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Though Matthew Campbell’s Oct. 27, 2010 article, “Belief in self the ultimate divinity,” doesn’t survive a surface scan for willfully annoying religion-bashing, I still feel compelled to respond.
I am an athiest. In my life, I have encountered a number of ridiculous, hate-filled rants about my decision to live a life with dignity but without faith. I have heard dumb jokes and listened as I was condescendingly told that I had no capacity for morality, decency or love because I did not accept the lecturer’s choice of religion.
Unlike Campbell, I concluded that ignorance and incivility from athiests is not the solution to ignorance and incivility from theists.
While I suspect Campbell would make no apologies for his incivility, I doubt he would be as happy about his ignorance. And his ignorance is on full display.
“Religions” did not become monotheistic over time. Most pantheistic religions died natural deaths; some exceptions survive in Asia (notably, Hinduism and Shinto, though they don’t have a real parallel to the Western “God” concept). Monotheistic religions were always monotheistic; no one looked at a budget and cancelled the extra God expenditures.
His other articles about Horus and Christ have already been thoroughly dismantled, but prove further that Campbell’s conclusions are spurious. People should always be suspicious of zealots, especially zealots who don’t understand what they are fighting. Campbell is that kind of zealot.
Had Campbell ever talked to any Christians with a shred of empathy, he might see that this “faith in self” concept comes through in a majority of them. However, I suspect that Campbell’s investigation into religious faith has ended with second-hand reports about a handful of Southern Baptists or other closed-minded and fundamentalist branches that have dominated American political discourse since 2002. Religion, of course, doesn’t help anyone when it resorts to bullying, name-calling or any other number of its ills. But neither does atheism. It is unforgivable in both cases.
For many, the experience of God is simply a reminder to elevate one’s self to a
higher and more noble purpose. This has room for human rights, civil rights and the option to love whoever you want.
While Campbell may be self-directed toward finding his willpower, his faith (and mine) still comes from imaginary friends who died hundreds of years ago. His philosophy, as expounded here, is Nietzsche’s. These sources of inspiration — Nietzsche, the Bible — are both external references for internal conditions. They are the words of wiser people than us. Does Campbell’s source of faith – a vast body of excellent atheistic philosophy — “undermine his faith in himself?” I should say not. Nor would referencing a bible, or a community, when life gets hard or questions can’t go unanswered. Such as the question of death.
I stopped believing in God when I did an experiment in an airplane. Terrified of flight, my natural inclination at a moment of great turbulence was toward prayer. I decided not to pray. If I survived, it would prove that I would have survived anyway, and probably would have attributed it to God. You can guess what happened.
Indeed, Campbell and I would agree that the fear of death is ultimately the source of religious power. Though I do note that Campbell betrays himself as an agnostic when he answers that he “doesn’t know” what happens when we die. In fact, he ought to, if his faith in biological textbooks is so certain. His brain activity will cease and his body will begin to decompose.
It’s a fate that all of us will inevitably meet. In Japan, buildings are left to decay without any attempt to repair them. Nature overtakes our greatest monuments. These places are left visible to remind us of this truth: That death is final, and that our death reveals in us the dignity and truth of how we lived.
And so ultimately, the choice to have faith, or to deny faith, will have no meaning. What matters, instead, is how we choose to live. Campbell and I agree on this much. But after landing on the ground and disembarking from my plane, I decided to live a life where I tried hardest to understand and respect the different paths everyone takes to make sense of their eventual demise.
I say this as a person who faces the end of his life with absolute certainty. If Campbell can’t be so certain, I wonder where he finds the inner authority to reject any possible explanation for what comes “next.” Indeed, is merely entertaining the possibility of an afterlife any different from the certainty that God exists? Both assume the possibility for a world beyond our comprehension.
If you take nothing else from my writing, Mr. Campbell, please note this: Looking closely at the two jokes you cite at the start of your article, neither is actually funny.
Eryk Salvaggio is a 2010 graduate of the University of Maine and currently living in Fukuoka, Japan. He was the editor and chief of The Maine Campus from 2007 to 2008 and during the Spring 2009 semester.
