Atheists Have National Day of Reason, But American Atheism is Irrational – Patheos (blog)

(Cranach, Agony in the Garden, 1526; Wikimedia, PD-Old-100).

Today is something called National Reason Day, on the atheist calendar. The National Day of Reasoncommittee describes their goals in this apocalyptic register:

Now, more than ever, America needs a Day of Reason.

With the religious rights influence in Congress, and with the threat to our Judiciary looming large, there has never been as important a moment in which to affirm our commitment to the Constitutional separation of religion and government, and to celebrate Reason as the guiding principle of our secular democracy.

During the past year we have witnessed the intrusion of religious ideology into all spheres of our government, with such assaults on the wall separating church and state as:

As in previous years, this years National Day of Reason coincided with the Congressionally-mandated and federally-supported National Day of Prayer on Thursday, May 4, 2017. We thank all who value the separation of religion and government & joined us in commemorating this years Day of Reason, and in building awareness for this important cause.

How can a body supposedly devoted to reason make such unreasonable claims?

For example, there has never been a separation of religion and government in the United States. This is a total myth, more strongly, a lie.The wall between church and state was intended to protect the former, rather than the latter. Furthermore, not only has the US favored religion in the public square, but it has tended to favor certain particular manifestations of it (Mainline Protestant) against others. The whole dirty story can be found in Sehats The Myth of American Religious Freedom. Im not trotting this out because it favors me, being Catholic and all its quite the opposite, but because thats the truth about American politics, not the Reason Day alarmism.

Once we sincerely and reasonably acknowledge this most of the other objections (no matter how silly some of them are theologically) fall away. Both bad religion and good religion have always heavily influenced American politics and learning.

European theory usually does a better job of explaining American experience. Which is why were going to try something completely different now.

There are atheistphilosopherssuch as Marcel Gauchet (The Disenchantment of the World) andJean-Luc Nancy (The Dis-Enclosure of Christianity) who argue theres a reason why atheism could only develop within the bosom of Christianity. Namely, because Christian mercy permits the persistence of that which is not God, namely, sinners. The communion of sinners is just as much a part of Christianity as is the Communion of Saints.

Even stranger, we find atheists trying to recover religious language for their own purposes, because they admit they cannot gain legitimacy for themselves on purely atheist footing. On a crassly popularizing level you have someone like Alain de Botton (Religion for Atheists: A Non-believers Guide to the Uses of Religion) and on a much more sophisticated level there is someone like Simon Critchley The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments In Political Theology.

These two groups of thinkers make me wonder whether their explorations are what Simone Weil meant about atheism when she said in Gravity and Grace:

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.

The Evangelical salvation-language Bill Nye used during the March for Science confirms all this, although hes has as much nuance as the National Reason Day. It makes you want to throw your arms up in frustration. Sometimes you want to give up, butwhen you dodont forget even those trulylazydisciples of Jesuseventually woke up. Be patient, wait for the godless, and dont lose your religion over National Day of Reason.

The symmetry between low church Evangelical pietist enthusiasmand the enthusiastic science pietism of Nye and the Reason Day crowd fits into a larger historical pattern of atheist protest mirroring the practices and ethics of predominant religious cultures in the regions where the atheist movements emerge.That pattern isdiscussed in detail inAtheists: The Origin of the Species, a book by Nick Spencer that Ive feature in Atheisms Ancient Creation Myth.

Hope you enjoy people emoting in the comments section since it only proves my point.

See also: 2 Reasons Why the March for Science is a Losing Strategy.

Please also make a donation to this blog through the button on the upper right side of this page to help keep it going.

Stay in touch! Like Cosmos the in Lost on Facebook:

See the original post here:
Atheists Have National Day of Reason, But American Atheism is Irrational - Patheos (blog)