Seeking Common Ground

A Theist/Atheist Dialogue

Andrew Fiala, Peter Admirand

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781725275317
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Ecumenism & Interfaith

Seeking Common Ground is a dialogue between an atheist philosopher and a Catholic theologian. It is about religion and nonreligion, as well as about dialogue itself. The book provides a framework for dialogue grounded in seven key values: Harmony, Courage, Humility, Curiosity, Honesty, Compassion, and Honor. Unlike typical "debates" about religion and atheism, Fiala and Admirand show that atheists and theists can work together on projects of mutual understanding. They explore the terrain of religion and nonreligion, discussing a range of sources, topics, issues, and concerns, including: adventures in interfaith dialogue, challenging ethical issues, problems interpreting biblical texts, the growth of secularism, and the importance of ritual and community. The authors show that it is possible to disagree about religion while also seeking common ground. The book includes a foreword by Rabbi Jack Moline, president of the U.S. Interfaith Alliance.

Part 1

On Virtue and Dialogue

Personal Stories and Academic Contexts

Prologue

Narratives of Faith, Doubt, and Unbelief

Dialogue and Lived Experience

Is it possible for atheists and theists to talk to one another? What would such a dialogue look like? This book attempts to demonstrate such a dialogue is possible and to show we each have something to learn from each other. Too often, religious institutions, cultures, the media, and publishers pit atheists and theists against each other, like cock fights, or a matador and the bull, with interchangeable roles. A red cape flutters—some argument about God existing or not existing—and one or the other charges or feints. Theists and atheists end up on opposing sides as a result of propaganda, rumor, slander, misunderstanding, and fear. We too often fail to look in and through another’s eyes, to sense their worries and motivations, weaknesses, and all-too-human dreams and loves. The other was “the Jew” or “the Bosniak,” “the woman” or “the homosexual,” or damnably: vermin, cockroach, heretic, Christ-killer, infidel—so many words to distance and remove possible connection, empathy, overlap, reflection. Theists and atheists have also participated in such name-calling—and they too have committed violence against one another.

Often, face-to-face, personal interactions can stem the ignorance and hatred that divide us—a shedding of the impersonal. In academic circles, however, often under the banner and guise of objectivity, some scholars scoff or delete the turn to the personal and subjective, deeming the autobiographical thrust as self-serving, unnecessary, common, an intrusion; shadowboxing. Not really knowing the other, of course, makes the dissection and pummeling so much easier. The focus can be on the knockdown argument; the knockout question, perhaps converting in some evangelical context, or just jockeying for any claimed victory.

When that “other” is actually Andrew or Peter, Mustafa or Maria, one’s neighbor, son-in-law, doctor, or car mechanic, the call for combat, for walls and slurs, for vanquishing and outlasting, rings hollow. There can still be pointed questions and challenges, a call for clarification and deeper explanation, but always in the context of mutual respect, hospitality, and humility.

Effective dialogue must be grounded in the lived reality of its participants. Discussions of ideas that are abstracted from the lived context of thinking and being quickly become debates. A debate, in this sense, is not a dialogue. A debate aims at victory: debaters seek to score points and defeat their opponents. But a dialogue is governed by a different set of norms. Dialogues aim at understanding. There are no victors in a dialogue; instead there are human beings who seek to understand themselves and the mystery of being human.

So, we begin our dialogue with a biographical prologue. What has led, inspired, or drawn the authors of this book down a path of theist-atheist dialogue and partnership? Let’s hear from Andrew first, and then Peter.

Andrew’s Path to the Dialogue

“When did you become an atheist?” My adult son asked me this question recently on a long car trip. It just so happened that Peter Admirand and I had been exchanging emails about the possibility of co-authoring a dialogue between a theist and an atheist. So my son and I spent an hour or so talking about my journey to atheism. I am thankful that my son took the time to talk with me, just as I am grateful for Peter’s interest in this project. As I hope to explain here, one does not simply become an atheist. Rather, there is a journey and a path. We are always underway and in the middle of becoming. And our beliefs and commitments arise out of our interactions with friends, family, texts, and traditions.

I have always enjoyed getting into these kinds of discussions with my kids and my friends. I am fortunate that I have had many productive and interesting conversations about religion and other topics with close friends and family. I am a philosophy professor. I have the privilege of talking about this kind of stuff for a living. Dialogue has always been part of what I do and who I am. My whole life has been, in a sense, one long conversation and inquiry. It is difficult to imagine living any other way. So as I think about my path to the present dialogue with Peter Admirand, I want to assert that from my point of view dialogue is natural and normal. I realize that there are lots of people who do not feel comfortable talking about what they believe and what they don’t believe. But for me, dialogue is a way of being. It is an existential anchor. I find meaning in thinking. I enjoy learning new things. And I like to be challenged to think about new ideas and defend my beliefs.

