Posted by Helen on: 12.12.2006 /
The other day I discovered Richard Dawkins has written an article called Atheists for Jesus. Here are some excerpts from it:
Of course Jesus was a theist, but that is the least interesting thing about him. He was a theist because, in his time, everybody was. Atheism was not an option, even for so radical a thinker as Jesus. What was interesting and remarkable about Jesus was not the obvious fact that he believed in the God of his Jewish religion, but that he rebelled against many aspects of Yahweh’s vengeful nastiness. At least in the teachings that are attributed to him, he publicly advocated niceness and was one of the first to do so. To those steeped in the Sharia-like cruelties of Leviticus and Deuteronomy; to those brought up to fear the vindictive, Ayatollah-like God of Abraham and Isaac, a charismatic young preacher who advocated generous forgiveness must have seemed radical to the point of subversion. No wonder they nailed him.
I am no memetic engineer, and I have very little idea how to increase the numbers of the super nice and spread their memes through the meme pool. The best I can offer is what I hope may be a catchy slogan. ‘Atheists for Jesus’ would grace a T-shirt. There is no strong reason to choose Jesus as icon, rather than some other role model from the ranks of the super nice such as Mahatma Gandhi (not the odiously self-righteous Mother Teresa, heavens no). I think we owe Jesus the honour of separating his genuinely original and radical ethics from the supernatural nonsense which he inevitably espoused as a man of his time. And perhaps the oxymoronic impact of ‘Atheists for Jesus’ might be just what is needed to kick start the meme of super niceness in a post-Christian society. If we play our cards right - could we lead society away from the nether regions of its Darwinian origins into kinder and more compassionate uplands of post-singularity enlightenment?I think a reborn Jesus would wear the T-shirt. It has become a commonplace that, were he to return today, he would be appalled at what is being done in his name, by Christians ranging from the Catholic Church to the fundamentalist Religious Right. Less obviously but still plausibly, in the light of modern scientific knowledge I think he would see through supernaturalist obscurantism. But of course, modesty would compel him to turn his T-shirt around: Jesus for Atheists.
(For more Dawkins see Two interesting articles by Dawkins on the eBay atheist blog today. In that I link to this article and also a newspaper special in which Dawkins answers questions sent in by readers)
Comment by: JG
1 12/12/06 5:05 AM | Comment Link |Intersting. This (in my mind) links with Vynette’s comment at;
http://www.jasonclark.ws/2006/11/24/notes-from-deep-church-conversation-series-no-3-living-with-ambiguity-facing-up-to-difficulties-in-scripture-and-christian-doctrine/
Comment 20 on 9 December in which she says:
In my mind, there is no contradiction between the Old and the New Testament. As mentioned in the “Giving God a second chance” thread recently, I see plenty of evidence for the kindness of God in the Old Testament. For example:
Extracted from http://conversationattheedge.com/2006/11/17/giving-god-a-second-chance/#comment-4196
Comment by: NCxian
2 12/12/06 6:00 AM | Comment Link |These comments are further confirmation to me that Dawkins, in writing about religion, is recklessly violating the grade school principle that you should only write about what you know.
Dawkins seems to never have actually met a real live person of faith. If he had, he would realize that the primary function of religion in most people’s lives is to help them understand how to live a “good life”. In the case of Christians, this function centers around following the teachings of Jesus. The guy who Dawkins apparently admires for being radically nice and practicing generous forgiveness.
If he really believes what he said about the teachings of Jesus, and if he had any inkling of how religion is actually practiced by regular people, then how could he, in his promotional campaign, assert with good conscience that his book is an “attack on religion” and that raising a child in one’s own religious tradition is “child abuse”? Unless (as I imagine is the case) his publisher has convinced him that the more inflammatory he can be in his public appearances, the wealthier everyone involved will be!
Comment by: David H
3 12/12/06 7:24 AM | Comment Link |Perhaps Dawkins is simply being Swiftian in is sarcasm. Like Swift’s satire, “A Modest Proposal,” the statement above about Mother Teresa is so ludicrous as to make the entire thing a jest.
