The movie Real Men is at best a guilty pleasure. A womanizing super-agent teams up with a wimpy suburban family man to save the world, one long dad joke after another. For me, the scene which captures the style of the movie best is when the protagonists are attacked by a bunch of rogue CIA agents… all dressed in clown suits. It begins with the line “Who are those clowns?” and finishes as the last clown standing looks around and says (and if you couldn’t see this coming when the scene began, you should hang your head in shame) “I’m working with a bunch of clowns”, before running away.
I suspect it’s not easy working with a bunch of clowns. And distancing yourself from them is no doubt a tempting thing to do. Especially when they are, in the words of Real Men, “bad clowns”.
It seems to me that that’s what happened when Harold Camping predicted the rapture on May 21, 2011. There’s no doubt that Camping is a ‘bad clown’. A man with two previous strikes for predicting days of judgement in 1988 and 1994, and who considers every church to be apostate, is arguably not a ‘go to’ guy for understanding the Christian faith.
So when his prediction appeared to become a key news story, it is not surprising that most of us were less than impressed that Camping’s views were simply asserted to be ‘Christian’, as though there were a reasonably large block of believers actually thinking that the rapture would occur on May 21. It didn’t help that journalists, showing either a typical ignorance of the details of their subject matter, or a typical disregard for reporting those details, tended to announce his prediction as a prediction of the end of the world—something that Camping claimed would not occur until October 21 (and still does, so we’ve got that to look forward to). It helped even less that people reacted to the news as though it was an attack of the clowns—and seemed to use it to smear Christianity generally with the silliness of which Camping was guilty.
The Christian response from what I saw was, by and large, to take a page out of Real Men; saying, “I’m working with a bunch of clowns”, and running away—joining in in pouring scorn on Camping, and clearly setting out the scriptural reasons why no human being knows when the end will come. In various ways we pointed people to Matthew 24:36 and declared—“Take no notice of the clown in front of the curtain, no-one knows the day or the hour”. We mocked the idea that Christ would return on May 21.
I get the instinct; no-one wants the Christian faith, still less God our Father himself, to take collateral damage due to one bad clown.
However, I think focusing on distancing ourselves from Camping’s prediction was the wrong strategy, and will almost always be the wrong strategy in these kind of ‘Camping moments’, when a Christian says and does something genuinely cringeworthy to do with the end of the world or anything else. When people laughed, or sneered, or were just bemused by Camping’s prediction of ‘the end of the world’ on May 21, 2011, to what were they reacting? Were they scoffing at the idea that someone could know exactly when the world would end? Or were they reacting to the idea that God would end the world and judge everyone? Which one was the real reason for their reaction?
I suggest that people were not, in the main, incredulous about the possibility of knowing the date. I don’t see enough evidence of people’s biblical literacy, or interest in the details of the Christian faith, to believe that people in our secular societies were going, “This guy thinks he knows the exact date when Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth, will return. Hasn’t he read Matthew 24:36? What a clown!”
No, I think people were reacting to the idea that God would end the world in order to judge everyone. That’s what the laughter, or just the bemusement, was over. The fact that somebody (again!) put a date on it simply made it low hanging fruit. People were reacting to the idea that God will judge the world. That was the true punch line to the joke.
In that light, I think our response was seriously insufficient. The primary thing we should have said was, “Yes, Camping is right. God will bring this world to an end in judgement. And he will do it very soon. You have to take the opportunity now to repent and believe.” Once that was heard clearly, then we could add, “And by the way, no-one knows the date. Just read Matthew 24:36. Camping is a bit of a clown for thinking he could.” We should have pressed the point that people were finding it difficult to come at (there will be judgement), rather than focus on the bit that they already grasped (no-one knows when it will come).
God will judge the world, and has set a day when he will do so. He’s given notice of this by raising from the dead the man who will do the judging, Jesus Christ. That might be an inconvenient and socially awkward truth, but it is the truth, and people need to arrange their affairs now in the light of it. We need to make it clear to them that sane, reasonable people (i.e. you and me) believe that. It isn’t just the hang-up of weird people with their own radio show.
It’s not fun, or funny, working with clowns. But sometimes we need to do so as fools for Christ. Next time we have a Camping moment (and we will, whether it be about dates of the end of the world, politics, morality, or a range of other possible gaff-ridden areas) will be one of those times. So be prepared, step up, and play the clown.
Hey Mark
What a great post! I always appreciate your perspective . Thanks for this again.
Russ
Great reflections as usual, Mark – I’m amazed that such a ‘classic’ flew under my movie radar in my senior year of high school – although after YouTubing the scene in question, I can see why I preferred ‘Clue’ over this when faced with a choice in the video store.
Hi Mark,
I guess you didn’t get to see my comments on Tony’s last post, but I’ve been meaning to ask you this question since I read your 3 part article on briefing (a while ago now) on a guide to Modern Theology.
