{"id":97,"date":"2015-03-11T16:50:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T22:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/everydayethics\/?p=97"},"modified":"2015-03-12T10:13:38","modified_gmt":"2015-03-12T16:13:38","slug":"atheism-requires-more-faith-than-theism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/everydayethics\/2015\/03\/atheism-requires-more-faith-than-theism\/","title":{"rendered":"Atheism Requires More Faith than Theism: My Response to Atheist Ryan Bell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>\n\n\n\n
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RYGER<\/a> \/ Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

This post is part of a new feature from Patheos called Head to Head<\/a> where our best minds debate the big questions of the day.
\nThis week, I\u2019m debating the Atheist Channel\u2019s Ryan Bell of \u201cYear Without God\u201d.<\/a> The question: does emphasizing the incomprehensible nature of god become an expression of atheism? Or put simply does religious faith require a personal God?
\nThis topic was brought to us by James F. McGrath. You can see James\u2019 thoughts at his blog, \u201cExploring our Matrix\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

My interlocutor, Ryan Bell, has written a perceptive piece <\/a>in which he has argued that there are many persons these days who are functional atheists \u2013 persons who live their lives as if God does not exist. I am grateful for his insights and there are two points that come to mind as responses.<\/p>\n

The first is that I agree with Ryan that there are many religious persons these days who are functional atheists. But at the same time I do not think that there are nearly as many as he thinks. I think that Ryan has cast the net too widely in his efforts to define \u2018functional atheists.\u2019 The longstanding view in my own tradition of Christianity is that God is personal, that He takes an interest in our day-to-day lives, and that He shapes our characters through the happenings in our environments. While God undoubtedly does sometimes do some seriously out-of-the-ordinary things in our lives, most of the time His preferred way of ministering to us seems to be through everyday events \u2013 He provides us with income by giving us the strength to work hard at our jobs, He heals our bodies through the hands of surgeons, He employs the laws to teach us to cooperate with our neighbors.<\/p>\n

Religious persons who pray for the power of God to be manifested in their lives are not Ryan\u2019s \u2018functional atheists\u2019 if they happen to believe that that power is usually shown through their ordinary experiences. The grace of God has been viewed in the mainstream Christian philosophical tradition as being a power that simultaneously sustains<\/em> the agents and objects in our surroundings, and also works through <\/em>these agents and objects to accomplish God\u2019s will. The fact that I believe as a Christian that God\u2019s usual way of teaching me spiritual truths is to use the law, my friends and family, my job, and my church does not mean that I am a functional atheist or that I think that God has receded into a nebulous and inaccessible background. If Ryan is trying to say that an understanding of God as working primarily through proximate causes \u2013 the agents and objects in our surroundings \u2013 is functional atheism then he unfortunately is misconstruing the tradition and is saying that leading Christians like Augustine, Aquinas, Melanchthon, Molina, Edwards, and Plantinga are all atheists. But I am not sure that Ryan wants to say this.<\/p>\n

This leads me to the second point of my response. What I think that Ryan may in fact be saying is that there are many persons these days who go through the motions of faith but who are not sure \u2013 or who only grudgingly believe \u2013 that God is active in proximate causes like the agents and objects in our surroundings. If so, then I think that Ryan is absolutely right in his account of their views. Such persons\u2019 versions of religious \u2018ultimism\u2019 do amount to functional atheism, in my view. When Paul Tillich says that \u2018to argue that God exists is to deny him,\u2019 he is projecting an anthropocentric understanding of \u2018being\u2019 upon something that he does not think is real. At the end of the day, the life of a functional atheist like Tillich is arrogant and self-absorbed because it is based on the idea that the fundamental thing in the universe is a projection of us. Tillich\u2019s belief that we humans are all that matters is a position with which I cannot, at the end of the day, agree. It requires too much faith for me.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RYGER \/ Shutterstock.com This post is part of a new feature from Patheos called Head to Head where our best minds debate the big questions of the day. This week, I\u2019m debating the Atheist Channel\u2019s Ryan Bell of \u201cYear Without God\u201d. The question: does emphasizing the incomprehensible nature of god become an expression of atheism? 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