I don’t have a lot of love for many sects of Christianity and think that many who go back that name Christians Against Jesus if forced to truly confront how their beliefs controvert what he wanted. But with what Dawkins is saying here, I think he must have been trying to make a joke. So I’ll just shake my head and chuckle.
Comment by: Stephan
4 12/12/06 8:56 AM | Comment Link |I think it’s a brilliant article, and he seems to me to be quite sincere. In a way he is finally focusing on the right thing - Jesus instead of religion. Think about that for a minute - Jesus instead of religion. Now think about it again - Jesus instead of religion. Wow. Keep thinking about it - Jesus instead of religion. If we could get Christians to do the same thing it would accomplish the goal set in his essay, to increase the numbers of the super nice.
I think that phrase, “super nice”, sounds a little too trite, but I know what he’s getting at, and it been talked about much here - MTWABP.
I like that he admits what I have said all along, that altruism goes directly against evolution and Darwinian principles. Being unselfish is not natural.
I hope he starts a real movement - Atheists for Jesus. It would certainly make people think - Jesus instead of religion. That’s powerful.
Comment by: JG
5 12/12/06 9:08 AM | Comment Link |I think it is much better expressed as kindness rather than niceness. There is nothing “nice” about touching lepers or getting in amongst down and outs etc etc - “niceness” to my mind implies not getting your hands dirty.
I’m not sure that “Jesus instead of religion” is a new concept. It is certainly a principle I have grown up with. I have always understood religion is man made, whereas true Christianity is IMO about God revealing himself to man.
Comment by: Mike C
6 12/12/06 10:38 AM | Comment Link |Wow, some of Dawkin’s comments about the Hebrew Scriptures are so extreme as to be borderline anti-Semitic. He might want to be a little more careful about that given recent European history.
Also, to hear Dawkin’s talk about “niceness” and “compassion” is incredibly ironic considering how rude and nasty he tends to be most of the time. It’s almost like hearing the president of Iran talking about religious tolerance, or George Bush talk about world peace. I’m just not sure Dawkins is particularly qualified to speak on niceness or compassion.
Comment by: Siamang
7 12/12/06 10:47 AM | Comment Link |I think Dawkins steps his foot in it here. When he writes about religion, he tends to become something like a pair of oxen attempting to waltz. This piece in its entirety is just about the worst thing I’ve read of his.
But I would differ from Stephan’s point. Dawkins absolutely doesn’t believe altruism goes directly against evolution. He wrote a whole book about the Darwinian rationale for altruism. It’s called “The Selfish Gene”. It’s a grabber title, that caused many to misunderstand its contents (especially those who judge books by covers alone.) It could easily have been subtitled: “How self-interested genetics paradoxically creates altruistic behavior.”
I do think he thinks “super-niceness” (ugh) is way beyond simple genetic advantage. But this is because he discounts the idea of group selection. Here, I think he’s out of his league, and he needs to be talking to sociologists, game theorists, psychologists etc, and he needs to stop looking at the question from merely his perspective as a zoologist.
Comment by: Siamang
8 12/12/06 11:04 AM | Comment Link |I disagree. I think he’s much, much nicer than that.
I don’t think he’s rude and nasty. I think he can be warm and humorous and sincere. I think he can be chilly and off-putting. But, I think he pales in comparison with most public speakers currently waging cultural war.
I find him far far more pleasant and warm than Sam Harris. I would never, ever compare him to people like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, the Reverend Dobson or their ilk. I find him about 100 octaves less shrill than ANYONE talking in the political sphere in this country with the sole exception being Jimmy Carter.
The way some people talk about Dawkins, you’d think he was Bill O’ Reilly or Sean Hannity yelling at people to “shut up! Shut up!”
I don’t know that he’s made such a blanket statement, that all children being raised in religion are being abused. I’d like to see the passage quoted directly. It seems to harsh a blanket statement.
I do know that he has met with people who suffer post-tramatic-stress as adults who were raised with horrifying dogmatic teachings of awaiting Hell, and he has called that child abuse. As I recall he thinks that seperate sectarian schools for palestinian children and jewish children is a kind of religious apartheid, and he thinks that the troubles in Northern Ireland could have been solved in a generation if they outlawed these seperate schools.
