The other night I caught a bit on the national news about some atheists who were protesting on behalf of the separation of church and state. Of course when folks like them protest, what they want isn't exactly the separation of church and state, but for public policy and discourse to be free of any religious influence, which is quite a different thing.
One man they interviewed was a former fundamentalist preacher turned activist atheist. At the time I just laughed and didn't think much of it, but he's stayed on my mind. It seems to me like all he did was convert from one dogmatic and rigid point of view to another. It seems like a complete change, but maybe it was the rigidity and dogmatism that was closest to his heart. From that perspective, he's hardly changed at all.
John Cassian, in his Second Conference (paragraph 16) says:
ReplyDelete"Excesses meet."
That's what you get when you take away the beauty of the mysticism of Christ and the Church (eg. the Sacraments) and reduce it to a diagramatic science, a set of beliefs. When one diagram seems better presented or more believable than another, you can easily switch sides. Its a matter of the head and not of the heart, and that's a sad thing indeed, for religion is first and foremost, a matter of the Heart.
ReplyDeletePeace! Actually, I've been reflecting a lot lately on the new crop of dogmatic atheists. I think of Richard Dawkins, who not only doesn't believe, but has made it his mission to show that anyone who does believe is a fool. Not so new that, but wanting to build that into our society and schools is. But, as the one atheist said: I don't believe in all this spiritual mumbo jumbo, thank God.
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