Santa Claus: A Web of White Lies

Although with respect to religion I've gone from devout believer to devout skeptic, I've always opposed encouraging children to believe in Santa Claus. It has always struck me as very strange that parents spend so much money on gifts for their children and then lie to them by saying that a magical elf snuck into their house in the middle of the night to drop them off, thus giving him all the credit for their work. I don't like the idea of lying to children in general, but this seems like a rather odd lie. I understand that some parents truly enjoy playing along with the idea of Santa Claus and sometimes use him as an unassailable authority when kids whine for a toy late in the year, but it seems that children would enjoy the holiday just as much if they knew their parents were responsible for all their gifts; older children and adults certainly like receiving presents despite knowing where they came from. As a Christian, I wanted to avoid lying as much as possible and I was concerned that children who learned that Santa Claus is imaginary would then start to think that God is imaginary as well. As an atheist, I also feel uneasy about lying unless truly necessary, though I certainly don't lament any nascent skepticism created in children about what their parents tell them about invisible beings. Still it strikes me as a bad idea to build and maintain this web of white lies for children.

Despite what some readers may suppose, I myself didn't have a negative experience with belief in Santa Claus. As is common, I believed in him as a young child and stopped believing in him sometime in elementary school. I don't remember being at all upset when I learned the truth. I didn't feel disappointed, deceived or disillusioned. I've heard stories, however, about children who do experience some amount of grief and who do sincerely struggle to accept the truth for some time. No, it's not a tragedy, but it is completely avoidable simply by not perpetuating absurd stories about an ageless magical elf who lives where there is no land, who can make deer fly, and who can deliver free toys to hundreds of millions of households in a single night though still unable to give nice presents to poor children.

I don't want anyone to get the impression, however, that I have some sort of weird vendetta against Santa Claus. It's not something I spend much time thinking about and it hardly even qualifies as a minor issue. Since I don't intend to have children, the question of what to say will probably never arise, but I decided long ago that I wouldn't lie to any children that I might end up raising one day. I certainly don't interfere with anyone else's parenting choices by telling children the truth about Santa Claus. When children talk to me about him, I listen attentively, but I don't ever say anything to suggest that he's real or that I myself believe in him. It's actually completely identical to my personal policy regarding children when they talk to me about God.

Bah Humbug!

I don't really like Christmas, but my reasons are mostly unrelated to religion or consumerism. Maybe I'm just a scrooge, but I dislike how Christmas dominates the month of December such that one can hardly think of the month without thinking of the holiday. I'm just tired of Christmas decorations, Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Christmas sweaters, Christmas cookies, Christmas candy, Christmas drinks, Christmas songs, Christmas poems, Christmas TV specials, Christmas movies, Christmas parties, Christmas travel and the incessant chatter about Christmas. I don't inherently dislike any of those things; it's just that it's too much for too long. We have other holidays, of course, but Christmas is unquestionably the holiday of the year. I would prefer to have several smaller holidays throughout the year during each of the four seasons rather than focusing so much energy on one particular winter day. One of the primary reasons that New Year's Day is one of my favorite holidays is that it's the unofficial end of the Christmas season and that our lives can return to normal after a little more relaxation. I'm already looking forward to it.

Religious Justification for Bigotry

I've only recently begun to fully realize the oddity of the obsession that certain religions have with homosexuality. Since I was raised as an observant Catholic and grew up in a relatively traditional society, I used to unreflectively consider homosexuality abnormal and homosexual acts morally wrong. As a heterosexual, I didn't really give the topic much thought during my religious years, but I assented to the teaching that to engage in homosexual behavior was gravely sinful and I opposed efforts to grant all persons the legal right to marry whomever they choose. To be fair, I in fact believed that every sexual act except that within a sacramental marriage and without contraception was gravely immoral, so homosexuality wasn't particularly singled out and was never an issue of much personal concern, but I still certainly thought it was immoral. All of that changed when I rejected the authority of religious leaders to dictate to me what was and wasn't acceptable. This change of opinion regarding homosexuality upon deconversion seems to be almost universal; I can't recall ever encountering any unbeliever who objected to homosexuality or to granting everyone the same legal rights with regard to marriage. And it's not that secular arguments against homosexuality are fallacious; I haven't even ever seen one. The only objections to homosexuality are religious and authoritarian and they exemplify the problems caused directly by religion.

It seems that the primary reason that many believers still consider homosexuality so morally abhorrent is that they personally find it disgusting, unlike other sins that also once received strong public disapproval. Fornication, i.e., sex between two unmarried persons, is equally condemned in the scriptures, has traditionally been regarded as taboo, and is still considered gravely sinful by the Catholic Church and certain other Christian sects, but there are no political efforts to prevent unmarried heterosexual couples from living together or to deny them certain legal benefits, at least after a certain number of years. What was once forbidden has become perfectly normal. Today it's not at all uncommon for even church-going Christians to live with their boyfriends or girlfriends while dating. Society has shed some of its former moral restrictions and most people today seem happy with the change as it grants them more personal freedom to indulge their natural sexual desires. The change happened quietly without becoming a political issue. Unlike with the situation with homosexuality, the majority of the population is composed of heterosexuals who by definition find straight sex appealing, so there was no issue of disgust or otherness to impede this repeal of the former moral code.

Where exactly does this feeling of disgust originate? It seems to me that the initial negative feelings were the result of simple xenophobia, i.e., antipathy toward anyone who is different from oneself or one's group, and that these feelings have been sustained by culture, especially by religious dogma. For my own part, I can't remember what I thought the first time I saw a homosexual couple together, but I definitely can't remember a time when I was aware of homosexuality when I wasn't also aware that it was considered strange and objectionable by most people. I know that I learned it from others, some of whom must have given an explicitly religious justification for their intolerance toward people who are different from themselves, for there are no other reasons to object to what sex of person mature adults choose to associate with. Since the time I cast off the heavy chains of religious devotion, however, my reason and my compassion for fellow humans have overridden any prior feelings of uneasiness about homosexuality. It seems high time that American society as a whole discard its religious obsessions, overcome any involuntary distaste it still experiences, and fully acknowledge the rights of all people. We do seem to be moving in that direction, but as is often the case, it's primarily religion that's hindering social progress. Whether religion actually creates bigotry or simply provides hypocritical justification for it, irrational belief is the enemy of human advancement.

A Man of No Faith

In dialogues with atheists, I regularly see theists pose the following inquiry:

If you don't have faith in God, then what do you have faith in?

The most typical answers include rationality, science and humanity. While I find nothing truly objectionable in these responses, it's my opinion that the most appopriate response is in fact, “Nothing. I have no faith.”

The problem is that a believer's faith and an unbeliever's faith are completely different. When a believer says they have faith in God, they mean that they believe in his existence without sufficient evidence, that they trust God to always do what's right, or both. When a nonbeliever says they have faith in rationality or science, they mean they think that's the best method to discover the truth about the universe, and when they say they have faith in humanity, they mean that humans must solve their own problems and that they have hope they in fact will, but it's never unbounded confidence like believers put in their deity. These two religious and two secular varieties of faith just don't truly overlap. Support for the scientific method and recognition that we must address our problems without divine assistance are not at all equivalent to belief without evidence and absolute trust in an invisible being, even though we often call them all by the same name of faith.

So in the sense that theists probably mean when they ask the question, most atheists simply have no faith whatsoever, but I don't really fault them for providing a seemingly more positive and optimistic answer than what I recommend. For my own part, however, I prefer to answer as honestly as possible and to challenge the assumption of the believer that I must have faith like they do.

A Man of No God

UPDATE: I officially resigned a week later. While I originally became ordained for the sake of novelty and as a protest against the special status of religious leaders before the law in performing certain ceremonies, I became increasingly concerned about confirming misconceptions about atheism, about my own conceptual clarity, about the apparent seriousness of the organization and finally about potential legal issues.

Today I have become an ordained minister with the First Church of Atheism. From time to time over the past few years I considered being ordained online with other groups, but I always decided against it because they always seemed too mystical or spiritual despite being completely non-dogmatic. This is not an issue with the First Church of Atheism. I'm fully legally ordained, but by an organization whose principles I support and which cannot possibly be mistaken for a liberal Christian denomination.

When I was a devout Catholic, I seriously contemplated entering the seminary to become a priest. Then as now, I didn't want any children and I knew that I couldn't in good conscience marry with the intention never to have any children, so it seemed like a reasonable option. I went so far as to write to a traditional seminary and look into scheduling a vocational retreat but no further. Eventually my scrupulosity came to dominate my life and removed the possibility from consideration. It surely would have been a major mistake to pursue that path and I have no idea what my life would look like today if I had. It probably though wouldn't have been as disastrous as if I had married a devout woman and had a child with her before undergoing a deconversion! It's remarkable that I might have become a Catholic priest and that now I'm an atheist minister.

I'm currently considering ordering the package which includes an official ordination certificate and identification card. I don't actually intend to perform any services, but I'm rather pleased that my new status means that in theory I have the same legal rights to preach my ideas to congregations and to perform weddings and funerals as any believer in the supernatural. I also like referring to myself as an atheist minister!

’Tis the Season

Regular visitors, if indeed I have any, will notice that I've added a logo to the site indicating that I celebrate Humanlight, a Humanist winter holiday about reason, compassion and hope. In order to avoid any possible copyright violations, I've created my own image without the logo from the official website and I'm rather pleased with the result. In my opinion, a burning candle symbolizes the idea of Humanlight much better than a shining sun. The festival occurs at the time of year when the sun provides the least amount of light and heat in the northern hemisphere, where the majority of humanity resides. Furthermore, the sun is a natural object whereas a candle is a human artifact, one which represents our ability to illuminate a dark world using the power of our reason and creativity. If anyone wishes to use the image I created on their own websites, then please do so.

This is my third year observing this festival and I intend to make this year the most meaningful yet. I've enjoyed starting my own traditions and personalizing my observance of this new holiday. Last year I purchased a simple metal candlestick and a white candle which each evening several weeks prior to December 23rd I lit while saying, “May the light of human reason illuminate a dark world.” This year I plan to repeat this ritual, to decorate my balcony with colored lights and to devise other ways to mark the holiday. I still observe Christmas by exchanging gifts, dining and visiting with my Christian family on December 25th as well as with my co-workers earlier in the season, but I would like to focus on Humanlight rather than a formerly religious and now essentially consumerist holiday.

Not Following Jesus

If Christians fully embraced and lived their lives according to all of the teachings of Jesus rather just those which still allow complete integration into society, the history of the western world would remarkably different. Jesus preached voluntary poverty, radical pacifism and irresponsible spontaneity; he told his followers to sell all of their possessions, to actively do good to their enemies and even to avoid thinking about tomorrow! How many Christians do you know who practice all of these teachings? Even the vast majority of monks, friars and nuns live in communities where they share possessions and which require a certain amount of administration. There are some truly nomadic and mendicant groups, but they are extremely rare. Perhaps less than one Christian in a million actually lives their life completely according to the Gospels. The rest generally enjoy a more conventional and comfortable lifestyle, excluding the significant number in the third-world who are involuntarily poor. Why is there such a disparity between what Christians teach and what they practice?

The key to understanding this divergence is to realize that Jesus' ministry as portrayed in the Gospels was essentially an apocalyptic cult. The major theme of Jesus' preaching was that the “Kingdom of Heaven” was coming very soon and that his followers were to repent of their sins, ask for forgiveness and amend their lives. His followers expected that the end of the world would happen at any moment and only with that in mind can we make any sense of his directives to live so irresponsibly. If he had intended to found a religion that was supposed to last for millennia, then he surely would have given some more practical instructions. When Jesus' didn't return very soon, his followers did what they had to do in order to survive: they compromised with the world. All of the difficult guidelines, which technically appear optional in the Gospels themselves, have been de-emphasized, especially in Protestantism. The majority of believers don't seem to worry about their possessions making them larger than a camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle. Christians today are no more likely to give money to charity than any other group and, here in the United States, they seem more likely to start a war than many other groups.

When I first started reading the Gospels on my own as teenager, I was very disturbed by what I read because I lived a normal lifestyle, not a radical Gospel lifestyle. I owned some possessions. I didn't start fights, but I would defend myself if attacked. I planned for tomorrow by studying. I wanted to get married. I loved my family and I didn't want to leave them to serve God. I didn't really spend any time volunteering. All of this made me feel very guilty and very afraid that God would damn me to hell for not obeying his commandments well enough, but I didn't want to live the insane life preached by Jesus. I didn't see anyone else worrying about this, but it was impossible for me to see Jesus' ministry for what it was, for that would mean that Jesus was mistaken and therefore not God. Eventually I learned the Catholic Church's teachings that one only has to die in a state of grace, not give away everything you own, to go to heaven. Similar yet distinct problems arose because of this, but that's another story. I knew I wasn't really following Jesus and it bothered me. I don't know why it doesn't bother more people.

I was prompted to write on this topic by the now annual coverage of Christians' war on “The War on Christmas.” I find it ironic for Christians to demand that minimum-wage employees explicitly say “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays” while they spend hundreds of dollars on frivolous gifts, often manufactured in dirty and dangerous factories by malnourished children in third-world countries. What an odd way to celebrate the birth of their lord who instructed them not to own even a second pair of sandals!

Death as Non-Existence

I find it remarkably difficult to fully conceptualize the extinction of my consciousness and personality upon my death. While I logically expect my subsequent non-existence to be identical to the billions of years prior to my birth, it seems that I actually tend to imagine it more like a deep sleep from which I will eventually somehow awaken at the end of time. I have to consciously remind myself that I won't ever even know that I'm dead because I won't exist. I then naturally wonder what it will be like not to exist and I have to remind myself again that it won't be like anything because it simply won't be. My mind simply cannot grasp what it means not to exist since from its own perspective it has always existed. It has been argued that fear of death is the principal cause of religious belief in humanity and I would argue that our instinctive tendency to think of our minds as always existing greatly contributes to it as well.

Like practically all humans, I certainly want to exist indefinitely. I say indefinitely rather than forever because I don't preclude the possibility that I might want my existence to end at some point. The only aspect of religion which I sincerely miss is the belief that life will continue forever. And it's not that I want just to believe; I want it to really be true. The promise of eternal bliss in a never-ending paradise is alluring, even if inconceivable, but I'm much more intrigued by the idea of repeatedly reincarnating and leading radically different lives in radically different circumstances. I would like to know what it's like to be both sexes, every ethnic group, attractive and ugly, strong and weak, intelligent and stupid, rich and poor, in every combination thereof, in every locale and in every age. It would be necessary that the memory of those lives be maintained, perhaps for later review and reflection outside of the physical universe, in order to distinguish it from an existence of only a single life. It seems that such a spiritual paradigm would be far more satisfying and poetic than the unchanging heaven of Christianity. None of this matters in the least, however, because I have no reason to believe that it's anything but an idle dream.

It's rather difficult to accept that I have no even remotely reasonable hope for life after death and that my consciousness will almost certainly be extinguished in a matter of decades at the latest. It's not that I really fear non-existence; I simply dread an existence filled with the despair of ever realizing my desires. In the end, all I have is a wish to exist indefinitely and all I can do is live this life to the fullest, trying not to waste too much precious time on idle dreams.

Labels Galore

We nonreligious have a remarkable number of labels with which we identify ourselves. I acknowledge that each has a unique denotation and connotation, that we disagree amongst ourselves what each one means, that we debate the merits of the options and that we often change labels, but the terms greatly overlap and tend to describe essentially the same group of people. Here is an incomplete list:

• agnostic
• antitheist
• apatheist
• atheist
• bright
• doubter
• freethinker
• godfree
• godless
• heathen
• heretic
• humanist
• ignostic
• infidel
• irreligious
• materialist
  
• naturalist
• nonbeliever
• nontheist
• nonreligious
• rationalist
• realist
  
• secularist
• skeptic
• unbeliever

We often subdivide atheism into at least two types:

• weak / strong
• negative / positive
• implicit / explicit

And we have at least two words to label those who used to be religious:

• apostate
• deconvert

If you have another fairly common label which I have forgotten, please post it in a comment and I will consider adding it to this catalogue of nonreligious labels. I have almost certainly forgotten one of the numerous names we call ourselves.

Neither Last Nor Least

Surveys indicate that approximately 15 percent of the United States population identifies as “non-religious,” making us the second largest group behind Christians, yet we're often listed last in most contexts, even by the most liberal sources. The list normally proceeds in descending order of adherents with the exception of the non-religious. If they bother to mention us at all, it's usually little more than an afterthought. I think this is wrong. The non-religious greatly outnumber all religions except Christianity combined, yet as a group we're hardly in the public's consciousness at all. I don't think this will ever change until we become so numerous that we're impossible to ignore.

The Concept of Neutrality

Many people fail to understand the concept of neutrality in church-state relations and I suspect most of these have never given any thought to comparing the various theoretical possibilities which clearly demonstrate it. They seem to believe that anything that fails to support their opinion automatically supports someone else's opinion and I think this is at least partially because they never stop to ponder the situation if the roles were reversed.

Let's examine the case of the motto “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency and coinage. When the issue of removing it arises, they see only two options:

(1) Keep the religious motto
(2) Remove the religious motto (and possibly replace it with a secular one)

They view the first option as favoring belief and the second as favoring disbelief. They don't see a neutral option and since there are more believers than non-believers, they argue that the majority should win. The problem is that they don't realize there's a third major option because it receives no support:

(3) Use an anti-religious motto such as “There are no gods”

With the full spectrum under consideration, they can see that the first option favors belief, the third option favors disbelief, but that the second option is truly neutral. It neither supports nor opposes any religious position. That the third option is never presented as a viable possibility doesn't negate its usefulness in demonstrating government neutrality.

The same principle can be shown with the issue of public prayer such as that at football games and city council meetings. The third option in this case would be to open or close the events by saying something like, “Since there are no gods, we have to rely on ourselves.” While I wholeheartedly agree with it, I don't think it would be appropriate to make this kind of statement in an official capacity at a public gathering.

Of course, many people who support government promotion of their religion have no interest in neutrality, but I honestly believe that at least some people who oppose removing religious mottos and public prayers simply need to be educated about the concept of neutrality.

Godfree for Three Years

Today is the third anniversary of my becoming a freethinker. In the months directly following my apostasy, I had plenty to say about my newfound freedom and peace. On the first anniversary, I wrote a thoughtful piece on an online forum reflecting on the many changes of the previous year. On the second anniversary, I wrote a simpler yet still substantive blog entry. This year I have very little to say because I have grown so accustomed to my situation, but I still want to commemorate one of the most important occasions in my life here in the most appropriate venue available. Here's to my intellectual freedom!

