Stephen, I was speaking of truth as in one of the transcendentals and how just this past Sunday I came to understand it’s not necessarily
based on facts. At one time when many of us listened to Walter Cronkite, read our local or state newspapers and Life Magazine, we could talk with one another because we had the same basic facts. That is no longer the way it is for me.
Well Judith on a fundamental existential level, humans are all the same: we are born; we live; we age and die. The old constraints are still there. We want to discover our relationship with what exists and how it came to be. We seek patterns and desire moments of significance in our lives. The very concept of art and culture is predicated on the assumption that there is an essential core of humanness that we all share. In my experience the folks who claim we live in a “post-truth” world are simply trying to pull a con.
The problem with the “Walter Cronkite” era was that it reflected a limited point of view. What wasn’t he telling us? Now we are deluged with points of view, but really, how valid are most of them? The earth is not flat. Evolution is true. God is absent. Night comes more quickly than we want.
I’ll repeat what I wrote before. The fact that people lie doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that people lock themselves in hermetically sealed bunkers of discourse, extruding all conflicting viewpoints. We have created technology that makes this easy. I seek out differing points of view and I listen. Most groups are exactly the same, however differing their ideology. They make unwarranted assumptions about reality. They refuse to consider ideas that conflict with their own. They regard disagreements as attacks on their personal integrity. As always, the problem is not what we think but how we think.
If we start with ideology then yes we will have a hard time talking to each other. But if we start with our basic humanness then we all start at the same place. What a relief to realize I don’t have all the answers!
** you do not have permission to see this link ** is getting celebrated on Christian social media, and I thought it might be relevant here.
Her reasons for becoming Christian seem to me largely sociological (essentially, if we look at the major global movements, I want to be on the side of the West, and you need a religion to hold the West together–the subtitle is instructive: “Atheism can’t equip us for civilisational war”).
One does not get the impression that she is convinced of any dogma; thus, she notes with approbation, “Unlike Islam, Christianity outgrew its dogmatic stage.” I don’t recall her making any mention of any distinctively Christian dogma or even mentioning truth.
True, she mentions the human yearning for a purpose and meaning in life, which she experienced acutely in her decades as an atheist. But then she turns right around and turns Christianity’s ability to answer such existential questions into a sociological tool: “we can’t counter Islamism with purely secular tools. To win the hearts and minds of Muslims here in the West, we have to offer them something more than videos on TikTok.” It struck me that she did *not* go on to say, “and I’m convinced that Christianity’s answers to these existential problems is objectively true”.
Christianity is, in one fundamental respect, like Islam for her: “The lesson I learned from my years with the Muslim Brotherhood was the power of a unifying story, embedded in the foundational texts of Islam, to attract, engage and mobilise the Muslim masses. Unless we offer something as meaningful, I fear the erosion of our civilisation will continue. And fortunately, there is no need to look for some new-age concoction of medication and mindfulness. Christianity has it all.”
We need a story–any story–to engage and unify the people. Christianity fits the bill. We are back to the primitive role of religion as a mere tool for binding people into a culture.
The survival of any species depends upon its members’ ability to identify threats and repel them. It’s not unity that our ancestors relied upon to survive, it’s difference and the identification of patterns of behavior that endanger “me and my kin”. This happens on an instinctive level. As civilization developed, our small, nomadic bands of family and friends grew and became more complex – and it became more difficult to be sure who was friend and who was foe. Thus entered stories – shared memories, legends, myths that enable us to relax the fight or flight instinct among the people with whom we share those stories. But they also, fundamentally, identify membership in the story-groups as apart from others. They sharpen the focus of whom we should fear. The major monotheistic story-groups involve a future paradise that is not for everyone and must be earned. All have or continue to commit genocide in the name of their shared story. Picking Christianity over Islam only changes the focus of the threat. It isn’t unifying. And the belief that it is necessary now to save the West seeks to return to a West in which most of us would not want to live.
To say “I am Christian” is to simultaneously identify those who are not as believers of false stories and as a threat. Secular humanists start from the premise that “I am a human” which leaves open the possibility that all other humans are among my tribe. But since we don’t and cannot know all other human beings, our instincts continue to assume the stranger is a threat. We first see differences (size, gender, skin tone, physicality, dress, etc.) and make assumptions regarding our safety based on that shorthand. Secular humanism, therefore, requires that we at least attempt to overcome our instincts by rejecting the assumptions and acquiring more information. It also rejects the simple religious notion that merely believing in a particular set of stories ends the inquiry. This internal struggle against our instincts means secular humanists are reactive – more likely to be proved wrong about skepticism (and therefore more susceptible to injury) than a person who is quick to judge. But it does not mean that we must ignore information. Secular humanists can identify patterns and protect themselves from the recurrence of threatening behavior. Secular humanists had every reason to eliminate the threat from Al Qaeda and ISIS as did Christians and Jews and non-jihadist Muslims.
Poor Ayaan. But I suppose if I had her biography I might think the way she does. It’s sad though that she winds up mouthing the same clichés I’ve heard all my life. Friends I’m not a recent “deconvert”. I began to identify as an atheist in my 30s, well before the advent of the so-called (but not by them!) New Atheists. I observed the phenomenon with great interest just as I’m interested in how Christians will navigate a world where they are not privileged in some fashion. The NA movement, such as it was, was part of the fallout from 9/11 combined with the influence of the Religious Right in the West. (This is what frightens me. Getting caught in the crossfire of another Crusade both home and abroad.)
So atheism and science make lousy religions. Well…duh! They make even worse secular substitutes for religion. Atheism is a negative opinion about the existence of a god. Science is a locus of methodologies to limit subjectivity in the investigation of the physical processes that make up the universe. I’m not a Christian because I don’t accept its truth claims. I don’t believe in a god because I don’t see any evidence of such. That’s pretty much it.
For a time, inevitably, the apologosphere will be all atwitter with delight. But in their triumphalism at bagging one of them New Atheists none will consider the implications of her words. What greater demonstration of decline is there than now we’re at the point where systems of belief are being defended not because they’re true but because of their utility in the culture wars?
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert