Atheists have a defective view of freedom, of knowledge, of God which they peddle in the garments of ‘science’. But there is another massive confusion around what religion is, and the nature of power, the contrast between human power and the power of God. This focus on human power is not only a key to atheism, but also a fault line through all religions, including Christianity.
For the humanist, the ultimate salvation is in man: man will become superman and conquer through his own power. The locus of power is in the human will, unconstrained by external forces. Not only is human power to be pursued, to be worshipped, it is to be concentrated. For the humanist, there is no power outside the human mind, outside human structure. So when I interpret a religion, I interpret in terms of the power structures which have grown up around it. These are human power structures which do not reflect God’s power. So when the atheist criticises a religion, he criticises the institutionalised religion, which is all he can see or understand. Christianity is the Vatican, the pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church of England. Such power structure are human inventions, connected to the exercise of human power in monarchies, in empires; often divorced from the religion it purported to serve and represent.
Contaminated by the ambitions of humans, the heart of a religion is replaced by human institutions rules and activities. What was once trust, obedience to the spirit, truth becomes, ritual, coercion, lies, drained of meaning and purpose like a chicken is drained of blood. There is nothing left of the original and the pursuit of a spiritual power becomes the corrupted pursuit of human power.
Such phenomena require the requisition of religious and spiritual concepts, philosophies and people in the pursuit of human power. This happens when, drained of knowledge, abandoning God, the humanists, whether covered by a veneer of religious conformance, or exposed through the materialist philosophies, whether Marx or Mao, pursue human power or exercise human power in the pursuit of corrupted philosophies.
In Christianity, a key theme is the clash of human power with God’s power. Human powers, when expose to external power react to threat and fear with persecution. The exercise of human power and control over other is not a resonance in Christianity. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Bu such threatens human power, threatens to expose its delusion, to expose the naked emperor. So the external human power must rise up against the internal spiritual power. Persecution, torture, suppression are become the norm.. Beheadings, crucifixions, mass imprisonments are exercised in an attempt to constrain a power which is hard to halt and threatens the primacy of the human will.
Unfortunately, this primacy of human power is at the heart of Islam. The kingdom of God, the Caliphate will be established on this present earth, by the will of humans. Such is the remoteness of Allah that humans, following the instructions of the Koran, will exercise power and make the kingdom appear by the pure will of humans. The purpose of the Islamic State is to establish Allah’s kingdom by the human enforcement of the law of Allah, because Allah will not intervene and come and do it himself. It is humans, attempting to make things happen, things which are the responsibility of God, through the sheer force of human will, human decisions, and human actions. At its heart, Islam is no less humanist than atheism, because it considers that the achievement of Allah’s will is a matter of human will, the bringing about the kingdom, the caliphate is a human task, salvation will be achieved by sheer human effort. This is a product of the pre-eminence of humans, whether through religious ritual or scientific advancement, and it is doomed to fail.
In the Hittite empire, in Mesopotamia, 1500 BC, the king exercised a brutal dictatorship through the medium of religion. He focussed power through declaring his role as the representative of a sun god. This was worship of the material and worship of the human. Absolute power was located in the throne and the temple. Control of information, of money, of food was centralised with the king. And the practice of a religion was used as an instrument of power and control.
So the atheist sees nothing beyond the institutional power, the material power structure. Such a restricted view leads to an interpretation of the crusades, the inquisition, and the imprisonment of Galileo which is entirely defective. The crusades concerned the exercise of human power and attempts to achieve human goals, not God’s goals. Violence, war and the sword were exercised in the pursuit of a human goal; the opposite of the goal of Christianity. Jesus specifically forbad the use of force, the use of the sword. So the crusades cannot be aligned with the philosophy of Christianity, but with the philosophy of humanism; an attempt to achieve erroneously perceived goals of religion by human means. The humanist philosophy, that man can heal himself, is not limited to humanism and atheism itself but penetrates every religion. It is only in the abandoning of the belief that man can cure himself, make God do things, achieve God’s ends by human means, that hope is born.
The crusades, portrayed as part of Christian history, were more part of secular history and the attempt to impose extra-materialist philosophies onto human power structures. The spread of Christianity does not depend on who possesses Jerusalem. And neither does the preservation of the Christian message require the exercise of the power, coercion, and torture of the inquisition. As such, the crusaders and the inquisitors were no different from atheists. Their belief was in the power of humans structures, human will, human sufficiency, to achieve human goals, without reference to what God might want, and deluding themselves that not only was violence God’s will, but they had heard from God; ignoring the teaching of Jesus in the sermon on the mount.
Galileo’s imprisonment was not a result of a threat of scientific revolution to religion, but the threat to the power structure in the Catholic church of the day. Galileo posed a threat to the power of the pope, who, contrary to the teachings and life of Jesus, sought to exercise human power in a human state. Galileo lacked discernment and diplomacy. It was his criticism of the human power exerted in the Catholic church that brought into conflict; not any commentary about the relationship of science and religion, or any doctrinal issues.
The axis of humanist understanding of power is anchored in the material, hence human power structures are all there is. Hence the creation of a humanist utopia requires the exercising of that human power, perhaps in the banning of religions, for example. Whether this humanism is underpinned by Marxism, Capitalism, Islam or many other philosophies, the power based is a materialist power base. And the ultimate eschatology is in the establishing of a perfect human political state. The pivot of human power is a wish tl control and exert the primacy of one view, whether by democracy, dictatorship or terror. And for the atheist, the exercise of totalitarian power has the attraction that it offers the opportunity to erase all disagreeable concept, all religions that question the primacy of a materialist philosophy.
The structure of the church represents the mingling of human power with God’s power. But if I cannot see that there is anything beyond the material, then all religions are associated with the human structures that have grown up with them. Then I accuse the religion of atrocities and evils which come from man’s mind and are in the realms of humanism. And any crime, abuse of women and children, rape, assault are about human control and power, and the wish through that power to do what I want. This is the heart of humanism,that the human will, the human desire is at the centre of everything.
Since the atheist can only view spirituality through the materialist lens, the spiritual is inevitably reduced to religion, the buildings, hierarchies, rituals, laws and demands for human conformity. The power of control that the atheist longs for is inevitably flawed, temporary, degrading and destructive. It is centred around the worship of man, and that a very limited set of the privileged in society; privileged by the exercise of military power, wealth, birth or the hubris of academic reputation. The exercise of human power, with the human and his self at the centre of it quickly descends to bullying whether in a marriage, the workplace, the school or the government.
Because the state of the human heart and the corruption that inevitably invades every attempt to establish heaven on earth will invade any power structure. The nature of humans will always contaminate the humanist’s vision of perfection and result in the killing fields, the gulags, the North Korean concentration camps which are the inevitable end-point of the humanist vision of perfection.
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