I was wondering whether you coould recommmend a few books to read on that a little further (understanding the development of Modern theology etc. I haven’t read much on the topic and I was hoping whether I could find a little more detailed account to help me understand things better)
Thanks.
Thanks for this helpful post. I think its always tempting to distance ourselves from unwise believers – but its a good reminder that we still have a lot more in common with them than we do with the mocking world.
Blessings,
Martyn
What is it about religion in general that attracts the people who you refer as “bad clowns”? And more unbelievable and extreme their message is higher they get in their organisation. Camping (like many other dooms day religions) managed to get great number of followers and amass tens of millions of dollars and fund thousands of bill boards and busses ads around the world. Why do religious people follow these leaders?
Christians have now claimed for two thousand years that “God will bring this world to an end in judgement. And he will do it very soon”. How is this claim of “very soon” for two thousand years any different than what Camping claims?
Hi Mark,
1. I agree that we kinda shoot ourselves in the foot when we just scoff along with everyone else. We do want to communicate that the judgment is a real and serious thing. After all, there is wisdom in acting as if it could be tomorrow.
2. However, I think we misjudge the wider world when we assume their scoffing is focused on the claim that God would judge. That would be an athiest’s reaction, but not necessarily that of an agnostic. The latter might say “Camping’s a clown because he claims some sort of knowledge that’s just not available to us”
3. I was in NYC on May 21, and the media focus was on the fact that his family didn’t believe him, and that people were willing to leave their jobs because of the claim, and, if memory serves me correctly, I remember reading one article in mainstream media which identified this as a fringe view. The real interest was in people’s reaction to the claim, rather than the claim itself.
In short, Christianity didn’t get the broadside you suggest. Maybe it was different in the UK.
Hi Russel, Nathanael, and Martyn,
Glad you guys enjoyed the post, thanks for letting me know. Good to hear from you again Nathanael – and yes, Real Men is one of those ‘undiscovered treasures’ that will take second place to pretty well any movie you care to mention :D.
Hi Hank,
I did see your comment – this post was written and emailed in to Matthias Media a few days before Tony’s post went up. Since I made the comment on Tony’s post that sparked you original comment, I’ve been doing other things that have kept me away from the threads. So apologies for the delay.
A further reading list is a difficult thing to create for that series, and would be somewhat dependent on which areas from that series you wanted to look at further (which of the three essays), how dense a book you wanted to read, and whether you wanted someone doing something at greater length or more primary source stuff.
One of the reasons why I was asked to write that series is because there’s so little out there that attempts to do it in an accessible way. In writing it I drew on my B.Arts studies in European History, and my own reading and studies in history, history of ideas, philosophy and theology.
There weren’t many books doing the same kind of thing just at greater length and detail, although there are some that do bits of what that series was doing.
So give me an idea of your interests and how dense a book you want and I (and anyone else following the thread with a penchant this way) can offer you some ideas.
Hi Peter,
I agree that religion does. I’m not sure it is a peculiarly religious problem however.
I worked with a medical doctor, an atheist, who was quite convinced that aborigines could live in the outback but not hold down jobs in a modern economy because they were less evolved. They could live off the bush, but not learn a profession. A friend here at Oxford worked with a physicist, again an atheist, who had internalized Singer’s ethics and come to the conclusion that children lacked the rationality to be considered human beings until the age of seven – despite having two children himself, aged five and three.
Go back through the history of free thinkers in the West and you’ll find most of the ‘big names’ had views that modern secular minded people would shudder at. The same facility that enabled them to stand apart from the religious convictions of society as a whole often led them to some very exotic beliefs.
My own view is that people have an inbuilt capacity to think and act wrongly – it’s easy to make errors in our thinking, and hard to think well. It’s easy to act badly and often takes real discipline to act well.
So even when people take on board something that is good and right and true (like the gospel, or science) that isn’t a silver bullet that guarantees good thinking or that they won’t then pervert some aspect of it.
In the words of 1 Peter 2:15-17:
Almost everything worth knowing has things hard to understand in it, and unstable people warp it to their destruction. And invariably some section of the populace (big or small) finds the idea attractive and grabs it and supports it. While I think there’s a spiritual dimension to our knowledge of God that gives the problem a distinct flavor in the religious sphere, I think we see this problem broadly in the human race.
We are too complacent, at this point in time, about our own rationality, IMO. It is something hard won, and easily lost. The Campings should remind us ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ not, ‘how could they be so stupid?’
Hi Peter,
Yars, I did toy with leaving that sentiment out, as I’m not sure that Christians have put things that way for all of the last two thousand years.