Anyway, I’d appreciate a direct quote. It may be that you’re right, and I missed such a broad-brush stroke by Dawkins. If he did make such an assertion, I’d think it quite foolish and simplistic.
Comment by: Siamang
9 12/12/06 11:06 AM | Comment Link |(obviously, not muslim and jewish schools in Northern Ireland. I meant seperate religious schools, protestant and catholic.)
Comment by: David S
10 12/12/06 11:11 AM | Comment Link |There’s an Atheists for Jesus website. It seems similar though perhaps not exactly what Dawkins is talking about. The guy on the website makes the point I’ve made a few times that there’s a big difference between what Jesus taught and the formal religion Paul later came in and created in Jesus’ name.
http://www.atheists-for-jesus.com/index.php
Comment by: Helen
11 12/12/06 11:58 AM | Comment Link |Siamang, here’s something Dawkins said about religion and child abuse in the other article I linked to on the eBay atheist blog this morning:
Comment by: Siamang
12 12/12/06 12:13 PM | Comment Link |Well, that’s just warrantless hyperbole, then.
Such a comparison does no help to the cause of understanding, and really it also diminishes actual abuse.
Comment by: Mike Clawson
13 12/12/06 1:54 PM | Comment Link |I should say that I do appreciate Dawkin’s overall point about “Atheists for Jesus”. I think it definitely is the case that one can appreciate many of the teachings of Jesus without accepting the Christian religion, and I would encourage more atheists to investigate the way of Christ, just as I would encourage Christians to look into the principles of humanism.
Comment by: Rachel
14 12/12/06 2:00 PM | Comment Link |That’s wonderful visual, Siamang!
Comment by: Kathleen
15 12/12/06 2:07 PM | Comment Link |Anti-Semitic? He sounds more anti-Muslim to me (and not just in the way that Dawkins would have to be, given that Islam is a religion):
Why use Sharia and Ayatollahs as inherently negative and inherently cruel? Given very recent world history (let’s make that current events, actually) I’d think he’d want to be a lot more careful.
Comment by: Karen
16 12/12/06 2:57 PM | Comment Link |I can’t speak for his motivations, but I would venture to guess that his invocations of Sharia and Ayatollahs (above) are an attempt to relate modern religious atrocities that are fresh in peoples’ minds to ancient history that’s typically glossed over (or ignored) by bible readers.
In terms of being “careful” - he’s pretty courageous about speaking out on his views. No doubt he’s one of the most-reviled individuals around these days, and yet he makes abundant public appearances.
Sam Harris, in contrast, has been much more cautious. From what I’ve heard (and please correct me if this info is outdated), he won’t say publicly what university he’s affiliated with and has turned down requests to have his books translated into Arabic.
Comment by: Pete Strobel
17 12/12/06 9:53 PM | Comment Link |I haven’t read much about Richard Dawkins except for an article about him in Discover magazine entitled “Darwin’s Rottweiler”. Mind you: Discover magazine is thoroughly supportive of the theory of Evolution. But even this magazine’s writer felt Dawkins is often over the top. In it Dawkins was portrayed as quite vitriolic upon occasion, and loses no opportunity to rudely and sarcastically dismiss or criticize anyone who is a Christian, and mocks those Christians that uphold Evolutionist positions (claiming that it is ridiculous or impossible to uphold a theistic spirituality and the scientific naturalism inherent in the theory of Evolution.)
I don’t think he is doing Jesus any favors by asserting that he is nice or even super-nice. Dawkins despises “nice”. I have found that the term is usually quite condescending, superficial, or belittling. I agree that Jesus was kind, and compassionate, but judging by his firm, uncompromising challenge to the Pharisees and Sadduccess, and the other “establishments” he wasn’t “nice”.
Just an aside: I am an elementary school teacher, and I have noticed over the past 14 years of teaching that children invariably characterize people in one of two ways: they are either “nice” or “mean”. At times I have forbid my students from using either label to describe a character in a story, since basically those terms mean nothing…. Kind, compassionate, friendly, responsible, generous, etc… Those are terms I gladly encourage. They apply to Jesus far better than “nice.” No, I think Dawkins was chosing his words carefully, but he did not do so to honor Jesus.
