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So, a bit ago I said that I was no longer an anti-theist, for several reasons. Alex Gabriel responded in a post that stated:

I don’t object to either of Hughes’ posts, and I share the complex feelings he talks about—they’re just not reasons to adopt his stance.

Here’s the annoying thing about that post. He doesn’t really characterize my stance in it. Doesn’t really mention it. No, really, go look. The most he said is that I discussed my mother’s own suffering, her religious feelings, and my own prayer — which were EXAMPLES of my argument. Not my argument itself. Of course it would be ridiculous for me to say I’m not an anti-theist simply because my mother suffered, she felt religious, and she prayed once. Obviously. But those were examples of my larger point, not my whole entire point itself.

So, because that post got a bit of attention, I’d like to set the record straight a bit with where, exactly, I’m coming from, and what I think Alex Gabriel is missing in the ensuing conversation he engages in on what he states ARE correct reasons to adopt a stance on anti-theism.

One thing Alex Gabriel says in an earlier post on this topic is that I said I had sentiments that sounded fairly anti-theistic:

In the process of declaring they aren’t antitheists, some authors make concessions that sound nothing but. (Mass belief in a moralising god ‘does more harm than good’, argues Hughes. ‘Would I like to see the human race leave all religion behind…? Absolutely, yes’ adds Carter.) When people say in these posts that they aren’t antitheists, I get the sense what they mean is that they aren’t jerks.

This is a bit awkward to respond to, because earlier in the post Alex says that his post should not be read as a reply to me or to Carter, and he puts our arguments in parentheses here (for the record, you have permission to read this post unequivocally as a response to Alex Gabriel). So, possibly, it wouldn’t be right to assume that the remainder of his post (which continues to talk about how people who aren’t antitheists are concerned about being polite) would apply to me, I suppose…although his quotation in the above indicates it might…

In contrast to these concerns, Alex states that:

Being religious isn’t wicked on its own, and secular people aren’t necessarily better. Ditching faith wouldn’t solve all our problems — I doubt that ditching any one thing would, and there would be better candidates if I had to choose. But I don’t think any of this conflicts with the idea that overall, religious movements do more harm than good. If antitheism is the word we’re using for that, the only question that matters is this: if everyone on earth woke up an atheist, would the world be a better or worse place? For me the answer is better, and it doesn’t take me long to reach it. I don’t know how to say that in a palatable way — I don’t say it to be cruel or unkind — but there it is. It’s what seems true to me.

Here is the problem:

That word “better.”

How is not believing in God going to make the word better? In my view, a lack of belief in God, at least in Scandinavian countries, seems to follow a more healthy country, not cause it. In China, a high rate of disbelief exists alongside disturbing gender discrimination, although this has been alleviated in other countries that have higher degrees of atheism and agnosticism, even though the study stating this says that non-religious sentiments aren’t strictly necessary for this progress.

As I argued originally, while some seem to leave God to get out from the oppressive control of people, others seem to leave God in order to give themselves more of a “free-for-all” license to see some people as subhuman. I know this is inconvenient, but things like scientific racism from nonreligious sources have actually happened.

Here’s a hard truth: There is no scientific rule that says we ought to be humanists. None. You can be an atheist and want to kill people to get your version of Utopia, like Stalin. You can be an atheist and want to help people. Atheism does not necessarily make you a nicer person. It can. It opens up ways that weren’t open before for you to be a nice person. But it doesn’t, necessarily. And a lot of atheists aren’t nice people. I’m not just talking about other atheists, either. I’ve been accused a host of times of being an atheist who is not a nice person, by other atheists. Maybe people who say that are right — but they’re also kinda proving my point.

So I need more details on this scenario. What kinds of atheists are they? Do they all think Stalin is their hero, or are they more interested in the opinions of people like The Amazing Atheist? Or Greta Christina? Or Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris? I mean, there are some scenarios in which I could see that a world immediately replaced with atheists would be worse, and others in which it might be better. Answering that question is not as simple as saying yes or no, for me. It’s pretty complicated.

And the fact that something does more harm than good doesn’t mean that everyone is better off without any form of that thing. People may be better off with no water than with poisoned water, but that doesn’t mean that no water is the best possible solution, especially if you’ve seen bits of water that don’t seem all that harmful. That’s a bit of a false dichotomy in my book. So, even though many of us don’t need God and even think it’s gross or disgusting, there may still be some people for whom belief in God is much more psychologically essential. I mean, the American Psychological Association has seen that some people may be much, much, much more naturally connected to belief than others. Some of us don’t need God. Maybe most of us are better off without Him. But I’m not sure, based on what I’ve seen, that it’s this way for everyone — possibly, in some cases, the dogma is more dangerous than the basic belief in God itself.

Alex also seems to think (although he may not directly be addressing me) that:

I don’t market myself as an antitheist, but I feel strongly that I’m not not one. Explaining why is difficult without a certain amount of meta. When I read posts in the non-antitheism genre, it often strikes me that most of the wordcount is about other issues. I see other writers assert that the death of religion won’t solve all the world’s problems, and that in a world without it, people who currently hurt others in the name of God would just find other excuses. I hear them say deconverting believers isn’t their priority, and that they no longer feel an urge to pick fights with them. I listen to people say they care more about social justice than bashing religion, and that there are some awful atheists, and that they have more in common with plenty of progressive believers, and that they’d rather work with them. I see them point out that being an atheist doesn’t make them more intelligent than believers are, and that religious people don’t deserve to be hated.

None of these statements are to do with whether religion is a good thing.

Hm. Let’s go down the list. I don’t think the death of religion will solve the world’s problems (I don’t think he does either), and I don’t think people who currently hurt others in the name of God will necessarily find other excuses to do so. Deconverting believers isn’t my priority, but I don’t an honest conversation and sometimes a more strident one, when the situation calls for it.

But the items that I likely uphold is the fact that I care more about social justice than I do about bashing religion, and I’d also like to work with really progressive believers than “awful atheists” — whether it’s at the workplace or in a charity. I have a hunch that you would, too. I mean, I’m not lying when I say that I’d rather work with Obama than with Stalin any day of the week.

When I say these things, however, it’s because I see belief in God as complex, and because I actually do have higher priorities.

Alex Gabriel states later:

A part of me still wants to be, be like or be liked by religious believers, and I could do well as a faitheist, rehearsing the platitudes from paragraph four  [the paragraph quoted above] — just as I could tell Christians what they want to hear on queer issues.

I’m more interested in saying what I think.

Fair enough. I’m not asking him to lie.

After a discussion in which he underlines the harm religions often dole out to people they suck in with love and consideration, he states:

When I hear people saying why they’re not antitheists — when I read tweets and Facebook statuses and blog posts and op-eds — these [the sentiments discussed earlier] are the statements I’m used to hearing. None of them are useful statements. All of them are either irrelevant or wrong. I don’t think anyone who says these things is being insincere, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they became things atheists said because they’re things believers like to hear, or feel like they might be. They’re delicate, diplomatic, sayable and politically correct.

OK, so let me clear the dust here and say no, I’m not being insincere. But when I say that my priority is on social justice over and above belief in God and that gets labeled as “politically correct”… I think the connotations of that word, insofar as they reference politeness without connection to the goal of reducing harm, may possibly be a mischaracterization of my position. My position, my priority, is diminishing harm. Diminishing belief in God (and any ensuing “political correctness”) is incidental.

Not being a jerk can be a priority, at times, when it entails diminishing harm.

Say you’re at a funeral, and everyone’s crying, and the father, crestfallen, comes up to the front to pray about seeing his son in heaven one day, and I stand on a pew, open my mouth, and scream at the top of my lungs, “He’s dead! He’s dead! He’s not in heaven, he’s rotting slowly in that overdone casket, and you’re never going to see him again you ignorant, flat-out wrong Christian!”

Now, that’s being a jerk, yes. And it’s also causing some harm in that time and place.

But would the dad be better off if he didn’t think he’d see his son in heaven? Am I diminishing harm or causing it?

Probably causing harm in that case, but I still need more information. For example, who is the dad hurting in his life through that belief? How much is that belief enabling him to keep living? Does he feel that the belief is beneficial or not? What kind of atheist would he be after he left the faith — would he live the rest of his life angry and bitter and creating harm because his son died? Or would he work harder to make sure fewer people died or went through the pain his son did? What kind of harm is the prayer doing to me, or to other people? How much is it hurting them? How much would shouting that increase harm? How much would it attack and diminish any harm that is being done?

This is complicated. I don’t know all of the answer, although I could probably guess based on how well I know the dad and the other congregants, but it’s difficult for me to say whether their lives would be better, in most scenarios. At other times, I may spout my opinion about the relationship he has with God. I might banter with him out of honesty, sure. I might blog about it. But do I want to get rid of his belief in God? Well, that’s not really a goal, necessarily, without more information.

To the extent that I am polite, I am not polite merely for meaningless niceties, but in order to reduce harm. The reason I don’t jump up and scream at the top of my lungs in the funeral service is not just because I’m concerned about meaningless niceties of being polite; it is largely because I care about the father’s grief, and at that moment I figure the chances are high that I would be doing more harm than good. This changes, obviously, if the prayer is doing great harm in the moment. But how polite or impolite I am is based on the harm my actions will cause.

See, this is where I think Alex’s problem is — the opposition between being polite and reducing harm/making things “better.” I don’t think they are necessarily opposed; there’s often significant overlap, which can muddle the conversation a bit.

Perhaps a way to widen the conversation, as Alex seems intent on doing, is to do what he does — underline the harm that religion is doing to people’s lives. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that widening the conversation would, optimally, focus on harm. I will admit that there are versions of God that may need to go, due to strict enforcement of gender roles. But I also think that, even here, the problem is the harm caused, not necessarily a God-concept itself.

At the end of his second article, Alex states:

I’m often reminded of those [LGBT interfaith] events, and of experiences with religious relatives, when not being a jerk meant always making believers feel comfortable — even with platitudes that weren’t quite true; even when your nuance wasn’t really all that nuanced; even if you had to be indirect. Like I said at the end of the last post — there are better ways to build bridges than dishonest arguments.

Strange that he would say that the arguments are dishonest while also stating that he thinks the “diplomatic” statements he used as examples earlier are sincere statements, but in any case…I’m not advocating for anyone else to be dishonest. I’m not saying that anyone should feel a need to hold back, necessarily. Especially if it is causing undue harm (which it certainly seems to be, in Alex’s scenario) among those who have grievances. What I’m saying, honestly, is that the question for me concerns how much harm actions are causing or not causing, whether people have the same stance I have on God or not. This may look like politeness or rudeness (and the affects of how it looks do seem to play into the calculation of harm), but the end goal, the focus for me, is on reducing harm.

The events Alex discusses, I think, could be remedied by encouraging (strongly if necessary) people to listen more, and by ensuring that his right to speak was protected. I don’t (and I don’t think Alex does, either) think that all the religious people at such events need to be silenced. But there is a general principle here that his argument should be able to be voiced and stand on its merits in his forum. I don’t have to adopt an anti-theistic position to have this viewpoint, advocate it, or work to empower Alex to voice it.

OK, moving on, I’ll also say this: I said a lot of uncomplimentary things about anti-theists I have encountered who have prided themselves on a stoic version of the world, and stated that I’m uncomfortable with signing people up for that when they are happy where they are at. I’m certainly not saying ALL anti-theists are like this. But I have seen too many vocal anti-theists, over the years, say that religious people are “weak” because they need God, and that they are “strong” because they don’t need God, to indicate this isn’t the case — and this weak-strong dichotomy seems to continue even into atheism, leading them to ostracize atheists who seem to be “cucks” or “weak” or “victims” when they express concern about harm they are experiencing in their lives. What I’m trying to say is that, in many anti-theist constructs I’ve seen, this weak-strong construction just doesn’t seem all that helpful for reducing harm. It might create a toxic “community” for me to get some ex-Christians who are particularly susceptible to belief in God to join. For them, that particular strain of anti-theism could result in an increase in harm, not a decrease.

I know that not all anti-theists are like this. Plenty of atheists say they’ve never experienced this phenomenon among anti-theists (although several say they have). Fine. But I’ll take the communities on a case-by-case basis. My point is that I’m not just trying to make people atheists — I’m also thinking about the net harm the atheism they’ll experience may do or not do for their life afterwards, as I said in several posts. We could say that instead of demeaning up anti-theistic arenas, we should tidy them up, and I think that the “tidying up” carries importance. People need groups that are against religion strongly and unequivocally that, at the same time, are psychologically healthy. However, as things stand now I can’t pretend everyone will be better off in an atheist community. I’ll be honest about my atheism, but I’m not quite as much of an atheist evangelist, if that makes sense. If it comes up or if I have to fight something that’s causing harm, I’ll deal with it as it comes, without necessarily having the goal of getting rid of someone’s theism.

What I’m NOT saying is that we have to be nice towards religion. I’m saying that my current attitude towards religions does not have the focus of rubbing in that I am right, nor even of underlining the truth for the truth’s sake (a controversial position, I know), but on reducing overall harm. All harm. Religious harm and nonreligious harm.  And sometimes (as I’ve done since leaving anti-theism) that does require cussing the religious types out to protect vulnerable groups. And sometimes it requires attacking your fellow atheists. But the goal is not atheism and it’s not theism; the debate, the conversation, is centered around reducing harm.

What I’m trying to say is that this division between making the world a better place and being nice to people isn’t really an easy one for me to see. Sure, I’m as against this kind of thing as much as the next guy when it comes to ridiculous rules on social behavior that have no real bearing on causing pleasure or pain to people. But the moment these acts of social behavior do cause pleasure or pain in people, they figure into equations of overall (including both short-term and long-term) harm that tilt the scale, in either direction, on what the best course of action will be.

