Bus Theology

I have a few problems with putting a summary of one’s faith on the side of a bus.

This week it has been announced that the British Humanist Association will be placing Alpha Course-style adverts on the sides of London buses this January, reading ‘There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’

I have read a few blogs on this so far. Responses are varied, from:

• Fantastic – now a change to show religious people what a bunch of illogical idiots they are so people stop talking God
• Isn’t this terrible – liberal are at it again, trying to remove God from everyone’s conscience because of their own hardness of heart
• They only say probably no God – therefore there are plenty of opportunities for Christians to tell them just how accurate the Bible is, and how evolution was made by God etc
• Isn’t this wonderful – people are being open about their beliefs. This should encourage Christians to be as well, and create opportunities for dialogue

I agree with some of these more than others, and hope to offer a few thoughts that I haven’t read anywhere else. They focus on a simple question: what is God?

The assumption of these adverts is simple: God is a big man in the sky who doesn’t exist.

The assumption of the Alpha adverts is simple: God is a big man in the sky who does exist, and you can learn some more about him here. He’s the kind of person who you can ask questions to and expect answers from. God is an active subject: he does things, answers people’s questions and tells them ‘what it’s all about’.

I don’t think this, and I think that God is rather different to this big man in the sky.

Yet again, we’re back to Nicholas Lash. God is not, Lash suggests, one of the things that there are, in order that one can doubt God’s existence. In his own words:

‘[atheists] take for granted that ‘belief in God’ is a matter of supposing there to be, over and above the familiar world we know, one more large and powerful fact or thing, for the existence of which there is no evidence whatsoever.’

Or Karl Rahner:

‘God really does not exist who operates and functions as an individual existent alongside other existents, and who would be thus a member of the larger household of all reality. Anyone in search of such a God is searching for a false God. Both atheism and a more naïve form of theism labour under the same false notion of God, only the former denies it while the latter believes that I can make sense of it.’
Or Lash again:

‘Take a word with which we usually have less trouble than we do with ‘God’: the word ‘treasure’. A treasure is what is valued, held in high esteem. Notice that, when we say this, we are not implying that the word is the name of a natural kind the members of which, it so happens, are valued. There is no good going into a supermarket and asking for five bananas, three rolls of kitchen paper, and four treasures. To call something a treasure tells you nothing about it other than that it is treasures, valued, held in high esteem. Smilarly, a ‘god’ is what is worshipped, what someone has their heart set on… To call something a ‘god’ tells you nothing about it other than that it is worshipped.’

If this is the case, is it possible for God not to exist? If God is not a member of the community of things that exist, in the manner that ‘my left shoe’ or ‘Kofi Annan’ exist, but is, instead, that which we have our heart set on, I feel atheism is an impossibility because (Lash, yet again):

All human beings have their heart set somewhere, hold something scared, worship at some shrine. We are spontaneously idolatrous – where, by ‘idolatry’, I mean the worship of some creature, the setting of the heart on some particular thing (usually oneself). For most of us there is no single creature that is the object of our faith… and none of us is so self-transparent as to know quite where, in fact, our hearts are set.

So what, then, is the point of religion? Twofold, suggests Lash: to wean us from the idolatry of worshipping ‘creatures’ (including, I might add, a despotic God who will perform particular favours for you if you pray sincerely enough); and to purify our desire onto the mysterious, life-giving wholeness that life is really about:

Against this background, the great religious traditions can be see as contexts in which human beings may learn, however slowly, partially, imperfectly, some freedom from the destructive bondage which the worship of the creature brings.

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Ah, Dan. Nice thinking there – but you have two theology degrees and spend huge amounts of time thinking about this stuff. Why should anyone else care/believe you?

Perhaps you shouldn’t, whether you are an atheist or a diehard theist. But here’s why I think you should:

• Theists: the God in whom many churchgoers believe is an idol. Talking about ‘God’ is a complicated business.
• Atheists: the God in whom you don’t believe is an idol. I don’t believe in him either. Yet, I think the language of divinity and the existence of religious tradition forms a wonderful and liberating method of approaching life.

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I may or may not have convinced you, but convincing you is not my intention: instead, I hope to start a discussion. One of the great things about the Humanists’ campaign is that it does exactly that: makes people think, and legitimises discussion about God and spirituality. If there is something you think I should read/you think I am completely misguided/anything else – let me know. This is interesting stuff, and worth thinking about..