their response to, "Because God says so," is, "Because
I say so."
Well, yeah, but
why?
I could spell out a canon of my own: Albert Camus, Clive Barker, Jack Cady, Steven Brust, Shel Silverstein, G. B. Trudeau, Captain Avatar, Yoda, Roger Waters ... musicians, actors, authors, painters, characters, philosophers .... There are certain things that work for me, that I can find in other people's expression that somehow reflects true in the reality of my experience. But
explaining how all of these components fit together is a bit tougher than saying simply, "Because God says so," or, "Because I say so."
There's a disaster movie, for instance, called
Deep Impact. It's
terrible. An abomination. One of the biggest wastes of money this side of Jim Carrey or Kevin Costner. But I remember coming out of that film dazzled by the fact that the writers, knowing exactly what kind of shit-heap they were building, played an
amazing trick: the characters behaved altruistically, and with integrity, something that is too often sacrificed in favor of eye candy and pop appeal. Like the scene when the boy hero decides to go back for his girlfriend and her family. The parents at first protest, and he stands his ground. Then the father, recognizing that this is
exactly what he taught his child about right and wrong, takes off his watch and says something like, "You'll need something to trade along the way." And then the kid goes off with his father's blessing. It's a small thing, but when you don't have some pabulum scheme like so many fundamentalists reduce Christianity to, you take what you can get; you find symbols and reminders along the way.
And, yes, over time I've encountered striking resistance from atheists to the idea that they might identify the components of their belief in right and wrong.
But why is it important? Because right and wrong is at the heart of human neurosis. It is the central conflict of our reason for living. And when someone abandons the absolute centerpiece of their moral structure, it leaves a
huge gap. And it's not so much that for those who might come away from the "wrong" way of looking at things the atheists have nothing to offer; it's more that the atheists seem to want to
refuse to offer anything useful.
Or else many of them grab hold of some non-theistic icon—Nietzsche, for instance—and canonize and deify it with much the same simplicity as those they might criticize.
It's a human characteristic, a frailty, this intellectual sloth. Atheists are not immune to it. At its heart, though, Christian faith seeks to transcend the frailties of the human condition. But atheists, in a neurotic outcome verging on the sardonic, come to rely on it much as they see the fundamentalist morons they so despise yet trust to represent the true nature of faith leaning on God as a crutch.
I think what you're seeing is the sloth of those who feel comfortable believing they're right, who can't or won't be troubled to understand
why they're right.
And, yes, it's partially a product of the dimensions of the debate, but it's also a surrender to those constraints.