A Googler who found her way to this site (search phrase: "john lennon atheist"), identifying herself as a thirteen year old, left a comment to this post about The Passion and conversion. She raised a common argument (with surprising longevity), so I thought I'd copy my reply into a post of its own:
Kimi,Posted by Justin Katz at November 7, 2004 10:30 PMThe existence of pain and suffering tells us absolutely nothing about the existence of God. The fact that God isn't like an all-powerful over-protective mother doesn't mean that God just isn't. It does, however, give us clues about God's nature and what He might want of us.
As a fan of Kurt Cobain, you ought to have a tremendous sense of the truth that good things can come from suffering. Chances are that the attributes of his music that you like derive, to some extent, from what he was going through. This isn't to say that it is right to wish suffering on others to get good songs out of them, but even the most over-protective mother will force her child to suffer if the payoff is important enough. (Some kids would say school is that very sort of suffering.)
Suppose a young child has cancer. Would you blame her mother for putting her through the various painful therapies to cure it? At least according to my Christian view of God it simply isn't the case that His watching us die in this life is "like watching your beloved child slowly die before you." Death is a transition; what if life itself is the "magic potion" that you mention?
As for John Lennon's religious beliefs... I'd suggest, first, that turning to rock stars for advice on God is a bit like turning to somebody who lives in Manhattan for advice on preparing a farm for winter. That said, everything I've ever read on the subject would indicate that he was an atheist. (Just look at the lyrics to songs like "God" and even "Imagine.")
Interestingly, though, George Harrison — who was most definitely not an atheist, and who knew Lennon personally — wrote a song a few months after Lennon's death titled "All Those Years Ago." In that song, which is like a letter to Lennon, Harrison writes that "they've forgotten all about God/He's the only reason we exist." That line always struck me as odd, considering Lennon's own lyrics about God...
Lennon wasn't an atheist. His aim was to make us think about the artificial boundaries that separate us - denominations about god, nations, ideas about heaven and hell.
"The concept of imagining no religion — not imagining no God, although you're entitled to do that too - but imagining no denominations. Imagine that there's no Catholic-Protestant, no Jew-Christian. Imagine that we revere Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Krishna, Milarepa, equally, or that we don't have to worship any of them. That we allow it all, freedom of religion for real.
Posted by: Heidi at January 6, 2005 5:13 PMHello Heidi,
Well, Lennon mightn't have been consistently an atheist, and he liked to expand upon his notions as he expounded upon them. But look, even, at what you've written: "His aim was to make us think about the artificial boundaries that separate us." To people who actually believe in any form of religion, the boundaries aren't artificial. If the claims of any one religion are true — and if they aren't, why believe it? — then that which disagrees, theologically and traditionally, is wrong.
What you've described is a sort of soft atheism: we can believe whatever we want, because ultimately none of it matters. It's essentially all bunk, from that point of view. "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." "Imagine there's no Heaven."
Posted by: Justin Katz at January 9, 2005 7:16 PM
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |