{"id":1457,"date":"2012-01-12T13:34:05","date_gmt":"2012-01-12T18:34:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=1457"},"modified":"2012-11-30T11:38:03","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T16:38:03","slug":"whats-wrong-with-my-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/01\/whats-wrong-with-my-atheism.html","title":{"rendered":"What’s Wrong with my Atheism?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I mentioned in a recent post on moral philosophy<\/a> that, although I understand why Christians<\/em> think I should switch teams, I\u2019m confused and frustrated by the comments of \u201cConvert already!\u201d I get from my atheist friends. \u00a0One of my college friends posted a cogent sum-up of the inconsistency he sees (reformatted slightly from facebook):<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think anything you\u2019re espousing is incompatible with atheism. I do<\/em> think you may be using metaphysical backsliding<\/a> as an excuse for not engaging with metaphysics.<\/p>\n

That sounds a little weird, so let me try and put it another way: you\u2019ve said, and I agree, that atheism without elaboration is boring and insubstantial. your response to this, unless I\u2019m missing something important \u2014 which I might well be, and do tell me if I am \u2014 is elaborating, at length, your brand of atheistic moral theory, which is laudable.<\/p>\n

But the great strength of religion, to me, and especially of Christianity (which is your main target) is that, in theology, it unites morals with metaphysics. That which we, as fallible humans, ought do, and that which we do but should not do, is illuminated by the word of God and the example of Christ.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, you write a great deal about what we ought do, without any non-pragmatic reason for why. How do you construe your role? Are you just trying to hold us to the basic moral precepts you assume in good faith we all hold, but, in proper social-scientific fashion, correcting our means? Or are you aiming for a broader theory of your brand of atheism? And if it\u2019s the latter, since you reject postmodernism and all its post-metaphysical tendencies, with what do you replace the metaphysical-rather-than-moral hole left by the death of god? (If the answer\u2019s in a series of posts I never read, by all means just link to those.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s going to take me a little while to give my friend a satisfactory answer, since, as was the case with Douthat\u2019s dilemma<\/a>, this is a pretty foundational question that I never seem to give anyone a\u00a0satisfactory\u00a0answer.<\/p>\n

For now, I\u2019d be very curious whether any atheist readers of this blog have run into this problem and if you\u2019ve come up with solutions. \u00a0Do you jettison metaphysics? \u00a0Do you ditch objective morality? \u00a0Are you forced to hedge all your moral imperatives?<\/p>\n

My very cursory answer is that I don\u2019t know that I believe the death of god deals a serious wound to the study of metaphysics. \u00a0The Greek philosophers were confident in moral order and telos<\/em> without the benefit of particularly well-behaved deities. \u00a0Look for more on this after this weekend. \u00a0I\u2019m meeting with a Dominican friar to discuss Edward Feser\u2019s The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism<\/em><\/a> and there\u2019s going to be a lot of Aristotelianism on the table..<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned in a recent post on moral philosophy that, although I understand why Christians think I should switch teams, I\u2019m confused and frustrated by the comments of \u201cConvert already!\u201d I get from my atheist friends. \u00a0One of my college friends posted a cogent sum-up of the inconsistency he sees (reformatted slightly from facebook): I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,176,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-conversion-2","category-epistemologyphilosophy"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat's Wrong with my Atheism?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I mentioned in a recent post on moral philosophy that, although I understand why Christians think I should switch teams, I'm confused and frustrated by\" \/>\n<meta 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