Atheist FAQ

Atheist FAQ

Q1: Concerning the historical existence of Christ Jesus.

A1: Since historians widely agree Buddha existed, and the earliest written accounts of him were hundreds of years after he supposedly lived, it’s pretty strange anyone could actually quibble over Christ having existed.

Q1a: Concerning the lack of first-hand accounts of Christ Jesus.

A1a: here is an argument for why the Gospels include first-hand accounts, as well as their historicity in general: http://pastebin.com/9XxNnSU6

Q1b: Concerning the Gospel of John giving a discrepant date for Christ's Crucifixion, compared to the other Gospels.

A1b: Leviticus 23:5 says Passover starts on 14th Day of the First Month (which is the day the Lamb is slaughtered), at evening--by ancient Hebrew (and Orthodox Liturgical reckoning) a day *starts* with evening, so the Mystical Supper is start of the first day of Passover, which is also the day the Passover Lamb is killed.

Q2: Concerning God's preference for faith over proof.

A2: Dostoevsky felt this was about faith being a choice. If God’s revealed truth were as clear and objective as the earth being round, there would be no choice in faith, which would deprive it of love. In my opinion, God also wants to make Christians seem (and feel) fools--they don’t just appear fools today, they looked like fools from the beginning, and the NT says God wanted it so. For everyone to see you as a fool is good for one’s humility. Too many Christians are already too prideful as it is, if Christianity were more blatantly supported, Christians might be unbearably obnoxious. But as it is, reasonable Christians cannot feel hubris about their faith because they have nothing to affirm it beyond personal experience, they have nothing they can show off and use to make others appear stupid--if you are plagued with doubt yourself, it is much more difficult to berate someone for being skeptical.

Q3: Concerning Christianity as a continuation of Roman Paganism.

A3: Take a look at this pic: oi67.tinypic.com/2dkbec8.jpg On the left, Augustus Caesar as high priest. Top right, ancient Jewish priests. Bottom right, Orthodox bishops. Here’s the Jewish High Priest: http://www.wwj.org.nz/news/images/15264p15.jpg Tell me, do Christian clerical vestaments look more Roman, or Jewish?

Q3a: Concerning the hypothesis of Christianity as Roman propaganda to pacify the Jews.

A3a: That theory has a number of holes in it. For one thing, its proponents talks about how Judaism was very much about “text” and “no graven image” (please see A3 from the Muslim FAQ for the Hebrew term used). In actuality, Jews were very into iconography, from the bronze snake in (Numbers 21:9), to the Ark of the Covenant, to all the gold statues decking out the Temple of Jerusalem. Also, look up the ancient Jewish synagogue (since destroyed by Daesh) at Dura-Europos: the interior was completely covered with Jewish iconography depiction various prophets and scenes from the Old Testament.

Q3b: Concerning the dissimilarity between Christianity and Judaism.

A3b: Orthodox Judaism (let’s not speak of the other kinds, since I don’t recognize them as having any ancient heritage)  is ultimately derived from a Pharisaic movement started by Rabbi Akiva, but their Messiah didn’t pan out (yet they still interpret the OT prophecies with the exegesis he inspired). Christianity is derived from Essenic Judaism, and our Messiah *did* pan out, meaning we adopted the New Covenant Isaiah prophesied about. (Karaite Judaism is the modern descendent of Sadducean Judaism, in case you were wondering). One big thing that’s sometimes missed, though, is that Christianity still has a clergy, whereas Judaism does not, which is a pretty big thing.


Q3c: Concerning Easter and Christmas as being derived from pagan festivals.

A3c: While it is true that Easter in the West has blended with blatantly pagan celebrations, in Orthodox Christianity, the holiday has always been referred to as “Pascha” (Ēostre is, after all, a Germanic goddess, so calling the holiday that would be alien in Greece, Byzantium, Russia, Ethiopia, Egypt, etc.), which is the Greek word for Passover, and it never had any of the pagan trappings. As for Christmas, the oldest accounts, taken from Christian letters, place Christ’s conception on the same date he died, which is late March. But there is also a Biblical argument for Christ being born on the December 25th. See Part 5 of On the Day of the Birth of Our Savior Jesus Christ, by Saint John Chrysostom: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2014/12/on-day-of-birth-of-our-savior-jesus.html If you would like to see more ancient and modern arguments corraborating that date, scroll down to “Christmas Origins and Paganism” here: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/12/christmas-resource-page.html


Q4: Concerning Hume's case against Christianity.

