Part 2, The Problem With Liberal Theology

As an atheist I am no longer in the habit of telling Christians what they should believe. I tell them to hammer it out between themselves and come back to inform me of the consensus, since I’ll be waiting in the wings to debunk what’s left over. I agree with the criticisms the social trinitarians offer against the non-social trinitarians, and vice versa. I agree with the Calvinist criticisms of Arminian interpretations of the Bible as well as with the Arminian criticisms of Calvinistic interpretations of the Bible. I agree with the Protestant criticisms of the Catholics as well as the Catholic criticisms of the Protestants. And I also agree with the fundamentalist criticisms of the liberals as well as the liberal criticisms of the fundamentalists. When they criticize each others views I think they’re all right! What’s left is the demise of Christianity as a whole. After they fight out to a draw in each disputed case there is nothing left for me to debunk except their shared common belief in God (a non-trinitarian one) along with their religious experiences as a pointer to God.

When it comes to the liberal/fundamentalist debate, I thought about starting a Blog to let the liberals and fundamentalists fight it out! But then it dawned on me that the liberals would win that debate, at least in my mind (the only mind that counts is what each one of us thinks, correct?). In fact, in my book I use the writings of the liberals to debunk evangelical Christianity much of the time. They simply are on the side of truth. They have better scholars.

Without wanting to do a great amount of research at this time on liberal theology, let me begin by quoting from Wikipedia on it:

Liberal Christianity, broadly speaking, is a method of biblical hermeneutics, an individualistic method of understanding God through the use of scripture by applying the same modern hermeneutics used to understand any ancient writings. Liberal Christianity is not a belief structure, and as such is not subject to any Church Dogma or creedal statements. Unlike conservative Christianity, it has no unified set of propositional beliefs. The word liberal in liberal Christianity denotes a characteristic willingness to interpret scripture without any preconceived notion of inerrancy of scripture or the correctness of Church Dogma. A liberal Christian, however, may hold certain beliefs in common with traditional, orthodox, or even conservative Christianity.

Liberal Christianity was most influential with mainline Protestant churches in the early 20th century, when proponents believed the changes it would bring would be the future of the Christian church. Despite that optimism, its influence in mainline churches waned in the wake of World War II, as the more moderate alternative of neo-orthodoxy (and later postliberalism) began to supplant the earlier modernism. Other theological movements included political liberation theology, philosophical forms of postmodern Christianity such as Christian existentialism, and conservative movements such as neo-evangelicalism and paleo-orthodoxy.

The 1990s and early 2000s saw a resurgence of non-doctrinal, scholarly work on biblical exegesis and theology, exemplified by figures such as Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong, and Douglas Ottati. Their appeal is also primarily to the mainline denominations.

The father of modern liberalism is widely considered to be Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), and Norman Geisler’s description of his theology is good enough for now:

As the father of modern liberalism, he influenced most major liberals after him, among them Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889), Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation; Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), What is Christianity?, and Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918), who wrote Introduction to the History of Israel in which he defended the J-E-P-D hypothesis of authorship/ redaction of the Pentateuch.

For Schleiermacher, the basis of religion is human experience, rather than divine existence. We must have it before we can utter it. The locus of religion is in the self. The inner is key to the outer. The object of religion is the “All,” which many call “God.” And the nature of religion is found in a feeling (sense) of absolute dependence, which is described as a sense of creaturehood, an awareness that one is dependent on the All, or a sense of existential contingency.

The relation of religion to doctrine is that of a sound to its echo or experience to an expression of that experience. Religion is found in feeling, and doctrine is only a form of the feeling. Religion is the “stuff” and doctrine the structure. Doctrine is not essential to religious experience and is scarcely necessary to expressing it, since it can be expressed in symbol as well.

As to the universality of religion, Schleiermacher believed that all have a religious feeling of dependence on the All. In this sense there are no atheists. In this he foreshadowed Paul Tillich.

Being primarily a feeling, religion is best communicated by personal example. It is better caught than taught. Religion can also be communicated through symbols and doctrines. But doctrines are accounts of religious feeling. They are statements about our feeling, not about God, his attributes, or his nature. So there is an endless variety of religious expression, due largely to personality differences. The pantheistic expression results from those who delight in the obscure. Theists by propensity are those who delight in the definite.

The aim of religion is the love of the All, the World-Spirit. This is achieved through loving other human beings. The result of religion is unity of life. And its influence is manifest in morals. Religion produces a wholeness of life, but it has no specific influence on individual acts. We act with religion, not from it.

Likewise, the influence of religion on science is not direct. One cannot be scientific without piety. For the feeling of dependence on the All removes presumption to knowledge, which is ignorance. The true goal of science cannot be realized without a vision arising from religion.

No wonder fundamentalists attack the liberals for what they are left with...not much. Their attack centers on why liberals even bother with the Bible itself. Why not the Koran, especially since Hector Avalos, a Harvard trained Biblical scholar, has shown that the liberal deconstruction of the Bible has made the Bible irrelevant to modern people. He claims they have made an end to Biblical studies and they did it to themselves. I agree.

Okay so far?

For the next installment on Dr. James McGrath's reasons for being a Christian read this.

Why My Focus is On Debunking Evangelical Christianity

A recent Barna Poll shows that Most Americans Take Well-Known Bible Stories at Face Value. That is one reason I focus on that which I do...

According to Barna, two-thirds of American adults take well-known Bible stories at face value. That's a lot of people; 200 million of them! So I take aim at a very large audience, including evangelicals, mainline Protestants, AND Catholics who believe the Bible.

Former Blog member Caleb Wimble described why we at DC have chosen to debunk evangelical Christianity in these words:

Not only is fundamentalist Christianity the greatest threat in the United States to science, tolerance, and social progress, but it is also the most prevalent form of Protestant Christianity to be found in our nation, whether you like it or not. It is the fundamentalist religious right that holds the reigns of the Republican party (which currently controls the nation, in case you didn't realize), and it is this same fundamentalist religious right that lobbies for the teaching of lies in public school and fights against funding for embryonic research that could potentially save the lives of millions.

Whether you like it or not, it is this flavor of Christianity that makes the loudest, most obnoxious, most dangerous impact on the world today, giving us plenty of good reason to direct the brunt of our attacks in its vicinity.

Maybe others will share why they think evangelical Christianity is a bigger threat. But at bottom it's precisely because they are fundamentalists!

I can, and I do argue against mainline and even Catholic Christianity. It's just not my focus. My focus is on fundamentalism because the majority of Christians believe the "literal" passages in the Bible, and because they have a zeal for pressing their views upon me through economic and political power. Liberals are not that much of a threat, period. They do not blindly accept what they read in the Bible, and that's being more reasonable than fundamentalists, who have a Bible verse for every problem, intellectual or social. I can agree with liberals on this, so why bother with them?

My goal is to dislodge the evangelical Christian off of center. That's the hard part. That's the challenging part. I like a big challenge. Once they are knocked off center they will be less cocksure and less of a threat to my personal liberties. They will begin to think for themselves without blindly accepting what they read in the Bible.

I can argue against liberal theological views! I was once a liberal Christian on my way to atheism. Is that too hard for people to understand?

Sharing the Good Nudes, and Bad Neuters, of Christianity (& God's love for harp playing male virgins)

Sixty residents of the Seminole Health Club nudist camp near Miami comprise a Christian mission that worships twice a week in the nude. According to leader Elijah Jackson, "We're not trying to start a cult here, but I think nudity adds something to Christianity." -- News of the Weird, "Weird Clergy"

In the past another group of Christians worshiped in the nude called "Adamites." They believed that Jesus's grace allowed them to draw closer to God in their nakedness, unlike Adam and Eve who were ashamed and withdrew from God in the garden because of their nakedness. They also cited the verse in which Job reminded his listeners that we all entered and exited life naked, and used that to argue that we will all face God naked. Besides which King David lost his robe in a religious dancing frenzy and danced naked for the Lord. The only trouble I can see with worshiping naked in church is having to set the temperature neither too hot nor too cold and keeping the seats from getting sticky.

Christians who worship naked, and the Bible verses they focus upon, are not to be confused with Russian Skoptzie Christians who focused on Jesus's words, "Some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven." (Mat. 19:12) The Skoptzie avoided the "lust of the eyes" and "of the flesh," via the use of a knife. All for the kingdom. (Another example of a Christian who made himself a eunich for the kingdom of heaven was the early church father Origin. Incidentally, he believed in the restoration of all things, except perhaps for the thing he cut off.) Will we behold in heaven naked dancing genital-less men -- made eunichs either on earth by their own hand, or transformed into genital-less angel-like beings after death by God?

The author of Revelation mentions "144,000 men... not defiled with women; for they are virgins," who are granted a prominent place in front of God's throne to play their harps. That's what God likes most I guess, harp playing male virgins. (Revelation 14: 2-4)

Old Testament authors seem to concur with at least the necessity of celibacy in the presence of Yahweh, since Exodus 19:15,17 taught that Israelite men must "NOT to come at your wives" prior to "meeting the Lord."

Paul likewise hailed celibacy as a holy virtue, but added, concerning those who could not rise to practice such a virtue, "it is better to marry than to burn" (a verse not often heard at Christian marriage ceremonies today, I wonder why, it's biblical):

"It is good for a man NOT TO TOUCH A WOMAN. For I would that all men were even as I myself. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. [i.e., celibate] But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn... I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress, I say, that it is good for a man so to be. Are you loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. The time is short: it remains that they that have wives be as though they had none... He that is unmarried cares for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married cares for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married cares for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your own profit, that you may attend upon the Lord WITHOUT DISTRACTION." (1 Corinthians 7:1,7,8-9,26-27,29,32-35)

But Augustine's commentary on Paul's verses is especially ripe:

"In the first times, it was the duty to use marriage. chiefly for the propagation of the human race. But now, in order to enter upon holy and pure fellowship. they who wish to contract marriage for the sake of children, are to be admonished, that they use rather the larger good of continence. But I am aware of some that murmur, 'What if all men should abstain from all sexual intercourse, whence will the human race exist?' Would that all would. Much more speedily would the City of God be filled, and the end of the world hastened. For what else does the Apostle Paul exhort to, when he says, 'I would that all were as myself;' or in that passage, 'But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remains that both they who have wives, be as though not having: and they who weep, as though not weeping: and they who rejoice, as though not rejoicing: and they who buy, as though not buying: and they who use this world as though they use it not. For the form of this world is passing away.'" (Saint Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, Sections 9-10)

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THE LATEST "NUDES" ON THE CHRISTIAN NUDIST EXPERIENCE

Christian Nudist Convocation, Planning their Summer 2008 conference:

The periodic Christian Nudist Convocation took place in July at the Cherokee Lodge nudist camp in Tennessee, and according to a dispatch in Nashville Scene, the group evokes skepticism not only from most Christians (who dislike the flaunting of naked bodies, even if innocently done) but from most Cherokee Lodge members, who see them as too intense for naturism's laid-back attitude. One CNC attendee acknowledged that many Christians would not approve of Cherokee Lodge, but to him "It's Jerusalem." Another compared his work at nudist camps to missionary work: "Some people get sent to Africa, some people get sent to South America and the Lord was like, 'I want you to go to nudist resorts.' And I'm like, 'Wow, what an assignment.'"
SOURCE: News of the Weird

Christian nudists to build village in Florida by Phil Barnoti Wahba (Columbia News Service Dec. 6, 2005)

"Naked Before God," cover story in Nashville Scene. Christian nudists hit the church-and the hot tub-for three days of wet and wild worship in the backwoods of Tennessee by Elizabeth Ulrich

The compatibility of Christianity and nudism is detailed in "Nakedness and the Bible," a self-published book by Canadian author Paul Bowman. The book cites key biblical events, including God's order to the prophet Isaiah to go naked for three years, and states that, contrary to popular belief, Jesus was naked when he washed the feet of his disciples, when he was baptized and when he was crucified and resurrected. "Nakedness and the Bible" states that nothing forbids nonsexual nudity and that misinterpretations of the Bible stem from faulty translations of ancient Hebrew words for nudity. For example, Jim T., Natura's spiritual adviser, and his wife, Shirley, believe the apostle Paul's call for modesty targeted ostentation, not nudity. Besides, said Shirley, 55, women in church wearing "designer clothes and $90 haircuts" are the immodest ones.

Christian nudists have long organized their own services and prayer groups. Carolyn Hawkins of the American Association for Nude Recreation, which was founded in 1931, said most of its 270-member clubs offer Sunday services, including one in North Carolina where they are led by a member who is a Baptist minister. Nathan Powers, a 50-year-old Texan, begins his day praying naked in his backyard. Nakedness intensifies his dialogue with God, he said. "I feel closer to God. It's an act of humility. It is absolutely spiritual."

Jonathan Palmiter was enjoying a recent Sunday morning stroll through a lush yard full of trees and Spanish moss--naked as was Adam in the Garden of Eden. A 59-year-old born-again Christian, Palmiter was visiting Natura, a development 40 miles north of Tampa, Fla., that, when it opens up next summer, will become the first nudist community for devout Christians in North America.

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Transgender Televangelist: Sister Paula Nielsen the world's first and only transgender televangelist. Unfortunately, Sister Paula's show is only available on the cable system of -- you guessed it -- West Hollywood.

I Am Not a New Atheist!

The only thing new about my atheism is that I've adopted it within the last few years before reading or knowing about the "New Atheist" authors. Let me explain further:

David Marshall published a book called The Truth Behind the New Atheism: Responding to the Emerging Challenges to God and Christianity. Recently I saw an interview where he describes those who are called “New Atheists” (NA) in these words.

This new cohort of atheist writers tends to have several things in common. They are trying generally to apply the theory of evolution in new ways to social science, including religion and morality. Secondly, they draw on new "Jesus spin" -- what I call neo-Gnosticism, along with the Jesus Seminar stuff and some even more hoary "Jesus was a mirage" theories. Third, the New Atheism arises in a new context -- after 9/11, when many skeptics want to see a symmetry between radical Islam and home-grown "Christian fundamentalism." Some people did this during the Cold War, too, trying to make out that Christianity was "just as dangerous" as communism.

I want to comment on the last (or third) tendency of what he describes as NAs.

Jason Pratt, over at CADRE, claims that in light of this third tendency

NAs tend to promote the notion that faith is intrinsically antithetical to reason. NAs tend to promote the notion that religious believers refuse to ask tough questions about their own beliefs. Skeptical questions are presented as if they are supposed to be staggering revelations to believers who have never considered such things before or who simply ignore the questions as being too dangerous to think about. Often the questions themselves are presented as if merely asking them is (or should be) enough to undermine a religious belief. NAs have at least a minor tendency to describe religious belief as having been arrived at, and held, without evidence.

Identifiable NAs are Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and especially the Rational Response Squad. Old Atheists include Bertrand Russell, and J.L. Mackie, and it should also be noted that there are still Old Atheists out there, like Michael Martin, Nicholas Everitt, Graham Oppy, Quentin Smith, Theodore Drange and J.L. Schellenberg, along with others like Michael Shermer, Jeff Lowder, Dan Barker and myself.

When people visit Debunking Christianity they might naturally assume that I am a NA too (other team members can speak for themselves if they want to). But I chose the name of this blog carefully. It was to grab people’s attention and at the same time accurately tell what I wanted to do. My dictionary says this:

de•bunk: (past and past participle de•bunked, present participle de•bunk•ing, 3rd person present singular de•bunks) vt show something to be false: to show that something is wrong or false. Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

Just for future reference let me distinguish myself in some ways from the NAs. I am a very respectful atheist. I treat my intellectual opponents with human dignity and respect. I am not militant in using the belittling tactics that some NAs use or in trying to offend believers. I even capitalize the word “God,” and refer to him in masculine pronouns. I like to learn from others. I enjoy the discussion. This is proved beyond a doubt every single day here at DC (with very rare exceptions when provoked). I think all religions are false and delusional but they are not held irrationally. I’m not sure what it can even mean to say Bill Craig, Alvin Plantinga and Richard Swinburne are irrational. They are clearly very bright, intelligent, and educated men. For this reason I’m against the suggestion that atheists should call themselves “Brights.” I dislike this term and won’t use it because it’s simply not true.

I do think believers are deluded. Jason Pratt has attacked me because I use this word, as if using it makes me an NA. However, just because someone shares some characteristics with a NA does not a NA make. I’m also a male atheist, but that doesn’t make me a NA. Besides there is a big difference between the meaning of a word and its significance. The meaning of a word is its dictionary definition. The significance of a word is something that is person-related based upon his or her own personal experiences with the word. My dictionary says this:

de•lude: (past and past participle de•lud•ed, present participle de•lud•ing, 3rd person present singular de•ludes) vt lead into false belief: to persuade somebody to believe something that is untrue or unreal.Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

When it comes to the belittling and harassing tactics of the NAs, I do not participate or approve of their tactics. But as a pragmatist I can see the results, and the results are positive for what I believe, since they have raised awareness about atheism in our culture just as gay people raised awareness of their cause by similar belittling and harassing tactics. I can appreciate what has been accomplished by them without approving how it was done. I think it’s unfortunate that atheists had to grab people’s attention in this manner, but it worked. Now there is a shelf in Borders Bookstores labeled “Atheism,” and I hope my forthcoming book finds its way on that shelf when it’s published. Many old atheists fail to understand the nature of the media (which reports on oddities), and the value of radicalism (which gets things done).

Furthermore, I think radical Islam is much more dangerous to civilization than perhaps any other religion, especially more dangerous than Christianity. There are four things that make Christianity less dangerous than Islam in my opinion.

One) Christianity has a Virgin Mary who helped bring in the redeeming Messiah. The Catholics have even made Mary a co-redeemer. This feminine Biblical example exalts women to some degree. Women aren’t entirely worthless chattel. Islam only has an Eve, who is known for being a temptress to Adam. She is weak, needing to be ruled over, who can be blamed for bringing upon the earth such misery.

Two) Christianity has its Jesus, who is basically seen as non-violent and who laid down his life for humankind. Islam has no corresponding figure. Mohammed was a political ruler, whereas Jesus had no earthly political power. So the Koran reflects the political goals of religion, whereas in Christianity it’s merely implicit.

