God is Worse than Kim Jong-il

In my international human rights course, we've spent a lot of time discussing North Korea, both because it presents the most egregious examples of current human rights violations and because our professor has a special research interest in the topic, his family having fled Korea during the war and he having also taught in South Korea. The professor recently recounted a familiar story about foreign doctors entering the country, curing people of their ailments, and the healed immediately thanking and praising the dear leader before his portrait for helping them and curing them, despite his totalitarian and ruthless regime most likely being the direct cause of their suffering in the first place. Everyone in the class rightly considered the situation ridiculous and sad. My mind, both then and when I first heard the story years ago, immediately made the comparison between how many people in other countries would have turned to their gods in exactly the same way after the medical treatment and how it's equally ridiculous and sad.

I honestly believe that an omnimax deity who fails to help his creatures and who sends any of them to hell would be infinitely more evil than Kim Jong-il. Even leaving aside the eternity of hell which really trumps everything else, God could distribute food and medicine to the populace without any effort whatsoever whereas the North Korean government at least has to arrange to let humanitarian relief organizations enter the country to do the same. Indeed, God could miraculously heal everyone of every lament, but he never does. All the excuses that theists make on God's behalf could be equally well applied to Kim Jong-il—he knows better than we do, it's for the greater good, we have to trust in him despite all appearances. It was depressing to see documentary footage in class of North Koreans escaping into China and constantly talking about how they trusted in God to help them. It's very understandable under the circumstances of extreme hardship, extreme ignorance, and extreme fear, but it's still disheartening to see them exchange a real dictator for an even worse fictional one, one who ultimately let them down when they were captured and returned to North Korea to be imprisoned in death camps.

The only point that God has in his favor is that he doesn't actually exist. This certainly excuses his failure to help people. It also means he cannot inflict any of the suffering which he allegedly threatens; only people's belief in him can, and that level of suffering is relatively minor, especially in nations which don't take religion especially seriously. My experience with scrupulosity, while the most serious suffering of my life, is nothing compared to starvation, imprisonment, and torture. Life—or more accurately existence—in North Korea, however, would in turn be nothing compared to eternal hell, if it were real.

I'm sure that many theists feel revulsion at the comparison of the God to Kim Jong-il, but they've never provided adequate responses to the Problem of Evil or to the Problem of Hell, so I feel entirely justified in making it. This is why I blog: to say things that simply need to be said.

Uncertainty about the Afterlife

In response to the problem of evil, believers typically claim that God must have a perfectly valid reason for allowing great evil in the world even if we cannot discover or understand it and that the proper response is to trust him without questioning. I recently encountered an interesting idea from Robert M. Price which addresses this response in a new way. He rhetorically asks how Christians would react if, upon death, God canceled their ticket to heaven (faith in Jesus, life of good works, state of grace at death, etc.) and sent them to hell without any explanation whatsoever. Applying their argument to this situation, they couldn't complain at all, for God must have a perfectly valid reason for sending them to hell even if they cannot discover or understand it. No Christian could honestly counter that it's an absolute impossibility; this is the same deity who slaughtered multitudes of Egyptian babies in their sleep and who they acknowledge threatens to send billions of souls to hell for mere disbelief. It's a perfectly valid rhetorical question without any clear answer.

Dr. Price's idea reminds me of the major issues I had with scrupulosity and fear of hell before I deconverted. For years, I had regular, persistent doubts about whether my confessions were valid, whether I was forgiven, and whether I would be damned to hell if I died at that moment. Priests regularly told me to trust in God's love and that God wouldn't condemn me if I honestly did my best to obey him, but their assurances never helped me because I also believed this was a deity who didn't hesitate to send souls to hell for all eternity for something as absolutely ridiculous as masturbating or missing mass one Sunday; I had no trouble imagining him on judgment day telling me that I sinned by listening to my confessor instead of my own conscience and casting me into a lake of fire to burn forever. It was mental agony to believe one is constantly being watched by a despicable, malevolent being who demands blind love, blind faith, and blind obedience and who will probably eventually capture and torture you. It's a lot like being Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but with infinite consequences. This is why the day I deconverted was the best day of my entire life.

While I'm on the topic of the afterlife, I want to say that sometimes I rather wish there were a way for arrogant religionists who claim certainty in their beliefs to learn they're wrong before they die. If my belief is correct that our consciousness is forever extinguished upon death, it's really a pity they can all pass out of existence without ever being forced to admit the magnitude of their stupidity.

Ignoring the Problem of Evil

When I was a Catholic, I almost never thought about the problem of evil. I must have encountered the philosophical argument at some point and resolved the issue in my mind by concluding that God must have a justifiable reason for allowing suffering in the world which I just didn't know, but I can't remember it ever being an issue afterward. Now that I'm an atheist, I very often reflect on this problem when I see someone addressing some source of suffering in the world specifically from a religious perspective; I see someone perform some charitable work out of a religious motivation and think to myself, “Why doesn't their god solve the problem itself if it's infinitely perfect? How can their god inflict such suffering knowing the pain it will cause and realizing that the majority of it simply cannot be relieved by human effort? Why can't they see how much more benevolently they act than their own master?” Believers never seem to ask themselves these questions and I know that I certainly didn't ask myself them during my twenty-five years as a Catholic. They seemed blinded by something, whether it be love, fear, ignorance, laziness or something else. In my own case, the predominant religious emotion I experienced was fear of eternal torture.

Atheism is Not a Religion

Critics of atheism often claim that atheism itself is a religion, but I have never encountered any atheist who agrees with this view. Atheists insist rather that atheism is the lack of religious belief. I would like to examine the idea that not believing in any gods is a religion by analyzing two associated claims.

“Atheism requires faith.”

This often seems to mean only that the speaker believes atheism to be incorrect, so therefore it requires faith to believe that it is correct. If this were so, then one could claim every view with with one disagrees is a religion, whether the question is religion, politics, economics, science, history or even sports. This is obviously absurd.

A more charitable interpretation of this statement is that the speaker believes that there is no proof for atheism, thefore it requires faith to believe it is true. There are at least two problems with this. First, weak atheism is simply the lack of belief in gods. A weak atheist doesn't make a claim about gods to consider true, so there can be no faith. Second, strong atheism indeed does make a claim that no gods exist, but this is based on the lack of evidence for gods and certain arguments like the problem of evil. It is true that this does not constitute absolute proof, but that doesn't mean it is believed on faith. We don't have absolute proof that the atomic theory of matter is correct, but the evidence points in that direction and it's reasonable to believe it. We also don't have absolute proof that Santa Claus doesn't exist, but again the evidence points in that direction and no one claims that disbelieving in Santa is a matter of faith. If one wants to argue that atheists just don't have good evidence, that is reasonable, but as discussed above that doesn't entail that atheism is a religion unless one wants to label as a religion every opinion with which one disagrees based on the evidence.

“Atheism worships mankind.”

The only thing all atheists have in common is that they don't believe in gods. Outside of this one opinion, there is infinite variety of other opinions. Some atheists are liberals while some are conservatives, while others are libertarians or socialists or fascists or communists or even monarchists. Some atheists believe in nothing supernatural while others believe in ghosts and the afterlife. Some atheists attend religious services while others don't. Some atheists are open about their disbelief while others hide it. Some denounce religion while some want to preserve it, while others simply don't care. There are general tendencies one can identify among atheists, such as the tendency to think independently, but even this tendency is a source of more disunity than unity. It has been said, correctly in my estimation, that organizing atheists is like herding cats. The reason is that atheists are a negatively defined group. It makes as much sense to make generalizations about people who don't believe in gods as it does to make generalizations about people who don't like chocolate ice cream.

People who make the claim that atheists worship mankind make two major mistakes. First, they think that all atheists are Humanists and thus they use the terms interchangeably. This is simply not true; nihilists are just one example of atheists who are not Humanists. Incidentally, many of the very same people also claim that atheists don't believe in morality, making the exact opposite error of thinking that all atheists are nihilists. Second, they think Humanists worship mankind, but this is also simply not true. Humanists do consider humans to be the most advanced beings we know about and do think humans should solve their own problems without help from deities, but that certainly doesn't constitute worship in any sense. Yes, there are a small number of Humanist celebrants who perform certain secular ceremonies like marriages and funerals, but none of these gatherings involve anything resembling worship like kneeling before humans and offering prayers. These ceremonies instead fulfill the desires some people have for formal rituals like graduation. No one claims that schools worship education simply because they recognize students who do well in a formal program! It should also be noted that only a tiny fraction of Humanists have ever attended even one of these services and most aren't even interested in special Humanist ceremonies. Humanism is more of a label than anything else.

Why do religious people make the argument that atheism is a religion? At first it seems odd because they themselves are religious and they obviously don't consider religion to be inherently bad. I presume, however, that it's a defense mechanism because they encounter atheists who criticize religion as irrational, so they label atheism as a religion in order to cast atheists as hypocrites. This argument might convince many faithful, but it holds no weight for atheists who understand their own position.

If atheism is a religion, then not collecting stamps is a hobby. — Unknown

Why I Am No Longer A Catholic

The following is a lengthy essay documenting my reasons for leaving the Catholic Church. It was written in December 2004, two months after my apostasy.

I. Introduction

Before I begin explaining my reasons for leaving the faith, it would be appropriate to briefly examine the reasons I was a Catholic in the first place. The story of how I entered the Church is a very common one: my Catholic parents had me baptized not long after my birth, brought me to church each Sunday, and sent me to formal religious education at the church until I made confirmation at the age of thirteen. As do many children, I simply accepted what I was told by adults in essentially all matters without questioning it, and this certainly extended to what I was told about God and religion.

While my enthusiasm for religion waxed and waned, I cannot recall any doubts of any significance until the summer after I graduated from high school, at the age of seventeen. For the next eight years I struggled from time to time with these doubts, and reassured myself with various reasons for believing the Catholic faith true. Since this is not a deconversion story, I will not detail the reasons I began my investigation into arguments against the faith, but only summarize my research, reasoning, and conclusions.

The intellectual challenge to my faith was two-pronged: questioning the reasons I had for believing and discovering distinct reasons for disbelieving. With regards to general chronology and relative strength, the order of these two elements was in fact reversed, but for stylistic reasons I am presenting them here in the listed order.

II. Reasons to Believe

A. Argument from Miracles

The history of the Catholic Church is filled with volumes upon volumes of accounts of miraculous events of all sorts: healings, apparitions, divine artifacts, extreme fasting, levitation, bilocation, mind-reading, visible Eucharistic transformations, survival of deadly force, resurrections, and even a dancing sun. St. Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican missionary of the 14th and 15th centuries from the Iberian peninsula, is reputed to have performed 40,000 miracles in his lifetime alone, which incidentally only lasted approximately 25,000 days. It's an impressive record, and very effective in quelling the doubts of a young Catholic. Its efficacy in convincing skeptics, however, is almost non-existent and for good reason. There are a number of problems with using miracles to establish the truth of a religion.

I would like to begin by saying that the sheer number of alleged miracles can seem overwhelming until one examines why mistakes, hallucinations, fraud, and forgeries could be so common. We need to understand that there is a long tradition of miracles in Christianity. Jesus Christ performed a number of miracles to establish himself as the messiah and the Son of God. The apostles performed miracles to establish their apostolic authority. Saints are only canonized by the Church after two separate confirmed miracles are attributed to them or their intercession. People in an unscientific age would be less likely to fully investigate an unusual natural occurrence and more likely to mistakenly consider it a miracle. Additionally, miracles brought respect, fame, and fortune that would entice many to try to create their own. There are even so-called pious frauds which are contrived to increase the declining faith of the people. The number of claimed cases itself proves nothing.

The most glaring difficulty with using miracles to establish the truth of a religion is determining whether these events occurred at all. A miracle qua miracle is always the least likely possible explanation of any event. While scientists and historians may be reliable enough to establish the probability of natural events, they are simply not trustworthy enough to establish the occurrence of a supernatural event which violates the basic laws we otherwise never see broken. It is always more likely that the reports are mistaken, fraudulent, or the result of later forgery than that a natural physical law was violated. Whatever the individual case, it's important to remember that there are always other possible explanations that cannot be definitively ruled out so that divine intervention can be firmly established.

Beyond the difficulties of confirming miracles at all, there is also a major problem in that each person in the world would himself need to become an expert in logic, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, psychology, history, and several other academic fields in order to be as certain as possible that no errors have occurred in the long line of research and reasoning. For while one may trust scientists and historians to establish the likelihood of natural events, one cannot confirm a supernatural occurrence and logically conclude that a certain institution is absolutely infallible on the fallible word of other persons.

The validity of using miracles to establish religious authority depends entirely on the truthfulness of whoever performed the miracle, in most cases assumed to be an omnimax (omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent) deity. This assumption, however, must be challenged. First, the very existence of such a being can be questioned; the problem of evil even suggests that such a being most certainly does not exist. Second, we cannot exclude the possibility of less honest supernatural or even advanced natural extraterrestrial beings performing these miracles. In fact, miracles in religions other than Christianity have sometimes been dismissed as the work of demons. Descartes argues that an omnimax deity would not allow supernatural beings to deceive us. This argument depends on the existence of an omnimax deity and certain knowledge of his will, and fails to consider that this deity does not prevent even other humans from deceiving us into false religions. One would need to exhaustively investigate the numerous miraculous claims in all other religions in case miracles confirm conflicting messages.

Finally, unless we blindly assume that whoever is most intimately connected to the miracle is henceforth absolutely infallible, we need a reliable method of determining when he speaks authoritatively. We cannot allow the authority to define it himself because we do not know whether this definition itself is infallible; the logic would be circular and thus invalid.

I personally consider fulfilled prophecy to be a special subtype of miracle. Everything I have said against miracles applies as well to prophecy, so there is no need to repeat my arguments. Mystical experiences are also of a similar nature to miracles and prophecy: they simply cannot establish an authority that we can trust without questioning. The argument from miracles fails.

B. Argument from Ecclesiastical Stability

The Catholic Church has experienced a certain amount of stability throughout her history. This point is certainly worth noting when studying the Church, but I argue that it cannot be used to establish her supernatural claims. First, the stability is only relative. In comparison to the doctrinal alterations experienced in the short history of Protestantism, yes, the Catholic Church has been quite solid. But in the earliest years of the religion, it was anything but stable. There were a good number of competing factions, teaching and believing very different things. These were not just heretical fringe groups. Often those who held the currently unorthodox positions greatly outnumbered those who eventually established their own beliefs as universal orthodoxy. Real and lasting stability didn't arise until Emperor Constantine converted and instated Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and at the same time also outlawing all other religions. Now with worldly power, the Church became more and more disinclined to alter doctrines unnecessarily and thereby jeopardize the status and revenue it was accruing. It should be noted that there have always been heretical groups, but that they were unable to establish and maintain themselves indefinitely until the invention of the printing press strengthened their cause against the extremely powerful bureaucracy of the Church. The various inquisitions stand out as rather ungodly methods of maintaining ecclesiastical stability, but we should not forget how effective the economic, social, and spiritual devastation attached to the silent threat of peaceful excommunication could be throughout the history of the Church. We should also note that the Church places extremely stringent limitations on what she considers unchanged in her history. The teachings and attitudes toward non-Christians, for example, have undergone revolutionary changes in recent centuries and expert theologians have had to bend over backward to find some core teaching which fits multiple teachings. Both Vatican Councils have resulted in the birth of many schismatic or semi-schismatic groups in the last two centuries. Why is there such an appearance of instability, both in doctrinal matters and church governance, if there is in fact none?

It is not necessary that I establish the instability of the Catholic Church. It is not even necessary that I demonstrate that her stability is debatable. It is only necessary that I provide natural reasons for the stability she has displayed, and I believe I have done that. The Church's stability is not nearly strong enough to establish the divine origins she claims. If never there had existed any heretics, schismatics, or doctrinal development, if there had never been violent and non-violent threats against heretics and apostates, both in this life and the next, and if there had been only minimal worldly motives for maintaining stability, there would be some plausibility to the idea. But it is simply not the case. The numerous failings of the Church, especially on a grand scale, strongly suggest it is something other than divine. The Church may perhaps be a unique institution in world history, but it has all the markings of a merely human institution nonetheless. The argument from Church stability fails.