A4: Hume’s argument, if anything, shows that everyone has faith equal to Christianity, and the Christian faith is no more absurd--at the worst, it says Christianity is a sentiment, not derived from reason, but according to Hume, *no* position is derived from reason alone, all positions rest ultimately on some sort of sentiment, which uses only reason as its crutch. The only argument he gave against Christianity specifically was concerning miracles, and this is the weakest  of Hume’s arguments because it is begging the question.

Q5: Concerning Stirner's case for the irrelevance of God.

A5: Stirner says we are all driven purely by the bodily (“the spirit, which is not regarded as the property of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a ghost”) pain and pleasure. We make idols of ourselves, and do everything in latria to them (idol + latria), however else we try to rationalize it. This actually is the Orthodox perspective. According to the Philokalia, the “knowledge” (used as synonymous with sexual intecourse in Hebrew) of “good and evil” is about carnal good and evil, which are pleasure and pain. These are not bad things per se, but we became enslaved to them. Christians are indeed involuntary egoists, because Christianity is about escaping these things as our masters. Here is Saint Maximos the Confessor, as quoted in the Philokalia: “Since man came into being composed of noetic soul and sentient body, one interpretation could be that the tree of life is the soul’s intellect, which is the seat of wisdom. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil would then be the body’s power of sensation, which is clearly the seat of mindless impulses. Man received the divine commandment not to involve himself actively and experientially with these impulses; but he did not keep the commandment. Both trees in Scripture symbolize the intellect and the senses. Thus the intellect has the power to discriminate between the spiritual and the sensible, between the eternal and the transitory. Or rather, as the soul’s discriminatory power, the intellect persuades the soul to cleave to the first and to transcend the second. The senses have the power to discriminate between pleasure and pain in the body. Or rather, as a power existing in a body endowed with soul and sense-perception, they persuade the body to embrace pleasure and reject pain.” God ordained us as absolute masters of the material (Hebrews 2:8), but we became enslaved by the deceit of hamartia, so that a veil is before our eyes, which can only be lifted by Christ, it can only be washed off by God’s Blood. See A6h of this FAQ for more on the post-fall material world.

Q6: Concerning Nietzsche's case that Christianity is driven by ressentiment.

A6: Nietzsche illustrates his argument by quoting two theologians, Tertullian and Aquinas, as talking about how those in heaven get to watch the punishment of those in hell for their satisfaction (On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Chapter 15). Firstly of all, Tertullian is an extremely Latin theologian (Tertullian is called “the Father of Latin Christianity”), so applying him to Orthodox Christianity would be improper--we consider him heretical. Secondly, the quote Nietzsche attributes to Aquinas is fabricated--it’s been cited by numerous atheist scholars to be in “Summa Theologiae Supplement to the Third Part, question XCVII, article i, ‘conclusio’”, but it’s not there; some have stated that it’s not there because the Catholic Church censored it out, but no one has provided a shred of evidence to substantiate this assertion. Furthermore, even if Aquinas *did* say that, it's hardly a crack on Orthodox Christianity, since Aquinas is not Orthodox at all, he wrote a lot defending the filioque. And now that we’ve dealt with that, this whole idea of hell is downright incoherent from Orthodox perspective anyway, which doesn’t conceive of hell as separation from God. God’s love saturates and sustains all matter and life, and our consciousness of it makes us experience it as either a light (described as heaven) or a fire (described as hell), perfect consciousness of it would mean you could feel it intimately on your every atom and your very spiritual being as the more intense than any sensation you could imagine, and you would see it everywhere (discernment of it is called the Wisdom of God, which is the feminine identification of the Word: (see A1 of the liberal FAQ).  Here are two articles on the Orthodox understanding of hell: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/st-isaac-the-syrian-the-hellish-scourge-of-divine-love/ and another: https://oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/the-kingdom-of-heaven/heaven-and-hell

Q6a: Concerning Nietzsche's case that Christianity is slave morality.

A6a: Christianity isn’t quite “master morality” in the Nietzschean sense (master morality being driven by love of the material abstracted from the spiritual; Christianity is driven by love of both), but neither is it slave morality, since it is beyond good and evil. Nietzsche said love is beyond good and evil(Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter 153). He also said that overflowing love and gratitude were the essence of great art (The Gay Science, Chapter 370). Nietzsche lauded ancient Greek religion because he saw gratitude as its distinguishing characteristic, which he contrasts with fear as the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity (Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter 49).However, later, (Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter 260), Nietzsche espouses a positive conception of fear, and berates Christianity for labeling that which is feared “evil”, saying that master-morality has high regard for that which is feared, whereas slave-morality is about labeling that which is feared, “evil”. Yet, “I will fear no evil,” is a Christian maxim from Psalm 23. God is the only one to be feared, and he’s clearly not evil in Christianity. Christianity is the embodiment of the transcending of the slave morality camel, and the master morality lion: Christianity is the Nietzschean child (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 1, Chapter 1, On the Three Metamorphoses--Nietzsche was influenced by Heraclitus: “Time is a child moving counters in a game; the royal power is a child's.”--”Time” is a translation of “αἰών”, the word used in the common Liturgical Orthodox phrase “unto the ages of ages”; “royal power” is a translation of “βασιληίη”, the word translated as “kingdom” in “Kingdom of God”). Saint Nikitas Stithatos is quoted in The Way of the Pilgrim, “He who has attained to true prayer and love has no sense of the differences between things: he does not distinguish the righteous man from the sinner, but loves them all equally and judges no man, as God causes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” The Christian seeks this state, to see the material as gift, each atom is a toy block for us to play with and enjoy in happiness (Refer to A5 of this FAQ). After the “restoration of all things”, aesthetics, morality and piety will all be harmonious, and the material will be an infinite canvas to every soul as an artist--Saint Maximos the Confessor said in , ”If we are made, as we are, in the image of God, let us become the image both of ourselves and of God; or rather let us all become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For in this way the divine gifts and the presence of divine peace are honored.” (from Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice; in the Philokalia).


Q6b: Concerning the Übermensch as destroyer and creator of values.

A6b: Christ was, without a doubt, the most perfect example of the Übermensch to ever live. The Übermensch is a man-god who destroys all the old values (though perhaps only Christians understand that his true mission here was not to destroy, "but to fulfill" [Matthew 5:17]) and imposes his own, self-created values upon the world, often at the cost of much bloodshed (only in this case, it was the blood of Christians that paved the way for Christianity, more than the blood of the defenders of the old values). Christ did this more radically than anyone in history, more than Mohammed or Napoleon. He did not come to bring peace, but a sword, and he was the first to suffer for his values. True, his values weren’t Nietzsche’s, but Nietzsche's philosophy is about creating one’s own values and reshaping the world in their image, not in following his values. Christ was both man and God, the only true superman, a man-beyond-man.

Q6c: Concerning Nietzsche's asserting that Christ was the only Christian.

A6c: How does that make sense? Countless Christians follow Christ’s lifestyle and died for their faith, how are they not Christians?

Q6d: Concerning Christ's followers failure to destroy and create values.

A6d: Here is an excerpt from Crime and Punishment, a dream of a world of Übermenschen:  “In his illness he had dreamed that the whole world was doomed to fall victim to some terrible, as yet unknown and unseen pestilence spreading to Europe from the depths of Asia. Everyone was to perish, except for certain, very few, chosen ones. Some new trichinae had appeared, microscopic creatures that lodged themselves in men’s bodies. But these creatures were spirits, endowed with reason and will. Those who received them into themselves immediately became possessed and mad. But never, never had people considered themselves so intelligent and unshakeable in the truth as did these infected ones. Never had they thought their judgments, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions and beliefs more unshakeable. Entire settlements, entire cities and nations would be infected and go mad. Everyone became anxious, and no one understood anyone else; each thought the truth was contained in himself alone, and suffered looking at others, beat his breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know whom or how to judge, could not agree on what to regard as evil, what as good. They did not know whom to accuse, whom to vindicate. People killed each other in some sort of meaningless spite. They gathered into whole armies against each other, but, already on the march, the armies would suddenly begin destroying themselves, the ranks would break up, the soldiers would fall upon one another, stabbing and cutting, biting and eating one another. In the cities the bells rang all day long: everyone was being summoned, but no one knew who was summoning them or why, and everyone felt anxious. The most ordinary trades ceased, because everyone offered his own ideas, his own corrections, and no one could agree. Agriculture ceased. Here and there people would band together, agree among themselves to do something, swear never to part—but immediately begin something completely different from what they themselves had just suggested, begin accusing one another, fighting, stabbing. Fires broke out; famine broke out. Everyone and everything was perishing. The pestilence grew and spread further and further. Only a few people in the whole world could be saved; they were pure and chosen, destined to begin a new generation of people and a new life, to renew and purify the earth; but no one had seen these people anywhere, no one had heard their words or voices.” The Tower of Babel.

