Is ALL Atheism Really Rage Against God?
The implications are pretty mind-boggling...
I just came across a YouTube interview, in which political commentator, author, and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza talks to former atheist philosopher Jason Hill about “the different forms of atheism.”
There are two forms, he suggests:
Philosophical atheism. That is, “by deploying reason alone, I don’t see sufficient evidence for God or an afterlife.”
Wounded theism. These, says D’Souza, are people who are angry with God because of a perceived injustice done to them or others. They harbor “a certain type of rage” or “moral indignation.”
Hill, who is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, openly admits that 2) was the case for him: “My atheism was forged in the crucibles of extreme anger at God for taking my father away from me. My father is a schizophrenic, and I watched the ravages of schizophrenia destroy a brilliant man. And he abandoned his family; told me at 12 years old that he was repudiating, renouncing me and my brother, and that he was going off to the mountains of Jamaica to be the Bride of Christ.”
D’Souza counters that even one of the “grandmasters of philosophical atheism,” Christopher Hitchens, in a private conversation told him that his real motives are entirely different ones:
“I don’t want to go to Heaven. I don’t like the idea of being under the tyranny of God. I don’t like the idea of a divine authoritarian, no matter how wise, sort of telling me how to be and what to do. I don’t want to join any chorus of angels.”
That, of course, was a totally different argument from the “sophisticated Oxford talk” Hitchens had given just 30 minutes earlier on stage.
“So the human mind… doesn’t like to believe that it is taking a position based on anger or rage,” D’Souza concludes. “We like to think that we are making Solomonic decisions based on a careful evaluation of the evidence.”
Hill agrees, saying that many people don’t want to accept that they would have to “give up their personal sovereignty and autonomy and acquire what I call, ‘God sovereignty’ and ‘God autonomy.’ … Your greatest freedom is not in your whimsical, capricious, personal autonomy, but when you take on the autonomy of God… there you find your personal freedom.”
Here’s the interview if you want to watch it.
I’ve met several brilliant men who were militant atheists.