At one level there possibly isn’t much difference. It depends a bit on what one thinks the Bible means when it uses words that Christians try to capture the sense of by saying it is ‘very soon’. If you think what is meant is a straightforward statement like, “in the next five/ten/twenty/fifty/four hundred years” then it’s obviously fairly similar to what Camping said.
I don’t think that’s what either the Bible has meant, or what Christians have meant (at least most of them) when they’ve used that language, however. I think that three things are usually in the picture.
First, the Bible assesses time against its story of God’s actions to redeem the world. So the NT talks of the present time as being ‘the last days’ and the ‘fulfilment of the ages’. That doesn’t seem to be primarily a statement about the amount of time left before the end, although it can seem that way to the casual reader. It seems to be more a statement of the quality of time we are now in. That is, there is no more Scripture to be written, no more revelations to be given, because the story of God’s work to redeem humanity has been finished. There’s nothing more left to happen now except the end. Hence it’s the ‘last days’ (and hence the end is ‘soon’) because from the point of view of how the Bible tells the story, acts one, two and three have occurred and we’re just waiting for the epilogue. The last two thousand years that matter a great deal to us, are quite irrelevant from the Bible’s point of view of history—all the important stuff has already happened, and we should live accordingly.
Second, the promise of Christ’s return is not like the prediction of the return of Halley’s comet. It’s not an impersonal calculation of the numbers (part of Camping’s problem it seems) but a commitment by a person. And that means that the ‘delay’ in his return is not like a prediction that doesn’t come to pass, it is more like a parent saying, “I’ll give you till the count of three or else There Will Be Trouble” and then counting One and Two quickly, but waiting a bit before saying Three. That seems to be a big part of the point of 2 Peter 3:
There is no mention of ‘soon’ here, but it is addressing the question of why it hasn’t happened yet (and that two thousand years ago). And the basic point is, it isn’t slowness, but patience, God giving people a chance to repent. But it will come and will come suddenly and will take everyone by surprise. No one will expect this Spanish Inquisition.
And that leads to the third meaning. One of the ways a guard tries to be alert is to act as though the thief is going to break in at any moment, that the theft will be ‘soon’. One of the worst ways to stay ‘ready’ is to go, ‘tomorrow will be like yesterday, nothing ever happens’. ‘Soon’ is a frame of mind, that focuses one’s attention and shapes one’s behaviour now around the future that one knows will happen and will be decisive.
In my view, all of that is lost when someone does what Camping did and puts a date on the coming of Jesus. So, in my view, I think that seen from the way in which the Bible is using the language (and I think most Christians over the last two thousand years) there’s not much similarity beneath the surface between this and what Camping did.
Hi Martin,
Great to hear from you. I think I agree with a fair bit of your comment (obviously your point 1, but also bits of 2 and 3 as well). There are some points of disagreement too though, and I’ll focus on those.
Agree on the whole. I did try and flag that the reaction wasn’t just scoffing by including ‘bemusement’ in there, but I can accept that the overall impression was one of scoffing. I’m not sure I would divvy things up quite the way you have here however.
The atheist will “scoff” (that word having a range that includes bemusement) at the idea of God. The agnostic will scoff at the idea that we could know (or depending on the agnostic, might accept the possibility of knowledge but not be convinced themselves one way or the other at this point in time) if God exists, and therefore if we could know that he will judge. The end result for both is to “scoff” at the idea that God is about to judge the world as any kind of basis for action (which was how Camping was using it).
But it’s not just them. Lots of theists will “scoff” too. There’s quite a number of people out there who believe in God in some sense and still wouldn’t accept the idea of a universal day of judgement, or that God will bring this creation to an end. I think all these various paths (atheist, agnostic, theist), while having important differences which shouldn’t be just swept aside (your point), all end in the same place on this question – some kind of less than wholehearted acceptance of the idea that God will judge the world as something that should guide how we live now (my point).
Yars, it was a broad brush with which I painted, fair cop. Counter-examples there are aplenty. My defence is the ‘were there one or two angels at the tomb of Jesus?’ argument. I wasn’t trying to discuss comprehensively how people responded to Camping. I was looking at how Christians responded to negative responses to Camping (or an anticipation of negative responses to Camping). It was a narrative with a specific focus.
However, I think there is evidence that it did provide the grounds for a fair degree of scoffing. I was on online that day at different times on a part of the web that enabled real time chat by a very large group of people, mostly from the U.S. It was the joke of the century every time I logged on there and used as evidence for arguments on the stupidity of religious belief (and no, it wasn’t an Atheist Anonymous site or the like). Similarly I noticed a couple of people make comments (in Oz and the U.S., not the UK) online in different places about how people they knew went to an End of The World party that day.
