An Open Letter to Non-Believers in Academia

Dear Non-Believing Colleagues:

My open letter is divided into two parts. The first one opens with a parable of sorts.

An atheist professor once approached a colleague with a sensitive question. The latter was a religiously devout academic from a distant foreign country who appeared to hold traditional views. “In your view,” she asked, “is homosexuality a ‘sin’?” To this he replied,

Kabluki mongi homosexituki chaka.

I beg your pardon.

I answered in the language of my people.

I do not understand that language.

Nor do you understand my moral language. Let us get to know one another. Only then will you truly understand my response to your question.

This fictional account was inspired by an actual exchange with an apparently non-believing colleague who recently solicited my thoughts on a divisive moral issue. Like the foreign academic, I replied evasively; not out of shame, but in the knowledge that one must truly know another before his positions can be fully understood. Until you truly know me – unless you know my core values, how I arrived at them, and the process by which I integrate my beliefs into one overarching framework — how will you fully grasp the positions that are based on this framework?

Perhaps my unique experiences – ideas I was exposed to, the loving environment in which I was raised, the trauma I witnessed, or personal encounters that elude scientific understanding — led me to adopt (correctly or otherwise) foundational beliefs that you would have just as likely accepted had you experienced the same things; and on that foundation, simple logic might have guided you to the same conclusion that I have drawn (but am reluctant to prematurely spell out). Yet even if you arrived at a different conclusion, it is less likely that you would be outraged by views that have been anathematized in academic circles; less likely to reach the facile conclusion that evil induced me to embrace them.

But why should you be outraged in the first place? This leads me to the second part of my letter. According to naturalistic theories, which you likely subscribe to, our world will be utterly annihilated one day in the near or distant future. From that moment forward, no one will be around to recall the opinions and identities of our extinct race. It will be as if our ideas, which we imagined to be of eternal significance, had never been formed in the first place. Indeed, we can deduce from naturalistic presuppositions that our ideas are ultimately worthless since it is people who assign worth to things. But where people are extinct, a goldmine is worth no more than a dunghill.

This should be borne in mind by the non-believing colleague who says that he would be able to tolerate a particular religious tradition if it did not directly conflict with his cherished opinions on sex, gender, or other topics that preoccupy us today. Since his opinions are, per the naturalistic view, the equivalent of dung, this conflict does not appear to be a solid basis on which to reject religion. (Whether he believes that there are only two genders or hundreds of them is ultimately of no import.) Thus, the non-believing colleague should temper his emotional attachment to his beliefs, for such an attachment implies a conviction that seems to conflict with his otherwise naturalistic worldview: that his beliefs are, indeed, of everlasting significance.

Perhaps you will take issue with this position, insisting that there are opinions worth passionately fighting for, even if they are not of eternal significance. But suppose that you were somehow transported to this post-apocalyptic universe and spent time reflecting on the ideas you are so passionate about today. After directly experiencing the end of mankind and the obsolescence of all that it valued, would you not feel differently about those ideas after returning to the current world? Would your experience not unfold like a typical Hallmark movie where one is forced to temporarily abandon the life she loved — often a materialistic, fast-paced life in the city — only to discover that there was no real substance to that life?

The contradiction between naturalism and the fervor with which we hold to our beliefs seems inescapable for the conscientious non-believer. He is convinced that his beliefs matter, but this conflicts with his naturalistic belief that ultimately nothing matters. For this reason, he ought to consider religious claims more dispassionately, but also because religion offers a way to escape this conflict. For religion affirms that his beliefs do eternally matter; that there is an eternal Audience who will remain long after social media and other means of disseminating our opinions vanish.

Therefore, colleagues, why not pick up a book by C.S. Lewis? What harm is there in attending a liturgy? Why not listen attentively to what nature tells you every day through her order and beauty, and the very fact that she exists? Why not consider the implications of people’s “near-death experiences” (not so much the sometimes dangerously misguided interpretations of those experiences, but the very fact that people are recollecting verifiable experiences during their “clinical deaths”)? In a word, why not give religion a real chance?

To close, I urge you all to make a real effort to get to know your religious and traditional colleagues before inquiring about their moral beliefs. At a minimum, I hope you suppress your outrage if their beliefs clash with your own, since the latter are, from a naturalistic standpoint, ultimately insignificant.

Sincerely,

Amir Azarvan