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christianity

Rebranding

Thursday 4 January 2024

There’s a local mega-church that rebranded a few years ago to “Relentless Church.” I thought that was an odd name. I always assumed it was suggesting that the Christian god is relentless in trying to reach the so-called unchurched, but there was something needlessly aggressive about that name. To be relentless seems antithetical to one of Christianity’s claimed attributes (claimed only, I would argue): that it’s built on mercy. To relent is, to some degree, to show mercy. Still, I thought they could have chosen a sillier name.

The pastor, a large man named John Gray, caused some controversy a few years ago when he bought his wife a $200,000 Lamborghini SUV. It made the Today Show:

His defense was that he used money from the couple’s reality show and his book sales to purchase the vehicle. It still seems pretty tone deaf to be a supposed servant of God and spend that kind of money on a vehicle.

But apparently tone deafness is one of Gray’s predominant qualities, for he’s decided to rebrand his church once again. This time: Love Story Church.

Considering the stream of sexual abuse scandals in countless denominations over the last few years, I couldn’t possibly imagine a worse name for the church

Flames

Monday 6 November 2023

On the Corner

Sunday 1 October 2023

I could hear him long before I could see him. K and I were walking up Main Street last night, returning to our car after a night out, and I could hear an amplified male voice in the distance.

“Most likely a street preacher,” I thought, although sometimes the Black Hebrew Israelites make an appearance on the downtown sidewalks. As we approached, though, it was clear it was an evangelical street preacher.

“You need Jesus! If you don’t know the name of Jesus, you need to invite him into your life…”

It always astounds me how these guys say nonsense like that: we live in America, in the damn Bible Belt. There is no one in this area who has never heard of Jesus. It is utterly impossible, regardless of your religious views, not to have heard of Jesus while living in South Carolina.

“There is no one walking on Main Street,” I said to K, “who might be thinking, ‘Now this Jesus fellow — never heard of him. Who is he?'”

As we neared, we had to stop at the corner to wait for the light. Our street preacher started going on about the perils of living a self-centered life, completely oblivious to the irony.

“Here these people are, taking advantage of the lovely weather to enjoy their favorite restaurant’s outdoor seating option, and they have to listen to this jackass as he gets his saving-the-world fix,” I said to no one in particular and everyone in earshot. One guy laughed a little, most everyone else ignored my stupid comment.

I wanted to say that to the preacher himself, and came close to doing just that, but in the end, I decided not to add to the guy’s persecution complex.

Villain

Saturday 9 September 2023

Who is the villain in the story of Adam and Eve? Christianity and Judaism will have you believe it’s the serpent, but I think a close reading without the blinders of preconception proves God is the villain.

To begin with, notice when in the narrative God forbids the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

Genesis 2.15-18

That second paragraph is crucial because it shows that God gave the command to Adam before Eve even existed. He told Adam, “Don’t eat of the tree.” He said nothing to Eve. In fact, if you read the text closely, he never talks to Eve at all.

The temptation occurs in the next chapter:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3.1-5

A few questions arise here:

  1. Where was Adam? Since God communicated with him about the cursed tree, he should have been careful to prevent an unknowing Eve from approaching the tree.
  2. Where is God? Since God never communicated with Eve, I’m assuming he assumed Adam would take this role. Now that it’s obvious that Adam is doing nothing, why wouldn’t a loving God step in.
  3. Why the hell is the tree there in the first place? This is the fundamental question. It’s like putting a knife in a baby’s crib. What do you expect is going to happen?
  4. Why did God allow the serpent to enter the garden to being with? Again, it’s like putting a circular saw in the nursery.
  5. Why didn’t God do something to prevent this? He is all-knowing: he knew this is going to happen. He didn’t take a single step other than warning Adam. And of course this gets us back to the question of why the hell God made this tree to begin with.
  6. Why is the tree of knowledge that’s forbidden? What’s so dangerous about knowledge. Oh, never mind…
  7. How could God expect them to obey him (i.e., to realize it was a sin, i.e., to understand it was evil to disobey him) when they clearly didn’t know the difference between good and evil? Now we’ve got a knife and a circular saw in the crib of a blind toddler.

The narrative continues:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Genesis 3.6, 7

First of all, we see that Adam was right there with her. What the hell was he doing? Why didn’t he stop her?

More significantly, we see that the serpent was telling the truth: “the eyes of both of them were opened.” But the didn’t die, despite God’s telling Adam that “in that day you shall surely die.” They didn’t die: God lied.

So let’s build the case for the serpent being the villain:

  1. He encouraged the couple to disobey God. However, God only bothered to tell Adam, and Adam did nothing to stop Eve. More troubling, they didn’t even know what good and evil as concepts were, so there’s no way we can hold them accountable for that.

That’s it. One point, a point that’s really not significant at all. What’s the case for the serpent being the hero?

  1. He was encouraging them to increase their knowledge.
  2. He told the truth: they did not die when they ate the fruit.
  3. He told the truth: they did receive knowledge when they ate the fruit.

There’s not much, but at least he has the truth on his side.

How about the case for God being the villain:

  1. He put a tree in the garden that he decided was forbidden and chose to punish Adam and Eve for eating of it.
  2. He only told Adam not to eat of it; he didn’t even bother to communicate with Eve.
  3. He lies to Adam about the consequence of eating of the tree.
  4. He expected obedience from
    • newly-formed creatures who
    • didn’t know what good and evil were.
  5. Once Eve and Adam eat of the tree, he punishes all future generations for the crime (which they couldn’t know was a crime because they didn’t know good and evil). And according to Christianity, the punishment is eternal torment. Eternal torment for a finite crime committed by other people!
  6. He turned Adam and Eve’s daily life to a relative hell of struggling for mere subsistence.
  7. After having told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply,” he makes the act of childbirth painful and potentially lethal.
  8. He creates Adam and Eve and the garden and everything else with complete foreknowledge of this catastrophe (for which he is responsible).

And the case for him being the hero? Well, I guess according to the text, we have him to thank for our existence since he made everything. But since that “everything” includes hell and a guaranteed ticket there for the vast majority of humanity, that one point in his favor is hardly significant and is in fact a point against him.

This all of course depends on the narrative being factually accurate, which of course it isn’t. But imagine trying to square all of this with a literal interpretation of this passage: anyone who worships this being is worshiping a monster.

No Rest in Hell

Tuesday 1 August 2023

I recently dipped into a social media feed titled “HELL IS REAL” to see what kind of discussion goes on there. Not much discussion — mainly just a bunch of disturbing memes.

Meme 1: No Rest in Hell

The question that comes immediately to mind: why would an all-loving and omniscient god create a bunch of creatures he knew would end up in eternal torment that he himself created? It just makes no sense.

Meme 2: Hell is not a joke

Two things struck me about this: first, the imagery is so disturbing. Second, “affirm yes”? Did the creator of this meme think that at some point we would be standing in front of God, and he’d patiently point out that we didn’t affirm “Yes” (redundant much?) in our social media feed so it’s off to eternal torment for us…

Meme 3: Hear Hell

This one is so oddly specific. If we could hear the people screaming in hell, we might not fornicate. We might lie; we might do drugs; we might murder (see meme below), but we sure as hell wouldn’t fornicate.

Meme 4: Choices

Why is the devil eating this guy? And do hoodies lead you to hell?

Meme 5: Roads

If only this god who so wants to spend eternity with us had done a better job getting us to that point…

It’s disturbing that in 2023 people still have such simplistic, brutal, and illogical views. They pass this poison on to children and scar them for life. I just can’t understand how they can posit a) a loving god and b) an eternity of torment. It just makes no sense to me.

Crusades

Thursday 27 July 2023

The meme — I couldn’t pass it up. The Crusades — not something one would joke about. So I said so.

In the end, the original poster devolved to this:

I’m not sure what he was referring to when he complained I deleted a comment: I didn’t knowingly delete any comment. Still, the rest of the comment left me wondering how someone like that can function in society. If you’re an adult willing to call someone stupid, who is willing to behave in such a juvenile manner, how can you hold a job? If it takes so relatively little to get you to behave like a pouting child, how can you keep your mouth shut when it really matters?

In the end, I left the conversation with the following final words: “Thanks for the wonderful Christian example. I’ll leave you to have the last word. Make it a good one!”

Review: Is God a Vindictive Bully?

Tuesday 13 June 2023

As with many apologetics books, the intended audience of this seems like it might be the skeptic community when in fact it is clearly written for Christians. In other words, this is not a book that will convince skeptics but is intended to ease the worries Christians have about the God of the Old Testament.

The first clue for this comes from the title: the average skeptic will not simply call the Old Testament god a bully. This being is a moral monster — which is actually the title of another book by Copan. The subtitle gives a clearer indication of the intended audience: “Reconciling Portrayals of God in the Old and New Testaments.” This book is written for people who love the god of the New Testament (i.e., Jesus) but finds the Old Testament god a bit off-putting. This is important because Christianity declares that, appearances to the contrary, these are the same being, albeit in different “persons,” which makes no logical sense, but that’s an argument for a different review. So this is an effort to reconcile kind Jesus with the evil god of the Old Testament by trying to remove the “appearances to the contrary” part of the argument altogether.

How do I as a skeptic read it, then? I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt, I tried to “treat another’s writing as you yourself would want your own writing to be treated” (6) as Copan suggested we do with the OT text, but in the end, I was just disappointed. There were no apologetic tactics in this book I had not encountered (and dismissed) before. The primary problem with this book from a skeptical point of view is that all the moves the author makes to square the two gods of the Bible simply belie the underlying Christian contention about Biblical authorship. In other words, he relies primarily on that old tired tactic “context.” Indeed, he has an entire chapter called “A Bit of Near Eastern Context.” For example, in justifying the harsh punishments proscribed in the Old Testament, Copan brings up the exaggerations of the Code of Hammurabi and then suggests that these are merely exaggerations as well and that “it is likely that the death penalty was rarely utilized” (85). This suggests that the authors of the Old Testament merely used the same tactics as the authors of Hammurabi’s Code. Yet how could that be? Didn’t the Christian god inspire the Bible? This apologetic tactic undercuts the claims of divine authorship, but Copan has a solution, explaining that the “Mosaic law didn’t start from scratch or reinvent the wheel” and suggests that it “appropriated sources apart from any direct divine revelation to Moses, who selected and adapted material resulting in a ‘special synthesis'” (37). Just Copan never explains just what this “special synthesis” might be and how we might discern Moses’s borrowing from surrounding cultures and divine intervention.

The other primary tactic Copan uses is qualification. This might be, or that could be, or this is a logical inference, or that is implied. This is probably an exaggeration and that is probably not carried out. In other words, it’s all conjecture.

This is a book that will not convince anyone who genuinely questions the text. This is a book for Christians looking to feel better about the god of the Old Testament.

Unfortunately Predictable

Monday 12 June 2023

I’m reading Is God a Vindictive Bully? by Paul Copan, which purports to square the “genocide, racism, ethnic cleansing, and violence” in the Old Testament with the seemingly different deity presented in the New Testament in the form of Jesus. I’ve tried to go into this with an open mind; I’ve tried to avoid presumptions and judgments before I read. But by page six, he’s already making moves that put the argument exactly where I anticipated:

Consider a “golden rule” of interpretation: treat another’s writing as you yourself would want your own writing to be treated. This doesn’t mean being naive or uncritical; it does mean being charitable and fair as we honestly examine challenges in the text.

Is God a Vindictive Bully, 6.

Why would I treat the Bible the same as other documents? Christians claim it is the word of God: they claim that it’s not like other ancient documents, and if it’s written by a deity, it isn’t like other documents. Why treat a supposed god’s words with kid gloves? Why do I need to be “charitable and fair”? Wouldn’t a god do a better job writing a document?