More important than those anecdotes for me was watching how the website GetReligion handled the story http://www.getreligion.org/2011/05/what-she-said-post-apocalypse/ http://www.getreligion.org/2011/05/the-rapture-of-harold-campings-claims/ http://www.getreligion.org/2011/05/averted-apocalypse-media-meltdown/
GetReligion is a site by professional journalists who are also non-liberal believers of (mostly) Christian faiths (I think there’s a Jew in the mix at this point in time) that focuses on analysing how the American media do the ‘Godbeat’.
Their take was that the story was handled okay in places, but that there was a fair bit of using it scoff more generally, and that the choice of the story itself was a bit off – a guy no-one had heard of who had done this twice before wouldn’t normally count as ‘news’. If you follow the links above to the relevant pages and then follow the links further I think you’ll see that there’s evidence that this was the catalyst of some mockery generally in places like the Daily Beast and Huffington Post.
I agree that wasn’t the whole story, hence my ‘bemusement’ comment, but I think there was some epic scoffing going on in there too, not least in editors selecting this story and giving it such a profile in the first place. And I think people were overly sensitive to that, from what I saw, in how we responded to it.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your comment.
Yes, the difficulty of finding further resources on this area is probably why I sought to ask for your help.
I guess I’m looking for something like what you have written, but that would go in a little more details for me to see the ‘implications’ of such and such movements and philosophy a bit clearly.
In Part – 1 of your essay, (due to the nature of it being a brief essay), you gave us breif history of 3 factors that have changed in the days of Enlightenment. But, I couldn’t quite see all the implications myself clearly. It would be good if I can have something that would lay out these relationships (e.g. between Kantian philosophy & Truth being eternal and thus never being established by unique historical evetns etc.).
I hope that made sense. Thanks.
Mark,
Your atheist medical doctor or physicist might have strange thoughts but they don’t start an organization based on that, have absolute truth holy books and creeds, have regular meetings, ostracize people who leave and ask people to donate millions to try to convert more followers to get more financial resources and man power.
This is why your comparison of Camping and “free thinkers in the West” is just non-sense.
Remember what God Jesus himself said “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.” Well, to me it looks like that everyone of Jesus’ generation have tasted death. Jesus surely ment “soon”
Christians claim that God and Jesus talk to them all the time also telling about future events… Some Christians believe in that some don’t
Hi Hank,
Okay, that’s helpful, and I can do something along those lines.
David Wells’ series of books beginning with No Place for Truth and then God in the Wasteland tries to show the links between cultural developments and what is going on in the church, although his focus is more on what’s happening on the ground in churches and on evangelicalism than where my focus was. Nonetheless a very good worked example of looking at the two things together, helped me a lot.
Os Guiness The Gravedigger File and Fit Bodies Fat Minds are like David Wells, but from a different angle. They are also far less demanding to read than Wells.
Colin Brown’s Christianity and Western Thought Vol 1 and Philosophy and the Christian Faith are probably one of the best introductions I know of to things like Kant and the empiricism/rationalism debate (which you pick out specifically) with an eye to what is of particular interest to believers. Like all such works others would challenge his take on things here and there, but you have to start with something and tweak it as you go.
Hope that helps, let me know if there’s something else/more you’re looking for.
Hi Peter,
Nice to see a New Atheist playing to their stereotype. I don’t think what I said is ‘just non-sense’ Peter. My point is that clowns are found everywhere, that people are prone to either coming up with bad ideas or supporting them.
Sure, religious people tend to make a movement out of that, and atheists don’t. I did say that there were some differences because religion involved the knowledge of God.
I don’t think that’s absolute though. Marxism is an atheist ideology and it involves canonical texts, regular meetings of the comrades, a view of history that it considers absolute truth, it tends to kill people who get in its way, and has been well financially supported over the years. Now, sure, you can run the Dawkins stupidity that it doesn’t count because it is not done ‘in the name of atheism’, but that’s just daft. Marxism is an atheist ideology, most Marxists are atheists, atheism is fairly important to its ideology. There have been other examples in history of free-thinkers getting a following around them for some strange idea.
But sure, as Putnam and Campbell’s book American Grace seems to show, being actively involved in organised religion causes (and they show it isn’t just correlation, people change after they get involved in a religion) people to be joiners – to be more involved in groups of all kinds: religious ones, but also community, sports, charity, politics. The less people are actively involved in religious attendance and the more down the atheist spectrum they are, it seems that the less likely they are to be involved in any groups. So, yeah, those two atheists I mentioned didn’t start a group or join one to do with their dumb ideas. That was just part and parcel of their lives. They didn’t join anything or support anything.
Religious people are joiners, so their bad ideas get spread around, and they do more good works. Atheists are not joiners so their bad ideas get spread around less and they do less good works. That seems to be how that cashes out.
And none of it has anything much to do with where you’re likely to find a bad clown. Bad clowns are found everywhere.