III. Reasons to Disbelieve

A. Divine Injustice

1. Original Sin

The doctrine of original sin teaches that all of humanity has been punished for the sin of our earliest ancestors. Punishing an innocent party for the transgressions of another party is clearly unjust. The association we have with the other party was even made without our consent. And even if substitutionary punishment were just, it would at least require the assent of the party to be punished, which we have never granted. No Catholic can argue that original sin is a logical necessity, for the Church teaches that God allowed the Virgin Mary to be conceived without any taint of sin. There exists no reason he could not do the same for each human conceived, who are all as equally innocent as the Virgin Mary before they are born. Original sin is pure injustice.

2. Eternal Punishment

Assuming for the sake of argument that God has the right to punish his creations for their sins, justice demands that the penalty match the severity of the crime. Eternal punishment in hell for temporal sins violates this principle. A human who inflicts a limited amount of unjust suffering will himself experience unimaginable agony for all of eternity. St. Thomas Aquinas recognizes this principle but argues in his famous Summa Theologica that because God is an infinite being, all sins against him are infinite in magnitude. There are two major problems with this idea.

First, God as an infinite being cannot suffer: we cannot do anything to diminish his infinite beatitude in even the slightest degree. The first reason that we imagine that we can is that our natural experiences involve only finite, harmable creatures so we cannot truly conceive of an infinite being. The second reason is that we have been taught that Jesus suffered despite the logical impossibility of the concept.

Second, the Church distinguishes not only between mortal and venial sins, but between transgressions that are inherently more or less grave. If we follow the idea presented by Aquinas, this distinction is totally mistaken; all sins are infinitely grave. One cannot argue that some sins are more infinitely grave than others.

3. Doubt, Disbelief, and Apostasy

Prohibition of doubt in matters of religion and philosophy is nothing more than tyrannical intellectual dishonesty to the extent to which it limits rational inquiry. If one is never allowed to question his own thinking, he will remained trapped in a mental jail which he has constructed for himself with the help of the Church. It should be noted that Church actually encourages members of other faiths to doubt their religions and investigate Christianity. Logical consistency would demand that they discourage them, for many non-Christians are as convinced of the truthfulness of their own religion as are many Christians.

The extent to which our beliefs are willfully held is debatable. I think that most would agree, however, that it is wrong to assume that all non-Christians, at least those sufficiently exposed to Christianity, deliberately choose to disbelieve the faith. Culpability could only be assigned if the non-believer makes the decision with sufficient consciousness and is sufficiently convinced of the truth of the faith prior to the decision. We cannot presume to truly know the mind of even one other person, much less everyone who has encountered Christianity, so it seems absurd to uniformly condemn all of those who refuse their assent to the faith.

The condemnation of apostasy rests entirely on the condemnation of disbelief. There is no reason to prohibit the discontinuation of the practice of a religion which one no longer believes.

4. Biblical Atrocities

The Bible is full of stories of violent injustice of all types committed by God, commanded by God, rewarded by God, or looked favorably upon by God: wars of conquest, slaughter of innocent men, women, and children, divine plagues, looting, slavery, death penalty for minor infractions, and a worldwide flood. The Skeptic's Annotated Bible is an excellent reference to Biblical violent injustice.

B. Divine Imperfect Benevolence

1. Prayer and Blessing

Prayers of petition are completely incompatible with the idea of an omnimax deity. With perfect knowledge, power, and benevolence, we would expect God to provide us with all of the good things we need simply because he loves us. Petitionary prayer implies that God would refrain from granting you or someone else something if you failed to ask for it. Would even a human parent fail to prepare dinner for his child if the child did not specifically ask for it, or would he cook one because he knows that is what is best for the child? Would he not attempt to catch his child falling from a tree and prevent a broken bone unless the child yelled for help, or would he try his hardest to prevent injury to his beloved child? When someone prays, for instance, that God grant him a safe journey and protect him from harm, he is essentially asking his all-loving Creator to prevent any injury that he would have allowed to happen to him if he had not made this petition. If God knows what is best for us and is completely capable of and willing to giving it to us, why ask him for anything? If he desires that we humble ourselves before him, there are other ways of doing that without making his blessings conditional.

The absolute disparity of the blessings bestowed upon each individual is normally answered by saying that God will judge each individual according to what he did with what he had and that God always judges perfectly fairly. Why not grant everyone the same blessings in this life? Why allow it to appear as though he does not exist and that blessings are randomly distributed? These questions prove nothing, but they do force one to ponder the situation. Regardless, I am often made sick when a rich person in a rich nation attributes some minor blessing to God on account of his faith and prayers when the same God allows thousands of orphaned, exploited, abused, malnourished, homeless, innocent children to die in filthy gutters around the world every single day.

2. Arbitrary Salvation

Salvation is a very highly disputed issue among Christians, with many contradictory opinions held fiercely by different groups. The requirement for salvation in the Catholic Church, however, is that one must die in a state of grace. One enters a state of grace by baptism, and if he should fall into a state of sin by committing a mortal sin, he must make a sacramental confession to a Catholic priest and receive God's forgiveness. This remains the teaching about what is necessary for believing Catholics. Over the years, the Church seems to have gone from condemning every single non-Catholic to hell to throwing her hands up into the air and making extremely vague statements about hoping for the salvation of even non-Christians. This is evidence of doctrinal instability, but the recent equivocation is almost impossible to criticize because it cannot be clearly formulated. There are, however, a number of serious problems with the clear teaching.

