RSS
Home
Atheism on a bus (part three)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
.jpg)
PHOTO: INDIANA ATHEIST BUS CAMPAIGN
I didn’t plan to write a third article on the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign, but the collective response to the first two articles has taken me by surprise. In that response, a number of issues were raised, and challenges made, in regard to the Christian faith, atheism, and the relationship between the two perspectives. These issues and challenges were raised and made, for the most part, by thoughtful and well-spoken people and deserve thoughtful (I hope) and adequately-written (I’ll try) answers. The problem here is that a column such as this works best if I can keep the content down to no more than 900-1000 words. Anything more than that tends to cloud the point of the column in a fog of wordplay and verbal excess. So, with your permission and patience, here’s what I propose to do:
I’d like to break down my own response into four parts: a) What I’ve learned from your responses; b) The intrusion of Christian faith and mores into American social and political policy; c) A clarification of Christian practice and dogma as they pertain to atheism and atheists; d) A return to my original questions.
Okay?
What have I learned?
A lot. To begin with, I’ve learned that the next time I make a comparison between Christian belief in an afterlife and atheism’s denial that any such afterlife exists, I need to take greater pains to make certain that the comparison does not leave the impression that I believe atheists cannot, or do not, live moral lives. Of course they can . . . and do. I intended to make precisely this point when I wrote that atheists such as Gene Roddenberry, Kurt Vonnegut, Ron Reagan, Jr., Christopher Hitchens, et. al., have “a great deal to say about being good and doing good.” When I suggested that, for Christians, the quality of our afterlife depends on how we conduct ourselves in the here and now, I did not mean to imply that, in contrast, atheists have no concern for the here and now and do not care about how they conduct themselves in it. I meant only to say that, for a Christian, day to day conduct has eternal consequences; for an atheist, it does not.
More importantly, perhaps, I learned that many atheists feel estranged from civil society because . . . well, because they are atheists. American society, they maintain, is predominantly Christian, and not just Christian, but aggressively Christian. They are regularly damned to hell by the neighborhood Bible thumper (admittedly, a hell they don’t believe in . . . but that doesn’t make the rudeness any less offensive), made to feel second-rate and, most poignantly, constrained to believe they are alone in a hostile world. This sentiment was made abundantly clear to me by the several responses that said, in effect, “Those bus ads were not meant for you, sir. They were meant for us.”
We all need to belong; the human spirit is communal. And when we are threatened because of who we are or because of what we believe to be true, we look for strength and solace among ourselves. We encourage each other, we join hands and hearts, and, as I’ve come to understand, we occasionally place ads on Chicago city buses. I did not, in my previous articles, pay due recognition to the truth of all this as it pertains to atheism. I should have.
Christianity and atheism stand in philosophical, polar, and irreconcilable contradiction to each other. This, however, need not be the case in regard to individual Christians and atheists. We share the same humanity; we are all, as one responder so eloquently reminded me, made from stardust. I’m a Christian. If it were up to me, the whole freakin’ world would be Christian . . . better yet, Roman Catholic. But wiser men and women than I beg to differ, and that’s fine by me. All I’m asking here is that, as we continue our discussion, we look for ways to build bridges that connect us, if not as philosophers, then at least as star-children.
Tomorrow, let’s talk about Christian faith and American socio-political policy.
Related Articles:
Comments
.jpg)
(2).jpg)