This hints at a problem I know will appear in this book: how does the tension between “God composed this book” and “humans physically wrote it down” resolve? No Christian would deny that humans wrote the actual physical Bible: it didn’t just float down from heaven. However, they also claim that it is of divine origin. Humans, they insist, were just the instrument. The actual composition is God’s. However, when apologists start using historical context to explain something, they have immediately removed the composition from God’s purview and made the Bible a strictly-human document. It’s coming–I know it is.

Random Picture for Today

Image from 2017 trip to Warsaw

Religious Time Machine

Wednesday 24 May 2023

I’ve sometimes wondered what it might be like to travel back in time with our current understanding of the physical world to a time when people thought witches cast spells, that comets were harbingers of the future, that thunder and lightning were from the gods. What kind of frustrating hell would that be to experience others making decisions — occasionally life and death decisions — based solely on uneducated superstition? We would watch in horror as pseudo-physicians drilled holes in epileptics’ heads to allow the evil spirits to escape. We would watch aghast as women accused of witchcraft were burned at the stake, crushed, drowned, and killed in ineffably evil ways. We would witness the spread of the Black Death through Europe and the accompanying brutal attacks against the Jews, whom the non-Jews viewed as responsible for the plague through supernatural means.

With all this swirling around us, we would, I think, find it difficult to keep quiet. As we would attempt to explain to these scientific illiterates the reality of germs, epilepsy, and the complete lack of evidence for the efficacy of witchcraft, we would likely find ourselves labeled as perpetrators of similar acts. Our defense would get us labeled as being “in league with the devil” and likely result in our own persecution or death. If we kept quiet, the frustration of watching people killed, maimed, and tortured in the name of superstition and illogic would take quite a toll on our mental health.

Yet we don’t have to imagine what it would be like to live among the scientifically illiterate who have only the most tenuous grasp on logic because we already do. This is the reality we’re experiencing now watching Qanon proponents try to explain that there is a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who harvest adrenochrome from kidnapped babies who are then raped and devoured. This is the reality we’re experiencing now watching people make unsubstantiated claims about stolen elections even when adequate evidence to the contrary exists. This is the reality we’re experiencing now watching people fall in line behind the far-right position that Russia is the good guy in its war with Ukraine, which has in fact been in various nefarious conspiracies with this or that group bent on world domination. People are swallowing whole lies that are so obviously and ridiculously false that it strains one’s imagination that anyone could respond to such suppositions with anything other than incredulous laughter.

Why would people believe this?

It’s simple: they’re primed to believe things like this. Most of those who hold these various conspiracy theories are on the far-right of the political spectrum, and that usually aligns with the fundamentalist wing of Christianity. These individuals are disproportionally evangelical Christians, and this means they take the Bible literally. There really was a talking snake in the Garden of Eden (indeed, there really was a Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve). Balaam’s donkey really did rebuke Balaam for beating him. Jonah really did survive in a fish for three days. People really do suffer demon possession that results in behavior suspiciously similar to epilepsy. And behind this all lurks an evil spirit secretly pulling the strings of all left-leaning individuals, institutions, and ideologies in an effort to ensnare souls and drag them down to hell with him.

Evangelicals are not the only ones holding these conspiracy theories; Catholics increasingly are falling for them as well. Their view of the source of evil in the world so much the less nuanced that they have a prayer about it:

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.

Yet no matter whether Evangelical or Catholic, these fundamentalists have one thing in common: their religion itself is a conspiracy theory.

Response: I’m Not All That Impressed with Exvangelical Deconstruction Stories

Tuesday 23 May 2023

“Deconstruction” is the current term for deconverting from Christianity. I’m sure it’s applicable to other religions, and I know not all people who deconstruct end up abandoning their faith altogether, but by and large, the end result of deconstruction is a new skeptic.

The Christian response to this has fallen into a few categories:

  1. They deny that the person was ever a true Christian to begin with.
  2. They blame the churches for incomplete catechesis.
  3. They play down the deconversions by calling them silly or suggesting that their objections are basic and even juvenile.
  4. They suggest that the new skeptic “just wants to sin.”
  5. They blame the parents for not teaching their children their faith well enough.
  6. They suggest that de-conversions do not result in a lack of faith but rather a change in where the faith is placed.

Occasionally, a Christian response can’t quite decide which tack to take and simple mixes and matches responses. Such is the case with Grayson Gilbert’s “I’m Not All That Impressed with Exvangelical Deconstruction Stories” from a couple of years ago.

Gilbert begins condescendingly enough by referencing the “never-ending supply of pastors, pastor’s kids, and artists formerly known as Christians” who are leaving the faith. There may be a number of “grand excuses,” Gilbert suggests, but he insists that the “fundamental issue behind every one of these de-conversion stories” is the fact that, as the Bible explains in I John 2.15, they “went out from us, but they were not of us.”

Gilbert pretends to preempt objections in the next paragraph by acknowledging that for many it’s not an inadequate answer because “it’s a bit too Calvinistic.” That’s a very theologically based objection, firmly grounded in an acceptance of the basic tenants of Christianity and quibbling over details, but most skeptics’ objections would be to question the validity of Gilbert’s and St. John’s foundational assumption: they left Christianity because they were never really Christian.

Forget for a moment how utterly and arrogantly childish it is to suggest that, despite skeptics’ protestations to the contrary, these true Christians can read the mind and know the intentions of those who have rejected Christianity. The truth of the issue is simple: most people who leave Christianity do so reluctantly. They want to believe, but they find they no longer can. Evidence and arguments that once convinced them no longer do. But for a Christian still in the fold, the thought that someone who is a true Christian (how Christians love to be gatekeepers with each other) could lose their faith is terrifying because it means if someone else lost their faith, they could, too. To allay these fears, the only option is to suggest that these individuals never were really Christian in the first place.

Gilbert then deals with a particularly famous ex-evangelical, Abraham Piper, who is the son of John Piper, a Protestant theologian who has written a number of books and runs a successful online ministry in addition to his real-world church. Gilbert points out that “Abraham has taken a fancy to TikTok with clever, catchy tidbits of him mocking the Christian faith.” That sentence is just dripping with derision: Abraham’s efforts online to point out the flaws he sees in Christianity are not a serious work but instead “a fancy.” His succinct observations are merely “catchy tidbits” unworthy of serious consideration. And he is not critiquing Christianity, which would require a measured response; he’s mocking Christianity, which can be easily dismissed and forgotten.