First, the time of death becomes disproportionately significant. One may lead a life of exemplary piety and faith, commit a single mortal sin in his dying moments, and be condemned to eternal fire. Alternatively, one may lead a life of debauchery and violence, sincerely repent in his dying moments, and be welcomed to eternal paradise, though admittedly having to spend a long time in purgatory beforehand. One may walk out of a church, having made a good and honest confession and thus in a state of grace, consent to one impure thought on the way home, get struck by lightning immediately afterward, and be condemned to hell. If the lightning had struck one minute earlier, he would have enjoyed the delights of heaven. It is completely arbitrary. Though I do not accuse the Church of having crafted the doctrine deliberately, they could not have designed one more favorable to her power: the faithful must diligently be cautious to remain in a state of grace lest their lives be wasted, while infidels are offered the chance to have their eternal condemnation voided and receive eternal paradise if they return to the Church, enter a state of grace, and die in the same. To remain in a state of grace, a Catholic must, among many other things, attend Mass on all holy days of obligation and generally contribute money to the Church.

Second, since the Church distinguishes between more and less grave sins, as discussed earlier, absurd lines must be drawn within sins that are not inherently grave. Theft is more or less grave depending on the circumstance such that, all other things being equal, stealing a small amount is generally venial in nature whereas stealing a large amount is mortal in nature. The line is sometimes drawn at an amount equal to one day's wages for the victim, but the specifics of the line are unimportant to my point. What is significant is that there does exist some line that separates two amounts which differ in the smallest monetary unit used, which would be a penny here in the United States. Let's say in one particular case that the line is drawn at $100.00. If you are in a state of grace, steal $99.99, and die immediately afterward, you would commit only a venial sin and thus go to heaven. All other things being equal, if you steal $100.00, you will commit a mortal sin and thus go to hell. Must a line be drawn? We humans must draw lines somewhere in government and business, but certainly an omnimax God could devise a superior system for determining whether we are granted entrance to paradise or to a lake of fire.

Third, the teaching allows for practically absurd scenarios to arise. Let's say that Person A hates Person B. Person A not only wants to murder Person B, but he wants to try to have him condemned to hell. Person B is a faithful Catholic and we can assume, for the sake of the story, that he would achieve salvation if Person A does not interfere. Person A, however, deliberately and successfully attempts to corrupt the morals of Person B, by encouraging and tempting him to commit various mortal sins and lose his state of grace. So Person B cheats on his wife by sleeping with a prostitute, and Person A kills Person B immediately afterward. Person B is now in hell and will remain there forever. Person A, however, can theoretically repent of his sins, go to confession, enter a state of grace, die in the same, and be rewarded with heaven for all eternity.

Fourth, with one's eternal fate always hanging in the balance, the Catholic teaching on salvation can easily lead to obsession with death, sin, and hell, if taken completely seriously. The stakes are simply too high to relax. One can diligently study Catholic morality, examine his conscience, meet with his confessor and still have doubts about the condition of his soul, whether he should go to confession when available or whether he should refrain from receiving communion. Confessors can confidently instruct their penitents to consider doubt equivalent to being no sin, but the obsession with the infinite cannot be so easily reined in. One doubts whether he should trust his confessor. He doubts whether he doubts and then fears that he claims doubts where none exist in order to excuse himself. It always seems safer to go to confession whenever possible and always refrain from communion. Can one live with the eternal consequences if he really does culpably excuse himself? Everyone does this every day when dealing with their earthly lives: we aren't certain that our food isn't poisoned, but we would rather risk our lives than ruin them obsessing over the extremely small chance of being poisoned. When you throw infinity into the equation, however, everything becomes skewed. No behavior becomes too radical. One can derive absolutely no comfort in hell by reminding himself that it was extremely unlikely that he was in a state of mortal sin when he in fact was. His choice to attend a sporting event instead of confession on one afternoon resulted in his eternal damnation; he would have been better off for the rest of his existence if he had played it safe. What's more, petitionary prayer implies that a decision to go to bed early one evening rather than spending ten minutes asking God for the gift of final penitence could eventually result in one's damnation. The Catholic teaching on salvation, if taken seriously, can easily lead to a life of obsessive-compulsive behavior. Although one can rightly argue that canonized saints certainly took the teachings of the Church seriously, it does not mean that they followed all of the teachings to their logical conclusions. The phenomenon of scrupulosity is extremely rare among canonized saints even though it affects a number of fairly devout believers. Since I have found no response to this issue, I hypothesize that canonized saints generally do not have obsessive personalities, allowing them to avoid obsession, while people who do are prevented from achieving sainthood precisely because of their personalities. I welcome research on this topic.

3. Superior Alternative Plans

Devising superior alternatives to what the Church teaches is God's divine plan of salvation is surprisingly easy. If we believe that God desires that every person be saved and avoid eternal damnation, we simply seek ways to achieve this objective while attempting to avoid compromises with different divine desires.

First, we must understand that Christians place great importance on free will and consider it logically impossible without the ability to determine our eternal fate. Christians, however, also believe two very significant things about heaven: First, no saint ever sins. Second, every saint has free will. This means that free will and not sinning are entirely compatible, which itself means that God could have created us in a state similar to heaven in which we have all the benefits of free will without anyone being damned to hell. There is no reason to think that an omnimax deity would have some other motive that would have been worth letting many of his beloved creatures suffer eternally.

