Kierkegaard, God, and Atheism
Philalethes wrote recently about someone claiming that secular humanists "echo Søren Kierkegaard's personal declaration of independence: that the thought of the existence of a Deity put a limit on his intelligence. Poor Søren, humbled by a higher being than himself." Philalethes notes with irony the fact that Kierkegaard's statement about the "limit" on intelligence was all about how faith must take over from reason in order to recognize religious truths that are "absurd" to mere intellect.
In other words, Kierkegaard was talking about the vital importance of "faith" to genuine religion — exactly the sort of the thing that the original author should have regarded as validating to his beliefs. That, however, might have required actually reading and understanding Kierkegaard — something few evangelical Christians in America seem to do.
Philalethes observes:
Isn't it funny how a guy like Kierkegaard can devote his entire life to promoting Christianity, and still get called an arrogant atheist by right-wing cretins? ... Perhaps their real beef with Kierkegaard has to do with his having attacked the hypocrisy of state religion, particularly in its nationalist mode, which he viewed as a "forgery" of faith.
There are many Christians today who tout the importance of faith and emphasize he need to have a personal relationship with God, but it isn’t clear that they fully realize or understand the implications of this. They are, after all, among the first and most vocal judges whenever someone claims to have been told by God to kill their children, as has happened more than once in America in recent years. They consider such behavior insane, but for Abraham it was an ethical duty.
Then again, perhaps it is preferable that most Christians don‘t really believe their faith-based rhetoric — a society full of Abrahams could be very dangerous.
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Comments
I agree; but the ordeal with Abraham can’t be compared with someone who successfully kills their child, since it loses it’s context to the former who was stopped by God. This implies that the Christio-Judaic God does not encourage killing one’s children- and if he did, he would have told or forced the killer to stop a second before he did. (Though this is only in rhetoric, since I doubt their mental disorders allow them to think things like this through.)