Yes, and very few Christians over the last two thousand years have taken that to be a reference to Christ’s return. Some see it as the transfiguration, some the cross, some the resurrection, some the ascension, some the giving of the Spirit, some the growth of the Church (to pick off the main contenders). But Christ’s return? Very, very few.
The people who tend to see it as a reference to Christ’s return tend to be the same people who see the Gospels as bad historical records written after Jesus’ generation had already tasted death; either deliberate fabrications, or collecting legends that had grown up around Jesus over many years. So we have the irony that the Gospel writers created or included something that clearly showed that Jesus had got it wrong even though they were trying to do the opposite – a view worthy of Dan Brown’s approach to history.
Sure, and when you find one of them feel free to run that argument. But even they won’t claim that their words from God should be added to Scripture. My point had to do with Revelation with a capital R – an authoritative word from God for the whole people of God that functions as the rule for the people of God. Even those who think that God still gives revelation with a small r will hold that it must be in line with, and cannot add or contradict, the canon of Scripture. God has no more promises to make, and no more promises to keep, other than the return of Jesus.
Hi Mark
You said:
“Now, sure, you can run the Dawkins stupidity that it doesn’t count because it is not done ‘in the name of atheism’, but that’s just daft. Marxism is an atheist ideology, most Marxists are atheists, atheism is fairly important to its ideology.”
Perhaps not so daft, Mark. Dawkins has no doubt actually read Marx and would therefore know that Marx rejected any role for atheism in his critique of capitalism. Marxism per se is explicitly not an atheist ideology.
Cheers
Brian
Hi Brian,
Given how many comments I’ve heard relayed to me in Oxbridge circles about Dawkins’ ignorance of even the history of philosophy of science, let alone broader philosophy, I think the idea that he “doubtless” has read Marx is a bit of a stretch.
Again this is going to come down to terms. As I understand it, Marx rejected atheism (like the kind esposed by Dawkins) because he saw it as still part of the problem of a capitalist society. Articulating a position that one does not believe in God does not go far enough. It will invariably replace “God” with something that does much the same function (in the case of New Atheism, that’s usually “Nature”). Capitalism simply produces religiosity as a matter of course. He got that the kind of atheism represented by New Atheism is parasitic upon religion and functions as a substitute religion. No quarrel with him there.
Marxism was aimed at the creation of a set of conditions whereby the question of God’s existence became meaningless – you’d neither affirm or deny the idea of God as there were no longer the conditions whereby religion came into existence.
Now, sure, it’s important that Marx saw himself opposed to the kind of atheism represented by New Atheism, and saw what he was doing as a more radical critique. And so he rejected the label ‘atheist’. That’s important to get a sense of the distinctives of his approach
But if atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of God (and many atheists go for that) then Marx was an atheist, and Marxism is atheistic. There is no question that Marx was unrelentingly hostile to religion in all its forms, was hostile to the idea of God, and saw Marxism as a way to remove the question completely from the human condition. That’s usually seen as a hallmark of ‘atheism’.
I’ll agree that Marx saw the kind of atheism that argued against religion as wrong, called that ‘atheism’ and so rejected the label.
But I think the label can still apply to him as long as one realizes that his ‘atheism’ is almost as opposed to the kind of ‘atheism’ represented by New Atheism as it is to religion. A person whose criticism of atheism is that it hasn’t gone far enough is either a different kind of atheist or we can create another term that will do much the same job. You say potato and I say potato.
Hi Mark
You said:
“Marx was an atheist, and Marxism is atheistic. There is no question that Marx was unrelentingly hostile to religion in all its forms, was hostile to the idea of God, and saw Marxism as a way to remove the question completely from the human condition.”
Marx may have been an atheist, but that doesn’t mean that his atheism played a substantive role in his philosophy, or that he was ‘unrelentingly’ hostile to religion. Marx felt that, capitalism would inevitably fall and religion would not be sustainable post capitalism, so he didn’t require the overthrow of religion as part of a revolutionary program. Indeed in the famous passage in the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right he denounces attacks on religion:
“To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
So, for Marxism, one could rightly go even further than Dawkins’ contention – that it was not done in the ‘name of’ – and yours that ‘it will come down to terms’. Marx neither wanted nor needed to impose atheism. In capitalism religion is to be preserved as a necessary comfort and post capitalism it would be freely abandoned.
Cheers
Brian
Hi Mark,
New Atheists play to their stereotype until Christians learn to not to make a false analogies. Just like you still try claim link Marxists killings to atheism. North Europe was full Christian Marxists/communists after all Jesus supported the common ownership of resources inspiring Marxists/communists Christians. What you claim about Marxists could be used for any European Monarchs who killed in the name of Christianity. But of course Christians deny that their actions were somehow related to Christianity.
Why ad hominem against Dawkins, and lies and hate towards atheists?
Jesus died, the generation died and nothing happened. So these people left Christianity, become Preterist or re-interpret it by coming up with all kinds of speculation like you mentioned.
