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. :-)

What Religionists Can't Refute

A recent article and book by Mr. Dinesh D’Souza argue that atheists can’t refute the possibility of God. From there, Mr. D'Souza goes on to argue for an affirmative belief in his god: the god of orthodox Christians. It seems like Mr. D’Souza misunderstands atheism and because of this inadvertently supports the argument of the atheists: Whether God is real or not is a separate argument from what we can know. Religionists claim to know that a god exists and typically which god it is. Atheists simply say there is insufficient evidence to call this knowledge.

Might there be realities that we finite humans can’t perceive? Of course! The claim that there could be gods or a god that we can’t perceive is valid. But to call this knowledge, and then to engage in the slight of hand that takes one from this ambiguous opening to religious assertion is absurd.

There might be fairies we can’t perceive. There might be djinns we can’t perceive. The world might rest on the back of an imperceptible turtle. There might be an invisible warrior waiting to whack my head off outside my front door. I can’t say there isn’t because if he’s there, he’s invisible. And if I survive when I go out to feed the chickens, maybe it will be just because he moved on to my neighbor’s house. And if I survive tomorrow, perhaps it’s because he only appears once in 2000 years. Neither I nor you can rule him out.

You can see where this leads—to a paralyzing lot of mental clutter.

In order to function, humans generally limit themselves to making claims about things that they can perceive using logic and evidence. And, in fact, this is exactly what religionists do. Believers say that their beliefs rest on faith, when in reality what they rest on is frail and faulty evidence—the same kinds of evidence that have always been used to support the existence of magical creatures: anecdote, emotion, testimonial, folklore, and inexplicable sensations of transcendence, otherness, or transformation. Religionists don’t see that this kind of low-grade evidence fails to differentiate among the many magical gods and creatures that have populated human history, and, therefore, a position of integrity would require that one argue for the existence of them all.

The reason we don’t hear this argument is because each supernaturalist is actually believer of a specific sort. Each has been infected with a specific viral ideology that creates an emotional inclination, a desire to believe in a certain kind of magical being or a fear of not believing in this being. This emotional valence in turn protects that single set of supernatural beliefs from the ravages of reason.

To make matters worse, if the resonant beliefs are tried-and-true handed-down religions, they fit the structure of human information processing the way that heroin fits receptors in the brain—damn near perfectly, even though that isn’t what the receptors were made for. All of the rational argumentation about whether god could exist is just window dressing, people making abstract arguments for an abstract deity because they want to believe in a personal deity, the image of which has been virally implanted in their brains through social contagion.

Mountains of evidence doesn't affect the beliefs of true believers. Why? Because, the rationality of believers is in fact a false rationality. To some extent this is true of all of this; most of the time we use reasoning simply to support our emotional preferences. In the case of religionists, supernatural beliefs are not bound to follow logic and evidence to their rational conclusions. Argumentation may appear to seek truth, but it does not. It seeks to maintain the status quo. That is why arguing with true believers is so maddening. Even the most lucid arguments put forward against specific magical creatures ultimately are a waste of breath. They may change the minds of a few people who are more compelled by evidence than their peers. (Ironically these may be people who have an emotional aversion to not following the evidence where it leads.) But this has always been and always will be a small minority.

If this were not the case, our devout friends would be subject to rational argumentation. We now have excellent reason to posit that the gods humans believe in (Yaweh, Shiva, Allah, Zeus, and company) are modeled on the human psyche. Evidence abounds that they are the products of human culture and evolutionary biology. Increasingly, we can describe where they come from, both in prior religions and in the structure of our brains.

In addition, as knowledgeable former Christians and ex-Muslims have demonstrated over and over again, the claims of traditional monotheistic dogma are refutable because they are internally contradictory and they are empirically contradictory. They violate morality, evidence, and logic.

Mr. D’Souza makes his abstract arguments in the service of his religion, orthodox Christianity. But we shouldn’t waste our time arguing with him about either philosophy or specific orthodox doctrines.

