The decision to raise children atheist is typically couched as noble desire to give the children “freedom of choice”. Even people who are nominally spiritual, pay a great deal of lip service to “allowing the child to choose” (meaning, “shielding him from Christianity”), as this current discussion amongst homeschoolers attests. I think that all of this discussion about “freedom of choice” is terribly misleading.

If we really believe something, we tell our kids, and we explain why we believe it. Nobody says, “I choose to follow a path that believes in gravity, but I don’t tell my kids to avoid cliffs, since I want them to make up their own minds when they’re old enough.” We indoctrinate our kids with all sorts of beliefs about personal responsibility, financial responsibility, commitment to education, and so on. You teach your son that Mommy and Daddy love him. Some of these lessons are objectively defensible, some are more subjective, but educating a child means indoctrinating him.

If you’re holding off from teaching your kids something, it might just mean that you don’t really believe it. That’s what I think is going on with many of the responses on the homeschooling thread. People today often use “faith” as a part of their projected identity. Their “belief” is something they wear like clothes to signal something about themselves. If you choose faith like you choose clothes, you’ll want your children to do the same.

On the other hand, if you really believe something important, you’ll indoctrinate your kids. It’s your job. Part of your indoctrination may be to tell him that Christians are brainwashed, if you really believe that. In the case of many atheists, I think they really do believe it, and they simply don’t want their kids to become Christians. So this claim that “I don’t want to indoctrinate my kids” is a cop-out.

And either way, I think it’s also a cop-out to say that it’s about “letting the child decide”. No amount of indoctrination can stop a child from making his own choice when he is “old enough”. Young adults frequently throw aside all of their best training. Atheists become Christians, Christians become atheists, and young adults enter risky careers, pick up bad habits, and adopt poor financial strategies. Children sometimes decide that Mommy and Daddy never really loved them. You don’t mitigate this risk by pretending to have no beliefs. You mitigate the risk by being clear about what you believe, and why.

One of the really dumb reasons that is used by both sides is the idea that Christianity is a “security blanket”. Often, you’ll see Christians trying to sell Christianity as if it will get you a job, a new bicycle, and provide smooth, happy sailing for the rest of your life. Atheists likewise argue that Christianity is an escapist delusion that panders to people’s desires for security and happiness. One side says that Christianity is exactly what you want, while the other says that Christianity is deceiving you by telling you what you want to hear.

Does Christianity really tell people what they want to hear? Christ says, “Give all of your money to the poor”. He says, “Turn the other cheek”. He says, “Deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow me.” He says, “You will be persecuted”. “You will suffer”.

This theme of self-denial and suffering is pervasive. It’s not some edge case; it is Christianity. The greatest role models of Christianity are people who gave up everything and suffered humiliating martyrdom with no reward in the world.

Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of security blanket people want.

Interestingly, the evidence shows that this phenomenon started right when black separatism began to take hold. Prior to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, black educational achievement was lauded by other blacks. As separatism took hold, educational achievement soon became identified with “being white”. In my experience, this antipathy towards education was not official, since children I knew of committed “Nation of Islam” (Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan’s organization) members would often be high achievers. Unfortunately, the separatism was interpreted by the common man as an antipathy towards intellectual achievement.

In reading Bobby Seale’s “A Lonely Rage” many years ago, I was struck by the parallels to American Fundamentalist separatism. But the leaders of Young Earth Creationism are even more damnable than the leaders of Nation of Islam, IMO. They officially preach an anti-intellectual and anti-science agenda, and smear anyone who dares to attain scientific achievement. If you study evolutionary biology, geology, or astrophysics, you are a traitor to fundamentalism, and guilty of trying to “act scientific”. Considering that fundamentalism began it’s existence in a commitment to Scottish Common Sense Realism and Baconian empiricism, the current climate is especially tragic. Separatism becomes idolatry, and when this idolatry is officially endorsed by the leaders, it is shameful indeed.

Atheists sometimes feel compelled to answer these questions. The most common answer goes something like this: “Ancient people were superstitious and ignorant about nature. When they saw things that they didn’t understand, they invented explanations, projecting their own psychology onto nature, in a process known as “anthropomorphism”. Lightning strikes a tree near you? God must be angry!”

This explanation of theism is far from satisfying, though. What evidence do we have to support such a narrative? The most ancient scriptures of theistic religions describe very different motivations and mechanisms for their beliefs. Nowhere in the Torah, for example, do we find a patriarch asking himself “what is the cause of lightning?”, and then hearing the voice of God answering in explanation. In the Torah and the Vedas, we find the ancients obsessing over issues of justice, agency, love, and responsibility — nowhere do we see them appealing to God to explain some natural or cosmological process. If theism is a fiction created to explain the cosmos, the ancient theists were cunning in their concealment of this fact.

Likewise, the theory doesn’t match with our empirical experience of modern theists. How many Christians do we know who started by asking, “why does lightning happen?”, and ended up at Christianity? The very idea is ludicrous! It would take a truly special sort of idiocy to believe that modern Christians adopt their faith as a way to explain lightning, so why would we assume any differently about the ancients?

And this leads us to the real problem with this common atheist response. We’re expected to swallow this narrative about how theism was “invented”, with no real evidence past or present. Since there is no evidence to back up the story, atheists project their own psychology to support their chosen narrative. They explain, “people today always ask ‘why?’ and invent answers, so the ancients must have done the same”. Besides the fact that the atheist is inventing a narrative to explain theism, the idea that the ancients cared so much about explaining natural phenomena is pure projection. It is modern materialistic reductionists who are obsessed with detailed explanations of minute natural phenomena. Nowhere do we see such an obsession among ancient theists.

