Religious Implications of Atheism

To this we can add that in no religion does God say to people: “You are my friends” (John 15:14). And in the Bible this is the main idea, and the main priorities in it are “clean heart” (Ps. 51:10) and sincere love for God and neighbor (Matt. 22:37–40), and not at all religious rituals. Abel and Cain were brothers and made the same (in a religious sense) sacrifice. However, God’s attitude to one and the other was opposite. “The hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem . . . But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:21,23–24). This is no longer religious worship, but something more. The main question that God asks man (all of humanity) is, “Do you love me?” (John 21:15–17). And where there is love, there is liberty (including liberty from religion).

It is also important to note another aspect of non-religious Christianity, correctly noted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer: the Christian’s task is to be a real human, that is, to embody God’s plan for a human, to find and realize his true self. It often becomes possible to do this only if a man not looks back at the opinions of others, at cultural, social and even religious stereotypes. The Bible encourages a person to be himself, and not to play a false role (albeit an honorable one) imposed by social or religious paradigms.

For example, King David rode and danced while bringing the ark of God into Jerusalem, like a boy, like a commoner. His wife, Michal, told him that this was a “violation of protocol”, a degradation of the king’s dignity. But David answered her:

“It was before the LORD, who chose me in place of your father and all his household, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the LORD, that I have danced before the LORD. I will make myself yet more contemptible than this, and I will be abased in my own eyes; but by the maids of whom you have spoken, by them I shall be held in honor” (2 Sam. 6:21–22).

Likewise, Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector and a rich man, climbed a sycamore tree like a boy to see Jesus (Luke 19:2–4). The head of the tax department is a fairly high rank, and even in that era, such behavior would have caused ridicule of the people. But Zacchaeus, like David, did not think about it, since all his attention was drawn to the Lord.

Some people, being completely turned to God, did not even look back at religious stereotypes. Religious people did not understand this and therefore expelled them from their society. St. Augustinus wrote about this, “Divine Providence often allows even good people to be driven out of Christian society, because of some extremely violent indignations of the carnal people . . . The Father, who sees the secret, secretly prepares a crown for such. People of this kind are rare, but examples are not lacking; there are even more of them than you might think.” [58]

And of course, there can be no religion in a baby in the womb. The greatest of all the prophets, John the Baptist, in the womb of Elizabeth joyfully greeted the Virgin Mary, who also bore Christ in the womb at that time (Luke 1:41,44). Naturally, he did not even think about any religion at that moment. In Christian Tradition, there are many more cases when babies express their feelings for God. Therefore, we can talk about completely non-religious and even pre-verbal communication with God. For example, the gospel call “to be changed and become like children” (Matt. 18:3; 19:14) is just about this. The theologians’ formulas “Christianity is the end of religion” and “Christianity is the trial of religion” will be completely incomprehensible to children. If Christianity is defined as love for God, this will be clear to everyone.

It follows from what has been said that in the modern universal meaning the term “religion” is extremely unfortunate due to its abstractness. In any case, it would be wrong to attribute Christianity to religion in some cases.

Relationship between State and Religion

In one thing, atheists are right: in religions, the human factor plays a significant role, there is much human, sometimes too much human. Religion is a social phenomenon. This is how religions differ from pure metaphysics. One, two, or three people can philosophize about metaphysics as much as they want, but they will never create a religion. And a few people living in a desert will not create a religion. It only occurs in a fairly large society. Therefore, it would be a mistake to view any religion outside the historical, social, and cultural context. Many people are followers of one religion or another, not because they searched for a long time and found some truth in it, but simply because it is the religion of their ancestors, or they were brought up in a certain cultural environment or it is so accepted among their relatives and friends.

Atheists often misunderstand religions as myths about supernatural beings invented by someone. It’s not like that at all. The genesis and existence of religions has many aspects in common with the state. Despite the fact that both the state and religion are often the subject of discussion, there is no single universally accepted definition of these terms. This uncertainty is explained by the fact that both of these concepts are quite complex and multifaceted, and it is not at all easy to express their entire essence with one universal definition.

Hegel said that there can be no definition of the state. However, summing up the various modern definitions, it is possible to highlight its main characteristic features. The state is an institution or a series of institutions for regulating social relations and for providing internal and external conditions for maintaining a certain order in society. These relations are legitimized by ideology and traditions, with which, at least, most of the society agrees.

Much the same can be said about religion. Religion is an institution or a series of institutions for regulating spiritual relations in a society. These relations are legalized by the worldview, ideology, culture and traditions prevailing in a particular society. Religion can be associated with a certain territory, and then it is even more closely intertwined with the state, but much more often religion, like culture, has no geographical boundaries.

Many books can be written on this topic, but for now we will confine ourselves to small comments. The state and religion have a common nature—they are like two channels of one river, two trees from one root. History is replete with examples of diffusion or fusion of the state and religion. As long as there is a certain paradigm of social relations, there is its reflection in religion, and vice versa. There were many theocratic states or those where religion was one of the state institutions. The Byzantine coat of arms, the double-headed eagle, is a reflection of the relationship of almost any state and religion. They have one body and two heads. One head thinks about political or everyday issues, and the other about spiritual ones.

The question naturally arises: what about atheistic states? In them, after all, religion is either prohibited or separated from the state. However, the paradox is that the prohibition of ideology is also an ideology, and the prohibition of religion is also a kind of religion. The nature of the state and religion originates from the socio-psychological nature of man, which cannot disappear anywhere. Therefore, if you “cut off the head” of a two-headed eagle, then in its place will grow another, perhaps not at all similar to the severed, but also head. This also happens in atheistic states. Having banned the old religion, they create a new one in its place. Of course, atheists will avoid religious terminology in every possible way, but, in fact, instead of traditional religion, they create their own religion of unbelief.

For example, in the atheistic USSR, belief in God was replaced by belief in science and the dogmas of Marxism-Leninism. Dissenters (even scientists) have been repressed and discriminated against, so an analogy can be drawn with the Inquisition. There was censorship, and a completely religious cult of veneration of the relics of Lenin in the Mausoleum. Church Councils were replaced by Communist Party Congresses. The glory of the CPSU was sent everywhere (instead of the religious glorification of God), etc. etc.

When a religion is transferred to new soil, it inevitably enters into interaction with previous traditional religious ideas, because it is impossible to start from scratch. The new religion is either built into the previous ones, or there is a kind of diffusion, hybridization. That is why in Judaism there was a strict prohibition even on everyday communication with pagans; and Christians from the Jews were very wary of the conversion of pagans, and the Romans looked wary of Christianity, since they saw it as a threat to their state. History shows many examples of hybridization of religions. In Byzantium, there was often a mixture of Neo-Platonism, Hellenic paganism and Christianity, simply veiled under different names, under different masks. In Latin America and Africa, under the guise of Christian saints, they still worship their ethnic spirits, they simply changed their names and external attributes.

In general, it can be said that every person from birth is influenced by upbringing, culture, national characteristics, traditions of their country, the spirit of the era, and other social factors. On the other hand, a person has his own inner “self”; he is a personality, he can mature his own point of view, and he may even dare to challenge the traditional foundations of society. If there are enough such people, a certain critical number, then a social revolution may occur.

The same happens in religions. It is impossible not to notice that social revolutions, or significant transformations in a state, are immediately reflected in religion in this state. [59]

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Примечания

1

. John Hogan, Scientific American, December 1, 2014.

2

. Франк, Смысл жизни, 19. [Hereinafter, everywhere all translations from Russian are made by the author.]

3

. For more information on qualia, see: Волкодав, Эволюция, 139.

4

. A translation from Russian to English.

5

. The video footage of this debate on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSwJuOPG4FI in eight years have been watched by more than forty one million people.

6

. The Edict of Milan (Lat. Edictum Mediolanense) of 313 proclaimed religious tolerance in the territory of the Roman Empire, and Christianity became legal.

7

. See Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, Part IV—Before The Beginning. Chapter 16—Did The Universe Have a Beginning? Beyond Unreasonable Doubt.

8

. Quoted from: Wetter, A Historical and Systematic Survey, 436.

9

. Legler wrote that during all periods of Soviet history from the 1920s to the time of writing the book (1985), Soviet science (all its areas, including natural sciences) was under the influence of the state (atheistic) ideology. See Леглер, Научные Революции при Социализме.

