God Delusion, Part 1: Nominal Christians

I love to read. To those who know me well, this will come as no surprise. I actually have trouble reading just one book at a time. For example, I am currently reading C. S. Lewis's Perelandra, Sinclair Ferguson's Heart For God, and Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion. It's this last book that this post (and probably more than just a few to follow) is about.

Quick summary: it's pretty much the Atheist Manifesto of this decade (published 2006). It's been wildly popular, especially with college-age religious studies majors and anti-right wing (as opposed to just left-wing) journalists, lobbyists, and more. Dawkins first gives his own view of religion and where he stands, then explains the God Hypothesis, focusing on the theistic view, then he gives some arguments for the existence of God, and from what it looks like, the rest of the book is about why those arguments are wrong.

Obviously I'm not reading this book because I like having my particular viewpoints reinforced. There are reasons, though. First and foremost, I think that our beliefs and convictions are better described as leanings and tendencies until they are strengthened by opposition. When we have to defend our views against someone who disagrees with them, we are forced to truly think about and critique what we claim to believe. Does it make sense? Are our beliefs reasonable, or are we buying into what our itching ears love to hear? By looking at this educated, well written attack on religion (which he usually identifies as Christianity), I am forced to articulate, in my head and the margins if nothing else, my own educated, reasoned defense.

A secondary reason that I'm reading this book is that so many people I know are reading it, mostly non-Christians. I want to be able to have an informed discussion with people about the book and its claims on God, Jesus, the Bible, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Atheism, Darwin, Creationism, Einstein, and everything else that he talks about. In a similar vein, there are plenty of nominal Christians out there who read a reasoned attack such as The God Delusion, and because it sounds good to them (it is a well-written book) and because they aren't practiced at reading critically and identifying some of the faulty, unmentioned, underlying assumptions that his arguments are based on, they try and fit the book into their worldview.

Obviously, this jump from Christianity to Atheism (two wildly incompatible worldviews) seems extreme. But, you'll notice, I used the qualifier of "nominal." By that I mean a person who calls themselves a Christian, but lacks firm belief in the basic tenets of Christianity. This begins, in my opinion, with an underlying assumption that the goal of Christianity is to make us into nice, unoffensive people who never cause arguments or ruffle other's feathers. Because of this spreading mentality, more and more people are willing to accept small compromises in the ethos of Christianity in order to avoid a dispute. These Christians lack the courage to say or believe something that culture disagrees with: in short, they think more of the opinions of men than of God. More and more compromises leads to a blend of so many conflicting statements and ideas in a belief structure that it loses any semblance of structure it may have had.

At this point, it is possible to fit anything into a worldview. Thus, Atheism and Christianity become compatible. It sounds like an oxymoron to me, but there are people out there who seriously call themselves Christian Atheists and see nothing wrong with that identification. John Shelby Spong's secular humanism blended with Christian morality (and what I see as Zen Buddhism) combines with Joel Osteen's health and wealth gospel that perverts the promises of scripture and Richard Dawkins's conception of a 'deeply religious non-believer' ("Spiritual, not religious" is an increasingly common self-identification these days) to produce a worldview that sounds great to the non-Christian and retains enough of a Christian terminology and morality (at least in the non-offensive areas) to come off as truly Christian but is completely devoid of the heart of Christianity. Nominal Christians.

I've kinda strayed a little, but that's how these things go. As I read the book I'll post my thoughts and reactions and the rabbit trails that come off of those. If you're up to it, go get the book and read it too. $15 in paperback. Admittedly, it's kind of a selfish request: it's one thing for me to read and wrestle with this stuff on my own, but I covet conversations about this kind of thing. Again, it's only after we've examined, defended, and expressed our beliefs that they truly hold weight for us.