Perhaps the best argument against the time-worn understanding of Christianity is that it is vile. It is selfish, materialist, and morally repugnant. The heart of orthodox theology is a god who demands human sacrifice. The Bible gives sacred status to some of the ugliest impulses of the human heart: tribalism, sexism, vengeance, rape, genocide, and a host of other brutish self-indulgences. Ironically, it corrupts the deepest values of Christianity itself, the love of Love and the love of Truth. It promises an afterlife in which the saved will be as rich as Paris Hilton (not just gold jewelry, streets of gold; not just gem studded purses and high heels, gem studded walls; not just good make-up but eternal youth) and as blissfully indifferent to the exquisite suffering of their brethren as, well, Paris Hilton (partying it up with their riches and friends including the Jesus friend-- while Baghdad or Southern California or Hell--burns). It isn’t just misguided. It’s disgusting.

Valerie Tarico, Ph.D. is the author of The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.

I keep getting asked, So Do You Believe in God?

So do you believe in God?

As a therapist working to help people recover from the damage of religion, I get this frequently. So I’ve decided to make a better effort to reply. To be honest, I don’t like the question because it presumes we know what those words mean. Here are some responses, touching on more or less serious aspects of the topic.

1. Which god? Do you mean Zeus, Baal, Athena, Shiva, Allah, Jehovah, or some other? If you mean one of those, then no. I am not a theist. I don’t believe in an individual being that created and now controls the world.

2. What is belief? Is it a cognitive conclusion that I have reached basic on logical consideration of evidence? That would assume I have access to all the information, and I do not. Is it an emotional feeling for something beyond myself? Well, my emotions vary, and some days are hopeful, other days are dark. Emotions are a rocky basis for “belief.” Do I make a leap of faith, not knowing anything really, but simply wanting to “believe,” and putting stock in a “scripture” to give it support? This is also difficult because knowing about the origins of “scripture,” I know the complexity; they were not simply dictated. Also, the strength of my blind faith can also vary and I’m not sure how completely I am supposed to convince myself in order to say I “believe.”

3. The concept of “God” usually meant by this question is some sort of being that exists “out there.” The god of the Bible is very separate, superior to humans, but anthropomorphic in many ways. Other gods are also considered “out there” and have controlling powers we do not have. A more New Age notion of god includes “the divine” in all of us, and still involves the notion of “spirit” infusing people. There is an assumption in most approaches to spirituality of a kind of “force,” which can be called by different names, but which is a thing in a universe of other things. As such, I do not resonate with this idea of “god” as an entity.

4. If I must use the concept at all, I would equate it with the “nature of being.” This is close to “ground of being,” a phrase coined by John Robinson many years ago in Honest to God. For me it involves a perception of existence grounded in the profound science of modern physics. Most ordinary people do not know much about this. Yet, we now know from findings in both relativity theory and quantum physics, that the universe is much more strange and incredible than we ever realized. It calls for massive humility because there are things no one understands, yet we now have good reason to question all of our basic assumptions about “reality.” The difference is bigger than finding out the world is not flat. We have evidence for questioning our ideas about matter, linear time, cause and effect, and more. String theorists agree there are eleven dimensions. Yet the general population operates all day every day assuming things that are completely out of date. The knowledge has not reached the masses. This is akin to having everyone act as if the earth is still flat. The issues are intensely profound, with implications for everything we do. The big words for me are “mystery” and “possibility.” Feelings are humility, awe, and excitement. There is no religious description of “god” that matches the grandeur of the universe as it is – elusive, ever-changing, impossibly mind-boggling. And this includes us. We are part of the fabric; there is no separation. If this is believing in god, then by all means, a hundred times YES! But I’m still not drawn to the language.

