Background: A Conversation At IHOP
(To skip ahead to my reaction to the speech, Click HERE)
First, a bit of background on a recent development that took place regarding an experience with an Episcopalian church member the night before the speech.
I live in the Bible Belt, in Fort Worth, Texas. As an atheist who thinks it’s important to inform people that the concept of God is a bad idea (thus a major reason I write this blog), I often attend venues that encourage candid religious debate. One I attend about once every five weeks or so these days is on Thursday night. It’s at this highwayside IHOP about 30 minutes east of where I live.
This evening was interesting. There was a die-hard Christian woman who believed the rapture was imminent, a gray-haired lanky Presbyterian criminal defense lawyer, a boisterous older man who looked like a slightly more overweight but much more outgoing Bernie Sanders (he read voraciously about Christianity and atheism and hesitatingly never gave you a clear answer when you asked what his religious affiliation was), and a Seventh-Day Adventist woman in her thirties. Several sporadic regulars like me didn’t show up this time, but we had a couple newcomers. There was trans woman in her mid twenties who seemed to identify as pagan, and there was a man in his twenties there who was Baha’i (not the trendy hippy kind – he was actually raised in the faith and took it fairly seriously). Later, a deacon who worked full-time in the Episcopalian church showed up.
And then there was me, resident anti-theistic atheist.
The discussion usually had a set format, but because we were a relatively small, yet interesting, crowd this time around, it was free-flowing that evening. The man with the Baha’i faith was pummeled with questions so that we could clarify a part of his faith that gradually came into focus. Apparently, if I understand correctly, he thought that there was a truth that was revealed in his religion, but that was expressed in all religions. The thing was that you had to study and search for it – the Baha’i faith, he said, was one that respected careful study and effort that people took part in in order to realize the deeper truth behind all religions. Or something like that.
Of course, we asked several questions, and the Christians and the man with the Baha’i faith eventually came to an understanding. They both had books they thought were sacred. They both believed that each other might have a part of the truth. Now, the ultimate truth, the thorough truth – that they disagreed on. The Baha’i man seemed less sure about it than the Christians. But there was some common ground.
I’m giving you this background because I think the Episcopalian deacon who came in at around 11pm (I had come in a 10pm) connected to this sense of community in a way that may have influenced the way I saw Obama’s speech at the African Methodist Episcopal church. For starters, she didn’t really think the Bible had as much importance as what the other Christians in the Bible Study were giving it. Her concept was basically that the church is like a sculpture of Christ, and we’re trying to get to know this Christ outside of us. Like the man with the Baha’i faith, she thought there was a truth, there was a Christ and a God, but it was something that we got to know by being in community and being aware of a sense of tradition (which seemed, when interrogated, fairly synonymous with “heritage”).
Although the man with the Baha’i faith somewhat understood her, all of us at the back room of that IHOP jumped at her. The Christians asked how she knew who Jesus or God was without using the Bible. I wanted to know if there was anything – anything at all – outside of the mere sense of community for her to know where God was coming from or who God was.
Eventually, conversation splintered. It was around midnight when she came to where I was sitting due to frustration with the other Christians, it seemed, and tried to tell me where she was coming from. We ended up talking until about 2:30 that morning. And I finally had to conclude, after trying to distinguish our positions over that time, that we were not that different; we just called things by different names.
For example, when I asked her if she actually believed that Jesus rose from the dead, she hesitated. I asked how sure she was, and she winced and said, “Maybe 60%.” Which is still insanely high, obviously, but it shows that at least she’s thinking about it. Indeed, however, the more we talked, the more I realized that the actual resurrection of Christ wasn’t the point for her.
“Christ” was a comfortable metaphor. It represented the utopia that, in one way or another, we’re all trying to get to. I mean, that doesn’t work for me – “Christ” seems, to me, too tied up with the Bible to be of much use. But for her, “Christ” was another word for the hope in a community. It was personalized because it made her comfortable, and gave her a certain amount of peace. And, having been a Christian before, I realize that there is, indeed, a sense of peace to be found in Christianity – but in my experience it’s a peace attached with just taking the Bible for granted, which is extremely problematic. Her concept of Christ – a Christ she did not know, but which she grew to love and understand as a representation of her experiences with others – was, in many ways, functionally undifferentiated from my atheism.
I don’t quite know if her views are orthodox Episcopalian views – I got the sense that she was much more liberal than the norm. But still…it was difficult to see a strong difference.
And it wasn’t for lack of trying to differentiate it.
I had to admit – I think morality is something that is created by a community, that is based on careful measures of well-being, and that seeks to avoid harm for as many people as possible, and this requires not blindly following a book. She thinks the same thing. She would just use different language (language that I think is problematic, but still) to describe it.
The biggest difference is that she thinks it’s embodied in some other entity, and I don’t. But because she relies so much on the world we experience to define that entity – without limiting it to a particular book or, it seemed, a particular church, necessarily – then functionally, we are very close in the way we operate. I mean, in most cases I would have a problem with God as a being who people give undue authority to. But if you think God exists for your own personal comfort, and yet refuse to presume you know him except through your experiences in the real world – without reference to a single book or strict cordoning off in a specific tradition – then this does not seem to be a God-concept that is invested in too much authority. It seems, rather, a way to embrace the world, so to speak, and some call that embrace nothingness, some call it “spiritual,” and some (although there is no evidence for it) call it God. God would be a metaphor for the conclusions we are trying to reach from the experiences of our existence.
Now, I don’t think there’s good evidence for consciousness existing outside the brain, but I don’t see it as necessarily a harmful conceptual metaphor for living life, if it encourages you along a road you walk anyway.
I’m not saying I believe it. But it makes sense that someone would choose this.
Now, it’s been shown that the most religious people are in places that tend to be poorest. It’s because of that that I think religion is a survival function. People are religious, I think, because they are passionate about trying to survive in a very difficult world without a friend. What’s offensive, to me, is when wealthy evangelists, preachers, political leaders, and campaign bankrollers control who people think this God is and, thus, control the people in disturbing ways. But the basic sense of peace and satisfaction some people get from believing in God that is behind all the bullshit that usually comes with belief in God (including blind allegiance to a puppet authority), I have a soft spot for, and I see how people could connect to it.