Many years ago I had a friend who was from a Southern Baptist background, but who became an atheist as an adult. We were discussing religion and rationality, and he mentioned offhand that “of course Mormonism is more irrational than traditional Christianity.” This assertion reflected the fact that my friend grew up in a traditional Christian household, and continued to carry over some of his presuppositions even as he abandoned his old religion.
When people who didn’t grow up with, or as, Latter-Day Saints, are told God has a physical body and he lives on the planet Kolob in our universe, and that he has intercourse with the Heavenly Mother, they think this is insane. My friend, an atheist, certainly did.
But if you are an atheist is the idea of God as a superhuman creature, perhaps like Q from Star Trek the Next Generation, more insane than the God of Trinitarian Christianity? After all, the “real presence” of the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ, the God of Christianity, is a pretty insane concept. But billions of people believe in it. Even though my friend never believed in the real presence, he would probably find it less bizarre than the fact that the Mormon God has a physical body and lives in our material universe.
As I dug into the issue my friend admitted that his initial view that Mormonism was less plausible and more irrational than traditional Christianity was not thought-out, but a reflex, and he changed his view. As an atheist of course he thought the religion of the Latter-Day Saints and traditional Christianity were not fundamentally true, but he had to admit that the rejection of Greek philosophy by some Mormon theologians makes it more intelligible and comprehensible as a system of thought if you are a materialist. Mormons might find this offensive, but their conception of God ends up striking many atheists as if he’s a virtuous superhero with incredible powers. In contrast, traditional Christianity (and Islam and Judaism) tends to project an almost incomprehensible and inscrutable Lord on High (one reason Christianity argues for the necessity of the incarnation of God into a man).
This general tendency is not limited to religion. Rather, because religion is explicitly talked about we see these dynamics more clearly. It’s present all around us. Khan’s second law of culture: “any institution not explicitly pagan sooner or later becomes Christian.” Many people embedded within the regnant ideologies of the contemporary West dissent from new orthodoxies promulgated from on high. But sooner or later it becomes clear they have internalized the logic of that which they disagree, to the point that they are co-opted, slowly but imperceptibly. The question is not if they will profess the new faith, but when. This just seems to be what is happening to many people I know, even if they do not realize it.
The real presence is insane. It is against logic, against nature, against your deepest intuitions. But once you accept it as not insane, you open the possibility to its truth, and you will be received in the end. Even in your silence the believers will know you deny God, and they will demand confession and profession. You will do so.
Isn’t the “real presence” doctrine rejected by Protestant Evangelicals and Fundamentalists?
I always find that real presence is often confused with transubstantiation.
@ Jason
Huldrych Zwingli, the founder of the Reformed tradition, did believe the Eucharist was meant to be a purely symbolic remembrance of the Last Supper, but both Luther and Calvin thought that was a bridge too far and still maintained some metaphysical/mystical quality to it. The two still disagreed on the exact nature and meaning of that quality though, which ended up being a major wedge issue between them which they were never able to reconcile. I would imagine most Evangelicals/Fundamentalists today are closer to Calvin or Luther in their interpretation of the Eucharist than they are to Zwingli.
The onion has so many layers
Timaeus
Neo-platonism
Gnosticism
Paulicians
Bogomils
Cathars
Zohar
Lurianic Kabbalah
Spinoza’s Ethics
You may need a subscription to Commentary Magazine to read this:
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/gershom-scholem/the-holiness-of-sin/
C’mon, now you have to list all three laws. Surely there are three? 🙂
> Many people embedded within the regnant ideologies of the contemporary West dissent from new orthodoxies promulgated from on high. But sooner or later it becomes clear they have internalized the logic of that which they disagree, to the point that they are co-opted, slowly but imperceptibly.
By this do you mean that leftish thought has always buried within it anti-liberal assumptions? This is true, and was obvious to the Marxists. The Marxists lost, but the new religion is exploiting the same bug.
But I don’t see the dissenters on the left drifting into the new religion. If anything I see the scales falling from the eyes — at least they become able to see that there is a vastness of reasonable ideas to their right.
The Marxists lost many individuals the same way, and eventually that along with geopolitical reality defeated them. This time around it is the geopolitics that looks bleakest.
I’m pretty sure most atheists from a Hindu background find abrahamism more “credible” than the majority polytheist school within Hinduism.
That said, despite not believing in the existence of the gods, Hindu atheists are still convinced in the moral superiority (not perfection) of Hinduism because there is no concept of true God thus no infidels, no conversion thus no proselytism, the gods themselves are benevolent contrary to the abrahamic god and his sadistic (Abraham’s sacrifice) and genocidal (deluge) tendencies not forgetting the atheist schools that allow Hindu atheists to be atheist and at the same time not “traitors” to their civilisation.
That’s why Hindu atheists are by far the most kind to religious ones and remain probably the most defensive of their former religion