Atheists are getting a reputation for being a bunch of know-nothings. They know nothing of God, and not much more about religion, and they seem proud of their ignorance.
This reputation is a little unfair, yet when they profess how they can't comprehend God, atheists really mean it. To listen to the loudest atheists, you can hear the bewilderment. And they just can't believe how a thing like religion could appeal to any intelligent person. The mythological story told by atheists recounts how religion arose through vast ignorance and perversity. A plague upon humanity, really, infecting the dimwitted or foolish with viral memes about spirits and gods. If there's no arguing with irrational people or dumb viruses, what's to be done?
Astonished that intellectual defenses of religion are still maintained, many prominent atheists disparage theology. They either dismiss the subject as irrelevant, or, if they do bother to acknowledge it, slim refutations of outdated arguments for a medieval God seem enough. Atheists cheer on such bold leadership, but what is really being learned? Challenging religion's immunity from criticism is one thing; perpetuating contempt for religion's intellectual side is another. Too many followers only mimic the contempt, forgetting that you won't effectively criticize what you would not understand. The "know-nothing" wing of the so-called New Atheism really lives up to that label. Nonbelievers reveling in their ignorance are an embarrassing betrayal of the freethought legacy.
Common responses to atheism from religion's defenders aren't any better. The bookstore shelves are bulging with hasty reassurances to the faithful, pointing out how noisy atheists hardly know anything. Intellectual standards are slipping everywhere. Too many "refutations" of atheism just complain about its failure to appreciate religion's depths and nuances, without going on to explain theology. Plenty of preachers and professors take the easy path by simply agreeing with atheists that God is very mysterious, so who can be blamed for resorting to faith? Very tempting, that fallacious argument from ignorance! Religious people are drifting into their own hazy corner, lulled by a reassuring message that faith is quite reasonable when no one knows there isn't a God.
Mystery now seems like a theologian's safest refuge, only perpetuating the blind faith that infuriates atheists. It's just too easy to proclaim a mysterious God, deride atheism's inability to prove that such an unknowable God cannot exist, and conclude that the faithful are above criticism. Lately too much theology involves notions of God abstract enough to avoid all refutation, yet so vague that a distracted churchgoer isn't sure what God is being talked about. But don't worry, defenders of religion say, there's no need to learn deep theology or debate God, thanks to dogmatic atheism's bad example. Just stick with faith; after all, who can argue with faith? Believers reveling in their ignorance are an embarrassing betrayal of their religion's theological legacy.
How did know-nothing atheism and lazy theology grab the spotlight? This dead-end trap of mutually assured ignorance was not inevitable. Ironically, better educated classes of believers and freethinkers had emerged over the past 200 years. All this thought found an outlet through the internet; ecumenical discussion and debate, led by laypeople as well as by ecclesiastics, is a fascinating world wide web phenomenon. The God debates should be doing better. Christians, for example, can access all the resources they need for discussing their religion with a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Taoist, or a nonbeliever. Atheists have the same opportunity for debating believers of any faith.
If you are religious, don't be wary of the God debates. Respectful debating yields deeper knowledge about one's religious beliefs. After all, religions are hardly strangers to debate. Many religious texts contain examples of debating. For example, accounts of debates between Jesus and Jewish teachers can be instructive for Christians; while Krishna's arguments to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita teach Hindus. Questioning and debating has helped shape many religions. Confucianism grew from philosophical meditations and debating with rival schools. Much of Hinduism and Buddhism developed through intellectual argumentation as rigorous as any in the Western philosophical tradition. Both Judaism and Islam have produced some of the world's finest religious literature and heights of philosophical thought. The Catholic Church's long reliance on councils of debating bishops directed its development. The fragmentation of Protestantism into thousands of denominations and churches is a long tale of disputation in the pews over ever-finer points of scripture interpretation, theological doctrine, and church practice.
Christian theology has come a long way since St. Thomas Aquinas. Under stress from modern science and Enlightenment philosophy, it has explored cosmological, ethical, emotional, and existential dimensions of religious life. Many kinds of theology have emerged, replacing a handful of traditional arguments for God with robust methods of defending religious viewpoints. There are philosophical atheists who have quietly and successfully kept pace. The discipline of atheology is quite capable of matching these theologies with its skeptical replies, so atheists need not be intimidated. Taking theology seriously enough to competently debate God should not be beneath atheism.
I expand on these observations from the front lines of the God debates in my new book, The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists, Believers, and Everyone in Between. All of the major traditional and contemporary arguments for God are reorganized by these five categories: Theology From The Scripture (can we trust its accounts of Jesus?); Theology From The World (should we supplement science with acts of God?); Theology Beyond The World (does cosmology need supernaturalism to explain the universe?); Theology In The Know (placing religious certainties before any other knowledge); and Theology Into The Myst (letting religious experiences of God take priority over creeds). The final chapter on Faith and Reason evaluates the competition among Western worldviews struggling to balance reason and faith, including fundamentalism, liberal Christianity, panentheism, mysticism, religious humanism, and secular humanism.