Three) Christianity has gone through an Enlightenment beginning in the 16th century with the rise of science and modern philosophy. The only version of Christianity we see in today’s world is one reflecting various degrees of this enlightenment. As a result the only Christians we see are “cherry-picking” from the Bible based upon their modern experiences and understandings. They do not take the Bible literally. They do not think it honors God to stone adulterers, kill witches, or keep women in submissive silence at home. By contrast, Islam has had no Enlightenment. Muslims still take the Koran at face value, and there are some pretty hateful things said in it about infidels, Jews, and women, along with some barbaric ways to punish criminals.

Four) Christianity does not have the same political power that Islam has within any country in the world today. There are whole countries ruled by Islamic law. There are no countries ruled by Christian law, although there is a heavy influence of Christianity in America, the most powerful nation in the world. Even many Christians think it’s best to have the separation of church and state. But in this nuclear age with WWD's, all it would take to destroy millions of lives is a rogue Muslim state or a small group of militant Muslims who gained access to them.

The Temptation of Faith

I want to believe. I want to have faith. I want to live like a child again, believing in things like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and in fantastical worlds where one could wrap a cape on their shoulders and fly through the air, invulnerable to pain or threat...

But the truth is...well, we see it when we read these posts, and consider these arguments. We see and read Christians using convoluted arguments to either justify the lack of evidence or consistency in their religion...one which I used to revel in with them. Their theology, use of science, philosophy...all impressive. But I hear in their voices and arguments an anger at something...which I think may be the loss of innocence in their religion. They no longer share the magic of belief...they have encountered the reality of failed or non-existent evidence, God has failed them, so now they fall back on circulur, sophomoric arguments. They attack their opponents, they insult or challenge without reason the methods of discourse...all because their God has failed them, or they have lost the simple, innocent child-like quality of simple belief.

I understand. I wish I could believe. I wish I could:
- pray, and believe God was going to answer;
- pray, and actually see an answered prayer;
- lay hands on the sick and watch them recover;
- speak to mountains and watch them move into the sea (or, as an environmentalist, speak to deforested and denuded mountains and watch them become green again)
- raise the dead
- walk on water (hell, I can't even ski)
- command weather, save New Orleans
- walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear no evil
- do these other things, even greater things, that Jesus did (and promised I could do)
- tithe, and see prosperity returned to me
- speak in tongues!
- prophecy about the future
- have visions (without pharmaceutical help)
- believe that a questionably historical figure actually died for my "sins" and that it meant something; and that it wasn't such a crazy idea to be so appealing
- absolutely know that my existence will continue when I die, or that my father is in heaven, ready to meet me when I get there (wink, wink).

I could go on and on. The promises of religion...no 72 virgins for Christians, but promises just the same...are multitudinous. But that one time, that first time, when the believer prays - not a shallow, vacuous prayer like "please let me be on time" but, with tears, "please heal my father" or "please save that nation"...and nothing happens...the dominoes begin to fall, and what is left is high-sounding arguments of convoluted philosophy. What I hear is a "melancholy, long-withdrawing roar."

The loss of faith is heartbreaking. The temptation of faith is strong.

Why Is It So Hard to Reject Christianity?

A Blogger named "Stan, the Half-Truth Teller" commented on this topic here, which you can find below....

Depending on one's level of indoctrination, turning away from the religious mythos can be likened to espousing the initial concept of a spherical Earth. Every scrap of "evidence" available to humans at the time said the Earth was most decidedly flat, yet a new version of reality is introduced which claims otherwise.

There was never any true evidence of a flat Earth, but the anecdotal evidence was clear: The Earth is flat.

It's worse, though, for aside from being branded a heretic, describing the Earth as a sphere brought no other real punishment - certainly nothing as severe as disavowing Christianity.

Condemning oneself to an eternity in Hell is hardly a trivial undertaking...

For myself, I was raised in a Christian home, and as such was a staunch promoter of all things Christian up until High School, after which I had various encounters with the real world, including alcohol, marijuana, and sex.

Lucky for me, I am a genius, and I was able to quickly determine that what I had been taught was a lie. Even when closed, my mind was unimpaired. I decided that I would refuse to believe in anything half-heartedly - which is precisely what "faith" is, no matter how well sugar-coated:

No evidence, no adherent.

I recognized that what I had been taught was in practice no different that what any other child in any child-indoctrination scheme anywhere on the planet had been taught: Our way is true, all other ways are false. Our way will find reward, all other ways will find only punishment.

I saw that had I been raised in any of these plethora of alternative indoctrination schemes, I'd have been exactly as convinced of my dogma's righteousness, and the deserved damnation of all others'.

Such nonsense does not deserve my support, nor that of any other.

I was able to ignore a potential fate in Hell because I recognized that the odds of my indoctrination being correct were not good enough to place a bet of any kind, much less one consisting of my immortal soul.

Since then I have come to realize that no evidence could possibly convince me to unabashedly "worship" anything. I can reasonably conceive of a technology so advanced that it would seem magical, and I recognize that no matter how much "evidence" such a mystical being could contrive, I could imagine a yet-more-powerful being.

There are still today times when I wonder whether a religion can be correct (and if I've really relegated myself to an eternity in Hell), but I fend off such thoughts by reminding myself that if God is that much of an asshole, then I'd rather burn.

Metacrock's Liberal Atonement Theory

Over at Metacrock's Blog Joe takes evangelical atonement theories to task and then offers his own, called Participatory Atonement. According to him "Christ died in Solidarity with victims." I both "love" and "hate" liberal theologies. I love them because they argue with me against evangelical Christianity. I hate them because they are used to maintain a faith that doesn't make a difference and cannot be rationally defended as being specifically Christian. Here's my response to his atonement theory....

Your answer is cherry-picking and choosing from the Bible, it doesn't sufficiently answer the question why Jesus suffered, nor does it answer the problem of evil, nor does it answer the problems of the incarnation and the trinity.

The best way for God to show his solidarity with victims is to do for them what he commands YOU to do, and that is to help them out of their misery rather than to suffer with them. If I chose to go to jail with you in order to participate in your sufferings, for instance, then how does that help you? It might make you feel better about your sufferings, but it should instead make you question my sanity. Can you actually imagine my helping any victims in tangible ways by suffering with them, especially if, like God, I had the power to allieviate their suffering and didn't?

If like Process Theologians your God doesn't have that kind of power, then neither does he have the power to help victims by suffering with them. Why should victims care for God if all he can do is to suffer with them? He's impotent. Besides, he got us into this mess in the first place by selfishly creating us for his own pleasure with our evil tendencies. What good does it show you that God loves you if he cannot do anything for you except to suffer with you? Big deal, I would say. Do something about our suffering and then I'll be impressed, and then I'll care, and then I'll think God knows what he's doing.

It's obvious to me Joe, that you're working from within a given Christian tradition that if you weren't already inside of it, you wouldn't come to accept it in the first place. This is so obvious to me. You initially became a Christian because you thought otherwise of the atonement, but with further study you rejected that initial evangelical atonement view, for good reasons. But rather than rejecting your faith, you try desperately to hang on to it by replacing it with something you never would've accepted in the first place.

Two "Liars for Jesus" and an Aging Philosopher.

In the names of gods all manner of moral boundary crossings become conceivable. In the service of a biblical god or the Bible-as-God, they all too often become real.

For Evangelical Christians, the greatest good in the world is winning converts. A Christian who wins a convert saves a soul that would otherwise be condemned to eternal torture. According to traditional Roman Catholic theologies in which modern Evangelicalism has its roots, only true believers are exempt from this fate.

With stakes so high, intellectual and moral slight of hand in order to win converts or keep people from deconverting becomes a lesser evil than leaving souls to suffer damnation.

Evangelical missionaries, often genuinely decent people driven by compassion, choose this lesser evil even if it means they have to engage in distasteful manipulation or deceit. As they should! That’s what moral reasoning is about: being able to weigh the consequences of our actions and choose the lesser evil or the greater good.

The problem isn’t that Evangelicals, like the rest of us, weigh alternatives on a sort of moral balance. The problem is that fundamentalist dogmas simply outweigh normal moral constraints on behavior. If one truly believes in a God who demands sacrifice (a white dove, an unblemished lamb, Abraham’s son, Yeshua-born-of-a-virgin) in order to forgive sin; if you believe that the only way out of Hell is to partake of this sacrifice, most anything becomes justified in order to get other people to drink the blood.

Through history, orthodox believers have taken this responsibility very seriously. Conquistadors reportedly baptized native infants and then ran them through with swords on the outside chance that they might have human souls. Public torture of apostates helped to keep the Faithful faithful during the Middle Ages. Even today in India and Africa, Evangelical missionaries stage “miracles” or manipulate desperate people with education, medical care, or even basic necessities like drinking water as here-and-now rewards of conversion.

On the scale of such zeal, most home turf moral transgressions in the service of faith seem small indeed. Sins that catch the public eye include things like evangelists rewriting American history so that the founding fathers appear to be “biblical” Christians, friendship missionaries targeting vulnerable foreign students without revealing their ulterior motive, a filmmaker fabricating an anti-Semitic snuff film based on outdated Catholic doctrine, or born-again officers bullying Air Force cadets to accept Jesus. Behaviors like these might seem worthy of little more than an eye roll. But such behaviors offer us an opportunity to understand how mind-controlling dogmas can get good people to do ugly things, large and small.

