Every life is a journey of individuality

There’s no better guarantee of a good laugh than the steady stream of batshit crazy quotes from such Christian sites as Rapture Ready and Rapture Forums, which are a mainstay at Fundies Say the Darndest Things.  Here’s one choice example, preserved in all its ungrammatical glory:

When I got saved in 1973 I went to a lot of prophecy meetings listening to Jack van Impe and really thot the rapture was near then,A lot of it was emotions,but now w/what,s going on in the world,IT IS FACT!!!! (24thchance)

I remember as a teenager my fundamentalist Christian step-mother handing me a copy of Hal Lindsey’s extremely popular The Late, Great Planet Earth, one of but a series of books going back centuries predicting the end-times, and her telling me that Mikhail Gorbachev was the anti-Christ. I was pretty convinced by the book’s arguments, and watched developments in the Soviet Union with “rapt” attention.  Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as thought for poor Gorby, nor for “Magog” (as the Soviet Union was known in end-times parlance), as both faded into the dustbin of history.  The same couldn’t be said for Lindsey, who went on to write more end-times novels and make further boat-loads of money, despite a perfect track record of failed prediction.  But even Lindsey’s success can’t compare with the latest and greatest incarnation of end-times hopes, the Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which spawned a host of movies, and even video games.

Today, I’m still fascinated by the end-times.  No, not when they’ll occur, but by the seemingly unquenchable thirst for them among a persistent minority of religious believers.  Every failed end-times prediction seems only to serve as fodder for the next.  There’s no better example of the triumph of hope over experience than end-times belief.  Why?

 To understand the history and theology behind Christian eschatology (the fancy name for end-times belief), I picked up Bible scholar Robert Price’s recent work The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind.  Price, too, is interested why end-times belief is the cat of infinite lives, and he arrives at a satisfying – at least for me – answer:

So, as Russell says, we do in fact see a consistent, long-enduring pattern throughout Old and New Testament concerning prophecy, only it is not what he thinks it is.  Instead of Jesus following in the footsteps of the prophets with their use of spectacular symbolism to describe historical developments, what we have is the New Testament writers continuing to do as their Old Testament predecessors did: banking on soon-coming events as heralding the end of the universe in fire and meteor storms.  They were wrong and they kept being wrong.  And that is why today’s fundamentalists, following the same trajectory, keep striking out, too.  Perhaps if they allowed themselves to understand that the biblical writers had so grossly and repeatedly erred, they would learn their lesson.  But that they will not do, for fear of forfeiting scriptural authority.  And this traumatic truth about the Bible they repress, but it is a burden their consciences bear with difficulty, so it manifests itself in neurotic, repeating symptoms, notably the incorrigible desire to calculate the end of a world they are not mature enough to deal with apart from magical fantasies.

I’ll be the first to say, Price is venturing into a field here for which he possesses no particular training; he’s not a psychologist, so take his opinion with a grain of salt.  But his explanation, which he elsewhere attributes to cognitive dissonance, has the ring of truth.  Have you ever noticed that believers most fanatical in their idolotry of  a religious work or of some “prophet” seem the most susceptible to neverending end-times mania?  I also think Price is on to something when he  connects end-times thirst to a lack of personal maturity, though what causes the other is unclear.   Could this immaturity drive another tendency common among end-times enthusiasts: antipathy, even hatred, of the world?  When we’ve made a serious mess of things and just can’t seem to summon the will to correct them, one inclination, most often witnessed among children, is to smash the whole project and start afresh.  I suspect something’s similar at work with these last-days believers.  It also conveniently relieves them of taking any responsibility for partaking in common human endeavors to alleviate the world’s troubles.  The earth sucks and it’s going to be blown away soon by a divine nuke, so why bother?

As I wrote before, this is one of the most worrisome aspects of end-times belief, though such apathy does not compare to the dangerous lunacy to actually effect eschatological doctrines through open conflict.  While such a vile strain is mostly isolated, it’s come too close to having one of it’s own in real power for me to breathe easily any time soon.  History, sadly, is littered with the victims of apocalyptic preaching.  Could it just be a matter of time before the rest of us are victims too?

Edit: Reflecting more on believers’ loathing for the world, I think a better, simpler explanation for it derives from the belief that God will one day blast it to smithereens.  What a terrible place this must be for him to do that!

I’ve been working on an article about end-times believers, but this is too juicy (pardon the pun) to pass up.  From an article in the The Daily Telegraph comes this gem of a photo featuring Scientology’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard, trying to find out whether tomatoes experience pain:

The article discusses declassified information on Scientology gathered by Britain’s intelligence services during the 1970s, primarily revealing how Hubbard and some of his Scientology associates “earned” their PhDs.

Unfortunately, there’s no word whether the tomatoes reached OT VIII as a result of Hubbard’s therapy.

Don’t believe me?  Check out this ad taken from a Christian blog for a Christian dating service.  Yeah, I’m guessing “chaste” is not one of the hopes held for this girl by Christian guys wanting to date her…

Cheap point aside, there’s actually a more fundamental point I’d like to make here.  After all, dear visitor, you don’t come here merely to be entertained, but to be informed, right?

It’s well-known that for many Christians, evolution is a dirty word, with around half rejecting the theory in favor of creationism.  Ever notice, however, that they in fact act in accordance with its principals, as our ad explicitly suggests?  Traits like good looks, wealth, youth, or an ideal body are absent from lists of what makes a Godly mate, yet what do we see?  Christians desiring and selecting mates with precisely those traits, for reasons explained only by evolution.  But, Christians retort, the Bible doesn’t rule those qualities out either.  True, yet according to the theology, they should play no role; it’s the inner qualities that matter – God-fearing, virtuous, trustworthy and trusting, faithful, humble, etc. – not the outwardly or “worldly” ones.  Thus, we should see the attractive paired with the ugly, rich with poor, fit with fat, young with old, able with infirm – all in combinations wholly at odds with evolutionary psychology – because external appearances do not necessarily reflect the most esteemed personality traits.  If creationism, not evolution, is true, such qualities should hardly be a factor in choosing a mate.  Yet, they are.  Christian creationists are virtually indistinguishable from outsiders in the qualities they actually choose in a spouse.

As far as I’m aware, no Christian creationist website has an explanation for why this is.  Perhaps they’d say it’s all covered under “the Fall,” which has made everyone, including themselves, incline to behave according to evolutionary instincts—which instincts of course originated with Satan, along with the rest of evilu…er, evolution. My guess is that creationists don’t want to tangle with the conundrum of why God would make certain people more desirably endowed physically when he says all the important traits are the invisible ones.  The cognitive dissonance for Muslim creationists must be especially acute.  Here Allah creates the female physical form and then orders his followers to cover it all up.

Christian creationists, as in so much else, let’s see you practice what you preach!

“The wrath of the lamb”

Somehow, that just doesn’t do it for me.  When I think of lambs, I think of white, puffy creatures who’re afraid of their own shadows and who star in kiddie shows.  “Wrath” and “lamb” seem about as related as “vengeance” and “Teletubby”.  The phrase pretty much obliterates the entire point you’re trying to make because I’m too busy laughing to hear it!

By now, you’re probably wondering, where the hell I got this from.  It was taken from the following video, about 1:05 in.  Admittedly, the preacher mostly says “the wrath of God.”  At least, heavy editing makes it appear that’s what he mostly says.  And if the editing wasn’t enough, a dark, foreboding track – Lord Sauron’s theme from The Lord of the Rings perhaps? – further emphasizes the punishment to come.  Really, you can’t make this stuff up (not even you, Dave Barry!).

Anyway, it’s good to see the old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstone sermon hasn’t gone completely out of style, if only to punctuate how bizarre and, well, medieval, is this aspect of religion.  But it got me thinking to what extent beliefs in some terrifying, eternal suffering in the afterlife have played in a religion’s relative success. After all, two of the world’s largest religions – Christianity and Islam – both share among the most merciless and boundless conceptions of divine punishment.  With those two religions, as the rewards in heaven for belief are supremely enticing (mansions, in the case of Christianity; female virgins, in the case of Islam), are the tortures in hell for disbelief stupefyingly horrific.  While some form of reward and punishment in the afterlife didn’t originate with Christianity and Islam, they are pretty unique in positing such an extreme variance in the two possible spiritual existences.  Yes, I realize that – at least for Christianity – most teaching on the subject of hell has moderated somewhat, the video above notwithstanding, it’s also true that this is a historically recent development.

It may be a mistake to assume that religious threats constitute a way to reel in new members.  From an outsider’s perspective, I’m possibly going to offend someone’s god regardless of which religion I choose. It’s like a game of roulette, except the wheel contains not 38 slots (or “pockets”) but thousands.  Good luck with that bet!  More likely, as is the case with apologetics, the aim is to keep the sheep from leaving the fold.  Our good preacher suggests just as much when he warns that even some members of his audience will not be immune from the main mutton’s mania.  As for myself, I’m going to try to get ahead of the game by pouring out my wrath on a plate of lamb kabob.

I finally watched Bill Maher’s film Religulous the other night, which came out in early October of last year.  What took me so long?  I was uncomfortable with Maher’s admitted deception in obtaining the interviews for his film, which was akin to Ben Stein’s practice in producing Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.  But while Stein presented his film as a sober documentary investigation, Maher’s work took itself far less seriously, a sort of mockumentary, along the lines of Sasha Cohen’s Borat, though underlying Religulous is a fundamental point about religion.  Nonetheless, the film should be imbibed with a grain of salt.  I got the sense that clever film editing created the many “stupefied reactions” so common among the film’s pious believers.

Maher’s aim is to expose the ridiculous beliefs underlying today’s religions (thus the film title).  He doesn’t focus on any single religion, a tactic that won’t necessarily broaden the film’s appeal, but it does strengthen his case tenfold.  Sure, everyone knows that the notion of a man flying up to heaven on a winged stallion is laughable on its face, but a man born of the union between a virgin woman and a deity really happened? Ok, right… You gotta hand it to Maher for studiously maintaining an easy joviality with his interviewees, upon whom it probably eventually dawns that Maher is not exactly friendly to their cause.  I myself would stand flabbergasted at some of the stuff coming out these theists’ mouths, but Maher rolls with it in a completely disarming way, by supposing, it seemed, at least a little incredulity within his companion.

Two observations about the faithful from the film are readily apparent.  The first is the shallowness of their beliefs.  Many know the basic theological tenets, but it’s obvious they haven’t reasoned them out very well, a fact Maher exploits to their detriment (and the audience’s amusement).  The second is how far believers go in rationalizing obvious contradictions between their faith and reality.  The Muslims, for example, all unfailingly ascribe Islamic violence to “politics,” somewhat akin to how many Christians blame Christian hatred and violence on “deviations” from Jesus’s teachings (as if Christ never said “Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,” for example).

While for most of the film I bounced between laughing and crying, there were a couple moments that offered hope.  One involved a retired Catholic priest who cheerfully dismissed fundamental Christian doctrines, such as the existence of hell.  This reminded me of one of my biggest complaints about theists, the fact that few of them entertain virtually no doubt about their beliefs.  This is the scourge of dogma, which is certainly not peculiar to religion, but which undoubtedly provided its main historical impetus.

 At both the film’s start and end, Maher describes his animating concern, one shared by Sam Harris in The End of Faith.  That is, in an age when humanity’s capabilities for destroying the planet grow practically by the day, faith-based, dogmatic belief is rapidly becoming a dangerous liability.  Fatalism underlies too much of today’s religion, sapping our collective need to act, and increasing our proclivity for conflict.  Watch Religulous for good entertainment, but keep in mind that the subject is ultimately no laughing matter.

Update: Valerie Tarico at Debunking Christianity just posted an illuminating article on knowing and certainty that segueways nicely with my objection to dogmatic religious belief.  The money quote: “As scientists learn more about how our brains work, certitude is coming to be seen as a vice rather than a virtue. Certainty is a confession of ignorance about our ability to be passionately mistaken.”

Kudos to B.T. Murtagh at the quarkscrew blog for this excellent framing of George Tiller’s murder within theistic absolute morality.  The money quote:

If your notion of absolute moral values is that you absolutely follow someone else’s decisions as to what is moral, or worse yet someone else’s unsupported claim as to what a third party has decided is moral, then your only absolute moral decision is an abdication of moral responsibility.

His deconstruction of the moral implications of God’s order to Abraham to kill Isaac is simply top-notch.  Well worth a read.

My question to theists: what if it emerges that Tiller’s murderer, Scott Roeder, claims that God commanded him to kill Tiller?  By your own belief, Roeder should be exalted and praised, should he not?

