Today is Easter Sunday and I am typing this out and post it for the whole world to read. **May edit later for clarity and typos, keep your thoughts coming**
The title of this post is so hackneyed and at least one Christian apologist (who was ‘saved’ after his Atheism got a kick in the ass by Biblical truth) Lee Strobel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Strobel) has written a book with this title. I believe that an intellectually honest faith is a true and healthy faith. Generally there are two equally unpalatable camps regarding Christianity, one is of course of fundamentalist Christians who believe in the inerrancy of Bible and want schools to teach biblical Creationism and so on.
The other camp is full of bitter, mocking and fundamentalist atheists like Richard Dawkins. Unfortunately many literary figures have also tried their hand from time to time at Bible bashing for example Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer etc. It is easy to do so today than when writers like D.H. Lawrence did so and got banned everywhere. And in the case of what many consider father of the great American novel and great humorist Mark Twain, he considered it wise to keep his heretic and dissenting writings about Christianity in the closet. It was only recently that it was discovered how passionately Mark Twain rejected traditional Christian faith. (See this link for introduction of Twain’s views against organized religion:http://www.twainquotes.com/Religion.html )
Then there are lapsed Christians like former nun and now ‘secular’ writer Karen Armstrong(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Armstrong). Naturally she feels her years were robbed by Christianity and now by writing books that reveal the fallacies and contradictions in the Bible she is settling the scores in a way. And why shouldn’t she. She has every right to express her opinions and she is a very competent and engrossing researcher, scholar and writer. But then she also writes books on Islam, Koran and Mohammed and she gets into appeasement gear and takes sides and glosses over Muslim fundamentalism. This is hardly what can be remotely called intellectual honesty. This is deception, this is pandering. You punch holes in Christianity because Western world gives you the freedom to do so but you go soft on Islam because you fear backlash. That makes you- and others of your ilk- intellectually dishonest cowards.
Tolstoy’s Confession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confession) is a great resource about someone going through the crisis of faith and trying to find intellectually honest answers that agree with one’s conscience . It’s full text can be found for free on the internet from many sources including this one: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Confession. Another great Russian writer Dostoevsky dealt with issues of faith in his novels. I have not read Brothers Karamazov but love this quote ‘If there is no God, everything is permissible.’ It always rings true for me. I also love Kant’s quote ‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me.’ Bible agrees with this kind of thought in a few places like in Luke 17:21 ‘‘Nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold the kingdom of God is within you.’’ (English Standard Version of Bible).
To cut the long story short in order to have an intellectually honest faith I find myself reading Bart D. Ehrman’s book ‘Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and Why’. He is a Bible scholar who has extensively studied (and taught) Bible (especially New Testament) in original languages for years. This book’s content is not original but has been presented in a very easy to grasp format for a layman who wants to do some honest investigation into the Biblical text and history of the very early Christian church. One review of the book fired a passionate debate on Amazon.com and you can access it from this link: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3L9D4Y81NNVGY/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0060859512&nodeID=283155#wasThisHelpful
This only proves how Christian faith means different things to different people. I personally believe in being intellectually honest but at the same time agreeing with Immanuel Kant and Luke 21:17, the Ten Commandments, teachings of Christ to love all mankind and to love God. I also believe that the theology presented in the Book of Romans is a good introduction to Christian faith. I believe objective scholarly resources should be used only to have a healthy faith, for a progressive and open minded Christian.
These are interesting thoughts. I find it especially interesting the note about Karen Armstrong, whom I had not heard of before, and how she goes soft on Islam but tough on christianity.
In a similar fashion, although in the reverse, I find it odd sometimes how soft muslims can sometimes be on atheists. Consider how in 2006, there were cartoons printed in several european newspapers depicting muhammed in a negative light and there was an uproar all across the muslim world as people burned flags of the countries involved, rioted and even some people were killed as a result of it. In that same year, Richard Dawkins published his infamous ‘The God Delusion’ which attacked, not the islamic faith, but all faith and did not depict Muhamed in a bad light, but rather depicted God Himself as a terrible evil being… and yet where was the uproar in the muslim world about ‘The God Delusion?’ Why is it that so many people were so angry when someone in the west insulted Muhammed, but the response was so much milder when someone in the west insulted God Himself? The God Delusion is even being sold in bookstores in a few parts of the Muslim world, while danish embassies were burned to the ground.
I suppose Muhammed must be more important than God somehow. At the very least, there does appear to be something irrational about it.
Many thanks for your thoughtful feedback David. Now, something about the Richard Dawkins- though I do not agree with his brash blanket statements I give him credit for criticizing all religions and supernatural phenomena, beliefs in his book. This shows honesty and consistence of his personal beliefs. I would be really disappointed if he had only focused on Christianity alone. But of course, he devotes large sections of his book to Christianity but that’s because it is the subject, religion and world view that he has interacted with most, being in a western country.
Yes, Richard Dawkins also criticizes Islam and fundamentalism in his book (as far as I can remember from my reading of the book about 2 years ago) But Muslim world does not react to stuff like that. Most of the Muslim world DOES NOT READ. Intellectual debate is not what they understand or decode. But give them a cartoon and call it Mohammad and they will burn everything in anger. How many of them had ever read Satanic Verses when they went on bashing Salman Rushdie? Hardly anyone. Rushdie issue was politicized by Muslim elite powers and Salman Rushdie’s career and reputation as a writer/ speaker against fundamentalism was solidified forever. Regardless of his gifts as a writer he would be nowhere as popular and acclaimed as he is today without the controversy and fatwa. Some Muslims leaders chose to politicize his book.
Sometime ago I’d read that an American novelist wrote a sensational novel about the life of Mohammad and his wife, in which Mohammad is shown as a lustful, barbaric or in such bad light. But because the Muslim elite did not choose to politicize it, no one has ever heard of it. Too bad for the writer whose goal most probably was to market her work through the controversy.
But it is indeed notable that if there is some work that exclusively makes fun of Christianity and Jesus the Muslim world will not react angrily even though Jesus is regarded as a revered prophet in the Koran. This is because Muslims are concerned with only their version of God and their version of the Abrahamic lore.