Life Is What Happens
Feb 3rd, 2009 by Liz Bennefeld
[Crossposted to The Moments Between at Wordpress.com]
Life is what happens, and faith to a great extent determines how we see that life. Sometimes, in order to bolster our faltering faith view, we try to convince or coerce others into seeing life the way we need to see it.
This past weekend I was reading some recent papers by William Stahl. One that I was particularly taken with is “”One-Dimensional Rage: The Social Epistemology of the New Atheism and Fundamentalism” (in Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Amarnath Amarasingham; Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). He states that adherents of the New Atheism see science as having replaced religion and consider religious beliefs to be dangerous delusions. Coming from the other extreme are the adherents to fundamentalism with their insistence on Biblical inerrancy.
Bill is right to say that both sides are very angry. They are convinced that their views are the correct ones–the only possible correct views, which should be obvious to everyone. They are angry that they cannot impose their world view on everyone, and they feel the need to do so. They need to be in control. They need the world to be under control.
While Bill is mainly talking about New Atheism and the more extreme fundamentalism, I see the same dynamics in many discussions where the extremes are not so extreme as authority of science alone versus authority of an inerrant, literal Bible alone. There is no dialogue, because there is a desperate need to be in control that, faced with opposition, produces fear and anger. Their fear pushes people into extreme, undefensible positions; the unspoken, sometimes unrecognized presuppositions that underlie their stances are not universally shared by others. Since there can be no dialogue, too often one or more sides demonizes the other.
Bill’s closing is a good summary of what I have witnessed happening in several venues where people with diverse religious views meet.
“So in the end, fundamentalism and the New Atheism are mirror images of each other, sharing deep structural and epistemological parallels. Both are attempts to recreate meaning for a world that they perceive as having lost is way. Both are screams of rage against those that do not conform to their one-dimensional thought. And both are expressions of a will to power that masks its own nihilism through eagerness to enforce its moral values.”
“Will to power” is the key to the dynamics I have observed all too often. We feel so easily threatened, too unwilling to risk, too unwilling to not know! How much are we willing to pay for certainty? Is it ever possible to attain it?