Forcing yourself to believe
And other myths about Christianity
Romans 10:17 So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
There is a mistake that atheists make when addressing their relationship with Christianity, or God in general. It is a rather large mistake, and may be related to why they are atheists in the first place. It is expressed in several ways, but one of the most dramatic and clear ways comes from Konstantine Kissin, of Triggernometry fame. The way I have heard him say it several times is more or less ‘I can’t force myself to believe…”
Now that is antithetical to the way that belief works… in any area. And, indeed, it is antithetical to the way that Constantine approaches so many other things. I have heard him be open about things that are completely opposed to his philosophy as well as things that are just out there and he certainly hasn’t believed them before.
The way that belief comes is not by force, but when an individual says, “I am open to hearing about…” “I am open to studying the evidence for…”. When they crack open a book or are willing to sit and have a conversation with someone that believes the thing they don’t believe, about the thing they don’t believe.
Now the interesting thing is that what he says, and what so many other atheists say, about Christianity is actually evidence for Christianity. More and more atheists are starting to state that they fear they have destroyed their own civilisation… and don’t like the result. Even David Silverman seems to be regretting his life work of promoting atheism
This regret comes as the ‘woke’ crowd and transgender activists lay an ax to the root of sanity.
But this post is not about wokeism, but atheism. There seems to be a growing number of halfway house atheists or halfway house conservatives. They wish to live in the house that Christianity built, and still throw stones. They are very approving of Western Civilisation, but wish to deny the foundation it is built upon.
And they are trying to get themselves back in the club by the back door.
I saw an ardent atheist on substack agreeing with another substack article and stating that she would like to start going to a Christian church for the community… if she could get a church to accept her as an atheist.
But what would that even mean? It seems to me that it would need to be one of three things:
1) That she would join a church that had already rejected Christianity. But that, surely, wouldn’t meet the very need she is joining the church to solve! The very problems that she was worrying about in society would be present in that church.
2) That she would join a church and then try to tear it down. That, having joined it because of the way they live out their beliefs, she would try to undermine those beliefs. Which would, of course, destroy the reason she was going there.
or
3) That she realise that the reason she wants to join a church is because the church has something that she and her atheist friends don’t have, and can’t have. And that that is evidence that her atheist friends are wrong. That atheism itself is wrong.
One of the more interesting features of these halfway house atheists (and, perhaps for another post, halfway house conservatives) is that they assume that history is a ratchet. That because we live in a ‘secular society’ Christianity can’t be ‘the answer’. They see problem after problem, and point back to history when we didn’t have those problems, and then say ‘but we live in a secular society so’…
This treats history like a ratchet. Like Constantine saying he ‘can’t force himself to believe’, so these people say that a society, once secular, can never become Christian.
But this ignores not only the entire history of Christianity, but the entire history of the world for every ideology that ever existed. There was a time (hint: before Marx) when there were no Marxists. Even so there was a time (see above hint for a clue) when there were no Christians. It might well be argued that there was never a time when there were no Jews, and I certainly think that Capitalism did not arise with Adam Smith; but the entire history of the world has been filled with ideas arising from nowhere and taking the world by storm.
There have even been times when ideas thought long dead have risen from their grave and taken at least a part of the world by storm. Antonin Scalia has been said to have revived textualism… a name put on the judicial philosophy to which the American founders held, indeed assumed… to the point where it has been said of the modern Supreme Court, “They are all textualists”. One may disagree with the latter without discounting the influence of the former.
When the former-left-wingers-mugged-by-reality such as Constantine look out at our wasteland of a culture and muse about how much better things were when people believed in Christianity, I would encourage them to open their minds to the idea that that is because Christianity happens to teach some true things. To read Chesterton’s ‘What’s Wrong with the World’, Lewis’s ‘The Abolition of Man’ and the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans (at least the first chapter) and wonder, if, perhaps, some of what they taught was true.
Warning: Below this line is for orthodox Christian believers only (note the lack of captial letter).
You were warned.
For those of us that understand the theology of belief you will notice I left something out, above… namely the Holy Spirit. In the end it is only the Holy Spirit which can bring someone to belief. That being true does not, in my opinion, change anything I said above to the non-believer. How the Holy Spirit brings him to faith is His business… preaching the gospel is ours. The path to faith is part of the gospel. Being open is part of the path to faith. See ‘Hardness of Heart’. :)
NB: Since I wrote this post Konstantine has written a post specifically about his religious beliefs. In it he repeats a fallacy about science and religion about which I am writing a post. He ignores or forgets that science can say nothing about the claims of religion due to their insistence on methodological naturalism. More later.
I love comments, especially comments that disagree intelligently.