In a parenthetical remark, Gilbert suggests that mocking Christianity “is so in vogue today.” Never mind that this is not a question of popularity; what’s more significant is the notion that critics are merely “mocking” the Christian faith, much like childish bullies mock their victims. It produces the victim complex that Christians expect from exhortations in the Bible, and it downplays the seriousness of the critiques themselves. Christian theology has caused real-world pain and done significant damage in a lot of people’s lives. It has destroyed self-confidence in its near-continual insistence that humans are worthless trash. It has caused untold damage in its institutional misogyny and homophobia. It has literally killed thousands upon thousands in religious wars. It threatens the planet with its denial of science. It stifles critical thinking and encourages blind faith obedience. Leaving this mindset can produce a sense of relief, but if this is something that the new skeptic’s parents taught them, something that’s been a central pillar in their life for so long, there can be understandable anger arising as a result. Gilbert explains he uses some of Abraham Piper’s videos to discuss “the nature of the Proverbial fool” with his son, thus attempting to ensure that his son instinctively reacts as he does without giving further thought to the motives or reasoning behind a de-conversion.

Far from the fact that the son of a celebrated and admired pillar in the Evangelical community has left the faith might depress Gilbert, he insists that he now has “a deeper appreciation for John Piper.  “It led me to see that despite Abraham’s brutal mockery of all his father and mother stand for and love, it testifies of his paternal faithfulness,” he insists.

How does Gilbert square this round hole? He explains that it is a sign of “the faithfulness of a man like John Piper in raising his son to be so inundated with biblical truth that he still can’t quite get away from it well into his adult life. It is constantly on the tip of the tongue; he cannot go about life without thinking of the God he professes to reject.” This is an attempt, in other words, to turn a loss into a win. Gilbert doesn’t consider the possibility that the reason Abraham Piper is critiquing Christianity online is to try to help people who are facing the pain and frustration that rigid, fundamentalist Christianity can inflict (see above). Notice, too, the wording: “the God he professes to reject.” This is a not-so-subtle dig at Piper through a subtle allusion to Romans 1:20:

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

Abraham doesn’t really reject it, in other words. He knows there’s a god — he just wants to sin.

Still, even if John Piper had not been a good Christian parent, it’s not his fault if his son rejects faith (and thereby condemns himself, in the Christian view, to hell):

Many a parent neglected to make the Word central in the home, raised their children to be good, obedient pagans, and then wondered why their children came back from school with all sorts of ideas that run contrary to the Christian faith. The onus is still on these children to search out the truth of Scripture, regardless of how bad a job mom and dad have done.

As a skeptic, I have to wonder how one could worship a god that creates such a confusing book that requires a library of explanation and commentary to understand and then sends you to hell if you don’t understand it properly. That’s probably something along the lines of what some of these de-conversion experiences went through as well.

Soon after this, Gilbert switches his argument and employs the “well, everyone is religious” suggestion: the “Religious Nones” are in fact misnamed: “everyone is a devotee to some belief system, whether agnostic, atheistic, or the ever-vague “spiritualistic but not religious” group.” It’s funny how “religious” becomes something of an insult in this case.

Finally, after tossing this argument and that argument at the idea of de-conversion, Gilbert launches his main attack:

I’ve come to be more and more convinced that the vast majority of those who reject the Christian faith do so on the basis of intellectual laziness, intellectual dishonesty, or simple ignorance. They either don’t care to find the answers, they don’t care to hear the answers, or, they don’t know where to even begin.

He classifies the case various ex-Evangelicals have leveled against Christianity thusly:

The objections that people like Rhett and Link, Abraham Piper, the Gungors, Newboys’ former member George Perdikis, dc Talk’s Kevin Max, Joshua Harris, Derek Webb, et al., have, are basic, Sunday school level objections. In where we are in the history of the church, these aren’t even the interesting questions that Christians have any more. These are some of the most basic elements of the historic Christian faith that it leaves many of us wondering if these people took much time at all to crack open some dusty, old tomes from dead guys on the subjects.

This is because for

anyone who has taken the time to actually study these things in depth, the question isn’t if someone has given a satisfying answer to reconcile the apparent contradictions of the Scriptures, given exhaustive treatment on things like textual criticism and transmission, or provided ample solutions to the “problem passages” we find as finite readers.

In other words, they reject Christianity because they are lazy, and even though all the answers to all their objections have been covered time and time again, they reject them in their ignorance. In still other words, they haven’t read the right books, and indeed they probably haven’t even looked for the right books.

Speaking as someone who has done the reading and looked for the answers, I can simply say this: it is entirely possible that someone can start questioning their faith, look for and find answers to their questions, and find those answers unconvincing. We cannot choose what ideas convince us and what ideas don’t, and to suggest that the only other alternative is ignorance or laziness sloppy argumentation at best and simple vilification at worst.

But in the end, that’s to be expected when we consider the intended audience. Gilbert is not seeking to convince wayward Christians of the errors of their ways; he’s soothing the worried faith of those who worry that they in turn might find their Christian faith lacking. If someone like Abraham Piper can reject Christianity, anyone can. But not us, assures Gilbert. We’re real Christians; we know that no matter the objection, there’s an answer for it out there. Notice, though, that Gilbert didn’t rehearse any of the objections or their answers. He simply swept them all away with an easy flick of the wrist: the answers are out there. Surely they’re convincing…

Modern Gnosticism

Monday 22 May 2023

I encountered a meme that got me thinking about the relationship between Christianity and conspiracy theories. It was a meme dealing with the supposedly soon-coming apocalypse that will usher in the end of the world and the return of Jesus (if you’re a post-trib millennialist, I guess).

