The Atheist Christian

since last I posted,

I lost my Mom to a particularly sudden and virulent form of cancer last May, after a 4 month battle that began with a massive stroke. The stroke was caused by a tumor on her lung, and it left her unable to speak. I lost my grandmother to very old age in September. (She had a good innings.) My Dad has already re-married in November to a woman he met on the internet. He had known her for all of 6 days face-to-face before proposing.
2007 has not been a banner year.
I find myself deeply and profoundly grateful that everything that happens is not guided by some big master plan. The tragic events of life happen more or less randomly. Shit happens. It is a great comfort to me to know that neither I nor my family have been specifically targeted by some great Master Plan.
Its nothing personal, and part of life, and I can accept it.

(If I thought otherwise, I would not rest until I held the still-beating heart of god in my hand and showed it to him before he died. metaphorically speaking.)

I wonder how long it will be before they revive the practice of burning atheists at the stake as heretics.

( via Trevor Blake at AmSam )

Newsweek: Being an Atheist in America Isn't Easy

Atheists "are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public," according to a study by Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota. In a recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Americans said they believed in God by a margin of 92 to 6�only 2 percent answered "don't know"�and only 37 percent said they'd be willing to vote for an atheist for president. (That's down from 49 percent in a 1999 Gallup poll�which also found that more Americans would vote for a homosexual than an atheist.)

[Not to mention that there are states in which an atheist is forbidden by law to hold public office.]

some other notable quotes:

"Tell a devout Christian ... that frozen yogurt can make a man invisible," Harris writes, "and he is likely to require as much evidence as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence whatsoever."
...
These authors have no geopolitical strategy to advance; they're interested in the metaphysics of belief, not the politics of the First Amendment. It's the idea of putting trust in God they object to, not the motto on the nickel.
...
"If there is no God, why be good?" he asks rhetorically, and responds: "Do you really mean the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward? That's not morality, that's just sucking up."

and this one resonates with my own beliefs about morality:

But Dawkins attempts to show how the highest of human impulses, such as empathy, charity and pity, could have evolved by the same mechanism of natural selection that created the thumb. Biologists understand that the driving force in evolution is the survival and propagation of our genes. They may impel us to instinctive acts of goodness, Dawkins writes, even when it seems counterproductive to our own interests—say, by risking our life to save someone else. Evolutionary psychology can explain how selfless behavior might have evolved. The recipient may be a blood relation who carries some of our own genes. Or our acts may earn us future gratitude, or a reputation for bravery that makes us more desirable as mates. ... This is a rebuke not merely to believers who insist that God must be the source of all goodness—but equally to the 19th-century atheism of Nietzsche, who assumed that the death of God meant the end of conventional morality.

If Ann Coulter's a Christian, I'll Be Damned

some of my favorite parts:

A mere three centuries after the Galilean Jew who got the ball rolling was strapped to a gurney and executed, Emperor Constantine "legitimized" the wild-eyed cult of peace by turning it into the mascot of imperial power it has remained ever since.
...
A disturbing number of Christians can't get past the book of Leviticus without gathering rocks to stone every stray "sodomite" crossing their path.
...

Recently, I realized that Ann Coulter's gall in calling herself a "Christian" isn't any of my business. The problem is my own stupidity in identifying myself as a "Christian" when the word is devoid of its original meaning and has even come to stand for its metaphysical opposite.

I continue to believe in the things I've always believed about the faith, but I can't be a Christian in a world where Ann Coulter can call herself a Christian without fear of contradiction.

I'm open to suggestions about a new spiritual handle since I've already removed "Christian" from my lexicon of spiritual name-dropping.

I was out having a beer or three with a very good friend this evening. He's been having a rough time of late; he is plagued by anger-fueled self loathing, and I was simply there to provide an empathetic ear. (and beer.) He had just finished a tear about how he feels compelled to punish himself and hurt those he is angry at by hurting himself when, uncensored by conscious thought, I shocked myself by saying "dude, what you need is redemption."