10

. Academician Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943) died on death row. He was a famous geneticist, vice president of the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In 1948, all genetic research in the USSR was discontinued. Hundreds of leading professors and instructors have been fired. Biology books based on genetics were seized and destroyed from libraries.

11

. David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) contains reworking of the main points of the “Treatise”, with the addition of material on free will, miracles, the Design Argument, and mitigated scepticism. Section 10, On Miracles, of the Enquiry, was often published separately.

12

. Lat. “ex nihilo nihil fit”.

13

. In 2003, cosmologists Arvin Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin proved the singularity theorem. It says that the expanding space time does not continue infinitely into the past, but has a beginning, that is, the universe has a beginning. See Borde et al., “Inflationary space-times are not past-complete.”

14

. “In 1973, I proposed that our Universe had been created spontaneously from nothing (ex nihilo), as a result of the established principles of physics,” Edward P. Tryon (prof. of Physics, New York University), “What Made the World?” 14.

15

. Климишин, Релятивистская астрономия, 243.

16

. Зельдович, “Возможно ли образование Вселенной ‘из ничего’?” Природа 4 (1988).

17

. However, in the Afterword to it, Academician A. D. Sakharov considered it necessary “to point out the great uncertainty in our understanding of the situation. This uncertainty is deeply fundamental, even philosophical. Philosophically acute is, in particular, the question of the so-called anthropic principle, which explains the peculiarities of our universe by the fact that only in such a universe could intelligent life arise, in contrast to an infinite number of other, spontaneously arising ‘dead’ universes.”

18

. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing, Preface.

19

. Albert Einstein remarked on this topic, “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” (Quoted from: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/albert_einstein_110208)

20

. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing. Ch. 10: Nothing is Unstable, 154.

21

. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing. Preface, 18.

22

. Isaac Newton (1642–1727). In Brewster, Memoirs of Newton (1855), vol II, Ch. 27. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/isaac_newton_387031

23

. Vilenkin, “Creation of Universes from Nothing”, 25–28.

24

. “That same Munchausen” is a Soviet artistic two-part television movie in 1979. The play “The Most Truthful” by Grigory Izrailevich Gorin served as the literary material for the script. It was written in the play, “A serious face is not yet a sign of intelligence, all stupidity on Earth is done with just such an expression.” However, when dubbing the movie, Yankovsky made a reservation, saying, “A smart face is not yet a sign of intelligence.” In this form, the phrase, despite G. Gorin’s protests, remained in the movie.

25

. For example, in the order of the Liturgy in the priestly prayer of the Trisagion Singing (“Who from non-being has brought all things into being”), in The Funeral Service—Eulogetaria for the Dead (You who of old did fashion me out of nothingness, and with your Image Divine did honor me), which was written by St. John Damascene, etc.

26

. John Chrysostom, In Gen. 13. 2; Cyr. Hieros. Catech. 4. 18; Nemes. De nat. hom. 2; Theodoret. Haer. fab. V 9; Hieron. Adv. Rufin. II 10; 5th anathematism of the Council of 561 in Braga—Enchiridion symbolorum. N 455; The fact that everything created was brought into being out of nothingness was written by St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil the Great, St. Athanasius the Great.

27

. St. Basil the Great. Hexameron (Six Days of Creation).

28

. Endless and limitless sea of essence (Gr. τί πέλαγος ουσίας ἄπειρον καί ἀόριστον). S. Greg. Naz. Or. 38, in Theophan. 7 // PG. XXXVI. P. 317.

29

. B. Augustini, Conf. XI, 11 // PL. XXXII. P. 813: splendorem semper stantis; aeternitatis cnfr.: De Trinit. V, 1, 2 // PL. XLII. P. 912: sine tempore sempiternum.

30

. B. Augustini, Conf. XI, 14 // PL. XXXII. P. 816: praesens autem, si semper esset praesens nec in praeteritum transiret, non jam esset tempus, sed aeternitas.

31

. Gr. “παρ’ ᾧ οὐκ ἔνι παραλλαγὴ ἢ τροπῆς ἀποσκίασμα”.

32

. Флоровский, “Творение: его начало и конец”, 3.