A recent New York Times article by Mark Oppenheimer (The Turning of an Atheist; NYT Magazine; 11/4/07) ; exposes a good example of this pattern in action. About four years ago, British philosopher Anthony Flew, a life-long atheist now in his eighties announced that he believed in some sort of god. Possibly this god was simply a prime mover, possibly it was a person-god. Flew’s public statements were sometimes contradictory. Nevertheless, Flew made a published appeal in support of intelligent design, among other things, and over the course of several years he became the darling of evangelicals in search of a credentialed ally. Flew was a “catch,” courted hard and won. Recently, two public defenders of literalist Christianity, self-funding apologist Roy Varghese and evangelical pastor Bob Hostetler even helped the aging philosopher write a book There is a God , which tells the story of how and why he converted from atheism to a fuzzy deism with theistic overtones that are fuzzier yet.

There is a catch. Anthony Flew, possibly for several years, has been showing signs of dementia. Looking back on the second election of Ronald Reagan, my psychologist friend Geoff comments: “How could the American public have voted for that guy? His Alzheimer’s was obvious by the end of his first term.” In hindsight it was. The same may someday be said of Flew. When he first announced his reversal, fellow atheists were dismayed and believers thrilled. But it is only in hindsight, in a context of unambiguous dementia that Flew’s recent years can be understood.

The DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists has this to say about Alzheimer’s: The course of Dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type tends to be slowly progressive, with a loss of 3-4 points per year on a standard assessment instrument. Various patterns of deficits are seen. A common pattern is an insidious onset, with early deficits in recent memory followed by the development of aphasia, apraxia, and agnosia after several years (any one of the three is sufficient to make the diagnosis). . . The average duration of the illness from onset of symptoms to death is 8-10 years.

Oppenheimer interviewed Flew, offering no diagnosis but simply reporting what he saw. If his observations are reported accurately, the characteristic symptoms of Alzheimer’s are present in interviews, Flew’s recent public appearances, and written conversations between Flew and atheist author, Richard Carrier. The article reads like a mental status exam:

• Memory impairment: could not recall the identities of old colleagues (e.g. Brian Leftow, Paul Davies) when given their names, could not recall the content of his earlier books (John Leslie), forgot and then remembered timeless philosophical arguments—conclusions were swayed back and forth in beliefs by most recent conversations or changes in recall.
• Aphasia: halting diction, loss of technical vocabulary (e.g. abiogenesis) self-described “nominal aphasia.”
• Disturbance in executive functioning: manifest confusion responding to abstract argumentation--demurring, passive assent, contradictory statements, didn’t write and couldn’t maintain content awareness of book published in his name.

Some of these symptoms can be seen in an interview of Flew by Lee Strobel, evangelical apologist, available on YouTube. With this level of observable dementia, and with a decrement of 3-4 IQ points per year, one might hypothesize that Flew is nearing that decade mark. In fact, having begun with a particularly robust mind and level of mental activity, it is possible that he has been fending off debilitation even longer. Symptoms such as those described by Oppenhiemer, even if they are currently patchy and inconsistent, let us know what to expect in coming years. Apraxia means losing the ability to carry out motor activities. Agnosia means losing the ability to recognize or identify objects, including people you love. Alzheimer's is a fate no-one would wish on anyone but an enemy and few would seek to exploit to their own advantage.

Is it not incredible, given this state of affairs, that people who claim to serve the God of Goodness and Truth would put Flew’s name to their own cherished arguments about what is right and real? If Flew showed symptoms of dementia like those witnessed by Oppenheimer and Carrier and then someone convinced him to donate his financial assets rather than his good name to their cause, criminal charges could apply!

For me, the real curiosity in the Flew story in not whether a once-brilliant philosopher caught in the throes of cognitive decline dies professing atheism or some form of faith-based belief. Rather it is the fascinating psychological question the story raises: Why would men who earnestly care about god concepts and goodness engage in the shameful behavior of manipulating and then speaking on behalf of an elder with diminished capacity?

One simple answer is that such behavior works. In evangelical circles, "Flew's" book will receive wide distribution, and few readers will be the wiser. It will be an effective tool for proselytizing young skeptics and arming campus missionaries. All’s fair in war, they say. And surely, if one seeks only dominion, any manner of behavior can serve the cause. Questions of good and evil are in some ways irrelevant to the end. But if one seeks, truly, to serve Love and Truth, then questions of good and evil, of decency and fairness and integrity are the end. Roy Varghese and Bob Hostetler, at least from their public statements, are not Machiavellians who generally insist that the end justifies the means. Rather, something has gotten them to violate what one might assume are their own deeply held principles.

Oppenheimer offers a partial explanation: “An autodidact with no academic credentials, Varghese was clearly thrilled to be taken seriously by an Oxford-trained philosopher; it may never have occurred to him that so educated a mind could be in decline.” This seems credible. Varghese has little to gain and much to lose from one simple punch line that emerges along with evidence of Flew’s impairment: How can you tell an Oxford philosophers is senile? He announces there is a god.

But beyond this partial explanation lies another. Bear with me while I try to lay it out.

Evangelism requires certitude. It simply doesn’t work to send out missionaries who say, “My best guess is that my God is real.” Or “The evidence is mixed, but some parts of the Bible seem divinely inspired.” Fortunately, the Evangelical narrative is beautifully adapted to provide the needed certitude.

The powerful emotions and personal transformation that can sometimes accompany conversion, worship and prayer in any religion get interpreted as unique to Christianity. They are evidence of God’s love, personal salvation, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s mind. Doubt, in Evangelicalism, is evidence of weak faith or even temptation by Satan, the Father of Lies. In the most sophisticated Evangelicals, it is something to be admired—and overcome. “Tolerance” means being fuzzy headed about good and evil. It means moral relativism or moral indifference of the worst kind. Developing attachments to unbelievers, except to convert them, is seen as dangerous—being unequally yoked. Contradictions within the faith are relabeled as divine mysteries that make belief all the more wondrous.

Maintaining appropriate Evangelical certitude, then, requires that one cultivate certain habits of the mind—an aversion to some kinds of inquiry, a will and ability to close mental doors, a faith in faith itself, a subsuming of curiosity to the higher cause, a wariness of seeing the world through the eyes of another, a funky sort of disconnect between compassion (good) and empathy (dangerous).

If we consider these habits of the mind in combination with the atonement-salvation-damnation doctrines mentioned earlier, we get a sense of how Varghese and Hostetler could fall into the trap they did. Combine a theology of desperate urgency and a mindset that actively disables the limited human ability to protect ourselves against self-deception, and the best among us are vulnerable. The weakness is not in the men but in man. It lies in our vulnerability to specific kinds of dogmas and in the ways that the Evangelical complex (and others) have developed immunity against self-correction.

Varghese and Hostetler sought to advance human wellbeing by advancing Evangelical Christianity and they instead did harm to both. Why? Because it is not enough to be well intentioned, we must also be right. What I mean by right is anchored to the real world contingencies that govern human well-being and the well-being of the world around us. The only protection any of us has against doing harm in the service of good is a set of mental habits that remind us that we may be mistaken and force us to ask those questions that can show us wrong.

These habits require that we cultivate a child’s delight not in mystery but in discovery and that we maintain an adult’s grudging appreciation for correction. The scientific method, which has been called “what we know about how not to fool ourselves” seeks to systematize these habits of mind. Our great wisdom traditions including Christianity seek to elevate them under the name of humility. Among other things, humility demands this: When looking at the shameful plight of someone like Varghese or Hostetler, I seek to understand the forces that bind them and to remember that there, but for grace, go I.

Valerie Tarico, Ph.D. is a psychologist and the author of The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth. Her essays are available at www.spaces.live.com/awaypoint.

The 39th Carnival of the Godless is Up.

Link. Enjoy!

An Early Review of Bart Ehrmans New Book

Stanley Fish gives us an early glimpse at Bart Ehrmans soon to be published book, God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question--Why We Suffer. Ehrman is quoted as saying: “I could no longer reconcile the claims of faith with the fact of life . . . I came to the point where I simply could not believe that there is a good and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge.” “The problem of suffering became for me the problem of faith.” “If God tortures, maims and murders people just to see how they will react – to see if they will not blame him (as in Job's case), when in fact he is to blame – then this does not seem to me to be a God worthy of worship.” “If he could do miracles for his people throughout the Bible, where is he today when your son is killed in a car accident, or your husband gets multiple sclerosis? . . . I just don’t see anything redemptive when Ethiopian babies die of malnutrition.”

Carrier Speaks About Flew's New Book

Link.

What's With all the Whining about Truth?

My book, The Dark Side has an in-your-face subtitle: “How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.” It’s in your face and so, not surprisingly it triggers push-back. One of the questions I get is a wearisome post-modern “What is truth, anyways? What is all this whining about Christian dogmas violating truth like you have some higher standard? (Implied: As if any perspective could lay any more valid claim to truth than any other.)”

Whenever this question comes up, I have to fight the urge to say: Go put your left ankle on a train track and come ask me again after a long freighter goes by.

