The View From the Ramparts: Hating on God
Self-actualization led us to ‘anti-deism’
We’ve always had atheists and agnostics among us — and for most of our recent history, the more self-aware of them took a quiet pride in not being as obnoxious as some of the more overtly ostentatious religious adherents. They even had a dismissive nickname for the more sanctimonious among we Christians: “Bible Thumpers.”
Today, mere atheists are viewed as suspect by the more militant nonbelievers: We might call this second group “anti-deists.”
It’s not just that they don’t believe in God — it’s that they are actively opposed to the possibility of God. They are offended that God just might actually exist.
They are also opposed to the public expression of faith by their Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic and Jewish neighbors, and regularly sue to block this or that public observance of faith. They take great pride in their obvious superiority to their ignorant, backwater neighbors who believe in the “invisible sky ghost,” and their self-identity seems just as wrapped up in their rejection of faith as the self-identity of the most devout believer is wrapped up in their faith.
And one other thing: They can be just as sanctimonious as those whose beliefs they mock and oppose, yet whose behavior they all too often emulate.
I think it was the self-actualization movement of the 1960s and ’70s that led to this anti-deism. Pop psychology books like “I’m OK - You’re OK” preached a kind of self-oriented alternative to religious faith, in which the individual was elevated to the role formerly held by God in our culture.
In film and television, religion mostly disappeared in the 1970s and ’80s — unless it was playing the role of villain. The Star Wars and Star Trek franchises are wholly secular in world view — the one religious community in the Star Trek universe, the Bajorans, are treated as a rather backward, primitive folk, not as enlightened as their secular Federation protectors. Captain Sisko is nothing if not patronizing in his interactions with Bajoran religious leaders — but after all, he has direct access to their gods (who turn out to just be highly advanced aliens).
And so by the millennium, with no ameliorating influences for a wide swath of the population, our culture had arrived at the point of the self as the ultimate authority: Whatever I want or desire is right and just because I want or desire it.
Although a string of court decisions have chilled them out some, our rather intolerant anti-deists spent much of the early 2000s sending threatening letters to school boards, city councils and other local government bodies claiming that if they did not cease opening public meetings with a prayer, they would be sued for violating the First Amendment.
These letters, of course, utterly ignore the reality that the Supreme Court opens each session with a prayer, that both houses of Congress open with prayers and have continued the practice of the Continental Congress of having chaplains to lend spiritual guidance to their members, that the president is sworn into office with an oath to God.
Perhaps those should be the place to start arguing that public prayer is unconstitutional, and not the Milpitas Unified School District or the Suwanee River Water Management District.
It is, of course, far easier to intimidate the little fish, though.
Faith, or the lack thereof, is entirely personal — and takes in a vast spectrum of degrees. The anti-theists were delighted when Mother Teresa’s private diaries showed she harbored deep doubts about God’s existence - claiming that this proved the entire enterprise of religious faith was a fraud.
The truth, though, is that every believer, if honest, will admit to harboring similar doubts.
In his extended reflection, “Against an Infinite Horizon,” the Catholic priest Ron Rolheiser writes, “Faith is not a question of basking in the certainty that there is a God and that God is taking care of us. Many of us are never granted this kind of assurance. Certitude is not the real substance of faith. Faith is a way of seeing things.”
Someone else once wrote that if there are a billion Christians on the planet, then there are a billion flavors of Christianity - for every person understands God a little differently.
I would wager that the same likely holds true for Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism - not to mention Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, etc.
Having lost significant legal and political battles the last half-century - from prayer in schools to abortion to marriage - most believers would settle for a live and let live solution.
And I suspect most atheists and agnostics would go along with that, as well.
But the hardcore anti-deists are having none of it.
They want total victory, unconditional surrender from believers.
During the Obama administration, military leaders consistently caved to demands from a group of atheist veterans who demanded that chaplains no longer be allowed to offer counseling consistent with their denomination’s teaching. A Catholic, Baptist or Eastern Orthodox chaplain in the military today would be treading on very thin ice if they were to counsel a sailor, soldier, Marine or airman against entering a same-sex marriage - even (or perhaps especially) if that service member came to them for honest advice about how their faith approaches such matters.
This intolerance for any kind of religious dissent from the prevailing secular cultural norms is not only unattractive, it is profoundly undemocratic. UnAmerican, even.
Even when this nation was overwhelmingly Christian, it was still illegal to impose a religious test on public office. Atheists were allowed to run in elections, to get jobs in government agencies, to teach at public universities.
Now, having seized control of much of the public infrastructure, the more militant and strident among them want to impose a reverse religious test on public life.
We saw this during some of the recent Supreme Court nomination hearings in the Senate, when several nominees had their religious faith openly attacked by members of the Senate.
Again, we must be careful to differentiate between those who merely do not believe, and those who would prohibit others from being allowed to express their beliefs.
Most atheists I’ve met do not believe because they feel the preponderance of the evidence points against God’s existence. I suspect that most of them, upon dying, would be wondrously delighted to be proven wrong and to be welcomed into God’s loving embrace.
The anti-deist, on the other hand, would be mightily outraged upon dying to find out that they had been wrong and God did exist. The kind of people who post “F— God” memes on social media are not likely to suffer a lessening of their pride simply because their earthly journey has finished.
I imagine many of them, upon arriving in the afterlife, will continue to be angry at God for having the temerity to exist.
That’s an all-consuming kind of anger - the kind that just might take an eternity to burn itself out.
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Why is everyone getting so extreme? I do see a lot of true haters/anti diests especially on social media. Maybe it’s our peacetime, time of abundance that has the restless youth looking for dumb things to be passionate about. It’s no longer live and let live and enjoy our differences. They must not realize how boring it would get if everyone believes the same thing
Again we don’t lose our rights overnight. It happens and has so a little at a time.
I look at these anti-deists as I do any zealot for trying to impose their beliefs and tell me I’m wrong. While I might not be able to definitively prove the existence of God, the can not prove he does not exist. Thus faith!