They’re Picking on Religion, So Onward Christian Soldiers

But a few Standards of Honesty are in order

While I was in the process of writing my 2016 book, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Belief, I set up a Facebook page to promote it. When the book was published, I did weekly paid boosts to help sales. I specified the target markets, e.g.. atheists, secular, humanist. Even so—don’t ask me how—my boosts showed up on Christian Facebook pages. What horrible reactions! None of the enraged Christians showed the least interest in engaging in the issues I raised. It was all hate and hasty conclusions, e.g., you were never a real Christian, you’re a terrible person, you’re going to hell. I eventually gave up on the paid boosts. So I guess the Christians won that round.

 

I also resolved never to go onto Christian blogs or websites to advocate atheism. This would be akin to me walking into a church on Sunday morning, going up to the pulpit and arguing with the preacher. Among other things, this would be bad manners. 

 

But does this mean that Christians arguing with atheists on the Debunking Christianity Blog is bad manners? No, not at all. 

 

However, there are a few Standards of Honesty that should be observed, respected. On 11 August, I published an article here, “My overdosing on religion was becoming a serious problem.” I offered my comments on a 2016 essay by Josiah Hesse, in which he confessed the agonies he suffered because of childhood indoctrination, in an apocalyptic Christian cult; it had been a brutal experience. This prompted a Christian apologist—I assume—RosAnarch, to dive in with very long comments, which provoked heated exchanges with regular followers of this blog. To date, there have been 209 comments. I wondered what Standards of Honesty should apply.    

 

Standard of Honesty One: Don’t remain anonymous

 

Anyone who wants to take on a major role as expert and critic should identify themselves. Why hide behind a pseudonym? Especially since being a defender of religion is not, in the current climate, dangerous. Why RosAnarch instead of your name? Who are you, what are your credentials and your profession? What Christian brand do you represent—if indeed you are an apologist? If I were to walk into that church on a Sunday morning to argue with the preacher, I’d state my name and credentials: Ex-clergy atheist, nine years a Methodist pastor, PhD in Biblical Studies. My business card, which I give to anyone who seems interested, reads David Madison, Atheist Author and Advocate.  

 

Standard of Honesty Two: Address the primary point of an article, i.e., avoid diversionary tactics. 

 

The point of my 11 August article was that early childhood indoctrination—these days called grooming—had done considerable damage to Josiah Hesse. RosAnarch set out to show that I was misrepresenting religion, and cited studies showing that evils can derive as well from folks who are not religious at all. How can there be any debate about that? Greed, territoriality, lust for power, and just plain being terrible people has caused so much evil and suffering. But when you add fervent conviction that there is a god justifying horrible acts, the evil can be intensified. In the 11 August article I mentioned the Crusades, and anti-Semitism fueled by the gospel of John and Martin Luther’s deranged rants against the Jews. For the role of religion in rage against Jews, see especially Hector Avalos’ essay, “Atheism Was Not the Cause of the Holocaust,” in The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, edited by John Loftus. 

 

Take a look at the French Wars of Religion, and the Thirty Years’ War, which John Loftus has pointed out 

 

“…pitched Christians against Christians. Roman Catholicism and Protestant Calvinism figured prominently in the opposing sides of this conflict…Estimates show that one-third of the entire population of Germany was killed…we’re talking about a Christian bloodbath.” (The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, p. 194)

 

But enough of this diversion. My article was about the harm done by Christian grooming. Even if Sunday School, catechism, and parental coaching don’t cause the extreme damage that Josiah Hesse endured, what do the clergy construe as a positive outcome? They’re delighted if the children in their charge grow up accepting a bundle of ancient superstitions. Christian theology is grounded in the brutal, rampaging god of the Old Testament—with little improvement in the New Testament. Required animal sacrifices in the ancient scriptures were replaced—after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 CE—by a single human sacrifice, as a way to get right with god. Some Christian theologians added the ghoulish idea that eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the human sacrifice was proper ritual for gaining eternal life. That is, magic potions. The apostle Paul added magic spells, e.g. Romans 10:9. If you believe—and say it—that the human sacrifice rose from the dead, you’ll be saved. 

 

How in the world does accepting this bundle of superstitions help people function in our world today? I suspect many of them just park it in the backs of their minds, and get on with life. And if any of them were asked for evidence to verify what their clergy/parents had taught them, they would be at a loss. Their response might be, “Gee, isn’t it in the Bible?”   

 

I recommend reading Josiah Hesse’s article, to get a full grasp of what he went through. That was the damage done by religion I hoped to convey. 