Why do I have this urge? Because at one level, it’s a dumb dope-smoking question. People who are being tortured or dying of cancer or, I would assume, getting their feet crushed by locomotives don’t spend a whole lot of time speculating about whether the experience is real.

Why do I resist? Because at another level the question is valid. And so I try to answer it –for the questioner, but mostly for me.

Being a psychologist and citizen rather than a philosopher or theologian, my interest in truth is practical–even utilitarian. I don’t really care whether the world that I (or my clients or elected representatives) live in real in some absolute sense. I don’t care if it is “merely” phenomenology or a dream or an ancestor simulation. Those questions are fascinating, but not important. If it’s a dream, I’m in it till I wake up. If it’s a simulation, I have no way of knowing what’s on the outside.

Whether my self-conscious existence is the product of a god or a big computer, I’m inside the game. And inside the game, some kinds of phenomenology are different than others. No matter how well a Buddhist monk has transcended hunger, if he doesn’t eat, he dies. If someone puts a gun to his head while he’s meditating and pulls the trigger, he doesn’t meditate any more. To insist that it is “all in our heads” denies the reliable, predictable and useful distinction between a monk meditating and a monk without a brain. That’s how it is, inside the game. And to date everybody who claims to know what is on the outside makes those claims using faulty inside-the-game evidence.

So, the definition of truth I care about is this: Within the game, what are the rules? What are the cause and effect contingencies that affect the things I value – like my left foot. As soon as we acknowledge that we care about anything, even something so basic as preferring existence to non-existence, then a whole set of outcomes (and by implication, cause-effect relationships) become important. This is where the freight train response is actually on target. It brings into sharp relief the fact that few dope smokers or philosophers if dragged to the track would consider the ankle and locomotive in the same category as their dreams or academic speculations. Being human means, by definition, we have some things we care about, because people who don’t aren’t around long.

My insult to the fields of philosophy and theology is conscious. Both fields have sneered down their elegant noses at empiricism for literally thousands of years. In consequence, neither ultimately has been more generative than masturbation. This is not to say that masturbation, or philosophy, is useless. But let’s do say what’s real. Neither produces new life. Introspection, unencumbered by data, failed to generate a coherent understanding of human mental processes, let alone a vaccine or a solar panel. So did theology, that vast web of semi-logic that brilliant humans built on top of ancient ritual and oral tradition. Theology utterly failed to heal disease (despite millennia of prayers, exorcisms, and sacrifices) and never even considered a green revolution or a sky scraper. By claiming knowledge of what lay outside of the game, theology failed to discern what lay within.

The rules of the game itself began emerging only when a few early monks and philosophers stuck their soft clean fingertips in the dirt. That’s when knowledge began to accumulate. It’s when we humans started gaining shared power to predict and control the contingencies we care about. The scientific method of inquiry has been called, quite simply, “What we know about how not to fool ourselves.” That’s all it is. Very basic. To make things worse, it’s not perfect, and in fact, has been subject to continuous refinement for hundreds of years. But accountable, empirical—in other words, scientific-- inquiry has made the difference between horse carts and space travel.

This is what I’m talking about when I accuse Christianity of violating its own proclaimed value on truth. It puts forward a set of ideals that have to do with health, prosperity, freedom and social harmony as well as love and joy. What does Yahweh give his people? A land flowing with milk and honey. How does Jesus minister? He heals. What does Paul promise? Love, joy and peace. What is heaven? Riches, health, and eternal bliss.

Christianity espouses these values and then it gets the in-the-game contingencies wrong. It articulates a psychology, a biology, a physiology, a geography, a physics, a political science, and a moral contract each of which is –should this surprise us?—as primitive as our bronze age ancestors who plagiarized the Torah, and our iron age ancestor who laid down that hallucinatory classic, the book of Revelation. In addition, it violates the most elementary principles of “what we know about how not to fool ourselves.” This means that it is inevitably procedurally prone to stagnant self-deception.

So, truth. My truth.

We can spend our time taking philosophy and theology courses, either refraining from any assertion of truth, or asserting absolute Truth and then dying in tangential superiority. Or we can roll up our sleeves and ask ourselves, What do I care about and what power do I have to make it happen? And not just what do I care about but what do we care about together? What are the core shared dreams of my people, and what truths do we need to discover to make them real?

I’m a woman with a life mission that focuses on the well-being of the web of life that gave me birth and my fellow human beings within that web. Within the priorities set by this mission, there are enough real-world contingencies to be explored that I suspect they’ll keep me busy for the rest of my life. And if I’m wrong, if I run out, I imagine I can figure out where to get some good dope.

This article is reprinted from ExChristian.net, where it stimulated interesting dialogue.

BREAKING NEWS: Jesus Declared Insane!

Monday, November 5, 2007 – from The Association of Rational Jesus Seekers Press.

In years past, evangelical Christians like Lee Strobel have boasted greatly about their belief that it is possible to have Jesus legally declared the Son of God in a court of law. Granting that conclusion, an up-and-coming team of textual critics and legal analysts known as The Association of Rational Jesus Seekers (TARJS) has banded together for precisely the purpose of expounding on such important biblical matters. The organization discovered that if Jesus can be legally declared to be the living and risen Son of God in a court of law, then he can also be declared legally insane in a court of law.

Breaths were held Monday night at the Kaczynski Memorial Auditorium in Chicago, Illinois as the council of over 200 came together to render a verdict on the highly disputed sanity of Jesus. Believers of all faiths could be seen biting their nails, anxiously awaiting this team of some of the ripest biblical scholars on the planet to reach their weighty conclusion. The verdict would forever stain the already tarnished reputation of Jesus the Christ—this verdict being surpassed in negativity only by the Talmudic accusation that Jesus was the product of Mary opening her legs to a weary Roman soldier one fateful night. Finally, the waiting was over and the verdict was in: Jesus Christ, known to Christians as “the Messiah,” is legally insane!

Gasps could be heard coming from nervous, sectioned off groups of believers at the announcement that their Lord and Savior was indeed the screwy lunatic they believed he was not. The silent tension in the air gave way to muffled grunts of revulsion and short, steaming outbursts against members of the association for their “blasphemous” rendering. “We have not seen such irreverence since The Jesus Seminar” one attendant said. Others stated that they agreed with the verdict: “Jesus may have been a compassionate human being, but he was definitely coo-coo for cocoa puffs!” So dense was the atmosphere that the council, having decided to leave the building quietly, was compelled to stay and give a lengthy verbal defense on the specific reasons behind the giving of the verdict. The speaker of the council, Dr. David Eardman, declined comment initially, but due to the overwhelming pressure from red-faced evangelicals, eventually elected to answer some questions from the audience.

“The reasons we declared Jesus unhinged had to do with his unstable behavior in cursing a fig tree for not having fruit on it (Mark 11:12-14), for sending soul-raping demons into a herd of two thousand swine, causing their needless deaths (Mark 5:11-13), and for his famous temple conniption fit (John 2:14-17).” Dr. Eardman said.

Mark 11:13-14 says, “13. And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find any thing thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet. 14. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever.” Dr. Eardman asked, “Can any thinking person deny that this behavior is insane?” He continued, “Why would the Lord of heaven and earth expect to find fruit on a fig tree out of season? This is the first evidence of demonstrable insanity.” But the team wasn’t yet through showing that Jesus was a fruitcake. They then moved on to what was said to be an even worse example of a sick, twisted mind.

Dr. Chamberlain, another member of TARJS and Dr. Eardman’s closest friend said, “Why Jesus agreed to go along with a request of Hellbound demons who lost the great war in heaven isn’t clear, but it is clear that Jesus was no animal rights activist. And he must have had a special dislike for pigs. Instead of sending the demons off to Hell where they belonged, Jesus sent them on a short trip inside the bodies of sweet little pigs and piglets that were subsequently drowned in the river. Perhaps Jesus didn’t think through that when the pigs died the demons would again be freed to wreak havoc on earth, and the owner of the swine would be out a lot of money. This is crazy behavior. I’ve never seen anything like it outside of a sanitarium! We have no choice but to declare Jesus insane and to warn others to stay away from him when he comes back to earth someday.”

Following the councilmen’s comments was a firestorm of heated debate, which reached a climax when uppity, New York Dr. Gregory Barnes referred to Jesus as “a male menopausal, foaming-at-the-mouth, psychopath,” for which he later apologized. “Maybe I went a little too far on that one,” Dr. Barnes was heard to say. The reference was made concerning Jesus’ throwing over the moneychanger’s tables and ruining good temple business, rather than resorting like he should have to legal means to stop what he believed was religious thievery. Dr. Chamberlain told us, “The real reason Jesus was as mad as a wet hornet was simply because the Jews in the temple refused to cut him in on the temple profits!”

Dr. Eardman then concluded the matter: “I’m afraid the conclusion is unavoidable. Jesus is insane—and we are not the only ones who think so. Even his family thought Jesus was nuttier than a fudge sundae. Mark 3:21 says ‘When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, He is out of his mind.’” When his appeals to reason failed to convince the religious herd, Dr. Eardman made yet one more rational appeal: “Do we really want to entrust our souls to a man who had a disciple who ran around with nothing but a towel on?” (John 21:7) Seeing no way to reach the intolerant mob, the meeting abruptly ended when the frustrated doctor and his scholars walked out of the auditorium.

