Now my students and friends – at least my friends who don’t know me too well–are sometimes surprised when they read it and discover that Paulos is a fervent atheist. I am not like the Christians who try to keep people from reading what atheists write. I think we should for several reasons. One, if you want to sharpen your faith, try it out on a bright person who doesn’t believe in God. If your faith is so weak it can’t stand up to a reading of Darwin, well, your faith is pretty feeble. But two, I recommend Paulos–and greater nonbelievers like Freud and Marx and so on–because I think they have many good things in them. They don’t believe in God but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t believe in them. Our faith teaches that God created John Allen Paulos, and made him a fine mathematician and a great teacher–why not honor that?
You see what I like about Innumeracy is that it is a well-organized book by an expert in a field where my knowledge stopped at age seventeen, written for people like me. But now, Paulos has written a new book. It is called Irreligion, and it’s all about how believing in God is wrong and religion is bad.
In other words, he’s stepped outside his expertise and into my own. I have read Irreligion and it has about the same value as John Paulos on cooking, or surgery, or meteorology. Nil. My impulse is to write a parody and call it something like “The Myth of Math,” with all kinds of clever stunts proving that mathematics is wrong and calculus is bad. But I don’t have time this term.
I mention all this because for some reason books such as John Paulos’ are appearing. The first I mentioned last year-God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens. There’s also Atheist Manifesto, by Michael Onfray.
Now these three have two things in common. One, all are atheists, two, none know anything about theology or religion. Onfray is actually a Professor of Philosophy, and has done a lot of good in France–but his expertise in philosophy is not the area that has anything to do with thinking seriously about God. His first book, the one that made him famous there, is called The Philosopher’s Stomach, and it’s about how their diets may have influenced the works of people like Voltaire. Interesting stuff but not the kind of thing that qualifies you to evaluate St. Augustine.
None of these men would dream of writing a critique of, say, dentistry or law. But if they did, I guarantee you this: an angry dentist or an outraged attorney would go after them. Why do they get away with attacking Anselm and St. Paul?
But here they go. They take a few shots at the old arguments about God such as design, an they say see design doesn’t prove God exists. Of course not and no serious Christian thinker believes it does. Then they say look at all the bad things Christians like Constantine and oh, name it, Louis XIV did. Yes, so? There was also Louis IX who did plenty of good, and there was also Stalin, you complete the sentence. Then they point out that more and more Americans are disbelieving in Darwin because Christians have told them not to. Well, I agree, that is bad, but what does that have to do with whether God is there or not? No serious atheist and no serious Christian think Darwin’s theory has anything to do with the existence of God at all.
It’s all sloppy, amateur atheism. I bring it up because you may well stumble on one of these, and because I’m disappointed in John Allen Paulos, who, as his website informs us, is “extensively kudized..” For some reason my computer slipped a red line under that last word.
If you would like to know where serious thinkers are on this, there is a very simple, plain summary in real English words by Jenny Teichmann in Philosophy: a Beginner’s Guide. She is a teacher at Cambridge and she deserves to be “kudized.” (There goes that red underline again).
Now this morning’s Gospel was like sunshine after a nasty, lukewarm wet spell for me. Why? Because it was about as far as you can get from this kind of thing. I can repeat all those arguments about God and I even respect all that. But it has nothing to do with my religion or why I believe in God. For me it is so much more like the Gospel story. Jesus walks by. John says there is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Two of John’s followers now follow Jesus. He asks them what do you want? They ask him where he stays. He says come and see.
John Paulos’ book begins by saying Christians believe in God “because he says he does in a much extolled tome that he allegedly inspired.” If he means the Bible, I challenge him, or you, or anybody else to show me where in that esteemed tome which people will be reading long after all of Paulos’ books are out of print, where in the Bible does God say God exists.
Not one iota, as Paul puts it, not one “jot,” as they used to say, is wasted on that. Scripture is all verb and call.
Recognize, follow, proclaim.
First, the Lamb of God. John recognizes him. He sees in him the Lamb that absorbed the sins of the people, blotted them out. And the lamb that signaled the victory over death, the Passover Lamb, the meat of Exodus. There’s no arguing that, you see it or you don’t. Of course Michel Onfray will say I am seeing things. And I will say that’s the color-blind man telling me that blue sky is an hallucination.
Second, the urge to follow. For those who see him Christ really is irresistible. You would not want to go in any other direction. There is simply o more freeing, more peaceable, more healthy, and more joyful lifestyle open to us human beings than to follow Christ, to walk his path. Of course Christopher Hitchens will say well that means you’re a masochist because Christ suffered. No, it doesn’t and I’m not, and what it means is, I don’t want to suffer but this life entails suffering like it or not and I want to experience it the way Jesus did–boldly, gladly, meaningfully, willingly, and fearlessly.
Third, the urge to share. “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother,” says the end of today’s reading. How utterly natural–human nature, I mean. When you see a good performance at the opera, or see a good film, or find a new recipe, or.... what is the next step? What will make it all the more enjoyable? Telling somebody else, of course. That’s half the fun. And In Christianity it’s half the joy.
Now Paulos will tell me that’s because I’ve been brainwashed. Christians are programed to do this that’;s how our absurd superstition has lasted this long. And I respond, no, I know what it feels like to enjoy. And then I want to say one more thing to Paulos, and Hitchens, and Onfray. I find their works painful to read. Not because I don’t agree–one of my students mentioned a book by Freud I don’t agree with either one that is much stronger atheism–but it’s a joy to read, witty, brilliant, happy.
These atheist manifestos are not. They are sour. The spirit is mean. They laugh at fundamentalist, which to me is like laughing at a physically challenged person–mean. But they also go sour and say nasty things about a faith they don’t understand at all.
I didn’t buy Irreligion. Somebody gave it to me. That somebody is a fine young person who is struggling with faith. He came to me a few months ago and asked if he could talk things over and now he comes here once a month during the week and that’s what we do.
I told him early on that I would not try to get him here on the Lord’s Day. Nor would I preach to him about his life style. I wanted him to know we do not proselytize that way and that I did not disapprove of him.
So we discuss those things John Paulos and Hitchens and Michel talk about in their books with their different conclusions. My young friend wants to know if there is a God or not and maybe this is helping. I hope so.
I try my best. But I’m afraid at some point soon I will have to go back on my word. I will have to say, come and experience what happens when we worship. Come here on the Lord’s Day, because that will tell you some very important things I can never tell you by myself. And I will have to say read the Sermon on the Mount and try living it for the next week. Because that too will let you discover things I cannot put into words.
You see, something happens when we break the Host and sing Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, Alleluia. And something happens when you keep the Beatitudes in your mind as you go about your daily work.
Christianity is not a Creed. There is a Creed in it, but it is very much more than that. I am not here because of a theory about God. Christianity is not merely a way of thinking, it is a way of relationship and a way of life itself.
We began worship tody by asking God to help us know, worship, and obey God. Know, worship, and obey. They go together. That means you cannot know God very much at all just by discussing things. You come to know God when you sing the Gloria or the Our Father, and when you hold the Host in your hands. You come to know God when you remember blessed are the poor in spirit and you let that guide the ay you treat somebody on Wednesday morning or Tuesday night.
God, says John Allen Paulos in his subtitle, just does not “add up.” I agree. If all you do is add up arguments, God does not add up. But if you know, worship, and obey, to the nth degree, then God comes through as clearly and as vividly and the person next to you in the pew.
John Paulos should have known that. This isn’t arithmetic. Faith is a higher math.
