Imagine No Religion...

In 1971, John Lennon composed one of his more popular songs, “Imagine,” where he asked listeners to imagine a world with no heaven, hell, or religion:

“Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too...”

I recently saw an internet meme that celebrated this song asking us to imagine all the supposed  benefits of a world without religion.  This is a common cant among the so-called New Atheists who, with much noise and little sense, rail against what they see as the evils of religion, its irrationality, and the stupidity of the deluded beliver.  Against the evils of religion, the  modern heathen asks us to imagine a world with no religion, no God, no heaven, and no hell.  In doing so, they think themselves progressive, modern, and ahead of the times.  Richard Dawkins, prince of the New Atheists, along with the death of God, proclaims that: “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference... We are machines for propagating DNA...”  He and his followers imagine themselves to be much ahead of their time.  In reality, they are at least a 100 years behind it. 

In 1882, Fredreiche Nietsche, among the first prophets of the modern God-is-dead movement, asked his readers to imagine a world without God.  He had his madmen proclaims God’s death:

                "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him---you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?... Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. "How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?

Seeing the modern world slaying God, Nietsche proclaimed the advent of moral nihilism, the destruction of all meaning and value in life.  Dawkins, in imagining a world without God, a world with no good or evil, where man was only a machine, did nothing new.  He simply argued what others had done before him.  Likewise today, there is no need for the modern man to imagine the death of God and no religion, others, besides Nietsche, have already imagined this world.

Dostoyevsky saw the growth of atheism in Russia and imagined where it would lead.  Like Nietsche, he saw a world bereft of meaning and value, right and wrong.  In The Brothers Karamazov, he proclaimed that “If there is no God, then all things are permitted.”   What Dostoyevsky saw with fear, others worked for.  Josef Stalin imagined a world with no religion.  Yet he did more than simply imagine that world, he tried to create it.  He persecuted the churches and  purged his enemies.  Stalin’s world without God was a world where all things were permitted—to him. 

John Lennon was wrong.   In a world without religion, there was plenty to kill for.  Stalin found many reasons, as did Mao and Pol Pot.  Men have scarce needed religion to supply a reason to kill; the lust for power, wealth, and even sex has always provided adequate reason. 

Yet, Lennon was also partly right.  He was wrong in claiming that a world with no religion would leave nothing to kill for, but he was right that in a world without religion there would be nothing to die for.   If man is just, as Dawkins says, a machine for propogating DNA, then why die for a fellow machine.  Nor can one die for freedom; no machine is free.  This is why tyrants have either tried to control religion or to eradicate it.  Stalin knew what he was doing.  Likewise, if there is “no purpose, no evil, no good,” then how can one die for what is right?  There is no right. 

With no religion, there would be nothing to die for.  As others have said, if a man has nothing worth dying for, he has nothing worth living for.  Hence the atheist Camus saw that the only serious question was whether or not one should commit suicide.  This is the world Lennon imagined;  but he had no need to imagine it.  Others imagined it first.  Worse, others have tried, and still try, to make such a world happen.

Bad Christians, Good Christianity

There exists today a modern brand of atheism that runs something like this: Christianity has long been a wicked influence on the world; it has been a tool of tyrants, has oppressed men and women (especially women) since its inception, has been an enemy of science, reason, progress, and tolerance.  It has caused men to rise to tyranny, yet made others too weak to fight tyranny.  It caused the crusades, the inquisition, the religious wars, as well as being a generally pernicious influence on human behavior.   

Such an atheism is not intellectually rigorous.  Its proponents, like the late Christopher Hitchens, typically know little about even science, less about actual history, and least of all about real theology.  Modern science developed in the Western world because of Christianity and not in spite of it.  Men, believing the universe to be the product of an orderly mind and not random chance, knew the world might be rationally investigated.  The positive effects of Christianity in history have been documented by various historians and scholars (1), as well as its positive effect on human behavior even today (2).

Nonetheless, the problem with the “new atheist” position lies deeper than a poor understanding of the positive effect of Christianity on the world.  The heathen’s argument runs something like this, “if Christianity is true, then Christians would be sinless.”  Since Christians are not sinless, Christianity must not be true.  It would be tempting to dismiss the heathen’s argument as an instance of the ad hominem fallacy.  Obviously to attack a person as a bad person is not to say that their beliefs are untrue.  But the argument is even worse than that.  

The atheist wrongly assumes that if Christians are bad, then Christianity must be bad, but, to argue that ‘if Christianity is true, all Christians would be sinless,’ is like arguing that if doctors existed there would be no sick people. Doctors exist, however, because there are sick people, and thank God they do.  Christianity exists because there are spiritually sick people, and thank God it does. G.K. Chesterton put it this way when he said, “when the world goes wrong, it proves the Church right.  The Church is justified not because her children do not sin, but because they do.”  Doctors exist because man needs cure from physical disease.  Christianity exists because man needs cure from spiritual disease.  A naturally sick man falls from the ideal of health and needs a cure.  A spiritually sick man falls from the ideal of moral goodness and needs redemption. 

I once spoke to an atheist who claimed that the high ideals and indeed, commands, including love of enemies and turning the other cheek (3) of Christianity were falsified because they were too hard to follow.   But this is clearly absurd.  That men do not perfectly follow high moral standards is not proof that the standards are bad, but that people are.  That many people fall short of health is not proof that health is a vain ideal, but that people are sick.  

Nonetheless, there was something right in the skeptic’s claim.  When faced with a moral ideal one cannot follow, he can only do one of two things.  He might abandon the ideal.  Certainly, this is a popular option in modern culture.  Faced with a difficult law, the skeptic denies the law.  Then, having denied God’s moral standards, man becomes nothing except a collection of appetites.  Hence, obesity rates are high, drug abuse, various forms of unchastity including contraception, premarital sex, and divorce are high.  

Still, there is one other option left to a person.  On falling short of high moral standards, he might react by denying the standards.  He might act instead, however, by seeking forgiveness.  He might decide that it were better to fail at following a high and holy moral standard than to be content with success at a mediocre one.  God can make saints from sinners, but He can do nothing with a man who rejects Him entirely, just as a good doctor can cure a disease, but can do nothing with a man who refuses treatment and even denies himself to be sick. 

(1) Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (1997).

Thomas Madden, “The Real History of the Crusades” http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-real-history-of-the-crusades

(2) Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares, (2007) 

(3). Christopher Hitchens for instance, ridiculed the idea of love of enemies say, “I’m not going to love them. You go love them if you want. Don’t love them on my behalf. I’ll get on with killing them, destroying them, erasing them. And you can love them. But the idea that you ought to love them is not a moral idea at all. It’s a wicked idea.” (emphasis mine).

http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/05/love-your-enemies.html