He gave me a look that mirrored my own astonishment. It sounded like something a TV preacher might say, but without the "dude". At the same time, I knew I was right.

Redemption is the thing that christian philosophy has over all the others. Redemption. Forgiveness. It is powerful, transformative. The turning away from your more selfish/animal nature and choosing to live by compassion and concern for others. The idea that your wrongs or others' need not be avenged. The idea that you do not have to drag around all that hurt and rage from you past like a big bag of rocks; that you can put it down, learn from it and move forward. The idea that if you hate who you are, you do not have to continue to be that person; you can choose to be a new person, reborn from the old. You can choose a different path.

Choose! Redemption is a choice. Forgiveness is a choice. Its never too late.


dude.

excerpt from "Pharisee Nation" by John Dear ( via Inspector Lohmann -)

Last September, I spoke to some 2,000 students during their annual lecture at a Baptist college in Pennsylvania. After a short prayer service for peace centered on the Beatitudes, I took the stage and got right to the point. “Now let me get this straight,” I said. “Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ which means he does not say, ‘Blessed are the warmakers,’ which means, the warmakers are not blessed, which means warmakers are cursed, which means, if you want to follow the nonviolent Jesus you have to work for peace, which means, we all have to resist this horrific, evil war on the people of Iraq.”

With that, the place exploded, and 500 students stormed out. The rest of them then started chanting, “Bush! Bush! Bush!”
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
We have become a culture of Pharisees. Instead of practicing an authentic spirituality of compassion, nonviolence, love and peace, we as a collective people have become self-righteous, arrogant, powerful, murderous hypocrites who dominate and kill others in the name of God. The Pharisees supported the brutal Roman rulers and soldiers, and lived off the comforts of the empire by running an elaborate banking system which charged an exorbitant fee for ordinary people just to worship God in the Temple. Since they taught that God was present only in the Temple, they were able to control the entire population. If anyone opposed their power or violated their law, the Pharisees could kill them on the spot, even in the holy sanctuary.

Most North American Christians are now becoming more and more like these hypocritical Pharisees. We side with the rulers, the bankers, and the corporate millionaires and billionaires. We run the Pentagon, bless the bombing raids, support executions, make nuclear weapons and seek global domination for America as if that was what the nonviolent Jesus wants. And we dismiss anyone who disagrees with us.

We have become a mean, vicious people, what the bible calls “stiff-necked people.” And we do it all with the mistaken belief that we have the blessing of God.
⋅ ⋅ ⋅
The first thing we Christians have to do in this time is not to become good Pharisees. Instead, we have to try all over again to follow the dangerous, nonviolent, troublemaking Jesus. I believe war, weapons, corporate greed and systemic injustice are an abomination in the sight of God. They are the definition of mortal sin. They mock God and threaten to destroy God’s gift of creation. If you want to seek the living God, you have to pit your entire life against war, weapons, greed and injustice--and their perpetrators. It is as simple as that.

and Lohmann's comments -

Solid gold...

You know, it's black comedy of the darkest sort: the bloodthirsty haters who call themselves Jesus's followers just don't see that they'd be the very ones who'd crucify their saviour if he was here today, their WWJD necklaces jangling while they pound the stakes through his hands.

Try as I do I just cannot comprehend how people resolve their cognitive dissonance through such antipodal doublethinking...

I went through adolescence in an evangelical environment, and I saw first hand the disparity between stated values and behavior. This is not to say that all evangelical christians are hypocrites; many (like my parents) are genuinely good, sincere people. But, like the good Inspector, I have always found it difficult to understand why these sincere christians put up with the greed, bigotry and hypocrisy of the others.

Some explanation for this can be found here, and here.

I think the basic core philosophies of christianity have been co-opted and engulfed by the so-called "christianity meme". It is time we took them back.

Can a person be both atheist and christian? I think so.

some exerpts from Richard F. Hall's essay on the topic: