Re: For the love of Christ

A friend of mine sent me a link to an article by Julie Burchill of Guardian.co.uk called For the love of Christ. He titled the email as ‘Stirring’ so I guess he was expecting fireworks on my part. I think he may have been dissapointed. I think ‘underwhelmed’ pretty much sums up my reaction. But I haven’t posted anything since July – it’s been a slow month – so this, I suppose, will have to do.

She opens with three good introductory paragraphs. I was pretty much nodding my head for all three. She establishes an emotional bond with the reader and manages to communicate that her faith is both strong and not particularly crazy, but she manages to do it without undermining her faith by suggesting it might be crazy. She comes off passionate and sane and respectable. All is well.

Then she gets to the point of her article: Atheism, and why it sucks. It got to be a bit of a frustrating read for me from here on in. Although I felt that a response was neccesary, I can’t argue with Burchill for the simple fact that she’s not making an argument – she’s having a four-paragraph whinge, and there’s no arguing with a whinge. Even the title smells like a semi-frustrated snarl. This is what I found so dissapointing about the article. Burchill opens so beautifully, and yet the four paragraphs that actually comprise the meat of her article are utterly without substance.

“Athiests say my beliefs are childish? My beliefs aren’t childish – you’re childish! Not only are you childish, but you’re a pack of boring old killjoys too! Plus you don’t need to be so brave as atheists in other countries, which is somehow relevant although I don’t see that I am required to explain why! Christians and Jews aren’t as bad as those nasty Muslims, so stop picking on us!”

This is a caricature, true. But not an undeserved one, and nor is it an unfair representation.

It isn’t even until the seventh paragraph where she finally mentions Dawkins. Until there, it’s all been a build-up. Possibly Burchill hopes that the momentum of the article will carry the reader past her statement that “it seems to me quite offensive that Christianity should be dismissed by Dawkins and his like in the same breath as Islam. Similarly, Dawkins’ critique of Judaism seems way too aggressive, when one compares it to the excesses of other belief systems,” without actually thinking about it.

Yes, his stance is offensive. So what? Sure, Christianity may not be causing as much large-scale harm as Islam at the moment, but that’s not the point of most of Dawkin’s arguments. He is not particularly concerned with whether or not religion causes people to do good. He states frequently that for a great many people it very probably does. His only concern is whether or not the truth-claims professed by religion to be true, are true. In his analysis they are profoundly false, and it is the very persuasiveness of this analysis – and the subsequent dismissal of your cherished beliefs as absurd – that has bothered you so.

Burchill’s entire article sets out to gripe about Dawkins in particular and atheists in general. But words such as truth, reason, logic and evidence don’t even get mentioned once throughout the entire article. The best it can muster is: ‘They’re a pack of grumpy ol’ fuddy-duddies and I dun’t like ‘em.’ Dawkins and the modern wave of atheism make only one claim, one argument: That the claims of religion are false. It would seem that this is not an argument with which Burchill feels interested (or perhaps capable) of addressing.

It’s simple, Ms. Burchill. Whatever else you or I may say about your faith, the simple fact is that the things that your faith requires you to profess to believe about reality are absurd. I have good reason for this assessment.

Also, I doubt you truly do believe in everything that you are required to believe by your professed religion. If I were to give you a stomach-pump after you’d been to communion, would you expect us to find partially digested human flesh from the consecrated host in the contents of your stomach? I somehow think you wouldn’t, and I would think all the less of you if you did.

Do you think that God made all the creatures in the world in one week, four-to-six thousand years ago, exactly as we see them now, and that their forms have not changed at all in that time? Do you believe in an actual talking snake in the Garden of Eden? Do you believe that there ever was a Garden of Eden at all? Do you you believe that rainbows are not merely a beautiful visual effect caused by the refraction of light through droplets of water suspended in the air, but are really a sign that God made a covenant with Noah not to murder every land-based creature in the world via flooding ever again? Do you think that the only basis to know if an action is moral or immorral is based on whether or not the bible says it is or isn’t? Do you believe that a monk from a charitable religious order in India who has heard of Christianity but disbelieves it, yet who lives a quiet life of compassionate, charitable and blameless service to his community will be sent to hell because he didn’t accept Christ as his Lord and Savior? Do you believe that such a man is more deserving of an eternity of torment than a rapist and murderer who, quaking in his boots on death row, babbles a confession to a priest and so moves on to heaven with a clean soul? Your article is entitled ‘For the love of Christ’ – so do you believe that the brutal torture and murder of Christ as related in the New Testament was a good thing? Would you have tried to stop it, or at least wanted to stop it had you not the courage to act, had you been there? Do you love Christ enough to wish to spare him that humiliation and torment? I don’t think that Christ was divine, but even so I love him enough to desire that such a horrific thing might never have happened. I could say the same of any human that has ever lived. How well do you really love Christ, you who thinks Him both divine and a fitting sacrifice for the preservation of your allegedly immortal soul? Was it good that such a man, divine or otherwise, died in such a way? Was it right? Was it just? Was it ethical? Was it moral?

Although I respect your right to hold and express any beliefs you so choose, I am under no requirement to respect those beliefs. With that in mind, the reason I am utterly unconcerned with offending your beliefs is because it is my explicit purpose to offend your beliefs, for I am not so constituted as to suffer a falsehood to hold sway over the hearts and minds of mankind. And make no mistake about it – by any intellectually honest assessment, your beliefs as a Christian are profoundly false.

TRUTH MATTERS
Écrasez l’Infâme