Clay Burell's Library tagged non-theism →  View Popular

One of the most common complaints leveled against Richard Dawkins (and other atheist writers) is that his understanding of religion isn't sufficiently sophisticated - that he dismisses religion without delving into all its intricacies of doctrine. For instance, Terry Eagleton:

What, one wonders, are Dawkins's views on the epistemological differences between Aquinas and Duns Scotus? Has he read Eriugena on subjectivity, Rahner on grace or Moltmann on hope? Has he even heard of them?

What any of this has to do with the basic question of whether God exists is left unexplained. So common is this attack that P.Z. Myers gave it its own, very appropriate name - The Courtier's Reply - a reference to the famous fable of the Emperor's New Clothes. The analogy behind the Courtier's Reply is that no one has the right to claim the Emperor is naked unless they've first engaged in a detailed study of all the latest fashions in imaginary fabrics.

The use of this argument shows how religious apologists set the bar at a different height for atheists than they do for their own fellow believers. Why is it that that atheists are expected to be fluent in every last detail and nuance of theology, while no similar qualifications are needed to be a churchgoer?

The Gnostic Saviour: a Maker of Wholeness

It would be erroneous to deduce from the foregoing that Valentinus negated or even
diminished the importance of Jesus in his teachings. The great devotion and reverence
shown for Jesus by Valentinus is amply manifest with sublime poetic beauty in the Gospel of Truth, which in its original form was in fact
authored by Valentinus himself. According to Valentinus, Jesus is indeed Saviour, but the
term needs to be understood in the meaning of the original Greek word, used by orthodox
and Gnostic Christian alike. This word is soter, meaning healer, or bestower of
health. From this is derived the word today translated as salvation, i.e., soteria, which
originally meant healthiness, deliverance from imperfection, becoming whole, and
preserving one's wholeness. What then is the role of the soter of spiritual maker
of wholeness, if he clearly has no need to save humankind from either original or personal
sin? What is the state or condition of newly found spiritual health bestowed or
facilitated by such a healer-saviour?

The Gnostic contention is that both the world and humanity are sick. The sickness of
the world and its equivalent human illness both have one common root: ignorance. We ignore
the authentic values of life and substitute unauthentic ones for them. The unauthentic
values are for the most part either physical or of the mind. We believe that we need things
(such as money, symbols of power and prestige, physical pleasures) in order to be happy or
whole. Similarly we fall in love with the ideas and abstractions of our minds. (The
rigidities and the hardness of our lives are always due to our excessive attachment to
abstract concepts and precepts.) The sickness of materialism was called hyleticism
(worship of matter) by the Gnostics, while the sickness of abstract intellectualism and
moralizing was known as psychism (worship of the mind-emotional soul). The true
role of the facilitators of wholeness in this world, among whom Jesus occupied the place
of honor, is that they can exorcise these sicknesses by bringing knowledge of the pneuma
(spirit) to the soul and mind.

What is this pneuma, this spirit, which alone brings Gnosis and healing to the sickness
of human nature? We cannot truly say what it is, but we can indicate what it does.
It has been said that the spirit bloweth where it listeth. It brings flexibility,
existential courage of life. By way of the healing agency of pneuma, the soul
ceases to be fascinated and confined by things and ideas and thus it can address itself to
life. The obsession of the human psyche with the importance of the material world and/or
of the abstract intellectual and moral world is the sickness from which the great saviours
of humanity redeem us. The obsessive state of material and mental attachments is thus
replaced by spiritual freedom; the unauthentic values of the former are made to give way
to the authentic ones brought by the spirit.