Alex also says that the attitudes behind rejections of anti-theism force silence onto atheists by making them think their views are dangerous. I’m not saying you have to silence yourself. This is more about me. If you want to speak up against religion, do so. And if you seem harmed or silenced from doing so by other people, I will defend you. But my goal, in that case, is to protect you from undue harm; it’s often not, necessarily, to disabuse someone else of the concept of God, especially when I don’t know whether that’s going to do more good or harm. If they get deconverted based on something you and I say, fine. That’s a side occurence. That’s not the objective, for me (although it can be for you). The overall objective, for me, is to reduce harm in the situation I find myself in.

It’s kinda like Desmond Doss, that WWII conscientious objector who pissed a hell of a lot of people off with his decision not to go into the war with a rifle. Not exactly like that, but the analogy helps, I think. People were pissed off as hell at his decision, at first, and its rooting in his strong Seventh-Day Adventist faith. But he decided to diminish the harm of the war as much as he could as a medic; that was his focus in Japan. That resonates with me a bit. In the crossfire, I’d like to try to diminish harm. Which is, in some ways, a weird position for me. Anyone who has been following me on here knows I got fighting running through my veins. And I’ll still fight. But my goal is not to beat the other side, so much as it is to diminish the harm on all sides. I’m here on the atheist side, so most of my action will likely come from here. But I wanna reach out to theists who are harmed, too, because we’re all part of the same world.

How is that a change? Simple. Before this, I thought that trying to pursue the goal of getting rid of religion around the world was essential for us to access the best chance we had of living with less harm. I don’t think that anymore, for a variety of reasons. If you do, I’m not necessarily in your way, although I may respond if you seem to challenge my own stance. But my view of “better” has gotten more complicated, and it includes possible harm to theists I didn’t factor in before, and honesty demands that I include it.

I think this is where a major question lies, though: What do you mean by “better”? No, by “better” I don’t just mean specific examples of the harm God-rooted actions have done, like this list I wrote once. Yes, belief in God has led many to do some disturbing things (and many nonreligious people have done disturbing things, as well) that we have every right to be incensed about. I mean that if you are among those who think atheism will give us a better world, try to give a concrete definition of what you mean by “better.” When I try to do that, I begin to see that “better” means less harm, not necessarily less belief in God, and that the second didn’t necessarily make the first more likely (especially when the kind of people who would have less belief in God — the kind of attitude the atheists have — is not clearly defined). Of course, your definition might be different, and I’d be interested to hear it.

I have more I’m going to write on this, but that should do it for now.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me do what I’m doing.

So, recently I stated that I’m not an anti-theist. Due to a host of reactions, it seems necessary to further clarify that I’m also not an anti-anti-theist.

I’m not entirely certain I’m an anti-anti-anti-theist. I’m probably not, although I realize that may not be a strong enough statement for any anti-anti-anti-anti-theists out there (my apologies).

But no, I’m not an anti-anti-theist. Let me explain why by going into more detail about where my head is at at the moment.

A while ago, I admitted that my atheism broke down for a few days and I prayed to someone I called “God.” Several have been confused by the point I made there, so let me make it more clear.

There are atheists who pray. I’m not alone in doing this.

Take, for example, atheist Sigfried Gold:

Each morning and night, Sigfried Gold drops to his knees on the beige carpeting of his bedroom, lowers his forehead to the floor and prays to God.

In a sense.

An atheist, Gold took up prayer out of desperation. Overweight by 110 pounds and depressed, the 45-year-old software designer saw himself drifting from his wife and young son. He joined a 12-step program for food addiction that required — as many 12-step programs do — a recognition of God and prayer.

Four years later, Gold is trim, far happier in his relationships and free of a lifelong ennui. He credits a rigorous prayer routine — morning, night and before each meal — to a very vivid goddess he created with a name, a detailed appearance and a key feature for an atheist: She doesn’t exist.

While Gold doesn’t believe there is some supernatural being out there attending to his prayers, he calls his creation “God” and describes himself as having had a “conversion” that can be characterized only as a “miracle.” His life has been mysteriously transformed, he says, by the power of asking.

“If you say, ‘I ought to have more serenity about the things I can’t change,’ versus ‘Grant me serenity,’ there is a humility, a surrender, an openness. If you say, ‘grant me,’ you’re saying you can’t do it by yourself. Or you wouldn’t be there,” said Gold, who lives in Takoma Park.

Now, I disagree with Sigfried Gold on a heap of things (and I think the 12-step program has serious problems). But I think I understand him here. And I hesitate to tell him he has to stop praying to God. It obviously helps him, so I hesitate to rip that away.

Another example is Hafidha Acuay, who states:

I’m an atheist, but it doesn’t bother me that others aren’t. Diversity — whether we’re talking about ecosystems or the human brain — is, in my view, a fundamental part of life. Once I became an atheist, no one ever pressured me to pray, but I was troubled by the idea of ignoring pleas for prayer.

I don’t ask for prayers (except in a facetious way about my favorite World Cup teams, for example) but when someone is really hurting and bothers to ask me to pray for them, what am I going to say? “Sorry, I don’t pray for people, but I hope you’re all right?”

I don’t know, but I couldn’t reconcile that in my heart. Praying for those who ask for prayers is a way for me to participate in the lives of my believer friends and family.

Now, I’m not sure all would feel that’s necessary. But…I dunno. Maybe in her situation this does more good than harm. Sure, the family may be inconsiderate of her atheism…but also, maybe by praying Acuay is connecting to and influencing her family more positively, in her specific situation, for her own emotional health, than she would be if she didn’t. So…I kinda get it. Maybe that connection does more good than bad, for her, although this may not be the case elsewhere.

Another atheist who prays is Californian research scientist Ripudaman Malhotra, who writes:

I am an atheist because I do not accept the notion of a super-natural God who, having created the universe, guides our destiny, which to me is essential to being a theist. Under this literal definition of theism, I suspect there are many more atheists than people willing to call themselves as such.

So why do I pray? Why do I recite the liturgy that refers to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Not because I ascribe any authority to the words of the Torah but because the ideas expressed in them-and in prayers from other traditions-resonate with me. Stripped of the reference to God, prayers are expressions of wonderment, of our aspirations and desires, and of contrition. This world is awesome and amazing, and I am thankful to experience it. I have aspirations. I wish I could be kinder, more loving, and less prone to anger. I wish the world were a more peaceful place. Occasionally when I find these ideas expressed in certain passages of liturgy, I get goose bumps. The feeling is real, and I want to experience it every time.

Friends have argued that this feeling is evidence of God’s presence. But that feeling cannot be a proof of God’s existence. It is just me wishing that God exists; and such an expression is a prayer.

I think what’s interesting is that he says that he suspects “there are many more atheists than people willing to call themselves as such” under his definition (I had a similar sentiment in reaction to my own prayer). But even when the belief in God is gone, he still prays, and says that in that prayer he feels a yearning for God’s existence (although, clearly, many and perhaps most atheists don’t). I personally would not tell him he should not feel that, even though he — and others who may share his outlook but not, as he puts it be “willing to call” themselves atheists — refers to “God” when feeling these feelings.

If I tell him, or those he “suspects” who don’t call themselves “atheists,” that he cannot refer to God without embodying the worst forms of theism, then am I giving him an ultimatum? Am I saying that they have to follow a dangerous theistic God in order to have the comfort of praying to God, or lose that comfort altogether? I don’t want to do that. So I am fine with him praying to a nonexistent God, so long as he’s not hurting anyone. But the curious aspect here is why he wants God to exist — why he yearns for God, while he is an atheist. Is that yearning bad? What are the components of it? These are interesting and, to me, possibly even important questions.

Another atheist who prays is JD Moyer, whose philosophical theory on it includes this:

When we pray, we don’t feel alone, because (once again) we are talking to someone.  Atheists, like myself, don’t believe this someone actually exists, but this shouldn’t prevent us from taking advantage of a psychological exploit that can give us emotional reassurance, guidance, and insight when we most need it.

When I pray, I don’t believe any sort of conscious entity is hearing my thoughts.  So who am I addressing?  I like to think of it as the “externality construct.”  I might give it a name, like “The Universe,” or “All-That-Is-Not-Me,” or “Layer Zero,” or even “God,” but the name doesn’t matter.  The entity I’m addressing exists in my mind — a construct.  But it feels like I’m addressing someone outside of myself — an externality.

I’ve felt that myself. And that feeling — I’m sorry, but I’m having a hard time saying it’s evil. I know not everyone’s experienced it. But I think there’s a lot more to the value of the feeling than the messed-up creeds of the Bible. So that’s kinda what I’m saying. I’m interested much more in attacking the creeds and the harm than that feeling. Because I suspect that if I attach my attack on the creeds directly and irrevocably to the feeling, in all circumstances, then some people more hesitant to give up the feeling may cling more stubbornly to the much more dangerous creeds. For example, if I consistently insist that people can’t pray to their God without being homophobic, then there’s the possibility that some of these people might connect being homophobic strongly with praying to God. While some might give up God and homophobia together (I did this), others (like people I actually know) may actually have a harder time separating from the feelings they label “God” and continue to be homophobic to preserve those feelings. In the interests of diminishing homophobia, I wonder whether this is healthy.

When I said in a previous blog that I prayed, for about a week, I broke down and went from wishing a God existed to, I think, believing in a panentheistic personal God. For a few days, I was worried the change would be permanent. But after that time passed (as I said in my original blog post) I became a hardcore atheist again. This was another piece of a lot of evidence that in some circumstances, connection to a God-concept might be the best available option for some people, as long as it doesn’t harm others. And then also, maybe I was [insert uncomplimentary word here] for giving in and believing in a God for a short time. That’s entirely possible. I’ve had people tell me as much, and it’s possible that what I went through was so trivial (and really my own fault) that what needed to happen is that I just took care of business and realized that was the correct route without giving in to praying.

OK, point taken. But, with all due respect, in looking at my story and those of other atheists…I am not certain that such connections necessarily hurt people. In some cases, they might help. Not just as a subjective measure, either. But it seems to be an objective fact to me (whatever you think of me, personally) that, in the moment I prayed and the moments that followed, the net good outweighed the net evil that seemed to happen.

If I am a humanist, does anything else matter outside of that simple mathematical equation of harm and pleasure? I mean, the facts matter, certainly. But facts just provide a map. The desire to avoid harm and encourage pleasure seem to be the qualities that dictate where we go on said map. So if I’m plotting a direction on the map, I look at where it’s possible to go, and I also calculate the possible harm and pleasure entailed in traveling those places. Make sense? So if that decision to go to a certain ideological destination results in more pleasure and less harm for those concerned, both in the short run and the long run, then in my mind it may be the best option.

While the equation may be the same, the outcome may differ here based on contextual variables, including time and place. For example, in Iran belief in God may be doing much more serious damage. In that case, if a possible course of action is to disabuse people of belief in God as much as possible, and that seems to be the best way to maximize pleasure and minimize harm in the short and long term, then that is the direction that should be taken, overall. Complicating this, of course, is the prospect that there may be smaller situations that create specific contexts where the general rule may have exceptions, but I’m willing to admit that, in that country for many atheists, attacking God may be the best general plan of action.

But where I’m at now, at this point, in my context…let me explain it this way:

Let’s say God is a concept on the map of ideas. Any positive aspects of the God-concept are in a certain box. Let’s say this box holds several items. Maybe it holds peace.  A deep feeling of inner importance or value. A sense of motivation to get through life. Happiness. Etc.

So let’s make this God-concept a “treasure” (OK, you might not think it’s a “treasure,” but I’ll keep going anyway, for the analogy’s sake) on the map of ideas. How do you access the God-concept/treasure?

Well, the ways have differed over the years. Some of them have been bloody. Some of them have been thoroughly destructive. And most ways seem to hurt people.

This is something I saw. It made me an anti-theist.

But sometimes…sometimes I saw people going to interact with that God-concept and saw that, as they were travelling there, they were making a lot of people happy, including themselves. And few people sad. And I felt, because I was the anti-theist sheriff, almost as if it was my job to stop them, or at least work towards stopping them.

But as I saw more of what seemed to be these paths that made people happy — a glimpse here, a glimpse there, a few years over there — I began to have doubts. So eventually I thought, “I’ll try just working on the places where people are being harmed or seem as if they will get harmed, instead of automatically trying to stop every single person who seems to feel a need to connect to the God-concept.” But once I did that, I couldn’t label myself as someone who was against people accessing the God-concept. My issue was the harm many people caused along the way.

That’s the deal. Now, it might be the case that there is no way to access the God-concept on the map of ideas without hurting a bunch of people. We need critics to check us, to argue with us, to show how unhelpful, possibly, the idea is. And from some locations, in some contexts, perhaps the God-concept may be terrible for everyone.

But…I’m not sure. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not sure. I’m also not sure enough I was wrong about anti-theism to stop all the anti-theists from doing their thing. But I am looking more closely at the paths and seeing whether it would be more efficient (in the interests of minimizing harm) to focus on harm than on pulling people away from the God-concept. It might be incidental to pull them away when they are walking right into doing some harm for other people, but I’m not focused on keeping them away from the God-concept anymore. The focus here, for me, is on diminishing the harm people seem to cause as they try to connect to the benefits they get from accessing the God-concept.

I’ve talked to some liberal theists and read some liberal theists who indicate to me that the God-concept might, potentially, be accessed without harming people as I’ve often seen it harm people. I’ve also seen people in certain countries and contexts where the God-concept does enormous damage. And I’ve noticed that attitudes towards religion among atheists often range from largely indifferent in places with more liberal views of God to outraged with the concept of God in the latter. Which makes sense. The more harm people trying to access the God-concept cause on the way, the more healthy and efficient it is to keep people from accessing it.

So I’m not necessarily against other people doing that. If you are an anti-theist, there’s some things you know, in your studies and experience, that give you a different path to travel than I have. But yes, I do supect now that, possibly, people might be able to access the benefits of the God-concept without increasing the degree of harm they do to others. That’s a major interest for me now. But maybe I’m wrong. I’m largely agnostic on the matter, but I’m not actively anti-theisting, so I don’t feel I can label myself an anti-theist.

