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.The pitting of faith against reason and belief againstknowledge undergirds the common assumptions aboutwhat is public and what is private.One recalls A.N.Whitehead s maxim that religion is what a man doeswith his solitude.Even one so religiously musical (the92 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 93Can an Atheist Be a Good Citizen?phrase is Max Weber s) as William James could write inhis great work The Varieties of Religious Experience, Religion.shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and ex-periences of individual men in their solitude. In thisway of thinking there is a radical departure from thepublic nature of religion, whether that religion has to dowith the ancient gods of the city or with the biblicalLord who rules the nations.The gods of the city and theGod of the Bible are emphatically public.The confine-ment of the question of God or of the gods to the pri-vate sphere constitutes what might be described aspolitical atheism.Many today who are believers in pri-vate have been persuaded, or intimidated, into acceptingpolitical atheism.This powerfully contributes to what Ihave elsewhere described as the naked public square. Political atheism is a subspecies of practical ormethodological atheism.Practical or methodologicalatheism is, quite simply, the assumption that we can getalong with the business of life without addressing thequestion of God one way or another.Here the classicanecdote is the response of the Marquis de Laplace toNapoleon Bonaparte.When Napoleon observed thatLaplace had written a huge book on the system of theuniverse without mentioning the Author of the universe,Laplace replied, Sire, I have no need of that hypothe-sis. When God has become a hypothesis, we have trav-eled a very long way from both the gods of the ancientcity and the God of the Bible.Yet that distance was nec-essary for the emergence of what the modern world hascalled atheism. The remarkable thing is that the defenders of reli-gion so uncritically accepted the terms of the debate set93 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 94American Babylonby the Enlightenment philosophes and their later imita-tors.It is far from evident that the God whom Chris-tians affirm and the god whom atheists deny is the samegod.Recall the statement of Blaise Pascal, that toweringseventeenth-century mathematician, about his affirma-tion of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the Godof Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars (Dieu d Abra-ham, Dieu d Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et dessavants).Modern atheism is in many instances the prod-uct not so much of antireligion as of religion s replace-ment of the God of Abraham with the god of thephilosophers, and the subsequent rejection of that ersatzgod by other philosophers.René Descartes determinedthat he would not accept as true anything that could bereasonably doubted, and Christians set about to provethat the existence of God could not be reasonablydoubted.Thus did the defenders of religion set faithagainst the doubt (understood as rational inquiry) thatis, for most thoughtful people, a necessary part of faith.Talk about affirming or denying the existence of Godis itself problematic.That way of talking can suggest tothe unwary that God is one existent among other exis-tents, one entity among other entities, one actor amongother actors, whose actions must conform to standardsthat we have determined in advance are appropriate tobeing God.The transcendent, the ineffable, that whichsurpasses our ability to conceive or speak, the biblicalGod who acts in history, was too often tamed and domes-ticated in order to meet the philosophers job descriptionfor the post of God.Not surprisingly, the philosophersdetermined that the candidates recommended by thefriends of religion did not qualify for the post.94 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 95Can an Atheist Be a Good Citizen?The American part of this story is well told by JamesTurner of the University of Michigan. The natural par-ents of modern unbelief, Turner writes, turn out tohave been the guardians of belief. Many thinking peoplecame at last to realize that it was religion, not science orsocial change, that gave birth to unbelief.Having madeGod more and more like man intellectually, morally,emotionally the shapers of religion made it feasible toabandon God, to believe simply in man. Turner s judg-ment of liberal religion is relentless: In trying to adapttheir religious beliefs to socioeconomic change, to newmoral challenges, to novel problems of knowledge, tothe tightening standards of science, the defenders ofGod slowly strangled Him.If anyone is to be arraignedfor deicide, it is not Charles Darwin but his adversaryBishop Samuel Wilberforce, not the godless RobertIngersoll but the godly Beecher family [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.The