I think this tell more about the circles your friends hang out than about Dawkins. Why do Christians circulate these kind nasty rumours? It is just like Christians are still telling a lie how Darwin converted to Christianity on his deathbed.
Christians seem to be so scared of Dawkins that they just constantly need to insult him
Hi Brian,
Does Marxism work on the basis that God exists? No.
Is Marxism predicated on the basis that either we just don’t know at this point in time that God exists or human beings just can’t know one way or the other? No.
Does Marxism have an explanation for where the idea of God comes from that grounds it in the lack of an objectively existing God? Yes.
Is its controversy with mainstream atheism that arguments against God won’t free people generally from a belief in God’s existence, and in fact demonstrate that that kind of atheism needs religion to give itself its identity? Yes.
I agree with everything in your comment (except the ‘unrelenting hostility’ bit – my impression is that while he acknowledged that religion plays a necessary comforting role in capitalism, he personally was hostile to religious expressions in all forms) and I don’t think it somehow shows that Marxism either isn’t interested in whether God exists or is neutral on the question.
Marxism is predicated on the non-existence of God.
Most people would think that ‘atheism’ is a reasonable description of that, I’d suggest.
It only isn’t a reasonable description if you hold that ‘atheism’ requires lots of personal energy expended in arguing against religious belief. As I think there are other forms of atheism around than New Atheism, not all of which define themselves so totally by their attack on religion, I think Marxism is another form of atheism. It’s a view of reality predicated on the non-existence of God.
Hi Mark
“Marxism is predicated on the non-existence of God.”
I don’t think Marx’s philosophy entails atheism; and I’m joined in this view by many Christian Marxists. A lot of readers let Marx’s personal views, and some of his (incorrect, as it transpires) sociology and predictions, colour their reading of the rest of his philosophy. That’s a shame because Marx’s critique of capitalism is one of the great insights of Western philosophy – not to be ignored by Christians or atheists.
Cheers
Brian
Hi Peter,
Heh, that wasn’t the stereotype I was talking about, but nice try.
Marx was inspired by Jesus? He read Jesus’ teaching and went, “We need a society more like what Jesus taught?” Thank you, Dan Brown.
Yes it could, and I don’t deny there is a link between religion – even true religion – and bad behaviour. I get as tired with Christians trying to say that the Christian message has never inspired seriously wrong behavior as I do with atheists not being prepared to admit the same for their side and doing just absurd things to try and make out that only Western individualistic atheism is the only atheism that exists – and remove the link between atheism and Marxism and other collectivist forms of atheism. All strong beliefs seem to me to lead sooner or later to bad behaviour, even as they can sometimes lead to good behaviour. Bad ideas lead to a lot more bad behavior, but even good and true ideas can be linked to bad behavior.
As I said, human beings demonstrate an inbuilt ability to take even good things and use them as a fuel for bad thinking and behaviour.
Learn the terms if you’re going to play gotcha with them Peter. “Stupidity” was a description of an argument by Dawkins, and so therefore is not ad hominem. It is easy for even intelligent people to make stupid arguments. I’ll happily acknowledge that Dawkins is a Very Smart Guy, and a good scientist. I’ll also happily acknowledge that on religion he has some very dumb arguments. And there’s nothing ad hominem about that.
And that atheists do less good works was one of the findings of the book I referenced. “Good works” being “making a contribution to the community they live in”. The researchers found that actively religious people clearly make a much bigger contribution to the welfare of their communities. If that kind of finding is ‘hate’ then take it up with them, I suppose as social scientists they’re used to it.
And why is it that you’re happy to assert that religious people spread bad ideas more often, and for me to agree with you, and that is not ‘hate’, but when I point out that that seems to be connected to atheism’s lack of community participation more generally then that is ‘hate’? Same kind of comment, one is okay, one is ‘hate’? That just looks partisan.
Thank you Dan Brown, but for bonus points you need to also weave a reference to Templars in there as well.
Yes, they hang out in circles where they talk to his colleagues. Because the comments were related to me by people in conversation with his colleagues, who consider him a very good scientist but (and you need to hang around the English a bit to get the nuances of this) “woefully ignorant of anything outside of science”.
Yep, he’s got me trembling in my boots. I don’t think I’ve ever insulted him. And it isn’t the Christian in me that he annoys. It’s the part of me that did a B.A. in history focusing on the history of ideas, and has gone on to study philosophy. It’s obvious to me that Dawkins needs to get up to speed in these areas if he’s going to pontificate on them. And it’s obvious he hasn’t, and isn’t even interested in doing so. My opinion on him for that comes through, but it has little to do with his unbelief. Some of my best friends are unbelievers, after all
.
Hi Brian,
Yes, but many interpreters of Marx’s thought would say that you and they were wrong. Your view is hardly the majority interpretation of Marxism in the relevant scholarship, is my impression.
