Column
Atheism
Creed
6 min read

Confessions of an atheist philosopher. Part 2: The making of rage against religion

In the second of a series, philosopher Stefani Ruper explores the roots of science and religion, and a manufactured rage.

Stefani Ruper is a philosopher specialising in the ethics of belief and Associate Member of Christ Church College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Theology & Religion faculty at the University of Oxford in 2020.

Part two of Stefani Ruper

My name is Stefani. I was a committed atheist for almost my entire life. I studied religion to try to figure out how to have spiritual fulfillment without God. I tried writing books on spirituality for agnostics and atheists, but I gave up because the answers were terrible. Two years after completing my PhD, I finally realised that that’s because the answer is God.  

Today, I explain how and why I decided to walk into Christian faith.  

Here at Seen and Unseen I am publishing a six-article series highlighting key turning points or realisations I made on my walk into faith. It tells my story, and it tells our story too.  Read part 1 here. 

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“Idiots,” I mumbled under my breath. 

I was fourteen. I was in the local library, spending the day with a stack of books about evolution. I walked past a conference room where a small group church meeting was taking place.  

“Idiots,” I grumbled again, a little louder this time. 

Rage began to simmer in my blood. Religious people swore allegiance to an invisible entity for which there was absolutely zero evidence—actually, that demanded their fealty against evidence! It made me so mad. I was studying science because we needed to stick to the facts! If society was to move forward, we needed to leave our religious superstitions where they belong… in the past.   

Twenty years and a PhD in Religion & Science later, I cringe at what I used to think and feel. I’m not upset with my former self—it wasn’t my fault. But today, instead of fighting in the war between religion and science, I am fighting to end it.   

Here’s what I learned that changed my life. 

Science came from Christian Theology 

Many assume science and religion have always been at odds. But science grew out of the soil of Christian thought.   

To medieval Christian thinkers, nature was God’s Creation. They studied nature to glorify God and to nurture their own spiritual health. As William of Auvergne put it in the 13th century, studying the “book of Nature” led both to “the exaltation of the creator and the perfection of our souls.”   

They also saw God as an all-knowing, all-powerful source of Order. This predisposed them to look for overarching, universal patterns that would later become known as natural laws.  

Contrary to the common assumption that medieval thinkers were dogmatic, they were extremely humble about their truth claims, because they compared their ability to know to God’s and found themselves wanting. So when Aristotle’s systematic methods of observing nature were re-introduced to Europe in the 12th century, they seized the opportunity to enhance the rigour of their studies. As they began implementing Aristotle’s techniques, they realised they could combine them with the Platonic mathematics they had already been using for centuries. This was a powerful combination that resulted in uniquely accurate theories and predictions. It illuminated just how much Order there was to Nature—in fact, more than ever previously demonstrated. It also provided a way to formalise the study of Nature into the methods we today recognise as science. 

It is often said that over the next few hundred years scientists (then called “natural philosophers”) fought against the Church for the sake of science (“natural philosophy”), but this is an anachronism. Philosophers did begin to debate the best sources of knowledge. There were some major conflicts. But the vast majority of these people continued to study nature as a way to know and glorify God as its Creator. 

Huxley and others also re-wrote the history of science to make it seem like it had always existed and been conducted by freethinking naturalists challenging the religious status quo.

Shots fired!   

The supposed conflict between “Religion” and “Science” only really emerged about 150 years ago. In Victorian England it was becoming increasingly acceptable to criticise the church. Most wanted to reform it, but a few began to want to defeat it entirely. 

At the same time, various areas of natural philosophy were proliferating into specific disciplines becoming known as “sciences.” Some people, including influential scientist and public intellectual Thomas Huxley (who hosted an exclusive dinner club for advocates of naturalism called the X Club), saw this as an opportunity to discredit religion.   

One strategy was to unite the growing pool of various scientific disciplines under the umbrella of a singular “science” that could be defined as oppositional to religion. Science was rational, so religion became irrational. Science embraced facts, so religion entertained superstitions. Science honoured truth, so religion enabled wishful thinking. The success of theories such as evolution helped lend credence to such claims. These naturalists began to argue that science doesn’t just disprove specific notions (such as that the Earth is 6,000 years old) but all beliefs in the life beyond entirely.  

Huxley and others also re-wrote the history of science to make it seem like it had always existed and been conducted by freethinking naturalists challenging the religious status quo. In Evolution and Ethics Huxley declared, for example, that “’scientific naturalism took its rise among the Aryans of Ionia.” And he described naturalism as appearing wherever in history “traces of the scientific spirit” were visible. 

Finally, Huxley used his considerable influence both in the UK and the USA to push religion and religious people out of the sciences. As a member of the Devonshire Commission and having several other prestigious roles and memberships throughout his career, he strategically placed his naturalistic protégés in influential university positions, and he re-wrote science textbooks and exams to exclude religious ideas, motivations, and people. In a very short amount of time, Huxley and others succeeded at pushing religion to the margins of the sciences (not entirely of course, but enough to make a difference) and making it seem anti-science. 

Overcoming rage and hate with humility 

I used to think that religion was silly and weak. I thought this view was rational, and I was intellectually superior because of it. I now know I only had these perceptions because I was born into a specific worldview in part manufactured by Huxley and others. By the same token, many fundamentalist religious people—while influenced by many sociopolitical factors—are anti-science in part because their forebears were derided as irrational and intentionally alienated from the sciences. 

Both “sides” of this supposed war have inherited simplified views of one another and are taught to fear and to hate. Without learning this history, most never realise what has biased their enemies--or themselves. And virtually everyone in our society carries misperceptions about there being some kind of intrinsic conflict. When I tell people I have a PhD in the relationship between Religion and Science, most laugh and say: “but is there one?!” 

