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從牧師到無神論者。(中文試譯）
來源: 圖靈冬奧 於 07-05-07 11:31:39
(來自在美一方的原文，未作細考。）
前牧師是如何變成了無神論者?
每一個人都有信仰嗎？是不是有一些人盡他們所能也不能相信一個超自然的東西，最後放棄了信仰？答案是「是」。我自己的故事就是一個實例。
問題
幾個月前，在一次愉快的晚餐后一位朋友問我：「你曾經是一個牧師？」
是的，簡單的說，是很久以前的事了。
她一直在看我的博克。「但是現在你像」，她停頓了一下，「幾乎像一個無神論？這是怎麼回事？」
不是一個「幾乎」的無神論者；我不信基督教的神。我不能回憶當初是怎麼跟她說的了。
基督教徒
現在我還不是很清楚我是否曾經真的相信過基督教神。但是卻確實存在這樣一個思想狀態，就是努力去相信（神），根據這個需要，我在田納西的一做好大學專修了《Bible》（同時還修了歷史和心理學。）
在我看起來許多人去做牧師是努力鞏固他們信心的一部分。這可以部分解釋這樣一個現象：當初要做牧師的後來很大一部分比例變成了賣保險的了。（其他的原因包括眾所周知的趨向：基督教軍隊向他們自己的受傷者開槍 – 譯註：不知道這是什麼典故,未查到.）
在大學里，我學習努力，為那些疑問而掙扎。後來我找到了一個實習牧師的位置，然後又臨時在一個空缺的講台上講道。當我和夫人（她收養了一個男嬰）結婚時，教會立即解僱了我。從我婚禮的那天起，我在教會的服務不再繼續了。
這件事本身並沒有影響我的信仰。我很了解不是所有的基督教徒都一樣慈悲和同情。它和是不是信神沒有關係。
我本來應該能找到另一個講台講道的，或者進入神學院，但是我沒這麼做。我來到了另一個教堂，在委員會裡做志願者，教星期天主日學，間或領禱，儘力幫助，我做了好多種的工作。
疑問和否認
在我內心的某個地方，我知道我通過持續不斷的自我欺騙可以做好一個牧師。我從來沒有跟人說起過這個想法。但是我對科學的畢生的著迷開始把我一直試圖避免的問題提了出來。
地球，我們知道，已經有幾十億的年齡了。我曾經親自挖掘出恐龍化石，研究過地層學。然而許多我的基督教徒仍然堅持地球只有6000年。我知道這是錯的，雖然可以用暗喻來解釋它。對於這一點以及其他的好多事情，我告訴自己：Bible是一本關於道德和精神方面的書，不是科學真理方面的書。大約就在那時候，我搬到了伊利諾伊斯州，開始在一個基要主義較弱的教堂供職。
這樣幾年過去都相安無事。更大的困難產生於當我閱讀宇宙學方面的書。我過去理解宇宙的尺度是一個可以用很一般的術語就能描述的，但是當我開始試圖獲得我們的地球和圍繞地球的宇宙之比例的清晰圖像的時候，某種東西被打破了。那些東西就是，關於我們世界的描述，特別是這個世界里的一種生命 -- 我們人類 -- 是特別的創造出來的；上帝有一個兒子來到地球拯救……
等一等。 拯救什麼？我知道的大多數人都是非常正派的。如果你丟了一塊錢，20 人中會有19個人會在大街上追著你交給你丟的那一塊錢。這就是我聽過很多的關於「完全墮落的」人性？不能否認，人們有時很自我為中心，但這也不是什麼壞事。畢竟，啟蒙了的自我利益驅使使世界更美好。
但是Bible本身是有問題的。在我花了大量的時間來學習它，用外部的資料來研究它，了解它的歷史，甚至把New Testament從原始的希臘語翻譯過來，我知道需要說這樣一種扭曲邏輯的話：「沒有矛盾」。
世界上充滿了宗教。我強制過不相信所有的宗教，除了一個。我嘗到的感覺是，基督教模仿其他的。
欺騙和認識
一次又一次努力地，我拖著我全家經受了極度的痛苦，幫助建立一個新教會。這就像在黑暗中發出的呼嘯。要是我對自己足夠誠實，我本可以解除他們好多痛苦。
「沒有眼光，人們就會麻木。」箴言如是說。但是我就看不到這一點。這不是一個沒有痛苦的認識。我禱告，沒有回應。不是「偶爾地」，而是幾年來一直這樣。正如基礎心理學所說的，未經鞏固的行為最終就會消失。我唱歌，但就像曲作家Jeff Buckley的歌詞：「一個冷酷破碎的哈里路亞。」
回到我們的日常教會，我幫助做清潔日的工作，領導一個佈道-回應小組，我是和平與公正委員會的成員，它追求發揚我的信仰。（你要和平嗎？為公正工作）
大約就在這個時候，我患上了一種慢性肌肉病症使我常常感到疲憊。我的身體機能水平變得不可預測。偶然我會想念教堂。我是說，我的確想念它，因為我非常熱愛那裡的人們。但是，每當要求休息的時候，我不能拒絕，星期日便變成了休息日。