I think Marx himself would have been surprised to discover that a view that the idea of God has no basis in reality, and has come about due to economic developments, is compatible with a view that God really does exist.
Completely agree. Marx is undoubtedly one of the most important thinkers of the last two hundred years, and even those of us who think that capitalism has done a better job in being put into reality and doing good for people than marxism need to listen carefully to Marx. He gets a lot of things right.
Mark,
Nice strawman. Maybe you are not familiar with Marxists/communists in northern Europe.
People act based on what they believe, not based on what they don’t believe. Blaming atheists’ bad behaviour on their non-belief of gods is incoherent just like blaming Christian bad behaviour on their non-believe in Zeus.
Christian books of course claim that. Religious people give to their own charities making that as ingroup giving and not helping the whole community. Donating blood benefits all not just your own ingroup and in that contribution atheist give just like theists. Study has shown that church going people are more likely to steal if they can get away with it (stealing from the community). Less religious countries give more than more religious countries (global community). If you would do fact checking you would contribute more and not turn father against son and son against father in our society.
Could you please point out what was wrong with my statement? Did something happened late first century?
Christians seem to talk about Dawkins almost as much as about Jesus. If his arguments are “stupid” and “dumb” why don’t Christians just ignore him, but keep on talking about it. Surely highly educated people see the “stupidity” and leave atheism.
Classic ending. I guess that gives you a license to keep on attack Dawkins and atheists
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your reply and kind further reading list that you provided for me.
Hopefully, I’ll get my head around those books during the holiday.
Hope your studies are going well over in England, and perhaps I could meet you in person if you come back in Moore before I graduate!
Thanks.
Hi Peter,
Yes, my friends have taken to calling me ‘Dorothy’.
Not something I’ve put serious work into, but I don’t think it really has a bearing on what Marxism is. I think we need to look at Marx’s writings for that. I know that’s a strawman and all, but still.
Yeah, nice position for a debate on the internet, makes an easy way to rack up the rhetoric points. I think most people can see that New Atheists are convinced that God does not exist and that a belief in the non-existence of something counts as a belief, not just the absence of a belief. You put too much energy and time into attacking the existence of God for it to simply be an absence of a belief.
The book in question is not a Christian book. It is a well-researched sociology book. I doubt I would consider the authors to even be Chrstian in a sense that I find meaningful (maybe they are, but that’s not the impression I get). It argues that a lot of your claims here are wrong. Feel free to show why it is wrong.
I’m aware of the arguments derived from the Scandanavian countries, and that well-done but far too limited study on theft, in favor of atheism and responded to them at nauseating length last time a New Atheist came on and did what you’re doing now – hijack a post that has little to do with New Atheism and try and turn it into Standard New Atheist Talking Points. Feel free to chase down that discussion if you’re interested. I’ve got little interest in saying again, so soon after the last time, why they are bad arguments.
Sure. The only access we have to what Christians in the first century thought about whether Jesus predicted the end of the world is the New Testament. And we find that, for as long as we have records about how Christians understood the New Testament, they didn’t think that Jesus Christ predicted the imminent end of the world.
So to say that Jesus did actually mean that by those words, and that what people did was then reinterpret them in a way so clumsy that guys like you can immediately see that it isn’t what Jesus is saying is speculation without any evidence. There’s absolutely no evidence for it apart from the words and the fact that no-one thought the words meant that. And it requires us to think that (as I suspect you also think the Gospels aren’t written early) that they didn’t tweak Jesus’ words to make it more clear that he hadn’t mean the end of the world (even though they knew that up until recently everyone thought those words did mean the end of the world).
It’s a Dan Brown view of history. Speculating against the evidence, creating one’s own reconstruction for which there is no evidence, and assuming the guys doing it were just really stupid. My original training was in history, and this kind of thing would never get treated as ‘history’ in any other field than religion.
Really? We talk about Dawkins as much as we do about Jesus? I’m going to the wrong churches then.
I think most Christians do ignore Dawkins. But he puts a lot of energy into arguing against Christianity. It perhaps isn’t surprising that some Christians invest a bit of time into responding to their critics.
Given that Dawkins seems to think religious belief is stupid I suppose you could also ask the question of him. If he simply does not believe in the existence of God, and that has no effect on him, and he thinks religious belief isn’t rational, why doesn’t he (and you) just ignore it?
Once again, your position here seems a bit partisan. I have no problems with Dawkins criticising religion, and no problems with religious people of all stripes responding. Why do you want the debate to be one-sided?
And why is what I say ‘attacks’ but yours isn’t? Either both are, or neither are.
Hi Mark
“Your view is hardly the majority interpretation of Marxism in the relevant scholarship, is my impression.”