However, if you, in your situation, see injustice happening constantly in the name of God and need to fight against it know that, insofar as that concept of God is hurting you, I’ll work to fight with you. My fight is against the harm that is being done in your life, first and foremost, and in remedying that in the most effective way possible. So I’m not against you. There’s a fork in the road, so to speak, and I’m exploring another path, but I’m not really interested in burning your side.

For more on how I got there, check this out.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, if you want to help me do what I’m doing.

It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me.

Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me.

I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men?

The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance. — Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

Recently I stated that I am not an anti-theist. This declaration, and its follow-up, have been mentioned in blog posts by five bloggers who seem to differ, in various ways, from my stance and/or its presentation: Stephanie Zvan, Alex Gabriel, Dan Arel, Kaveh Mousavi, and Galen Broaddus. I’ve interacted with several of these responses already, but I’ll go ahead and do so more fully here. Rather than respond individually to each one, I’m going to give general statements that will, hopefully, address much of what has been said.

Here’s my message to Theists:

If you can believe in God without endorsing, enhancing, or forwarding the mistreatment of or harm to human beings — the mistreatment of and harm to human beings in the world as it would exist if (in your case, theoretically) we left God out of the picture — then I have no beef with your belief in God.

To me, that’s not an antitheistic message. That’s opening the door to a theism that does not harm human beings, if the other side can figure it out. If they can’t then we’re going to have to fight. But we are fighting against the harm that their belief does to human beings, in concrete ways, and not necessarily against the raw belief in God itself.

I have this stance because I increasingly suspect that many of the reasons people believe in God may be difficult or even, in many cases, impossible to divorce from God, but may be relatively easier to divorce from God’s precepts or how a specific God is portrayed.

Anyone who says that I’m doing this simply because I’m interested in being polite doesn’t know what the fucking hell they’re talking about. I’m rude as shit to a shitload of people. I mean, have you read my blog? The no-holds-barred style is not unknown here. I’ve been known to cuss out a storm and shout angrily at people who have disagreed with me more than a few times on here. I take it and I dish it out. This is not about politeness, in that sense. This is about what it’s always been about for me — practicality in actually making people’s lives better. Everyone’s life, regardless of your background. Although I may be strong in my rhetoric at times, I am strong because I don’t want the larger world hurt. When I talked about “arrogance” of anti-theism in pressing it’s views on others, I was not referring to being polite, so much as I was referring to the way that, in my view, thinking I know what’s best for other people when I am not that other person can, when I’m wrong, be fundamentally harmful. Arrogance is not wrong just because it causes impoliteness; arrogance is disturbing when you’re arrogant about being wrong and that blindness causes you to inflict unnecessary pain on people.

There’s been talk about how leaving anti-theism for this reason dampens anti-theism, because I’m giving fodder to the people who say anti-theism is rude and thus making people who are vocally against theism look bad.

While that may be true, that does not obligate me to then become an anti-theist, and the consequences do not mean I have to lie about my reasons for making the break. I was constantly concerned, when I was a Christian, about how I would make Christians look instead of whether or not I was right, and in doing so I hurt people I was not even aware I was hurting. The most I can say is that I recognize a place for anti-theists, and that I want to protect that space. But I am not interested, with what I think I know now, in being drafted or press-ganged into that role. And if you ask, I’ll give my reasons.

It’s like that movie Hacksaw Ridge I saw recently. A conscientious objector named Desmond Doss wanted to be a medic. He was on the US side, but he wasn’t trying to kill people. He wasn’t trying to make his fellow soldiers look unethical, although that was the effect for awhile. It was his personal choice. And he had good reason. And being forced to carry a gun into battle was not for him. He wanted to be a medic. That’s more-or-less me. I want to decrease harm for humanity, around the board. But I’m not sure that belief in God itself is the main target here, or a target at all. It may be an incidental casualty to the work I’m trying to do, or it may not be. But what matters is that I decrease the harm in the world as efficiently as I can.

So I’ll defend anti-theist intentions and actions, where I can. I don’t have to be an anti-theist to do that. In fact, you might even argue that I’m more empowered to defend anti-theists as a non-anti-theist than as an anti-theist because this stance would, presumably, allow me to reach the non-anti-theist audience a bit more to do some more diplomacy.

To further clarify, I’ll say: I’m not at all sure it’s necessary or even desirable to now or ever eradicate theism from the world. Is it a beautiful picture to imagine a world full of people who don’t believe in God and love each other deeply? Sure. But is this a realistic utopia? I don’t know. I’m not certain enough that it ISN’T to condemn the types of anti-theists who advocate for such a world (not saying all of them do), but I know that trying to craft out a utopia vastly different from the world that we live in has done a lot of damage in the past, both among people who believe in a God and heaven, and among people who don’t believe in God and have a strong political vision (or “atheist heaven”) that fundamentally requires others not to believe in God.  I am not at all certain that a world so radically different from the one we live in is the best goal to pursue, based on what I have seen concerning what seems to be a low likelihood of getting there. Because I’ll tell you the truth: when I study people who did damage in the past, their motivations are portraits of utopia. And before they got carried away, these visions of utopia sounded pretty good. They just required a shitload of people to completely change their lives. And in the frustration over people not changing their lives, and being more connected to their lives than originally anticipated, eventually…well, you likely know how sadly these stories often end.

One rebuttal I anticipate to this is that, unlike the harmful utopias, a world without God is a more realistic picture of utopia (if your rebuttal is that a world without God, even if unrealistic, really WOULD be a better utopia, please reread the previous paragraph, where I addressed this viewpoint). Maybe you’re right. But I’m not all that sure you are. Again, I am opening the door to, and beginning to suspect, the view that maybe people can be theists in some way, shape, or form without endorsing, enhancing, or forwarding the mistreatment or harm to human beings.

In my book, that means I’m not an anti-theist in the sense of being against theism. I’m agnostic about anti-theism, true, but I’m not actively even remotely working to eradicate all forms of theism anymore because, frankly, I’m beginning to suspect that’s a waste of time. Just like you can be agnostic about God and yet not be a theist, you can be agnostic about anti-theism and and not be an anti-theist.

In a way this puts me in between a rock and a hard place. I still get turned off by faitheists who insist we gotta treat offensive forms of theism with kid gloves when they are actually hurting people, and I can’t join the anti-theists who say that eradicating God is a necessary or desirable optimal outcome or goal. So I don’t necessarily have a group on one side or the other. I can live like that; I just gotta go where the honesty takes me.

If you’re still confused, maybe this would help.

I wouldn’t mind living in a secular country.

But a secular country wouldn’t necessarily be an anti-theistic country, right? And it also wouldn’t necessary be an anti-anti-theist country. It would be, optimally, secular and working for the good of all in the country, day by day, year by year, decade by decade.

And that’s kinda the level I’m thinking at, more or less. I’m not fighting for an anti-theistic country. I just think in a secular way and look out for people to be treated fairly and without harm from that secular perspective. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m anti-theistic. I can still think in a secular way without necessarily being against theism, and I’d still be making the world a better place.

This also does not me I’m anti-anti-theistic. I can still support anti-theists and theists, so long as I am ensuring that people are being treated fairly and without harm.

OK, now to the controversial bits (oh, you thought that last part is controversial? Hold on).

There is a lot of sensitivity around this topic. But the fact is, as Neil Carter has said:

I’ve watched how non-theists handle themselves both privately and as a group, and I’m telling you they’re not much better than religious people when you really get down to it. I will agree that it benefits people to develop a greater appreciation for the scientific method and for critical thinking skills. On paper it seems like we should be better than our religious counterparts. But I’ve watched how atheists behave in large groups, and I’m telling you they don’t really behave in ways that are significantly better than the rest of the world.

And yes, I know about Scandinavian countries, and I realize that within my own country it is the least religious states that measure highest on all of the things you want to see in a region. I also know that it is the uber-religious states like my own which score the highest on all the things you don’t want. I’ve countered with that myself as well. But I’ve also learned from empirical observation and hard life experience that atheists can be just as tribalistic, just as prone to emotional bias, and just as likely to treat others badly when resources are limited and social competition is introduced.

Which means that religion isn’t the problem, WE ourselves are. The theism/atheism divide isn’t the one that’s decisive, here. Obviously this doesn’t mean I think we should go back to telling people they’re fundamentally wicked or that we should seek forgiveness from an invisible supreme being. I no longer think there is sufficient evidence to believe in such things myself. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t observe that most of the things we hate about religion can be found in non-religious environments as well (yes, violent extremism included). What’s more, the presence of religion alone doesn’t necessarily mean that all the other anti-humanistic things will also be there. It just depends on which kind of theism we’re talking about. They’re not all created equally.

Maybe religion isn’t a discrete thing that can be eradicated from the earth. Maybe instead it is a manifestation of things woven into who we are as a species—things which we must own up to and figure out how to harness and steer into a positive, more humanistic direction.

Now, I just read that for the first time a couple hours ago. And yet, I wrote this similar statement in May of 2016, just a week or so after Neil Carter wrote his, in response to several scandals in atheist organizations that I was aware of:

I’m not as eager to advocate atheism, after the last couple weeks, as the most important part of the solution to the problems we face.

Of course I’ll speak from an atheist perspective in my criticisms of culture. But I’m thinking, now, that I may not be promoting atheism specifically, so much as the values that I hold and the logic I think is important that come as a result of my atheistic thinking. Like…not as fixated on atheism, but fixated on things like love, logic, justice, knowledge, etc.

And also on things like bowling, running, reading novels, working, laughing, and helping people.

In a lot of ways, this isn’t a big change. I still think religion is harmful. I’m also against trying to reach out to religion just to boast that a bridge is made; I think religion contains faith, which offers fundamental harm in our efforts to solve the very real problems we face in culture today.

I still think that the atheist organizations carry some importance — atheists need to be less marginalized, people need to recover from religion, and so on, and groups helps this happen.

But in a major way, this is a big change, because I also am much more hesitant, now, to say that atheism is the beginning of making everything better.  Like religion, there are some things in many atheist movements that are good, and there are some things that aren’t. Very little of anything is exactly the way we’d want it to be, or exactly as good or bad as it may initially appear. And that doesn’t mean that the good things aren’t good or that the bad things aren’t bad. Life is just complicated.

So I’m an atheist who thinks religion is a terrible idea, but that’s not the entire definition of who I am, and even though it’s important, a lot of other stuff in my life is important, too — and focusing too much on atheism means that those other things (like, for example, honesty) get left at the wayside.

I need to have a broader focus. That’s what this taught me. Atheism isn’t the answer; no one thing is the silver bullet for making the world a better place. The world is more complex than that, and the people — people working to make the world a better place and the people we are trying to make the world a better place for — are more complex than that.

As you can probably see, this isn’t about Sarah Morehead; it’s about an error in atheism I made, personally, that I need to correct. It’s time for me to stop having and preaching illusions about it, and start showing that atheism, while it’s part of many solutions, doesn’t automatically fix a lot of the very real issues we have.

I don’t exactly know how realizing all this is going to change the way I move forward, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and the disillusionment has been broadening and challenging my vision.

I guess that’s a good thing.

Let me remind you: This was back in May of 2016. Some people have ascribed my change to The Amazing Atheist. That played a part, but this happened before that.

Now, this post didn’t make as many waves. I still insisted I was an anti-theist. Truth be told, I was afraid to walk away from a title I had defended so hard. I tried to hold onto it. But I kept seeing evidence that theism isn’t the only problem, and may not even be the real problem. I mean, forget yesterday, with the controversial example of Stalin and all that. One of the most nonreligious countries in the world today is Russia, and we know how they treat the LGBTQ community…absolutely horrendous. Like…having a more atheistic country doesn’t necessarily help.

So the typical rebuttal to this is that these facts are compatible with an anti-theistic position, because anti-theism isn’t saying that atheism is going to magically make everything better — just that it’s a superior option. But here’s the thing — why not just focus on making “everything better,” if that’s really our priority? I just don’t see any reason I should be obligated to tie myself to anti-theism, in the sense of consistently arguing atheism is the superior option, when my focus is more on making the world a better place for people. And I have no interest in pushing for an atheism that has, as Neil discussed above, many of the faults, and potentially more of the faults in some places, than many forms of religion.

Now, the common rebuttal to that is that anti-theism was never primarily about (or, depending on who you talk to, at all about) making people nonreligious. That’s a side effect; anti-theism is the admission that belief in God is harmful.

And here is my most controversial opinion: I am not sure that belief in God is necessarily harmful. It is harmful in many circumstances, true. But I strongly suspect, based on my own experiences, things I have read, and the experiences of others, that there may be instances in which belief in God is less harmful than no belief in God. “Instances” don’t refer merely to circumstances, but also to people, as in their personal, from-birth tendencies. I mean, we’ve discovered evidence that some people are simply more predisposed to be religious than others. So while some may be jerked out of theism, others may have theistic sentiments buried in a much deeper place. And I am increasingly suspecting that it may be a waste of time for me to focus, even remotely, on getting rid of their attraction to theism when it is far more productive for me to urge their focus more on connecting to and understanding human beings, and on attacking the particular parts of their belief structure that seem to prevent their doing so. They may eventually find that they have to leave God wholesale to be consistent. Or they may find another way. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. I just want people not to hurt each other.

So I can’t really call myself an anti-theist, because I’m no longer really interested in getting rid of religion wholesale, and I’m not sure getting rid of God is a healthy goal. And this position has been developing for some time. I’ve been struggling with this for awhile — one of the earliest moments was in February of 2015, the month I began my blog on Patgeos, when I said:

I thought that, perhaps, Frank Turek (a Christian evangelist I had met) had at times found encouragement in his writing, and insulation from realizing his perceived fears, in his own moments.  That may sound patronizing, but one thing meeting and seeing Frank Turek taught me is that he came across as a man — an apologist who has what I think are unhealthy views, but someone who, like all of us, is trying to make it through this life.  He has found something that keeps him going through dark times, and he wanted to pass that on to me — perhaps so that, if I experience dark times in the future and turn in desperation to his book, this militant atheist will find it encouraging.