(JH)

NY Times Writer Questions Former Atheist Anthony Flew's Competency

NY Times writer Mark Oppenheimer raises some questions about the competency of Anthony Flew, the world's most famous ex-atheist. Christians like David Neff of Christianity Today, along with Victor Reppert, are responding with a letter from the co-author of Flew's soon to be released book, There is a God.

David Neff sums up the NY Times article by saying that Oppenheimer...

...questions the degree of Flew’s involvement in writing the book, the credibility of scientists whose perspective Flew adopted, and even Flew’s mental competence at the advanced age of 84. (Oppenheimer suggests that Flew may be “a senescent scholar possibly being exploited by his associates” and raises the possibility that his “memory [is] failing” and that “his powers [are] in decline.”)

None of this is about whether or not God exists, but it is interesting to get at the truth. Is Flew being manipulated by Christians in the interests of spreading their message about the gospel? Is that possible? Would they do this?

Metacrock's Blog

Christian thinker Joe Hinman has the equivalent of a Ph.D. and is taking me to task for dealing almost exclusively with fundamentalist Christianity, here, and here. Maybe I have developed a tunnel vision about the Christian faith, and so I thank him for reminding me that Christianity is broader than fundamentalism. But as you'll see I can also deal with liberal versions of Christianity. I recommend his blog.

About me Joe said:

“I do want to thank [Loftus]. It makes it so much more interesting to dialog with an intelligent person who does not assume one is a fool. Loftus is so much more fair and reasonable and intelligent than most atheists at CARM (his other site). I forgot what it was like to deal with a real dialog partner.”

Thanks Joe. Others may disagree, but it's nice to hear you think so.

My story

From chapter two and the Epilogue to my book: I was one serious kid. Despite my healthy sense of humor, I worried a lot about the Big Questions. When in bed with a severe cold, I pondered my death. Especially as I hit puberty, I had to understand everything thoroughly. I wanted to get it right and make it mine. No hand-me-down religion. I was going to feel it for myself and work it out intellectually too. At sixteen, I decided to chronicle my spiritual life. An excerpt:

"I don't know when I was actually saved. I believed in Jesus most of my life, I guess. My mother says that when I was about five, she had punished me for something and sent me to my room. A little while later she saw me jumping on my bed and saying that Jesus had forgiven my sin and come into my heart."
-From a history of
my spiritual life
written at sixteen

Every child finds a way to meet basic needs, and from an early age I chose a religious path to find the satisfaction that I craved. I grew up a middle child in a missionary family of seven. Both of my parents were kept busy establishing churches and Bible schools in the Orient. The Christian view of life was the only one I knew. So when my family struggled with continuing conflicts, I deepened my involvement with faith and church. The semitropical climate of my childhood meant sundresses and bare feet, cicadas and lizards, and our own little aboveground swimming pool to survive the summer. My parents employed a Chinese couple to help with the house, and they stayed with the family for eighteen years. The wife was my nanny. She taught me to speak Cantonese before I learned English.

My sister and I played games with our dolls. Our favorites were "hospital" and "orphanage." In bandaging the dolls perhaps we bandaged our own psychic hurts. We fought a lot as kids. Our parents had their own problems, and as missionary kids themselves, knew little about what to do beyond punishment and prayer. I have warm memories of family life too. Dad made wooden stilts for us. Mom sang with us at bedtime from a beautiful homemade scrapbook of Christian songs. One of them went "Mommy talks to God, Daddy talks to God, And so do I, And so do I." We had fun filling in with other names of people we knew. The lullabies gave sweet assurance of God's love and protection. A classic picture of a guardian angel helping children across a bridge in rough weather hung on the bedroom wall.

I began school in a Chinese kindergarten, where I was popular for my blonde hair and origami skills. My sister and I rode to school in a pedicab, past beggars on the street, and jostled by the crush of bicycle traffic. After kindergarten, though, we were largely sheltered by the American subculture in Taiwan and had little contact with the Asian culture around us. Our family was in a foreign, heathen land for the purpose of teaching, not learning. Sadly, I remember strong sights, sounds, and smells in the Buddhist temples, associated only with pity and disgust.

In spite of the inconsistency of our public and private family life, the core message of Christianity still made sense to me. It was my personal relationship with God that counted. I became infatuated with Jesus, in love with Him. It didn't matter what anyone else did. I was determined to mature into an ideal Christian. I wanted to be part of God's family with all my heart and soul. Only much later did I understand the acknowledgement I sought.

During a furlough back in the States, I was introduced to the charismatic style of worship in the Assemblies of God. I loved it. Since I had always been demonstrative myself, the emotional expressiveness felt so warm and real. I did not "receive the Baptism" until later, but I became more involved in my faith.

My family traveled to many supporting churches in California, reporting on missionary progress. We kids helped by dressing up in traditional Chinese clothes, saying a few words in Chinese, or singing a song. I felt uncomfortable, but I wanted to do what I could for "the Lord's work." When we headed back to the mission field, I shared my parents' sense of purpose.

"In the Spirit"
In junior high, I was sent to a private Christian boarding school intended to provide a good education to "missionary kids" in a Christian environment. Bible classes were taught daily, chapel was weekly, and church was required twice on Sunday.

I became intensely religious and fairly outspoken about it. I wrote a paper for school entitled "My Beliefs" and turned it into a huge project. On my own, I wrote treatises on topics like, "Why dancing is wrong."

The Second Coming was one of my major concerns. I wrote a paper discussing all the biblical evidence for the "tribulation" and the question of whether the Christians would be "raptured" (taken up to heaven) out of it beforehand. I studied and wrote about predestination and "eternal security," scouring the Scriptures for hints about the theological problems of whether a Christian was "once saved always saved" or had to work at staying in a state of grace.

I made a great effort with all these study projects, but I continued to have emotional needs that were unfulfilled. The energy and time that went into my faith is actually rather amazing in retrospect. It is sad now to look back and understand the tension between my normal teenage need to belong in a peer group and my desire for spiritual acceptability. My faith taught me to glorify the idea of being different, which psychologically fostered a feeling of alienation that I tried to justify in my writing. Sometimes I also seemed to be fending off sexual interests. With awakening hormones I delved more deeply into my Christian faith.

I continued feeling discouraged and was struggling with the concerns of growing up. Finally, one weekend in eighth grade, I "received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit" - the experience Pentecostal Christians seek after being saved. It means that you are filled with the Spirit, and usually speak in tongues as evidence.

My "baptism" experience was an ecstatic forty-five minutes of speaking in tongues, which felt like ten minutes. Even now, I believe it was a very special mystical experience, one that I am not sure how to interpret. It certainly was an altered state, with overwhelming feelings of total love and acceptance comparable with the spiritual transcendence experienced by people in a variety of spiritual traditions.

I returned to school with a new confidence and contentment. My prayer life included speaking and singing "in the Spirit" (in tongues). I felt happy and loved. I had meaning and I belonged. For the rest of my adolescent years, my faith was central to my sense of well-being.

At school I shared my enthusiasm for the "Spirit-filled" life. Some friends went with me to Pentecostal Fellowship meetings, and two of them also "received the Baptism" when praying with me in the dorm.

For a while I spent my Wednesdays fasting. I got special permission to miss meals so I could go to the dorm rooftop and pray. I was convinced that the Second Coming was very soon. This was frequently preached in Pentecostal circles along with ominous warnings about "the world."

I was keenly aware of an imminent end and the urgency to spread the word. This produced seriousness in my communications with others and, at the same time, a thrill in my private longing to be with Jesus.

Teen Times
Other aspects of teenage life proceeded. I became involved in sports, grades, piano, dorm life, and plenty of the "good, clean fun" that comes with the camp like atmosphere of a boarding school. I worried about acne and agonized with the best of them about my latest crush. Flirting was always a bit of a mystery.

Dancing became a point of confusion for me. We were not allowed to dance at school, but I went home for weekends. My friend Laura invited me to a record hop at the American military teen center. I kept it a secret from my parents - and felt guilty about what I expected to be a sinful, sensuous grinding of bodies that would heat up lustful thoughts and lead directly to sex. So I was surprised to find out that it was mostly great fun. Rock and roll didn't really seem like the devil's music, and getting a little attention from boys felt pretty good too. After that, I alternated between sneaking off to record hops and declaring to Laura that I did not want to be caught dancing when the Lord came back. She was pretty tolerant. Although she was also a Christian, since I had "led her to the Lord," she suffered little guilt for having fun. At a slumber party with her non-Christian friends, we stayed up all night playing pinochle. I was developing little chinks in my armor against "the world."

But I remained puzzled about ordinary human faults. My own failings were very disturbing. I desperately wanted the "fruits of the Spirit" (love, joy, peace) and not just the "gifts of the Spirit" (tongues, healing, prophecy). Speaking in tongues was wonderful, but to me the real miracle of Christianity was a transformed heart. I was more in awe of true love than any healing or fulfilled prophecy. But no matter how zealous I became, I did my share to contribute to the pain and conflict in my family. I felt guilty for my part and I blamed the others for theirs. How nice it would have been to learn something about communication or how to express feelings! But nowhere in our belief system was there any help for working on these things - only hope that God would do miracles. Troubled relationships only meant lack of faith or submission to God. I remember sadness and unrelenting guilt for disappointing a God who had sent his son to die. I wrote in my diary:

"I want to be perfect. I want Jesus Christ to control me completely - my thoughts, words, and actions. I want people to see Him in me and believe because they've seen what He can do for a person. I have a long way to go but with Jesus' help I'll be a blessing.
"My main trouble is at home. Oh God, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you for your healing spirit. I need you to mend me so many times."

