Things Said by Atheists That Are Untrue or Otherwise Irritating (part four)

For all of you who are not into the religion debates, I am sorry for going back into fundie mode, but I need to address a few more points in this discussion I am having with J.D.Ryan of Five Before Chaos. Also, check out part one, part two, and part three.

I am going to try and wrap this series up with a few straggling points that haven’t been addressed.

Today, I was reading a post that was given the Rudest Atheist Post of 2006 honor by five before chaos. It was mostly a rant against all of the bad, murderous things that fanatical religious belief leads to. It brought me to realize another thing that atheists say that is untrue or otherwise irritating. Atheists seem to think that getting rid of religion will get rid of the crazies.

Understand this. There will always be crazy people and they will latch onto whatever they can to justify their craziness, but that does not make religion at its core nothing more than a vehicle for creating crazies. Take away religion and you can always find some other thing that will drive the crazies. History is full of examples. Can you say, “communism”?

Heck, I know some atheists who would gladly kill all religious adherents if the law was on their side to carry such an action out.

There are also a lot of good things that people do in the name of religion. Would the same people who condemn the whole concept of religion for the times it is used as a justification for bad things also praise religion for the times it is used as a justification for good things? No. Of course not.

In fact, Christians are criticized for doing good because they are really just doing good to score points with God, which is selfish, unlike atheists, who do good because they are good. This is another untrue thing that atheists say, or at least, don’t get.

Here’s how it works. (Of course, this is my version and there are so many different belief systems all calling themselves Christian that it is very confusing.)

For starters, I really don’t like people. Seriously. They are rude, obnoxious, self-centered, loud, smelly, and take up too much space. I like my space. I don’t like people.

But God likes people. Actually, God loves people. Even people like J.D. Ryan. He loves us all. Even the Muslims. Even the New Agers. (No seriously.) Even the Red Sox fans. (I’m kidding. I don’t even watch baseball.) God loves people. Why? I don’t know. He just does.

I love God. He rocks. Even more so than geeky husbands. I love God more than anything. Even blogging.

I want to use my life to do God’s work, to be His hands and feet, as we say. God wants to show people that He loves them, ergo, I must show people that God loves them. Except, I don’t tell people that God loves them because that tends to freak people out. I just do things to help them even if I don’t want to.

Is that selfish? Not really. I don’t need to help people to get to Heaven, or whatever. I am saved through faith in Jesus Christ alone. I just want to serve God because, well, because I have a deep, burning passion for Him. He is awesome.

It’s kind of like if I knew my husband wanted me to do something and I really didn’t feel like it. I would do it anyway because I love him. Not for a selfish reason or because I would expect something in return. Just because I love him and I like to do things to make him happy. He’s the same way with me. That’s part of the reason I love my husband. He’s a great guy.

I feel the same way about God. He’s a great God. I love Him. I want to do things for Him. He wants me to love people.

That’s it. Jesus said that all of the other commandments hang on these two: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and Love your neighbor as yourself. (Darn. I said I wasn’t going to quote the Bible. Well, that was a paraphrase.)

To change gears, since I got kind of out of hand with the Bible quoting and all, I want to address two final points.

First, the notion that science disproves God. This is a funny one because some science lovers say that the two are separate (as to not cause the religious folk to come after science), but then the anti-god-ers come along and say that they are not separate (and use science as a weapon against faith). I have heard atheists from both perspectives, so I don’t want to lump them all together (unless the ones that say God and science are separate are lying).

In his post “Science Must Destroy Religion,” outspoken atheist Sam Harris says that, “The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.”

The only conflict there is between science and religion is the conflict between religious people who fear science and scientific people who fear religion, or rather, people who fear religion and view science as the means of destroying it.

I am a “religious” person (meaning I live my life according to a faith, though I don’t really care for that word because it implies a legalistic adherence to ritual and tradition that is not really necessary for a relationship with God), but I am not afraid of science. I homeschool my kids, but I do not keep them from secular science materials (and even history materials contain an evolutionary perspective). In fact, I took this book out of the library for my kids just yesterday. The first chapter is entitled, “Man or ape?” and explains how humans evolved.

Do I believe that? No. I believe God made man as man.

Does that mean that I find no value in science? No. Science is very valuable for understanding our world and it leads to discoveries that make our lives better. It is, however, based on things that can be seen and measured, which God cannot be, so it excludes this very influential piece of the puzzle. Science makes assumptions about the past based on what is known or true now. As with any logic-based discipline, if any of the premises are faulty, the conclusions are flawed. Just the same, it is important to learn and understand science. To try to infuse it with religion would not work. So, it has to be “godless.”

That doesn’t mean that one cannot use one’s own capacity for reasoning to look at the science and identify the assumptions that would not hold if God was in the equation. This process is the responsibility of parents and the religious community though, not the schools.

The bottom line is that science cannot destroy God and believers need not fear that it will. God is bigger than that. More importantly, they need not try to destroy, or weaken, science education in the process.

The last thing I want to touch on is the question of whether or not God is necessary for morality. I do not doubt that an atheist can be a “good” person. I was an atheist for most of my life and I was a good person. I never stole, or lied, or cheated, or killed anyone. I worked hard and was more or less responsible. I did not need a code of ethics from a divine being to be a good citizen. Even though, as I said, I don’t so much like people, I was not mean or rude to them and was even helpful of my own free will on occasion.

People can know right from wrong with out religion for the most part, but when right and wrong are subjective, it is easy to reason ourselves into dark waters.

We can justify stealing when a poor man steals food for his children. We can justify lying when a woman lies to her abusive boyfriend to keep him from hurting her. We can justify killing an otherwise healthy and viable fetus when it would be inconvenient to the mother for it to be born.

People can justify just about anything. People even use their religion to justify bad things that are clearly condemned by their religion. People are good at making excuses, whether they are religious or not.

Moral relativism is dangerous because there is no standard by which to judge things. Even though humans will continue to miss the mark when it comes to God’s plan for us, it serves as a baseline for evaluating our own behavior.

I don’t use my value system to judge other people. That is actually condemned by the Bible. I use it as my guide to make my own life easier.

I once heard this great teaching series on a Christian radio program that I listen to online called, “Living on the Edge.” They did a series on the Ten Commandments and how they are a guide to living a life of minimal suffering here on earth; kind of like God’s instruction book for a good life.

It is amazing how much pain we cause ourselves when we violate God’s laws. Some theologians even believe that Hell is actually the state we create for ourselves when we reject God, as opposed to the dated idea of an actual place where pain and suffering is imposed. We don’t need a tormentor to suffer in a hell of our own creation.

Non-religious codes of morality are based on not hurting other people, but the amount of harm we cause ourselves is far greater. All of the “sins” I needed to confess when I accepted Jesus were things that were harmful to only myself and fully accepted by our secular society.

So, yeah, one can be an ethical person without God, but I have learned that God’s way is really better.

Okay, I sound like I am evangelizing again, so I will wrap this up.

On a final note, the thing that atheists say that is the most untrue is that people only believe in God because they are ignorant. This is note true at all. If there is something that you think I do not know, or haven’t thought about, that would make me reexamine my beliefs, please let me know. God has not called me to a life of ignorance.