This sort of hyperventilating anticipation of being able to say “I told you so!” is fairly typical of the fundamentalist Christian mindset, and it’s one of the reasons I’d be nervous having a fundamentalist Evangelical in the White House: he (and it would certainly be a “he”) would be tempted to make decisions based on a sense of what might help prophecy along. At any rate, the meme suggests that skeptics will soon be put in their place:

This sort of gnostic conspiracy theory is part and parcel of the Evangelical tradition. They await anxiously the events suggested in the meme, and the suggestion that Christians have been waiting for 2000 years for something like this is wasted breath. Every Christian generation has had a portion of people who are sure that they are the last generation. Indeed, Jesus himself in the earliest gospel seems to think this:

And he said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with[a] power.’

Mark 9:1

I grew up in a heterodox sect that took this gnostic conspiracy theory nonsense to the next level, suggesting that its members (numbering less than 150,000 at its peak) were the only true Christians on the entire planet. That’s probably why I’m so skeptical of this nonsense.

Review: The End of White Christian America

Tuesday 25 April 2023

Evangelical Christianity as the dominant political force in America is dying from a self-inflicted wound. To suggest that Christianity in America is not waning is to ignore the obvious. But just in case, there are data to back it up:

Robert Jones’s book looks at the decline of white Christian America (which he shortens to WCA) through a couple of lenses, but most significantly, the decline of WCA is due to its stance on homosexuality:

Today, many white Christian Americans feel profoundly anxious. As is common among extended families, WCA’s two primary branches, white mainline and white evangelical Protestants, have competing narratives about WCA’s decline. White mainline Protestants blame evangelical Protestants for turning off the younger generation with their antigay rhetoric and tendency to conflate Christianity with conservative, nationalistic politics. White evangelical Protestants, on the other hand, blame mainline Protestants for undermining Christianity because of their willingness to sell out traditional beliefs to accommodate contemporary culture.

Traditional Protestantism and more progressive Protestantism are both point their finger at the other, but the dilemma is real:

Moreover, more than seven in ten (72 percent) Millennials agree that religious groups are estranging young people by being too judgmental about gay and lesbian issues. Seniors are the only age group among whom less than a majority (44 percent) agree. The dilemma for many churches is this: they are anchored, both financially and in terms of lay support, by older Americans, who are less likely to perceive a problem that the overwhelming majority of younger Americans say is there.

As a skeptic, I can’t help but find hope in this.

Selective Reading

Tuesday 11 April 2023

The kids were reading about Jim Crow laws as part of the To Kill a Mockingbird unit that we started a couple of weeks ago. Part of the article dealt with the religious justification some Christians used to explain the harsh segregation of Jim Crow times. One young lady — a sweet kid that always has a smile — wrote the following comment:

It reminded me of the suggestion that Christians who don’t read their Bibles are Catholic, Christians who read their favorite parts are Protestants, and Christians who read the Bible critically from cover to cover become atheists. It is, perhaps, an over-simplification, but I’d be willing to bet this young lady goes to one of those Protestant churches that are well-versed (no pun initially intended) in the parts of the Bible that make the feel good and avoid completely the tricky parts.

Parts like 1 Peter 2:18: “Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate but also to those who are harsh.”

Or Philemon 1: 15, 16, in which Paul sends back a slave to his owner, suggesting, “Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you might have him back forever—no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a fellow man and as a brother in the Lord.” He could have suggested that slavery is wrong, but he chose not to.

Or all the countless passages in the Old Testament instructing Israelites on the proper use of their slaves.

I, of course, said none of these things to her. It’s not my place: I’m there to teach them, in part, how to think critically, not what to think. However, a close reading of the text…

Check, Please

Sunday 9 April 2023

I need to contest some of these charges.

To begin with, I don’t accept your view of sin. Sin is the violation of a deity’s will; since I don’t believe in a deity, I don’t sin. You can say I sin, but that’s just in your perspective, accepting as a given the deity you believe in.

Additionally, the shame you indicate I should have never showed up. I don’t feel shame for sinning — see above.

As for the pain and past mistakes, I don’t think your product does anything for that. My past mistakes remain mistakes; pain remains. It’s a defective product, in other words.

Rejection and loneliness? I know a lot of people who use your product and experience that. Indeed, your sales force itself practices rejection on a regular basis. Come to think of it, it regularly engages in shaming people as well.

Slavery to sin? See above.

Spiritual death? I don’t even know what that could possibly mean.

Jesus might have paid it all in your scheme of things, but I bought none of it.

Leaving the Faith

Wednesday 5 April 2023

The post stood out immediately: I can relate, and so can K. Granted, I hadn’t been attending Mass as long as the gentleman in question, but I could see myself in the post:

“I am very lost & confused as to where all of this came from,” she admits, and I find myself wondering how this came about. Perhaps the husband had been on this long road of deconversion for years and simply kept it to himself because he didn’t want his wife to worry. Perhaps as the issues piled up in his head he was in some sort of denial. Perhaps he dropped hints, unsure how to begin the conversation outright, and she just didn’t pick up on them because they were so incongruous with everything she knew about him or because he, inexperienced with dropping such hints, was unable to do so in a sufficiently clear way. (That’s the double problem with dropping hints.) Whatever the case, from her perspective, it’s coming out of nowhere.

In responding to this, some people shared that they can relate. But at least a couple had me wondering if effective communication was actually taking place. One response declared that her son had become “a socialist.”

Perhaps he does not align with a socialist political position, but knowing conservatives of the 2020s, it could simply be that he’s now aligned himself with the Democratic party and the mother, true to Fox News talking points, simply labels him a socialist.

To that response, someone commiserated that “it’s absolutely awful what this world is doing today,” to which the original commenter replied that “it is getting scary.” She suggests it’s “this world,” which is American Christian-ese “the Satan-influenced, Satan-worshiping society we live in,” which in turn is simply the non-Christian segment of the population. And it’s getting “scary” because more and more people are realizing that they don’t need Christianity in their lives: church attendance is plummeting, especially among those under 40. These two ladies see the issue in terms of society as a whole, but they fail to understand the underlying causes, attributing it most likely to Satan’s growing influence.