Second, God could have chosen to refrain from placing temporal limits on his mercy. Catholics believe one has his entire life to enter and remain in a state of grace, and once he dies, he has no more chances. There is no reason to imagine that souls in hell cannot repent. On the contrary, they have more reasons than ever to do so. If they can repent, why would God not accept their repentance and forgive their sins, as he would joyfully have done one second before they breathed their last breath? If they can't repent, why would he remove them from the earth where repentance is always possible? The only response I have encountered is that, given an infinite amount of time to repent, all souls would achieve salvation and no one could really choose eternal torture. It is presented as though that's a bad thing! I am not convinced that an infinite number of opportunities necessitates that something will occur, but infinity is a difficult concept to grasp and apply, so I will grant this point for the sake of argument. Regardless, the one choice to repent, whenever it happens, would still be absolutely free and free will in that sense would still be maintained. Does it really matter that everyone is fated to freely accept God's love and live with him in perfect happiness for all eternity? Why would God allow us to freely choose eternal torture when he could have achieved all known objectives without a single soul in hell forever?

Third, assuming the principle that infinite chances equals necessary occurrence, God could have chosen to extend the lives of humans until they enter a state of grace and then allow them to die immediately, assuring their salvation. This plan is actually superior to the second because no one would have to suffer in hell even temporarily!

Fourth, God could have chosen to deny humans free will. Many, if not all, souls in hell would have preferred to have no free will if they had known they would be condemned to eternal torment. Unless this desire is irrational, there is no reason to suppose God would act against their wishes. Would a human parent hand his suicidal child a loaded gun so that he can freely choose whether to live or die? Or would he act in the best interest of the child and not give him that free choice? Why would God act differently?

Fifth, God could have chosen to annihilate the souls that now go to hell. I do not accept the explanation that because God wills them to be eternal, he cannot destroy them. Even if that were so, God would still have known better than to make creatures who will find themselves better off not existing. Who would prefer to suffer unimaginable pain for eternity than to be annihilated? If God is the source of all happiness, what is the point in existing without him forever?

C. Implausibility as Divine Plan

1. Redemption

God becomes incarnate, suffers an execution to cancel a debt of justice to himself, incurred by his creatures by violating rules that he himself decreed. Paying someone else's monetary debts is certainly possible, but paying someone else's debts of justice is just not possible. Allowing someone to suffer in another's place for punishment is not possible for humans, and there is no reason why it would be logically possible for God either. Debts of justice are inherently non-transferrable.

2. Faith

Christians accept the importance of faith, ironically, as a matter of faith. Never have I encountered an explanation why one's salvation depends so heavily on believing a certain set of propositions true that made any semblance of sense. The best attempt casts it as a matter of personal trust in God, but there are two major defects of this explanation. First, it completely fails to address the fact that non-believers don't believe God exists, so any discussion of trust in him is nonsensical. Second, trust is not something that is freely chosen. If one believes he can trust someone, then trust is not praiseworthy. If one believes he cannot trust someone, then mistrust is not blameworthy. The issue of belief is central and cannot be replaced with trust. Let us examine an example to illustrate. One day a man is sitting at home and he receives a telephone call. The voice at the other end is unfamiliar, but the speaker claims to be a billionaire second cousin that the man has never met or even heard of. He says that if the man sends him all the money from his savings account within twenty-four hours, he will give him ten million dollars, but if he does not, he will receive nothing. He gives the man some reasons to suggest he is legitimate, but there are problems with his story that the man cannot resolve. He asks the man just to trust him despite the difficulties. Let's say for the sake of the story that this offer is legitimate. Would the man be blameworthy for not believing this story without sufficient evidence simply because it turned out to be true? Then why do Christians consider non-Christians not just blameworthy but deserving of eternal torment for not believing the story of Jesus without sufficient evidence simply because it turned out to be true? If someone does not believe one's important message, is it better to enlighten him to best of one's ability or to torture him forever?

One story from the Gospels presents us with an interesting question. Why is the Apostle Thomas' doubt indulged by Jesus and he later considered a saint whereas later doubters were condemned, excommunicated, and occasionally tortured and executed? Why are we not justified in saying that we will not believe until we can examine Jesus' wounds ourselves?

3. Judaism

The Bible reports that the Jews are the chosen people of God. Christians view the Jews as being chosen primarily to prepare the way of Jesus to save the entire world. This presents some problems that are difficult to answer. Why did God institute the Mosaic Law if it was going to be rejected by the Christian Church? If it was salvific, then why replace it? If it was not salvific, then why institute it at all? Also, since most Jews, both in the time portrayed in the Gospel and ever since, have rejected Jesus as the messiah, why did God guard over them for three thousand years? Why would the chosen people be so unlikely to accept the message of their own messiah, who was the purpose of their entire existence? There is nothing definitive here, but it does cause one to question the plausibility of the story.

4. Biblical Problems

The Bible is full of material which suggests it is the work of humans and not of God: contradictions, failed prophecies, scientific errors, religious intolerance, misogyny, racism, sexual perversion, and blatant absurdities. I recommend The Skeptic's Annotated Bible as an excellent reference to Biblical imperfections.

5. Human or Divine?

The story of Christianity, and especially of Jesus, has all of the markings of a purely human phenomenon.