There is, and it was once beautiful and harmonious.  

The truth is that science is a way of investigating the order of nature, which can be done with or without belief in God. Today, many scientists eschew faith, but many others continue in the medieval tradition of studying Nature as God’s Creation with great integrity, rigour, and depth.  

We don’t all have to return to such beliefs. But one medieval practice we may all do well to reclaim is to approach the world, ourselves, and one another with deep humility concerning the limits of our knowing.  

Article
America
Creed
Justice
6 min read

Is it okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right?

Here's what a mean street preacher really taught me.

Nathan is a speaker and writer on topics related to faith, life and God. He lives near Seattle, Washington. His writing is featured frequently in The Seattle Times. nathanbetts.com

Behind a passer by a street peacher holds up a large yellow sign with a message on it.
Street preachers on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
LaTerrian McIntosh on Unsplash.

A few months ago, my cousin was visiting my hometown of Seattle for work. We planned to meet one evening for a Mariners baseball game during her visit. I suggested that we meet near the wonderful Ken Griffey Jr. statue near the stadium gates. What I hadn’t realized was that this was the precise spot a street evangelist had also decided to station himself in order to share (mostly shout) his message of judgement and destruction the same evening. Kind of like a pre-game verbal hors d'oeuvres. I arrived at the meeting point a few minutes before my cousin, giving me ample time to hear the preacher preach.  

Now, I grew up in church, and, in fact, am myself a speaker and writer on topics involving faith and God. In other words, I’ve had over 40 years to experience the church’s, umm, “quirks”. I’d like to think that very little coming from the mouths of faith preachers could shock me. Alas, I was wrong. 

As I began to listen to the preacher, lines like “weeping and gnashing of teeth” scorched through the preacher’s megaphone. Yep, nothing new there. The preacher used the word “judgment” a lot. Actually, impressively a lot. I’ve never before heard the words “God” and “judgment” used in conjunction more times within a two-minute span. There was a raging intensity to the sermon, but still in the range of normal for street preaching. 

Then, my cousin texted me that she was outside the ballpark but might have gotten the location wrong. I realized she and I were at two different locations. While I texted my cousin back, I tuned out the preacher’s message. That is until I heard him shout through his megaphone, “He hates you.” I stopped texting. I looked up at the preacher. Did he just say that God the Almighty hated all of us outside the ballpark? Families, little boys and girls, and elderly? Did God hate all of us lining up for the game? It was “bark at the park” night so even the dogs were casualties in the preacher’s line of fire. If nothing else was gleaned from the man’s message, it seemed, we were all to understand that God hates us. 

Minutes later, when my cousin and I finally found each other, I told her that she had had the good fortune of missing out on the street preacher informing her that God hates her. She replied, “Oh, I have plenty of others who tell me that!”  

Sadly, many of us have received that negative message from different sources in our world and too often from people sharing some association with God.  

In America, as election season comes to the boil, I’ve noticed (and maybe you have too) the not-so-subtle attitude that it’s okay to say mean things about another person as long as that person is on “the other side”. A verbal dig here, an eyeroll there, name-calling and slanderous nick-naming the enemy for the sake of ridicule have become all too common, if not a soft virtue in political discourse. It has become hard to discern where the moral line is, or if such a thing still exists within political dialogue.  

Conversations like the following happen so frequently following a political debate or interview, they’ve become cliché: “I almost cannot believe he said that!” Response: “Well, yes, that was pretty bad. But he’s right, isn’t he?” Translation: it’s okay to be mean as long as you are mean and right.  

Evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.

The meaning of the word ‘evangelical’ here in America is a complex thing, to be sure. But perhaps one of the reasons it is understood as a political word more than a religious one is because the combative and rude nature of discourse seen in politics has become increasingly acceptable even in Christian settings. As a friend of mine said to me years ago, “It feels as though Christians have turned rudeness into a spiritual gift.”  

The thing is, you probably don’t know the preacher I heard in downtown Seattle, but you’ve probably heard or know a person who makes Christian claims in the same kind of rude ways.  The result is that evangelicalism has gained a hard edge with little resemblance of the good news from which it has its very name.  

I’ve had the privilege of speaking to audiences on topics of faith and God for around 20 years now and I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve met who feel unlovable, already hated, and unforgivable for the decisions they’ve made in life.  

So when I hear a preacher shouting a message through a bullhorn in the name of God and I hear not words of hope, peace, grace, love, and forgiveness, but strictly judgement and burning, I fail to see how this God can be the one who came to earth out of love for people in the person of Jesus Christ.  

It’s true that the Bible does depict God enacting justice and judgement. But equally true is that the Bible not only displays, but out-and-out defines God as being love. My concern with the street preacher’s message is that although he might have communicated the justice of God (albeit in a warped way that would make old-time revivalists look tame), his message left little room for hearing about and feeling the love of God.  

If there is anything we need to hear today, it is the message that God, in his very nature, is love. One particular writer of antiquity, and a close friend of Jesus Christ, once penned a letter to first century churches. In attempting to explain what God is like and what people of faith should be like he wrote: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”   

For those of us who have never been to a church, we only need to watch or attend an American football game to see a sign with the words John 3:16. That reference, taken from one of Christ’s biographies states that, “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life.”  

This is a message we need to hear. It’s something we need to let into our bones—that those of us who feel beyond the reach of love, are in fact loved by God.  

In a strange way, I can’t help but admire the guts those street preachers have, banging out an unpopular message to strangers in crowds. The problem lies in the fact that often their message, so boldly proclaimed, is God’s disappointment, disapproval, or outright hate for people. 

Because this is the truth and too important to miss: God doesn’t hate you. He loves you. He always has and he always will.