 

On the issue of damage caused by religion, there are historical realities that it is helpful to recall—and difficult to dismiss. Theologians have found it necessary to knock the rough edges off the god depicted in the Bible, and in their flights of speculation and fantasy, they came to portray their god as all-powerful, caring, loving—and in the bargain—aware of everything that goes on with every human. It takes a great deal of gerrymandering to make this god look good. In the face of so much suffering—genetic diseases, plagues, mental illness, very high infant mortality rates for millennia—it’s indeed a great mystery that a wise, competent god neglected to give humanity crucial information that could have helped enormously. We have a Bible—more than a thousand pages of it—with no information on why we get sick, and how to prevent it. 

 

In fact, there are Bible texts that are quite misleading. In the famous story of the Jesus healing the paralytic who had been lowered through the roof to reach Jesus, we find this Jesus-script:

 

“Which is easier: to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— “I say to you, stand up, take your mat, and go to your home.”  (Mark 2:9-11)

 

The concept here is that sin causes illness. And at the time of the Black Plague in the 14^th century, this idea provoked extreme behavior. Barbara Tuchman describes the behavior of the flagellants:

 

“In desperate supplication for God’s mercy, their movement erupted in a sudden frenzy that sped across Europe with the same fiery contagion as the plague. Self-flagellation was intended to expressed remorse and expiate the sins of all. As a form of penance to induce God to forgive sin, it long antedated to plague years. Flagellants saw themselves as redeemers who by re-enacting the scourging of Christ upon their own bodies and making the blood flow, would atone for human wickedness and earn another chance for mankind. 

 

“Organized groups of 200 to 300 and sometimes more (the chroniclers mention up to 1,000) marched from city to city, stripped to the waist, scourging themselves with leather whips tipped with iron spikes until they bled. While they cried aloud to Christ and the Virgin for pity, and called upon God to ‘Spare us!’, the watching townspeople sobbed and groaned in sympathy.” (p. 119, Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14^th Century) 

 

This is religion-induced misery.

 

Tuchman mentions another example of religion-induced rage. RosAnarch criticized me for stating that religion can result in rage—but this makes my point:

 

“In February 1349, before the plague had yet reached the city, the Jews of Strasbourg, numbering 2,000, were taken to the burial ground, where all except those who accepted conversion were burned at rows of stakes erected to receive them.” (p. 119, A Distant Mirror)

 

Why didn’t god show up in some fashion, get the word out in some way?  “No, no, no, you’re not getting sick because of sin or rebellion against Christ. It’s microbes, it’s the fleas!” How do theologians/clergy make sense of this divine neglect/incompetence? "God works in mysterious ways" is a useless cliché —it doesn't work at all.   

 

Standard of Honesty Three: Try to offer balanced evaluations

 

At the beginning of my 11 August article, I mentioned the volcano of Christian rage that erupted on social media when Christopher Hitchens died in 2011. This was when many pious folks learned for the first time about his famous title, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. This set off RosAnarch, who referred to the book as “a big pile of garbage”—and provided links to a couple of very negative reviews. The review in the New York Times was candid in acknowledging Hitchens’ eccentricities, but failed to mentioned that the book was a pile of garbage. Links to a few positive reviews might have been helpful. No doubt, all those alarmed Christians who fumed on social media would have been egged on by anyone who called the book garbage—which would have been all the more reason not to read it.

 

Standard of Honesty Four: Avoid behavior that resembles a toddler tantrum

 

At one point, after being challenged and critiqued by many readers,

RosAnarch declared, “This whole blog is truly a clown circus.” So, the resort to ad hominem. No surprise, after his “pile of garbage” remark. Hey, I won’t try to defend the atheists here who might have been unkind in their responses to RosAnarch. But he—assuming it’s not she—came on the blog posing as a scholar/specialist on religion. So:  behave accordingly, act like it. 

 

Standard of Honesty Five: Admit that Christianity is a blend of superstitions

 

Well, apologetics is a major industry, so we can assume this Standard of Honestly will never gain traction. Apologists are part of the faith bureaucracy, dedicated to making sense of the superstitions, miracle folklore, magical thinking, and fanciful/bad theology preserved in the New Testament. Even the problematic Jesus-script in the gospels has become a headache, and efforts to verify any events in the life/ministry of Jesus have stalled because of the utter lack of contemporaneous documentation. Some moderate/liberal brands of Christianity are making the effort to put much of the superstition (e.g. human sacrifice) behind them. 

 

But apologists are dedicated to creating scenarios that overcome all these difficulties. The church bureaucracy has two thousand years of momentum, and has managed to get away with promoting the blend of superstitions. Honesty shows no signs of surfacing.  

 

 

 

 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

 

His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

 

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.