• similarities to god-men in other religions
  • divine father, human mother
  • gathered apostles
  • suffered for the sins of humans
  • resurrected from dead
  • ascended into heaven
• message not proclaimed universally
  • attested to by small, unoriginal, unverifiable miracles
  • recorded by men decades after death with many imperfections
  • Christians themselves deeply divided into many sects
  • still has not reached all persons
  • superior alternatives absurdly easily devised
• doubted by those who knew him best
  • Israelites
  • Nazarenes
  • family
  • apostles
  • St. John the Baptist
• return expected imminently for millennia still not accomplished

We can either conclude that God had some mysterious motivation for letting his perfect divine plan appear like a human-made religion, or that Christianity is a human-made religion. The choice is clear to me.

IV. Faith Paradigms

A. Definition

I have examined all of the major reasons I had for believing and have rejected all of them as insufficient for establishing the truth of the Catholic faith. At this point, some readers may be thinking that I have missed the entire point of religion: that it's about faith in that which you cannot prove, not about logic and science. Allow me to respond to this.

I had no definitive understanding of faith until high school when I acquired one, which I call the rationalistic faith paradigm, that differs from what appears to be the official position of the Catholic Church. The rationalistic claim is that one can firmly prove the truth of the Catholic faith using only reason and sense perception. That is, one can establish the authenticity of the Gospels, the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, the divinity of Jesus as the Christ, the establishment of the Catholic Church, and the certain meaning of the promise of the Holy Spirit to guide the Church, all without any appeal to faith. One normally cites the reasons I have examined and rejected above, often called the motives of credibility, as the evidence. Having demonstrated the Catholic Church to be a divinely inspired, infallible authority, we can accept as definitively certain what the Church presents for our belief. Faith is merely a matter of trust and assent to the authority that one has discovered through rational inquiry, and thus in its foundations is completely rationalistic.

What I call the mystical faith paradigm approximates the teachings of the Catholic Church to the best of my knowledge, though I am certainly open to correction and clarification. It presents all of the same motives of credibility as the rationalistic faith paradigm, and with the same intention of arguing for the reasonableness of faith, but it makes more modest claims regarding the effectiveness of this sort of reasoning. It does not claim that these motives of credibility actually prove the faith, but that they are nonetheless strong arguments in its favor and help incline the individual to believe. The mystical faith paradigm differs from the rationalistic primarily in its insistence on faith being a supernatural grace granted at God's good pleasure. Thus our faith is based on supernatural grace, not on the motives of credibility.

B. Analysis

While imperfect and mistaken, neither paradigm is particularly troublesome until one considers the Church's condemnation of unbelief. St. Thomas Aquinas, widely considered the greatest philosopher and theologian in the history of the Church, in his famous Summa Theologica, boldly states that unbelief is the worst of all sins, thus saying that not believing in Christ is worse than murder, without providing any clear reasons why it's sinful in the first place.

Under the rationalistic paradigm, which I repeat is not accepted by the Church but under which I operated for many years, the condemnation would imply that the Catholic faith is so obviously true and divine that anyone who encounters the arguments in its favor will, without exception, believe it's the one true religion. Failing to profess the faith becomes a morally culpable choice to ignore the truth. This is so obviously absurd, and additionally irrelevant, that I will discuss it no further.

Under the mystical paradigm, the condemnation implies that God grants the mystical “light of divine faith” to people of good will who encounter the arguments in favor of the faith so that they can believe, even though the arguments themselves are not completely sufficient in themselves. In fact, it is even said that the arguments are totally insufficient without this grace! This is slightly more difficult to address because of its mystical nature, but not much more. The first objection is that people, in general at least, are not consciously aware of the offer of divine grace, thus it is impossible to make a willful decision to accept or reject it. An act must be willful in order to be sinful, but the supposed worst sin of all is not willful, nor even conscious. The second objection is equally damaging: the only reason we have to believe in the existence of the light of divine faith is the authority of the Church, and the only reason we have to believe in the authority of the Church is the existence of the light of divine faith!

C. Conclusion

Anyone can present insufficient arguments for any faith, claim there is an undetectable and mysterious light of divine faith, and then condemn all unbelievers for rejecting something they don't have sufficient reasons for believing even exists. Should we take seriously everyone who makes such a claim and tremble in fear of displeasing a deity that we're supposed to believe without sufficient evidence and of burning forever in that religion's hell? Then why should we take the Church's threats seriously? If the evidence does not firmly establish an infallible authority, and I argue that in principle and for more reasons than I present in this essay that one can never be established, then we can ignore anything that is not supported by evidence.

Whether intuition and feelings, however, constitute sufficient reason for believing something falls within the jurisdiction of the individual, but I personally do not trust my own intuition enough to decide that a particular comprehensive metaphysical belief system is absolutely, objectively, and universally true and live the only life that I know that I have according to its teachings. If anything, my intuition tells me that Christianity is a purely human and historical phenomenon, not a divine religion instituted by an omnimax deity.

V. Conclusion

Having demolished all of my former reasons for believing, discovered numerous significant, unresolved difficulties, alternate explanations which make much more sense, and established that believing on faith unacceptable, my belief had disappeared. My desire for intellectual honesty and my sufferings from scrupulosity had lead me on an extensive search for the truth. My deeply ingrained fear of hell resulted in prolonging it for several months after I could no longer profess the creed. The threat of infinite suffering as infinite, discussed earlier, had not lost all of its power. Eventually, however, I mustered the courage to say to myself, “If there exists a deity who will punish me forever for rejecting something as absurd, implausible, and disgusting as Christianity, then so be it.”