Strident atheism is mostly uninterested and unprepared for this broad theological landscape, and faithful believers aren't much better off. Everyone needs a better education on the current state of the God debates. If atheists are going to produce a rational worldview capable of replacing religion, they must take religion and theology more seriously. If believers are going to defend a sensible faith capable of advancing civilization, they must become fluent in their reasoned theologies. We hear plenty of complaints from all sides about the low level of intelligent discussion on religion. Yet we have no one to blame but ourselves, and ignorance is no excuse.
Chris Stedman: 'Evangelical Atheists:' Pushing For What?
Thank you! Finally, someone acknowledges their very poor education with regards to philosophy, existentialism, atheism, theism, reason, faith, and even science. They have such a narrow view.
However, by failing to define any of these theologies, he commits the very same "mystery" defense he accuses theologians of. To wit, "somewhere there exists a god/theology, but I can't be arsed to define it, so you'll just have to take me at my word."
Check out: http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/?
Seems we rate quite highly, and a whole lot of mainline Protestants don't know who Martin Luther was, oh well. *whistles*
Pardon the expression but what do you "know" of god? Flat out wrong, check today's headlines, or the last century of the smartest people on Earth's writings, aka Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Crick, Laplace, Mill, Hawking, etc.
"Too many "refutations" of atheism just complain about its failure to appreciate religion's depths and nuances, without going on to explain theology."
-Which I'm guessing you plan to do somewhere else, since its not done here? By the way how do you explain theology (which I'm assuming you mean to be some version of Christianity) without discussing the fact that the majority of people who ever live and die are unaware of the realities of their own religion much less, all the others? Again, see todays's own headlines, or think for a moment.
"Christian theology has come a long way since St. Thomas Aquinas."
An understatement of the century. What does this go to show? "Christianity has come a long way since one of its most celebrated and beloved thinkers died many centuries ago..." OF COURSE IT HAS! How could it not? Do you think people could be duped into believing the Sun revolves around the Earth? Or that they got sick not because of germs, but because god is punishing them?
"Everyone needs a better education on the current state of the God debates."
What debate? Faith/REASON?
I think that sheds a little light on the topic.
From the Atheist side, Dawkins himself addressed many of the issues you raise in The God Delusion. First off, you don't need to be a textile expert to say that the Emperor has no clothes. There's no reason to debate the characteristics of a non-existent entity; you must first establish his existence. He addresses Aquinas's arguments for god because so many believers still cling to them. He discusses the faith of the masses, not the esoteric beliefs of a few professional theologians. If you put your typical liberal theologian in the pulpit of your typical American church, most of the parishioners would think that an Atheist was speaking to them. There is no reason to discuss the beliefs of a relative handful of academics when the problem lies with the beliefs of over half of the country, which still rely on outdated arguments for God.
Several months ago (pre-diagnosis), Christopher Hitchens was debating 5 Christian leaders at once (!), among them Rick Warren. I started watching, expecting a decent debate, when what I got was the first Christian trotting out the ontological argument. I turned it off. Once you can get the majority of Christians to reject Aquinas as Dawkins was attempting to do, then you can worry about debating more thoughtful, considered Christianity.
Mr. Shook is no theist, nor is he an accommodationist (he called "accommodationism" a "betrayal"). I do think that John used a poor choice of words for the article, and I still have bones to pick with many of his points- however, I would ask my fellow atheists & agnostics to reserve judgement until we hear more from him. His book looks to be very ambitious in scope...
Thanks for ruining my Christmas!
I've read only a few comments and am happy to say this article is getting the response it deserves.
"If atheists are going to produce a rational worldview capable of replacing religion, they must take religion and theology more seriously." This is simply not true.
My epistemology is a variant of pragmatism. As a result, I actually find "sophisticated" theology that defines "God" in terms of other apparently meaningless phrases much *less* intriguing than theology that is both meaningful and clearly false. There's so much equivocation and vagueness in theology, and in esoteric metaphysics in general, that I despair of relying overmuch on these to deliver answers to what are, in effect, social issues. And while at times debate can be fascinating, I have yet to encounter "robust methods of defending religious viewpoints", and am becoming increasingly doubtful that such really exist. In the end, they either come down to clinging to non-existent evidence, a form of presupposition, or an appeal to consequences.
Maybe there is more for atheists to learn here, but I think that's in psychology, not philosophy, because the psychology explaining how people come to believe is much more telling than the theology they espouse.