Believe Differently

I picked up Jack Huberman’s book, “The Quotable Atheist,” the other day, and am really enjoying it.1 I find I have, nowadays, what can be described as an (a)theistic faith. That is, I am more certain than ever that much of what I believe is wrong. I am convinced that “God is love” but the “Devil is in the detail” – pun intended! For me, “all theology is heresy,” the more I say concerning God, the more I get it wrong; yet, I cannot stop talking.2

I am also convinced of something else, and that is that we all can speak of God. Genesis teaches that we are made in the image of the divine; that there is within all of us something of him. For me, this means that I must recognize something of God in every person I meet. Although the Genesis story also carries with it a negative account of humanity’s origins, nevertheless, it does not erase from the narrative the latent Godness inside us all. Denying God’s existence does not make us any less Godly and, I am not so certain, faith makes us any more so!

In a common but crass apologetic move, the question often put to the atheist is: “What god do you not believe in?” The point, I suppose, being that whatever remains indicates some level of faith. Well, though I do not like the often subversive intent of the question, I really like it when it is posed honestly and I find the atheist’s answer genuinely helpful: those who do not believe can be the most profound and challenging of teachers. For me, Nietzsche, who famously declared “God is dead”, falls most definitely into this category of person.

Interestingly concerning Nietzsche, Huberman writes:

No selection of quotes can do justice to the depth of his hatred of Christianity, which he regarded as a religion of slaves, the rabble, and the weak, motivated by a thirst for revenge and hatred of their natural superiors and all that is positive, noble, beautiful, healthy [and] strong.3

I suspect that Huberman’s book will supply plenty of meat for upcoming posts.

1. Jack Huberman, The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and those generally hell-bound (New York: Nation Book, 2007)  [↩]
2. I have found Peter Rollins particularly helpful in this respect - Peter Rollins. How (not) to speak of God (London: SPCK, 2006) [↩]
3. Huberman, Quotable, 224 [↩]