The Importance of Religious Literalism

Although I discarded all my religious beliefs several years ago when I deconverted, I have retained one metabelief throughout my life: it really matters whether the claims of religion are true. If there exists an omnimax deity who created the universe, who loves me, and who has instructed me how to be happy, then I want to listen to him and follow his plan. If heaven exists, then I want to live there forever. If hell exists, then I want, more than anything else, to avoid being condemned to suffer there for all eternity. Indeed, I simply can't imagine anything which would more justly merit my concern. If, on the other hand, there are no deities, there is no heaven and there is no hell, then I see no reason to maintain any religious tradition merely for the sake of tradition. And if religion is nothing more than a metaphor, then I don't care any more about biblical stories than I do about Aesop's fables. In fact, the message of the bible is essentially tyrannical and barbaric and, even though it contains some benevolence, I don't want to give the impression that I respect the more pervasive malevolence or give special credence to any of it as divine. If any religion is true, then I want to accept it as truth, but if it's false or just symbolic, then it's simply not of any interest to me.

The rejection of literalism and scriptural inerrancy is the mark of liberal religion. It seems in particular that one can't be a liberal believer without rejecting the doctrine of hell, or at least the belief that nonbelievers are condemned there simply for not believing. But without the threat of hell, there is no reason to take religion seriously except societal pressure, personal preference or the belief that religious devotion is rewarded in this life and there is certainly no reason to obsess about it. Over the past several centuries, even the Catholic Church has liberalized its teaching on the salvation of those outside the church. (Of course, church leaders refuse to acknowledge the change and refer to it doctrinal development.) The traditional teaching was that only baptized Catholics in good standing could hope to be saved. The possibility was later extended to those who lived before Jesus or who otherwise never heard the gospel. Next unbaptized infants or aborted fetuses were included. Then it was non-Catholic Christians who could be part of an “invisible” church. Now some theologians argue that all non-Christians and even atheists might achieve salvation. I know not all of this has become official dogma, but the overall trend toward universalism is unmistakeable. If the church officially renounced the doctrine of hell, however, and apologized for the enormous amount of suffering it has caused through the ages, I would be no closer to returning the fold as there would be even less incentive to return since I would be admitted to heaven no matter what. I attended mass every single Sunday for twenty-five years, with only a small number of exceptions which I later confessed, until the day I decided to apostasize. Not once since then have I ever even considered the idea of returning for the community or the nostalgia. Attending mass was at most a tolerable experience from which the only pleasure I ever really derived was my belief that I had fulfilled my obligation for yet another week. Attempting to follow all the moral rules was at best an annoyance and at worst pure torment. I want to leave all vestiges of my former faith in the past where they belong. Perhaps the only significant difference between liberal believers and nonbelievers is that the former like religion and want to preserve it, even if they have to mangle it in the process, and the latter generally don't like it and are content to live without it.

Ironically, I share this metabelief that religion matters with conservative believers, who are usually opponents on political and social issues, but not with liberal believers, who are usually allies on these same issues. Since individuals rightly have their own unique opinions, it's usually not possible (or necessary) to find others who share the exact same thought processes, only similar conclusions. We can use all the allies we can get for political battles.

Happy World Humanist Day!

Today is World Humanist Day, a day to celebrate and raise awareness of Humanism as a life stance. Unfortunately, this holiday holds even less significance for me than Humanlight since I know of no local events in which I can participate and it has no popular holiday to create a festive atmosphere from which it can indirectly benefit. Nevertheless, I would like to wish all of my visitors a Happy World Humanist Day! Perhaps next year I will have someone with whom to celebrate this special day.

Pain and Suffering

Yesterday I went to the beach for the first time in years, excluding visits during which I simply walked along the sand or the pier, and I paid the price for spending so much time in the midday, summer, Florida sun. I completely forgot to apply sunblock to my feet and failed to sufficiently cover the backs of my lower legs, resulting in severe sunburn, primarily on the tops of my feet. In addition, I had to walk back to the vehicle barefoot over sand which was absolutely scorching, the hottest I have felt during my entire life. My feet are still in constant pain more than twenty-four hours later despite my use of multiple cooling, soothing and healing agents. I'm sure that I will recover soon enough, but all of this pain reminded me of the change in my approach to suffering from when I was religious.

As a believer, none of this pain would have seemed pointless because I could have offered it to God. I believed this would reduce the amount of time I would spend in purgatory after my death and perhaps even gain me some merit in the eyes of God. It didn't matter that the causes of suffering didn't always seem just; the offering itself gave it meaning and perhaps made it easier for me to accept. This response to suffering has most likely played a major role in allowing religion to largely sidestep the problem of evil, which even believers acknowledge as the strongest argument against their faith, and is just one way in which religion makes life easier for believers by making unsupported promises.