Prayer in Public Venues

This month The Florida-Times Union has published two articles, two editorials and numerous letters to the editor on the issue of prayer at public high school football games and other public venues. The original article which sparked the debate was about a high school football coach in nearby St. Johns County who regularly leads his team in prayer.

• 1 October — original article by Tiffany Pakkala of The St. Augustine Record, “St. Johns coach under fire for team prayers”
• 2 October — editorial by Ron Littlepage, columnist for The Florida Times-Union, “Christian prayers inappropriate at government events”
• 3 October — letter by Marcia Greer, “Public schools: Prayer is not allowed”
• 3 October — letter by Paul B. Schaeffer, “Football games: Prayer is not mandatory.”
• 4 October — letter by Bobbie O'Connor, “Public prayer: Guidelines are offered.”
• 8 October — letter by Chris Tidball, “Religious intolerance is blatant.”
• 8 October — letter by Carolyn Henley, “Postgame Prayer: Coach is to be praised.”
• 8 October — letter by Jim Reape, “Postgame Prayer: Coach is doing a fine job”
• 9 October — editorial by Sam Borden, sports columnist for The Florida Times-Union, “Public school coaches should not preach”
• 10 October — letter by David Schwam Baird, “Public Prayer: Infringing on freedom”
• 11 October — letter by Richard Kusnierek, “Majority rule not always proper”
• 13 October — letter by Sonja Harpe, “Church, State: Going too far”
• 13 October — letter by Harry Parrott, Jr., “Time out on football and prayer”
• 15 October — letter by Brad Howald, “Prayers at Events: No prohibition”
• 16 October — letter by Steven Eddy, “First Amendment: Coach has a right”
• 17 October — letter by Charles Collins, “Religion: Coach should be supported”
• 18 October — article by Wayne Ezell, reader advocate for The Florida Times-Union, “When prayer is controversial”
• 22 October — letter by Bryan Price, “Religion: Coach is the government”
  

I will continue to post updates until this issue passes.

Telling Others about Hell

Believers and nonbelievers tend to disagree about whether telling someone that they will be sent to hell constitutes a warning or a threat. Believers, convinced of the truth of their religion, feel that they must share this truth and attempt to save others from an eternity of suffering by warning them of the danger. Nonbelievers, unconvinced of the truth of the believer's claims, sometimes feel threatened, viewing the believers as the ones making the threats, using God as a proxy to express their anger and hatred toward nonbelievers.

Having been on both sides of this issue, I can sympathize with both groups. I know what it's like to be told that I'm going to hell, but I also remember what it's like to honestly believe that others would be damned and that I should at least make some effort to help them avoid that fate. I feel uncomfortable both with simply letting religious fanatics attack all of those who disagree with them while hiding under the veil of piety and with restricting the ability of people to express what they sincerely believe to be true. In the end, I prefer to support full freedom of speech as the law should never enshrine a particular viewpoint by prohibiting others from being expressed and discussed. Cultural conventions generally address issues such as this more effectively than the law, though I must admit that I'm concerned about the sustainability of informal norms in a socially fragmented and ideologically diverse modern society. We cannot, however, let fights over something as absurd as mythical torture chambers erode one of our most treasured freedoms by limiting what those who disagree with us can say.

Religion in the Business Section

Last week I noticed my local newspaper, The Florida Times-Union, had moved the weekly religion subsection to the business section of the paper. Since the publishers are rather religious, I'm sure the irony of such a move was purely unintentional. I open up this special section every Friday and I frequently close it in disgust. Of particular interest is a regular column in which they profile a local religious figure with their responses to a standard set of questions, including one which asks whether they have ever doubted their faith and another how they have resolved them. Their answers are almost as standard as the questions themselves. None has ever even remotely acknowledged that to doubt one's faith is merely to recognize that one is fallible. They have all demonstrated that they desire orthodoxy, not truth.

Naturalist as a Label

Although I've never actually disliked the term atheist as a personal label, I've come to appreciate a reason to prefer an alternate label: it's just too specific. Referring to someone as an atheist says that they don't believe in any deities, but it doesn't say anything about their beliefs regarding other supernatural concepts. Although they generally don't, an atheist could believe in life after death, ghosts, spirits, auras, astrology, numerology, karma, fate or any other number of supernatural entities or forces. In light of this, I have a theoretical preference for the term naturalist, but I have concerns regarding its practical usage. If I tell someone I'm a naturalist and they then ask what that means, I can explain that I don't believe in anything supernatural. If they don't ask, however, I'm afraid they will either think that I'm just interested in the outdoors, think that I'm a nudist, or simply not understand. I've identified as a Humanist in certain circumstances, but I feel this term simultaneously says too much and too little about what I think. I would really rather err on the side of saying too little and avoid mischaracterizing my beliefs, which are constantly being refined and reanalyzed in the light of new experience. I suppose that I'll adopt naturalist as my preferred label for now and see how it goes.

Truth vs. Orthodoxy

Although I have written much criticism about religious faith, there is one particular aspect of it which I would like to address today: Faith isn't interested in truth, only in orthodoxy. Believers are almost never encouraged to pursue their doubts, rather they are encouraged to overcome them, to ignore them, to banish them, to squelch them. They are encouraged to cultivate their faith and to pray for its continual increase. All of this says they are not really interested in truth, only in maintaining what they already hold as true. A believer may argue that they know their religion to be true and they are attempting to avoid error by fighting against their doubts, but they fail to recognize that the very fact that they have doubts is clear indication that they don't really know it's true! They work to unwaveringly retain a view which is uncertain in their eyes. If they were actually seeking the truth, they would examine all of the evidence, no matter how blasphemous it may seem in light of their current opinions, and make the best possible conclusion based on what they have learned. It's impossible to respect anyone's claim to truth who has not only refused to investigate alternate views but actively suppressed feelings that they just might be right.

Prayer & Miracles

Although I discussed the absurdity of petitionary prayer in my original essay against the Catholic faith, I have never written nor read anything about one particular aspect of this type of prayer:

Almost every petitionary prayer is a prayer for a literal miracle.

Petitionary prayer is prayer in which a person asks something of a deity, as distinguished from prayers of thanksgiving and meditative prayers. And it almost always asks for a supernatural, physical miracle. Sometimes this is obvious, such as when someone prays for a miracle cure from an illness, but believers never seem to realize they are always asking the laws of nature to be broken on their behalf. Let's examine a simple example, perhaps the most common type of petitionary prayer: a person asks God to bless them or someone else and keep them healthy. All diseases and injuries have physical causes whether it be bacteria, viruses, genetic defects, radiation, etc. When someone prays for health, they are asking that these physical causes not have the negative effect they would have had, or for their medical treatments to have a positive effect they wouldn't have had, if the prayer had not been said. For a deity to answer this prayer, it must somehow intervene on a physical level and alter the laws of nature. Even to inspire the person to healthier lifestyle, it must alter the neurons inside the person's head, again necessitating a literal miracle. Citing “spiritual” or “mystical” effects is absolutely meaningless because they can't effect physical substances without having a miraculous physical effect. If someone prays for a safe road trip, they are asking for the weather to miraculously change or for their equipment to miraculously function properly or for drivers to miraculously pay better attention. Even deities cannot give you a safe trip without doing anything.

The only type of petitionary prayer that doesn't seek a miracle is one that asks for something spiritual. If one asks a deity for forgiveness, the granting of mercy wouldn't entail any physical miracle. Even in this case, however, a miracle would be necessary to know that the mercy was granted, so even asking to feel forgiven is asking for a physical miracle, too.

I would like to end with a paraphrased quote by another user at an online forum which doesn't fit my theme perfectly but which is topical enough and which I found hilarious: “If prayer were sent by e-mail, you'd get a message back from your mailer daemon!”

God's Choices

Today I read something rather remarkable in the church bulletin from my parents' parish about the gospel reading regarding who will and will not be saved from the fires of hell:

If it were up to God, everyone would be saved.

If?!? The Christian God is supposedly omnipotent. He created the universe. He created humanity. He issued the commandments. He founded the church. He instituted the sacraments. He created heaven and hell. He forgives us. He will judge us upon our death. Everything is part of his perfect plan. How can one possibly say that our salvation is not up to him? I suppose one could argue that he grants us free will, concentrating on free will and ignoring he grants us, but even then there is absolutely no reason to imagine that we must forever suffer untold agony if we reject him. People who reject God don't suffer hellish pain while living. Why must they suffer after their death unless God specifically ordains it? It most certainly is up to him.

This attitude of resignation to whatever God has arbitrarily chosen to do as logically necessary can be seen in other areas of Christian theology. Christians say that Jesus' death on the cross was necessary for God to forgive humanity. Why? An omnipotent deity can forgive anyone of anything for any reason without any blood being spilled. If God chooses to do so, then it's because he wants to, not because he has to. Everything truly is up to God. You simply cannot justify the supremely hideous doctrine of hell by saying that God has no choice but to send some of his beloved creatures there to fry for eternity.

Scrupulosity, OCD and the Doctrine of Hell

For approximately five years, from 1999 until my deconversion in 2004, I suffered greatly from an obsession with sin, death and hell known as scrupulosity. The condition is usually considered a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder and is normally treated with counseling and medication. While I respect the general opinion of mental health professionals in this matter, I always insisted that my own problem was not the result of abnormal brain chemistry but simply of sincere belief in the teachings of the Catholic Church regarding the afterlife and I think that the almost three years of my life since then, without any belief in the supernatural and without the slightest hint of obsession, have vindicated that opinion. My belief that God might damn me to hell forever almost drove me literally insane and the terrible anguish which it caused contributed to my sustained antipathy toward the idea of the Christian God.

