{"id":513,"date":"2011-03-14T21:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/03\/angry-angry-atheists.html"},"modified":"2011-03-14T21:27:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:27:00","slug":"angry-angry-atheists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/03\/angry-angry-atheists.html","title":{"rendered":"Angry, Angry Atheists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I don\u2019t care if it is on HuffPost, I\u2019m not going to ignore the latest piece by David Wolpe in which he\u00a0asks the question, \u201cWhy are atheists so angry?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 He\u2019s prompted to this query because he\u2019s been the object of a considerable amount of derision in the responses to his HuffPost pieces.\u00a0 (Anyone looking for love on the internet is definitely in the wrong place!)<\/p>\n

I guess there are a lot of angry atheists out there.\u00a0 I can certainly be one of them.\u00a0 My anger is almost always limited to what people do to others in the name of some truth claim attributed to God.\u00a0 So, for example, I get truly angry about the treatment of gays and lesbians.\u00a0 I have yet to see any kind of real movement against gay rights that is not completely dependent upon theistic justifications.\u00a0 Even those who claim they\u2019re not deriving their homophobic positions from religious positions are usually revealed to be liars.<\/p>\n

I also get angry at what theism has done to women, children and the other weak among us any time that theists get a little wind in their sails and start running things.\u00a0 For evidence of this, see pretty much any theocracy that\u2019s ever existed.<\/p>\n

To his credit, Rabbi Wolpe recognizes why atheists would feel this way:<\/p>\n

No one can seriously deny that religion has been guilty of wickedness in this world and has provided cover for wickedness. I refer not only to abusers who hide under the cloak of clergy, but religious persecutions, the stifling of speech and dissent, the mistreatment of women \u2014 the crimes are legion. While as a believer I think there is much more to be said about this topic, it is certainly reasonable for people to be angry at religion for its abuses, particularly people who have themselves been victims.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He then goes on to enumerate the other possible sources of our anger.\u00a0 That we blame religion on retarding scientific progress.\u00a0 That we do not address serious religious arguments.\u00a0 That we lack a sense of wonder.<\/p>\n

Maybe all of this is true for some atheists, but those of us who identify as secular humanists do not view the world that way, no matter what kind of silliness fills the comment sections of the HuffPost religion page.<\/p>\n

Plenty of religious people have made important scientific discoveries.\u00a0 Reasonable modern non-theists, however, claim that the more that is uncovered the less necessity there is to invoke the existence of supernatural powers.\u00a0 This has removed \u2013 or at least critically wounded \u2013 the explanatory power of theism.\u00a0 This is why there is an increasing indifference to a \u201cpersonal God\u201d among scientists.\u00a0 That\u2019s not to say that there aren\u2019t theistic scientists, but their number is diminishing for good reason.\u00a0 The more we know, even though it\u2019s still very little, the less we need deities of any kind.<\/p>\n

About the more sophisticated theologians that we hear so much about, Wolpe states, \u201cThere is an arrogant unwillingness to engage with religion\u2019s serious thinkers.\u201d\u00a0 This charge I must take seriously since I have personally spent some number of decades engaging them.\u00a0 I even honor them as part of my intellectual history.\u00a0 On my office wall there are pictures of Maimonides and Mordecai Kaplan.<\/p>\n

Maimonides is there because, though his ultimate conclusions about the world do nothing for me, I admire his tireless efforts to wrestle with the science of his time (although the science was wrong).\u00a0 I would not, however, seek contemporary wisdom in Maimonides\u2019 writing.\u00a0 How could he provide it?\u00a0 Instead I draw inspiration from the effort that he undertook to treat \u201cscience\u201d seriously and to re-evaluate religion in its light.<\/p>\n

Kaplan\u2019s picture is in its place of honor because, though he could never let go of a God \u201cidea,\u201d he did let go of God as a being.\u00a0 In so doing, he took a very long stride toward defining God out of existence by transforming God into a metaphor for a purely human process.<\/p>\n

Since Kaplan, however, I have not really encountered a serious consistent theologian whom I can take seriously.\u00a0 Now perhaps it is my own intellectual deficiencies that are to blame for this, but I think not.\u00a0 What I have mostly found in the words of Whitehead and his intellectual descendants, is a desperate effort to keep God alive by defining him in ever more abstract terms.\u00a0 At some point the definitions become so imprecise that I am no longer sure what kind of God is left; it is certainly not a personal God, a being or an entity.<\/p>\n

Finally, Rabbi Wolpe makes the claim that \u201c\u2026there is sometimes in the atheist a want of wonder.\u201d\u00a0 This is not a charge for which I have found any substantiation.<\/p>\n

Richard Dawkins, for example, can be criticized for a lot of things, but a lack of wonder is not one of them.\u00a0 The entire \u201cnew atheist\u201d approach is championed first and foremost by scientists.\u00a0 They exemplify the very essence of wonder.\u00a0 The non-theists that I know are in constant awe of the universe.\u00a0 We are also quite struck with our great good fortune to be conscious beings living here.\u00a0 That\u2019s why we consume so much science.\u00a0 We also make all kinds of art, including poetry that is no less awe-struck than that of the ancient God-intoxicated authors of the Hebrew Bible and Rabbinic literature. \u00a0It is also considerably more informed.<\/p>\n

As for the religious, we are often told (not unreasonably) that they should be divided into at least two groups.\u00a0 One group consists of\u00a0 those who already have all the answers.\u00a0 In the other are the liberals with their more sophisticated and nuanced theologies.<\/p>\n

The latter group, to which Rabbi Wolpe and all of the others like him supposedly belong, claims to represent the real spirit of religion.\u00a0 They contrast themselves quite starkly with the fundamentalist in temperament.\u00a0 Wolpe himself states in this very article that the incredulity of atheists about other views \u201creminds me of the most self-assured of the faithful, who suffer the same intellectual imperialism.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet it was Rabbi Wolpe who stood on a stage in Mexico and sided with two undeniably conservative Christians,\u00a0William Lane Craig and R. Douglas Geivett in a debate against scientists \/ atheists Matt Ridley, Michael Shermer, and Richard Dawkins. \u00a0These two Christians have been outspoken in their support for continued oppression of gays and lesbians, to name just one example of their theologically justified immorality. \u00a0But in the name of their common theism, Rabbi Wolpe stood by their side.Come to think of it, that made me quite angry.\u00a0 So there\u2019s another answer to Rabbi Wolpe\u2019s question.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t care if it is on HuffPost, I\u2019m not going to ignore the latest piece by David Wolpe in which he\u00a0asks the question, \u201cWhy are atheists so angry?\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s prompted to this query because he\u2019s been the object of a considerable amount of derision in the responses to his HuffPost pieces.\u00a0 (Anyone looking for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,24,25,30],"class_list":["post-513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-atheism","tag-liberal-judaism","tag-liberal-religions-and-theologies","tag-non-theism"],"yoast_head":"\nAngry, Angry Atheists<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I don\u2019t care if it is on HuffPost, I\u2019m not going to ignore the latest piece by David Wolpe in which he\u00a0asks the question, \u201cWhy are atheists so angry?\u201d\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/03\/angry-angry-atheists.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Angry, Angry Atheists\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don\u2019t care if it is on HuffPost, I\u2019m not going to ignore the latest piece by David Wolpe in which he\u00a0asks the question, \u201cWhy are atheists so angry?\u201d\u00a0\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/03\/angry-angry-atheists.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-14T21:27:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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