Uncertainty about the Afterlife

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

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

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

Deconversion: Evolution vs. Revolution

Deconversion is not a uniform process. Some happen in matter of days, others over the course of decades. Some pass through several phases on their way to atheism, others jump straight from strong belief to strong disbelief. Some can be likened to game of Jenga, in which one belief after another can be removed without affecting others until finally the tower just collapses, others to a game of dominoes, in which the fall of one very basic belief results in the fall of all the others. Of course, most deconversions are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between gradual change, i.e., evolution, and rapid change, i.e, revolution.

My deconversion certainly falls on the revolution end of the spectrum. Once I became a devout believer in junior high school until my apostasy over a decade later, my status as a religious conservative never changed. At no point was I ever a liberal or even moderate Catholic; I never at all openly questioned any dogma the church taught until I doubted and then rejected all of them at once. I think this is because of how I learned from apologetics to defend my belief from Protestant arguments against Catholicism.

According to Karl Keating in his Catholicism & Fundamentalism: The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians”, which was the very first apologetic book I ever read, Catholics can justify their religion with the following “spiral logic,” which contrasts with invalid circular logic of fundamentalist Protestants who begin with the unquestioned assumption that the bible is inspired: First, one reads the gospels without assuming they're perfect or inspired, merely historically reliable (!), and one concludes that Jesus must have been divine. Next, one reads in the gospels that Jesus established Peter as a permanent, infallible religious authority, and since the pope is the successor of Peter, he is also an infallible religious authority. Finally, the pope says the bible is divinely inspired, so we can believe it. I realize now, of course, this argument is incredibly weak, but I was only about thirteen years old when I encountered it, and I already believed the conclusion for non-rational reasons. This was my first real exposure to any justification for my religion, and I grabbed onto it tightly. I later learned to rely on alleged miracles throughout the history of the church as confirmation to quell my doubts, but I never forgot that without papal authority, I had no reason to believe almost anything else in my religion. For example, I couldn't know whether the whole of the bible was true without an authority telling me so, and I couldn't trust my own interpretation of it, which necessarily conflicted with that of other Christians. Within this paradigm, faith was not belief without or in spite of evidence; it was trust in papal authority, which I believed was established by logic and evidence. It didn't matter whether there was any biblical, historical or scientific evidence for any teaching since the pope's approval itself was sufficient evidence. Belief in papal authority was thus the rock on which I built my justification for my religion. For the record, I want to clear that I'm not saying this is an entirely accurate portrayal of actual Catholic doctrine, just my own understanding of it when I was a believer.

My belief structure was mostly rational, in a sense, even if badly mistaken, and I dismissed every other kind of faith as blind and irrational. This brought my views into conflict with other Catholics, especially liberal Catholics. Liberals accept some church teachings (e.g., heaven exists) while rejecting others (e.g., fornication is sinful), but if they reject anything, they must reject its basis, papal authority, and therefore have no reason to accept anything else except on blind faith. The church itself doesn't really care why one believes the easy doctrines, even if it laments and preaches against disbelief in the difficult doctrines, but as for me, I felt not only little connection with liberal believers but even with conservative believers who just happened to accept all the church's teachings without directly and explicitly connecting it to papal authority and instead citing mystical faith. Returning to the point of the story, it explains why I never passed through moderate or liberal phases on the road to apostasy.

Over the years, the very same doubts which drive evolution-type deconverts to moderate and then liberal positions also arose in my mind, but I responded to them either by invoking papal authority if they related to the church's teaching or by simply suppressing them due to my intense fear of hell if they related to the basis for papal authority, such as the divinity of Jesus or even the very existence of God. When I finally sat down and examined these doubts, everything hinged on the original argument as forwarded by Keating, held together by the glue of belief in Catholic miracles. There was no way I could reject belief in hell, which had caused me so much agony over the previous five years, without rejecting everything else. The arguments against religion had to overcome everything all at once, but after a few months of intense research and reflection, that's exactly what happened. In the end, I still had to make an emotional effort to admit that it was all over and finally discontinue attending church, but I always knew I couldn't simply return as a weak believer once I faced my doubts. I had gone from believing everything the church taught to believing nothing. The revolution had ended, and reason had triumphed over superstition.