The Catholic Church preaches two entirely incompatible doctrines which led to my scrupulosity:

1. God loves each person perfectly and unconditionally.
2. God will damn a person to hell forever if they commit a mortal sin and then die without having confessed or at least having made an act of perfect contrition with the intention to confess as soon as possible.

It also seems that one must engage in doublethink to fully accept both of these conflicting dogmas and that my eventual inability to reconcile them in my mind was indeed the source of my problem.

Let's say that I'm not certain whether I have committed a mortal sin despite knowing that it must be a gravely immoral act committed with full knowledge of the intellect and full consent of the will. A confessor would most likely instruct me that if I'm not certain, then it cannot be a mortal sin and I don't need to confess it. The problem is that there is no absolute distinction between certain and uncertain in any of the three elements and I was frequently uncertain about whether I was certain! The prospect of literally never-ending torture meant that I couldn't risk even the very slightest chance that I culpably judged wrongly and that obsession was the only rational response to infinite danger. I was often told that I had to trust my current confessor absolutely, but my confessors had directly contradicted each other, directly contradicted official church documents, and even told me that I was right in leaving other confessors who had instructed me wrongly. I was told even more often that I had to trust God because he loves us, but it was simply impossible for me to really believe this. If he really and truly loved us, then he would never assign us infinite punishment for finite sins or make our salvation so heavily dependent on the hour of our death. I was told that I was wrong to view God as a policeman who is constantly waiting for us to do something wrong so that he can punish us, but the image seemed to fit rather well except that, unlike a policeman, God had unlimited control over me, my world, the rules and the punishment! I simply couldn't love a being who threatened me with eternal fire if I didn't follow his rules exactly and who would just completely give up on me once I died. The Christian God was a monster in my eyes whom I grew to fear and despise more and more over the years.

My scrupulosity was treated by confessors, counselors, and even with medication from a psychiatrist. Their assistance granted me a certain limited amount of relief, but it was always only temporary and my condition never really improved beyond being simply bearable. My deconversion, which included the rejection of the concepts of God and hell as absurd, on the other hand, resulted in complete, instantaneous and permanent relief without any counseling or medication because my obsession was rational and had nothing to do with brain chemistry or my “failure” to trust and love God. Here is an example. Like sufferers of actual OCD, I had an obsession with washing and cleanliness. The typical OCD obsession is based on the small possibility of becoming sick and the minuscule possibility of becoming fatally sick from lack of washing and cleanliness. My obsession was based on the possibility of sinning by getting me or someone else sick from lack of washing and cleanliness. The worst that happens with an OCD obsession is that someone gets sick or dies. Everyone dies eventually, so while it makes sense to be careful, it doesn't make sense to be so careful that it ruins one's life. The worst that happened with my obsession, however, was that I burned in hell forever and ever. It really would be worth ruining one's life to avoid an eternity of pain, so my reaction was completely proportionate to the danger. Once I realized that there was no danger of hell, however, I returned to normal immediately. I started washing my hands only after using the restroom and sometimes before eating. I could touch anything without worrying about germs. I could drop a cookie on the ground and eat it without thinking about it except to laugh at how easy it had become. That is simply not possible for someone with abnormal brain chemistry and irrational obsessions. Of course, I would argue that my belief in hell was essentially irrational, but my scrupulosity itself was a perfectly rational response to that irrational belief. The infinite nature of hell had completely disrupted my normal pattern of ordinary risk management and created obsessive thinking, and the church's liturgy had forced me to participate in compulsive rituals such as mass and confession to eliminate these obsessive thoughts. My scrupulosity was thus generated by belief in the church and was thus resolved by disbelief in the church.

A fundamentalist Protestant might respond that one's salvation is assured upon accepting Jesus as one's lord and savior. (As an aside, I don't understand why they usually think Catholics haven't done this except that they don't use those exact words to describe their faith.) At first this seems to avoid the problem of always having one's salvation in doubt, but there other problems which only become apparent upon further reflection. If one's salvation were truly assured, then they could sin with impunity without any fear of hell. Fundamentalists respond that sinning greatly would be an indication that a person was never saved in the first place. This entails that one can be mistaken about whether they are truly saved because they also might sin greatly in the future and therefore they have no assurance of their salvation! One cannot argue that they know they would never do that because many people have been very devout in their faith and then sinned greatly. I have heard of fundamentalists who repeatedly tried to become saved after sinning because they didn't know whether it worked the other times. Since fundamentalist hell is just as terrible as Catholic hell, the same infinite danger merits the same obsessive response.

