In the Beginning…

8/14/2023

It has been an interesting week all around. Many challenges, many opportunities, and of course the occasional “WTF?” moment, that usually comes when I read something so unbelievably ignorant (usually on Twitter) that I just stare blankly at the computer screen waiting for what I’m reading to transform itself into a piece of scholarship. Which never seems to happen.

I’m feeling a little punchy today, which is usually a good time to hit the tropes of lazy atheists. I’m not talking the atheists who have sat and deliberated the idea of God in their head, done research, tried to balance things out in their mind, and found that the idea of a supernatural presence, at least as presented by the various fan clubs of God, as something that just doesn’t make any sense.

I have tremendous respect for these people who have just found the whole concept of religion to be lacking. I have always been both a man of faith, and a man of science. It is what led me to my own “distilling” of my faith. The fashionable term now is “deconstruction”, which describes the essential function of going back to the most basic building blocks of your faith — simplifying it into something that you can work with. I use “distill” as my term because I not only simplified my faith to it’s most basic root, I have also committed myself to rooting out ideas and “doctrines”that have worked their way into the “faith” that conflict with the teachings of Jesus, and his ideas of a well-spent life. I have never been a Bible literalist, and judging from the population in Christianity that do see the Bible that way — well, literalism leads to a lot of shenanigans that Jesus would not approve of.

The atheists that I am specifically targeting today are the lazy ones. I should define that. A “lazy” atheist is the fair weather atheist — the type of person who has no moral or principled opposition to a specific faith or denomination, he (or she) “just doesn’t wanna”. Doesn’t wanna go to church, doesn’t wanna get involved, doesn’t wanna help others, doesn’t wanna think really. They don’t claim atheism as anything other than a higher brow cover for for an IDGAF attitude about anything but me and my little world.

Now, that, in and of itself, is fine. God requires nothing of us. God suggests to us that our life on earth will be far more fulfilled and complete by “loving our neighbors as ourselves”. That was taught and demonstrated to us by Jesus. It is a core principle in most other major religions as well. Being a kind person with a loving heart is a life lived as God desires for us. It requires no brick & mortar church, it requires no doctrine, it requires no clergy. You can just do it. Many atheists do live their lives in this manner, and are active in making society a better place. They are not the problem.

The problem is the lazy atheist, and he isn’t a problem to God. He is actually a problem to the thinking atheist. It is a similar problem that Christianity has with its evangelical denominations. I don’t fault evangelical believers — they have been hammered by their clergy to incorporate a bunch of man-made doctrine into God’s desire for us. They have been poorly educated, by teachers who have been poorly educated into equating human legalisms with being Godly.

This poor education reflects badly on Christianity, as it highlights the man-made legalisms over God’s direction to us. It is what leads people to see hypocrisy and judgmentalism, where they are supposed to see love and kindness.

The lazy atheist, instead of examining his own soul/spirit/consciousness, sees the hypocrisy an rightly calls “B***S***”, and then proclaims to be an atheist, not because of any deeply held conviction, but because he’d rather eat Cheetos by the bagful while binging Netflix, instead of trying to be a decent human being.

This is not lost on the lazy atheist — they are aware that they just don’t want any inconvenience. Honestly, I can have some sympathy for that. We all work hard, and continuously, seemingly at a war stance with society. The emphasis is on preserving what you have rather than trying to help others. Most of us are in exhaustion mode, an it is very hard to care for others when you fell like you are drowning yourself. Society, in its ongoing quest to turn us all into profitable cogs in the machine, does it’s best to feed that fear.

But back to the problem. Rather than just settling on the “I just don’t wanna” bother with this crap, declares for the higher ground of being an atheist, without examining why a person would actually choose to become one. In their zeal to justify their laziness, they don’t actually learn about atheism, but they assist by mocking Christians who are poorly educated in their faith, with an even stupider counter-argument. In effect, they become the evangelical wing of the atheist movement by badly arguing miseducation and applying hypocrisy with a broad brush to anything “churchy”.

I will toss out a favorite of mine, out of Genesis (which does align really well with the scientific proposals as to the order of the origins the universe and life on earth, if not the timeline itself — that’ll be another article). Everybody knows about Adam & Eve. They had 3 sons. Where did everyone else come from? And right away, from the very start, we have an incest problem, which is a no-no in western civilization (unless, of course, you are royalty).

This is one of the classic Bible illiteracy problems of all time. Everybody can tell us about Adam, and Eve, and the serpent, and the tree, and Cain, and Abel. That starts in Genesis Chapter 2. It is the story of God creating a man — Adam, and a woman — Eve to live in a special little garden that God made that had everything you would need in it. Sort of like a special habitat in a zoo for a treasured species. It was to be a special relationship between Adam and God, but oopsie…

So where did everyone else come from? Science tells us that the general “hominid” designation originated in Africa, and people migrated out and developed genetic changes over time to adapt to the different climates moved into. Which makes sense. A study was done in 2000 (https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/02/science/the-human-family-tree-10-adams-and-18-eves.html) claiming that if humanity originated from a single mating pair, the original couple would have needed 10 male and 18 female offspring to give us the current mix of DNA we have in modern times. Perfectly logical. But that also assumes mixing DNA with others not in the direct bloodline. a problem for incest.

It is funny though that even though Genesis Chapter 1 is arguably the best known story in the Bible (the creation), everyone seems to miss that in verses 26–31 mankind was created, as males and females, and let loose over the earth to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it”. No restriction was made on them for consuming anything on earth as needed — including as food.

It was not until after God had “rested” on the “7th day”, and began the “8th Day” to build the garden in Eden and create Adam and Eve to be “God’s Chosen” (God’s pets??). Once they got tossed out of Eden for eating from a tree that God forbade them to eat from ( or maybe they peed on the couch), there was a whole world of people to have additional children with. Go back and check it. I’ll wait.

This works if you read the Bible literally or as allegory. Science backs this analysis. It is why this is such a classically stupid thing to argue about. Yet this is the one I see most from the lay atheists arguing with the misinformed evangelicals. If you would like to take it further — as there were no restrictions on the “other” humans he just let loose on the planet, no one is “damned” except Adam & Eve who had to meet a restriction that no one else did. And apparently, their kids. God then went many generations before getting in touch with one of Adam’s descendants, Abram (soon to be called Abraham) and made nice again. Conditionally. Of course.

As I often say, we can fight over our differences, or we can celebrate those things we hold in common. Whether we believe in God/Source/Origin/Consciousness or nothing at all but human decency, we do not need to fight. If you walk with love in your heart, and treat others with kindness and respect, you are upholding the one universal desire of God, or if you prefer, the moral imperative of being human. It causes no harm, either way, and it pleases God, either way.

Take that into your week and try it. It could be the difference you are looking for. And some kindly advice to the evangelicals on both sides of the God issue — up your game so that you at least sound like you have a clue. You’re doing yourselves and your cause great harm by advertising that you have no idea what you are talking about.

In Peace, Faith and Love

RL Brandner, Ecc. New Ecclesiastes Ministries