But my son’s question left me with a furrowed brow and momentarily speechless. When did I become an atheist? I scratched my head. The honest answer is that I don’t exactly know. So I had to think it over before responding. And as I thought, I also realized that I had a paternal obligation to answer this question with care. The context of my son’s question was a longer conversation about religion and social relationship. We were talking about how difficult it can be to be nonreligious. My son was raised without any religion, as was his younger brother. This made our family a bit odd, living as we do in Fresno, California, in the heart of the Bible belt that is California’s Central Valley. We have evangelical megachurches here, as well as a strong Catholic diocese. Many of the kids in my children’s peer group are engaged in religious youth groups of various sorts. Around here the kids huddle together before school events to pray. But my older son and his younger brother were raised by me, a philosophy professor, whose work focuses upon religion, ethics, and politics. My sons are both independent thinkers with a strong sense of personal integrity. This often left them feeling excluded during student prayer circles or when the other kids went to church dances together. The other kids were not mean—far from it. But atheist kids simply don’t have a place in a circle of prayer. Despite this, I think my wife and I have done a good job raising our children. They care about virtue and reason. They are kind, compassionate, and actively engaged in the world.

We never had our children baptized. Nor did we ever attend church or any other religious ceremony, with the exception of a few Christmases, a wedding or two, and some touristic visits to temples and cathedrals in far-flung places. We raised our sons with love and encouraged them to understand the importance of honesty, integrity, and hard work. We also encouraged them to learn about religious diversity and to respect the diverse people who live in our community, including people from a growing number of Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and other religious communities. Our sons have turned out to be fine and decent human beings, who are open-minded and inclusive. And although we never viewed what we were doing with our children as a kind of experiment in atheistic child-rearing, in retrospect our children provide some anecdotal evidence for the claim that religion is not needed as a means of moral education and spiritual health. Furthermore, it is the experience of being excluded—including seeing the ways that my children were subtly and unintentionally excluded by the religious majority—that has led me to be deeply committed to the idea of religious liberty and the importance of secularism. Atheists in unfree societies are censored and even killed. It is much easier to be an atheist in a society that values freedom of conscience and religious toleration. The good news is that in my part of the world there is a growing number of nonreligious people who are finally coming out of the closet. The Pew Center and others report that nearly a quarter of Americans now admit that they are not religious.1 And even though atheism remains in the shadows, the nonreligious are being invited into dialogue with our religious neighbors.

At any rate, I had a difficult time answering my son’s very direct and simple question because that question is connected to so many more ideas and issues. And given the difficulty of being an atheist in a world that assumes that everyone is religious, I wanted to be clear about all of this. So when did I finally become an atheist? Well, the answer is that it is a long story that is still underway. I’m not sure, in fact, what it might mean to “finally” become an atheist. And what I have learned about religion and spirituality is that narrative and process are more important than any final statement of belief. Our beliefs are not merely stated as abstract propositions. Rather, they are embedded in narratives that involve biographical details and our relationships within communities of meaning and inquiry. So to answer his question, I had to tell my son some of the story of my own journey to atheism.

Unfortunately, this journey is not a dramatic story. There was no moment of conversion on the road to Damascus. Rather, there was a slow unfolding of a long conversation between myself and the world around me, which eventually led me away from religious faith. I suspect that this is similar to the experience of many of the growing number of nonreligious people. Phil Zuckerman has offered an analysis of how people end up as nonreligious.2 He notes that in European contexts, there are fewer dramatic stories of radical conversion to atheism. In the countries he studied, it just seems natural not to have any religion. But he argues that loss of faith is more significant in American contexts. I suppose much of this depends upon the religiosity of one’s community and peer group. If you grow up in a very religious community, it might be traumatic to break with the group. But if your friends are not religious, then it is no big deal to be nonreligious.

In my own story, I can only recall one moment that seemed traumatic—and it was very minor. One day, when it was clear that I was already not religious, a younger cousin outed me to my grandmother and the rest of the family. He said something like “ . . . but Andy does not believe in God” as we sat down to pray before a meal. I kept my head bowed. I recall being nervous that someone would do or say something. But nobody said anything. My pious grandmother didn’t flinch. We ate our meal and the subject never came up. Maybe they thought it was a prank. Or, as is more likely, it was just inconceivable to my devout grandmother that someone in her family might be an atheist. This is not “denial...