I would guess the evolution-type deconversion is more common among Catholics and mainline Protestants because most never structure their faith on one core belief, and that the revolution-type is more common among fundamentalist Protestants who often do. In a sense, I was a fundamentalist Catholic; because of my background, my fundamental belief just happened to be papal authority rather than scriptural inerrancy. I wonder whether I would have become an atheist in my teenage years if I had never been convinced of the centrality of papal authority and nothing more than blind faith was offered as justification, which I would almost certainly have rejected more quickly. I'm just happy I'm an atheist now.

Same-Sex Marriage & the Rule of Law

Today the Supreme Court of California upheld Proposition 8, and many proponents and opponents of the measure have reacted strongly to the ruling without even bothering to attempt to understand it. I've already seen many bloggers condemn the members of court without even suggesting they've at all considered the actual issue under review. The court cannot simply overturn a free and fair vote without a very clear legal basis. If one reads the majority decision and honestly disagrees with the legal analysis, then I have no objection. If one simply laments the decision and its effects, I sympathize. But it's downright ignorant and irresponsible to condemn the six justices who supported the ruling as bigots without even knowing the rationale for the ruling.

I know I'm only a second-semester law student, but I've really come to appreciate how little the general populace understands the concept of the rule of law. My first instinct upon hearing the ruling was to find a copy of the decision and try to understand the issue and the reasons for the decision. I've gotten lots of experience examining this type of document, and while I don't expect everyone to be able to understand it themselves, they can all at least find basic summaries in news stories. It's not at all difficult to educate oneself in the age of the internet.

Let's be clear: I'm a strong supporter of same-sex marriage – I voted against Amendment 2 here in Florida, which was stronger than Prop 8 because it also constitutionally prohibited civil unions and anything which resembles civil unions – but I'm an equally strong supporter of the rule of law. If the court could overturn this vote, then they could just as easily also overturn a future vote which would legalize same-sex marriage. With current demographic trends, it's only a matter of time until same-sex marriage is legal in California and, eventually, the rest of the country. I hope to live to see the day when it's legal here in the Bible Belt!

The court did its constitutionally appointed job, so there's no shame on them. There is instead shame on the Californians who voted for it out of bigotry and those outside of the state who organized and financed support for it. Your days as a majority are numbered.

Reason & Compassion

The two keystone virtues of Humanism are reason and compassion. I've recently come to appreciate that on this blog, while I've emphasized the former thoroughly, I've somewhat neglected the latter. Since I believe this life is the only one we have, that we should make the most of it, and that we're happiest when we work with others to improve the world, my goal in writing should be to truly help others rather than simply entertain my readers by discussing the absurdity of religion.

It's easy enough to point out why a belief is false; it's more difficult, and more productive, to identify why it's believed and address a believer's deeper concerns. Let's look at an example. Modern science quickly and easily dismantles the creationist worldview as a matter of fact, but we need to realize the centrality of a creationist's belief that God is in total control of the universe and thus of their lives. We can, and we should, explain why their beliefs don't match reality, and we need not always be gentle in doing so, but we can't forget that creationists are humans just like ourselves who happen to have a mistaken viewpoint. If one is to make any progress in promoting any idea, it does no good to simply dismiss anyone who disagrees as stupid. We need to appreciate that creationists don't cling to a non-scientific view of the universe because they're truly convinced by the evidence that it's correct; they cling to it because they're afraid of what it means if it's wrong. It's important to explain, therefore, how evolution has provided us with an instinctive morality and the ability to reason, and that the sciences have given us a greater understanding and control of our lives than religion ever did. It's important to make them understand that accepting evolution doesn't equate with descent into moral anarchy. Laughing at believers can be fun, but it has only entertainment value and should never be the majority of my religious commentary because it serves only ourselves. Showing believers they don't need to believe in the supernatural in order to be happy, on the other hand, is a work of both reason and compassion.

