Agreeing with an atheist

I’m reading the book “The God Delusion” (2006) by famous (and somewhat self-acclaimed “aggressive”) atheist Richard Dawkins, known for his activism against religions.

I’m halfway through the book and must say that I am enjoying it. He makes some good arguments – but is yet to convert me. However, I am finding, as I have found in the past that I am agreeing with an awful lot of his atheistic standpoints. I have always said that if I had to believe in the kind of God that most atheists understand God to be, then I too would be an atheist.

Take for instance the following list of religious (Christian) beliefs Dawkins list (and by default disagree with) and with how little I agree with (or rather with how much I agree with Dawkins). My comments are in square-brackets.

• You will survive your own death. [If, by this, Dawkins means the innate immortality of the soul, I also disagree with the statement.]

• If you die a martyr, you will go to an especially wonderful part of paradise where you will enjoy seventy-two virgins (spare a thought for the unfortunate virgins). [Okay, not a Christian doctrine, but of Abrahamic religious origin. I do not believe in this. Whether God has pleasantries installed for martyrs I don’t know, but I disagree with the idea that militant “holy war”-martyrs is looked upon favourably by God. I disagree with the statement.]

• Belief in God is a supreme virtue. If you find your belief wavering, work hard at restoring it, and beg God to help your unbelief. [Belief, Hope and Love are listed as priority virtues. So I do agree with this statement. However, Dawkins’ understanding of “belief” and mine differ as we will see with the next point. But for the sake of arbitrariness let’s say agree fully with this statement.]

• Faith (belief without evidence) is a virtue. The more your beliefs defy the evidence, the more virtuous you are. Virtuoso believers who can manage to believe something really weird, unsupported and insupportable, in the teeth of evidence and reason, are especially highly rewarded. [My understanding, from the Bible, of what faith differs greatly from Dawkins understanding of the term. Faith, as I understand it, is “trust” and not blind-faith. I don’t think that God is an adherent supported of blind-faith. So I disagree with the statement.]

• Everybody, even those who do not hold religious beliefs, must respect them with a higher level of automatic and unquestioned respect than that accorded to other kinds of belief. [I think we should allow people their differences in opinion. We do not have to agree, but we can respect such differences and even engage in dialogue. So I only halfway disagree with this statement.

• There are some weird things (such as the Trinity, transubstantiation, incarnation) that we are not meant to understand. Don’t even try to understand one of these, for the attempt might destroy it. Learn how to gain fulfilment in calling it s mystery. [To start with, I do not belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. Neither do I think we are barred from contemplating the other two, or similar, “mysteries” mentioned. Our musings over such concepts cannot destroy them, just as little as our musings over the number “0” can destroy this mysterious icon of “nothingness”. I mean, what is “nothing”. It is not something I can mentally grasp, yet mathematics claims it to exist. So, although I believe in the inspired concept of the incarnation, for instance, I disagree with the statement.]

Let’s for a moment remove the statement referring to Islamic-doctrine (the one about the martyrs and the seventy-two virgins), which will leave us with five archetypal Christian doctrines. I disagree with 3½ of the 5 statements. In other words, I agree with 70% of an avid atheist.

Where does that leave me? Clearly a heretic in the eyes of conventional Christendom! The interesting thing is that my reasons for agreeing with the atheist 70% of the time are not because of materialistic, Darwinian reasons, but because of my (Biblical) understanding of God’s character. Isn’t that ironic?!