標籤
「不可知論」對於我和我的疑問來講，這是一個認同半可的標籤。我不想把我擁抱信仰的手完全切割掉。我的兩個最小的兒子對我和他們自己甚至更誠實，他們是無神論者。
就像在晚宴上我的朋友一樣，我對「無神論」這個詞應用的比較仔細，反覆權重它所包含的意義。最後，我發覺它跟信仰的地位不同，實際上比較確切的含義是沒有基督教的神。宇宙用它自身更容易解釋。
鑰匙
具有諷刺意味的事，C.S.Lewis提供了我所需要的鑰匙。在他的書《Screwtape書信》中那個老魔鬼建議他的外甥，把他的病人指向「基督教和」的狀態，也就是說，基督教不是它自身的原因，而是其他事情的一個手段。
「你看見了其中的裂痕了嗎？」Screwtape問道，「相信它不是因為它是正確的，而是有其他原因。」
鑰匙轉動了，鎖就開了。我不能相信基督教，是因為它承諾來拯救我，或實際上是別的正確的原因。這本身是錯誤的。
基督教宣稱了好多東西，但如果拿出一條來，就不成立了。每一個宣稱都成了這麼一種產物：從邏輯上錯誤地運用在某些有希望的思考，到仔細選擇的ures和軼聞。只要你說它是真的，那它才是真的。如果我不認為是真的，它就不是真的。這不像那些真正的事情，比如物理、數學和生物。
說出來吧
我有好幾年對宗教問題拒不開口。 我不想推翻任何他人的信仰；這有什麼區別嗎？除了增加這個世界的痛苦。但是慢慢地，我認識到，那些在我們這個社會中的不相信基督教神的人們一直被描述為某種醜陋的形象，簡言之，我們是魔鬼。
就在那個時候，我注意到把同性戀妖魔化的運動，讓他們擔當我們這個社會的許多邪惡。然而，我所知道的同性戀者，沒有一個是像他們所說的。好多同性戀者不得不把他們的真相隱藏起來，以求平安的生活 – 一個殘忍的結果，而這結果正來自提倡愛的那個宗教。
如果他們都一起「出櫃」了，會怎麼樣？如果每個人都是完全正常的人，正派的同性戀者就會走到街上，握著他們愛人的手，開始公開的生活嗎？那簡直就是一場革命。直人們以新的眼光看待他們，頑冥不化隨著熟悉的腳印而消失死去。同樣地，如果無神論者喊出「走出柜子吧。」
「嗯，無神論者是邪惡的，但不是這個人，而是那個人。我認識他們，他們是無神論，他們還可以。因此，不是所有無神論者都是邪惡。等等 -- 那些其他人怎麼樣？我一直認為他是個很好的人，卻剛發現他不相信基督教神。或許關於無神論是邪惡的整個事情是一種偏見，事實上沒有根基的。」
為了使這樣的事情能夠實現，無神論者必須說話。所以我正在說。
前面是什麼
關於道德和倫理方面的討論。是的，一個無神論者對性、流產、或戰爭有不同的結論：這不是缺乏道德而是由於從不同的假設開始的結果。只要無神論者還在柜子里，就不可能有真正的意見交換。
關於自然的討論。讓我們的國家在憲法的世俗性質統治下就是缺少愛國主義。而恰恰相反；這不是意味著無神論者要干涉個人的宗教自由，因為憲法保證每一件事情。它意味著，對宗教的稅收免稅必須停止，這也是因為憲法保證的邏輯結果。
關於對精神的討論。無神論不是有關靈魂的理論；它僅僅是不相信神。但是有人可以相信人的精神不依賴於他的大腦而存在。這就是我們在細緻地和熱情地處理我們的生活的所有依據。天平不會向死後的生命傾斜：我們為現在負一切責任。這不是一個試驗。
我知道我的一些個基督教朋友對於我講出不相信基督教神后感到很惱火，這是容易理解的：他們是天生是富於同情的人，不想看到我遠離永生的的痛苦。我沒辦法減緩他們的焦慮，因為這些焦慮是基於我所認為的幻影。
朋友們，這就是發生過的事情。如果信心是一種禮物，我從來沒有收到過它。如果它是一種思想狀態，我從沒有到達過它。如果這是一個問題，我相信答案在技術上是沒有意義的。很難說我沒有給基督教一個公正的評價。
結語
長期以來的習慣提示我，要用訓誡或寓言來結束一次講演。這次也不例外。如果你是一個基督教徒，你很滿意你的信仰，那很好 – 請不要在你和無神論者之間建立一個「無神」的框框。最主要的是，要讀出美國憲法中的無宗教思想的另一個意義，因為它是一個世俗的文本。
如果你對自己的信仰還不滿意，捫心自問：你有假裝過對待任何人嗎？你不必向任何人交代，也沒有一個叫做「無神教堂」來問你要你的捐助，但是至少你要對你自己誠實。就像莎士比亞說的「對自己真誠，必須遵守，就像白天和黑夜，你不能欺騙任何人。」
設想一個城市和寬容的結合，這是讓每一個人有更美好的世界的堅實基礎。
原文如下：
How did a former minister become an atheist?
