50 Shades of Belief

"In every ... community there are varying shades of ... opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic."

-Phil Ochs











Say what you will about fundamentalists, they are at least intellectually consistent.  One of the shadiest groups of religious types are the liberals.  I concluded this after reading Michael Robbins' review of Nick Spencer's Atheists: The Origin of the Species on Slate.

Two things jumped out at me.  First of all, Robbins scoffs at the notion that religion is (as Richard Dawkins has suggested) "a competing explanation for facts about the universe and life," calling the notion "bullshit."  Robbins points out:

To be sure, several scriptures offer, for instance, their own accounts of creation. But Christians have recognized the allegorical nature of these accounts since the very beginnings of Christianity.

"How con-VEEEE-nient," as Dana Carvey's Church Lady used to say.

"Sure that Genesis stuff may sound like complete unscientific balderdash, but it's all just an allegory! And TRUE Christians have known that all along." 

I'll table the question about which version of the Bible with its Genesis account is THE Bible with THE Genesis account and focus on the little problem that we have now.

How much of the Bible (or THE Bible, if you can produce it) is to be taken as allegory and how much is not?

Follow-up question: Who gets to decide this?

Either the Bible (or the Quran, or the Baghavad Gita or the Tripitaka or the Book of Shadows) is to be taken literally and at face-value, or it is not.  If it is not (as Robbins suggests) then he has created the problem of how much (if any) of the scriptures are to be taken literally.  If none of them are to be taken literally, then I am curious as to what kind of religion this "Christianity" of his actually is that would treat allegedly holy writ as fundamentally no different than any other piece of literature.

He has also created the problem of why one should choose his religion over the myriad of others ... unless he is suggesting that all religions are essentially the same, which is pretty much what "New Atheists" suggest.

My second issue is that Robbins asserts that the "New Atheists" just don't understand what religion is and what it does.  Nor do they understand "God."  He praises a commenter called "Saint Cecilia" who noted:

The “pitch” of Christianity, she points out, has “nothing to do with the Big Bang or evolution or anything like that at all.” Nor is the existence of God a scientific proposition: “Christians aren’t talking about a math problem, they’re talking about a Person. And in the vast experience of people who claim to have had a genuine encounter with the Personality called Christ, there are certain things that are involved, such as willingness [and] humility.”

"Saint Cecilia" also adds:

"If someone is really interested in whether or not God exists, I’d say the best way is to have a little humility and experiment, with an open mind and heart, with the paths that Christians have claimed take you directly to him, in the ways that have worked." 

"So basically, just forget about all that mumbo-jumbo and science stuff and focus on how there's all these people who have had an encounter with this guy Jesus."

Yeah, so...these "encounters"...were they real-world encounters like the time I met Waylon Thibodeaux, or were they "virtual" encounters that took place in the mind, like the time I dreamed that I met Knute Rockne? 

How much of this Jesus personality is real and how much is an invention of your own mind?

Did the Jesus you worship actually exist or have you given him features that he didn't and couldn't have had?

How do you know this?

So we come now to the crux of the whole problem with religion:

How can your claim of a divine encounter be fundamentally different than anyone else's? 

How is your claim any different from the figment of an active imagination, a drug-induced hallucination, a hysterical delusion or an outright fabrication?

Until you can answer those questions with something other than "You just gotta have faith" or "Open your mind and your heart," then I cannot take your claim seriously.

For all of Robbins' disdain for "New Atheists" and "Evangelical Atheism," in the shadow of his many words, is very little substance.