I had planned on posting on a completely different topic today however I guess maybe not. So instead I would like to follow up on yesterday’s post which among other things somewhat attempted to address my thoughts regarding atheisms misunderstanding and exclusion of my God.

It would seem that God has been on my mind a lot lately. Actually come to think of it, pretty much daily since 2001 when I returned from a stint teaching in Asia. I spent most of my life being a categorical god denier, with my earliest memories of doubt beginning sometime around the age of five or six. My first official act of disobedience being at the age of 12 when I refused to undergo the Catholic sacrament of confirmation. This is all stuff which I’ve of course covered in numerous other posts, so I’m not going to waste anybody’s time by rehashing what is already been posted elsewhere on my blog. I guess I just want to point out that God is important to me and our relationship is something that I struggle with daily.

Despite the fact that I’ve been a God denier I’ve never identified as or considered myself to be an atheist. I can’t really say why that is for sure however I’ve always felt, that most of the atheists I knew wasted a lot of time and energy (not to mention emotional well-being) on their dislike and often anger/hatred towards God, Religion and those who profess to be believers. Although I may have seen this is a waste of time it never bothered me because it wasn’t my problem, that is until recently. Now that I count myself as one of the “believers” it has become something of a concern and irritant. This is because I often wind up getting lumped in with the “enemy”.

My first question is what God are people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris talking about and does it bear any resemblance to the God of my understanding? I’m not suggesting that there might be more than one God, but there certainly is more than one understanding of what that one God might be.

I find it somewhat unfortunate that for whatever reason atheists are unable to separate pre and postmodern understandings of God and creation without, ejecting the very notion of God itself. All (I guess) because to them such beliefs are nothing more than pathology. I think this is an intellectually lazy way out of the problem and is nothing more than a secular/materialistic attempt at forced religious prohibition and abstinence and is something which truly lacks big picture thinking.

I hear that the vast majority of atheists support the theory of evolution and I’m sure that many are more likely to see it as a fact rather than theory. Therefore at least from my perspective the same attitude towards evolution or rather in this case human and social development needs to be taken into consideration. Specifically in terms of psychosocial development with regard to our species ability to understand and relate to God, throughout history and leading up to this very moment.

I believe that in doing so it can only become clear that God has never been, is not now and will never be a one size fits all proposition. It is therefore a huge mistake on the part of atheists to reduce God to what is unfortunately nothing more than, lowest common denominator behavior on the part of humans.

Yes atheists are right to react against the atrocities which come out of the misappropriation of God, especially when horrors are committed in his name. I also deny and denounce the belief in a supernatural God who punishes and judges but I don’t blame God for human misrepresentation of his name, meaning and metaphor.

So for me the question still remains, whose God and religion are atheists fighting against?

Are the atheists arguing against God as proposed by Mordecai Kaplan?

“God is the sum of all the animating organizing forces and relationships which are forever making a cosmos out of chaos,”

“God cannot abridge the laws of nature for God is synonymous with natural law”.

Are atheists arguing against religiosity as understood by Abraham Joshua Heschel?

“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers no harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”

I ask this question because both Kaplan and Heschel speak of God as I understand him to be and he bears no resemblance to the abomination that atheists seem to be fighting.

Just curious…

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