themattscott

A prob­lem I fre­quently expe­ri­ence when in con­ver­sa­tion with oth­ers is that I am often seen as the adver­sar­ial char­ac­ter. Part of this is because I use the label “athe­ist-chris­t­ian,” which often leads oth­ers to imme­di­ately focus on only one part of the hyphen­ated label—when talk­ing to a chris­t­ian, I am labeled an athe­ist, whereas when talk­ing to an athe­ist I am labeled as a Chris­t­ian. All from a label that is meant to dis­rupt the abil­ity to define me by any par­tic­u­lar label.

This stance typ­i­cally leads to any con­ver­sa­tion becom­ing one of “attack-and-defend,” which is a rather unfruit­ful way of con­vers­ing. Granted, for quite some time I thought that this was the best way to go about con­ver­sa­tions, see­ing myself as the char­ac­ter that would draw oth­ers toward some mid­dle grounds, but I’m quickly real­iz­ing the futil­ity in this posi­tion, as well as under­stand­ing that the ends attained through this approach are quite dif­fer­ent than those I wish to reach.

Regard­ing the ends: As the antag­o­nist pulling every­one toward some mid­dle ground, I sweep all diver­sity away, leav­ing only the bland sameness——an ends that I believe lib­er­als are rightly cri­tiqued for seeking.

Regard­ing the futil­ity of the approach: When I am viewed as the antag­o­nist, the typ­i­cal response is that my con­ver­sa­tional part­ner feels challenged/threatened and acts defen­sively. Very few peo­ple are capa­ble of deal­ing with direct chal­lenges to their beliefs with­out turn­ing defensive—-it’s not a skill that is easy to master.

Thus, instead of approach­ing dia­logue from the posi­tion of an antag­o­nist, I’m real­iz­ing that the best way (and the way that is most in accor­dance with my philo­soph­i­cal beliefs) is not to chal­lenge another’s belief as a belief, but to chal­lenge the other to believe more fully. This insures that beliefs are not homog­e­nized and bland, but remain vibrant and distinguished.

This path is far more sub­ver­sive than attempt­ing to con­vince some­one of an epis­te­mo­log­i­cal fact (i.e., that God does not exist as a real entity) because it has the poten­tial to fun­da­men­tally alter world views--both that of your­self and your con­ver­sa­tional part­ner, and it does so with­out demand­ing that the other con­form to your belief. If I con­vince some­one that god is not an entity that exists in the world (in other words, that god is only a con­struct of the human imag­i­na­tion), they will believe this because they are con­vinced of my fac­tual argu­ments against their belief; in other words, they will believe because I believe.

The prob­lem is that their belief (likely) goes deeper than fac­tual argu­ments; instead belief stems from experience--A chris­t­ian believes in god because their expe­ri­ence of the world leads them to believe it. Thus, when I con­vince them of the fac­tual argu­ments against god, they may believe on one level that god is an idea cre­ated by human inge­nu­ity, but their fun­da­men­tal expe­ri­ence of the world is that god is an exis­tent being. If, in this posi­tion, they affirm that god does not exist, then they reject their own expe­ri­ence. They may accept the propo­si­tion that god is not real as real­ity, but it is not their expe­ri­ence of real­ity, thus their belief about real­ity is medi­ated through my own expe­ri­ence of reality.

Lets say that I wanted to con­vince this per­son that god doesn’t exist because their belief in God causes them to act in harm­ful ways (i.e., deny­ing gays the right to marry or fly­ing planes into build­ings). This is an admirable end, but my path to that end is by forc­ing them to reject their expe­ri­ence in favor of my own-—by being the medi­a­tion between their expe­ri­ence and their belief. Essen­tially, this assumes that I am some­how priv­i­leged to real­ity and denies any other valid per­spec­tive other than my own. This brings up a sec­ond prob­lem: In com­pelling the other to believe as I believe, I am medi­at­ing my belief through them. If I can per­suade another to believe as I believe, then this affirms the “valid­ity” of my belief and makes me feel bet­ter about it. This betrays a cer­tain lack of belief on my part—-it denies the valid­ity of my real­ity unless it is everyone’s real­ity. [1. The same applies to the­ists who say that athe­ists are deny­ing real­ity. The expe­ri­enced real­ity of an athe­ist is that god does not exist. To demand an athe­ist believe in god is to demand that they deny the facts of their expe­ri­ence, just as demand­ing a the­ist believe there is no god is a demand that the the­ist denies the facts of his/her own experience.]

The true way to affect change is not to demand that the other deny their own real­ity via medi­at­ing it through another, but that they live accord­ing to their real­ity and reject any medi­a­tion of their belief. This is the essence of sub­ver­sion; it demands that the other live up to what they say.

To con­tinue with the exam­ple of the the­ist (and using the the­ists I am most famil­iar with, Chris­tians): When a Chris­t­ian affirms their belief in god, they often talk about the Bible as that which affirms the valid­ity of their belief. In this case, their belief is medi­ated through the Bible and is not a lived real­ity. (Osten­si­bly) Because the Bible is then that which dic­tates real­ity, the laws listed in the Bible are those which a Chris­t­ian will obey. Thus, the result is cer­tain laws are held up as the proper way, despite ones expe­ri­ence of real­ity. For instance, I know of some­one who believes that gays should have every right to marry and that their love is just as lov­ing as so-called “straight love” (so called because love is love…), yet they think gay mar­riage is a sin because they Bible says so. Thus this per­son is medi­at­ing their belief about the world (which is that being gay is just as accept­able as being straight) through the Bible, essen­tially stat­ing that their real­ity is not real.

This, there­fore, is not a belief in god, but a belief in the Bible.

One could argue that they believe the Bible because it reveals the god which they expe­ri­ence, but this would be a disin­gen­u­ous argu­ment if the one who believes in god were not will­ing to let their expe­ri­ence of god dic­tate how they should act, even when this would con­tra­dict the Bible.

This, I believe, is what Christ meant when he said, “I come not to abol­ish the law, but to ful­fill it.” Jesus was not over­turn­ing belief in the law, but free­ing it from the cage of writ­ten state­ments; essen­tially, Jesus becomes the heart of the law (if the law is under­stood as an expres­sion of god on earth). Thus, to my acquain­tance that says being gay is a sin, yet believes that it’s nor­mal to be gay and (a sec­ond belief I did not men­tion ear­lier, but is usu­ally asso­ci­ated with a belief in god) that god is lov­ing, if the more sub­ver­sive act is not to get them to deny their belief in the law, but to demand that they live their belief that god is lov­ing and become the law.

I’ll end here, fully real­iz­ing that there is far more about this that must be fleshed out, but I’ll hope that it makes some sense.

Tech­no­rati Tags: athe­ist, belief, Bible, Chris­t­ian, christian-atheist, God, Jesus