The non-religious generally understand the practical impossibility of truly hating the sin while also truly loving the sinner, but I have failed to realize that in hating religious belief, I end up hating the religious believer. It's unacceptable, however, to have greater concern for an idea, whether that idea be religious or secular, true or false, than for humankind. Since my innate tendency is to do otherwise, I must focus more on loving the irrational person than hating their irrationality. None of this should at all imply that I should ever back down from communicating or defending my disbelief, simply that I shouldn't let winning every argument and pointing out every logical error forever trump all other concerns. Perhaps the most frustrating experience in life is attempting to have a conversation on a particular topic with a person who has adopted an irrational stance toward it, but that doesn't excuse me for becoming upset when I should anticipate the probable reaction from the beginning. It is irrational, and thus hypocritical, of me to expect others to be rational. I shouldn't even respond in kind to those who antagonize me. There is little virtue in treating people well who return the favor; there is, however, much in rising above pettiness and treating others with the compassion they have not earned.

Being Positive

Yesterday I finished taking my first set of finals in law school. I studied more for those four exams than I did combined over the course of six years pursuing two undergraduate degrees, when I found studying for tests mostly superfluous. I've also moved into a new apartment with my wife in a different part of the city. I mention all of this to explain my lack of activity on this blog in the past few months. Not only have I had very little time to actually write, but I've been so busy with my education, my marriage and our new dwelling that I haven't given religion much thought except where it happens to intersect with my daily life.

At some point, however, it seems there's really nothing more for me to say about humanity's innate tendency to think and act irrationally. I really tire of being so critical and negative, even when I think the target in question is fully worthy of all the disdain I could ever muster. I don't even know whether there's really something positive to promote in Humanism. Its ideals are so high-level as to be practically useless for daily living, and the non-religious tend to be so individualistic that we have difficulty organizing and building real communities. I intend to concentrate on developing my own personal virtue without reference to any ideology or philosophy.

Worshiping a Monster

Yesterday there was an entry at Daylight Atheism on the subject of the atrocity of Passover. One of the comments suggested modern Jews recognize the suffering entailed in the divine slaughter of the first-born Egyptians and mourn for the dead. This seems something like moral progress, but the fact remains they still worship a deity who alleged killed thousands upon thousands of innocent children! There's not even the tiniest sliver of justification for it. At Passover, Jews thus thank a mass murderer for sparing them and praise him for his moral perfection. In the same entry, there were other comments about the importance of the symbolism of the story, but even as an allegory, it fails miserably to communicate any worthwhile or respectable message.

Christians hold an even worse moral position. Although they don't celebrate Passover, they revere the same vile story. What's worse is that they believe this monster tortures unrepentant sinners in a lake of fire for all of eternity, making him infinitely more evil and despicable, all the while constantly extolling his love and mercy. It could hardly be any more absurd.

Humanist Communities

There has been some recent discussion in the media and in the blogosphere about building Humanist communities, and I'd like to indicate my support for the idea and explain some of my thoughts.

The first question commonly asked is why Humanists don't just join a group of Unitarian Universalists. Some certainly do. As for me, though I have a positive opinion of UUs, I really prefer a group of people who generally share my beliefs, not simply a group of people who welcome me regardless of my beliefs. UUs emphasize love, peace and acceptance of all people, but not necessarily the critical thinking and intellectual rigor that I personally value so strongly. They use religious language and rituals in a non-dogmatic manner and they fully welcome atheists, but I much prefer to jettison anything from religion that suggests superstition and retain only the most humanistic elements of religious practice relating to the promotion of virtue and building of communities. These include such things as a recognizable name and symbol, meetings at least once per week, discussions of various topics, social activities, and small group interaction.

