Why Do You People Keep Coming?
I’ve been blogging inconsistently at best for about the last six months. And yet, when I looked at my logs just now, I found that some time back in June, I had my 1 millionth page view. That was around the site’s 13 month anniversary (mesaversary?). Not too shabby for a blogger who barely shows up.
For those of you who are into stats, I’m at almost half a million visits and about 1.5 million hits at present.
~I AM~
August 22nd, 2006 at at 6:07 pm
We come because we love you. We just sit here and pray you’ll have posted since our last visit.
When we don’t see a new post, we remember why we’re atheists.
Congrats!
August 22nd, 2006 at at 7:29 pm
I don’t know about everybody else, but I hang out here for the free booze.
August 23rd, 2006 at at 4:37 am
We’re desperate for smart and funny atheist material, and it is harder and harder to find these days…
August 23rd, 2006 at at 10:47 am
It’s because we blindly believe that you’ll return, of course.
August 23rd, 2006 at at 11:10 am
Ditto on all the previous comments. Your writing is just that good.
August 23rd, 2006 at at 11:45 am
Yes it is. So write more!!!!!!
August 23rd, 2006 at at 1:37 pm
If you don’t want us, send them my way.
Thankfully I have bloglines tho, it tells me when you have posted — that way I don’t have to keep looking. But you know, you could keep us all happy and post more often.
August 23rd, 2006 at at 1:44 pm
I found your blog the other day and find it to be refreshingly different than other writings by atheists which are often so vitriolic and hostile to religion. I find yours humorous and, as an Episcopal priest, I find your comments and remarks to be helpful “reality checks.” I think religious leaders and adherants both need occasional checks to remind them that, although what religion professes often transcends the rational, it should not be seen as negating it or defying it. Perhaps if we reminded ourselves more often that we are speaking about that which cannot rationally be spoken of (Wittgenstein) we would tread a little more lightly, with a bit more grace and humility.
August 23rd, 2006 at at 5:22 pm
Right on Chuck!
August 23rd, 2006 at at 8:42 pm
Chuck, your sentiments reinforce the status of Episcopalians as my favorite Christians. In fact, I’d rather be in a room with fifty Episcopalians than a single Baptist.
However, I don’t understand how someone such as you, who seems to have his stuff basically together, can’t take that small final step toward letting go of fantasy completely. If more people lived with a lot of grace and a little humility (too much is irritating, after all), it would be a better society. We don’t need to pray to ghosts to make that happen. We just have to understand the effects of our actions.
Your statement on grace and humility is well supported by scripture. Proverbs 11:2 comes to mind. “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” However, in the face of those who disbelieve, why would a believing Christian be humble? He believes himself to be in league with and doing the work of the most powerful force in the universe. How can he help but feel superior?
I’ll readily admit that there are some positive aspects to the teachings ascribed to Jesus, but there are few who have the character to live those teachings. For most, Christianity serves more as an escape clause. It’s a way to avoid this life because one is focusing on the next. It’s a way to pull a Constantine, and get one’s ticket to Heaven punched at the last possible moment after living as one damn well pleases. It’s a good reason to look down on others, be they Jews, Atheists, members of other Christian denominations or the neighbor who showed up ten minutes late for church last week.
So, to sum up a comment that’s at least twice as long as I had intended, if your goal is for more people to live Christlike lives (not the Christ who kills fig trees and sends away his family), Christ is about the best way I can think of to keep that from happening.
August 23rd, 2006 at at 10:43 pm
I keep hoping I’ll see a new addition to the “God is a Dick” series =P
August 24th, 2006 at at 9:14 am
Your statement on grace and humility is well supported by scripture. Proverbs 11:2 comes to mind. “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” However, in the face of those who disbelieve, why would a believing Christian be humble? He believes himself to be in league with and doing the work of the most powerful force in the universe. How can he help but feel superior?
The lesson from Luke we read for St. Bartholomew’s day today answers that one:
“A dispute arose among the apostles as to which one of them was to be regarded as the greatest. But he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
Besides worship, we spend most of our time here at St. Mary’s trying to help people. And we don’t check anyone’s religious credentials or voter registration.
