Mystery Solved!

This one may end up being somewhat controversial. Before we get going on this installment of my “How I Became A Skeptic” blog posts there’s one thing I would like to make clear for those who may be among the uninitiated: not all skeptics are atheists or agnostics. Conversely, not all atheists and agnostics are skeptics. It just so happens that many skeptics are atheists or agnostics. They just happen to be two great tastes that taste great together.

Now that that’s out of the way, where were we? Oh, right. With the help of Randi, Sagan, Nickell, Penn and Teller, Shermer, Ben Radford and some others, my baloney detection kit was basically complete. I already knew how to think critically about arguments and break them down into their own unique components and examine them. That skill, I think, improved as a result of discovering the Skeptics Guide to The Universe podcast and the listing of their top 20 logical fallacies that they had on the site and a game they used to play on the show called “Name That Logical Fallacy.”

For all intents and purposes I considered myself a full blown skeptic, but I had not quite given up on religion yet. I had basically rejected all of organized religion, but still held on to a very deistic/Spinoza-esque view of God and, frankly, I did it because I wanted to, and even though knew that it was irrational. But before I get too far ahead of myself, a little background on what, for lack of a better term, locked me into this mindset for so long.

I’ve discussed in previous posts how I never really accepted organized religion so I don’t think I need to re-hash anything there. But to in the interest of open and honest discussion about the issue, I think I should give you some more background on my personal experience with my former faith and belief in a deity.

I never, ever liked going to church. When I did have to go I thought the stories they told were kind of neat sometimes, but other than that? Meh. I would have been much happier staying home and/or outside playing with friends. Besides, I got all the religion I needed from TV and books, right? Church just wasn’t for me. But! I was fascinated with religion and god and the stories that I had heard over and over again either when I was forced to go to church or when I watched Mysteries of The Bible on A&E.

Maybe it was partly due to my lifelong love and fascination with history and mythical story telling? I don’t know. Whatever my rationale and however it evolved through the years, I wanted to believe and did.

I prayed for all sorts of things large and small. I prayed for school delays, to be just sick enough to not go to school on a particular day (often a self-fulfilling prophecy), for certain outcomes to personal concerns, I worried about Armageddon, and feared the prospect of Hell.

Not unironically, it’s prayer, prophecy, and the “end times” that dominated shows like Mysteries of The Bible, various History Channel programs, Unsolved Mysteries and on and on—all shows that I watched and was fascinated by–that helped encourage my interest and belief. In hindsight, I clearly had a very biased view due to my choice in television programming and, to be fair, these were and are the things that permeate all of our culture and, I would guess, are the cornerstones of most people’s faith.

Although I had considered myself “saved” for a very long time, I was pretty passive about my faith. In middle school, fr example, I occasionally attended Youth for Christ meetings that were held at my school, but I never went for the religion. I went to hang out with friends. Faith, while at least somewhat important, was a backburner issue for me. I already told you about my youth group experience a couple posts back and that was basically it for high school. I just never really gave it much of a second thought, it was always jus kind of there…lingering.

Then I went to college. College was an interesting time for my then held faith, however minimal it may have been. There were two major competing forces:

1.) I was and am a voracious reader and gobbled up books about and by personal heroes like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison, John Locke and other products of the Enlightenment. I also discovered the works of Ayn Rand.
2.) I met the girl who later became my wife. Her faith was and still is quite important to her and, out of respect for her, I made a concerted effort to re-evaluate my thoughts about religion and made a specific point to read the Bible, cover to cover.

Before I begin addressing those two competing forces just one item I want to clear up: I am not concerned with anyone’s preconceived notions and thoughts about the politics of any of the individuals mentioned in item 1. I’m not. If someone has a different perspective on Jefferson or Rand or the Enlightenment, cool. It’s a discussion for another time. The purpose of this is not to discuss and debate the merits of the actual or perceived political viewpoints of those individuals. It’s to help illustrate the internal struggle I had for a few years because each of those people had one thing in common: they were anti-religion and anti-faith.

As a student I was constantly challenged in my political science, history, and philosophy courses to think critically about what I thought and believed about things and had to support those thoughts with evidence. I worked hard at it too. BSing my way through a report or a test may have sufficed for a passing grade, which I could have easily done, but it didn’t do me any real good. I was much happier to really study subjects and ideas so I would get my money’s worth, so to speak, and actually learn something.

As I began to study to read and study the individuals I noted above, I noticed they all had one thing in common: a remarkable lack of faith and/or disdain for religion. Jefferson and Madison worked hard to keep religion out of American founding documents, both at the federal and state levels. Jefferson coined the term “the separation of church and state”, Madison opposed the idea of a Congressional Chaplain, Jefferson wrote his own version of the Bible that meticulously removed every bit of magic and superstition, Rand railed against the damaging and dishonest ideas of religion, faith, and mysticism, Paine was not much different from any of them. As the scope of what I read grew, I discovered these traits to be held by Washington, Adams, Einstein, Franklin, and on and on. Many of my intellectual heroes all had one thing in common: a rejection of faith and religion.

Somewhat ironically, but not surprisingly, the more I faced arguments against the faith and god that I held true, the more I tightened my grip. For someone who valued reason and logic so much, I desperately searched for some reason to continue believing. Embarrassingly enough, I actually once had the thought, “I don’t care if it’s irrational. I believe in God.” It was a ridiculous and absurd rationale for believing anything, not just in a deity. Embarrassing as it was, it was almost certainly driven by fear. The fear of an eternity in Hell, which is a cruel and nonsensical idea for anyone to have to struggle with, kept me from just letting go. For a short time all of my rational faculties seemed intact, except for those that I needed to objectively examine religion.

I held on in the face of the most convincing arguments and, basically, tricked myself into still believing and accepting the looniest of ideas, like intelligent design.

This went on for much of my time in college. So take those struggles and combine that with a desire to learn more about Christianity by reading the Bible. An endeavor I took on because the girl I was and am very much in love with held her faith in very high regard.

It’s a funny thing. You would think that that ridiculous grip I was maintaining would be supported and armed by a reading of the Bible. If you did think that, it would be wrong. Just as my attending a church youth group in high school helped end any positive thoughts I had regarding organized religion, the Bible ended any positive thoughts I had regarding faith and God.

I struggled and struggled for a long time to reconcile my belief in a God and prayer and whatever with my skepticism and all of the critical thinking skills I worked so hard to gain and understand. I’m not kidding, it was a constant war of cognitive dissonance in my brain for at least three years. Only reading the Bible could put an end to it.

If you haven’t read the book, you should. Its bananas. God is just mean and cruel. A few quick examples of his cruelty as described by the authors of the stories: God endorses rape (Judges 21:10-24), God endorses the murder of homosexuals (whom he must have created as such) (Leviticus 20:13 and Romans 1:24-32), God endorses the murder of non-virgins, but ONLY if they’re women (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), God endorses the murder of children (Isaiah 13:15-18), God demands genital mutilation (Genesis 17:10-14 and Exodus 12:43-49), and God uses bears to kill children who may act like jerks (2 Kings 2:23-24).

That’s just a VERY small number of examples and just (mostly) from the Old Testament! It doesn’t include a litany of other disturbing deeds perpetrated by God, such as those committed against Job (he wrecks Job’s life over a bet with Satan, WTF?), the numerous acts of genocide he commits or encourages in war, to glorify his own name, or to cleanse the planet.

Sticking with the Old Testament for just a moment, take the Exodus: Pharaoh, on numerous occasions, is ready to let the Israelites go. Then God intervenes and “hardens his heart” and makes him keep the Israelites captive as slaves. Why would he do that you ask? So he can show off, of course, with plagues that destroy the land and punish all of the area Egyptians, regardless of how they felt about the Israelite slaves or their level of involvement with them. God then, according to the book, kills children to prove a point. A point that was already conceded on several previous occasions and the Israelites could have left—no harm no foul. Instead God, in his benevolence, kills all of the first born male Egyptians anyway. Fucked. Up.

The New Testament then goes on to endorse all of these heinous acts and claims to fulfill their prophecies provided in the Old Testament. Don’t even get me started on the cruel, torturous murder he orchestrated for his own son to do something he could have done with a wave of the hand and a few words from a prophet.

The New Testament, is basically God turning into Ike Turner. He effectively says, “I know I done you wrong, baby. But you just make me so mad sometimes, I can’t help it. I just go crazy. You know I love you, right? Let me prove it by killing my son.”

Oh and did I mention he can convict you of thought crimes? (Matthew 5:27-28)

Oh and also, if you want to follow Jesus, he says you have to hate your family. (Luke 14:26)

How is any of this okay? If I were to write a fictional novel for you with all of these acts included, would you immediately presume the perpetrator of these acts to be a hero or someone who should not be reviled? I would hope and guess that you would not approve of such atrocious behavior.

I freely admit that I am only citing a very small sample of things. I do that for the sake of brevity and to (hopefully) illustrate my point.

I’ve heard many times that not everything in the Bible should be taken literally. Okay, fine. I’m willing to concede that point. Please clearly delineate when God is joking or being metaphorical, then. Also, why would God deliberately obfuscate what he’s trying to say and use metaphors to begin with…makes it difficult for people to properly obey him, no? And does that difficulty in understanding not put souls in peril? Seems rather needless.

All of those things that I noted contributed to the end of my faith. How could I possibly reconcile all of those undeniably evil acts with what we were to accept about God? It just stopped making sense. He was supposed to be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and, most importantly, omnibenevolent.

Do you see how the sweater began to unravel for me? None of this jived with what I was taught and thought about the Almighty. After reading these things and being appalled by them, the most elementary questions immediately began to spring to mind. Questions I had ignored before. None of which had answers that were reconcilable with a rational response or could reasonably be attributed to someone who wasn’t a megalomaniac.

A quick example: Let’s imagine there’s a Hell, or at least that there’s the potential of some separation from God if you don’t obey him and that it is decidedly less pleasant than being in his presence. Fair enough? Now let’s take the idea that God has the power of prophecy and can therefore see across time and space, which also means that he knows what we’re going to do before we do it and, thus, even before he “creates” us.

If we assume those things to be true, and that there is a Hell or other non-Paradise for “sinners” to go to, then that means God deliberately creates people to send there. If he were in fact omnibenevolent, why not spare the sinners the misery of the existence they will have to endure in the afterlife? Instead, he creates them knowing that he will condemn them. That’s kind of messed up and at least a little sadistic.

This, of course, says nothing of the people and children, no less, that he apparently creates only so that they can suffer. Let’s exclude starving children that live in both Third World countries and the Western world, for the sake of discussion. Why would God have to create down syndrome? What purpose could it serve other than to saddle those individuals and their families with that disorder with unnecessary hardship? What worthwhile purpose does cancer serve? Why make those people suffer? What did they and their families do to deserve such physical and emotional pain and suffering? I do not find these things to be immediately indicative of a loving God, rather I find them to more likely be indicative of the absence of a loving God. They are more evidence of either an indifferent god, no god, or perhaps the existence of a cruel one.

Before you answer, consider this: if a single human being were responsible for these tragedies, what would you think of him? Would the alleged glory that he sought for himself through the creation of these diseases and disorders be justifiable to you?

Then I asked the most important question of all: What evidence is there? The answer is that there is none, only the Bible—which is notoriously unreliable as a historical document and even the cobbled together stories of the New Testament weren’t written down until decades after Christ’s alleged execution. There’s just no archeological evidence to support the overwhelming majority of the claims of the Bible, at least the most important ones.

The more I read of the Bible the more rapidly I abandoned my faith. When you read it in a historical context and compare to other myths and legends of the time, it’s very obviously a Bronze Age text that reflects the societal norms and concerns of the age. Not a document that should be fawned over and worshiped and obeyed by modern audiences. When you read the book, God reads more like a barbarian warrior-king out of a Robert E. Howard novel than he does a benevolent creator.

Truthfully, for as rapidly as I lost my faith, the more I began to appreciate the book. Not as a religiously worthwhile text, but I began to appreciate it as I enjoy other mythological stories, like those of Homer or the tales of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, or King Arthur. Perhaps, hidden somewhere, there are grains of truth but they are clearly legends that borrow from rich histories and other myths and are meant to keep and establish societal norms.

So, in the end, I lost the last little bit of faith and finally fully replaced it with reason. It felt good and feels good.

Please, please understand that this indictment is not of believers. I bear no contempt or ill-will to those who do still believe. What purpose would that serve? People have different reasons for believing different things and not all of those reasons are stupid or invalid. I may not accept their rationale, but I won’t disparage it. Hate the sin, love the sinner, right? Indeed many of the people who mean the most to me in my life are believers.

I’m not angry at God, either. Afterall, how can one be angry at someone who he doesn’t believe exists? While I don’t bear any ill-will towards believers or even “God”, individuals who take advantage of that belief to abuse their fellow humans are not free from my ire, however. That’s what bothers me. That’s the problem. The stories in the Bible are just stories, no more awful or dangerous than other ancient myths or the latest horror movie or crime novel. They’re just stories and words. It’s when people begin to use those stories to control others and use them as a source of power over the masses that they have convinced to believe. It’s the Peter Popoffs, Tomás de Torquemadas, Pat Robertsons, Jerry Fallwells, Mother Theresas, and a whole host of others that I take issue with.

I’m not an atheist, well I don’t like the term anyway. The term “atheist” implies there’s a God to believe in. I’m no more an atheist than I am an A-Cat-In-The-Hatist. I simply am me and who I am does not believe in the literal truth of a Bronze Age mythical text or that the main character of that text is an actual being. There simply is no evidence, and therefore no reason, to believe so. I am not a believer.

More than once the question has come up, “What if you’re wrong?” I suppose that’s a possibility. But in the event that I am wrong, I am prepared to admit that to my presumed maker and, presuming he is a rational being, I would hope that he would accept my sincerest apologies and value the fact that I relied upon the reason and rational faculties that he, the deity, provided me with and simply made an error in judgement that I am willing to reverse. It reminds me of a quote from Jefferson,

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences… If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you.

Another common objection that’s raised is Pascal’s Wager—that is, why not believe in God? If you’re wrong, you’re no worse for wear. If you’re right, you get an eternity of bliss.

I don’t buy that argument. Not in the slightest. First, it asks the believer to shelve his integrity and lie about their belief. To be a phony (wouldn’t God know you were lying?). Second, it implies that God is okay anyone who just pretends to believe and no real faith is required (why all the pomp and circumstance about rules and the multiple acts of violence he committed on people then?). It effectively relegates God to a desperate, friendless child who will let anyone come play with his toys if they just pretend to be his friend. Is this really a viable argument for belief?

Should adequate evidence of a deity or the truth of Biblical tales surface, I will be happy to reverse my position. But there must be evidence. The scientific method demands it. Critical thinking skills demand it. You see, in the face of reality, we have to be prepared to change our minds. We have to be open minded and ready to learn. This is the exact opposite of faith and religion, which demand that we believe without evidence and never question.

I have plenty of other thoughts on God and religion, but I’ve dragged this on long enough. Suffice to say that I no longer have any faith in a deity, be it Spinoza’s or one belonging to one of the major religions of the world. I reached that conclusion because of reasoned inquiry into what I thought about the world and how it worked. I’m glad I did.

When I reached this conclusion, nothing happened. Time just moved on. I learned more and I’m still learning more. It was the capper on my journey into skepticism. Now that I’m really there, a whole new journey is just beginning. It’s the end of Act I of what I assume will be a three act play.

There’s so much that I don’t know and want to know. That’s skepticism though; it’s reasoned inquiry. A constant search for something new and wonderful and always being prepared to be corrected. It’s exciting because it means that with so much unexplored territory there’s a diminished chance of having a dull moment in my life.

Yay science!