Necessary faith

We are all familiar with the arguments between atheists and Christians.

They aren’t difficult to find. They spring up during family dinners, disrupt productive class discussions and haunt Facebook.

The battle lines are always the same. The atheist denounces faith and evokes images of the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades to argue that Christianity is a blight upon the earth.

The Christian defends the Judeo-Christian moral framework that he or she believes our laws are built on and argues that life without God is meaningless.

Both sides cherry pick the Bible for passages that support their sides of the argument. Both positions are deplorable.

The atheists denounce faith despite having a faith of their own. They have a faith that the philosopher Slavoj Žižek calls “a private, obscene secret.”

They are willing to argue for days that faith is a curse on mankind, that belief without direct evidence is a fetter on humanity’s growth, but there is faith lurking in the heart of the atheist.

Atheists have faith in scientific advancement. Understand that I am not mocking the scientific method. Rigorous empirical investigation is not faith.

Faith is the firm belief that science will someday solve all problems and create a Star Trek-style utopia.

This is the faith that allows privileged American atheists to ignore the suffering of billions of people in favor of hideously eccentric discussions about interplanetary exploration and the technological singularity.

Atheists have a suspended faith, a faith no more well-grounded than the belief in God, but they deny this fact and spout rants about their superiority to primitive believers.

Many Christians also have a suspended faith. They profess a belief in Christ without following through on what that requires.

Attending church on holidays and voting Republican does not make one a true Christian. They wear the mask of belief but underneath is a vacuous commitment to secular capitalism.

They drive to office buildings to sell their souls and assist in the enslavement of the Third World during the week and put on a show of spiritual purity on the weekends.

These people are scum.

The few Christians with true commitments to their faith are no better. They have been seduced by hateful blasphemies and turn their backs on the Christ of love, forgiveness and radicalism.

They forget that Christ did not die suffering so they could live in luxury while 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day.

We must move beyond the deadlock of theist versus atheist. Both sides selfishly worship the idol of their own privilege.

We need a faith in the mass of humanity, a faith in the ability of our fellow beings to break the chains that bind them.

One day the suffering will be too great, and the oppressed people of earth will rise up, drag the wealthy from their offices and throw them on the pyre of history.

Then it won’t matter if you preferred Richard Dawkins or Billy Graham. Both will burn in a hell of their own making.

­— atcrane@indiana.edu