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Tuesday, 24 October 2006 16:07 |
 | | Marc Mullinax |
"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
ÇƒÓ George W. Bush
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"To you Iëm an atheist; to God, I am the Loyal Opposition."
ÇƒÓ Woody Allen
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MARS HILL ÇƒÓ What do you do when your god is not enough? The short answer: Kill it and get a new One.
Most human conceptions of God are too small to be real, or helpful. The small god I think about most (I cannot even capitalize its name) is the god of competition, the one prayed to in times of war and national crisis by patriots, a god who actively enables our forces (the good guys) against the "bad guys." This is the god who takes sides, who considers our puny pages of human history to be pivotal points on which the entire universe rotates.
See Mark Twainës "The War Prayer" (http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/making/warprayer.html).
Repeated
exposures to this and other puny gods in national, sacred arenas tend
to reinforce these godsë existence and exposure. As an adult I can
counteract this because I think. But to parade such divinities before
children is a capital crime. Just repeat something enough and it
becomes true, especially to trusting kids. However, is mere repetition
enough to create and sustain truth? Is truth subject to majority votes,
the ballots of which are written by the shrillest voices?
I think not.
Let me therefore
urge upon the faithful a healthy dose of atheism. Yes, atheism ... that
hated word by people of faith, who will be better off when they include
the roughage of atheism in constipating diets of unquestioning theism.
My atheism
prescription is NOT the active disbelief in all divinities. Rarely do I
meet the rigorous, conscious atheist who bravely faces each day without
god. When I do, I take my hat off to them. (Iëve removed such a hat
exactly twice in my life.) Real atheism is extremely difficult and
rigorous, and thus rare.
Instead, I urge
an atheism that kills ÇƒÏ through intentional, conscious neglect ÇƒÏ the
gods with which one grew up. This is "faithful atheism."
Most of us have
already done this. We have killed-by-neglect our childhood gods that
populate our fairy tales, dreams, and early religious education
programs. You know what I mean: the gods that are all sweetness and
light, who inspire saccharine Hallmark cards with dainty doggerel to
remind us ÇƒÏ despite the evidence ÇƒÏ that Someone truly is in charge.
Well, just
preach this inoffensive Helen Steiner Rice, let-go-and-let-god of
orchids and roses to the 30,000 children that died today, and
yesterday, and will die tomorrow, from preventable causes. Tell them
and the little children who go blind each day in Third Worldland that
the worm boring into their eyeballs advances the mighty, perfect will
of the Creator, and that god requires their suffering so the universe
can hum along.
Tell it to the
12 million victims of the Holocaust, that their deaths were
pre-ordained at the beginning of creation in order to make the universe
a balanced place.
Active faith
requires saying NO to some gods, and killing them, or we risk spiritual
suicide. We must put at serious risk a scapegoat religion in which some
god blames the weak, victims, and the poor for their conditions. If
faith is too lazy to exert the proper effort to believe with integrity,
then we get the small, petty gods we deserve.
Give me a
faithful atheist, one who views the world with both eyes, and hears
with two ears. Atheism completes faith because it clears out the
undergrowth to allow strong growth. It scrapes off the barnacles that
prevent the ship from its full efficiency.
Is your faith blocked up? Try the atheist purge.
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Dr. Marc S.
Mullinax, chairman of the philosophy and religion departments at Mars
Hill College, can be reached at mmullinax-at-mhc.edu.
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