BICBW
Comment by: Kathleen
18 12/12/06 10:40 PM | Comment Link |I’m not saying it wasn’t an effective comparison; I just don’t think it was appropriate. It is effective exactly because it plays on fears and misperceptions that people have of Muslims. “The Old Testament God was cruel…let’s see, I need a comparison…Oh! I can use Islam! Islam is cruel, too!” It seems offensive not in a Dawkinsesque “Muslims (like Christians) must be stupid to believe in God” way but in a much scarier, more secular, “the average Muslim on the street was responsible for 9/11″ way. I don’t know much about Dawkins, but I don’t think that those are among the views that he’s so open about - but, to me at least, they seem somewhat implied in the excerpt above.
Comment by: Karen
19 12/13/06 3:27 PM | Comment Link |Fundamentalist Islam scares the hell out of me, frankly. Especially when I read how it’s gaining in popularity even in countries, like Indonesia, that have traditionally espoused a very moderate form of Islam.
This topic was the subject of a lively discussion over at Talk2Action recently:
Dawkins is well aware that the majority of Muslims are not followers of Sharia Law and the Ayatollahs. No one is saying that the average Muslim was responsible for 9/11 - not even close. There are no doubt ignorant people who believe that, but I think that educated people discussing intellectual topics like this are by and large able to make the distinction.
I guess I don’t see how mentioning a dangerous, highly militant fringe element of Islam tars every Muslim on the street. In fact, this is exactly why Dawkins and Harris object to the default position that it’s not polite to criticize religion. Even moderate believers, they argue, will use that rationale to provide cover for the radical believers that need to be exposed. Because, after all, it’s their faith, and we shouldn’t be mean and criticize it.
Comment by: Kevin D. Johnson
20 12/14/06 1:59 PM | Comment Link |Yawn. Dawkins is as much a fundamentalist as Pat Robertson and these article excerpts only prove it.
He might consider that it is only the intellectual freedom of Christianity that made atheism possible today. In any other society not only would he be an even rarer bird than he now is, he’d likely be dead.
Comment by: Siamang
21 12/14/06 2:27 PM | Comment Link |Yikes, Kevin.
I don’t see how intolerance to the point of death is a good argument for religion.
Does the “intellectual freedom of Christianity” really mean “you’re danged lucky we don’t kill you, like those other folks would have. Count your blessings.”
I mean, yikes.
Would you like it this way: You Christians are lucky that atheists allow the intellectual freedom to have a God. If this was the soviet union, it’d be the gulag for you, Comrade!
Comment by: Kevin D. Johnson
22 12/15/06 3:05 AM | Comment Link |‘Intolerance to the point of death’ wasn’t the argument I was making but curiously enough it is Dawkins and company that are intolerant of Christianity not the other way around.
Besides, I don’t remember arguing for a particular point of view in the few sentences I put forward.
However, it’s a known fact that with the advent of the modern era and Christianity’s defeat of polytheism, the intellectual environment of Christianity as I said is what made atheism not only something that is rational in some sense to believe in but also something that you could believe in without getting killed for it.
And as you note, contrast that to the former Soviet Union where the great tolerance of atheists likely wound a public or professing Christian either in prison or dead.
Comment by: Helen
23 12/15/06 3:47 AM | Comment Link |Kevin, my experience is that in general, atheists champion intellectual freedom at least as well as Christians.
People claiming to be Christians have a long history of putting others to death who refuse to be forced into saying their beliefs are right. There’s no intellectual freedom in that.
If none of these were true Christians then maybe none of the atheists who suppressed intellectual freedom were true atheists either.
Comment by: Helen
24 12/15/06 3:50 AM | Comment Link |Kevin wrote:
There are many Christians in the US who pride themselves on being intolerant of such things as women having equal roles with men, gay people being allowed to get married, etc. ‘Intolerance’ is praised in conservative Christian circles and ‘tolerance’ is mocked as ‘ungodly’.
