Why I'm Not an Atheist, Part 1

Reductio ad absurdum...atheists don't cover themselves in glory when they ignore the fact that
discussing the morality of killing (in war, self-defense, revenge, capital punishment, hunting) is
an ongoing and complex issue in human society, and a church is a more fitting place to
have that discussion than a science lab.    
There is just a second in that blasphemous masterpiece of a musical The Book of Mormon where I thought the writers were aiming one of their poison tipped darts right at me. It is when Mafala Hatimbi, the African chief whose religious beliefs are summed up in the scabrous song hasa diga eebowa (Trans: Fuck you, God) mocks even those like me who dance around the old God question with the God is metaphor soft-shoe. I was not offended that they chose to lump my kind in with the Mormons in their un-divine comedy. I was actually impressed that they were so shrewd as to include secular believers like me in their ecumenical mockery. After all, just because I’m such a sophisticate that I contemplate God as metaphor shouldn’t exempt me from being laughed at. (Contrary to our friends the Muslims, no one’s belief should be above occasional ridicule...nor, dare I say, should anyone’s atheism). If you’re watching a movie with a child when a zombie steps out of the bedroom closet and scares you both out of your seats, it makes no difference that you knew it was just a movie and the child didn’t. You both jumped..and it's funny. 

Emotion trumps knowing. And like true believers who see God as more (or less) than metaphor, I have been moved to tears listening to Handel’s Messiah, awestruck walking into St. Peter’s Basilica, uplifted listening to the ReverendDr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The fact that all three were inspired by a God I no longer believe in does not prevent me from responding to their emotional power. But I have encountered people whose atheism, especially the so-called new atheism, is so dogmatic that they won’t allow themselves to be accepting of music, art, or good works that have the hint of God about them (or in the case of MLK they accept the politics, but dismiss the piety behind it). They are as condemningof godly works as some believers are of ungodly works, regardless of artistic or social merit.
In the terrific new HBO documentary on music and civil rights icon Mavis Staples there is footage of a visit Mavis makes to the home of Levon Helm, one of the very best good ol’ boys in American culture. Levon was in the midst of a losing battle with cancer and had just endured a brutal round of chemo when he and Mavis greet each other at the door with an exchange of “Amens.” Later we watch Mavis singing to him, “This may be my last time. This may be my last time, children…talking with King Jesus…about my wants and woes…” The presence of a higher power…a spiritual power…that is in that room with them is palpable even through my TV. I can’t ever see myself in a room personally feeling such a power, but I cannot deny that Mavis and Levon were feeling it. So I don’t know how I can rightly call myself an atheist if I’m open to seeing God’s hand in such things, even if it’s a God beyond me.
As happened the night after watching Mavis, I revisited Woody Allen’s most profound film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. The dichotomy between faith and atheism is set up early on when a man of science, Dr. Judah Rosenthal, confesses an infidelity to a man of faith, Rabbi Ben. In what follows, the doctor realizes it’s a conversation they’ve been having all their lives, which the rabbi sums up this way:

Yes, I know. It’s a fundamental difference in the way we view the world. You see it as harsh and empty of values and pitiless. And I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t feel with all my heart a moral structure and real meaning and forgiveness…and some kind of higher power. Otherwise there is no basis to know how to live. And I know you well enough to know that a spark of that notion is inside you as well.

Woody restates the theme later when his character Cliff Stern has a flashback to a family Seder where his aunt, a woman of learning, and his father, a man of God, take positions on opposite sides of the same debate. It so haunts him that he makes an obsession of getting onto film the teachings of a wise old philosopher who he believes may have the answer. Prof. Louis Levy tells Cliff that because God is created in man’s image rather than the other way around, God is susceptible to human contradiction…as much capable of cruelty as love.
In the end the wise professor commits suicide without leaving an explanation, the good rabbi goes blind before getting his wish to see his daughter’s wedding, the doctor gets away with murder, and Cliff our hero loses the woman of his dreams to a phony rival he loathes. Woody the filmmaker seems to have clearly come down on the side of an empty, harsh and pitiless world. But that’s his view…and ours only because we’re seeing Crimes and Misdemeanors through his eyes. But for all we know the professor’s suicide may very well have been informed by his wisdom and totally rational. The rabbi may have had a  Cat Stevens-like reconciliation with his loss of sight (And if I ever lose my eyes/If my colors all run dry/Yes, if I ever lose my eyes/Ooh, I won't have to cry no more). And the doctor may have been morally tortured by his murder long after his particular happy ending in the film.
As for Cliff…let’s really pull back the camera because this is where my God, Spinelli, God of Irony, steps forward to command center stage. The love of Cliff’s life in the film is played by Woody Allen’s real life lover of the time Mia Farrow. The audience feels the heartbreak of Woody’s character because Cliff’s creator, his God, Woody has made him sympathetic. But in the real world of the Mia Farrow/Woody Allen scandal, it is Mia who is the victim of an empty, harsh and pitiless world.

Like Woody Allen, or at least like his character Cliff Stern, I struggled with the God question. It was one of the formative events of my life. It made me think about the universe and my place in it for the first time on an adult scale. I had lived my young life up until that point believing that a just and loving God was watching over me and that every day I could walk and talk with his only begotten son. It was a benign existence. I never felt oppressed…or, in the words of a famous sermon that was delivered in my hometown centuries ago, that I was a sinner in the hands of an angry God. To willingly wake up alone one day in a wholly other place was for me whatever's the opposite of a "no-brainer" (full brainer, perhaps). It was the day my intellectual and spiritual training wheels came off, but not the day to declare my atheism.

Next week: Part 2