Disclaimer: This article describes the beliefs of mainstream atheism especially the type that is anti-Christian.
What is a Myth?
A myth is a story that explains something about the world. It does this by personifying natural forces and objects in the world. Thus myths, contrary to popular belief, actually made some type of objective observation about the world. This is why you often find the same myths appearing across different cultures. It is not a coincidence that myths surrounding sun gods for example or fertility goddesses are very similar whether they were told in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon, or Persia. This is because these are not simply fictitious stories invented by imaginative people, but they actually observed something about the world and expressed it in a pre-logical and pre-scientific way.
We modern people mistake ancient people for being fools who thought myths were historical truths. They often did, no doubt. But it was a bit more complex than that. First, there was no clear understanding of historywhen myths first began to be circulated. Also, with the birth of philosophy, humans began to understand that myths did not describe historical events but explained patterns of life and existence in allegory. This was possible because at that time philosophers were able for the first time to clearly distinguish history from myth.
Myths often were incorporated into religions to support religions like those of ancient Greece.
Atheist Mythology
Modern Atheism, especially in its form of New Atheism, is no different than the ancient religions in that it incorporates mythology to explain and understand the world with the exception that unlike the ancients (who were pre-logical and pre-scientific and did not have a clear conception of history), atheists believe their myths are accurate history.
Examples of Atheist Mythology
Here are three examples of atheist mythology:
Myth # 1: Christianity stopped the progress of learning especially of science
This myth goes something like this: Christians stopped the progress of learning, especially of science. Christians even engaged in days-long book burnings on a regular basis so that they rid the West of classical learning and it was only rediscovered after some brave and courageous people went to Muslim Spain and translated classical texts from the Arabic which the Muslim thinkers of Spain preserved.
Further, they personify the combined forces of evil and ignorance in the church, and the combined forces of good and knowledge as science. The church and science are personified like the ancient myths personified forces and objects of nature.
The truth is that this myth is nothing more than a mix of a lack of context, distortion of facts, and lies.
The reality is that the most influential ancient Christian archbishops not only encouraged classical learning in specific texts, but they exemplified it in their own preaching, writings, personal letters, and their lives. The amount of allusions and references that the early Church writers make to classical learning is overwhelming. If you pick up Henry Chadwick’s translation of Augustine’s Confessions, the footnotes in that specific translation highlight all the allusions and quotations that Augustine makes to the classical writers and philosophers. It is overwhelming. This is because Augustine’s Confessions are set in the framework of education and at many times the classroom. Augustine saw learning as a doorway to deeper spirituality. To exemplify this, he wrote a book titled On Christian Instruction where he aimed to teach people how to read and understand the Bible instead of having them depend totally on those who understood it. This was to allow Christians to be thinkers and understand(and not only know) why the Church interpreted the Scriptures in the way it did. Augustine argued that to be able to do so, one had to be educated and have a background in the various branches of education such as languages, history, the sciences, mathematics, and philosophy. He goes through how each one of these branches of knowledge contributes to understanding the Bible correctly. Thus, learning is a doorway to a deeper understanding of the Bible, and a deeper understanding of the Bible with the right heart, leads to a deeper relationship with God.
Basil of Caesarea exhibited a command of Greek education that was admirable. When I read his Hexaemeron, I found myself having to look up some of the things he was referring to when he spoke about nature and the scientific body of knowledge of his day. For example, I had to look up the Nightingale’s song and sea silk in order to understand and fully appreciate what he was talking about. To make clear how educated he was: I have Google and a huge amount of resources at my fingertips in the 21stcentury, and I am college-educated and have been trained in research, and I didn’t know some of the things he spoke about; he didn’t have Google, and he knew these things all those centuries ago. That is the mark of a truly educated person who values lifelong learning. Not only was he educated himself, but as part of his pastoral duties, he wrote an Address to Young Men on the Use of Greek Literature, where he encouraged young Christians who pursued an education to read classical Greek writings, and to separate the good things from the bad like a bee who collects nectar from flowers. Not every flower produces nectar, but the bee can draw out the nectar from those that do produce nectar and benefit from them.