Or at least, that’s what makes the most sense to me now.

I had expected to leave that auditorium fuming, but, although several things about the presentation deeply bothered me, I found myself fighting a smile as I walked the third of a mile back to my car, signed book in hand — trying to ignore, again, the glances from passing college students.

At the same time, this experience made things harder.  Maybe I’m getting a little too sermonic here…but it felt like existence reminding me that most things are not just bad or just good; life is multifaceted, so that even those you most despise may, when looked at from a certain angle, give you a glance of beauty that brings tears to your eyes.

And while that makes things indeterminate, and complex, and sometimes bewildering — in some contradictory, paradoxical way it also makes the experience of life encouraging.

As I started up my car, I found that I was grateful for the long drive back home.  It would give me some much-needed time to think.

I was still fundamentally an anti-theist though, and defended that in a flurry of posts soon after. But later, in an account of conversations with religious people that took place in June of 2015, I said:

Now, it’s been shown that the most religious people are in places that tend to be poorest. It’s because of that that I think religion is a survival function. People are religious, I think, because they are passionate about trying to survive in a very difficult world without a friend. What’s offensive, to me, is when wealthy evangelists, preachers, political leaders, and campaign bankrollers control who people think this God is and, thus, control the people in disturbing ways. But the basic sense of peace and satisfaction some people get from believing in God that is behind all the bullshit that usually comes with belief in God (including blind allegiance to a puppet authority), I have a soft spot for, and I see how people could connect to it.

I again said something similar to this back in May of 2016 (again, before the Amazing Atheist fiasco), as I continued to process my experience with atheism:

One [type of Christianity I can stand] is the Christianity that clearly, unequivocally, does not believe in a personal God. Those who follow this Christianity think that God is wholly and completely a human construction that symbolizes things like “order” or “love” or something similar. But it’s not those things itself, it’s not bound to any book, it’s not someone it would ever really make sense to talk to except as a ritual that brings you personal comfort but that you know does absolute jack-squat in the “real world.”

The “God” of these Christians is nothing more than the sense of community they get when they hang out, and the moral code that they craft from a ground that is STRICTLY man-made, as there is no personal God to dictate this moral code to them. Nothing is “just so” — their morality is completely and wholly and thoroughly a product of the thought of human beings.

And later, in June, when a church very graciously helped me — sincerely — after I got a flat tire, and I saw the way they interacted, I had a similar sentiment:

I saw hugs [in the church], I saw friendship, I saw beauty, I saw people of many different races and backgrounds coming together, and as much as I’m an anti-theist, I had to admit…it was beautiful in its way.

I slowly realized, as the minutes ticked on, that underneath it all we’re just human beings. We’re not perfect, and sometimes we’re wrong. But we’re part of the same life, so to speak.

To be honest, I had also been feeling a bit down about atheism in general, as well. There are a lot of disputes and names and accusations of scandal being thrown around these days among atheists that have really impacted me, and to be honest it’s hard for me to make heads or tails of it now. The whole thing has been really demoralizing for me, personally.

I go on to talk about positive aspects of atheism, which are still there, but this was still bothering me then (by the way, if you want to understand where I’m coming from, it would help to read that post — that sentiment is one I’ve struggled with several times).

Soon after this came the Amazing Atheist drama (which I don’t want to rehash at the moment — Google it if you’re interested). But the post I made right before that started was about how I wished there was a heaven. After my second response to The Amazing Atheist, I posted again about how I wished there was a heaven (admittedly hoping more might read it and it’d get more feedback — which didn’t quite happen), and included this:

Yes, there’s a tendency to see us all as separated. And in a way there are separations. Some people are Christians, some people are Atheists, some people are Buddhists, some are rich, some are poor, some are liberal, some are conservative, etc. And we get angry with each other — sometimes for good reason.

But I find joy in those places where — even fighting through strong disagreements — you can do the hard work of getting to a place where you can look at things from the other person’s point of view. Sometimes it’s harder, it seems, than climbing Kilimanjaro. But if you ever finally get there and look around at the way they see the world, you may find, even in the most disturbing features of what you see, that your own perspective has grown larger.  The beauty you selfishly live for day in, day out now includes another person, and that other person’s perspective now includes you.

At the time, I was primarily writing about how I wanted to understand The Amazing Atheist (that didn’t work out), but this was part of a larger sentiment and struggle with anti-theism that happened before The Amazing Atheist. Indeed, it was my dream of a place where people understood and empathized with each other that made me so upset with The Amazing Atheist and his popularity in the first place. It was the culmination, in many ways, of things I had struggled with for a long time.

When the tragedy in Nice happened back in July, I had the following reaction:

I choose, instead, to seek love for people across the divide. I’m an atheist. I don’t have any allegiance to anyone’s God, so my shoulder is a free space for anyone, regardless of your religious creed, to cry on. And I can seek comfort in the hugs and sharing of tears from people across the religious landscape. I can connect to all people to try to find ways to stop the killing.

It’s a beautiful thing about being an atheist for me, even in the midst of such crippling sorrow. It’s what I left God for. It lets me embrace our humanity and my fellow travellers in this life span without regard for religion or creed.

So that’s why I don’t pray. I gave up love for God so I’d have more room in my heart for people.

There will be time to come up with solutions that will show our love for each other without respect to religious lines and ideological prejudices that cause such violence in the first place. But for now, I’m working on being an ear to listen, a voice to comfort, and a shoulder to cry on. Regardless of who you are, this atheist has left religious lines to stand with you.

And then, later, infamously (according to several bloggers who think it’s weird that I seemed to make up a God to pray to), I did actually find a need to pray. It wasn’t just about the deadline I was meeting — prayer, in that moment, helped me connect to a larger, global sense of community, in my thinking. It was mind-opening instead of mind-closing. You don’t have to believe me; however, I’m just telling you the truth as I experienced it.

But…I mean, think about it. Don’t you think that the prayers of the Native Americans at the DAP Pipeline sustained them? That deep feeling of fervent solidarity? It’s hard for me to deny that they would have stood strong as long without it, or that it should have been abolished.

I know I’m saying something very controversial right now. I know religion has flaws. Hell, I know most atheist groups have flaws. But still, there may be something good in it, too, and I’m freeing myself to explore that.

In August, I repeated a similar sentiment:

I don’t want to sit around all day talking about how much I don’t believe in God. Really. I mean, if atheism is just about a lack of belief in God or gods, and that’s it, what is the point? Any way you answer that would be adding something onto atheism that wouldn’t be part of atheism.

These days, people are more interesting to me than God, and caring about them is much more interesting than caring about a lack of belief in God or gods.

Really. I mean, most of what really bothers me about Christianity has to do with the idea of people burning in hell forever, anyway. That’s a very cruel thing to believe about some good people.  God’s not the problem for me there; the way people are treated and thought of is.

Here’s something I think:

If refusing to believe in God makes us treat people worse instead of better, it’s a waste of time. Refusing to believe in God is only interesting if that love and fascination once reserved for God gets dedicated to people.

I just don’t see the point of shaming Christians for not caring about people if we don’t care about people ourselves….

Nothing can change the beauty in the moments that we decide to enrich each other’s lives. When the entire universe is completely cold, unimaginably vast, and silently empty trillions of years from now, nothing will change that in one part of it, however small, people felt the beauty of caring about each other. People mattered to each other because they decided to matter to each other. No God had anything to do with it.

That’s worth getting up in the morning. Refusing to believe in God…isn’t.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be against religion. I just think the reasons why we’re against religion are more important than just being against religion.

It just seems boring to focus so much on the fact that there’s no God when there are so many fascinating people to get to know, love, and support. I don’t want to just sit here in the one life I have and get tunnel vision on being against God.

To each their own, though.

I could give you further sentiments from several blog posts. But the fact is that anti-theism started to look less and less like a natural, rational belief for me, and more like something I had to upkeep and keep my thoughts manicured around. Like…my doubt began awhile back. And I can’t write as roundly against theism in all its contexts now, because I have a deep empathy — partially, yes, from experiencing it myself — for those who lean on God, even though I am angry with many of the things this supposed God commands. So now I’m looking at theism more on a case-by-case basis. I used to talk to some extremely liberal Christians, for example, and honestly not really find any noteworthy points of disagreement with them, and then I’d feel as if I were doing something “wrong” because I could not find those strong points of disagreement — I was an anti-theist; I had the label, so I felt obligated to. It got to feel like I had to have faith that anti-theism was going to fix things or was the best position, in spite of evidence that created, for me in my situation, a strong skepticism that this was the case.

What drew me away from fundamentalist Christianity and towards atheism in the first place was a strong personal hunger for the truth and a sense of empathy. This also led me towards anti-theism, and in many ways it is what is forcing me out.

Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we can create empathy through convincing everyone God does not exist.

But where I am personally right now, in my attempt to follow the evidence where it leads, I feel that the label of an anti-theist does not correctly describe my efforts, as fighting theism, in general, isn’t really my goal or even a secondary focus at the moment. My goal is to enrich the lives of human beings, and sometimes doing so requires fighting against beliefs people root in theism, and sometimes it requires fighting conclusions people draw from their atheism. But the real common denominator is the attempt to try to discourage harm.

I know this isn’t going to satisfy everybody, but this is already over 5600 words. If the conversation continues, I may discuss this more then. Until then, thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

The following is a slight adjustment from a piece written by Representative Bob Goodlatte (Republican, Virginia) attempting to justify a recent change to the Office of Congressional Ethics that basically stops it from being an independent organization, and puts it under the Committee of Ethics, which is comprised of members of Congress. It puts it in terms of HR changes in your workplace.

Edit: This change has since been scrapped.

——————

The word ethics carries a heavy weight in your workplace, and with good cause. The men and women selected to be your bosses should be held to the highest standards. That’s something with which I wholeheartedly agree. Nearly a decade ago several of your bosses were involved in major ethics scandals, some of which resulted in those bosses serving prison time. While the legal system dealt with their actions in an appropriate manner, your workplace looked inward at its own practices to ensure that ethical challenges were being handled appropriately, in line with our policies, and in a manner that reflected the best intentions of your bosses.

Out of this review came the Office of Human Resources, or HR.  This nonpartisan, independent office was founded partially to add an additional layer of review over your bosses, but primarily to serve as a receiving forum for complaints from you.  As a former member of the Office of Human Resources, and the leader of one of its investigations, I know how important a robust investigative body can be to uphold the high standards expected of your bosses by employees.

Since the HR office was first created, it has gone through some growing pains, and your bosses have now had nearly a decade of results to make necessary improvements that will strengthen HR and provide important policy protections for your bosses, when they are being investigated. As your bosses have done since the creation of the HR department, the policy changes adopted on the opening day of this fiscal year include important changes to HR department operations.

A policy change I offered builds upon and strengthens the existing HR department by maintaining its primary area of focus – accepting and reviewing complaints from employees – while providing additional due process rights for the bosses, as well as for anyone who is asked about the employees’ complaint.  It also changes the name of the HR department to the Office of Managerial Complaints Review (OMCR) to avoid confusion with the Committee on Ethics and more accurately reflect its mission.

Feedback from bosses who have having gone through review by HR has been that those under investigation need increased protection of their rights to ensure that they are being investigated fairly, greater access to basic evidence brought against them, and a process that does not act negatively against them when they act to ensure they are being investigated fairly and when they gain thorough access to evidence. The amendment seeks to strengthen each of these needs while maintaining the basic core of the HR department’s functions.  To be very clear, while the name may change, the office maintains its independence and mission to review complaints against bosses from the employees.

For decades the Office of Human Resources has worked in an impartial manner to investigate alleged abuses of power by bosses.  Their track record of confidentiality for employees who submit complaints about the bosses is the gold standard for any Human Resources office. Now, the Office of Managerial Complaints Review (formerly HR) should do the same to protect the bosses’ rights, which will preserve the integrity of the complaint process. Due to the sensitive and confidential nature of the investigations, the policy provides strong protections to prevent any attempts by you to talk about your workplace complaints to anyone outside your workplace, and requires that any complaint from you about your bosses that may involve a violation of criminal law be referred to the Committee on Ethics (which is comprised of your bosses) for potential referral to law enforcement agencies, after an affirmative vote by your bosses. These provisions taken together ensure that the rights of the bosses you accuse of criminal behavior are protected throughout the investigation and not subject to law enforcement agencies or courts of law by anyone outside the investigation without consent from your bosses, and also ensures that any criminal matters are properly referred to law enforcement agencies by your bosses — not the non-boss staff of the Office of Managerial Complaints Review (formerly HR).

An important principle of effective governance is that all bosses in all companies should be subject to proper oversight. That is why my policy change ensures that the OMCR (formerly HR) will be subject to oversight by the Committee on Ethics (which, again, is comprised of your bosses). This provision does not mean that your bosses will be able to dictate outcomes or impede a properly conducted complaint, but rather that your bosses’ decisions on the budget, policies, and their impact on workplace investigations will be reviewed with the help of OMCR (formerly HR) which, again, is subject to the oversight of your bosses.

Another of the basic tenets of American law is that bosses accused of breaking the law have a right to confront the accusing employees in a court of law.  Today the HR department is able to accept anonymous complaints, meaning literally anyone from anywhere in the world can send something through the HR website and potentially disparage the reputation of a boss without a basis in fact. Responding to an anonymous accusation drags good bosses’ names through the mud, can cost the accused boss tens of thousands of dollars, and can cost bosses their jobs. And when the anonymous complaint is found to be frivolous none of that is returned. This amendment requires OMCR (formerly HR), which is under the bosses’s control through the Committee on Ethics, to have a policy that will not accept anonymous complaints, something that will prevent frivolous complaints and allow the OMCR to focus their time and energy on complaints about your bosses that your bosses deem legitimate.

