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When I was a Christian I was worried that I was living my entire life for something that wouldn’t happen until after I died. Pastors encouraged me, using the Bible, to sacrifice my wants and desires for a happily-ever-after. When I realized that it was all a lie, I left — but I still get upset about it. It’s not just because I was tricked into living so much of my life for a lie; it’s also that I’ve seen people close to me sacrifice their lives for that lie. I’ve had some people look at me and say, “But if you don’t believe in God, you just live for yourself” — and when they do I feel deeply sorry for them, because they seem to be telling me that the promise of a lie is stealing away their chance to live for themselves.

So when a pastor says, as Rick Warren did recently:

To make the best use of your life, you must never forget two truths: First, compared with eternity, life is extremely brief. Second, earth is only a temporary residence. You won’t be here long, so don’t get too attached. 

I think of the millions of people who are just letting life on this earth pass them like a waiting period, a temporary stay, and trying hard not to get too attached to life on earth — which steals away so much of the beauty of their surroundings, including the beauty in understanding other people.

Unfortunately, this idea is in the Bible, so it’s common among pastors. One of the most common versions of this argument, a video I see often from the Christians on my Facebook feed, is from Francis Chan. It’s so common and so damning a view of the Christian mindset that it seems fruitful to transcribe it at length:

Now imagine that this rope [picks up end of a long rope] is a timeline of your existence. It just exists forever. You see this red part [points to small section on the end painted red]? This would represent your time on earth. You’ve got a few short years here on earth, and then you’ve got eternity somewhere else. This is your existence. And what blows me away is that some of you — all you think about is this part [points to red section]. That’s all you think about; you’re consumed with this.

You go, “Aw man, I can’t wait till here; I’m going to work hard, and I’m going to save, save, save so that I can get to this part right here [points to part of red section].” And you’re consumed with that; you think, “Aw man, am I going to travel, am I going to eat well during this part…” and I’m like, “Are you kidding me? What about this? It’s crazy to me, because the Bible says what I do during this little red part determines how I’m going to spend my eternity for millions and millions of years — forever. And so why am I going to spend this little red part trying to make myself as comortable as possible, and enjoying myself as much as I can?”

[The Apostle] Paul says, “Look I’m going to live my life for this mission. I’m going to spend my life and invest my life for that moment when I cross that finish line.”

See, I’m going to forget about all this stuff I enjoy, just looking at that moment when I face God, because when I face him, I don’t get this life over again. We got one chance for this life on earth, and it can end at any second for any of us. We’ve got one chance at this, and then comes eternity. And I’m not going to be fooled; I’m not going to spend my life down here. See, people look at some of my decisions and go, “Oh, you’re so stupid, because that’s really going to affect this [points to small red party].”  I’m like, “No, you’re stupid because that’s going to affect all of this! [holds up the rope and gestures to the end of it]”

Man, I’m serious — I look at the way people live and I’m like, “Man, that is so crazy. You are so crazy. You’re going to do that right now, just to do that right now — not even knowing if you have tomorrow, and you think that’s smart and that I’m dumb? That doesn’t make any sense. Paul says, “I’m not going to look around at all this stuff. And it’s tempting, it’s tempting to all of us. That’s what I’m saying. Down here it’s crazy, because everyone lives that way. Everyone lives for the red part; no one’s thinking about the millions of years afterwards. It’s this crazy deception that we can’t get out of our minds. And Paul says, “I’m not doing that. I’m going to keep my eyes on that finish line, and I’m going to forget what’s behind me, and I’m not looking around as I’m straining [for the finish line].”

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

This clip makes me uncomfortable — it couldn’t be any clearer in saying that the Christians should give up their present life for an afterlife, which will never come. I really find it truly saddening that so many pastors, like Warren and Chan, encourage their congregations to give up the entirety of their lives for a tomorrow that will never come.

But while I’m sorry some I care about are trapped by this lie and chasing the phantoms, it is a relief that I can fully embrace this life, enjoying it as it comes, as opposed to straining for a happily-ever-after eternity that will never happen. It also is beautiful to look around and be distracted by life and by opportunities to see and understand people without having to filter them through God’s often strange morality.

