Here is one of several emails in a correspondence with someone by the name of Joshua Richards whom I met at the Whetstone branch of the Columbus Public Library system.
Tom Over : My sense of being appreciated by others generally is commensurate with my degree of integrity, which is a constant work-in-progress.
Joshua Richards : My degree of integrity is also a continual work in progress; as is loving others the way I would want to be loved. I myself am still a work in progress!
Tom Over: Humans have an innate concern for each other, with or without theology. But I find my empathy and compassion toward others is intensified by having a value system thru which to rationally and intuitively recognize my connection to human and nonhuman others, in terms of meeting my physical needs (water, food, shelter, medicine, and so on) and my mental needs (companionship and community and purpose). It’s what ecologists refer to as the web of life.
Joshua Richards: What if the ecologists are wrong? How do you know who to trust and who not to trust? The Gospel of Jesus is what fuels my concern for others. It extends itself beyond the physical and logical; it transcends itself into the supernatural. I can pray for something or someone and God will answer my prayer. In doing this, theology becomes a living reality dependent, of course, upon my ability to fully trust Christ.
Tom Over : To be clear, I suggest the science of ecology as a framework for morality in place of theology. I don’t advocate atheistic nihilism. Some religious folk seem to assume that a belief in nothing is the only option other than what they believe (as Christians, Muslims, and so on.)
Joshua Richards: Why do you feel a need to separate theology from morality? No offense, but isn’t that being closed-minded? Believing in nothing is also a belief system (everyone HAS to believe in something even if something is nothing.)
Tom Over : As for what “fuels my love” if it’s not a belief in God, I’ll say to you that I now love more genuinely and consistently as an atheist than I did as a Christian and as I did later on as a universalist theist.
Joshua Richards : You could be right. I would then have to question if what you had experienced in your past was in fact real, Biblical Christianity and not a fraudulent Christianity that is more concerned with keeping religious traditions, maintaining buildings, and getting money in the offering plates instead of living and being Christ to others. I do believe there are more atheists that love the way Christ would love, than the way many “so-called” Christians love (I would include myself in this category at times). However that does not mean that *all* of Christianity operates this way. I should be careful to not “throw out the baby with the bath water.”
Tom Over : I suggest that nonreligious morality focuses clearly on the task of loving each other, instead of combining that with all sorts of theological dogma (ie humans having original sin and needing God’s son to die on a cross to atone for it.)
Joshua Richards : Why?
Tom Over: As for the irrationality of the Judeo Christian Bible, how does what it says about the age of the Earth jibe with Geologic science ? Is it reasonable to believe a virgin gave birth after a god impregnated her or that Jesus turned water into wine and walked on water?
Joshua Richards: Evidence for Creation
Joshua Richards: To the second question, I would say a resounding yes. Is it reasonable to believe that we have a brain if we can’t see it? I believe faith is the evidence of things not seen by our physical senses, and oftentimes as in the examples you cited, it requires a trust in the Supernatural.
Tom Over : “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” to quote Carl Sagan. Religious folk offer emphatic testimonials about their faith. They don’t offer evidence, but instead present circular arguments : the Bible is inerrant because it’s the word of God and God is infallible and so on and so on.
Joshua Richards: “More Than a Carpenter” by Josh McDowell is a great book on this subject; have you heard of it? Faith IS the evidence. What would appear to our physical senses as “circular reasoning” is rather a tangible demonstration of faith in action.
Tom Over : But humans are fallible. If we are fallible, then maybe those of us who believe in gods are incorrect. Religious folk often ask, “who then created the universe, if there is no God?” Why not be honest and say we don’t know who, if anyone or any type of being, created the universe? It might be useful for you to consider who or what created God. If you can believe that God always existed, why can’t you believe that the universe always existed without anyone or anything creating it ?
Joshua Richards: God could not be created; He has existed before what we know of as time itself. My honest answer to all the questions is to just believe what the Bible says. I take it as my final authority. It must be read within its proper context, dispensation, and read prayerfully, otherwise the truth of the origins of things like the universe will never be fully understood by the human intellect alone.