Is everyone able to have faith? Are there some people who, try as they might, cannot believe in the supernatural, and finally give up? The answer is 『yes』, and for an example, here is my own story.
The Question
Over a delightful dinner some months ago, a friend asked me; 「So you used to be a minister?」
Yes, briefly, a long time ago.
She had been reading my blog. 「But now you』re like,」 she paused, 「almost like an atheist? How did that happen?」
Not 『almost』 an atheist; I don』t believe in God. I can』t remember exactly what I told her, though.
Christian
It isn』t clear to me now that I ever really believed in God. But there is a state of mind in which one is trying to believe. To that end I majored in Bible at a good college in Tennessee (with a dual minor in history and psychology.)
It now seems to me that many people enter the ministry as part of an effort to bolster their faith. It may partially explain why such a high percentage of aspiring ministers end up selling insurance. (Other reasons include the well-known tendency of the Christian army to shoot their own wounded).
In college, I studied hard, and struggled with doubts. Eventually I filled a pastoral internship, and then filled in temporarily for an empty pulpit. When I married MrsDoF (adopting her infant son) the church quickly terminated my employment. Effective on the date of the wedding, my services would no longer be required.
In itself, their action didn』t undermine my faith. I was well aware that not all Christians put the same weight on grace or compassion; it had no bearing on the truth or falsity of God.
I could have looked for another pulpit, or gone into divinity school, but I didn』t. Instead I attended another church, volunteered to be on committees, taught Sunday school, preached the occasional sermon, and helped out where I could. I worked various jobs.
Doubt and denial
It could be that somewhere inside, I knew that I could only be a minister by an unrelenting self-deception. I kept this realization off the table. But my lifelong fascination with science began to pull up questions I』d been avoiding.
The Earth, I knew, was billions of years old. I had dug up dinosaur fossils myself, and studied stratigraphy. Yet many of my fellow Christians insisted our world was 6,000 years old. This, I knew to be false, but it could be reconciled as metaphor. On that and many other things I told myself; the Bible is a book of moral and spiritual, not scientific truth. About that time, I moved to Illinois and began attending a less fundamentalist church.
It worked for a few years. The bigger problem occurred when I began to read about cosmology. I』d understood the scale of the universe in very general terms, but when I really started trying to get a clear idea of the proportion of our world to the universe around it… something broke. And that something was the notion that our world, and specifically one species within it, our species, was monumentally special in all of creation, that God had ONE son, who came to this planet to redeem…
Wait. Redeem what? Most of the people I know are really quite decent. Nineteen out of twenty of them would chase you down the street to hand you a dollar they』d seen you drop. This is the 『utterly depraved』 human nature I』d heard so much about? Yes, people are somewhat self-centered, but that isn』t necessarily a bad thing. Enlightened self-interest calls for a better world, after all.
But the Bible itself was problematic. Having spent endless hours studying it, researching it in external sources, learning its history, and even translating some of the New Testament from the original Greek, I knew the pretzel logic that was required to say; 「No contradiction.」
The world is full of religions; I was practiced at disbelieving all of them except one. I fought the sense that Christianity resembled the others.
Dishonesty and realization
Trying harder, I dragged my suffering family through the agony of helping a new church congregation get started. This was whistling in the dark. If I could have been honest with myself, I would have saved them a lot of heartache.
「Where there is no vision, the people perish」, says Proverbs. But I just couldn』t see it. This was not a painless realization. I』d pray, and nothing came back. Not 『occasionally』, but for years at a time. It』s basic psychology that unreinforced behavior eventually undergoes extinction. I would sing but it was, in the words of the songwriter Jeff Buckley; 「a cold and broken alleluia」.
Back at our regular church, I helped out with cleanup days, and led a sermon-response group. I was on the Peace And Justice committee, which sought to promote what I still believe. (You want peace? Work for justice.)