I don’t know if it is the minority interpretation of Marx scholars (if you’ve done the numbers, please tell), but that isn’t the point. It’s certainly a feasible view with some pretty significant supporters – Macintyre, Lowy, Bloch, Garaundy, Girardi, et al. I think they have demonstrated that, at least, there is no logical incompatibility between theism and the main tenets of Marxism. This is no surprise given the scant attention Marx actually gives to the subject of religion (and even less to God). I’d be interested in who you see as the main supporters of the view that Marxism ‘entails’ atheism – I’ve not encountered such a strong view among any of the scholars of Marx I’ve read. More importantly, though, there have been many Christians who have considered themselves Marxists and have taken up the struggle. It’s hard to deny that they were Marxists or that they were believers. So belief in God and Marxism don’t seem to be incompatible either theoretically or in practice (or should I say ‘praxis’).
It’s an interesting question as to whether Marx’s views on the origins of religion are incompatible with a belief in the existence of God. I can’t imagine that they are logically incompatible: it’s not difficult to conceive of a belief that has its origin in some sociological phenomena, but is nonetheless true.
Cheers
Brian
Hi Hank,
Glad the list was in the right ballpark, and hope it does the job you want.
And yeah, hoping to be finished, *ahem* “soon”. Be nice to meet you when that eschatological moment occurs
.
Good article, but the Matthew 24:36 is used out of context. The end of the age in question was the end of the Old Covenant, not the end of the New Covenant. It was AD70. It all came to pass as Jesus predicted, upon that generation (and an online word search for “generation” in the New Testament is a terrifying eye-opener if you are a first century Jew).
The gospel will be triumphant in history (although not triumphalistic!) The leaven will spread until every nation is discipled. So, we are probably still in the early church.
Taking the New Testament out of context doesn’t help. The last trumpet concerned Old Covenant Israel. The walls of Herod’s Jericho came down, but that was just the beginning…
The second coming is history. Jesus came to Jerusalem just as He came to Babel and Egypt – in judgment. He received the Old Covenant faithful and the New Covenant martyrs.
But the second resurrection and the final judgment is yet to come. We shouldn’t conflate these events.
So not believing in something becomes belief in the non-existence of it which counts as a belief. And according to you (who criticizes Dawkins’ philosophy) people act on this belief which is a non-belief. Nice.
So first you criticize Dawkins’ ignorance. They you show that you have to research charitable giving and only rely on a book that confirms your view. You haven’t bothered to look peer review studies contradicting your claim, but try to shift the burden of proof of your claim to me. Please don’t criticize anyone’s ignorance any more.
Excuse me but I have not introduced any new topics. You brought up all discussion topics, I am just responding to your claims. How is that “hijacking”?
And I thought 1 Thess tells how the world is coming to an end any day now. Some Christians quit their jobs waiting for the end so 2 Thess was written. And Montanist movement, and John’s number of the beast / Nero…
And come on now. Nobody assumes that “the guys doing it were just really stupid” and nobody “is speculation without any evidence”. Jesus said “there are some standing here who will not taste death”. Just answer me; did all of them not taste death? Why do you think Jesus generation did not believe his words? Surely they believed what Jesus said.
Well you are ignorant of his position yet you criticize his ignorance. Dawkins has stated many times that religions should give up their privilege position in a society. Dawkins’ tax money goes to religious organization. Churches get tax exceptions and hundreds of millions of taxpayer money. Church charities are inefficient and often taxpayer funded. Churches us taxpayer money to discriminate when hiring people (even for office jobs) and protect abusers. Dawkins thinks that society is better without religions dominating the decision making (see northern Europe). You seem to criticize Dawkins a lot without knowing his positions. Have you even bothered to check if Dawkins is ignorant of the history of philosophy of science before you started spread this rumour? Is it ok to spread the rumour without checking out Dawkins?
I’m ok with multi-side debate. Let’s just look at the both sides of the issue. If it about Christian Marxists, charitable giving or Dawkins’ views. I just get the feeling you stick with “the Christian facts” without reading anything else.
Here’s a free lecture that might help on the Old Testament context of the imminent predictions in the New:
http://www.wordmp3.com/details.aspx?id=12171
It show’s how little both modern conservative scholarship and the Campings of the world understand the New Testament as part of the Bible.
Peter T.,
Your last paragraph correctly alludes to Mark Baddeley belonging to the category of NOMA-believers; those who believe in Non Overlapping Magisteria, ie separation of the fields of science and faith, temporal and spiritual as described by Gould, and no expert in either camp should cross the line. Especially scientists into the religious camp who might be bristling with intent! We know religious practicioners also cross the line into science, and the result is we get ID etc etc – speaking of working with clowns!
Dawkins (from memory) vociferously argues against such a fanciful divide, and points to the creeping nature of science that is slowly nibbling away at the religious/theological patch.