33

. A priori—knowledge obtained before experience and independently of it, i. e., knowledge, as it were known in advance.

34

. Hereinafter, everywhere by “heart” we mean a metaphor meaning a certain spiritual center or spiritual depths of a person. This metaphor is used very often in the Bible. In general, the “heart” in it is often called the center or depth. For example, “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40). It is obvious that the Earth does not have a heart (as a physical organ), but has depth.

35

. For example, Acts. 17:22 “Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way’.” Gr.: «Σταθεὶς δὲ ὁ Παῦλος ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ ᾿Αρείου πάγου ἔφη• ἄνδρες ᾿Αθηναῖοι, κατὰ πάντα ὡς δεισιδαιμονεστέρους ὑμᾶς θεωρῶ».

36

. Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and other painters, whose work is now estimated at $100 million per painting, lived in poverty and barely made ends meet. Also, in music, the brilliant Mozart and others geniuses lived in poverty, while the less talented were much better off.

37

. See Irenaeus of Lyons (Adversus haereses, III, 10, 2 and in the Prologue of the chapter 5); St. Athanasius of Alexandria (Contra Arianos I, 39). Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian said about the same thing.

38

. See Скабалланович, «Что мы ждем от обновленных монастырей?», 20.

39

. Ζητεῖν τὸν Κύριον, εἰ ἄρα γε ψηλαφήσειαν αὐτὸν καὶ εὕροιεν, καί γε οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου ἡμῶν ὑπάρχοντα (Πράξ. 17,27).

40

. Quoted from: Антоний Блум (Митр. Сурожский), Труды. Кн. 1, 715.

41

. Антоний Блум (Митр. Сурожский), Труды. Кн. 1, 821–822.

42

. For a large ship, the additional harmful cargo can be several hundred tons.

43

. See Иоанн Зизиулас, Церковь как икона Царствия Божия, 62–63.

44

. For example, Karl Barth, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Fr. Alexander Schmemann.

45

. Engels, “Bruno Bauer and Early Christianity.”

46

. Gr. παράδοξος—contrary to the established opinion, unusual, incredible, extraordinary.

47

. The Christmas Kontakion describes five antinomies in five verses: Today, the Virgin bears Him who is transcendent, and the earth presents the cave to Him who is beyond reach. Angels, along with shepherds glorify Him. The Magi make their way to Him by a star. For a new child has been born for us, the God before all ages. Greek text: Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον, τὸν ὑπερούσιον τίκτει, καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸ Σπήλαιον, τῷ ἀπροσίτῳ προσάγει. Ἄγγελοι μετὰ Ποιμένων δοξολογοῦσι. Μάγοι δὲ μετὰ ἀστέρος ὁδοιποροῦσι· δι’ ἡμᾶς γὰρ ἐγεννήθη, Παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός.

48

. Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. https://biblehub.com/englishmans_hebrew.htm

49

. Quoted from: Антоний Блум (Митр. Сурожский), Труды. Кн. 1, 361.

50

. Quoted from: Антоний Блум (Митр. Сурожский), Труды. Кн. 1, 295.

51

. http://www.saintjonah.org/services/proskomede.doc

52

. Quoted from: Антоний Блум (Митр. Сурожский), Труды. Кн. 1, 328.

53

. Gr.: Ψαλμοκατάρα (from the Greek “ψαλμός”—“psalm” and “κατάρα”—“curse”) is the liturgical rite, which existed in the practice of the Greek Orthodox Church, at least in the twelfth–seventeenth centuries. Ii is described in the Greek Nomocanon of 1528.

54

. Алмазов, Проклятие преступника псалмами (Ψαλμοκατάρα). К истории суда Божьего в Греческой Церкви.

55

. St. Cyprian of Carthage. Letter to Pompey against Stefan’s letter about the baptism of heretics.

56

. Ιt is clearly expressed in the books For the Life of the World and The Diaries.

57

. However, this technique is far from being safer, more rational method is annealing of artificial fire edge.

58

. Augustini Hipponensis episcopi, De vera religione, PL 34, cap. VI, 11, 128. Paris, 1845.

59

. An illustrative example can be the history of the emergence of the Church of England, the transformation in France during the Great French Revolution.