RELIGIOUS ATHEISTS Revd Dr. Valson Thampu, Trivandrum Atheists are of two kinds: religious and irreligious. We may also call them dishonest and honest atheists. Our concern, for the time being, is with religious atheists. Those in the other category are less of a problem because they are easily identifiable. Religious atheists are not unlike the corona virus: hard to detect, unless they are tested out with discernment. Atheism is about denying God. We are, for the most part, aware only of one mode of denying God, which is the direct method of doing so, which is practised by honest atheists. In this mode, one takes a public stand and asserts or tries to prove that God does not exist. But the anxious eagerness of these exercises has a touch of poignancy about them. I think it was Joseph Mazzini who that those who feel the urge to deny God hide within them either a great crime or a great sorrow. In comparison, our religious atheists are a shallow category. They rob God of his or her attributes.
We do this to God all the time. The valid way to relate to God requires respecting the attributes of God. In the nature of things, the attributes of God can be respected and practised only in relation to fellow human beings. It is like air serving as a medium for sound. Sound will not carry in vacuum. Others serve a function analogous to that of air in our relationship to God. So, if we, in our dealings with our fellow human beings do not practise the attributes of God, then we alienate God from his or her core attributes. In grammar it is impossible to separate the subject from its attributes. Suppose I write, “George is….” it makes no sense. I have to say that George is honest or dishonest, tall or short, married or unmarried. The subject cannot stand by itself. This applies all the more to God. But in the perverse grammar of our religiosity, we shave off all attributes from God. God becomes an impersonal, ethically blind phenomenon, whose only merit is that he is partial to us. But no one can be just, if he is partial. But our rational faculties suffer suspended the moment we enter the hypnotic space of popular religiosity. Jesus tells his disciples that they should pray in his name. This is taken to be a magic formula! As though the name of Jesus has supernatural potency, the very pronouncing of which suspends the laws of nature and the common-sense logic of life? Surely, that cannot be the meaning of praying in the name of Jesus. To pray in his name is to pray fully respecting his nature. It implies an awful discipline, which would, if taken seriously, make praying nearly impossible! Yet, how glibly, how loudly, how coercively we pray! Reducing ‘the name of Jesus’ to a magical means is the height of practical, religious atheism. The irreligious atheist leaves Jesus alone; our religious atheist deforms him. The former is blind; the latter is cruelly callous.
Our religious atheists insist that God exists. But they are wholly indifferent to his or her nature. We need to have a closer look at what this religious atheism involves. God has two aspects: the person and the attributes. The major attributes of God are love, truth, justice and compassion. It is plain common sense that a person should not be separated from his attributes. For example, if you believe in being a sober-minded person, you wouldn’t like it if someone were to relate to you as though you are a drunken lout. If anyone does so, what he does is to separate you from one of your attributes. You could, likewise, be contemplative in your practise of religiosity. If, by virtue of belonging to a charismatic worship group, you are required to sing and swing in induced ecstasy, that group separates you from an attribute of yours that you value.
Religious atheism increases with the rise of popular religiosity. As a rule, the attributes of God do not appeal to human beings. The reason for this need to be recognized. What appeals to a person depends on his nature. A dishonest person will feel ill-atease in the presence of a person of integrity. In the Bible, whenever human beings become aware of the presence of God, they feel fearful. The reason is that the Person of God is an embodiment of attributes that far exceed the spiritual state of the person concerned. Jesus could say, “I and my Father are one”. Such a claim is tenable only in a state of total identification with the attributes of God. Taking the name of God, while rejecting the attributes of God, is the essence of hypocrisy. Religious atheists outnumber honest atheists a thousand to one. Honest atheists have a chance someday of encountering God and of turning a new leaf in their life; but in religious atheists, atheism and hypocrisy combine to create impenetrable hardheartedness. You shall know a tree, Jesus said, by their fruits – which also includes by its fruitlessness. If we choose to remain ignorant and undiscerning; notwithstanding glaring evidence, the fault lies not with the barren trees but with ourselves.
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