Why I'm Not an Atheist, Part 2

I suspect this was intended as a boast for atheists and a diss of Christians, but the truth is that only atheists and religious zealots pay attention to each other; most ordinary Christians just want to get on with their daily lives and they rely on their religion much like they rely on aspirin…as pain reliever.  

I was about as eager a beaver as could be at becoming the first member of my family to go to college when a teacher friend of the family fed into my parents’ skepticism about the venture by telling them, “You know, he’ll just go to college and become a communist and an atheist. They all do.” I don’t think the word gobsmacked was around back then, but it would pretty much have described my reaction. At the time, I was as much an idealistic young American boy as you could imagine all jacked up on the New Frontier, and as I’ve written before still going to church to pray every blessed night of the week. When I got to college and started studying it, I realized (long before Reagan called on Gorbachev to tear down that wall) that the Soviet system sucked and would fall of its own accord. I also ended up going to a seminary. So my teacher’s prophecy failed on both counts.
Nonetheless my seminary experience had more to do with making me less a disciple of any one church, but more understanding of churches, temples and mosques in general. I realized through my studies of mythology and history of religion how integral religion has been to the development of just about every human society (and though atheists like to point to remote societies here and there throughout the world that seem free of religion, none of them are free of myth or ritual which occur naturally to humans and are the building blocks of formalized religion). The prominence of religion in human society is not propaganda manufactured by church hierarchies, but a scientific truth revealed to us by anthropology. So, paradoxically, it was science that led me to a greater appreciation of religion rather than a disdain of it, which is the typical course.
Its fundamental role in the development of human society cannot hide the fact that human history is full of religious idiocy...if not insanity…and its more lunatic aspects are not confined to the Dark Ages but on full display most every day. So the casual student of religion--which most atheists are--can be forgiven (if I may use the word) for assuming that religion is an unholy grail full of beheadings, pedophilia, war and grand scale hypocrisy. More cogitative atheists, however, hold three core tenets:
One, that the universe is indifferent to the fate of humanity (thus a meteor that may one day crash into earth and destroy it is an accident, not divine judgment).
Two, that there is no benign spirit watching over us (thus an infant born with encephalitis is a misfortune, not a test of faith).
Three, that there is no heaven (thus death is not the doorway to basking in God’s glory, but a closing of the door on the only glory there ever will be). 
I actually accept all three of those tenets, which brings me damn close to being a card-carrying atheist. But I also accept that heaven, God, and moral consequence have been animating tenets of human existence and--spirituality aside--should not be dismissed if one has any intellectual curiosity about who and how we are as a species. Evidence of our need…desire…for a higher power, an afterlife, and moral structure are embedded in our non-biological evolution. You can argue that our drones are nothing more than Greek God Zeus’s thunderbolts made real. You can argue (as I have) that the historic subjugation of women is nothing less than the patriarchal legacy of Genesis. But I would also argue that our cathedrals and skyscrapers and choir voices raised on high are attempts to reach heaven; our legal system is designed to simulate a moral universe; and that our political org. charts, regardless of kind of government, always include a godhead. We can separate Church and State on paper, but religion in so many ways both insidious and inspiring permeates most every aspect of human society. 
Stephen Jay Gould, one of the most brilliant minds of our times and a foremost agnostic (atheist lite), engaged in constant, public battle with creationists on behalf of Darwinism. Unlike “the new atheists” (Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris) who define religion by its most extreme or preposterous manifestations and demand in vain and vanity that humanity abandon its historic embrace of religion to see things their way, Gould subscribed to what he called the magisterium. He borrowed the word from the Catholic Church, which used to it to delineate areas of authority where the Church could legitimately claim primacy. Gould was fascinated that the Church invoked magisterium in order to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution. In 1950 Pope Pius XII declared that the magisterium of the Church only extended to the evolution of the soul, not the body. Thus, he declared, Darwin’s theory was not in conflict with the teachings of the Church. Gould expanded on this in his challenging work Rocks of Ages by propounding something he called NOMA—Non-Overlapping Magisteria, which he believed could be essential to the peaceful and productive co-existence of faith and science. In simple layman’s terms NOMA meant science doesn’t stick its nose in the business of religion and religion doesn’t stick its nose in the business of science. And in Rocks of Ages, Gould argues--contrary to the new atheism which calls for an end to religion--why that should be a two-way street. Science, he maintains, should be concerned with the empirical realm, that which is factual; religion with ultimate meaning and moral value…and each should merely inform the other, not prevail over it.
Examples of religion’s intrusion into the empirical realm are abundant in our time; especially in the cause that commanded so much of Gould’s time and energy --the imposition of creationism on science. But Gould, true scientist that he was, did not shrink from seeing things from the other side. After chillingly documenting how early 20thcentury German intellectuals perverted Darwin to affirm their belief in Aryan superiority, Gould offers this passage from one of the most sacred texts in all atheism:

Hundreds of families such as those described above exist today, spreading disease, immorality and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families is very severe. Just as certain animals or plants become parasitic on other plants and animals, these families have become parasitic on society. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing or spreading disease but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money. Largely for them the poorhouse and the asylum exist. They take from society, but they give nothing in return. They are true parasiteslf such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading. Humanity will not allow this, but we do have the remedy of separating sexes in asylums and other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibility of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race.

That’s from A Civic Biology by George William Hunter, a professor of biology at Knox College. It is the book that was at the center of the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in 1925. Every scientist, secularist, humanist, academic and atheist worth his or her soul holds that trial holy as a landmark in the struggle for intellectual freedom. One can only hope that if these intellectuals knew that the passage quoted above came from the same book that famously advanced evolution they would find it sobering and damnable. 
As for me, again I find myself bowing before my great God Irony and thus unable to declare myself an atheist. After all, Irony--as Gods go--is not much different than any other…invisible, inviolable, inviolate. Yet I wonder if I could’ve made it fly as my answer if I had been in Bernie Sanders’ shoes at the Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, on Sunday night when a sweet church lady asked him if God was relevant to his life. Would she and the country have accepted it if I as candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President had declared that Irony is my God and I experience its presence every day in small ways and large? Would a mass audience have made room in its collective conscience for a concept of God that didn’t fit its own any easier than it would accept a declaration of atheism?
To be sure, the better question is: Why is such a question even relevant in a debate to lead a nation that accords the highest priority to the separation of Church and State? But that’s a question for another blog post. For this one, the paramount question remains: Why am I not an Atheist? And for all the fancy dancing I’ve done around that question through at least two blog posts and more than 2000 words, I guess the answer gets down to this: I just don’t believe in atheism. 

Shortcut to Part 1.