At the end of tenth grade, at the age of sixteen, we moved to Southern California. I thought it was a yearlong furlough but it turned out to be permanent and created much grief later. The good-byes at summer camp with my friends were sad. For four years I had lived with them, playing pranks and saying prayers, singing songs and studying for exams, shouting at ballgames and whispering secrets. In my yearbook they wrote:

"Thank you, Marlene for being the mirror through which Christ reflected Himself to bring me back to Him. Your witness has meant much to me."

" You're about the best Christian I know."

"You've been such a great friend to me this year. It was through your concern I as eventually filled with the Holy Spirit. Praise the Lord!"

My religion at this time of my life met my many needs perfectly. Upon arriving in a strange country, I was able to fit in immediately with the youth group at church. We understood each other because of our common belief system. My faith also gave me a continued meaning in life. My huge high school was full of potential converts, and street witnessing was a dramatic addition to my Christian experience.

To top it off, I soon had a Christian boyfriend at the church. He demonstrated to me how to talk about Christ to "hippies," emphasizing the natural high we could get from Jesus. Most of our relationship occurred over the telephone. He instructed me in ways of being Christian and cool at the same time. For this I was grateful. Coming from overseas, my clothes were wrong, and I had a lot of slang to learn. The adjustment wasn't always easy; mood swings and low self-esteem became a problem for me, as they do for many teenagers.

I always sought a spiritual solution, so God filled in. My love relationship with Jesus eased the rough edges of those years. I rarely had a "steady," but I always had Jesus. I remember feeling a serene calm inside, knowing at least one person that always found me totally acceptable.

Making the Break
Leaving my faith was a very slow process. It was in many ways a reluctant parting and it's hard to say how many years it took. Some changes began when I was sixteen, but it was ten years before I stopped calling myself a Christian.

New Ideas
Overseas we were taught to feel lucky to be Americans, to be patriotic and anticommunist, and that our culture was superior to the one surrounding us. There was little discussion of the Vietnam War, even though it was right next-door. We met GIs who were on leave, but they didn't talk about the war. I didn't give it much though, other than that it was a shame but somebody had to stop the Communists. From our Christian point of view, the turmoil of the war was simply another sign of the end times. It was inevitable. We thought that war protesters should get right with God instead of trying to change history.

Despite world travel, my life had been sheltered. High school in California was for me the beginning of provocative new information: existentialism, Eastern philosophy, Black literature, and modern poetry. Studying Shakespeare taught me that profound thought wasn't limited to Christians. I read Siddhartha, The Stranger, Catcher in the Rye, and Stranger in a Strange Land. I was both intrigued and upset, unwilling to simply screen out what I was learning. Sustaining my faith was taking more and more effort.

The "Jesus Movement" came into full swing in Southern California at about this time. We had the Christian version of flower children: going to Calvary Chapel in jeans and bare feet, baptisms in the surf, Christian rock and roll, and being different from our parents. There were converts by the hundreds, and I was excited. We had a sense of cosmic purpose.

A memorable highlight was a week of organized witnessing in San Francisco with "Youth With A Mission." The group received continued training in evangelism and assorted topics. Walking into the hip subculture was for me like Dorothy in the Land of Oz - "Drugs and occult and sex, oh my!" I was treading carefully through Satan's territory. Witnessing to a longhaired man in Golden Gate Park who said he was Jesus left me stumped! Every evening we tallied conversions, and compared notes about the challenges we had faced. We memorized more Scripture and refined our arguments to handle the tough cases. Of course, we interpreted objections to the Gospel as "darkness" rather than honest reasons people had for not being Christian. We prayed for the souls we had spoken with each day and asked God to "convict" them of sin and lead them to the light.

In June, 1970, I graduated second in my high school class and made an evangelistic speech at graduation. For a basically shy girl, in front of a stadium full of people, it was quite a pitch. Evidently I had become more entrenched in my beliefs as a way of dealing with the new, discordant information. The school administration neglected to read my address beforehand, which I considered an act of God. I recall delivering my words with fearless enthusiasm because I was being "used":

That we as graduates are now going into a confused, embittered, and violent world is a fact which no one can contest. Our goals must be above the all too common and somewhat glib rhetoric of graduation speeches of the past. Our goals must be to work for the genuine brotherhood of mankind - true peace - based on love and mutual respect of our fellow man. This can only be brought about by the transformation of individuals through the power of Christ.

Intellectual Challenge
I debated between Oral Roberts University and the University of California at Irvine and chose the latter - so that I could be a witness there! The Christian students there took evangelizing seriously. We met for Bible studies in the park on campus. For a while I even lived with them in a Christian commune, getting the family warmth I always craved.

I enjoyed college for the intellectual stimulation and challenge. My exposure to new ideas continued. In a multidisciplinary course, I learned about the history of Western culture from the time of Plato and Aristotle to the present, covering major movements in philosophy, political science, literature, and art. We read St. Augustine, Descartes, Mill, Marx, Freud, Beckett, and many others. It was interesting to find out about religious assumptions that were challenged by Copernican astronomy, the rise of empirical science, and Darwinism. I was surprised at how many philosophers had tried to prove the existence of God.

Most of all, I was intrigued by analyses of core existential dilemmas. I wrote a paper about Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground and "The Grand Inquisitor," ending with, "The tragic grandeur of humanity is the struggle to be free in constant fear of freedom." For me, the notion of free will had always been a problem in the contest of an omniscient and omnipotent God. How could we possibly choose our lives or choose salvation if God knows all and controls all? I felt increasingly compelled by notions of personal freedom.

In psychology I learned about behaviorism, which asserts the then mind-boggling thesis that everything is learned. This meant that, in theory, all human behavior is predictable. In response to B. F. Skinner's book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, I wrote a paper defending free choice. But the idea that behavior is learned was also liberating. It was revolutionary for me to think that personal problems or "bad habits" could be the result of environmental conditioning rather than sin. I noticed a growing softness in my judgment of human beings. We were all in the same boat, struggling to meet our needs.

From Eastern thought and existentialism, I soaked up ideas about awareness and responsibility. I fell in love with the notion of being fully present in every moment and thereby creating one's life. This was personal and powerful. The individual was all-important instead of "mankind." Choices were not only available but were critical for identity and existence. I wrote about paying attention to small pleasures and participating in the dance of life:

Time moves on, in rhythmic step, relentless but not unpleasant. We can dance to the beat, weaving in and out, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, back and forth crisscrossing the steady advance. Always knowing however, that we must keep moving. There is no sitting down to rest. So try to enjoy the dance, baby. It can be beautiful at times as well as terrifying. We must savor those segments of beauty.

For a New Year's resolution, I wrote, "Enjoy the dance" but later "I weep for the struggle, longing to be set free yet wanting my fetters." I read Ram Dass's Be Here Now and tried to convince myself to give up desire and attachment. I wanted contentment and inner peace. "Extricate from desire," I read, "the fire of internal struggle."

Discovering Compassion
Majoring in social ecology meant pursuing my interest in a multidisciplinary approach to social issues. Six quarters of field study got me out into the community and learning skills. In my preschool placements the children were wonderful - natural, curious, creative, affectionate, alive - which led me to question some of the Christian precepts I had accepted before, all based on original sin. Learning child development was quite the eye-opener. For example, a child's behavior that appears "selfish" is often part of learning identity and self-worth.

In my desire to help people, I took courses in counseling. Early on, I thought that secular psychology had something to offer Christians, particularly in the skill of good listening. Christians don't tend to concern themselves with this. And as I learned the art of facilitating a person's personal change, I couldn't help developing a respect for natural, intuitive growth processes. People are for the most part well intentioned, I realized. A good therapist provides loving support the way a gardener tends her plants. A humanistic view of humans made sense to me. It seemed to work in practical ways, and it felt good to me emotionally.

Nevertheless for a long time I tried to integrate my new awareness and skills with my faith. For one of my field studies, I worked with another woman to start a 24-hour hotline and walk-in Christian counseling center. The experience brought my growing frustration with the church patriarchy into sharper focus. To my surprise, we were told we could only get support from Calvary Chapel if we had male leadership. So we prayed for a male director! The first one we were offered by Calvary soon created problems - he canceled our phone service and left town. We had the service reinstated and carried on. Finally one of our male counselors, a newly converted Christian, stepped into the director position, saying God had led him. At the time that was enough for me. I had been taught well enough to repress my anger. Personal feeling and individual credit are of no importance compared to getting the Lord's work done, I believed. In the end, the One Way Help Center (audacious name!) operated for four full years.

Just as I was disappointed with sexist and hypocritical Christians, non-Christians who impressed me soon influenced me. When I made friends with two people involved in an Eastern religion, I found they were just as enthusiastic about their religion as I was about mine. They were happy and loving and delighted with their marriage. I saw more "fruits of the Spirit" in them than I saw in most Christians.