The bottom line is that if your bosses want you, the employees, to have a way to make complaints against your bosses, an important goal that I share, then it needs to work, it needs to protect the rights of the accused bosses, and it needs to remain confidential to everyone outside the workplace throughout the investigative process. The amendment in our policy strengthens the mission of the OMCR (formerly HR), restores rights to the accused bosses, and ensures that the Office of Managerial Complaint Review remains a strong and independent review board (under the supervision of your bosses, of course) throughout the the tenure of your bosses.

“Adia I do believe I failed you
Adia I know I’ve let you down
Don’t you know I tried so hard
To love you in my way
It’s easy let it go…

Adia I’m empty since you left me
Trying to find a way to carry on
I search myself and everyone
To see where we went wrong

‘Cause there’s no one left to finger

There’s no one here to blame
There’s no one left to talk to, honey
And there ain’t no one to buy our innocence

‘Cause we are born innocent
Believe me Adia, we are still innocent
It’s easy, we all falter
Does it matter?// — “Adia” by Sarah McLachlan
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5wW8N4pt3U[/youtube]

Ever since I’ve left Christianity, I wondered why people would consent to be Christian. Why would you say that you’re nothing, that you’re a “worm,” that you’re a sinner deserving of hellfire, and you are completely dependent on the grace of God? It seems like such an emasculating thing to believe. Why would a Christian want to believe they are worthless?

I think I’ve figured it out. And it’s something that most atheist circles don’t offer. I’m not saying they should offer it. I’m just trying to paint a map of the issue and the attraction of Christianity, the most-believed religion in the world, and figure out why it is so popular (besides, of course, the fact that many believe it through force).

Here’s the thing — we all think that we are innocent. We were born, and then life happened to us and twisted us in all kinds of complex ways to make us who we are. But we wouldn’t say that a baby was evil, right? Looking at its trajectory…it would be hard to point at one particular point and say, “the person became evil HERE.” Because when you understand the life in enough detail, you see how it got from point a to point b, and it’s logical. It makes sense. Sure, people can do evil THINGS that hurt other people; that’s different. But the person themselves? Who they are seems, at every point, to naturally fall from the things that happened — hormones, life circumstances, etc. — to that baby after they were born.

That’s why the parents of some of the worst serial killers in the world have a hard time, sometimes, believing their kid is evil; parents are often the ones to see that trajectory up close. That’s why individuals who are living their story almost invariably think, no matter how bad what they do is, that they are fundamenatlly innocent.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WEd34oW9BI[/youtube]

But there is that deep feeling of innocence, and then there is the community-constructed rule that innocent people don’t unnecessarily hurt other people in the community. Innocence is not just privately felt; it’s also culturally constructed. And when there is a picture of what an innocent person looks like that’s culturally constructed, there will be trajectories of life (however they are caused) that won’t fit into that. When the trajectory of someone’s life veers from their community’s constructed image of innocence, the resulting gap makes the person “guilty” or “evil” in the eyes of the community and creates a crisis in the individual — a tension between the individual’s feelings that, deep down, they are innocent, and the judgment from the community the individual is part of that declares they are not. The tension between these two judgments creates “guilt.”

Usually communally-constructed ideals of innocence involve a measurement of how much others (especially other individuals in the group) are harming people in the group. We care about the constructions of innocence to the extent that we care about and/or are connected to the people or group harmed or negatively affected by their violation. That’s why we can feel guilty even when, logically, we’re doing the right thing. Like, when I first left Christianity, I would feel guilty when I didn’t bow my head to pray before a meal with the rest of my Christian group, even though logically I was convinced I was doing the right thing. That is because the construction of innocence from the group was something that my own life’s trajectory veered away from; because I cared about the people in the group and “harming” them by not joining the prayer and thus disrupting their sense of community, I felt a tension between my own personal trajectory and conviction, and the image of innocence constructed by the group. That tension expressed itself in guilt.

Several years later, I no longer feel guilt because I am not as connected to this group. I don’t care quite as much about its opinion of me, and I’m connected to another often fundamentally opposed group now. My opinion didn’t change, in either circumstance. What changed was the group I connected to and, thus, the construction of innocence I prioritized. Am I still hurting religious people? To some extent, their feelings are still hurt when I don’t bow in prayer with them. But in addition to my rational decision not to bow my head, my emotional identification with atheists I want to represent and defend insulates me from guilt over my decision not to bow my head and the inferior discomfort this decision may create in Christian groups.

The fact that I can shift from one construction of innocence to another indicates to me that innocence is something that groups construct, even as it’s something that each of us, to an extent, feel we embody deep within ourselves. I know I sound a bit deterministic, and maybe I am, but I simply cannot make sense of the view that says the trajectory of an individual’s life can’t consistently be explained by that person’s psychology, biology, and environment. That’s awkward, because I’ve read that the idea that we have free will can actually get people to act better, making it a necessary fiction in some ways. But even the idea of free will seems to work as a part of largely (for lack of a better shorthand way to put it) deterministic mechanisms. Even though we hurt each other and help each other in ways that prompt us to build images of identities that are “innocent” and ones that are “evil,” we, ourselves, are all, in a manner of speaking, innocent products (at least, for the most part, as far as I can see) of our environments, our biology, our psychology, and the rest. There is no “ghost in the machine.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQxJi0COTBo[/youtube]

I’ll correct a possible misconception here — it might sound, to some, as if I am saying that because we are all, in a manner of speaking, innocent products of our environment, we should not condemn people or punish people for not measuring up to socially constructed ideas of what it looks like to be innocent. That is not at all what I’m saying. These socially constructed ideas of innocence are essential in making sure that individuals experience as little pain and as much pleasure in their lives as possible. They keep us alive, they allow us to thrive, and they are of extremely important practical benefit in every arena of our lives. When I say these ideals of innocence are constructed, I don’t mean that they are a game. If you don’t construct physical objects in this world, you will die, you will starve, and you will not have shelter — you and the others under your charge. The same is true if we fail to construct an ideal of innocence. Without a construction of an ideal of innocence and the pressure on a culture that comes from these constructions, people get hurt — murdered, raped, robbed, abused, etc. — and that results in real harm. So when I say they are constructed, I’m not saying they are unimportant or need to be eradicated.

What I am saying is that most people don’t measure up to these constructions. I have never met someone who I can say, with confidence, measures up to any group’s construction of innocence consistently. Hasn’t happened. Sometimes I thought I had, but it turned out I just had to get to know them better before I realized I didn’t.

So we have this constant tension between the fact that we feel, deep down, that we’re good people — that we’re people as good as we were when we were newborn, because we know our life (usually) better than just about anyone around us, so we understand who we are and why we do what we do — we have this tension between that and this ideal of innocence constructed by social groups we are part of, connected to, and care about that we simply don’t match. Even worse, these ideals of innocence are often ones that we need others to fulfill themselves so that they don’t get hurt, which further connects us to them. That tension between the innocence we feel in ourselves and the innocence as constructed by our social groups — that difference — is what often (certainly not ALWAYS, as there are notable exceptions, but often enough) translates into guilt.

Now, guilt is a useful mechanism because it keeps us upholding that ideal of innocence, and if everyone in our group feels it, that ideal acts as a barrier, a communally constructed electric fence, to keep us from hurting each other. As psychologist and behavioral economist Dan Ariely has noted (see video below), we are all hypocrites, in the sense that we all tend to cheat a little bit (or what we perceive as a little bit) when it comes to such ideals (we deny it, but it seems to be true). But as long as we don’t cheat A LOT (which guilt usually prevents in most group members), the ideal stays intact.

But because we all cheat a little bit, sooner or later we might get caught, and then the guilt starts to go into overdrive, because suddenly you are distanced from that ideal of innocence.

Let me make this practical. I’ve met people who drink and drive occasionally. They’ll talk about it like it’s no big deal. But then one day they get caught, and their guilt spikes. Why are they feeling guilty now and not then? Because they got caught, and now they are publicly seen as the opposite of that ideal of innocence that they had sought to uphold.

What happens next here is crucial. As Dan Ariely has noted, if you do wrong once and are chastened for it and then let back into the group, you are likely to recover. That works (start video at 7:42 and watch till the end for info).

[youtube]https://youtu.be/XBmJay_qdNc?t=7m42s[/youtube]

But if someone does something wrong and becomes closed off from the group that constructed the violated ideal of innocence with no hope of recourse, then they seek or construct another ideal — one that will realize them for the truly innocent person they are. And they may keep doing that formerly wrong thing, feeling less and less bad about it because they are less and less connected to the group whose ideal of innocence made them feel guilty about it in the first place.

That doesn’t mean that it helps to never close someone off from the group. After all, fear of being closed off from the group can make people still in the group more strongly cling to the group’s ideal of innocence out of fear they will be closed off, too, making that ideal stronger. So there is value in various forms of excommunication (be it prison, banning, etc.) as far as preserving the group’s constructed ideal of innocence is concerned. But if the individual kicked out has no path to be restored to the group and once again become an upholder of that ideal of innocence, then there is a strong possibility that the individual will find a group that they will be let into, one that will accept them, bad things they do and all.

It’s just the logic of human relationships. As far as I can see, that’s how it works. I mean, have you ever been kicked out of a group before? And then blocked out when you tried to join? What did you do? Maybe got depressed for awhile and then, as the years, months, or even days passed, found a group that would allow you to express yourself, right? This happens all the time. If it hasn’t happened to you, think about others it has happened to

People feel worthless, like they don’t matter to the group, after they get seen as thoroughly incompatible with the group’s constructed ideal of innocence. This feeling of worthlessness isn’t something constructed just by Christianity (although it is heightened here) — it is a common phenomenon for every group someone may be connected to, and it’s where guilt comes from. If their worth isn’t restored by the group, most people will find some other way to restore it.

Given that setup, Christianity’s staying power is simple. It sticks around because it has created a deep, thorough abyss of worthlessness and also constructed a mechanism for restoration to the group. It’s a lie, and it’s harmful in a lot of ways. But it’s not just creating a problem — it’s realizing a problem, preparing for its worst-case scenario of worthless feelings in the person experiencing worthlessness because they are an outcast, and building a way to restore the person to the group (in many cases) that brings the person out of that worthless status.

Christianity also has an extreme ideal — Christ, God, eternity, heaven, etc. You could hardly set this imaginary ideal any higher. And it has made that ideal essential to the well-being of the group — if you don’t join it, you spend eternity in hellfire.

Now, here’s the deal. Those extremes are so extreme that you don’t have to wholeheartedly believe them. What counts more is that this is a construction from a group that you are connected to, so that even if it’s factually inaccurate, the construction of the group remains. And that construction is far more epic than a lot of other ways of thinking.

Then there’s the powerful deterrent. If you don’t match up to the ideal, you’re worthless and deserve hellfire. And then there’s the powerful restoration — because the constructed ideal itself has taken that position of disgrace, worthlessness, and condemnation, and returned to become the ideal again, you can become the ideal, too, no matter how worthless your alienation from the group may feel. And any feelings of guilt you have — all the way up to the complete and thorough worthlessness you may feel — is connected to the ideal of a Christ, so that if you are separated from the ideal you can access the ideal to once again be connected to the ideal, at least in theory — no matter how separated from the ideal you feel.

It might sound like I’m trying to preach a sermon here, but I’m not. I hate the constructed ideal. It’s bullshit, and it usually hurts a hell of a lot of people. I’m just explaining why I think it works.

In a lot of atheists circles, however, I’ve seen that if you violate the guidelines of the ideal construction (whatever it is in your group) and get caught, there isn’t necessarily any recourse. There isn’t necessarily any way back. These violators, I’ve read and heard in their blogs, also frequently feel profoundly worthless. And they don’t have any way back to the group, in many atheist circles. It’s a mark that doesn’t leave. I’ve seen atheists turn back to Christianity, claiming that reason and stating those feelings of hopeless worthlessness, and I believe them. I don’t really want to name individual names at the moment (I may later), but it definitely happens.

“But,” you say, “Atheism is growing. Christianity is losing. So we don’t need to pay attention to this supposed ‘advantage.’”

Yes, atheism’s big advantage is that it’s telling the truth. But at the same time, a lot of nonreligious people are becoming religious. Let me explain.

According to the latest Pew Research Poll in 2015, 2 out of 10 people raised in religious homes in the United States will likely become nonreligious. So yes, truth has a way of breaking through in this computer age, and a lot of the bullshit rules are being exposed. But the other news is that 3.5-4 out of 10 people raised in nonreligious homes will likely become religious. The reason it looks like we’re winning now is partly because there are just so many more religious people, so that their 20% is much higher in number than our 40%. In addition, the world is becoming more religious, overall, where there is less access to information. Atheism has a definite advantage in that we are actually right, yes. For many, it has an emotional advantage as well. But the fact that religions spreads like wildfire where there are large numbers of poor people and/or less access to information indicates that Christianity seems to have an advantage when it comes purely to satisfying (or appearing to satisfy) emotional needs without a regard for truth. And it seems that this space Christianity has made for feelings of worthlessness, and the road back it has paved from guilt, in most sects, is a major part of this advantage.

If you violate the constructed ideal in Christianity, there is a clear recourse and restoration process that’s worked into the system and thus keeps people in, raising the retention rate much higher than it would otherwise be. This is not the case in much of atheism — if you violate a constructed ideal in an atheist group, there doesn’t seem to be a recourse that’s nearly as connected to the “system.”

Should there be a way back for atheists who have not lived up to community-constructed ideals of innocence, just as there is in Christianity? I don’t know. There is an argument to be made that this might be letting the fox back in the henhouse to harm people, as we see in Catholic priests who are moved from parish to parish to molest young boys. There is also an argument to be made that these outcasts simply make their own communities (cf. the increasing influence of the anti-SJW movement in opposition to the SJW movement in organized atheism, as one example my audience is likely familiar with) in which they stop being outcasts and attempt to flip the tables, which can also negatively impact the prominence of certain ideals of innocence and, by extension, hurt the people these ideals were built to protect.