Many of today’s Christians lament how religion (by which they mean their religion) has been stripped from the public school curriculum.  They yearn for the days when the Bible was as much a part of learning as the three Rs.  But thanks to godless liberals, that’s no longer the case.  The results are as sad as they are predictable.  Just one example: biblically conservative teens are one of the most sexually promiscuous groups among their believing peers.  Who knew children of Christian evangelicals were so dependent on the public school teachers to imbue them with the proper morals?  But I digress…

We all know there were sound legal and constitutional arguments for keeping religion in the home and church. But that’s all foolishness to God, say militant Christians.  Yet, there were very practical reasons too, which unfortunately have been either overlooked or quietly swept under the rug.  One of them relates to a tragic and deadly incident in Pennsylvania some 160 years ago known as the “Philadelphia Bible Riots”. 

I’ll leave it to you to read the full story, but here are the essentials:  In the 1840s, Philadelphia public schools were dominated by Protestants.  Bible-reading, KJV-style, took place every morning.  This didn’t sit well, to say the least, with the growing number of Irish Catholic immigrants, who took theological direction from Rome and from a different bible.  Mix the traditional Christian brotherly love between the two sects, add a dash of demagoguery, bake in the fires of burning homes and buildings, and what do you get?  Ten persons dead, twenty wounded, and $5.8 million in property damage (in current dollars).

Rob Boston, author of the article linked above, arrives at some very important lessons from the riots.  Here are a couple:

[R]eligion is taken so seriously that when people believe that their religious rights are being violated, they are capable of responding in ways that shock.

Isn’t that the truth!  What is it about religion that sometimes relieves one of all civilized behavior?

[D]espite the claims that state-sponsored religion in public schools would be a unifying factor, history shows that it is a divisive one that quickly causes people to take sides.

One of the beneficial consequences of the separation of church and state in this country is inter- and intra-faith peaceful co-existence, which has traditionally been the exception rather than the rule throughout the world.  It’s ironic that some of those who most strongly advocate for a religious presence in the schools would probably now be arguing against it had the principle not been enforced.  Even more ironic is that it’s secularists who may actually be responsible for preserving the skins of Christians who so frequently revile them.

…is undoubtedly how some Christianists will spin it, but everyone else will be rightfully appalled by the practice of a church in Colorado Springs baptizing children without parental permission.  It gets freakier than that, believe it or not, for the same church tried to lure a seventh-grader into one of its vans.  Many Christians complain how practices and views which are contrary to traditional Christian teachings are being “forced down their throats,” which is in reality their way of objecting to the mere existence of such things, yet it appears that Christians are the ones truly doing the forcing.

h/t Austin’s Atheism Blog

I’m finding it increasingly common to have my posts at Christian blogs removed.  It seems proprietors are simply unable to respond.  This is not to say my arguments are particularly good (though they may be); rather, I think many Christians lack critical thinking skills, preferring diatribe over debate.  They’ve been told what to think, and now they’re going to tell you what to think.  Like their faithfully held beliefs, they entertain no possibility they could be wrong, and must work assiduously to maintain that appearance.

The latest example comes from the Possessing the Treasure blog.  It’s proprietor, Mike Ratliff, recently fulminated against the growing acceptance of homosexuality in Christianity and society, a practice, he reminds us, is a “sin,” “abomination,” and “sexual perversion”.

Now, it gives me a lot of satisfaction to see Christians working themselves up over issues like this, primarily because they’re quite literally shooting themselves in the foot and contributing to their faith’s demise among the next generation.  Many wonder, as I do, what is the Christian’s prurient fascination with homosexuality, when Biblical morality covers so much more.  This is the question I put to Mike.  In his response, Mike dodged the question, but not before alluding to my lack of god-logic for failing to understand.  So here’s what I wrote back, which Mike refused to publish:

Mike: I do not expect you to understand what I am going to tell you since you are an atheist. You are not regenerate. You do not have the Holy Spirit.

Me: Yes, I lack the required special gnosis which supersedes normal reason and logic, apparently.

Mike: To answer your “thought” about why we are focusing on homosexuality like this is that it is clearly an issue of morality. It is sin and not the same thing as race or whatever. It is a sexual perversion whose advocates insist it is not. It demands protection and acceptance in our society. It is immoral as I said and, therefore, should not be given that sort of recognition.

