... to find a good atheist to talk to: Lonely Atheists of The Global Village. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It would have been wonderful if any of our three authors had measured their vision of religion against the hard-won Biblical faith of the originally atheist scientist Anatoly Sharansky, who served nine years in the Soviet Gulag simply for vindicating the rights of Soviet citizens who were Jews. Sharansky has written the record of his suffering in a brilliant autobiography, Fear No Evil.
Their natural habit of mind is anthropomorphic. They tend to think of God as if He were a human being, bound to human limitations. They are almost as literal in their readings of the Bible as the least educated, most literal-minded fundamentalist in Flannery O’Connor’s rural Georgia.
Couldn't read the article, and I'm not about to sign up for the National Review, but Michael Novak is a writer who I've read for decades. I frequently disagree with him, nonetheless his is a voice I can dialogue with who remains reasonable and rational, even about faith. One of the best books I've ever read is Novak's "The Experience of Nothingness."
ReplyDeleteNovak is absolutely correct when he states that They are almost as literal in their readings of the Bible as the least educated, most literal-minded fundamentalist in Flannery O’Connor’s rural Georgia. That's the whole nature of the problem, really: both sides of the argument are lliteralists who are convinced they are right, and neither side has a nuanced, poetic, mythological, or mythopoetic reading of the subject. It's too bad, because philosophically they're just opposite sides of the same literalist coin, and their mindsets (if not their data) have a great deal in common.