British biologist Richard Dawkins on a London bus at the launch of an atheist advertising campaign, 6 January 2009
delivered 8 February 2009
by Rev. Dr John Evans
Atheism is on a bit of run lately.
You will recall from last week’s Bulletin the story Jeff published about the British atheists advertising on the side of London buses. It is true that in recent years there has been a marked upswing of interest in atheism. Certainly there has been an explosion in the publishing of anti-religious books. Richard Dawkins with The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everythingand Sam Harris’ The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason are some of these books.
In many respects, none of this is surprising. These works are a reaction to the rise over the last 10 to 15 years of religious fundamentalism. Islamic fundamentalism and the various jihadist movements, Jewish fundamentalism within Israel, and of course the Christian right in the United States. Instead of attacking just the excesses of belief in God, about which all of us would have sympathy, these authors have endeavoured to attack the very belief in God itself. . . and I might say, in a sense themselves become open to the criticism of being fundamentalist atheists.
There are, however, rational and essential attacks on belief on God, and they have been around much, much longer. One of the most significant challenges comes from a German philosopher during the first part of the 19th century by the name of Ludwig Feuerbach. Even today, his Essence of Christianity, published in 1841, challenges us who believe in God. He simply asserts that there is no god, because our God is just a human projection of the qualities which are good and perfect for our humanity. In fact we are god, there is therefore, no god. I guess if we were cows or horses, then god would be a cow or a horse. God is what we make god to be . . . just from a human point of view.
And what Feuerbach says is fair comment on much that passes as religious belief. For many, God is just a talisman — a good-luck charm for what an individual wants to do, or achieve or overcome, whatever. All other approaches have been taken, found wanting – so, for me to achieve my desires, I will call in God. Our human goals and dreams call in aid all available resources – including God. At the end of the day, it is what we want and not what God wants.
My point is that our understanding of God should have our human life, and God’s life, separate. There is a difference between ourselves and the creator, a difference between the creator and the created.
Feuerbach is saying that difference, that separation is not possible; Christianity or Judaism or Islam, whatever, would say that it is essential; essential for a belief in God.
The problem is that often in our lives we just cannot believe that there is a god, any god, any force, power, spirit apart from ourselves. We find ourselves exhausted – our wells have run dry; or the grief and the pain we or others suffer is too great; the loneliness is so vast – that there just cannot be anything beyond what we are living through. Those who take their own lives must, tragically, feel this way.
And so it was with the Children of Israel. The circumstance was exile. Death and destruction back in Jerusalem. Bondage and no future in Babylon. Even traditional worship seemed useless. Psalm 137: “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” Even if we were able to sing that song, surely it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true – promises of God’s lovingkindness were just a cruel joke as they looked around them in the midst of despair, bondage and hopelessness.
This is the context of the great 40th chapter of Isaiah. At this point, what is known as Second Isaiah begins; and addresses the exiles. The chapter begins with:
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God
but soon turns to the essence of the concern of the Children of Israel: where is God in this gloom and destruction? This is more than, ‘We are having a rough time, please help, O God.’ There is now no God. It has moved from a social or political calamity to a profound theological crisis. Where is God now?
Our passage picks up chapter 40 at verse 21 – but the key verse is verse 27. The prophet says:
Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
The prophet gets to the heart of the matter: Why, even in these dreadful circumstances, are you feeling, well, abandoned by God; feeling that God is hidden – that even, there is no God?
The prophet endeavours to answer this not unreasonable view of the exiles by pointing to the presence and continuing existence, even the unchanging nature, of God. The rhetorical flourishes in the face of this existential angst of the exiles may to our ears be a little grating, but:
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? (v21)
It is God who sits above the circle of the earth (v22)
. . . and so on. Even as you face your exile, know God is the creator; God stretches out the heavens like a curtain – it’s God who oversees the passing of empires and kings; or the passage of time in the fields and crops.
God is there; God the creator is still at work. As the prophet says,
God does not faint or grow weary; God’s understanding is unsearchable.(v28)
There is a timelessness about God; God is beyond our knowing – but that same God,
Gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. (v29)
That God, also may touch your lives – may affect you personally. Here the prophet is clearly saying
- There is a God.
- God is the creator.
- God acts dramatically in history – nations rise and fall.
- The creatures are different
- And God will continue to sustain you.
The message of the prophet, then, is wait; be patient; don’t let despair overtake you.
Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run [not just survive, run] and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (v31)
The waiting, that expectant waiting puts a gap, a disjunction between what you might think is right for you, your own thoughts, and God’s love and will for you. The waiting challenges Feuerbach’s human projection onto god. Theology takes time and only rings true, perhaps makes sense with hindsight and patience. God is not for those who want instant gratification.
Indeed, this is also the message from our Gospel passage this morning. This first chapter of Mark sets the scene for the Jesus’ ministry, his pattern of working – and the content of his message – his new kingdom – his new rule of God.
So today we have an action-packed couple of hours of this early time in his public ministry: teaching in the synagogue, healing many with unclean spirits, then in our passage, healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, then all the sick and unwell of the town. Indeed the next morning, while it was dark, he withdraws to a deserted place to pray. The disciples, his minders of the time, lose him and can’t find him. Then verse 37:
When they found him, the disciples said to him “Everyone is searching for you.”
He answered, “Let us go on to the neighbouring towns that we may proclaim the message there also.”
Why was everyone searching? Jesus suspects it’s because there was more work to do in Capernauam, more people to be healed, more unclean spirits to cast out; and so he says, ‘No. We are moving on.’
Here is the flip-side of not having any obvious presence of God, God being hidden, absent – like the exiles in Babylon felt. Here there is, well, just too much ‘spiritual activity’. So many people being healed in a frenzy – and, well – no one understanding; understanding the big picture of what this was all about, how this all fitted into the kingdom of God. Interestingly, only the unclean spirits knew, according to Mark. Jesus was keen to move on – leave that awkwardness, and get on with proclaiming the totality of his message throughout Galilee.
To just experience, just want, the quick miracle – which can occur – is to really miss, or misunderstand the whole purpose of God. Again it can be just projecting our human ideals and values, our own human needs, our demands at the time, onto God – and thus diminishing the full dynamic of the nature of God’s will for us and for this world of ours. It is little wonder, to use the language of scripture, that ‘only the demons knew him’. Jesus’ mission involved healing, yes, but it was bigger than just satisfying the health needs of Capernaum. He had to move on. His message of love, of God’s love and the fullness of life, touched all parts of human existence – our health, but also relationships, power structures, society and even religion. God’s vision was greater than what we humans might ever dream or suspect. This was the vision that Jesus wished to share. He had to get on and tell the world about it.
So a last word to Ludwig Feuerbach, who sees religion, God, just as a human projection. He also writes in the Essence of Christianity:
What yesterday was still religion, is no longer such today; and what today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion.
For Christians, God is not us. God is not our projection. So as the prophet Isaiah says:
Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (v31)
One Comment
Thank you, John, for your considered response to the atheist position. I was surprised and disappointed to read in Hoffmann’s article that some Christian groups in the UK have attempted to have the bus advertising banned. That seems to me a wasted opportunity for community discussion, and makes the church look both insecure and intolerant. We will not ‘win’ this ‘debate’ by suppressing dissent (even if that were possible).
It’s also interesting to wonder why the atheist campaign supposes religious faith makes people worry, and abandoning faith would lead to greater enjoyment in life. I guess they presume people believe in a judgemental and disapproving God. That’s a notion the church could challenge.