About this time, I developed a chronic muscle condition that meant I was frequently exhausted. My energy level became unpredictable. Occasionally, I missed church. I mean, I really did miss church, because I was very fond of the people there. But rest became (and remains) something I can』t pass up when it』s available. And finally, I realized months had gone by without attending. Sunday really had become a day of rest.
Labels
「Agnosticism」. For me, it was the semi-acceptable label for my doubts. I didn』t want to cut off the hand that clung to faith. My two youngest sons were more honest, both with themselves and with me. They were atheists.
Like my friend at dinner, I tasted the word, 「atheist」 carefully, weighing its implications. At length I realized that unlike the position of faith, I actually felt quite comfortable with the notion that there was no God. The universe made better sense on its own.
Key
Ironically it was C.S. Lewis who provided the key I needed. In the book Screwtape Letters the elder demon suggests his nephew direct his 『patient』 to a status of 「Christianity and」. In other words, Christianity not for its own sake, but because it is a means to something else.
「You see the little rift?,」 asks Screwtape; 「Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason.」
The key turns, and the lock falls open. I could not believe Christianity because of its promise to 『redeem』 me, or really for any other reason but that was true. And it wasn』t true.
Christianity was a large collection of claims which, taken one at a time, just didn』t hold up. Every single one turned out to be the product of some logical fallacy applied through a lens of wishful thinking, to carefully selected ures and anecdotes. It was true only as long as I made it true. If I stopped, it went away, unlike things that are true, like physics, or mathematics or biology.
Speaking up
I clammed up entirely on religious issues for a couple years. I certainly didn』t want to undermine anyone else』s faith; what difference did it make? Other than increasing the amount of pain in the world. But slowly I realized that in our society people who do not believe in God are subject to a number of rather ugly stereotypes. In short, we』re evil.
About this time I also became aware of the campaign to demonize gays; to make them responsible for many of the evils of our society. None of the gay people I knew fit the stereotypes, though. Many of them had to hide their true selves in order to live peaceful lives - a cruel outcome resulting from a supposed religion of love.
What if they all 『came out』 at once? If every perfectly normal, decent gay person just walked down the street holding hands with their partners and just started living openly? It would be a revolution. Straight people would see them in a new light, and bigotry falls dead at the feet of familiarity. The same would apply if atheists spoke up, 「came out of the closet」.
「OK, atheists are evil, but not this guy, or that guy. I know them and they』re atheists and they』re OK. So not all atheists are evil. Wait - what about that other guy? I always thought he was a pretty good fellow and just found out he doesn』t believe in God. Maybe that whole thing about atheists being evil is just a prejudice, unfounded in fact.」
But for that to happen, atheists have to speak up. So I am speaking up.
What lies ahead
There is a moral and ethical discussion to be had. Yes, an atheist might come to a different conclusion about sex or abortion or war: this is not a lack of morals but the result of starting from different assumptions. No real exchange is possible as long as the atheist stays hidden in the closet.
There is a national discussion to be had. A desire to make our country live up to the secular nature of its constitution is not lack of patriotism; exactly the opposite. Nor does it mean that atheists should want to interfere with individual religious freedom, for the constitution guarantees that very thing. It does mean that tax funding of religion must stop, for that too is a logical consequence of the guarantee.
There is a spiritual discussion to be had. Atheism is not a theory about the soul; it is only a lack of belief in god. But one might believe that a human 『soul』 exists, without believing that it outlives the brain. This is all the more reason to handle with care and compassion the one life we have. No afterlife will balance the scales: we are responsible now. This is not a test.
I know some of my Christian friends are rather vexed by the revelation that I no longer believe in God. This is easy to understand: they』re naturally compassionate friends and they don』t want to see me suffering for all eternity. I have no way of relieving their anxiety, because it is based on what I believe to be a phantom.
So that』s what happened, friend. If faith is a gift, I never received it. If it is a state of mind, I never reached it. If it is a question, I believe the answer is technically sense-free. It would be hard to say I didn』t give Christianity a fair shot.
And so
Long habit prompts me to end a sermon or a parable with an altar call, so here it is. If you』re a Christian, and you』re comfortable in your faith, that』s fine - please try not to let the stereotype of 『atheist』 get between you and the atheists around you. Above all, give the US Constitution another read without trying to read religion into it, because it is a secular document.
If you』re not comfortable in your faith, ask yourself; are you doing anyone any favors by faking it? There』s nobody you need to confess to, no 『church of atheism』 asking for your donations, but at least try to be honest with yourself. As Shakespeare said, 「to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.」
Imagine a combination of honesty and tolerance. It is a sturdy foundation of a better world for everyone. |
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狗仔卡
提升卡
置頂卡
沉默卡
喧囂卡
變色卡
搶沙發
何況他還不清楚是不是真的相信過神.
樓主