Comment by: Kevin D. Johnson
25 12/15/06 8:18 AM | Comment Link |I wasn’t talking about the actions of individuals along the road of our common history, but about Western *Christian* civilization. It is our civilization that finally made atheism plausible and arguing as Dawkins and other atheists do that the son is greater than the father seems extremely implausible to me.
Comment by: Helen
26 12/15/06 8:55 AM | Comment Link |I disagree with you that Christianity per se is what has enabled intellectual freedom.
Comment by: Siamang
27 12/15/06 9:35 AM | Comment Link |If it’s intolerant to write something that says “I don’t believe the supernatural claims of Christianity” paint me with that brush, too.
People of all belief minorities are being threatened and harrassed in isolated incedents in America. Jews in the military have suffered from pressure to convert. A jewish girl suffered intense pressure in a small town public high school, where a minister giving an unlawful religious invocation singled her out and said “God is speaking to one person in particular here today…” An atheist father was recently acquitted of a trumped up charge of assault in an attempt to run them out of town when his daughter wouldn’t take part in a prayer before a basketball game.
Real persecution is occurring in this country. I’d like to what actions Dawkins has taken to call him intolerant.
Does that mean all Christians are being intolerant by saying “I believe all atheists are wrong?”
I hope not.
The two belief systems are in conflict, but I believe we can still talk about them without crossing the line.
Christianity IS intolerant of atheism. Hopefully Christians can be tolerant of atheists.
And vice-versa.
Comment by: JG
28 12/18/06 5:48 PM | Comment Link |Rod Liddle had programme tonight on atheism:
Rod Liddle is a somewhat controversial figure in the UK.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Liddle
Other links that may be of interest following this theme:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2101-2388270,00.html
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/index.html
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/talking_point_atheism.html
http://community.channel4.com/6/ubb.x?a=frm&s=162603557&f=69460501
Comment by: JG
29 12/18/06 6:00 PM | Comment Link |This article reflects negative feedback to Rod Liddle’s programme entitled: The New Fundamentalists.
http://www.eauk.org/media/dispatches-response.cfm
Comment by: Rachel
30 12/18/06 7:19 PM | Comment Link |Well said, Siamang! I think the important thing is that we all listen to and respect one another, regardless of our differences. (Are there any two people anywhere who agree on absolutely everything??) And we can certainly work together on areas of shared concern.
Siamang, have you heard of Edward Wilson’s new book The Creation? I’m interested to know what you think of his approach. Personally I see environmentalism as one area where atheists and people of faith can join together to work for the common good.
Comment by: Helen
31 12/19/06 5:08 AM | Comment Link |Thanks for the links, JG.
Comment by: joe
32 12/19/06 5:49 AM | Comment Link |Not really, Rachel.
There is a fundamental oxymoron in natural science (which interestingly mirrors some oxymorons in christianity).
On the one hand, species are dying all the time and this is perfectly normal within natural selection. In time, the best and most fit species will survive, and/or new species will emerge. Dawkins et al.
On the other - Species Are Dying All The Time!!!! E O Wilson et al.
So we’re being told that it is perfectly natural and acceptable at the same time as being natural and unacceptable.
Comment by: Siamang
33 12/19/06 6:06 PM | Comment Link |Joe,
That’s an intense oversimplification and misrepresents various views.
This is the classic is/ought problem. You can’t get an “ought” from an “is”.
Yes, it is so that animals go extinct, and that’s part of natural selection. That is not the same thing as saying we SHOULD hunt creatures to extinction.
Look at it this way: death is a natural part of life. That doesn’t mean we should murder everyone.
That’s the oversimplification.
First off, I don’t think Dawkins has ever advocated anything of the sort.
I recognize certain facts about the world. That doesn’t mean I ADVOCATE them.
Second off, there is no such thing as a “best species”. There are merely the living and the dead. Nobody wins a prize. Tell me, what’s the better species, the T-Rex or the Philodendron? It’s a nonsensical question.
So killing living things doesn’t make the survivors win more prizes. Life ITSELF is the prize. Killing things kind of defeats that.
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the issue.