Familiarity & Absurdity

I have become so accustomed to viewing the world without any belief in the supernatural and to interacting, mostly but not exclusively online, with people who share the same perspective, that I feel a certain amount of surprise and disappointment whenever I hear an intelligent and educated person express belief in religion. I remind myself that I used to believe quite sincerely and I cannot expect the entire world to have adopted as skeptical an outlook as I have in just the last three years. Even so, it seems so strange that someone living in the twenty-first century in a first-world country can believe that an omnimax deity is watching over us as we slaughter each other and suffer other innumerable tragedies, that unbelievers will be punished forever for honest doubt, that you can magically obtain what you desire by talking to yourself, or any of the other absurdities taught by traditional religion. I will probably always view such belief as irrational and ridiculous, but like everything else in life, it can only seem truly bizarre if one only rarely encounters it.

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.

Equality & Secularism

Is it truly possible for a devout believer to treat outsiders with complete equality? If a person honestly believes that their god will forever torture anyone who doesn't follow their religion, then it seems unrealistic to expect that person to treat them with any more respect or fairness than the deity they worship. If a person honestly believes that their god has specially chosen their ethnic group to receive special favors, then it again seems unrealistic to expect them to treat members of other groups with the same level of compassion as their own.

Social animals always treat outsiders differently than members of their own group and humans have more criteria than other animal upon which to mark divisions. Religion is one of those criteria along with location, ethnicity, language and culture, but it's unique among these in that it's irrational and, to a certain extent, can be moderated by education and social security. In order to build a more egalitarian society, the influence of religion must be diminished through these two means.

Perceptions about Atheists

I have come to the conclusion that the negative perception of atheists by theists seems to result primarily from interaction with two distinct groups. The first group is what I here term militant atheists. I fully realize that this term has been greatly abused by theists, but sometimes it's a completely appropriate description of certain individuals who are aggressively antagonistic toward believers without provocation. This group is rather small, but I can attest from personal experience that they in fact do exist and that they create quite an impression on the believers whom they encounter. The second group is what I here term delinquents. It includes criminals, thugs, hoodlums, hooligans, vandals and every other variety of habitually selfish jerk. Delinquents can be theists or atheists, but they are not representative of either group because of their marked lack of empathy. Theists often wrongly interpret, however, the lack of religious piety among this group as atheism even though it indicates only that they don't really follow a moral code, religious or otherwise. I believe the reason for this problem is that moral behavior is an inherent part of the concept of religious piety in the minds of most people. A delinquent theist is often dismissed as “not really a Christian,” but no one says that a delinquent atheist is “not really an atheist” because of his immorality. In fact, I have heard the exact opposite, that someone cannot possibly be an atheist precisely because he's moral!

I think there are ways to address these two sources of misunderstanding about atheists. First, although we can't really do much to convince truly militant atheists to calm down and relax, regular atheists can make themselves known as atheists. A theist who only meets militant atheists and a theist who meets a dozen regular atheists for every militant atheist will have very different perceptions of atheists in general. Second, we need to cultivate an image of a thoughtful, considerate atheist to correspond to the thoughtful, considerate theist that people already call pious. In order to do this, I don't think we can content ourselves with just simple atheism. An atheist is anyone who doesn't believe in gods. The word atheist says absolutely nothing about their other beliefs or actions and is no more useful than the word theist when referring to individuals. We need to move beyond our lack of religion and formulate what we do believe and value. I personally prefer the philosophy of Humanism, as I have explained previously, and I identify as a Humanist rather than as just an atheist whenever I can. It distinguishes me from nihilists, from postmodernists, and most especially from delinquent atheists. It says something about my principles and it identifies me as someone who cares about reason and compassion rather than just saying that I don't believe in gods. I'm not suggesting that everyone necessarily adopt this particular label, but I think it's a good idea to indicate what you think beyond your opinion on the single issue of the existence of deities.

Perhaps some readers will disagree with my desire to see atheists and theists in the same category, but I encourage them to remember that it's only with respect to their thoughtfulness and consideration. There is still a world of difference to distinguish the two groups.

Refusal to Respect through Capitalization

I consider myself a diligent and meticulous writer. I pay strong attention to detail, including proper spelling, capitalization, punctuation and various issues regarding formatting. I raise the topic because I want readers to be aware that my recent failure to capitalize the following words is a conscious decision, not a mistake made out of ignorance or carelessness:

• bible
• church
  
• eucharist
• mass

Capitalizing these indicates a measure of respect for the divinity or holiness for them, which I most strongly reject. I want to add, however, that I continue to capitalize church when part of a fuller title, e.g., the Catholic Church or the Church of England.

I continue to capitalize God when it refers to an omnimax deity, such as that of most monotheistic religions, in order to contrast it with a god of polytheistic religions. This does not indicate any respect, only that is treated as a name.