Some, however, did see that it wasn’t simply a question of Satan’s supposed influence but also a question of the hypocrisy and judgmental nature of contemporary American Christianity:

This comment reveals what I see as one of the primary causes of declining church attendance: the church is continually creating situations that amount to self-inflicted wounds.

Fundamentalist Christians insist that the Genesis account is accurate and that evolutionary theory is a Satanic lie. Then their children learn about the mountain of evidence supporting evolution and they’re forced to choose between the faith of their parents or, as they see it, reality.

Fundamentalist Christians insist that homosexuality has no place in a Christian worldview. Then their children meet queer people and realize, “Hey, they’re not the devils they’re made out to be,” and another church teaching falls to the side.

Fundamentalist Christians remove from their fellowship individuals who choose not to live according to fundamentalist interpretations of sexual morality, and their children find out their soccer coach has been fired, despite parents’ and players’ begging, mid-season because she got pregnant out of wedlock. Then the players are crushed, and a handful of them start thinking, “If this is how Christians behave, I don’t think I need that in my life.”

These are just a handful of the ways modern Christianity is sabotaging itself. Perhaps something like this went on with these commenters’ children.

Others tried to fix the problem.

What happens when prayer doesn’t work, though? What happens when these people are still not returning to church? These poor folks then have a second layer of doubt: why isn’t God helping my child save herself? What am I doing wrong that is preventing this prayer from being answered?

As an aside, the metaphor of prayer as “storming heaven” is always a little strange for me. “Storming” is always used in the sense of an assault — storming the beaches of Normandy. Soldiers storm a position because it’s held by the enemy. In this case, “storming heaven” has connotations of viewing God as an enemy. I’m certain this is not what they intend, but I’m equally certain they’ve never really thought about the metaphor. It just sounds like strong, intense praying — praying really hard.

Some people just passively-aggressively blamed the believers: it’s your fault. You’re not trying hard enough. You’re not holy enough.

This could not possibly be helpful. Such a response only increases the sense of overwhelming guilt these people must feel. As with the “storming heaven” metaphor, this commenter probably didn’t even think this comment out.

Finally, there was the Catholic sense of magical thinking on full display:

The Catholic reliance on relics and holy objects fascinates me. What would this scapular actually do? How would it affect things? And since this husband would be unaware that it’s there, would that amount to God acting against this guy’s will, thus negating the cherished notion of free will, a staple among Christians for explaining how evil exists on earth given the existence of an all-knowing, all-powerful, completely-benevolent god?

I can’t really blame them for their thinking, though: there are certain lines a Christian cannot cross, and “he might have had perfectly good reasons for leaving Christianity, and he might have done so in good faith” is one of them. In such a case, if he found a reason to leave, perhaps I could as well — and that’s unthinkable.

No matter the reason he’d give, though, it wouldn’t be good enough for them.

The Shift: Initial Thoughts

Thursday 30 March 2023

I’ve begun reading The Shift: Surviving and Thriving After Moving from Conservative to Progressive Christianity by Colby Martin. I’ve read a number of books and articles about people who start doubting traditional Christianity and end up leaving it altogether, but I’d never read anything about taking that first step but ending up still in some form of Christianity. The idea intrigued me. Not because I’m interested in finding a place for myself in progressive Christianity but rather because I like reading about different people’s experiences of faith.

I don’t enjoy reading shitty writing, and I’m afraid that’s what this is. The ideas might be good, but the writing so far is awful. Take a look at this passage from the introduction:

Not to brag, but I’m pretty good at sleeping. Normally, it welcomes me like a freshly hired Walmart greeter. But one evening, just before finishing this book, it treated me more like the Costco exit guard who scans your receipt, glances with unprovoked judgment toward your cart, and won’t let you go until you acquire the Sharpie swipe of victory. Frustrated, I stared into the darkness, scanning the receipt of my brain for what held me back from passing to the void. I tossed and turned on my Casper mattress. I fluffed and re-fluffed my Tuft & Needle pillow. Maybe my issue is that I fall prey to too many Facebook ads? Nah, that’s ridiculous, I thought as I unclasped my MVMT watch.

Dear Lord, why do people who have no idea how to construct compelling figurative language insist on doing it anyway? I know there’s tone-deafness; is there metaphor-deafness as well?

And what is the point of all this brand name dropping? His “Casper mattress”? His “Tuft & Needle pillow”? His “MVMT watch”? Did he read somewhere that good writing includes details and so he’s going to include the brand of every damn thing he mentions?

An Apologist’s Response

Wednesday 8 March 2023

While discussing the difference between the Old Testament god and the vision of the Christian god we see in Jesus, a social media commenter suggested I read Dr. Jeff Mirus’s “Making Sense of the Old Testament God” in which he attempts to “make God’s ways under the Old Covenant easier to understand” as a reader had requested. He concludes his introduction by admitting that he “can only do [his] best,” which seems to be a tacit admission that there really is no way definitively to reconcile these two visions of the Christian god and that it’s a matter of faith.

Mirus begins by suggesting that there’s not such a disparity between the seemingly harsh god of the OT and the loving god of the NT. There are two ways he does this. First, he argues that there are many passages in the OT that show a deity in line with what we see from Jesus. Fair enough. But he then suggests that Jesus had a harsh streak himself: Jesus’s “denouncing hard-hearted Jewish leaders, lamenting those who lead others into sin, rebuking the wealthy, condemning hypocrites, and foretelling disaster for unbelieving communities” were harsh elements of “Our Lord’s effort to wake us up.” He then quotes Matthew 11:21-24 in which Jesus does a lot of “Woe to you”-ing. Yet there is a big difference between genocide and harsh words. There is a chasm between rebuking someone and stoning them. This is like saying Truman was as harsh as Stalin because he yelled at people.

