The Boredom that is Atheism

I’m sitting at Borders reading several apologetic books (and one magazine, Free Inquiry) for atheism. It is strangely eerie how religious they all are. They all have their tenants of ‘faith’ (Listed usually in the front or back) and their shibboleths for entry (You had better say the password: "Homosexuality is just fine!"). They caricaturize their opponents (Yes, it’s not just an evangelical habit!); they are consumed by their own sense of martyrdom (Atheists "are the nations most unwelcome minority."); and they are vehemently ‘evangelical’ about their need to 'convert' all those in error. They are, in fact, so possessed by their evangelicalism, that even in their magazines (Free Inquiry, in this case) they are hard-pressed to speak of anything else except how irrational all those religious folk are; there are no articles on the arts, nothing on great literature, and sculpture, forget it! Oh, they mention and even extol the terms, but actual discussion length articles are more elusive than a garden gopher. Instead we find just one long screed, article after article on how insane it is to explain the world supernaturally. "No reliable empirical evidence" is repeated ad nauseum by writer after writer. It would be a waste of time repeating the canards and downright babble; I would recommend folks read Lewis and Chesterton, as they are quite good about presenting their opponents position in its most resilient form - quite unlike the atheists themselves, I might add.

What drives these folks, I ask. If there is no purpose in the universe, why should they care what anyone believes? Why not be satisfied with knowing that people are happy even if they are deluded? I suspect that what really drives them is far more tragic and sinister, but that’s for another time.

The Editor and Chief of Free Inquiry is Paul Kurtz, former professor of philosophy at the State University of New York. He does not come across as a professor as he strains one's confidence in his philisophical abilities with silly strawman arguments. When he tries to present and explaination as to why religion persists, the only answers he can come up with in the article I read are (my paraphrase) that folks are bombarded from childhood with religious concepts and have no chance to escape into the arms of a caring atheist, or, and this ‘or’ is downright hilarious, they suffer from a quasi-genetic problem. Here he resurrects the theory of Richard Dawkins, which says in scientific-sounding speech exactly what his first supposition stated: We are religious because of so-called "memes" - those habits of repetition and imitation that bring us all into conformity to our various cultures. In other words, we are raised that way. He thinks that if we study the causes of belief and explain them to folks that they will then understand the illusion and skip happily into atheism. Funny, the now defunct Soviet Union did just that to no avail.

Still, they all seem at their wits end in their attempts to reproduce authentic human community based on their secular humanism. Perhaps this is because of the intellectual prison which they have constructed for themselves. While they are shouting "Free Inquiry!", they vilify the believer if he opens his mind to entertaining non-empirical causes. Apparently 'free' to them is synonomous with empiricism.

Sadly, the attempt to explain grand things with small ideas has been the pentient of those folks in the asylum. Alas, those tragic folks have nothing on the atheist. The atheist's dogmatism is perplexing considering their anger with all things dogmatic. While Jesus’ life was a struggle to get folks to think outside the box when conceptualizing the true God, the atheist’s box is never to small. And woe to you if you peek.

The hardest thing for me (and them, apparently) to get over is their struggles to establish any kind of convincing moral judgments or standards. But when one says that "human values are relative to human experience, interests, and needs…", what prevents a society from welcoming pedophilia when, after societal "evolution," it begins to satisfy this criteria? Again, Kurts speaks of the "the right of dissent." Where did this right come from? What gene can explain it? Maybe he should look to Dawkin’s meme for an answer.

Outside of ‘might makes right’ I don’t believe he has any other explanation for morality – here at least Nitzsche was honest. The tragic truth is that all committed atheistic societies, like the Soviet Union or the cocky and cowardly French, have resorted to just this sort of principle to guarantee the "fraternity" of the people. There has never been more bloodier revolutions than those of these two despotic and atheistic regimes. Despite the atheist’s cry of how horrible were the times of the Inquisition, this particular period in Church history was mere child’s play when compared to the nightmare of the Russian Kommissars or Robespierre. I would wager that the crimes of atheism would break the scales against any crimes committed by religion (with the possible exception of Islam).

In the end, Kurtz’ answer to building atheistic communities amounts to such paltry suggestions as teaching folks to deal with the "weltschmertz," the "blows of outrageous fortunes", and to "marshal a stoic attitude."

Atheism. What an interminable bore.

JB