What I Think Is Really Behind The Intellectual Objections To Christianity

I've wanted to write this for a while, and today seems like as good a time as any to get the words down. What I want to speak about is a particular kind of rejection of Christianity - the so-called intellectual one. Now, of course, there are many other reasons why people aren't Christians - apathy, unawareness, emotional pain, subscription to other faiths, and being too busy to give it the time it warrants (to name a few) - but they are not my principal concern here.

My principal concern is the view that Christianity suffers defeat when face to face with what some atheists like to call 'free-thinking' - by which they mean some kind of rational, intelligent scepticism that sets them apart from those 'dumb' enough to believe in God. They'll happily tell us they are too smart and enlightened to believe in God, but yet every one of them almost certainly knows (or knows of) dozens of intelligent and thoughtful theists that evidently have considered their Christian faith very deeply and profoundly.

Why, then, the brash confidence in atheism? The real reason, I think, is a twofold truth - but it is a painful one, and one to which many over-confident unbelievers will scarcely give much acknowledgement. The first part is to do with pride and the second part is to do with courage. You see, we humans are proud creatures - and although we try to suppress it, we cannot help but be seduced by admiration, praise and prestige.

Religion-bashing is a peculiar phenomenon - in the first case it is either thoroughly justified (in the case of criticising religious fundamentalism), and in which case, a proprietary duty not just of unbelievers but of believers too. Or in the second case it is thoroughly lacking in depth and profundity (in the case of the facile arguments and brazen posturing we see too often in social media).

The thing about the second case of religion-bashing I'm talking about is that it's the one that most enchants the ego, because it is of a lowest common denominator discourse that attracts hoards of impressionable people or people damaged by their bad religious background (sometimes, of course, the damage adds to the impressionability). People who are scarred by church-shaped wounds will easily find comfort and sometimes even hero-worship in figures like Richard Dawkins and (the sadly deceased) Christopher Hitchens if they appear to offer an intellectual emancipation from some of the religious nonsense and cruelty by which they were once beset. And, of course, from the vantage point of the emancipator, the continual prestige and praise cannot fail to seduce and enchant, as well as often proving to be financially rewarding and career enhancing too.

Now if there's one thing that Christianity does to the unbeliever and believer alike, it proceeds to shatter any such illusions we may have about self, about impressing other humans, and about courting status and prestige. Don't misunderstand, the Christian faith has no discouragement towards conferring praise or admiration on individuals who do good and noble things - it just frames goodness in its wider context of God's love for His creation, and His grace bestowed upon creation.

Or to put it another way, if there is one irritating thing about God (or even considerations of God) from the atheist's perspective, it is that He cares not one jot for our attempts to monger status and lionisation from other people. He couldn't give two hoots about our ego-stroking or the ways we court prestige - He sees right through it all, into the real self, and He knows, as do we deep down, that such grasping is really out of weakness, not strength. For although we enjoy the transitory moments when we are admired and praised, we know all too well how much they mask the real drawbacks and limitations of being human.

Now we begin to see why courage is the second part of the resistance - for it is only being courageous that enables us to face our weaknesses and limitations. As such, it takes tremendous courage to make concessions to a worldview based on the abnegation of ego, and to properly face up to our human limitations and weaknesses.