As to the rest of what you said, I would simply briefly state that, in my opinion (borne out, I think, by world history and current events), one of the most dangerous things in the world is an uncritical adherance to religion. “Jesus died to take away your sins, not your brain” reads one of our church ads. But people want easy answers and, as you indicated, “pie in the sky by and by,” and with as few strings attached as possible. So, unfortunately, they’ll stalk the aisle at Wal*Mart and spend 20 minutes to choose the cheapest product with the most features, but come Sunday morning they swallow everything whole, hook, line and sinker, without so much as a thought. Makes no sense to me. But, then, maybe that’s why after spending the first 25 years of my life in the Baptist tradition I became an Episcopalian: there, too often, answers are freely given, it’s questions that aren’t allowed.
August 24th, 2006 at at 10:14 am
Chuck,
I hope you hang around, I think you may like it here.
LBBP,
Glad to see your “promotion” to the front page…..but where is this free booze you speak of?
August 24th, 2006 at at 11:34 am
As to the rest of what you said, I would simply briefly state that, in my opinion (borne out, I think, by world history and current events), one of the most dangerous things in the world is an uncritical adherance to religion.
Well, if you’re going to keep making so much sense, it’s going to be very hard to argue with you.
I have a few thoughts on this, though. First, how is a critical adherence to religion compatible with faith? Doesn’t this idea undermine a lot of what Jesus supposedly said? Second, every religion breeds extremism and lunacy eventually. I would be perfectly satisfied to leave the kind of tame religion you’re talking about alone if it weren’t for the fact that history shows us that any faith can and will metastasize into something ugly and dangerous. Episcopalianism comes from Catholicism. What else did Catholicism give us? The Inquisition. Eric Rudolph. Famines that can be directly tied to the ban on birth control. Now, if you go into an average Catholic church on Sunday, you won’t find the kinds of people responsible for these things, but they’re out there somewhere, and when they commit whatever atrocities will next spring forth from religion, those who are complicit in and who promote the lie of god are partially to blame, no matter how great a guy you may be personally.
August 24th, 2006 at at 4:02 pm
As to the rest of what you said, I would simply briefly state that, in my opinion (borne out, I think, by world history and current events), one of the most dangerous things in the world is an uncritical adherance to religion.
Well, if you’re going to keep making so much sense, it’s going to be very hard to argue with you.
I have a few thoughts on this, though. First, how is a critical adherence to religion compatible with faith? Doesn’t this idea undermine a lot of what Jesus supposedly said? Second, every religion breeds extremism and lunacy eventually. I would be perfectly satisfied to leave the kind of tame religion you’re talking about alone if it weren’t for the fact that history shows us that any faith can and will metastasize into something ugly and dangerous. Episcopalianism comes from Catholicism. What else did Catholicism give us? The Inquisition. Eric Rudolph. Famines that can be directly tied to the ban on birth control. Now, if you go into an average Catholic church on Sunday, you won’t find the kinds of people responsible for these things, but they’re out there somewhere, and when they commit whatever atrocities will next spring forth from religion, those who are complicit in and who promote the lie of god are partially to blame, no matter how great a guy you may be personally.
1. Somewhere along the line religious leaders, particularly in churches like Baptist and Roman Catholic where the leadership suffers from some major control issues, tried to redefine “faith” as “blind, unquestioning adherance to whatever we tell you.” This does not sound consistant with “Seeking, you will find; knocking, the door will be opened to you,” or, “I will send you the Comforter who will lead you into all truth” (as opposed to infallibly revealing it to you through popes, councils, or preachers on the radio), or, “Now we see through a glass darkly, then, face to face” etc. etc. Nor does it sound consistent with the Psalms or the book of Job where people question God all the time. For me, “critical faith” means a faith that is strong enough to stand up to the tough questions, not a faith that is so weak that it must be protected from them.
2. Any and all ideologies are susceptible to breeding extremism and other unhelpful, if not destructive, mutations. The argument could be made that Marx’s brand of atheism produced the mass killings under Stalin and the cultural destruction of Tibet. Are you willing to accept complicity in those events? Or do we acknowledge that a constituitive part of human makeup is a tendency to take anything too far, especially things considered to be beneficial? After all, in the church, “heresy” usually meant a church teaching that had been taken too far in one direction so as to present so skewed a picture as to no longer be true.
August 24th, 2006 at at 4:49 pm
1. Well answered. However, once we program people to view faith, which I prefer to define as “belief without evidence,” as a virtue, is it not far easier to make them accept just about anything we package cleverly enough? Does faith in one thing not make people more susceptible to believing all kinds of ludicrous if not dangerous things?