Q6e: Concerning Nietzsche’s test of eternal recurrence.

A6e: Orthodox Christianity doesn't posit that heaven is some otherworld, heaven is happening right here, right now, we just can't see it. The "ages of ages" is when the veil will be lifted for all and in totality, but until then we struggle against the veil. We strive to live as if this were the eternity, not in any was distinct from how we live after the eternity. The eternity is not some reprieve from time, it is the fulfillment of everything. The Orthodox ideal is to live as in the eternity, because if everyone did that perfectly, then we'd already find ourselves in heaven.

Q6f: Concerning eternal recurrence's incompatibility with repentance.

A6f: The word translated as sin is “hamartia”. This is a term used to describe the flaw that brings down a great hero in Greek tragedy. To say that you can have no flaws or failures, is to live in denial (and that in itself is a classic flaw of Greek drama: hubris. Eternal recurrence is not about rationalization or denial, it's about how you confront life, "Am I going through life as if I had to repeat it forever?" If you make it just about rejecting mistakes on your part, then you will eventually have to blame others for everything wrong with your life, and that's ressentiment--either that, or it would be, "The grapes are probably sour anyway, I don't regret being unable to eat them." It's not about saying that you are living according to the thought experiment regardless of how you go through life, it's about conforming your life to what you'd want it to be under the circumstances, which is going to have mistakes; it's about offering a different ideal to pursue.

Q6g: Concerning Nietzsche's argument that Christianity is a continuation of Platonism.

A6g: While many Christian theologians used Greek philosophy to support Christianity in evangelizing to the Greeks (Paul, for one), Christian dogma is not derived from Greek philosophy, and any Christian theologian’s endeavor in this regard is faulty. When it comes to Platonism, see the distinction between icons and idols in A3a of the Protestant FAQ. As for the significance of Logos, that comes from the Septuagint, not Heraclitus (for some examples of the OT using Logos in the unique sense it has in the NT, see Psalms 107:20 and Isaiah 55:11).

Q6h: Concerning Christianity's hatred of the material world.

A6h: Saint Nikitas Stithatos said, in On the Practice of the Virtues (it’s in the Philokalia):  “If you refer the activities of the outer senses back to their inner counterparts - exposing your sight to the intellect, the beholder of the light of life, your hearing to the judgment of the soul, your taste to the discrimination of the intelligence, your sense of smell to the understanding of the intellect, and relating your sense of touch to the watchfulness of the heart - you will lead an angelic life on earth; while being and appearing as a man among men, you will also be an angel coexisting with angels and spiritually conscious in the same way as they are.”  We worship with all five senses at Divine Liturgy, doctrine is expressed not just in writing, but pictorially, and to the other senses as well The material and the spiritual are complementary, they are not separate places, but different dimensions which properly intersect (“Five senses characterize the ascetic life: vigilance, meditation, prayer, self-control and stillness. Once you have linked your five outward senses to them, joining sight to vigilance, hearing to meditation, smell to prayer, taste to self-control and touch to stillness. you will swiftly purify your soul's intellect: refining it by means of them, you will make it dispassionate and visionary.” ibid.); hell and heaven are actually different terms for the same dimension (see Ephesians 6:12, which says overtly that our struggle is not against the material, but against the dark spirits who inhabit heaven, also see A6 of this FAQ for the Orthodox conception of hell and how it is the same as heaven); the fall impaired the harmony of these two dimensions, but it will be restored after the restoration of all things--in fact, the only issue is that we can’t see that we are in heaven, because hamartia clouds our ability to detect it; to quote Dostoevsky,  “We don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep.” Hamartia is a lie (the Devil is the “Father of all lies”). Christianity is not Gnosticism. “World” in Christianity is a translation of  κόσμος (kosmos), which means order...as in, the order of being enslaved to carnal good and evil (see A5 of this FAQ, and: http://deathtotheworld.com/about/ ), which means the material rules us rather than vice versa. The material realm is γῆ (gé), generally translated as “earth”, it’s never used negatively. See the significance of the word here: http://biblehub.com/greek/1093.htm Notice how Plato's Socrates confronted death: he said it was no big deal, and that philosophy is all about no being concerned about it; compare that with how Christ begged to live from His Father at Gethsemane.