Comment by: Siamang
34 12/19/06 6:07 PM | Comment Link |Rachel,
Yes, I’m interested in it. It’ll have to go on my reading list.
Comment by: Siamang
35 12/19/06 7:03 PM | Comment Link |I used first off twice above. Please change one to “Second off”.
Thanks!
;-)
Comment by: joe
36 12/20/06 3:17 AM | Comment Link |Siamung,
I spent four years studying natural science at university for two degrees. My statement is an simplification of a complex scientific discussion.
Whilst I might well be misrepresenting views in a short paragraph (and in trying to be funny), those are the positions in essence. Many biologists do not take a stand on biological conservation of species - and many in fact dispute the numbers generated by people such as E.O. Wilson.
Anyway, whilst I am happy to discuss these details with you, I suspect this is not the place to do it.
Comment by: Siamang
37 12/20/06 10:01 AM | Comment Link |Please come to the discussion board. It’s a great place to bring stuff like this.
“Many biologists do not take a stand on biological conservation of species…”
Please illuminate. What is your definition of “many”? You didn’t say most. You said many. What’s many to you, a hundred? A thousand? A few very visible ones?
What do most biologists think? I think the vast majority would call what we are going through currently a massive rise in extinctions. An alarming one. You set Dawkins on the side against E.O. Wilson in your earlier post, but that’s manifestly not the case. I just read a passage last night in Dawkins’ “The Ancestor’s Tale” where he raised the alarm at the number of human-caused extinctions we are currently facing. He offered no balm like “this is the natural order of things” or “this makes the survivors even better organisms”.
Anyway, pardon if I evince a natural reaction of skepticism to the use of “many” in a discussion that includes evolution. I have been well-trained to that reaction from corresponding with creationists who claim that “many” and “a growing number” of scientists accept their claims.
So when we say “many” biologists do not take a stand on biological conservation of species, I’d ask “who”? And for what reason? And what do you call not taking a stand?
Here’s the best summary I could find, from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction_event
Here’s an exerpt from a statement from the AMNH:
http://www.amnh.org/museum/press/feature/biofact.html
We can bring this discussion over to the discussion board if you like. But I dispute your uses of the word “many” to give weight to a minority view at best. I don’t think there’s actually much controversy that we are indeed facing a human-caused crisis in biodiversity.
Comment by: Pete Strobel
38 12/20/06 10:29 PM | Comment Link |What I find interesting in discussions about human-caused versus nature-caused is a curious assumption that humans are somehow not a part of nature. Now given an atheistic viewpoint, if there is no God and no Creation, and only Evolution, we are simply inside that system. There is no more human versus nature than there is butterflies, geckos and chantrelle mushrooms versus nature. We are causing mass extinctions because that is part of evolution. What if there was an elephant-caused crisis in biodiversity? Of course you laugh. Why? Because humans are, in some way, separate from nature. We naturally think of human versus nature because there is a sense inside of us… in our self-conceptualizations… that says we are somehow separate from nature: at least stewards and caretakers, because there is something fundamentally different within the human species that distinguishes us from the rest of “nature.” Or “Nature. Perhaps it is the human soul: whether wonderful or corrupt.
My point: When a Science based association like AMNH distinguishes human from natural, they are … perhaps unwittingly… admitting that there must be something essential that separates humanity from the rest of the natural order. I would call it the human soul. And to me that does point to God.
Comment by: Rachel
39 12/20/06 10:50 PM | Comment Link |Joe, what was the “not really” in response to?
Comment by: Siamang
40 12/21/06 10:37 AM | Comment Link |Pete,
I read it like that the first time through.
But you must realize that that’s not a scientific statement. They are using layperson’s language. They are using it to say this is primarily antropogenic and not part of the ordinary order.
It has nothing to do with a soul. They’re just saying “yes, we humans are causing this. It ain’t merely the climate shift since the last ice age.”
If you think there’s something essential that seperates humanity from the rest of the natural order, I agree. We’re the one with nukes!
I’ll argue that it’s civilization, it’s warfare, it’s sheer power to change the world.
If you want to call the power a soul or a God, go ahead. But it’s no more than power to me. Sadly it’s power to do great harm.