2. I agree with your first sentence, but religion seems to go throught this process again and again ad nauseum. The next bit of your argument is simply misplaced. Marx was an atheist. Marx developed communism. I don’t see a causal relationship. In fact, there are many passages in the gospels where Christ sounds like a communist, don’t you think? Then your logic gets truly silly. Stalin didn’t kill anyone in the name of atheism. China didn’t invade Tibet in the name of atheism. By making this kind of point, you open up a whole new line of attack for me. Earlier, I mentioned Eric Rudolph. His terrorism was motivated by Christianity. If I allow myself to make the same jumps you do in pointing to Stalin and Tibet, I get to use not only Christian terrorists but every criminal who happens to be a Christian. So, unless you’re ready to take some responsibility for the fact that the US prison system is overflowing with Christians (which would be absurd), don’t try to blame Stalin on atheism. Correlation is not causality. Unfortunately, the propaganda of the cold war stressed the link between atheism and communism, and we haven’t outgrown our programming as a country.
August 25th, 2006 at at 11:52 am
Isn’t it obvious? We’re in lurve.
August 25th, 2006 at at 1:18 pm
2. I agree with your first sentence, but religion seems to go throught this process again and again ad nauseum. The next bit of your argument is simply misplaced. Marx was an atheist. Marx developed communism. I don’t see a causal relationship. In fact, there are many passages in the gospels where Christ sounds like a communist, don’t you think? Then your logic gets truly silly. Stalin didn’t kill anyone in the name of atheism. China didn’t invade Tibet in the name of atheism. By making this kind of point, you open up a whole new line of attack for me. Earlier, I mentioned Eric Rudolph. His terrorism was motivated by Christianity. If I allow myself to make the same jumps you do in pointing to Stalin and Tibet, I get to use not only Christian terrorists but every criminal who happens to be a Christian. So, unless you’re ready to take some responsibility for the fact that the US prison system is overflowing with Christians (which would be absurd), don’t try to blame Stalin on atheism. Correlation is not causality. Unfortunately, the propaganda of the cold war stressed the link between atheism and communism, and we haven’t outgrown our programming as a country.
1. I think we are in danger of talking past each other on this one, since it appears to me that you continue to adopt a different view of religion and a different definition of faith. If I were to accept religious upbringing as “programming” people to accept “cleverly packaged” stories and ideas, and faith as “belief without evidence” I would very likely agree with your comments.
However, I tried to suggest in my previous comment that I do not believe in “blind faith,” nor am I particularly interested in any form of religion that involves “programming” people. I DO, however, see any world view, whether an atheistic, purely empirical worldview, or a theistic, spiritual worldview, as proceding from fundamental, unproveable assumptions which can only be said to be accepted “on faith.” Once accepted as presuppositions, these fundamental assumptions then support either a more or less coherant, satisfactory worldview. Whether the resulting worldview is indeed coherant and/or satisfactory seems to me to depend a great deal on reasons that are as much or more subjective as objective.
My fundamental presuppositions are threefold: There is an objectively real world; God is the objectively real meta-reality who stands behind, permeates and sustains the world; and God is as s/he is in Jesus the Christ. These presuppositions form the foundation of my Christian world view. It must then be judged whether the resulting world view is coherant and satisfactory, and, for me, it has been for 50 years or so.
2. “Correlation is not causality.” Okay, so where ideology x is followed by action y, there are three logical possibilities:
a. Action y is sufficiently consistent with ideology x that causality can be inferred.
b. Action y is sufficiently foreign to ideology x that causality can be rejected.
c. Action y represents a distortion of ideology x such that a relationship between the two can be established, but not causality in the sense that the distortion is neither necessary nor invited.
None of these is a necessary condition; each situation must be evaluated so as to see in which category it falls. Were Stalin’s and Mao’s actions consistent with their atheism? Were Eric Rudolph’s actions consistent with Christianity? Certainly not with the Christianity I know. And I would have to take great issue with the statement that his actions were motivated by Christianity. They could not possibly have been, since his actions were so contrary to the teachings of Christianity.
My contention is that no ideology is immune to distortion, and to advocate any point of view makes it available in the marketplace of ideas and therefore subject to distortion. It sounds to me that As The Rt. Rev. David Jenkins, bishop (ret.) of Durham once said, “The main thing you can say about people who say they believe in God is that they don’t, but that’s not God’s fault.”