These were not rare occurrences in the early Church, but these are representatives of bishops in the early church.
More than all this, at the heart of the Christian faith is a set of books. The word for books in Greek is biblia, from which we get the word Bible in English. These books which were brought together into a single volume led to the rise of literacy. Languages such as Armenian, Gothic, Ge’ez, the Slavic languages, and even Aleutian among many other languages had alphabets created for them for the first time because of the Christian faith in order to read and understand the Bible, and literacy was a positive effect of the creation of alphabets for these languages. Other languages received alphabets by using already existing ones (like Latin) such as Old English and Old High German due to the missionary influences of Christians.
What about science specifically? David C. Lindberg in his well-researched and clearly written The Beginnings of Western Science hows the Christian contribution to the development of science in the Middle Ages both in Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity through such movements as the translations of ancient scientific texts, commentaries on those texts, development of ideas within them, challenging them to come up with better science, and creating a terminology, conceptual frameworks, and early observations that contributed to the development of science.
Myth # 2: Christianity is an inherently violent religion
I don’t know where atheists come up with these claims, but it’s clear that those who claim this could not have read the New Testament (and understood it) if they make such claims.
It is one thing to say, for example, that the Roman Catholic Church has committed some atrocities in the Crusades in a span of a couple of centuries (which also negatively affected other Christians such as Orthodox Christians), but it is another thing totally to say that Christianity as a whole, of which High Medieval Roman Catholicism is only a small part, is inherently violent. Most Christians who have ever lived HAVE NOT BEEN Roman Catholic. Catholicism only became dominant a few centuries ago. Most Christians who have ever lived, lived in the East, and not in the West. That majority never looked up to Rome; they had their own archbishops as Eastern Orthodox Christians still do to this day, and that majority never practiced warfare as a matter of course.
When I first heard this claim about Christianity being inherently violent, I had not yet completed reading the Bible, but I knew enough from the sermons my priests gave to see the ridiculousness of this claim because I knew from what I had read from the Bible: primarily the New Testament at that time, that Jesus was, without doubt, nonviolent, commanded His disciples not be violent, was willing to suffer violence rather than to commit it, even to the point of Crucifixion, and the early Christians had followed the same example for hundreds of years, and indeed it is characteristic of most Christians today; think of Middle Eastern, African, and Asian Christians.
The ones who believe this myth of inherent Christian violence have not read the New Testament or early Christian literature seriously. Had they done so, they would have backed away from this claim for honesty’s sake or at least for the appearance of honesty.
Have they heard of Christian martyrdom? You know, that phenomenon where a Christian suffers and dies for his or her faith in Christ instead of denying Him even on the threat of death.
In Orthodox Christianity, we read the Synaxarium (the lives of the saints) shortly before the Gospel is read on Sundays, and the Synaxarium is full of the stories of martyrs who chose to suffer violence rather than to commit it. Our icons depict martyrs. So all over the church we are constantly reminded of those who chose to suffer violence rather than to commit violence.
In the end, when I see that there are people out there who actually believe this myth of Christianity’s inherent violence, it is just bizarre. It tells me more about them (their state of poor learning, inability to carry out honest research, the community they belong to, and their psychology) than it tells me about Christianity.
Myth # 3: An atheist state would bring the most peace and progress
While this is not a myth about the past, it is still a myth because it attempts to describe a pattern of existence and living. It drives its adherents, and they have a firm conviction (faith) that this is what will happenas a matter of cause (through conditions) and effect.
The reality is that atheist states have been established multiple times beginning in the late 1700s. They have brought everything but peace and progress. The most common things that atheist states have brought are: violence, censorship, inequality, and oppression, and in that order.
In Post-Revolutionary France, a new atheistic and secular order was imposed. It turned churches into Temples of Reason. It personified the so-called values of secularism such as liberty and offered a festival. It was symbolic (actually mythic according to the definition of myth above). But the state guided under this religion was violent. The blood of the French people was poured out into the streets. If one reflects on this short period of history, the true festival was the sacrifice the blood of the French people for the ideals of Reason operating without God in mind.
