Tag: God

David Bentley Hart and Theological Gaslighting

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ Leave a comment

I hoped that I was done commenting on David Bentley Hart’s tiresome book The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, but as I’m nearing the end of the book I think I have one more complaint that I need to put to writing. It’s a complaint that I’m starting to have with a great number of more “progressive” or “sophisticated” theologians. While I do generally think that their vision of God, humanity, and the cosmos is better than most of what’s out there, I find this particular trend aggravating.

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Fundamentalism is a Drug

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been reading Chris Kratzer’s book Leatherbound Terrorism — a heartfelt diatribe about how thoroughly Evangelical fundamentalism has destroyed his — and everyone else’s — life. He writes with the fervor of an end-times prophet, except his message is an inversion of the usual religious pessimism: Evangelicalism is killing the vulnerable, oppressing minorities, destroying hearts and minds, and imperiling the whole world with their blunt denial of human diversity and scientific truth.

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Meaning in a Godless Universe

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 1 Comment

Last week, I had the pleasure of appearing on the podcast Church and Other Drugs. What I expected to be a conversation about Satanism turned into an enjoyable back and forth over the existence of God. Jed, who hosts Church and Other Drugs, is a theist, while I am a nontheist. Jed finally brought up a question he says he has yet to hear a satisfying answer to, and it’s one I hear perpetually:

If there is no afterlife, how can this life have any meaning?

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On Not Believing in God But Experiencing Him Anyway

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 6 Comments

Last night before going to bed, I found myself praying the Evening Office from the Book of Common Prayer. I love the book of Common Prayer — I love the poetry and the guiding, inner choreography of the liturgy. As I prayed last night I felt that warmth, presence, and silent awe I’ve felt my whole life when I enter sacred spaces — many would call it the presence of God. Sometime, when praying, I find myself speaking in tongues, a torrent of syllables pouring from me unbidden. It feels warm in my mouth, and it feels like something outside of myself speaking through me. I also still attend church (when I can), and I experience the love and presence of an external, invisible force.

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This is What I mean When I Say I Don’t Believe in God

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 13 Comments

I don’t believe in God.

Nothing sends off fireworks in the brain for religious people quite like an admission of atheism. It’s scary, in my beloved religious community, to admit that I don’t believe in God. I’ve had some unexpectedly unpleasant conversations with friends — conversations that suddenly dipped into ferocious defensiveness, in which they assumed a lot about what I believe and don’t believe.

So, allow me to explain what I mean when I say I don’t believe in God.

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The Epidemic of Codependent Christianity

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 6 Comments

There are two primary accusations brought against Christians today: hatred and hypocrisy. Over the past year, though, I’ve come to see the apparent hypocrisy and hatred (or bigotry, as many people put it) as occasional symptoms of a much deeper problem, a disease that is rotting out the heart of modern Christianity: codependency.

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Three Questions I Have About the Existence of God

~ Stephen Bradford Long ~ 12 Comments

I am at the Abbey of Gethsemeni as I write this: home of Thomas Merton, and one of the great mystical and ecumenical centers of the world. The Abbey has a plain, simple beauty about it, and is transfixed in a perpetual silence – a silence so deep it feels like a physical substance. I am taking this time to rest and reflect, to process the past year and prepare myself for the new, and to open myself up to the presence of God.

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