Fair and unfair critique of christianity

een artikeltje voor Apathetic Agnostic.


In response to Ask the Patriarch 47:
“Can agnostics create a criticism of theology that they cannot themselves refute?”

… on fair and unfair critique.

The question of whether an almighty deity is capable of creating an impossibility for himself isn’t a particularly interesting one. No first year student of theology would ever feel befuddled by it, at least when he has his wits about him. A common churchgoer might, on the other hand, but this is only because the common churchgoer is just as ill-read as his peers who stay at home on Sunday mornings.

Can God create a stone He Himself cannot lift? Can God devise of a task so fiendishly difficult He cannot even do it? These are all non-questions, aiming at semi-religious strawmen. At least Homer Simpson’s question has the merit of being funny. Living as a man of faith in today’s world can be challenging I’ll readily admit but since I do not believe in a stone-lifting Popeye-in-the-sky, these bits of rhetoric slight-of-hand are not amongst my problems.

A perfect example is ‘taking the Bible litterally’. Taking a religious text litterally need not be wrong but interpreting texts thousands of years old is, often enough, comparable to walking a tight-rope. The danger of seeing one meaning in a line and then accepting that as the litteral truth is very great. In this way, we force Scripture to speak, as an echoing well, with our own voice. ‘Reading litterally’ then becomes nothing more than an excuse to block all dissenting opinions.

There are two categories of people who habitually handle metaphysical conumdrums this way and they are fundamentalists and non-believers, especially those of the last kind who mean to debunk or even attack. The fundamentalists, in forcing on the living faith their own parochial views, set the cart before the horse.

I should like to focus on the non-believers, however. Living faith, born of this age and circumstances, has, of necessity, to be able to withstand all questions. However, the questions also have to be phrased properly. In this case, this means that questions on the nature of a deity should use the mode of address of the religion in question.

Science, we hear from many writers on this site, should not be misrepresented. Well, neither should this be done to religious thought. The concept I have of God is far more complicated and realistic than that of a bearded geezer on a golden throne in the clouds with all manner of super powers. What we have here is the distilled wisdom of centuries and centuries of thinking, hoping and trying to express it all in our limited words. It is not science and it shouldn’t be treated as science, nor should it be forced into the straight-jacket of crystallized meaning.

As non-believers, agnostic readers will often have grown up without the extensive education in the jargon and ideas of one religion. This should not pose any problems for them in their daily lives and I will like them just the same for it. However, I can get a bit irked when outsiders shoot off one-liners and look at me in triumph. A rapid conversion to their views is usually expected. This gets to me, especially since I myself treat non-believers with respect and have actually tried to explain my own views, on this site. I am and remain always open to questions.

Maarten van den Driest

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