It’s a tough place. And I don’t have the answer. Really. For the most part, I’ve been on the side that has been firmly against letting people disgraced in organized atheism back in, because I don’t trust people easily and I don’t want to see people get hurt (and sometimes they don’t want to come back, anyway). I still am likely more on that side of being more cautious. But at the same time, this stance comes with the understanding that Christians, who often have a clear way back for many of their disgraced, have an advantage here.

This understanding has also gotten me to rethink the strategy of referring to the subservience Christians often feel as a way to try to convince them to leave Christ. Yes, the downside to this subservience, this feeling that you deserve hellfire and would get it if it were not for the grace of Christ, is that it allows people to be controlled like puppets in deeply disturbing ways that continue to make me angry. However, I’ve come to realize that one of the reasons this religion is so stubborn in people’s minds is not in spite of that hellhole, but BECAUSE of it, as it acts as a deterrent from leaving the constructed ideal of Christ that it also validates — an ideal that includes or encompasses the hellhole and thus rinses away the person’s guilt and restores them to the group.

It’s a bit like the reason I’ve read people become addicted to drinking — often it’s not just the drinking itself, so much as it’s the thrill of how drinking causes you to veer away from an moral ideals and then come back to the group that constructed those ideals upon becoming sober, or even while drunk. That thrill of realizing that the deep innocence you feel in yourself has found a secure home in a community, even when it does not match up with the externally constructed ideal.  In Christian theology, the ideal of Christ contains the fact that you veered away from it. It’s still there when you mess up, because Jesus died (and is thus at) the place your “sins” are. The conscienceless people take advantage of this, yes, but most people actually have consciences and feel a strong sense of connection to the ideal because of this mechanism.

Again, I don’t know how we can use this knowledge to make atheism “win” even more effectively. One thing Neil Carter seems to propose is that we should encourage Christians to have more human-based relationships with people who accept them. I support this. I’m also wondering if we can work on being more accepting, but that’s dangerous territory, because if you accept people under the wrong circumstances people will get hurt in horrifying ways. So I don’t have the answer, yet.

I’ve been thinking about it. But in the meanwhile, what I’ve put here just seems to be an explanation for how Christianity has grown to be such a strong ideology around the world, and also for how it is an ideology that seems constructed to fight and outlast other ideologies and overcome them (especially when the communities holding these ideologies don’t have access to facts). I don’t have all the answers on what to do with this reality (if I did, there might be a lot fewer Christians in the world), but it seems that in our future fights it would help to take it into consideration.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to help me keep doing what I’m doing.

It was 2004 on the Northern Arizona University campus, the day after Bush’s re-election, and I was having the time of my life.

I was laughing my head off at all the people around the campus crying. I went to work and turned on happy music in the face of my grieving boss. I laughed with my roommates at the delicate snowflakes who were grieving. We laughed hysterically at our TVs and made fun of the marginalized groups (especially the LGBT individuals — we were pretty homophobic) on our screens and around campus. It was a beautiful day. All was right with the world. And we had WON.

We had a bushwacking, take-charge, cowboy President at our helm, not a weak, droning Kerry who was much too concerned with diplomacy and was missing common sense.

We had a morality that was going to be protected. Marriage was going to stay marriage. We weren’t going to overspend our budget because needy people needed handouts that rightfully should be given by the church. Fetuses weren’t going to be slaughtered. And all our enemies were in tears.

Good day. Beautiful day. And it was so much fun to make fun of their tears. All these people crying like it was the end of the world. You got a sense of power from it. And I laughed at their weakness, which made me feel stronger, which in turn made me laugh even more.

I was an obnoxious asshole. I was having the time of my life during most of Bush’s second term. It was AWESOME to see the fragile liberal snowflakes melting in the streets.

I know I’m harping on it. But I’m harping on it because it’s difficult to overstate it. I felt like America had won. I felt patriotic, like the sun had burst through the clouds and my life was beautiful all around. I felt incredible. Definite High.

And I probably would feel close to that to this day. Oh, I would have had misgivings about Trump, I’m sure. But I likely would have voted for him, thinking about it. And I might even have laughed at the liberal snowflakes…

Or maybe not. Because experiences happened in my life that kept me from looking away, that broke down the wall, that showed me what love looked like in a way that I had missed.

I learned that a lot of the right doesn’t love the people on the left, or doesn’t know what it means to love them. Oh, they’ll talk about it in their churches all day long. But last I checked, “love” wasn’t laughing at people for being “victims” or “snowflakes” without understanding them. Love wasn’t labeling respect “political correctness.”

I changed because people came into my life, people I cared about whose emotions and experiences I began to understand, and it got harder and harder to laugh.

This may sound weird to you, but if you can laugh at someone’s sincere tears, you probably don’t love them. You probably don’t understand them.

If you respond to people’s request for you to respect them by saying you don’t want to be “politically correct,” what you’re often saying is that treating them with respect isn’t a priority.

I’m not saying you have to agree with me or like what I say. I’m saying that if you tone down the laughing at “snowflakes” and begin trying to understand the meaning behind why people want you to be “politically correct” before you denigrate them, you may find love in places you would have missed otherwise — love to receive and love to give.

Thinking about it, that’s what happened to me. And now, four years later, as I enter a 2017, I’m crying with the people I used to laugh at. You might think you’re superior to me in your mirth. But the truth is that, having been on both sides, I know that the tears are better than the laughter. I’m grateful for the tears more than I could ever fully express, because those tears come from love, and with all the pain love brings, it brings so much deeper joy and profound connection than mirth.

Don’t you want that? Do you want to be stuck in a box laughing at others like animals behind the glass, or do you want to find more love and understanding for people next year than you did this year? Do you really want to miss out on how much you could care about other people? Aren’t relationships what life is about?

I mean…I feel that if I hadn’t deepened my understanding, if I were laughing at the people crying after the election, that I would be missing out on real flesh-and-blood people. We’re all on this world together, so we might as well look at each other. Dehumanizing people isn’t going to do that, and winning by hurting people, I learned, isn’t really winning.

There is hardly a day that goes by when I don’t look at those days with regret. Not just for the people I hurt with my laughter, but for me and the world of people I was missing out on — the love I was blocking out of my heart.

You don’t know what you’re missing as you’re laughing from the outside looking in. You don’t realize how human these people are. I used to be on that side of the fence, and I have cried over that laughter several times over. I know we’re crying, and I know it’s funny to you, but if you ever really understand you’ll find that, once you dig underneath the shallow appearance there’s a wellspring of love that, honestly, makes it better here, in all the pain.

It makes for a deeper, richer, fuller life to cry in love than to laugh in hate or indifference. I wish I could tell that laughing college student that back in 2004. So many wasted relationships that could have been. It’s too late for him.

But it’s not too late for you.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to support what I do here.

So, guys, I had a “eureka” moment, compliments of Marc Barnes from the oh-so-helpful Catholic channel on Patheos.

Up to this point, I thought that we should just straightforwardly accept the gender individuals identified as. I thought that if you loved your child, you would respect who they actually were, as opposed to who you wanted them to be. I though that respecting your kid would help them grow up and respect other people. Assuming that you or some doctor has the final say about who your child is for the rest of their life based on the kid’s genitalia (especially when there are children who don’t have a penis till 12, people who live with vaginas and y chromosomes their entire lives since birth, and because several studies indicate that gender in the mind does not correlate with assigned gender to the genitalia. Take this one, for example. Also, there’s this one. Another relevant study is here. In addition, you might want to consider this one, conducted by a half-dozen researchers.  Then there’s also this one, conducted by a baker’s dozen. And this one, as well. Another recent study also indicates this is the case. And in addition, there’s this one. And then there’s…well, I could go on, but The Wall Street Journal gives a good overview of the issue if you need a summary. And then in addition there’s the statements that say this is an actual phenomenon by several organizations that would know, including the American Psychological Association in a thoroughly-cited, strongly worded statement.  Likewise, the American Medical Association has also taken these studies into account in a strongly worded statement.  As does the National Association of Social Workers, in a 9-page, well-cited, similarly strongly worded statement.  The American Public Health Association has taken these observations into account in their policies since 1999.  Finally, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an authoritative body of 55,000 physicians, has a committee opinion supporting these observations that is also fairly clearly written. But I digress, and this parentheses has gone on long enough) is disrespectful to your child and to people in general, really. A bit arrogant, as if you have authority over the most intimate parts of another person’s body and psyche.

But Marc Barnes set me straight in a brilliant, two-part article that contained no citations (outside of a theoretical sentence from Slavoj Zizek that contains no actual, like…facts) directly backing up his position, presumably because he’s such a genius.

Apparently one of the horrible things that will happen if your transgender child indicates they were incorrectly assigned at birth and you decide to believe them is that (horror of horrors!) you will have to believe them and respect them (and, like, science and stuff) over and above how much you respect the label you gave them at birth!!!!!!!!!

No, really. This is something to be thoroughly paranoid about. As he put it:

If I have a daughter (and have up to this point considered her as daughter, not because I know her mental self-affirmation of gender-identity, but because she was given to me as “my daughter,” named by her mother, held as female by a tradition I trust, given over to a menstrual cycle, and so forth) I must now consider her as “my daughter” based entirely on a principle of which I can have no certainty — her private self-experience. I must become uncertain as to whether she is my daughter — only repeated verbal affirmations of her hidden mental state could affirm this as a fact. I must consider her communal body (the way she looks and speaks) her history (how she was raised, how she was given the language and lessons of identity) and the network of relations she is embedded in (as sister, granddaughter, and so forth) as extrinsic and ultimately unimportant. She has the good luck to have a mind that, by the age of 6 or 7, coheres with the rest of her being. If her mind changes, my daughter will become a son. To accept this means holding the current identity of “daughter” in flux. It is no longer a permanent relation. Plainly speaking, no person can ever have a son or a daughter, only a daughter-for-now or a son-for-now. Even if, at 8, she reveals that she “identifies as a man,” requests the pronoun “he,” and begins the process of transitioning, there is no good reason to assume that my now “son” will not self-identify as my “daughter” once more. My point is not that such “coming outs” should not be met with respect — they may be the correct response to the true nature of gender. My point is that it is foolish to pretend that the gaze which sees a daughter and the gaze which sees a daughter-for-now are the same. They are not.

And I know he says that the coming out should be treated with “respect” — but he makes it such a tragedy later in the article:

In fact, if I am to remain consistent, I must consider no gendered relationship as permanent or fundamental or intrinsic — only contingent and changeable. I must consider no body — neither my own, nor my wife’s nor my child’s nor my father’s — as an expression of the truth about the person. It is always possible that the body of my loved one will turn out to be the “wrong” body. I must hold it in suspense. I must detach myself from it. I must love a body without communal interpretation, a neutral, uninterpreted, material X that exists prior to any thought of being-man, being-woman, being-neither, being-both. The body gives no truth. Every body — from the perspective of the supremacy of self-concept over all other gender-data — is a possibly-wrong body.

Holy fucking shit. This kid you say is your daughter may actually be your son because, like, you respect them and shit.

And here am I, thinking that the world would keep turning. But no. Marc Barnes set me straight. It’s THE END.

Dun, dun, daaaahhhh….

If the doctor peeks at your kid’s genitalia and sees a pussy, then that means that, regardless of what your kid feels and regardless of whether they are actually transgender (or even has a Y chromosome or another arbitrary marker of identity), their identification as transgender will mean the fundamental end to your world, and that’s a tragedy that should put fear into every parents’ heart. That the kid would have any control over their identity in any decently normal world and that there is, like, actual science that indicates Marc is full of shit doesn’t matter. It’s just so. The identity of the kid is under the parents’ authority forever and ever amen, or the world ends.

Sorry. This. Is. Ridiculous. This is laughable. This is ignorant. This is stupid. This is so blind to reason that I’m open-mouthed in awe. Seriously? How does that work? Why is it so horrible? You may have thought your child would identify as a daughter. But he identifies as a son. Just–why the fuck is this a big deal? Get over yourself. Seriously. It’s just….uggggghhhhhh…..

Why does the arbitrary gender you assign based on genitalia have to be “a permanent relation”? Why the fuck is it such a tragedy that it’s not?

These questions are rhetorical because….seriously? You think there would be a rational answer to that?  Private self-experience is the way we experience gender. How the hell does Marc Barnes think that this is so bad? And regarding the son he discusses in the above quote, the “communal body…history…and network of relations [the son] is embedded in” is not, at all, zip, zero, zilch “extrinsic and ultimately unimportant” if Marc realizes he has a transgender son. It’s just a, “congratulations, now you know your son a bit better.” What? You want to spend your whole life insisting your son is your daughter and falling in love with your own private fiction?

What the hell is wrong with you?

Seriously. We all change our view of each other all the time as we get to know each other more intimately. This is just another part of that.

And no, you don’t have to watch your kid’s body “in suspense”; that’s really goddamn creepy. You just gotta love your fucking kid. Why are people making this so goddamn complicated? Why does the body as YOU see it have to be “the truth” about someone else who is not you? We can change our bodies, or choose not to change our bodies, to reflect the way we want to see ourselves — other people aren’t really in a place to be offended or even held “in suspense” over it, as if they own your flesh. It’s yours.

*sigh*

Then he says:

If “gender is on a spectrum” then everyone’s gender is on a spectrum. If being a man or being a woman is not determined by biological facts, then no man and no woman is justified by their reliance on biology for their gender identity. Cisgendered, polygendered, lesbian or gay — if any believe that they are a woman on the basis of their body, they are unjustified, mistaken, or deluded. If it is wrong to ascribe the term “boy” to anatomically male baby, it wrong for everyone, always. If there is no such thing as “woman,” then a trans woman is wrong to so identify. A feminist is wrong to so identify.

Fuck you.

If someone wants their body to express who they are as a woman, then they can do that. If someone wants it to express who they are as a man, they can do that. It’s their body. Theirs. Not mine. Not yours. Theirs. And yours is yours.

Is this preschool? No, I’ve met preschoolers who get this. How basic do I have to get? I just…what planet are we even on here?

