While I think science and reason and religion can most often be reconciled, if you do not believe in the miraculous, you are not a Christian; it is as simple as that.
via I Believe and Am Thankful | RedState.
In a heartfelt piece that I would describe as “odd,” this is actually a perfectly-penned point – Christopher Hitchens is dead and I doubt Harris, Hawkins or Dennett read RedState, so I think I’m firm in stating that Erickson has constructed a truth. As for the “odd” part, read the whole piece – if you are an extremely devout Christian, you will nod your head in agreement, and like many people, you will be enriched; if you’re not, you will gag.
Or guffaw.
Or offer a lamentation of kerfuffuling.
Or, perhaps, accuse me of gallywagging.
Whatever.
If you are a Christian, you have to believe in miracles. The foundation of the faith is the dead living, that a man born of a virgin was killed on a cross and rose three days later. Less-clever anti-Christians refer to this as “Jewish-Zombie-ism” or something akin, but the basic facts are there.
Erickson didn’t say it, so I will: you have to reject reality, believe in fantasy, deny what is real and believe what is impossible and … so forth. You cannot a) be a devout Christian and b) recognize that immutable laws of the universe exist.
Not saying they do, but I think they do – if you believe a dead man was raised (and while living, raised a dead man) then you reject any number of these immutable laws.
Erickson, writing from a Christian POV, anchors his view on … Adam/Eve/Jonah/Sodom et al, which is not uncommon or absent the admirable, but it’s quite Old Testament.
I hate fun-haters, and that’s a fun-hating thing to say, and although I’m an atheist, I’m not one of those fun-hating ones that goes about kicking sand in the face of believers. As some of the better racists have said in a different manner, most of my friends are Christians.
Erickson writes something that I think is one of great misunderstanding between those who believe in the ever-after and those who do not: I feel sorry for those who put their faith in this world.
Putting politics aside – and if I say it again, my head will be swallowed by a whale, but not everything is political and not everything religious is Conservative – it is a false premise to suppose that those of us who reject a belief in God/god/superstition put faith in the world. I don’t have faith, and beyond assuming concepts like gravity aren’t soon to fail, I don’t live my life on faith. Faith is an ethereal miracle; more bluntly, those who believe in miracles have faith; shockingly, those who don’t believe in miracles don’t rely on faith.
When the jets I fly on hit turbulence, I don’t pray because I don’t have faith and don’t hope for a miracle – I assume that it’s turbulence and that the plane will land. So far, I’ve been 100% correct (as a man who’s flying tomorrow, call this the Epic Jinx if one of my flights goes down in flames).
==
Erickson and RedState, recall, spent a month or so mocking Sarah Palin for not announcing (or not-announcing) her POTUS-bid on their timeline. It/they literally had a daily countdown mocking a Christian woman who’s embodied the Christian life Erickson speaks so eloquently about, including her adherence to Pro Life views, family, faith, thrift, self-reliance, etc. Palin’s political wavering was a source of great traffic and mockery for Erickson and RedState, and All the Right Blogs linked RS repeatedly.
So, my silly observation: when Thanksgiving is upon us and introspection is appropriate, faithful testimony is groovy, but when it’s the political mid-season and The Wrong Person is, er, Dominating the Narrative, then the long knives are appropriate? Ends trump Means? Sounds pretty Donkey to me, but I’m not a Christian or a RedState afficianado, so maybe I’m missing something.
I don’t mock Christians because that’s how I was raised, and I understand the merit of the faith. I don’t claim to know what’s in another man’s heart, and no matter who it is, I don’t really care.
I do, however, tire of Christians penning politically-expedient, heart-felt exegeses claiming to know what is in the heart of the awful atheist. Yeah, Marco Rubio gave an answer about how old the Earth is and people who can’t remove themselves from the political cycle freaked out – as a Conservative who likes Rubio, an atheist and someone who tries not to live politics 24-7, here is my profoundly rhetorical question: Who The Fuck Cares?
[...] Erik Erickson on z’faith « God’s Own Crunk [...]