As the article develops, so does the offensive weirdness of Mirus’s logic. Regarding the harsh nature of the OT god’s commands to slaughter so many people, he suggests, “Finally, we must not forget the decisive separation of the sheep from the goats—those who will be sent into eternal fire.” He is literally saying that the acts of cruelty we see from the Christian god in the OT pale in comparison to hell. In other words, “Yes, our god was pretty cruel in those times, but just think about how cruel he’ll be toward you for eternity in hell!” There are elements of our god that are even more appalling than what we see in the OT, so this god is really actually good. This is another example of how Christians seem to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome: the very god that “saves” them is the being that creates the conditions from which they long to be saved!

Mirus then deals with a second “misconception [..] that the Old Testament authors thought of God’s will in exactly the same way as we do today.”

This gets at the tension between the obvious fact that humans wrote the Bible and yet Christians claim that their god inspired the Bible. Where does divine authorship/inspiration leave off and human creation begin? In saying that “the Old Testament author thought of God’s will” in any way that could be discernable in the text is to negate the divine authorship. Surely what the human authors thought would not interfere with the divinely giving knowledge of the reality of the situation. But this very idea that somehow the Biblical authors’ own ideas got inadvertently mixed in with the divine revelation gives apologists the room they need to excuse the OT god of any wrongdoing.

Mirus continues by asserting that many of the abuses in the Bible are not God’s responsibility: “It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that everything recounted in the Old Testament is the will of God.” He then relates the story of Jephthah, who made a vow to sacrifice the first thing that came out of his door if his god would grant him military victory. When Jephthah returns home, his daughter runs out to greet him, which necessitates him slaughtering her as a sacrifice to his god.

Mirus argues that this is all on Jephthah and that we cannot hold the OT god accountable for this. That might very well be a good point that solves this dilemma, but it does nothing for the seemingly-countless times this god does indeed command people to do awful things. It’s a softball pitch intended to make readers more confident in the Bible and Mirus’s argument.

In dealing with the OT god’s commands for genocide, he asks, “Is there a significant difference between reading what God has done to this or that person or this or that people in the Old Testament, either directly or indirectly, as compared with the manner in which He appoints our lives, including the circumstances and agencies through which we will die, and which He alone both knows and contains within His own Providential limits?” In other words, our god is in control of how we die anyway, so does it really make him such a monster to kill us in this manner or that manner? He is, after all, a god: he can do what he wants! He made us; he sustains us; it’s his choice.

First, imagine saying that about your own infant child: “Surely I can kill this child. I made her. I sustain her.” What wretched monster would think like that?

Second, apologists can use this line of reasoning to excuse any action they undertake, no matter how horrific

Why Don’t I Believe?

Tuesday 24 January 2023

I was having an exchange on Twitter (I would say “conversation,” but that would be a terribly inflated label given the medium) about my disbelief. “Do you know why the Bible says you don’t believe?” my interlocutor asked.

I was confident I’d hear Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” It’s a favorite among apologists, so I was ready to hear my questioner suggest that I really had no excuse, that I did believe but was just hiding the fact — probably because I “just want to sin.” These moves are as standard as any established chess opening.

Taking that all into consideration, I responded, “I have a hard heart. I refuse to see despite the evidence all around me. Lay the verse from Romans on me, baby! I’m ready!”

Instead, the fellow replied with a verse I’d never really noticed: “He has blinded their eyes and he hardened their heart, so that they would not see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and be converted and I heal them” (John 12:40).

How could I have not noticed this verse before? This passage presents a positively damning view of this god, and I pointed this out: “He then is responsible. Your god created me, blinded me, then damned me for being blind. Do you guys not see how sick this is? Do you guys not understand it’s perverse thinking like this that prompts so many to question their faith?”

I was expecting an explanation for how this can make the New Testament god appear to be heartless and even capriciously cruel, that preventing someone from believing and then punishing him for that disbelief is in fact some unfathomable mystery that ultimately will work to this god’s “greater glory” (what an immature, insecure being this god of Christianity is, always demanding praise and worship and smiting those who don’t fall in line — sounds a bit like North Korea). Instead, I got another verse:

But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the [veil] is taken away in Christ.

2 Corinthians 3:14 (New King James Version)

That “Old Testament” bit sounded a bit strange, so I looked it up to find other translations:

  • But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. (New International Version)
  • The people were stubborn, and something still keeps them from seeing the truth when the Law is read. Only Christ can take away the covering that keeps them from seeing. (Contemporary English Version)
  • But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. (New Revised Standard Version)

I suspect this translation to “Old Testament” instead of “old covenant” is to create a sense of continuity between the New Testament and what it views itself as replacing in some sense — a propaganda move, in other words.

Still, I resisted the urge to comment on that (and thus radically derail the topic under discussion) and stuck to the point: “So your god blinds me and then punishes me for being blind. How can you not see how perverse that is?”

He, however, had no qualms about radically changing the topic, which I see as another typical apologetic move. Instead of dealing with what I said, he replied, “I see someone who fights tooth and nail against God. What makes you more deserving? You are already under the judgement [sic] of God.”

“It’s like you willfully misconstrue my objection,” I concluded.

Fences and Guardrails

Thursday 19 January 2023

“God just puts these laws in place for our protection!” seems to be a common apologetic response to criticism of the laws of the Bible and the sense of absurdity some of them engender. There’s even a cartoon about it.

This is such a silly cartoon — it shows the absurdity of the argument better than apologists recognize. Most basically, the things that this god’s law supposedly protects us from were created by that god himself! He made all the universe, according to apologists. He created all the laws of physics. He created all the contingencies and consequences. In other words, to relate it back to the cartoon, he created the fence (“guardrail”) and the cliff. And he put the guardrail right at the edge of the cliff.

To turn it back to Christianity itself, this god created the laws and the consequences for breaking them (i.e., eternal damnation). If it were any other way, he would be dealing with something he didn’t create.

This also plays into the idea of Jesus’s salvific sacrifice. He’s saving us from the consequences of breaking some god’s laws. The trouble is, according to the doctrine of the trinity, he is that god! He’s saving us from himself.

No matter how many times I point this out to believers, they just don’t see it. They bring up free will and all that: “God created us with free will, and we can abuse it and reject God.”