A couple of quotes that I find consistent with this:

“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant’? Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.”`
-Carl Sagan

“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
-Albert Einstein

5. Dispensing with the “god” word, it makes a little more sense for me to address “spirituality,” although this word has often meant a focus on other-worldly things. I prefer to describe spirituality as a way of living which is here-and-now. These are attributes rather than a definition. They involve feelings and perceptions and experiences which depend on openness. This openness can be chosen and developed. Rather than escaping into a different realm, I think of spirituality in terms of how we live our lives – the choices, the consciousness, the texture of daily life. There are several aspects of this:

Accord. This is the experience of feeling attuned with the rest of existence - a feeling of belonging on earth, being a part of the rest of nature, and in harmony with everything around. When you are in accord, you move along with the vast river of evolutionary change, feeling connected in a fundamental way with the harmony and power of the whole. You feel as though you are tapping into a rich resource that is beyond you, much larger than yourself. Your inner spring of god-within connects with the vastness of god-beyond, a "deeper power" rather than "higher power," a subterranean aquifer connecting all of life. This produces a sense of trust and safety, a knowledge that you fit, that you have a place.

Awareness. With awareness you are alive and awake, fully experiencing life. This means being totally grounded in the here and now. Your sensory experiences are vivid, and you notice what is happening when it is happening, both around and inside you. You do not reject uncomfortable experiences or deny pain; you are open and embracing of all that life has to offer. This makes it possible for you to enjoy things more intensely and to learn from difficulties. You are not trying to be on some other plane of existence, but are willing and happy to be here now, like a curious child.

Growth. Growth is a natural process. You are not static or inert; you are a changing, growing being. And your experiences can propel you to develop further. As a plant needs the attention of water and food to grow, you need to attend to your needs and consciously make opportunities to learn and change. This aspect of spirituality is active, complementing the more receptive elements of accord and awareness. As humans we are granted the exciting option of making conscious loyal commitments to move in positive directions. Learning will often occur anyway, as a neglected plant will often survive, but informed with a sense of accord and awareness, you can take action on your own spiritual behalf.

Transcendence. There are moments of awe for us in life, those times of being overwhelmed with wonder at beauty, or love, or natural power. At these moments you get clues about the immensity of the cosmos, like pinpricks in the veil around your limited consciousness. You are humbled and thrilled as you gaze at a sunset or a torrential waterfall. A moment of pure love can be ecstatic. Let your vision extend into the night sky, and you may experience a blissful dissolving of your individual ego. Not needing to understand or control, you can experience a sense of total Mystery. These moments are gifts that reflect your spiritual capacity, gifts that become more available as you open to your sense of the ultimate. This is not ultimate in the sense of above or better, but simply beyond your usual mode of consciousness. These are moments of realization knowing that the sense you have of “god” within is not only in contact with but one and the same as the transcendent “god”-beyond. You are a wave in the ocean, individual in a sense but also part of something much bigger – the immensely huge and powerful ocean of existence. You don’t understand and you don’t need to understand. All of this is multiverses away from “believing in God.”

So even though I would have to say I don’t believe in God and I am an atheist in the true definition of the word, ie, not a theist, I obviously feel compelled to question and reclaim the language being used and make this rather inadequate stab at describing my lived experience. It’s a bit defensive and that’s because the stereotype of the cold, shallow, hedonistic, selfish atheist needs to be challenged. In my opinion, it’s all about how we live, and not what we “believe.”

Judgement House: A Legitimate Case of Child Abuse

In my local area a church staged a Judgement House for Halloween, in which people are scared into believing because of the threat of God's punishment in hell. It basically portrays a few people who die and face God's judgement, with some being taken away by "demons" into hell and the others taken into heaven. Now we've heard a lot recently about Richard Dawkins' claim that religious indoctrination is child abuse, but this is a clear case of it...

As I read my local newspaper tell of it there was a picture of a nine year old boy being counseled to accept Jesus after the program. This alarmed me so I wrote the following letter to the editor:

I think it’s time more people question the tactics of churches like Grace Community Church with its “Judgement House” (as reported Wednesday). When a father verbally threatens his children with violence, we consider that mental child abuse, don’t we? How is that different than admitting nine year old children (as pictured) to graphic depictions of God’s judgement and the threat of hell if they don’t immediately accept Jesus into their lives? That’s some pretty powerful stuff, don’t you think? What nine year old child wouldn’t accept Jesus in order to avoid hell? If a Muslim group decided to make a similar “Judgement House” and admitted nine year old children, it would have the same effect. These children would become Muslims to avoid the Muslim hell depicted.

I know this is what that church believes, but exposing children to it is nothing short of mentally abusing them with threats, not from a father, but from a heavenly father. Most Christians think people should come to Jesus because he loves them, but apparently not this church. Like an earthly father who threatens his children with violence if they disobey, Grace Community Church threatens children with violence from a heavenly father if they don’t believe.

It has been said that “hell serves the holy purpose of cradle to grave intimidation,” and this is exactly what that church is attempting to do. But for civilized people, including most Christian people, what they did can be considered child abuse. They can only be thankful that with the separation of church and state, child protective service agencies cannot do anything about it.

Notice that I am also trying to rally Christian people to help me argue my case, since this is better than going it alone in our small community.

It hasn't been printed yet. But it'll be interesting to see the reaction.

The Nature of our Arguments and the Christian Worldview

The circular nature of our debates goes something like this: A believer may begin by quoting the Bible to us, like John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

So we pick on one of the issues in the quote, and we may say something like, “I see no reason for God to condemn us for our sins. The punishment does not fit the crime.” And the debate begins.

The believer may argue that our sins do indeed deserve eternal condemnation because they are an offense against an infinite God.

Then we may respond that hell is such a terrible punishment no civilized person would punish their worst enemy by casting them into hell.

The believer will probably respond that people in hell prefer to be there than in the light and glory of God in heaven.

We might ask why God ever gave us free will in the first place if people end up in hell.

Believers might respond that God wants people who freely worship him.

Non-believer: Besides, it has been shown that there was a long process of transmission of the texts of the Bible along with a long process of canonization that we cannot really know what the Bible truly says, and if so, why do you believe it?

Believer: Because God guided this process perfectly behind the scenes.

Non-believer: How do you know God exists in the first place?

Believer: There are some strong philosophical arguments for the existence of God.

Non-believer: No, all of them have holes in them.

Believer: But they add up cumulatively to the existence of the God of the Bible, besides, there is very strong evidence for the resurrection of Jesus which confirms both that God exists and that the Bible is God’s word.

Non-believer: No, the evidence for the resurrection is very weak coming from an ancient superstitious world.

Believer: The rest of the ancient world was indeed superstitious, but early Christians were different and based their beliefs upon evidence. And Jesus died on the cross for my sins to I can be saved and rose again.

Non-believer: I see no way that a human sacrifice can do anything to save me from my sins.

Believer: Jesus took upon himself the punishment for your sins so you can be forgiven.

Non-believer: Then what about those who have never heard?

Believer: God knows their hearts.

Non-believer: What about all of the intense suffering in the world?

Believer: God gave us free will, and even if I cannot say why there is so much suffering, God knows the reason why, and I trust him.

Non-believer: Why do you trust God when it comes to all of this?

Believer: Because the Bible is true and is confirmed by arguments for God’s existence and the resurrection of Jesus.

--------------

Okay? This is the nature of our debates, and it goes round and round.

Here’s the rub. We are dealing with a whole worldview. Worldviews serve as a set of control beliefs that reinforce one another. When an argument is weak on one issue the Christian can lean upon other background beliefs to support the weaknesses in any one particular issue we’re speaking about. But we can only speak of one issue at a time! We cannot effectively deal with all of the issues of the whole Christian worldview.

That’s why I wrote my book. It deals with all of the major issues of the Christian worldview. The Christian who has a hard time defending hell who must punt to a separate issue, like the omniscience of God, or the resurrection, will find those other issues dealt with in that same book. In my opinion we cannot effectively deal with the whole Christian worldview unless the Christian is willing to read up on all of the issues in a skeptical book like mine.

So round and round we go. Where we stop nobody knows.

Christian, if I hadn’t written my book, I would still highly recommend it. If you seriously want to deal with the whole range of issues you must defend, then I challenge you to get it and read it. You will not have the option of retreating to background beliefs to support your other beliefs, because they are all dealt with in my one book.