Unfortunately, your “reply” doesn’t answer my objection. How is homosexuality any worse than, say, adultery?  Or blasphemy?  Or working on the sabbath?  Aren’t these “issues of morality” just as serious?  Christians aren’t clamoring to place restrictions on them, or reverse their acceptance.  Why?

It matters little to me, as a non-Christian (and heterosexual, by the way), what Christians accept or don’t accept within their own religion.  What bothers me is your attempt to force Biblical morality on the rest of society.  As you may not be aware, the Bible is not a part of the U.S. legal code.  When it is, then by all means outlaw homosexuality (and adultery, and worshipping other gods, and working on the Sabbath), but for now, you would do well to keep your morality to yourselves.

Mike: As far as your poor logic concerning God’s Law, the moral parts of the Law are still very much in affect and are contained in our faith. On the other hand, those dietary and ceremonial parts of the Law were fulfilled and done away with at Christ’s crucifixion.

Me: Good news to slave-owning Christians who wish to increase their holdings from pagan nations! (Lev. 25:44)

Further down in the comments, a person named Jackie wrote, “[G]ays are actually helping to fulfill this same worldwide “sign” (and making the Bible even more believable!) and thus hurrying up the return of the Judge! They are accomplishing what many preachers haven’t accomplished!… Thanks, gays, for figuring out how to bring back our resurrected Saviour even quicker!”

Jackie’s reasoning is sound (and something I’ve previously blogged about), but of course it wholly undermines Mike the Christian’s rationale to keep “sexual perversion” at an absolute minimum.  Unsurprisingly, a reply pointing this out did not make an appearance either.

Amateur Christian theologians like Mike aren’t the only ones running away.  Over at the Debunking Christianity blog, John W. Loftus (whose book, Why I Became an Atheist, I’m currently enjoying) has issued a debate challenge to his former mentor, William Lane Craig.  The latter has so far demurred, saying he refuses to debate former students.  That’s odd.  In his book, Reasonable Faith (p. 21), Craig wrote, “Again and again I find that while most of [anti-Christian college professors] are pretty good at beating up intellectually on an eighteen-year-old in one of their classes, they can’t even hold their own when it comes to going toe-to-toe with one of their peers.”  Is it Craig who’s afraid he can’t hold his own against one of his peers?

The Washington Post reported recently on the fascinating results of a new poll showing a sharp turnaround in support for gay marriage nationwide.  For the first time, a majority -albeit a slim one-favors such marriages.  Three years ago, a strong majority rejected them.  Gays can thank those under 35 for the shift, among whom support has grown the most rapidly.  While political views tend to grow more conservative with age, gays can justifiably cheer over the news, which is but the latest in a series of favorable portents. (In the wake of Proposition 8’s passage in California last year outlawing gay marriage there, I saw reasons to remain optimistic, but did not believe a reversal in public opinion would be so swift).

Although gay marriage doesn’t touch most atheists directly, I know many follow its triumphs and setbacks like sports fans follow their favorite teams.  The reason I suspect is because opposition to gay marriage encapsulates like no other issue so many of the reasons why atheists reject religion and seek to diminish its influence in the public sphere.  First of all, there is the believer’s presumption that their bronze-age holy books contain some immutable, objective moral code – a code which for the most part they themselves either ignore or selectively apply.  Second, there is the inappropriate intrusion of the believer’s morality into the public policy.  If their religion disavows gay marriage, fine by me, but by what right do they proscribe it in secular law as well?  The logic of their stance is identical to that employed by the mullahs instituting Sharia law.  Third, there is the utter poverty of their arguments, such as the one claiming defense of “traditional marriage” (whatever that is), or the absurd one claiming that believers will experience a wave of persecution as a result of gay marriage.  Finally, there is the sheer hypocrisy of same-sex marriage’s most ardent foes, religions that loudly proclaim marriage is divinely ordained between one man and one woman only, while their Godly founders and “prophets” not only had multiple wives, but some who were barely teens, or even younger.

So gay marriage is a barometer of sorts for religion’s waning influence in areas it doesn’t belong.  Non-believers — as well as believers who firmly uphold the separation of church and state – can applaud to the extent the practice is defined as a civil rights issue, and not a “family values” issue.  Intolerant religious devotees will continue to wail and gnash their teeth as state-after-state legalizes the practice.  That’s fine by me.  They’ll only marginalize themselves and make it that much more difficult to press their faith-based views in other areas of public policy.  And we’ll all be better off for it.