As an atheist, now I have to accept any and all pain as essentially meaningless. It's true that it will teach me to more carefully apply sunblock before spending hours in the merciless sun, but this is a lesson which I could have learned without pain and which has no real moral value. The same is true of much greater suffering such as major illness, accidents or even death. We have to face cold hard reality without any promise that everything will be all right in the end and that everything will balance out. It's not easy, but it still seems better than comforting fantasy.

Individualism and Infallibility

In my previous entry, I discussed the tendency of modern Catholics to adopt Protestant attitudes toward theology and proclaim the autonomy of the individual in determining religious truth. During my deconversion, however, I realized that even the most conservative Catholic must also necessarily implicitly hold this position because of the inescapable fact that it's always an individual who chooses to follow a religion and thus always an individual who act as the final authority. Catholics attempt to avoid this issue by claiming to recognize an infallible pope as the final authority, but the individual still must be the ultimate arbiter between who is fallible and who is infallible! All Catholic dogma does is reduce the number of personal judgments to one, but this judgment still must be made by each fallible person. It would be circular and thus invalid to argue that the pope is infallible because he claims to be, so in the end, each Catholic really only says, “I think the pope cannot possibly be wrong.” So much for building the church upon a rock.

Protestant Catholics

Although there are far more atheists than professed Catholics in this country, I felt more alone intellectually when I was believer because only a small percentage really thought like I did beyond their basic belief in the divinity of Jesus. I thought that miracles and logical arguments proved the authority of the Catholic Church and I accepted absolutely everything that the church taught for that reason. The majority of self-identified Catholics, however, even those who attend mass regularly, don't truly recognize that authority (if they dissent from even one teaching) and are essentially Protestants in that they consider themselves the ultimate arbiter between true and false, right and wrong, good and bad. I felt especially alone because all these people who supposedly shared my religion really didn't; at most, they shared some superficial beliefs, but they lacked the core principle that I considered so important to my identity. As an atheist, this is not the case. I fully accept the primacy of the individual conscience, and my reasons for disbelieving generally align with those of others: lack of evidence and the meaninglessness of religious language. The general populace might look at me with suspicion when I say I'm an atheist, but at least I know that I'm not alone in my thinking.

Perpetual Adoration

Catholics believe that the bread and wine consecrated during the mass “transubstantiate” into the body and blood of Jesus, that is, truly become God without changing their outward appearance. As such, they become proper objects of worship within the mass and, sometimes, outside of the mass. In some parishes, there is a practice known as perpetual adoration in which a consecrated wafer is placed in a monstrance and displayed in a chapel twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year with volunteers scheduled such that at least one person is always present in the chapel offering adoration.

Volumes have been written criticizing the belief in transubstantiation and the reception of communion, but my intention here is only to indicate the absurdity of asking people to keep God company around the clock, even within the context of church teaching. The practice is supposedly voluntary, but it's rather more complicated than it seems because of the goal of continually uninterrupted worship. First, in order to set up and then maintain the practice, the organizers need people for every time slot throughout the week, so parishioners could feel guilted into participating. Second, if someone cannot come during their regular time slot, because of a vacation, a new work or school schedule, sickness, accident, etc., a replacement must be found, even if it's for two o'clock in the morning. And if the person following someone doesn't show up, they're not supposed to leave until someone else can replace them. I fully realize that it's supposed to be a sacrifice, but I object to asking people to make sacrifices which put the elderly and the sleep-deprived on the road in the middle of the night, all to visit a deity who is supposedly present in every corner of the universe. As is typical with religion, it's just absurdity upon absurdity.

The Day I Almost Deconverted

Although my actual deconversion several years ago was a rather thoughtful and deliberate process, there was a memorable day approximately eleven years ago when I seriously considered becoming an atheist in the matter of a single day. It was the summer after I graduated from high school and I was working at a supermarket as bagger. I remember that I had recently had conversations with a couple of friends who were atheists in which they had refuted the apologetic arguments that I had presented to them, even though I didn't really recognize the validity of their responses at the time. As I carried the groceries out of the store to the customers' cars and brought back the shopping carts, I imagined how it would feel to be an atheist. I can't seem to recall the particular issues that I was pondering, but I do recall the surge of emotion that I felt, a mixture of excitement and fear. At home at the end of the day, I decided that I couldn't ignore the arguments from miracles and the peacefulness of the religious, though it was certainly the fear of hell which provided the greatest motivation to remain a believer. It seems truly strange that I almost rejected a lifetime of belief with hardly any thought and I wonder what could have happened if I had deconverted that day. If it had stuck, I might have saved myself from a lot of grief that I was to experience in later years, but if it hadn't, then I might have ended up worse than I actually did.

One of those friends correctly predicted that I would eventually become an atheist because, in his opinion, I was too smart to remain a believer. I haven't seen him since high school and I have occasionally wondered whether he would even remember his remark and whether he would be pleased to learn that he was right. If I ever talk to him, I will be sure to ask and probably report on it here.

