A person very close to me, I’ll call her M, recently handed me a printed copy of this sermon. She handed me this sermon because she knows of my recent faith questions and she thought I might find it interesting. It took me a couple of weeks to get to it, but I finally read it last night.
The sermon opens rather poorly for me–with a condescending story about a 23 year-old questioning some tenets of his religion, only to be told “There are lots of things that you don’t know at twenty-three.” Though the statement is absolutely true, there are also lots of things that you don’t know at 43 or 63 or 93. To decline to discuss the issues head on with an adult clearly interested in discussing them is to miss an incredible opportunity. Instead, the priest (not the author of the sermon) chooses to be condescending toward the student. Imagine if I were teaching a class at work on technical topics where I’m an expert, and someone said “I don’t understand, why should I do that step?” If I were to simply respond “You’re too young to understand, just do what I tell you to do” I would be considered a bit on the pompous side.
The sermon touches on a church member, Hoff, who refused to say certain parts of the Apostles creed because he didn’t believe in them. I find I agree with Hoff, and that’s where I started having difficulties in my own church-going. I couldn’t stand in the pews and say words that I didn’t believe to be true. I find the pastor’s argument–” It’s the church’s creed, not ours.”–rings hollow. What is the church if not the members? Can members not choose to change the church as their understanding of the world evolves?
The pastor then makes a serious mistake. He mentions the “new atheist” movement and two prominent authors, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. He then quotes an anonymous reviewer of The God Delusion:
One reviewer of Dawkins’ book gently asks if the author has forgotten that the Soviet Union was an intentionally godless state and culture? Have Dawkins and others forgotten the atrocities Josef Stalin afflicted in the name of secularism? Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, Pol Pot presided over mass murder of millions of people in the name of a new godless, religionless secularism.
It is clear that neither the pastor, nor the reviewer actually read the God Delusion. Nor did they look in the index under Hitler or Stalin. In fact, pages 272 through 278 are dedicated to addressing exactly these concerns. By asking the question rhetorically, the reviewer (and the pastor by using the quote) implies that Dawkins thinks all atheists are wonderful and therefore cannot do evil. This is not the truth. Dawkins fully admits that Hitler and Stalin committed horrible acts. Many people commit horrible acts. The real question is does atheism actually lead people to commit the horrible acts? The correct answer is that there is not currently any evidence that it does.
The pastor moves on to a tone of reconciliation between all the worlds religions which is admirable. The world would definitely be a lot better place if there were less killing of people. If that means convincing them that God doesn’t want them to kill others, fabulous. He then quotes Isaiah 19:23-24 which predicts an alliance between Israel, Egypt, and Assyria. I’m not sure how that is supposed to inspire hope that God can bring us together–its been a few thousand years since that prediction, and Assyria hasn’t existed for over 2600 years.
The pastor then makes what I think is an absolutely absurd assertion: “The Bible nowhere argues for the existence of God.” That’s like saying that my Camry manual never argues for the existence of my car. Of course it doesn’t–that’s one of the founding assumptions in the whole book. The bible doesn’t argue for God’s existence but it sure does claim that all who don’t believe in God will burn in hell.
He then brings up an interesting point that I’ve seen mentioned in atheist blogs: “In the Bible, faith in God means trusting God more than believing ideas about God to be true”. Frequently when a believer says “I believe in God” they really mean “I trust God will do what he says he’ll do or what I think he’ll do” in the same sense as if I were to say to my daughter “I believe in you” as she attempts to ride a bike for the first time. The core of my problem with believing in God is precisely this interpretation. For me to believe in God, I have to see some reason to trust that God will do anything. I believe in gravity even though we have a very poor understanding of the core mechanics because it does something. I believe in electricity even though it feels a lot like magic because I know how to trust it to do work (or provide warmth, or inspiration, or joy).
Finally, the pastor gets to the reason for the name of the sermon–Pascal’s Wager. He doesn’t describe the wager explicitly, but it goes like this: the risk of belief in God is low (religious life), and the risk of unbelief is high (hell); the benefit of belief is high (heaven) and the benefit of unbelief is low (atheist life). Therefore based on a risk-benefit analysis, we should just believe because it makes sense. The pastor seems genuinely unaware (or more likely, unconvinced) of the criticisms of the wager. He ultimately claims to wager on God for two reasons:
- the highway builder, making a way where there is no way, bringing together antagonists and mortal enemies, his precious children, Egyptians, Assyrians, Jews
- and that shepherd, with a lost sheep on his shoulders, coming home
So, he chooses to believe in God because of a failed (so far) prediction to bring three nations together in harmony, and because of the lost sheep parable. Its a wonderful parable, and volumes have been written on it. But there are lots of parables around. Sorry pastor, that’s not reason enough for me to believe.