I couldn't simply dismiss this perception the way I had been taught, chalking it up to "Satan disguised as an angel of light." These people were real. I was becoming tired of twisting everything to fit. But I tried to hang on. Jesus was still precious to me.

For an anthropology class, I wrote an extensive paper about the cultural context of sexism in the Bible. I maintained that the comments about women in the Scriptures were understandable by examining the times. I said that they were descriptive, not prescriptive for us. I wanted to think that our faith could be relevant, that Christianity could change with the modern world and still be the viable truth. But despite my effort, sermons at church about "women's place" became more and more intolerable to me.

All through college, I also worked as a waitress, meeting people and overcoming my shyness. This also helped me leave my religious cocoon. The demands of the job first taught me to function more competently in the world. Then, as I learned to relate more openly to a variety of people (since everyone has to eat), I became more accepting and appreciative of human diversity. Gradually I stopped filtering and twisting information. I learned more and more and felt better and better. I didn't want to see people only as potential converts. I wanted to love them for who they were and I wanted to love life here and now. Eventually I stopped categorizing people as sheep and goats, saved and damned. I was on my way out.

A Wilder World
In the course of taking art classes in college, I thought the dada and surrealist movements were fascinating because they rebelled against the established order, exalted the irrational unconscious, and honored the absurd. Perhaps because of my mystical experiences, I was attracted to the surrealists' interest in dreams. Weary from my efforts to understand everything, I became more accepting of my own dream life, my visual appreciation, and my enjoyment of the unusual.

A film history class introduced me to Throughout, Bunuel, and Bergman and the beautiful innocence of children in "Small Change," the agony of the personal decision in "The Exterminating Angel," the terrible strangeness of humanity in "Un Chien Andalou," the immense profundity and fragility of existence in "Cries and Whispers."

One night I dreamed that I was in outer space at a space station that was trying to contact Earth for help. We were in danger of blowing up any minute, and I watched a technician calling desperately on a telephone. He did not know that the other end of his telephone line was not connected to anything. I remember the horror of realizing that no one was listening. The next day I knew the dream was about God. But rather than feeling terrified - or in addition to being terrified - I felt an incredible awareness of being alive. The dream had felt real; I had faced certain impending death. Being alive the next day felt like a wonder, as though I had woken up. I walked slowly that day and allowed myself to actually feel my footsteps. I can still remember the crisp air and the clear edges of the leaves on the trees. The day was long and full and I felt like I had learned something at a very deep level - something important that I wanted to always remember - to notice my life.

Last Links
Journal entries and letters from my college years reveal swings between anguished frustration and renewed faith. I always heaped blame for the problems on myself, looked to God for help, and thanked him for any improvements in my life. Looking back, I can see that self-respect was a near impossibility:

"There is a secret of being a Christian that I have not managed to master. Every time everything seems to be going fine, I lose control of myself in some way. Then I hate myself, feel estranged from God, and start despairing. It frustrates me so much that I can't know the will of God. Or when I do know it and can't fulfill it. But my hope is irrepressible. I'll never stop trying.
"I think God speaks in a very soft voice. I think I've been hearing it but I'm not sure.
"The Lord is becoming very real to me, and I'm finding out how very slow I am to learn things."

I was also becoming very confused about sex. My college boyfriend was not raised the way I was, even though my first success was to take him to church and see him converted. Our hormones ran high, and I had trouble with the usual female gatekeeper responsibility. Somehow we managed to avoid going "all the way," but that was more of a technicality. My sexuality was a wonderful discovery, but the guilt was also tremendous. I broke off the relationship several times and suffered just as much guilt for hurting him. I was convinced on more than one occasion that God wanted me to let go. The effort to figure out God's will was exhausting.

Finally after three years we got married. At that point, we felt led by God. I allowed myself to fall in love more deeply. I stopped debating and began enjoying the happiness of commitment with another human being. Very unintentionally, I prayed and studied the Bible less and less. I gradually realized that I no longer felt emotionally needy all the time. Being loved and held daily was wonderful. The closeness with a real live person had a profound effect: It broke my addiction to God.

Outside the Fold
I continued on to graduate school, pleased to be learning about domains of human interaction that we could work on - not everything was spiritual after all. My helplessness and shame and dependence on God were being replaced with real abilities.

I learned counseling and teaching skills, marriage and family therapy, and behavior change techniques with children. My husband and I ran a home for emotionally and behaviorally disturbed boys. Then we received a federal grant and worked together with the county to create a shelter for troubled teenagers. At the university I helped with programs on male-female relationships, assertiveness, sexuality, and empathy. As a counseling intern, I worked with individuals, couples and groups. I spent several years working in human services with teenagers and families in a variety of settings, including foster care training and placement. I became especially interested in preventing psychological damage and promoting health. With more knowledge and skill in human relations, I felt enriched and empowered.

Retaining an existentialist regard for the power of choice and responsibility, my doctoral dissertation concerned self-direction. After graduate school I taught briefly on the university level and then began a private practice as a psychologist. In the course of my work and my own growth, I became interested in the long-lasting influence of religious involvement.

As my therapeutic skills developed, I found that non-rational and nonverbal methods had an important role. I became trained and then taught other therapists to utilize inner state work, which blends guided imagery, hypnosis, and bodywork. Movement and art and group dynamics have also been important in my practice. In general, my approach emphasizes helping clients to tap into their inner resources for healing and growth.

My personal growth has taken quantum leaps with the experience of parenting. With my first husband I had a son who has taught me immeasurably - about life, about myself. I am convinced that we all need to listen to the wisdom of our children.

My divorce and a move to Colorado made for a very challenging time. Being on my own with a child and working full time forced me to dig down and find the inner strength I needed. I also had a lot to learn about self-love and self-care.

A second marriage, a stepdaughter, and a daughter gave me more to treasure in my life. I continue to be impressed with the options we have to create the kind of life we want to live. My family enables me to be myself within a nurturing environment. Love is possible, and families don't have to be dysfunctional all the time.

Most recently, my work in California again involved teaching at the university level, this time focusing on issues of human diversity and skills to enhance communication. The need to learn tolerance and cooperation in the world today is obvious; it has been gratifying to continue toward this in some way and to watch students find that they can learn relationship skills to match the ideals of their rhetoric. I looked forward to more work in the domain of cross-cultural and personal understanding.

Along the way, it has also been fascinating to learn about the function of art in human expression and social statement. I recently curated an exhibit with sixteen artists and a group of art therapy clients, as well as work of my own. The show, called "Thou Shalt Not," used a variety of media to express feelings about religious indoctrination and spirituality, offering both protest and hope.

Lifelong Process
I left the faith of my childhood because of old promises that were not fulfilled and new promises that were. The diaries I kept made it clear to me later that being a Christian did not solve my personal or interpersonal problems. I had mystical experiences, which seemed to give me a glimpse of the divine, and I had the hope of future union with God. For these I am still grateful. But in my everyday life I lived with enormous guilt and frustration over not being the person I thought I should be. Good things were always due to God and failures were always mine.

Encountering other ideas gave me new options. As I became armed with alternatives, I was more willing to confront the problems in my religion, such as sexism, the notion of original sin, and the dichotomy of saved and damned. Allowing myself some intellectual integrity was an enormous relief. Then I allowed myself to be in the world. By letting go of judgment, I could participate in the joys and care about the problems, instead of focusing on the hereafter. I could be close to people and realize the warmth of human love. And very importantly, I developed a framework for thinking about myself that included self-esteem. With all of these developments, there was no turning back. The mental and emotional doors to the future had been opened. The honesty and gut-level confrontation with my humanness - the good, the bad, and the ugly - was delicious.

This is not to say that I haven't had much pain and struggling. The loss of an all-encompassing belief system has profound consequences, including ambiguity and responsibility. Over the years I have dealt with all the issues addressed in this book. Family relationships have been forever changed. Like a lost child, I have had to reconstruct reality. I have had to examine and recreate a great many assumptions - about the meaning of life, the world, myself, others, the past, present, and future. Automatic thoughts and behaviors are difficult to change, and I continue to wrestle with old beliefs that are powerful and often unconscious.


Epilogue: In 2007, I am now in Oakland/Alameda, California. After seven years in Australia, I moved to California with my son and daughter. My marriage had ended in 1996, and I was a single mom. My son went to college and I lived with Jayme in Santa Cruz, teaching for a while at the University of California, and back to my private practice. I also got involved in anti-war activities and documentary filmmaking. The political changes in the U.S. goaded me into more involvement than I had had before. I've been in the Bay Area now for three years, still filmmaking and also in private practice. My daughter goes to the School of the Arts in San Francisco in the dance department. She's 17 and lives with me. Ryan lives in SF and we see him quite a lot. My book got reprinted and I'm doing religious recovery workshops. My biggest challenges now are dealing with family of origin (all still fundamentalist and several missionaries) and my repetitive stress injuries. I had to stop video editing and rethink how I will manage to do any filmmaking. For relaxation I do art and read, both fiction and nonfiction, especially physics, which always fills me with awe. I swim to stay fit, although age is creeping up and it gets harder to keep those extra pounds off. :-)