I dare you. If you think your faith is on solid ground then you have nothing to lose. If you can read my book and your faith becomes stronger, then I have helped you. If your faith falters then your faith wasn’t worth having in the first place. Think about it, there is nothing to lose. And you will learn a few things in the process, no matter what you conclude when you're done with it.

Church ordered to pay $10.9 million for funeral protest

CNN Story
"They've picketed the funerals of dozens of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, claiming that God is punishing the United States because of its tolerance for homosexuality."

"All it was, was a protestation by the government of the United States against the word of God. They don't want me preaching that God is punishing the country by killing their servicemen."
Fred Phelps, church founder.

Some people can convince themselves of some really outrageous things.
But hey, what's the harm?

From the argument analysis point of view, Phelps argument is a classic strawman and /or red herring. It misrepresents the opposition and introduces an argument irrelevant to the issue.

Thank God for the Holocaust!

I mean, really, if God allowed it to take place then there was a greater good he desired more than the sufferings of these people, and if that's the case Christians should thank God for it! For the higher, greater good that came out of it was better than had it not happened at all. What was that higher good then? Even if Christians "punt to mystery" here, can they also have it both ways? Can they condemn the Holocaust and at the same time maintain there was a higher, greater good that resulted from it? I don't think so. But they can try. The question for the Christian is this one: Was it better that the Holocaust happened or not? Yes or no?

Thanks to Bill Ross for the link.

A Cursory Glance Through the Book, "Bible Shockers!"

Bill Ross sent me his book Bible Shockers, which I received today along with several books Andrew Atkinson sent me. Bill sent me the book for a possible review. I promised him I would review it, but I didn’t promise him I would read all of it. Let me tell you why, and it’s not because it’s a bad book. It may be that I want to get on reading the other better books I have on my plate. I'll probably keep it for a Bible reference from time to time.

I began reading it but the more I read it, the more I skimmed it, until that’s all I was doing, skimming through it, which probably has more to do with his approach than my merely wanting to get on reading the other books.

What is he doing in this book? In his words: “I will present many of the more shocking discoveries in a somewhat cursory way, but each observation deserves a separate book to handle objections. I do try to present the reader with enough data to assess these observations or directions to pursue further study.” (p. 4) He also says that the book is really an adjunct to his website, www.bibleshockers.com, and in his book he repeatedly asks his readers to prove him otherwise on that site, in its forums. Since I have not participated in his forums I can’t say how well he does in defending his arguments in his book. But he is absolute correct to describe it as a “somewhat cursory” approach to the issues. That’s why the more I read, the less I read, for I am interested in a more than cursory approach to the issues.

Who is his intended audience? He claims it will appeal to “people who already find themselves taking pains to understand the Bible, whether they be Bible students, Sunday School teachers, preachers, seminarians or just inquisitive, and whether they be Christians of any sect, or not.” (p. 4). With such an intended audience he would’ve been better off telling us who the book wouldn’t appeal to, and apparently it's not intended for people not interested in the Bible, like his wife, as he says. But I don't think it will appeal to people who are even somewhat well-read on these issues, especially seminarians and informed skeptics.

In the sections I read he offered some Bible verses on behalf of his views, but a cursory approach that mostly quotes the Bible could be bettered if he had at least offered a more comprehensive set of passages to show his points. But he didn't do this. He uses the Bible to show God was viewed essentially as “a man with supernatural powers,” and best described as a “supernatural national champion.” (pp. 7-16). He argues God did not create the universe out of nothing (pp. 17-27). He argues that Adam was made to look like God (“in his image”), and that God had other sons who also defected (pp. 33-38). While I do agree with him, again the cursory approach is uninteresting to me personally.

He argued that Jesus was a sinner, and talked about the sin of lusting in one’s heart over a woman. Ross wrote, “Could the son of God actually pull out his wonker and ‘slap the salami’?” He claims a human 30 year old male would surely lust after a woman. (pp. 39-48). His language here is probably too graphic and demeaning for Christians who may be interested in reading his book.

