You are not an atheist
Posted by LaudateAgno on 2025-July-3 20:17:24, ThursdayIn reply to 4 minute proof of atheism posted by diogenes on 2025-July-2 06:40:43, Wednesday
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You provide a happy proof that 1. you're not an atheist, and 2. neither was Satjajit Ray! You prove only that one can say "I'm an atheist" while demonstrating convincing evidence evidence against that claim. You are not an atheist. You just don't want to use the word "God" to describe what you bow down to, what your very real sensitivity to beauty and suffering and humanity demands of you and of us. (You're just like many an orthodox and theistic Jew -- keep reading!) You have a concept of "God" that you connect with religious and philosophical traditions that you mistrust, and mistrust with good reason -- what bearded old man? What resurrection? What all-powerful creator who allows evil? -- And you reject this "God" (especially the awful monarch American evangelicals still suck up to). This "God," also, supposedly serves as an "explanation" for mysteries science has not yet found an explanation for. But we all know that science keeps finding better and better explanations. Fair enough to reject this "God". But you reject this crappy God by appeal with the common sense that there is something higher. To wit, you reject what is for you an idol that others worship and that you refuse to. Again, rightly so. "God" thus remains a dirty word, the name of an idol you do not worship. Truth itself is what you worship. Apparently it is Good to be true to the True. You are obliged to it! But this identification of the true and the beautiful: that's calssical theism. An awkward situation emerges: The True and the Good are exactly what is classically meant by God. The Jews saw this problem thousands of years ago, even before Christianity and the Greeks. They were also reluctant to use the name of God. Many remain so, to the point that many won't name what they worship either to this day. They've made a clever practical compromise: the tetragrammaton YHWH may be written, but must not be pronounced out loud. (Even writing is often trimmed: G_D, not God...) Judaic monotheism anticipates your apophatic logic, your "atheism," millennia ago. You believe in God, and you operate with a concept of God, _but you just can't allow yourself to say_ this word, G_D. The word 'God' has come to be a dirty, disrespectful word for what you hold most dear and most true. So you reject it. Your refusal of "God" is a deeply religious, monotheistic affirmation: a visceral, worshipful defense against the corruption of what you conceive as transcendent. Your rejection of "God" is exactly the Judeo-Christian rejection of idolatry. Your dedication to that defense is theistic, not atheistic. |
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