Here in Jacksonville, we have the First Coast Freethought Society, but I've only attended a couple of meetings. They only meet once a month on Monday nights, and the group consists almost entirely of senior citizens. I'm less than halfway to being a senior citizen and my wife is less than a third of the way there, so I have a more difficult time making social connections in such a group. There is also an atheist Meet-Up group with plenty of young members, and I've attended a number of their meetings, but the focus is almost exclusively on views of religion. Now I enjoy the criticism of religion more than almost anyone except perhaps some other bloggers, but sometimes I want to move beyond the inherent negativity in criticism and on to something more positive.

Since I've gotten married, my desire for such a community has noticeably weakened. An important part of that desire was to meet a young woman who shares my worldview, and now I have exactly that. I'm also much busier than previously with a wife and law school, so my life is rather full and I'd encounter difficulty in finding time to attend any meetings. I've already had to go on hiatus from improv comedy for several months, and if I find any extra time, it will be spent pursuing that first. If something new arises in the area, however, I hope to lend it whatever support I can manage.

Nothing New Under the Sun

I've grown weary of discussing the statements and actions of religionists in this blog. A couple of years ago I adopted a policy of monitoring the opinion section of my local newspaper in order to provide a source of regular material to address. Since then, I've written dozens of blog entries about perhaps a hundred letters and editorials. Although I've found a brand-new local violation of church-state separation, I've chosen to ignore it and to officially revoke the policy altogether. Believers have nothing new to say, and I have nothing new to say in response. It's the same idiocy over and over again. The average person in the area can't reason their way out of a wet paper bag, and I'm tired of arguing with a brick wall. This is not at all to say that I won't discuss the stupidity of religion, just that I won't feel obligated to myself to mention every example of stupidity that finds its way into the pages of the local newspaper.

Nothing to Fear

This opinion column by Terry Dickson was published in the life section under the title, “Righteous ‘fear’ has its place.” I found most of it unremarkable except for a few choice selections.

The slide in religious affiliation [in New England] may be because of a lack of fear.

Perhaps this is correct. Maybe more people are increasingly realizing they have nothing to fear from non-existent deities and their imaginary torture chambers.

I like what the Rev. Tommy Nelson, senior pastor at Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, sometimes says. He'll be reading along in the Bible and do a little interpretation. “In the original Greek,” he'll say, “the word fear means fear. Be afraid.”

I suppose he didn't get the memo from liberal theologians and apologists that Christianity is supposed to be a religion of love and peace, and he actually read Jesus' intolerant and exclusivist message in the bible!

“I'm prophesying we'll become more religious with this economic downturn,” [Rev. Jay Hanson] said. FDR famously said during the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

How utterly ironic! Dickson laments modern society's lack of fear of God throughout the entire column and then at the end suggests with this quotation that we have nothing to fear and should not be afraid of anything except irrational fear! Be not afraid, indeed!

Foolish Wager

I love waking up in the morning and being threatened with hell as I eat breakfast. This letter by Joyce Bates was published today under the heading, “Atheism: Price of being wrong.”

I am mystified by the belligerence of atheists. Do they really believe their "sincerity" is more important than truth? I'm not trying to persuade them, I just want them to stop trying to persuade me. Why does my belief bother them so much? If I'm wrong, I lose nothing and gain everything. If they're wrong, they lose everything and gain nothing. Looks like a no-brainer to me.

First, I don't know which alleged belligerence she's referring to. She really needed to be more specific. Second, I've never heard any atheist claim that sincerity is more important that truth. Third, I have no idea how atheists are trying to persuade her. We don't have churches, schools, universities, television channels, or radio stations. There are a few local television and radio shows around the country and some podcasts, but those are almost never about deconverting theists. There are atheist books and bookstores, but nothing compared to the number of Christian books and bookstores. I've heard of atheist street preachers and tracts online, but I've never encountered them in person and I would bet neither has the author. I've never even heard of a door-to-door proselytizer. Fourth, her belief bothers some of us because it's irrational and dangerous. It adversely affects political and social life. Fifth, if she actually thinks Pascal's wager is a valid argument for belief, then “no-brainer” a very apt description of her. She claims not to want to persuade us and then she threatens us with eternal torture. This is why religion is evil.