Q7: Concerning the incompatibility of hell and a loving God.

A7: First, see A6 of this FAQ for the Orthodox conception of hell. Second, universal reconciliation is a *possibility*--not a doctrine-- (http://orthodoxwiki.org/Apocatastasis) that has  been speculated upon by various Orthodox saints (verses which might be cited in this regard include 1 Corinthians 3:13-15, Colossians 1:20, 1 Timothy 2:4 and Acts 3:21). But for it to happen, at the very least it would have to be with the free affirmation of all those who are reconciled. We pray and hope that it may happen, as is proper for Christians, but we do not presume to teach that it will, which would be extremely presumptuous.


Q8: Concerning Hesychasm and other Christian practices and theology being derived from Asia.

A8: Actually, “mantra” and “japa” (mantra meditation)  just meant a regular prayer in Eastern religions until a while after Christians started using constant repetitions. This a passage from the Shatapatha Brahmana, which shows what mantras were prior to Christianity:
"When called upon by the Adhvaryu to recite the morning-prayer, the Hotrt first makes an oblation of ghee on the Agnidhra fire, with the mantra, 'Protect me from the spell of the mouth, from every imprecation, Haill' and then two oblations on the Ahavaniya with appropriate mantras."  The earliest Buddhist canon, which is the Pali canon, dates from 29 BC and make no mention of mantra meditation. Christian meditation dates back to the OT (Genesis 24:63). Joshua 1:8 says to keep the Law constantly on your lips, to meditate on it day and night. The word translated as “meditate” here, means to mutter or growl quietly. Paul says to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17)  The earliest extensive written instructions  on Christian mantra meditation, were authored by Saint John Cassian, in 420 AD, at the behest of Bishop Castor of Apt. The earliest account of Buddha as we think of him now was written by Buddhaghosa, and dates from around the same time Saint John Cassian was writing (earlier accounts of Buddha are closer to something out of Homer). The Visuddhimagga, Buddhaghosa’s extensive meditation manual, makes no mention of mantras; here meditation is focusing on something (or focusing on precisely nothing), but none of the instruction says anything about use of mantras in meditation. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, from the 4th Century AD, mention mantras, but here they have nothing to do with mediation, they’re invocations used to gain power over things, probably the identical sense to what they were for Brahmin priests. As for Hinduism, their most famous mantra, the Hare Krishna, was not used for constant repetition or meditation until 16th Century AD, when it was popularized by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. The idea (in the West) that all of this is far more ancient than Christianity started with Orientalism.

Q9: Concerning modern Christianity as a product of Saul's thought rather than Christ.

A9: Saint Paul doesn’t contradict anything in the Gospels, and in fact he is very explicit whenever he says something that didn’t come directly from Christ. His Epistles are peppered with disclaimers every time he is just speaking his own mind rather than iterating Christ’s teachings. It’s clear Paul was diligent in regard to preserving Christ’s teachings and not distorting them, because if he were not, he wouldn’t be so scrupulous with such disclaimers. For instance, Paul said it is shameful for women not to cover their heads in Church, but then added that this isn't a teaching of Christ's, it is his own opinion on the matter; consequently, Orthodox women very often cover their heads in Church, but it is not something enforced or demanded.