Another Response to Atheism and the New Urbanism

Another reader responds to Atheism and the New Urbanism:

In Joel Kotkin's The City, he points out that classically, one of the main aspects that defined cities was their religiosity. Specifically, religion, along with commerce and defense, brought the people of the city together to live as a community, to have a shared experience of their lives. And he further posits that one of the problems with modern cities is that they don't have religion as a part of the fundamental cultural experience. But this is not to say that urbanism created atheism - I'm sure that the great Ancient and Medieval Cities were no less testaments to our abilities to create, to shape our environment. Somehow those people didn't seem to become atheists when faced with man's ability to build great things.

Instead, It seems much more likely that atheism seems to be coming out of the cities because it is a cultural trend and (as Kotkin points out) EVERY cultural trend begins in the cities.

Finally, theologically speaking, we build and create because we are made in the image and likeness of God. He allows us to co-create with Him. Anything humans can build is thus, automatically, a sign of God's love and fidelity to us. To live with that constant reminder shouldn't create in us a tendency towards atheism. The problem is that we can sometimes forget that what we've built is a sign of something else, and think that it is great because we made it so. But this is true of every sign of God's presence in our lives. I would wager that we are no more likely to see the sign of God that is the city and make it our God (or make ourselves God) than we are to look at nature and make make it our God.