And if you think you want to express yourself through your body differently, then do that — especially when we have so thoroughly backed it up through, like, actual science and not the whims of a nosy parent that this is what happens. And there is such a thing as a woman, because people identify as women. And there is such a thing as a boy, because people identify as boys. It’s not like these concepts are no longer available to us. They’re right fucking there. Like right there. I feel like I’m being fucking gaslighted when the concepts are ALL AROUND US.

*sigh*

This article is some of the worst drivel I’ve read in a long time. It’s hand-wringing authoritarian bullshit trying to control bodies that aren’t yours based on the most intimate parts of their genitalia in the state it was at the most vulnerable moment in their lives, when they couldn’t define themselves and who they were. It’s like baptizing a baby at birth and then insisting it’s a Christian when it gets older and leaves God. It’s profoundly disrespectful, and the fact that it’s couched in the pretense of polite, smarmy, greasy language all the way up to its ugly end makes it even worse.

Ugh. God, that feels sick and slimy. Sorry I put you through that, reader. I’ll stop now.

In any case, thanks for reading.

Recently I wrote a post explaining why I’m not an anti-theist anymore. There was a bit of disagreement and I thought about addressing it all point by point, but instead I’m going to just make a confession that may clear some things up.

About a month ago I fell on some hard times. I had to do a project that was enormous and overwhelming under some very tough circumstances. I felt really alone as I was doing this thing I had to do. It was very hard. I was shaking at times, I cried at times, I felt helpless at times. And so I thought about ways to overcome this.

I tried meditation. It didn’t work. Meditation is something I would have had to practice for years, I saw, to get good enough at it to help me cope with this difficult thing. I searched for something else — music wasn’t enough. Being with people wouldn’t help because the work I had to do involved long hours of solitary, mind-intensive study that required plenty of writing and reading about people’s lives and how they worked.

And then it dawned on me. I had something like meditation I had access to that had been nurtured for over two decades of painstaking practice. Something that could, at least in the short term, give me the strength and peace to move forward.

No, it wasn’t the Christian God. More like Spinoza’s God, if there is such a thing. This idea that there is a consciousness made up of the collection of everyone’s experience. That God is everything connected thoroughly and intricately, and we’re like individual cells or in its great overall Mind.

Can I defend that concept? No. Does it actually exist? I see no good evidence that it does. But did it help me, practically, in my life? Yes. At that point, it was likely the only thing that did.

I did feel guilty about it at first. But then I realized that I needed this thing, that it was the only way of thinking that would help me get through this difficult time with any peace, and…well, why not? It was increasing my sense of love for people, not decreasing it. It wasn’t the God of the Bible — it wasn’t misogynistic, homophobic, or otherwise prejudiced. It just gave me this peaceful sense of connectedness that helped me study and write with gusto.

I actually prayed to this…well, I called it “God.” I just freed myself to explore this God-concept through the experiences of the people I was reading and writing about. The world came to life in the midst of that lonely darkness for me. And sure, there might have been another way to do it…but this felt old and familiar, like I was meeting an old friend. Because, to be dead honest, even while I was a Christian I had doubted that the real God was the one in the Bible anyway, so I had kept trying to peek through the curtain.

I’ve heard plenty of times, and argued plenty of times, that people who leave atheism don’t do so for rational reasons, but because of the way it makes them feel. Which makes sense to me. People smoke weed or drink alcohol not to have a more accurate perspective of life, but to feel differently about it. It helps them cope, or alters their mood or the way they look at the world in a way they see as positive. And that’s what, for about ten days in which I hardly interacted with the online world at all (which is unusual for me, as I normally post on Facebook about 4-5 times a day, at least), “God” did for me, sustaining me as I enthusiastically did the work. I felt less alone and more intensely connected to the work. And I knew it was infantile and patronizing and subservient and blah, blah, blah. Frankly, I didn’t care. It just felt good, and it worked.

I didn’t know how long this would last. But once the hard time passed and I got the work done, within about 3-4 days I snapped back to normal. I was a hardcore atheist again.

And I’ve had to think about what happened. Now, truth be told, I had had doubts about anti-theism before. A few months ago I had grown disillusioned with the anti-theistic movement once I saw how anti-social-justice it was on YouTube. But this was something different. I had to start thinking hard an honestly about whether I could rail on people for using something that I needed sometimes.

Because I think that a lot of people who say they believe in God aren’t really all that sure, either. It’s a mechanism people use when they’re falling on hard times. That’s part of the reason the poorest nations and states are among the most religious, I think. And I’ve seen this repeatedly in my own life.

Now, I agree that faith in God can be dangerous, as it can insulate harmful faith-based thinking. In a perfect world, we would all be happy without God being in the way.

But this isn’t a fucking perfect world. It’s full of pain, and hard times, and loneliness, and depression, and poverty, and war, and sickness, and anxiety, and broken hearts. And some have it worse than others. Some have it worse than me.

And it’s not pride to look at those people and put myself in their shoes. If I had had to go through that hard time, I likely would have still clung to some kind of God-concept to help push me through. So who am I to say someone else can’t have it?

Maybe you’re a stronger person than me, in that way, somehow. Fine. Go, lead the charge. But I can’t do it. I just can’t. I can’t spend the rest of my life ripping away the only security many people have in this world. It would tear my life apart, and I only have just the one and then I’m dead under a tombstone (or, actually, donating my body to science, but you get the metaphor). I can’t do it. I’m out of gas. I’m not really interested in judging people who are full-on anti-theists. Knock yourselves out. I may support you where I can. But…yeah.

But what I can’t stand and what I hate is when people take that need some people have for comfort and use it to control them like puppets. When they insert themselves into this God and make them prance and do their bidding. And I can’t stand it when it’s people who do it now or people who do it by writing a book that is over 2000 years old. I hate that. I hate it with a passion. And I want to burn that to the ground, still. I want to tell people that they can feel that satisfaction and comfort and deep sense of connection without tying it to any of the outrageous bullshit. Or they can choose not to feel it at all. Because I have done and do both.

Does this mean I’m not an atheist anymore? No. I think I still am. My reasons for “believing in” this overall sense of connection that I may call “God” in tough times are not logical; they are existential. They’re not based on reason; they’re based on emotion. If you pressed me, I’d say that no, there’s no evidence that this God exists. It just helps me sometimes. And I think that’s OK. To me, the best God-concept is the one whose existence wouldn’t matter to the general public, anyway. So it’s of no real consequence, in my view. I wasn’t raised atheist, I don’t have the experience nor the time to learn a meditation strategy to match what I learned over 2 dozen years of my life. And so I take what I have and use it.

And that’s what life is, I think. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself these days. We aren’t cookie-cutter people. Life has fucked us all up in various ways, giving us certain crutches and ways of coping that have helped in our unique experiences that seem strange or don’t work for other people, and a lot of life, I think, is tied up in taking the ways that life has fucked us up and rearranging it so that we can carry on in the limited timespace we have in this existence while doing and endorsing as little harm to our fellow primates as possible. Giving the best of ourselves and who we are. And you’re not me, and I’m not you, and part of the reason is that, for 28 years of my life almost all I knew — through a homeschooled childhood and an intense faith most people I meet these days, Christians and non, don’t and will never understand — was a deep and tumultuous relationship with God. It’s part of my psychology. And yeah, maybe it’s fucked up. Maybe I need to see a therapist or get a goddamn lobotomy to get the shit out of my head. Or maybe the best use of my time is to accept myself and accept other individual people as well as I can, and realize that my atheism may not look like yours, and never will, and that’s maybe OK. I’m not preaching to you, in the sense of saying you can’t be an anti-theist if you are one, and you’ll  see me right there on the battlelines with you whenever belief in God does some fucked-up shit or puppet-Gods need a walloping.

But…I’m writing a letter that I’m gonna leave this goddamn world, same as you, and it never wrote me nothing. The Bible is bullshit; we both know that, since you’re likely reading this as an atheist. There’s no overall life manual anyone gives you in this life that you can stand on. Life just did shit to me and to other people, and I just having been trying to cope, with some sense of empathy, in the midst of a vast, often overwhelming ignorance in others and in myself that I’m still wading through. I’ve been trying to figure it out, and maybe I have some of it wrong here or there. I know there’s a hell of a lot I don’t know. But every second that ticks by I’m alive and doing shit that is drawing my pen on my letter across the paper till the dot at the end of the line, same as you. And maybe to you my coping may look a little fucked up, and I suppose that’s OK. It would; you’re not me.

I’m me. I’m still here for you. But I’m the one who was dealt this hand of life, and I don’t have your cards…

So that’s why I’m not an anti-theist anymore, in a nutshell. It’s kinda complicated, and there’s much more to say about it that I’ll likely say, but that’s a start.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. If you’re a Christian who thinks this was proof for the bullshit God of the Bible, or really proof for God at all, you weren’t paying attention. Please read with comprehension before commenting.

P.S.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to support what I do.

This blog post has been a few months in the making. You might have noticed, if you’ve been following me, that recently I’ve been a lot less harsh regarding religion and much more focused on social justice issues and politics. This is no accident. It is the result of the fact that several occurrences I’ve experienced have revealed tendencies in the tenor of anti-theist conversation that have given me pause.

To be sure, I am still an atheist. That hasn’t changed. I see no strong evidence for God, and I make my decisions without thinking that an all-powerful being is concerned about me. I see no logical way to argue any of the manifestations of God, and I think that concepts of God too often get in the way of our organization of society. Most people who believe in God seem to think that God has some authority over morality or over the way we should understand other people, and I think that does more harm than good.  All that hasn’t changed.

What has changed is my realization that there are two aspects to God that often get confused. This is told well in the old rebuttal to the statement that there are no atheists in foxholes — the person jokingly admits, “I agree; last time I was in a foxhole I was terrified, and I promptly believed that Gay Marriage was a sin.”  The funny aspect here is that the statement that there are no atheists in foxholes is made because the speaker thinks, however erroneously, that the atheist in the foxhole needs someone to hold onto in times of great stress. The stuff God says about Gay Marriage doesn’t really seem to occur to most Christians (yes, I’m using Christianity as an example of theism) because that’s in a separate realm.

Having been more-or-less on the front lines of anti-theism for a couple years, I can tell that most anti-theists take pride in a stoic view of a desolate existence. We are on this spinning ball of dust, alone in a vast universe. And this gives us a kind of Nietzschean strength and courage that makes us more powerful human beings than religious people.

One of the many reasons I stopped being an anti-theist is that I became uncomfortable with this pride. I couldn’t ever really embrace it. I mean, I’m a relatively comfortable individual who is privileged in a wide variety of ways. I’m not in a position to make fun of someone else’s weakness, their difficulty in facing the outside world. If you’re alone, and you’re destitute, and you’re struggling to make it through each day, and you don’t have a friend — maybe sometimes you have to make someone up. Who am I, in my position, to be proud that I’m not doing that?

It took me awhile to admit this, as an atheist. But I’ve seen and heard too many stories that indicate this is true. My mom, for example, could hardly move for months on end. She had a vibrant personality, but her disease suddenly confined her to a wheelchair for months. On top of that, she struggled with a cancer diagnosis. She didn’t know, from day to day, whether she would live or die. Most of the kids had moved out the house, so she (she lives 1000 miles away from me) often spent long hours by herself under conditions that might have crushed me.

How did she get through it? In her stronger moments, she put verses like Philippians 4:13 — “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” — all around her bedroom and the connected bathroom (walls, ceilings, mirrors — everywhere), so she could look at them and keep going. I was a Christian for a good part of the time, so she also wrote in a Bible that she dedicated to me after a year, and I could hear the life in her voice every time she called and told me what she wrote in it. She cried and prayed. She had hope.

I know the regular anti-theist message is that she is alone and could possibly find the strength to keep going in the desolate universe, but I could tell, even as an atheist, that my mother needs relationship and connection. So she hung on to God tightly. Maybe other people could have pride in their stoicism, but my mother, in those circumstances of often crippling desperation and weakness, couldn’t afford that pride.

And I’ve seen the same thing in Facebook friends who have clung to God in horrible illness, as I’ve imagined them struggling in their hospital beds. I’ve seen it in person in the eyes of people who have lived beautiful lives, over and over again. I’ve seen anti-theists — hell, I’ve been an anti-theist — who have insisted that these people would be stronger if they stood on their own two feet and were “weak” because they leaned on God.

But as I’ve studied religion and the motivations for why people believe in God, I became increasingly hesitant when it came to demeaning people who depend on God to get through hard times. Especially when, frankly, so many I’ve encountered over the last few months among atheists are people who take pride in demeaning the vulnerable. How can I tell them to leave a God they think loves them for a group of atheists who takes pride in showing how little they care about their concerns, who makes fun of every moment they need a tissue, who laughs at every attempt to beg them to care?

At the same time, God as a concept is problematic. It usually insulates really harmful views about other people in the believer’s mind. It often puts us in the wrong direction when it comes to helping each other and making the world a better place. It gives us a fundamentally false, deeply dangerous view of the world.

So I want to get rid of that dangerous view in the world.  I want to fight fiercely against the sense of religion that got Trump elected, for example. But over the last year I’ve seen, slowly, that getting rid of God doesn’t do the trick, because a lot of atheists voted for Trump or actively campaigned for him and his principles. Those same attitudes I thought were harmful were in atheists.

That showed me that convincing people not to believe in God alone would not necessarily make the world a more wholesome, loving place to live. The key wasn’t so much to get people to stop believing in God, as much as it is to nurture their connection to other people. And I found I could do that best through trying to advocate for other people. I mean, I still object to God now and then, and I’m down for a good debate. But my focus is on nurturing love for other people.

Because, honestly, that’s a major way I personally came to be an atheist. And even though a lot of people do, indeed, become atheists through raw reason, a substantial reason many people start doing the research that showed them God doesn’t exist is that they simply started caring about other people, and as their relationships with other people increased the relationship with God became less and less important until they finally broke away. For me, my increasing love for people that was based on the things I was finding out about their lives — not imaginary lives, but lives based in reality and real human emotion and seeable, testable cause and effect — dueled my love for a more conservative, outdated, more restricted God who, I found, didn’t exist. So I left.