pitting of faith against reason and belief againstknowledge undergirds the common assumptions aboutwhat is public and what is private.One recalls A.N.Whitehead s maxim that religion is what a man doeswith his solitude.Even one so religiously musical (the92 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 93Can an Atheist Be a Good Citizen?phrase is Max Weber s) as William James could write inhis great work The Varieties of Religious Experience, Religion.shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and ex-periences of individual men in their solitude. In thisway of thinking there is a radical departure from thepublic nature of religion, whether that religion has to dowith the ancient gods of the city or with the biblicalLord who rules the nations.The gods of the city and theGod of the Bible are emphatically public.The confine-ment of the question of God or of the gods to the pri-vate sphere constitutes what might be described aspolitical atheism.Many today who are believers in pri-vate have been persuaded, or intimidated, into acceptingpolitical atheism.This powerfully contributes to what Ihave elsewhere described as the naked public square. Political atheism is a subspecies of practical ormethodological atheism.Practical or methodologicalatheism is, quite simply, the assumption that we can getalong with the business of life without addressing thequestion of God one way or another.Here the classicanecdote is the response of the Marquis de Laplace toNapoleon Bonaparte.When Napoleon observed thatLaplace had written a huge book on the system of theuniverse without mentioning the Author of the universe,Laplace replied, Sire, I have no need of that hypothe-sis. When God has become a hypothesis, we have trav-eled a very long way from both the gods of the ancientcity and the God of the Bible.Yet that distance was nec-essary for the emergence of what the modern world hascalled atheism. The remarkable thing is that the defenders of reli-gion so uncritically accepted the terms of the debate set93 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 94American Babylonby the Enlightenment philosophes and their later imita-tors.It is far from evident that the God whom Chris-tians affirm and the god whom atheists deny is the samegod.Recall the statement of Blaise Pascal, that toweringseventeenth-century mathematician, about his affirma-tion of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the Godof Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars (Dieu d Abra-ham, Dieu d Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et dessavants).Modern atheism is in many instances the prod-uct not so much of antireligion as of religion s replace-ment of the God of Abraham with the god of thephilosophers, and the subsequent rejection of that ersatzgod by other philosophers.René Descartes determinedthat he would not accept as true anything that could bereasonably doubted, and Christians set about to provethat the existence of God could not be reasonablydoubted.Thus did the defenders of religion set faithagainst the doubt (understood as rational inquiry) thatis, for most thoughtful people, a necessary part of faith.Talk about affirming or denying the existence of Godis itself problematic.That way of talking can suggest tothe unwary that God is one existent among other exis-tents, one entity among other entities, one actor amongother actors, whose actions must conform to standardsthat we have determined in advance are appropriate tobeing God.The transcendent, the ineffable, that whichsurpasses our ability to conceive or speak, the biblicalGod who acts in history, was too often tamed and domes-ticated in order to meet the philosophers job descriptionfor the post of God.Not surprisingly, the philosophersdetermined that the candidates recommended by thefriends of religion did not qualify for the post.94 0465013678_Neuhaus.qxd:5.5x8.25sam.qxd 1/9/09 1:15 PM Page 95Can an Atheist Be a Good Citizen?The American part of this story is well told by JamesTurner of the University of Michigan. The natural par-ents of modern unbelief, Turner writes, turn out tohave been the guardians of belief. Many thinking peoplecame at last to realize that it was religion, not science orsocial change, that gave birth to unbelief.Having madeGod more and more like man intellectually, morally,emotionally the shapers of religion made it feasible toabandon God, to believe simply in man. Turner s judg-ment of liberal religion is relentless: In trying to adapttheir religious beliefs to socioeconomic change, to newmoral challenges, to novel problems of knowledge, tothe tightening standards of science, the defenders ofGod slowly strangled Him.If anyone is to be arraignedfor deicide, it is not Charles Darwin but his adversaryBishop Samuel Wilberforce, not the godless RobertIngersoll but the godly Beecher family [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]