In Soviet Russia, after the violent revolution and the arrest of clergy and intellectuals, many texts were banned and put out of circulation, not only the Bible but also works of history, philosophy, and economics. In short, anything that would threaten to change the atheistic government. Knowledge was filtered through the state, and free inquiry was discouraged and suppressed through conditioning in the schools. If, for example, a student in class thought differently than what a teacher was teaching (which served nothing more than to perpetuate the atheistic communist order) the other students were encouraged to ostracize that student to a corner of the room until he changed his mind. That is brainwashing, not education, not peace, and not progress.
Every one of these atheist states was not founded by zealots, but by people who were applying philosophies by atheists which were based on fundamentally atheistic assumptions. France during the time of the Cult of Reason, applied the philosophies of the Enlightenment. Lenin and Stalin applied Marxist philosophy to governance; Pol Pot, who was educated in France, applied French atheistic Existentialist philosophies in addition to Marx.
If there is any ideology which left to its own means (freed from any effects and influences of other belief systems) that is inherently violent and anti-educational (with no room for other interpretations), it is atheism.
Just like distorting facts about Christianity’s positive role in progressing literacy, learning, and science, atheist myths distort facts and give incorrect interpretations about atheist states. When confronted about these, they call these atheist states “secular religions” as a way to distance themselves from these states. But “secular religion” is nothing more than atheism’s goals being realized. So, they are only playing with words and running away from having to answer challenges to their beliefs about a future atheist state because it is self-defeating to acknowledge that ALL historically documented atheist states founded on atheistic assumptions have led to everything except what they believe and gleefully preach will happen.
But then again, atheism is not based on any rational foundations. It believes it is. But that wrong belief is the foundation of all the myths which atheists believe in in order to make themselves feel smart about what they believe.
Conclusion
These three myths drive mainstream atheism today. Atheists have even projected these myths onto the past as origin myths. The Enlightenment becomes something more than just a time period in history. Even its name suggests something more than a movement; it is a period of light shining in the darkness. What darkness? That of rational thinking imprisoned by faith. But the reality is, there was no Enlightenment. Everything the Enlightenment claims was its own (such as critical thinking, modern science, and a system of higher education) already existed in one form or another before that time period.
Atheist mythology like the ancient myths of Greece and Rome is accepted as true without question especially among the New Atheists. Just like the ancient myths were most believed by uneducated peasants, atheist myths are most believed by uneducated atheists. That is those who have not read widely on the topics of Christianity and education, Christian nonviolence, and atheist regimes. Even worse, they may reject all that body of knowledge to hold onto their beliefs. And this is when their religious allegiance to atheism becomes most evident.
There is a danger here. If one adheres to these atheist myths, then it will prevent them from being able to clearly understand and contribute to accurate history. They will distort the facts which we use to build an understanding of the past in order to accommodate the myths that have been handed down to them and continue to circulate them in atheist communities. This will happen only if they believe in the three atheist myths I listed above. Yet history does not care about anyone’s feelings or myths. If one has acquired the tools to accurately examine the past, all they can do is accept what they find if they are honest.
Overall, atheist mythology is perverse. In fact, it is so perverse that it would be insulting to the ancient myths to refer to these modern fabricated stories that atheists believe in as myths. But the irony is that just like they ridicule ancient myths as being fabrications, atheists have made their own fabrications to support their own worldviews. They don’t line up with reality.
On the other hand, ancient myths, while not being historically true, made some type of objective observations about patterns of existence and life. Atheists myths do neither; they project modern frustrations of atheists onto the events of the historical past that did not happen in the way they claim, and these frustrations are then circulated as facts among modern atheists which they then use to try to convert people to atheism.
We need to call them out.
If you found benefit from this blog entry, click here to like my Facebook page here OR sign up to my email list to receive my latest blog entries every week in your inboxes, and you will also receive my free eBook The Way of Christ. Click here to sign up.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.