And I’m beginning to see — especially in the wake of a Trump presidency that was disturbingly supported by many anti-theists — that eradicating God doesn’t necessarily increase our love, care, and consideration for people. In some cases, people seem to see the deletion of God as the creation of a playground without rules, where (to put it plainly) they can treat people like shit. I’m not interested in being authoritarian but I do think loving people, in a reality-based world, carries some importance and value.

I’ve come to realize, over my time as an atheist, that I simply connect better with people — regardless of religious background — who are passionate about ensuring people are loved and cared for, more than I connect to atheists who makethose who have these needs punchlines to jokes. And I’m not comfortable telling vulnerable Christians to leave a God they believe loves them for a world in which many atheists simply don’t. I’m convinced that the most powerful and valuable way to end belief in God is to show people — regardless of religious background — that we will build relationships, that we will nurture love, and that we will strengthen the caring bonds of humanity where we can. This seems to be the best way to replace a love for God with a love for humanity, which has always been my real goal.

The difficult part of this is that there is a paradox in the contrast between a God who gives comfort that I have seen some people need (in some shape or form, even if it isn’t in the form of God) in very tough times, and that same God dictating hate or misunderstanding towards other people and stealing them of comfort. The fact that the God who strengthens the vulnerable also functions as the puppet of the powerful. That contrast is where my anger at God lies, and it’s why I may sometimes be in two minds when it comes to God — cursing out the God of the Catholic priest who molests the child, but sympathetic to the molested person’s newfound liberal Protestant faith that transforms a God who brought him shame into a God who brings Him love and confidence (even if I think that it would be better if he could find that love and confidence without God). There’s a difference between the God my mother needs for strength, through her tears, in the midst of her disease and cancer diagnosis in the privacy of her home, and the God who thinks gay people should be stoned to death. There are many differences between, as another example, God as a privately experienced source of meditation and personal strength, and God as a publicly enacted concept that has fueled control and domination.

I can say that because I believe that God is not real. It’s just a concept with a list of characteristics, and there are some characteristics that may help people in their lives, even as there are many characteristics that ruin lives. It’s just a concept. It’s not real. And it exists for reasons within the desire of many human beings within their environments. If we can locate those reasons, analyze them, and use the knowledge we get from doing so to not only deconstruct it, but to put something in its place that continues to make people happy without doing as much damage, then that’s valuable work. It’s hard work. It requires harder thinking than merely insisting God doesn’t exist. But it may be a more effective for enriching people’s lives while we’re here.

And the way to do that, for me, as it appears to me now, is to focus on loving humanity more than on loving or hating God. Not to wear myself out trying to eradicate God, although that may be a side project, as much as I concentrate on showing how human beings are so much more real and important that the concept of God doesn’t really matter.

This is a shift in focus. And I’m still trying to figure a lot of it out, because it’s complicated. Love is very complicated, because love requires the pursuit of often complex, contradictory understandings of people’s lives that is trying honestly and stridently to figure out how to accurately empathize with them, how to enrich their lives and the lives of their neighbors.

I think it’s important to say here that I’m not trying to tell you that you have to do this work. I’m saying that I’ve come to a point in my life where I have to do it. Atheism — the mere denial of God — was the entry, for me, into a life in which I cared about people more. It’s the Truth, but it matters, in my current perspective, only insofar as it can help me work towards a more understanding, loving world that enriches our lives. Perhaps that does, indeed, require getting rid of God. But if it does, I want to do it in a way that ensures people’s lives are enriched, that they are being understood and cared for, and that they have a home in the hearts of people who they know have given them reason to care about themselves and others.

I’ll be saying more about this in the future, but that’s the nuts and bolts of it for now. Thanks for reading.

PS: I have a Patreon, in case you want to support what what I do.

Hi.

I’ve been MIA for a variety of reasons lately, but I have to come back and address this bullshit.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNXMNDpqhvA[/youtube]

Recently, MTV has gotten more conscious about the marginalized groups in our society that many of its artists are part of. They’ve been trying to encourage love and respect to encourage this country to recognize the full worth and, therefore, potential of groups that are too often marginalized in this culture.

This has gotten a group of people, the “anti-SJWs,” to lead a campaign to get MTV to change and stop caring. And because they are more in number, tireless, and goaded on by YouTubers with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, they are succeeding. Which is sad, because MTV often has a good message.

In a sense, the anti-SJWs have won. You can’t get remotely prominent on YouTube as someone passionate about the most vulnerable in this country anymore without being tremendously demoralized and bullied by comments about your appearance and the all-powerful “dislike” button (and no, it doesn’t work the same the other way). And the occasional video with professional bulliers doing their best to spiral you into deep depression and laughing and punching harder anytime they feel they’ve done it. Such power has even led people I thought were my friends to instantly abandon me in the wake of attacks from prominent YouTubers, out of fear, possibly, of what would happen to their own channels.

The tables have turned. Trump is President-elect, even though he lost by 2.8 million votes. The alt-right/neo-nazis, the anti-SJWs, and the white evangelicals — most of them, anyway — have been dealing those who care about social justice and equality a strong blow. They’re the establishment now. We are the rebels. Congratulations.

I mean, in the above video, it’s gotten so bad that The Amazing Atheist gets support for rebutting the claim that “America was never great for black people” with Clara Brown’s success, because after slavery Clara Brown apparently died a wealthy woman who owned several properties. So that’s supposedly proof that America is great…except it isn’t. Clearly. To anyone who remotely looks into Clara Brown’s life, which the cheer squad of TAA and crew wouldn’t bother to do.

First of all, Clara Brown’s entire family was split up — her husband and her three children — at a slave auction after their master died, when Clara Brown was 35 years old. Maybe The Amazing Atheist didn’t know that, but now you do. That’s really sad. That doesn’t sound like something that would happen in a great country. And after Clara Brown was freed, she worked hard washing laundry for gold prospectors in the west. Getting wealthy by operating a laundry business is hard, backbreaking work. And during this time her family was lost. That’s not a sign of a Great America. That’s ugly.

Her husband and one daughter died and her son was never found — so in spite of her efforts, she never saw them again. She looked desperately for her daughter, spending funds to do so, and at 82 she finally found her daughter. Just her daughter.

I don’t know if you have sisters or brothers or a spouse, but that’s a hard life, no matter how many dirty clothes you scrub for long hours as a second-class citizen to scrape out enough money to find your place in the world.  This isn’t a story about how great America is — it was an accident of circumstance that Clara Brown made money; a woman driven by her need for money to find her family found a place of gold prospectors where there was a high demand for a black washerwoman (a racist position itself, to be sure) and took advantage of it.

This program has been advocated for before by people such at Booker T. Washington, who preached that black individuals should accept the jobs that white people were willing to give them, excel in them, and thereby gain wealth and respect. But we decided, most of us, that that wasn’t good enough. We didn’t want to be limited to succeed only at the jobs we were stereotyped into; we wanted equality. And so we fought segregation and fought publicly for voting rights and fought for equality in education. Whether he realizes it or not (and I hope he doesn’t, because if he does it would be disturbing), when The Amazing Atheist talks about the late nineteenth century as a time when America was great (via the poor example of Clara Brown), and uses that time to say that black people today are not recognizing America’s current greatness adequately enough…he is indicting not only us, but the civil rights we have fought for through our strong criticism of America throughout the Civil Rights movement.

Because — I’m sorry — in my opinion, a country that allows segregation and restricts voting rights on the basis of skin tone is not great. It’s not. To the extent that people succeed in spite of segregation, that success should be credited to their hard work, their ingenuity, their determination, and a bit of luck that they had in a horrendously unjust system. I realize that for many of The Amazing Atheist’s followers this is a controversial opinion, given how many have “liked” his video. But I know that so deeply and confidently that, although you have won and may be trying to push us as far back to the nineteenth century as possible, I’m not about to just change my opinion due to the force of the majority.

….sigh…….

OK, let’s move on. He then talks about black Americans who come from wealthy families and want to lecture white America on how oppressive and racist it is.

Guys, guys, guys…you’ve got this all wrong. It’s not about white guilt. It’s not about making you feel guilty. It’s about trying to make this country successful. Because black Americans who go to college often learn (because, in spite of popular opinion, college does allow you to learn) about how much prejudice holds us back. And they need to know this (again, in spite of popular opinion) so that they can think outside of any racist stereotypes that may limit their success in their endeavors — as in who they hire, how they treat customers, who they vote for, who they support, etc. Stop feeling guilty, and stop feeling lectured — just recognize the real situation we are in, where racism is a thing, and join us in moving America past that.

I mean, honestly. Can you imagine how much more reasonable this country would be about drug policy now if it hadn’t been so racist? Can you imagine how much less stigma there would be? Same with poverty. Same with single motherhood. Same with paid maternity leave. Same with healthcare for the poor. Same with for-profit prisons. Racism’s attack on human dignity is a major creator of baked-in attitudes that make it so hard for us — black and white — to have nice things.

It’s not about black vs. white. It’s about all of us moving forward to make this country better, together, by mutually realizing how much racism gets in the way of that pursuit and thus ensuring that we eradicate it instead of letting it be (which has never worked, by the way — not for slavery, due to the Civil War, and not for segregation, due to a bloody Civil Rights battle).

When The Amazing Atheist insists that America is “all about” giving everyone a chance, regardless of circumstances, he ignores the fact (from all I’ve seen, it’s a fact) that people don’t seem to have equal chances. I’ve talked before about several studies that indicate black people DON’T have an equal chance, but it’s more straightforward to list the studies that support the claim that America is all about giving everyone an equal “chance” — non. Zero. And when we don’t have equal chances, that often means that the best don’t rise to the top, which hurts society as a whole.

About “Black lives matter” — the words, not the organization, which he didn’t address and which would be a separate blog post to address the nuances — The Amazing Atheist says that this is as racist as saying “White lives matter.” No, it’s not. Not in context. If I went to a funeral where a white person was killed by a black cop holding a sign that said, “Black lives matter” that would make me a rude asshole. If I held a sign that said “All lives matter” that would also make me a rude asshole. Because I’m at a fucking funeral and someone is dead. The right thing to do is show respect.

So the phrase is one of discomfort. In light of the inferior treatment Blacks tend to received from law enforcement and the government (the people of Flint STILL don’t have clean drinking water, by the way, and several children continue to be exposed to lead), many of us are beginning to wonder if our lives matter less. We’re standing at funerals and the negative effects of discrimination and saying that our lives matter. Not matter more than. Just “matters.” Not even matters equal to, necessarily. Just “matters.” And the fact that we can’t even say that without people getting upset out of their minds and doing the equivalent of holding up an “all lives matter” sign at a funeral is disturbing.

I mean, I’ve marched for Philandro Castile shouting “All Lives Matter” and gotten similarly outraged responses as when I shout “Black Lives Matter.” The chant doesn’t matter. People just don’t like the thought that the lives of black people should be respected more. If you think Black lives matter, and you know we are insecure about that based on what we see, why would you attack that by invalidating our concern instead of addressing it or affirming our insistence that black lives do actually matter?

Whether you agree that this is racist or not, it’s clearly very rude and in poor taste. Which, given what I’ve seen in comment sections, most of the anti-SJWs don’t mind. But some of us do…

Anyways…what else…he said reason means absolutely nothing to SJWs….

Right…moving on….

In response to the person who said that Judges shouldn’t prioritize the well-being of an ivy league athlete over the well-being of a woman he assaulted, TAA said that there weren’t many judges. That was his rebuttal. I mean…doesn’t he know we often vote for judges, and that the point is to influence general public opinion and by extension judges?

This is ridiculous. Really ridiculous.

And then he says that the person was “clamoring for more people in jail and harsher punishments for criminals.”

But actually, all the MTV guy said is that judges shouldn’t prioritize the well-being of an athlete over the well-being of a woman he assaulted. It didn’t say what that should entail. I mean, that seems like a relatively uncontroversial point. Do you think the judge SHOULD prioritize the well-being of an athlete over the well-being of a woman he assaulted? If it’s not prison, we should do something to make sure the woman is safe and that people are deterred from, y’know, sexually assaulting women because they think their status as an athlete is going to let them get away with it.

Kanye West…Kanye West supported Trump, vocally. And Trump is a racist. I’ve explained why before, and I’ll explain it more in the future as he does more racist shit. But yeah — endorsing Trump isn’t cool, regardless of your skin tone.

Then TAA argues in another rebuttal that “racists don’t have black friends, unless they’re black racists in which case they don’t have white friends.”

……right. I mean…does he realize that this logic is licensing all kinds of abuse of black individuals in this country? That it’s logic that has excused slavery and Jim Crow? That even Dylann Roof — that guy who went into a church and shot black people and wrote a famously neo-Nazi manifesto — has a black friend who insists he isn’t racist? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just doesn’t know. Maybe his audience just doesn’t know.

And they’ve won. They’re the establishment now. Ignorant, with terrible logic. I mean, I’VE been called “racist” a number of times by TAA and his crew, and I have a ton of white friends.

But it doesn’t matter. I’m still racist to them, because logic doesn’t matter, reason doesn’t matter, the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is the one thing that has always mattered to racists: Power.

The power to shut down MTV. To be racist and hypocritical and insulting and put tape over our mouths; to hurt us and laugh hysterically at our tears.

This is the world we live in now. They’re in charge. They’ve won. The truth hardly matters anymore. Rudeness, outright racism, and prideful hate that can’t be called out for what it is, in Trump’s America, where the KKK, the alt-right, the white evangelicals, and the libertarian atheists join together to melt the snowflakes as their march through the streets dies down, falters, and gasps.

I’m with you, though. Bring it on. We’ll be rebels in this Brave New World together. I won’t stop writing, criticizing, challenging, defending.

Thank you for reading.

P.S. I have a Patreon, in case you want to support what I do.