Is atheism necessary for religion? Rabbi Zusya would say yes.

 

The great Russian Hassidic Rabbi, who lived more than two hundred years ago, was one day teaching his students when he emphasized the necessity of atheism and agnosticism. His students were aghast. Had the master lost his mind? He proved his point. “Say you’re walking down the street and you see a hungry man or a homeless woman. If you’re certain there is a G-d you’re reaction might be, ‘I need do nothing because G-d will provide.’ But if you don’t believe in G-d, or if you doubt his existence, then there is only you who can provide.'”

 

 

Religion is the most powerful tool known to mankind. It is capable of
inspiring the artistic wonders of the Italian Renaissance and the reliefs of
Michelangelo, and it is capable of inspiring nineteen young men to fly
airplanes into buildings. It can lend mankind a vision of a perfect world in
which ‘the wolf lies down with the lamb’ and it can impart to the world a
vision of people needing to be burned at the stake as infidels.

 

Without intelligent and earnest critics of the faith the heavenly
vision of religion can easily spill over into the hell on earth. Hence, the necessity
of atheism and agnosticism. I would argue that religion learns more about
itself from its critics than it does about its admirers.

 

I have debated many atheists in my time, from Richard Dawkins to
Daniel Dennett to Sam Harris to Christopher Hitchens. Of them all Hitchens
stands alone. He has by far been the most formidable and the most interesting
opponent, the one I have most loved and the one that has most gotten under my
skin. Religious people have no real interest in Dawkins whom they find extreme,
clinical, mechanical, and monolithic. But Hitchens is passionate, utterly
unpredictable, contrarian, and fluent. And while he has been, at times been, in
my opinion, highly unfair in his criticism of religion, he redeems it all by
being all too human. It is his most likable quality. He is also supremely
entertaining.

 

I believe this is the reason that my upcoming debate with Hitchens
on 16 September in New York City at the Cooper Union on ‘Is there an afterlife’
has generated such considerable interest, particularly among religious people.
The news that Hitchens has esophageal cancer and may be terminally ill has
provoked sadness all round, particularly among the faithful. When I told my friends
at the excellent Baron Herzog vineyards in California that Hitchens was ill, we
all immediately decided to send him fine bottles of kosher wine so he and his
friends could toast L’Chaim, to life, for his recovery. Religious prayer groups
for Hitchens’ healing have sprung up all over America.

 

Are the faithful praying for Hitchens recovery because they want to
have enough time to convert and win a great victory? Is it because they want a
miracle in Hitchen’s life to open his eyes to G-d’s presence? I cannot say. I
can only speak for myself.

 

I have no interest in converting Christopher Hitchens to religion.
His atheism has not stopped him from being a singular champion of human rights
throughout the world and he can teach we religious people a thing or two about
courageously standing up to tyrants. I am not so naïve as to believe for a
moment that Hitchens would be so intellectually dishonest as to suddenly now
change his antipathy toward religion because of the possibility of impending
death. Only a coward would forsake his personal truth out of fear of death and
one thing Hitchens certainly is not is a coward. I am not a believer in
religion-in-the-foxholes and deathbed confessions. Religion is too important to
be embraced out of fear or trepidation.

 

Rather, what I intend with our debate is to finally dismiss this
notion that religious people invented the idea of an afterlife out of a sense
of weakness and insecurity. We’ve heard it all before. Religion is the opiate
of the masses. It’s a drug that weak-minded people take to help them deal with
the meaninglessness of life. They invented the afterlife because they couldn’t
accept the finality of death. Then they invented G-d to give purpose and design
to a fundamentally chaotic and unjust world.

 

The afterlife in Judaism is none of these things. It is not an
escape from the flaws of this world or a reward for the suffering endured here.
Any religion that promises an eternal reward for living righteously is better
characterized as a business promoting celestial remuneration. Worship G-d so
that he’ll pay you in the hereafter. Judaism certainly demands that we do the
right because its right and never for the consideration of any external reward.

 

Most Jewish sages understand the World to Come as the world
the way it will be when it reaches a state of perfection through human endeavor
and G-d’s finishing touches, what we call the messianic era. Judaism’s
focus is not on the heavens but on the earth, not on a disembodied existence in
the sky but on souls animating bodies and doing good deeds here on earth. Our
ground zero is not G-d’s celestial throne but the earth’s sacred spaces.

 

I have no intention of converting Hitchens to my religious point of
view and do not believe I could do so even if I wished.

 

But I can convince Hitchens that his ideas about religious people
are wrong. That we are strong rather than weak, focused on this life rather
than the next, dedicated to healing the world rather than gaining entry into
the heavens, fundamentally opposed to fundamentalists, extremely suspicious of
any kind of extremists, and open to ideas – and criticism – from every quarter.

 

And that’s what Rabbi Zusya was trying to demonstrate in his story.
Religious people learn how to serve G-d and humankind better from all whom they
meet.

 

 

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is
the host of ‘The Shmuley Show’ on 77 WABC in NYC, America’s most listened-to
talk radio station. He is the international best-selling author of 23 books and
was the London Times Preacher of the Year at the Millennium. As host of ‘Shalom
in the Home’ on TLC he won the National Fatherhood Award and his syndicated
column was awarded the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for
Excellence in Commentary. Newsweek calls him ‘the most famous Rabbi in America.’
He has just published ‘Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.’ Follow him
on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.