When faced with a series of unexplained facts, humans love to invent narratives to explain those facts. Nicholas Nassim Taleb calls this the “Narrative Fallacy“. Atheists would have you believe that theism is simply a gigantic example of narrative fallacy, backed up by anthropomorphism, and concealed with lies. But this explanation itself reeks of narrative fallacy and relies on projection of motivations that apply primarily to atheists. When faced with narrative fallacy, you don’t combat it with your own narrative fallacy. And you don’t back that narrative up with psychological projection — especially when you are accusing your opponents of doing the same. You combat narrative fallacy with evidence and empirical tests.

Why do atheists rely so frequently on narrative fallacy and psychological projection when explaining theism?

“About prides, superiorities, and affronts there is no book better than Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life where you’ll find us all pinned like butterflies on cards – the cards being little stories of typical characters in the most sober, astringent 18th century prose.”

He’s talking about this book (free online), which I read at the suggestion of Dissidens at Remonstrans.  I chuckled at Lewis’s use of the phrase “sober, astringent 18th century prose”, since it’s so true.

In his letter, Lewis speaks of the book as if it’s a sort of encyclopedia of human character flaws.  But this is not William Law’s purpose in writing the book, and Lewis’s own books contain much better insights about human nature, better written.  What Law sets out to do, and accomplishes powerfully, is to shake the foundation of nearly anyone who considers himself to be a “good Christian”.

Law methodically, ploddingly, dismantles every excuse proffered by Christians of his time.  Maybe you think that you’re a pretty good Christian, because you don’t look at porn or steal from widows.  Do you tithe 15% of your income?  Jesus asked for all of your money.  Do you spend even 10% of your free time on idle gossip?  There is no room for that in the Christian life.  Do you appreciate comfort and luxury?  What room for that is there in the gospel?  Law is very, very thorough in supporting his statements with scripture.

To be honest, I found nothing that Law said to be surprising or objectionable.  Scriptures are quite clear, and I’ve never understood people who preach “prosperity theology”, “easy-believism”, and the like.  Likewise, it’s surprising to me that Law’s book would change a person’s opinions on these matters.  If a person can read the clear words of Christ and the Apostles, yet still cling to the idea that worldly attachments are compatible with Christianity, said person is obviously skilled at self-deception.  Do we really think that “sober, astringent 18th century prose” will persuade such a person?  Perhaps.

~

I was not surprised to learn that Law was an admirer of the Christian mystics.  If not for the “sober” prose, I might have thought that I was reading something by one of the great mystic saints such as Theresa of Avila or Bernard of Clairvaux.  In fact, while I could imagine many protestants reading the book and taking serious issue, it seemed to me that the sentiments expressed by Law would be more readily accepted by modern Catholics.  Law essentially describes the ideal of a Mother Theresa or similar figure.

To describe authentic Christianity in a convincing manner, vivid examples like Mother Theresa’s (or better yet, Christ or the Apostles) are far more profitable than rhetorical prose.  There is at least a dollop of mother-wit in the old saying that “Christianity is caught, not taught”.  Undoubtedly, this is why Law liberally supplements his prose with stories of fictional characters who illustrate his points.  But Law’s characters lack any sort of sympathetic depth, and are obviously contrived for rhetorical purposes.  At times, it feels like reading a cross between Cicero and John Owens.

Having said that, the book is powerful and important.  Most Protestant voices who are calling for a “Devout and Holy Life” tend to focus on personal responsibility, which flirts with “blame the weak” and neglects the aspects of service to the needy.  And the voices who point out the hypocrisy in traditional Protestant attitudes, tend to be pushing decidedly heretical agendas (see Andrew Sung Park or Sara Miles).  So it is nice to have an authoritative and orthodox Protestant voice making the case so strongly.

Just last night, I read Jürgen Habermas in “The Dialectics of Secularization”, and came across another whopper of a theory:

Without initially having any theological intention, the reason that becomes aware of its limitations thus transcends itself in the direction of something else.  This can take the form of mystical fusion with a consciousness that embraces the universe; it may be the despairing hope that a redeeming message will occur in history; or it may take the shape of a solidarity with those who are oppressed and insulted, which presses forward in order to hasten on the coming of the messianic salvation.  These anonymous gods of the post-Hegelian metaphysics – the encompassing consciousness, the event from time immemorial, the non-alienated society – are an easy prey for theology.  There is no difficulty in deciphering them as pseudonyms of the Trinity of the personal God who communicates his own self.

Wow, Habermas blithely declares, in passive voice, that “there is no difficulty in deciphering” his putrid nonsense.  As if he is merely stating a common-sense fact, which any intelligent person would know.

It was very difficult to read the entire work, but I persisted.  Contrary to what I had been led to believe, Habermas is maddeningly nonsensical.  Like many of the other German philosophers, he is an expert at embedding unsubstantiated presuppositions within deeply nested clauses.  One particularly annoying habit is his continual uses “post-this” or “post-that” to imply a sense of “progress”; as if anything slapped with a “post” label is now dead and overturned by whatever the chronicler of progress deems to be current.  And what can I say about the use of the phrase “post-Hegelian”?  Hegel was nonsensical enough; anyone who would eagerly build a castle on the foundation of Hegel’s grave is even worse.