An Ancient Theodicy

The following is the third in a series of writings which I have composed previously. It was written in November 2004. It has been slightly edited to maintain privacy.

I have listened to a local easy listening music radio station operated by a small private business college for more than a dozen years. Each weekday, they present a short segment by one of the producers in which he presents some various thoughts of the day. Sometimes they are philosophical, sometimes they are humorous, sometimes they are civic, and sometimes they are religious. Today's was religious or, more accurately, anti-atheistic. The basic story he presented can be found at Snopes Urban Legends, though I must acknowledge that he did not falsely identify the student as Albert Einstein. In response to today's commentary, I sent the following e-mail:

Mr. (name removed),

I am writing in reference to your commentary of 19 November 2004, the story of the atheist professor and the Christian student who silences him with an ancient theodicy that this professor has somehow never encountered in his lifetime.

If anyone thinks that he has solved the problem of evil by such philosophical legerdemain, then he is greatly mistaken. Anyone who believes that the existence of murder, rape, theft, and disease-causing bacteria can be dissolved by defining them as “the absence of good” is not being intellectually honest but is rather seeking a cheap defense of his religious beliefs. It supposedly answers the Epicurean paradox by challenging the fourth proposition, that evil exists, but it is only satisfactory to those who will accept any answer rather than consider the idea that he is mistaken in his religious beliefs. Further, if he thinks he has found some brilliant new insight, then he is badly in need of religious, philosophical, and historical education. To the best of my knowledge, this response first appeared in the famous Confessions of St. Augustine of Hippo circa 397 CE.

Occasionally the student in the story you told is falsely identified as Albert Einstein. I was pleased that you presented it without this baseless lie; admittedly, it would have not have been dishonesty on your part if you had done so, but it would have been gullible and irresponsible.

I respect everyone's right to believe or disbelieve. I spent the first twenty-five years of my life as a devout Catholic Christian before I faced my fears, questioned my reasons for believing, and realized that my belief in the divinity of Christ was an untenable tradition I had been taught since my youth. My point is that I know what it is like on both sides of the fence.

Here is my bottomline: I resent and protest your depiction of an atheist professor as an ignorant buffoon. If you want to promote Christianity or even criticize non-theism, I have no objections whatsoever. I consider unfair mockery, however, to be outside the realm of good taste and respectfulness for even a privately owned radio station. I have been a faithful listener of (station removed) for more than half of my short life and never have I been as displeased as I am today.

With Utmost Sincerity,
(name removed)

No response was ever received.

From Catholic to Atheist

In the interest of providing additional perspective to my thoughts, I will now share the tale of my journey from Catholicism to atheism.

The circumstances of my entrance into the Church are very commonplace. My Catholic parents had me baptized shortly after my birth, brought me to Mass each Sunday, and sent me to formal religious education until I received the sacrament of confirmation at the age of thirteen. Around that time, I developed a serious interest in religion and became relatively devout in my faith. I sought to understand the teachings of the Church more deeply. I read the Bible, the newly published universal catechism, and a few books on apologetics, though my forays into online apologetic debate were largely uneventful. Discussion of religion with two atheist friends at the end of high school, however, planted seeds of major doubt in my mind, which seemed to flower immediately before being quickly crushed by fear and anxiety.

At university I entrenched myself even more deeply into religion, leading to serious considerations of entering the seminary or the monastery, but the fear of an eternal hell which had forcefully preserved me in the faith soon created a terrestrial hell for me in form of scrupulosity. I will not discuss the details of the situation, but I will say that it truly was a nightmare. The condition persisted for years with only temporary, partial, and sporadic reprieves despite extensive assistance from the clergy and other persons. Eventually, however, the issue of doubt became a major focus of my obsession and the seeds planted years before germinated such that they were ready to blossom with the proper amount of cultivation.

A frank discussion with a friend who had earlier made a similar journey provided the catalyst to a thorough investigation of my doubts over the course of several months. During this time I read everything that I could find, online or in print, pro- and anti-religion. I spoke with family, friends and priests. I spent much time in prayer and in thought. In the end I found that I had lost my faith from a combination of the obliteration of my former justifications for belief, the establishment of numerous insurmountable objections and difficulties, and the realization that everything in life makes much more sense if Catholicism is indeed false. I left the Church almost four months after my initial decision to question my religion.

Though my sufferings certainly helped prompt the investigation, my loss of faith and subsequent apostasy were the result of logical, systematic inquiry rather than an emotionally motivated escape from the torment I experienced at the hands of religion. I am certain, however, that many believers will dismiss my reasons as less than noble. In response I would like to indicate that my decision to face my doubts and fears demanded a certain amount of courage. With my understanding that to entertain and indulge one's doubts was a sin grave enough to merit eternal damnation, I willfully endangered my soul in order to satisfy my sense of intellectual honesty and desire for truth. Additionally, I realized that it would perhaps be impossible to feel sorry and thus seek forgiveness for the sin of doubting if I found the Catholic faith to be true, meaning that I effectively had to surmount a point-of-no-return in order to even begin. Whatever the case, supposed emotional motivations do not discount rational argumentation and criticism.

My scrupulosity immediately and substantially diminished upon my apostasy, though the fear of hell lingered for approximately six months before fully dissipating. I initially considered myself an agnostic, but the more appropriate term would have been weak atheist. A further examination of the problem of evil a few months later prompted my transition to strong atheism. I have maintained that position since and that is where I stand today.