“Yes, but this god put in place the laws and their consequences. He’s the one sending you to hell and then saving you from it,” I reply.

“Yes, but he loves us so much that he sacrificed himself for us, to pay our debt.”

“Our debt to him!” I want to scream.

If I am beating a child and then stop beating that child, I haven’t saved him any more than the mafia, when receiving payment, is not saving you from anyone other than themselves.

How do they not see this?

Beheading Hydra — A Review

Tuesday 3 January 2023

Dwight Longenecker is the pastor of the parish we used to attend. He’s a prolific author, and the title of one of his books caught my attention: Beheading Hydra: A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age. It purports to be a “radical plan” for believers in an age of atheism. As a once-Catholic-now-atheist, I thought it would be interesting to see how Longenecker defines the problem and what this radical solution might be.

Fr. Longenecker

The problem of what Longenecker seems to see as a predominately atheistic society is a “perfect storm” which is “the culmination of five hundred years of devious philosophies, half-truths, godless ideologies, false religions, and rebellion against God, his Church, and His timeless truths” (7). That’s quite a list of problems there, but what’s key to me is the five-hundred-year timeframe. What really began happening then? Modern science was slowly emerging from the mix of alchemy, philosophy, and superstition that had been used to explain the world in the past. The rise in atheism tracks closely to the success of the scientific method. Granted, what I’m suggesting here is one of the “-isms” that Longenecker claims is problematic, namely scientism, which is the claim “that science alone can render truth about the world and reality” (Source). I certainly don’t believe science is the only source of truth in our world, but when it comes to the physical world itself, it is certainly the most successful. Science continually knocks at religion’s door and says, “Here, we’ll explain that now,” whereas religion never offers explanations that supersede previously accepted science.

But the book is not about just scientism but a whole bunch of “-isms”

  1. atheism
  2. materialism
  3. historicism
  4. scientism
  5. utilitarianism
  6. pragmatism
  7. progressivism
  8. utopianism
  9. relativism
  10. indifferentism
  11. individualism
  12. tribalism
  13. sentimentalism
  14. romanticism
  15. eroticism
  16. Freudianism

That’s a whole lot of “-isms” to tackle in a book just a bit over 200 pages in length, but Longenecker plows through them all, explaining how they’re problematic for Christians and how they contribute to this “atheistic age” he sees us in.

But how can this be? How can we live in a largely atheistic society when most atheists point out the number of elected officials who are Christian is many times larger than the number of elected officials who are atheist (to use one simple metric)? It’s simple: “most atheists are blind to the fact that they are atheists” (21). I read that and immediately realized where he was heading: if you’re going to call yourself a Christian, you’d better act like a Christian and a Christian as I define it. He frames it by saying that this tide of atheism can be slowed with people living authentic Christian lives, but suffice it to say his definition of “atheist” would leave most atheists scratching their head.

“But I’m not an atheist!” I hear you say. Really? Then why do you live like one? If you do not pray, if you do not tithe, if you are living without a real relationship with God, then your belief in God is only a theory (144)

That’s the answer: prayer, tithing, and creating a close community.

While the book is not an effort to disprove these “-isms” definitively, he does take some time to point out what he sees as flaws in them. Regarding atheism and materialism, for example, he makes the argument that miracles “remind us that weird things happen,” and then gives us examples: “Friars float. Dead saints smell like flowers thirty years after they were buried. Seventy thousand people said they saw the sun spin and plummet to earth at Fatima” (30).

St. Joseph Cupertino

This short list he makes refers to

  1. St. Joseph Cupertino, who had “the gift of levitation” (27).
  2. St. Bernadette’s body, which smelled like flowers thirty years after her death.
  3. The appearance of Mary at Fatima.

Cupertino lived from 1603 to 1663: this was a time when people were burning witches, so that Longenecker takes these fanciful claims that he could levitate seriously suggests to me a naivety that I would not have expected. Bernadette’s body does indeed look lovely, but that’s because of the efforts of the faithful: she’s not that way naturally. And Fatima? It’s just as hard to take that seriously.

It’s easy to understand why Longenecker might willingly accept these things: “The spiritual person sees miracles–divine interruptions–all around him, and and through his everyday experience” (31). If you’re looking for it, you’ll find it. That might be advice he’s giving believers, but I think it’s a double-edged sword: when you go so far as to believe in 17th-century floating friars and someone else says, “Wait a minute,” you’re creating a crack in your belief system that doesn’t have to be there.

What are his suggestions for dealing with all these “-isms”? It’s to develop a “creatively subversive alternative.” Real Christianity. Deep Christianity. Prayerful Christianity. After all, it’s happened before: “Every five hundred years, there seems to be a major crisis in the Faith, and at each juncture, a new wave of witnesses rise up.” First there was ancient Rome, but “the first Christians simply lived a graced life of charity and peace, and the pagan world was drawn to their example and converted.” Then, in the sixth century, “St. Benedict stepped out and established simple communities centered on prayer, work, and reading,” which served as a bulwark against the “listless and corrupt” church. By 1000 CE, there was more corruption and crime but the “Benedictine Order surged forth in the great Cistercian renewal.” Finally, there was the Reformation and the Catholic Church’s Counter-Freformation which “brought renewal simply by living out the creatively subversive alternative” (133).

Yet Longenecker’s suggestion that this same kind of solution (returning to a prayerful traditional Christian life) will work in 2023 is almost laughably naive. The forces at work now are much more powerful than the forces at work in the previous periods, and they’re driven by one thing: the internet. Subversion and alternate views can reach even the most sheltered people now, and the amount of material available that simply picks at thread after thread in the tapestry of Christian belief is overwhelming. Skeptics have methodically taken apart argument after argument and shown how the arguments simply don’t make sense. They constitute an ever-present “yeah, but” to everything Christian apologists say, and no amount of praying is going to make that go away.

Really, the only answer is complete sequestration, and that is in essence what Longenecker is suggesting, and it’s what he was doing in the parish, and it’s a significant reason we left.