Sounds of Peace

Whenever writing a blog entry, I listen to quiet music to soothe my mind and I've found that my most frequent selection is my collection of Gregorian chant on my computer. It's rather ironic that I compose my thoughts against religion to the sounds of the sacred liturgy, but it's simply the best choice for the purpose. Chant is both very beautiful and completely calm. It's also performed in Latin, a language which I've studied but which I can tune out without any effort. If I automatically understood what the performers were singing like I would if they sang in English, I think that I would be annoyed by the words themselves and most especially by what they signify and that I would be unable to concentrate. As it is, however, I can enjoy chant for what its actual sound conveys to me: peace and meditation.

Hell: The Evilest Doctrine

The single most influential idea on my religious outlook is undoubtedly the doctrine of hell. It was hell that sparked my initial interest in religion during my teenage years, it was hell that kindled the scrupulosity which tormented me for years, it was hell that ignited my investigation and subsequent deconversion and it is hell that continues to fuel my antipathy toward Christianity. It's difficult to envision how my life would have been if I had never believed in hell, but it certainly would have followed a markedly different course.

Every person values and seeks happiness. It's the ultimate motivation for all our thoughts and actions, whether we pursue it directly or indirectly (by making others and then thus ourselves happy) and even paradoxically when we find it in feelings of sadness. Hell is the antithesis of happiness and is by definition the worst possible concept imaginable. It's a place (or “state”) of eternal pain and suffering and has been symbolized as an unquenchable lake of fire. And it is, despite its simplicity, without a doubt the vilest concept ever conceived of by humanity.

No person could ever deserve to be consigned to hell, for the pain endured therein would be infinitely more than any pain inflicted by a finite being. Even the most brutal dictators caused only a limited amount of suffering and would be unjustly punished in hell, even by the most vindictive standards of justice. And I find it both laughable and depressing to hear believers argue that an omnimax deity cannot prevent people from being roasted for eternity. This claim can only result from complete ignorance or from a complete lack of imagination.

Whenever I hear Jesus referred to as loving or merciful, I wince. While the gospels do contain some benevolent teachings, these are completely overshadowed by Jesus' recurrent threat of unending torture for anyone who fails to accept his message. One cannot expect praise for preaching love while simultaneously executing divine blackmail. An objector might arguing that hell is only a metaphor and that Jesus' threats weren't meant literally. To this, I respond that this isn't the Jesus of Christianity but instead a sanitized caricature of Jesus that has been altered in response to moral progress of the past twenty centuries. To claim that the vast majority of Jesus' followers throughout history have totally misunderstood him and that the true message of Jesus perfectly corresponds with modern western humanistic values is to engage in completely unsupportable historical revisionism.

I simply cannot imagine that the billions of people who profess to believe in hell truly do so, or at least not that they believe they themselves might actually go there. If there is truly even the slightest possibility that one could be tortured forever and ever, then no response is too radical to prevent this possibility from being realized. For many, however, hell is just a place for murderers; everyone else will be admitted to heaven upon death. With this thoroughly unbiblical perspective and because most of us aren't emotionally close to any murderers, hell is relatively easy to ignore. I would like to stress that this is a very good thing; billions of people obsessing about it would result in worldwide chaos. It was, after all, belief in hell which fanned the flames of the crusades and inquisitions. We would all do well to toss the concept of eternal punishment into the trash bin of history.

I would like to comfort my readers by reminding them of a truly glorious truth which finally ended my personal religious struggles and which I hereby resolve to reflect upon each day: Smile! There is no hell!

No Sacred Cows

Atheism, unlike religion, has no sacred cows. There is nothing that someone can do which can cause especial offense to atheists beyond the mere desire to offend. There are no gods to blaspheme, no prophets to mock, no dogmas to ridicule, no scriptures to desecrate, no temples to profane, no sacred objects to defile and no rituals to parody. This is certainly not to say that you cannot offend atheists, only that we don't set ourselves up for offense by treating something or someone as inviolable. You never see an angry atheist mob form in response to a cartoon caricature, an obscene sculpture, an incisive documentary, or the publication of a controversial book. We might well feel upset over any of these but only because they misrepresent our position and not simply because someone had the audacity to portray it differently from ourselves. Even then, our response is far more measured than that of most believers.

Muslims in particular are known for the extreme amount of offense they claim and for their verbally and physically violent reactions thereto, but Christians aren't immune to emotional reactions to alleged blasphemy. Although they very thankfully almost never threaten real violence, we have all probably heard believers threaten and even wish others hellfire for even questioning their faith. It's difficult to appreciate just how violent this response is unless you realize that these people actually believe that hell exists and that they want you to suffer unspeakable torment there for all eternity! Perhaps even more remarkable is that the majority of Christians only condemn the desire to see others in hell and not the threat itself, which is an integral part of the gospel message. (Most people think the message is love and forgiveness when it's actually, “Believe or fry!”) Even if an atheist dismisses all believers as fools, that doesn't even begin to compare with what the average believer thinks about atheists. And atheists certainly don't express the same level of emotion when someone insults their beliefs.

It's not surprising there is no reaction when you believe that blasphemy is a victimless crime.