On Wednesday night we were treated to an engaging and thought-provoking talk by Prof. Matthew Dinan of the Holy Cross Political Science Department. Prof. Dinan's presentation was titled "Ecce Homo: How Reading Nietzsche Can Make Us Better Catholics."
Prof. Dinan began by stating that it is currently a very bad time to be an atheist. The reason for this is that the New Atheists, led in their charge by Richard Dawkins, the Cambridge biologist, fail to provide any thoughtful criticism of Christianity. Dawkins employs a very narrow form of "science" to refute Christianity, a definiton of science based solely upon human genetics.
Darwin's main argument against God's existence, as portrayed in his book The God Delusion. The argument presented is that, for God to have been creator, He must have been more complex than His creation, putting
Him at the wrong end of the evolutionary spectrum. This argument is very flimsy, because it fails to take into account that God is eternal and creation is temporal, and the same sort of evolutionary standard cannot be applied to God's infinitude. In effect, the Dawkins argument focuses not on the particulars of Christian belief, but is merely a polemic contempt for Christianity. The New Atheists have no interest in serious dialogue.
In contrast with these weak arguments, the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche proposes far more difficult challenges to Christianity - namely that Christians are unable to deal effectively with the comforts of bourgeois society and that they lack the joy of the Gospel.
The first challenge is manifested in Nietzsche's work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In the book, the character Zarathustra emerges from a cave high atop a mountain and descends to the land below. in the forest, Zarathustra encounters a pious hermit who, thinking Zarathutra is a fellow hermit, warns him that the nearby townspeople dislike hermits. Zarathustra, meanwhile, is shocked because the hermit does not realize that God is dead. Nevertheless, Zarathustra doesn't inform the hermit of this, but instead proceeds on to the town.
In the town, the locals, who are very hedonistic and petty, think that Zarathustra is a tightrope walker coming to entertain them. Zarathustra then announces to them that God is dead. The people, however, are unaffected and confused, and fail to understand his message.
There is a stark contrast between the hermit and the townspeople. To the hermit, because of his strong belief, God is still alive. To the townspeople, however, God is already dead, because they instead worship pleasure and comfort. They are what Nietzsche terms "last men." The theme here is that modern Christians don't understand the call to distinction presented by the Gospel. In effect, we must change our lives, like the hermit, and not fade away into hedonism like the last men. Thus, we are challenged to ask: do we put too much stock in petty things? Are we distinct?
Beyond this, Nietzsche argues that modern Christians are about hatred and selfishness, rather than charity and joy. He argues that when modern Christians act charitably, they do so not to help the poor, but to bring down the powerful. thus, by helping the powerless, they validate their own weakness. Thus, modern Christian charity is merely envy of the powerful, and resentment. This in turn makes them joyless, and obscures the good news of the gospel.
Finally, Nietzsche threw in the caveat that, by throwing out God, people everywhere will fail to appreciate truth. Although he probably believes truth is more subjective, he still acknowledges that out ideas about truth have a firm foothold in God, and with God's "death", the basis of truth will be destroyed - in effect, modern atheists are unprepared to deal with the consequences of God's "death."
In sum, the thought of Nietzsche challenges modern Christians to look past resentment, even resentment for Dawkins, and instead to answer the call for a changed life based upon the joy of the Gospel. He also challenges us to approach science not as a threat, but as a part of God's Truth.
We thank Prof. Dinan very much for his time and effort in preparing this presentation. It is very good to be aware of the challenges levied against Christianity today, and how to answer them through examples of right Christian life.
No comments:
Post a Comment