Ross also discounts the sufferings of Jesus: “I find that the evidence that his life was, as far as human lives go, a breeze.” On a suffering scale of one to a hundred his life “would come in at zero.” When looking at the sufferings of Jesus during his trial he says, “He was falsely charged, awake all night, and whipped. Compared to the generations of slaves in the United States, regularly whipped, etc, we should give this a 0.1, I guess." And although “crucifixion is not a picnic,” Ross rates the sufferings of Jesus on the cross at 4.5. He says such a death “was certainly worse than dying in one’s sleep, but it was a merciful death in comparison to the many thousands of Jews who died on Roman crosses after days of agony.” (pp. 48-53).

It was at this point I started mostly skimming the book. Anyone who treats the sufferings of another individual so carelessly in order to make his point about the religion he wishes to debunk surely has an axe to grind, and as such, it becomes harder to take him seriously. [sorry]

Still he makes some interesting points. He says Jesus is a terrorist because he will send plagues and terrors on the earth in the several passages. He argues from the Bible that sins aren’t paid for, that Paul wasn’t a Jew, that Christians do not go to heaven, that sinners don’t go to hell, that God cannot read your mind, that God does not love the world, that God approves of slavery, that every Christian denomination is heretical, and that there is no Bible. Since Bill comments here he might want to spell out for the reader what he means with these claims. As far as I can tell he’s using rhetoric to show that some Bible passages say things that other passages deny, and he’s claiming the Bible is one sided in its approach, and that Christians have misunderstood what the Bible says. This approach is interesting to me, and I like it, although I'd rather focus on what Christians actually believe today and debunk those claims since I'm not in the habit of telling Christians what they should believe.

When it comes to Bill’s credentials he tells a story similar to what Paul the apostle did when telling his dramatic conversion. Bill says, “isn’t that how religious authority works?” (p. 307) The parallel is that if Paul can be an authority based on his personal story, then so should Bill. I liked this and thought it was creative and provocative. I mean really, if Paul can get away with it and become a religious authority, then why can’t Bill?

Anyway, you can see for yourself. If you’d like to read “a somewhat cursory” approach to these issues including many Biblical quotations, and if you don't mind some occasional graphic language, then you may be interested in getting this book.

Can We Prove a Negative?

While I don't think anything can be proved in the area of metaphysics, still we can indeed have sound arguments showing God doesn't exist. See Jeffrey Jay Lowder and Richard Carrier on this. [Thanks to Andrew Atkinson for reminding me of these essays].

Theism Without a Revelation is Deism

Theism is used as a springboard for defending Christian theism, for if theism is true then Christianity isn't far behind. I disagree.

Theism without an adherence to a particular branch of theism reduces to deism, for the three main branches of theism (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) all depend upon embracing a particular revelation from their God, along with the "correct" interpretation of that revelation. Without a revelation from God theism collapses into deism, which is basically equivalent to the philosopher's god, since deism is not a set of beliefs; it is a method whereby a particular theological viewpoint is adopted based upon reason. Anything not supported by reason is to be rejected by the deist. And moving from deism to Christian theism is like flying a plane to the moon. [Deism went through four stages which traveled from continent to continent and flourished in the 16th-18th centuries, although people still maintain it today.]

Richard Dawkins: "The Enemies of Reason"

Part II below:


The Enemies of Reason is a two-part television documentary, written and presented by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. From the makers:

Is it rational that the dead can communicate with the living and give sound advice on how they should live their lives? What about sticking pins into your body to free the flow of Chi energy and cure your illness? Or the bending of spoons using your mind alone? Is that rational? Richard Dawkins doesn’t think so, and feels it is his duty to expose those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell. He will take on the world’s leading proponents in their field of expertise, meet the victims who have used them and expose the history of the movements – from the charlatans who have milked these practices to the experiments and testing that have failed to produce conclusive results.

[Thanks to www.exchristian.net for this].