Tom Over : On top of all this, it’s not just the case that Christians are inconsistent with their claimed belief in scripture such as (1) being against gay marriage, but (2) not being against militaristic wars (turn the other cheek? love your enemy? love your neighbor as yourself ? ) and (3 ) not being against the ongoing concentration of wealth and impoverishment of large segments of societies (easier for a camel to go thru the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go to heaven ? give everything you have away to the poor ? )
Joshua Richards: This is an excellent point and one I would entirely agree with you on. As I mentioned earlier, it sounds like you have not been exposed to real Biblical Christianity; there are of course thousands of shades and flavors of church groups representing Christianity but this does not mean they are Christians. Standing in a garage does not automatically make me a car any more than standing inside of a building with a steeple make me a Christian. I strongly believe in non-resistance (loving my enemies/turn the other cheek/go second mile) similar to what the Amish practice. I am against gay marriage; I am not against gays. I can back all of my beliefs up with Scripture (to the best of my limited ability; and I’m still learning 🙂 )
Tom Over : It’s also the case that people shouldn’t follow one of the key ideas of Christ : the Golden Rule. There are situations in life where we would be more ethical to NOT treat someone as we would want to be treated. Consider self-defense, where someone kills a home intruder. As Rousseau suggested, it’s better to ‘do what is good for you with as little harm as possible to others’ than it is to ‘do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.’
Joshua Richards: You bring up another good point. I believe that God loves me so much that He would never allow me to be put in the hypothetical situation described, and to put a gun toward the person trying to break into my home would not be loving the way Christ loved for the enemy, or for my family. My family would have to live with knowing their husband was a murderer; would this create a subconscious or perhaps even conscious distrust in my reputation (If killing people is the way he shows love to others than who am I to think I wouldn’t also be a victim of his version of “loving your enemies”?) But again, I believe God loves me too much to ever put me in that situation in the first place, so its a non-issue for me 🙂
Tom Over : Further still, not only do most Christians not follow the idea of turning the other cheek (they usually creatively find a figurative interpretation while some of them become literal about the Bible when it comes to other issues, such as gay marriage.) But turning the other cheek is a rule we shouldn’t always follow, regardless of whether Christ or someone else said it. We can’t always be nonviolent, because sometimes to refrain from violence is, in effect, to allow others to commit acts of violence.
Joshua Richards: I can’t control what other people do or believe. Nor can I base what I believe upon what other people do or don’t do. Everything is ultimately about me (not in a selfish way, of course). In other words, ultimately the Holy Spirit is my guide and I have to do what God says through the lens of the Bible.
Tom Over : So, I’ve multiple layers for my reasons for being someone who is not only non-Christian but also not an adherent to any other form of theology, including, by the way, attempts to turn ecology into some type of theology by worshiping ‘Gaia.’ I don’t believe Earth is angry or upset at humans or that Earth is otherwise a sentient being.
Joshua Richards: Still, the bottom line is you do have a belief system. Are you content enough with your current belief system that to even entertain the idea of a literal heaven, hell, and the God that is real, loves you and wants a relationship with you?
Tom Over : Some theists have the bumper sticker “worship the creator, not the creation” while others have the bumper sticker that reads “Nature is God.” I relate to the latter claim, but I’m not sure it’s accurate or honest of me to say that nature is ‘God’ or a ‘god.’ I’m inclined to refrain from using the concept of ‘God’ to describe anything.
Joshua Richards: What is the single, biggest reason you do not accept the God of the Bible as the One true God?
Tom Over : Stop and think about what you’re saying for a moment. Humans are sinful and needed someone to suffer and die to appease God. It’s a vengeance-based mentality and the idea of sacrificial animals and the idea of atonement existed before Christianity and Judaism. It’s a mentality in which a person believes someone needs to suffer because God’s angry or offended. Think about that.
Joshua Richards: Jesus did not die for sinful humans to appease God. Jesus was offered as a sacrifice because God loves us too much to see us make the wrong choices, based upon the free-will He gave us. He didn’t have to send Jesus, He voluntarily chose to send Jesus and Jesus chose to do the will of His Father. It was all done out of self-less, unconditional love. Again, your version of “Christianity” sounds more like religion to me. I’m sorry that you have experienced the sour tastes of religion and legalistic, controlling, judgmental religiosity. The Bible is the greatest love story ever told. No more guilt, no more fear, no more pain and suffering. That is freedom and life in Christ!
Tom Over : I’m interested in what you’re reading. Maybe you’d recommend some Christian writers to me. Here are some atheist books.
Godless by Dan Barker, a former evangelical preacher.
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
Godless Morality by Richard Holloway
Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell
Morality Without God ? by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
The End of Faith by Sam Harris
Joshua Richards : Here are some books I have read and enjoyed:
Crazy Love by Francis Chan
Radical by David Platt
More Than A Carpenter by Josh McDowell
Biblical School of Evangelism by Ray Comfort
The Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down by David Bercot
Happy reading! Thanks for the email. Talk with you later.
Leave a Reply