I, personally, have found this video (illustrated by the makers of South Park) to be a better view, given the reality I find myself in and the beautiful life this world has to offer:

There was a hoax. A dreadful hoax. They made you miss everything. We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end. And the thing was to get to that end. Success, or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music was being played.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM1Wk4AfBGM[/youtube]

I’m not saying that you have to look at it that way, exactly — but I have found great beauty in it, a reason to get up in the morning. When I left Christianity, much of the world looked brighter simply because I could more fully embrace it.

It just seems like such a cheap con to steal someone’s life away based on the promise of an afterlife no one has seen and that you can’t collect on until you’re dead.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaFZQBb2srM[/youtube]

Sad, and sometimes upsetting when you see people sacrifice their lives for a nonexistent ever-after or, worse, sacrifice other people’s lives and rights.

The preachers, like Rick Warren and Francis Chan, who teach this nonsense are doing untold damage by stealing away the lives of millions, forcing them to dedicate everything they are to an afterlife they’ll ever see.

They don’t need to be applauded and respected for stealing people’s lives away. They should be called out for who they are.

My two cents.

Thanks for reading.

I’ll probably have to repeat this a lot more times, but I feel a need to clear things up.

The fact that I am an anti-theist does not mean I hate people, religious or otherwise.

It doesn’t.

It really, really doesn’t.

I might sound frustrated, but it seems people are terribly quick to rush to the worst possible straw man with the label. It simply does not follow. The fact that I think the world would be better off if people did not believe in God or gods does not mean that I hate all religious people.

It doesn’t. And yet I’ve heard this accusation or forms of it so many times that I feel I need to go on the mountaintop and make a general announcement.

Look: I know God is important to many religious people. I have teared up at weddings and funerals. I have listened to religious people pour out their passion for God to me without talking back. I was religious myself for over two decades. I really, really, really like religious people.

Here’s the way I look at it:

Maybe there was a time we could use the computers we used in the 1980s. They weren’t the best, but they were the best we had. We were looking for better. If you deeply, deeply care about company you’re anxiously ambitious about searching for better. And when you find better, you go back to your old company that you love and urge them to switch systems. If they are using the same system in the year 2016 that they used in 1980 and it’s causing serious problems, you’re going to be begging them to switch.

It doesn’t mean that you don’t understand the nostalgia of the 1980s system. It doesn’t mean you may be unwilling to listen to people talk about how important that old system is to them, how much it has helped them get through, how tough life was before it and how much better it got once they had it. These are people you care about, and these are their stories. You care.

This does not change the fact that you think it is prudent to use all 1980s computer equipment. Your passion for the company directly contributes to your pain at seeing the company fail in ways it could do much, much better.

That’s how I feel about religion. Except it’s a 2000+ year old system, and we have better ways, now, to figure things out. I love the people in the church. But the “system” is hopelessly outdated, and the reason is God.

That’s why I rant and rail and complain and get angry sometimes.

It’s not because I care too little. It’s because I care, if anything, too much.

I don’t hate people. I love people, and that’s why I think it’s time to leave God behind.

This is what makes me an atheist. Not my hate for people; my care for them.

It also makes me explore the possibilities of atheism — the places that open up once a nonexistent God’s imaginary limitations are removed. So, for those reasons, I write about my atheistic views and I criticize God and gods.

When you take that orientation and say, “So, what you’re saying is that you hate religious people” you’re not hearing what I’m saying and you need to listen better.

I don’t hate people. I love people, and that’s why I think we should move on from belief in God or gods and towards connecting in our common humanity.

Hopefully that helps clear things up.

Thanks for reading.

Many Christians follow a double standard when it comes to how they think their prayers should be viewed vs. how they think others’s prayers should be viewed. Christian prayer? We should all respect it. But you can laugh your head off at the prayers of other religions — or in some cases even threaten them with guns, as a bunch of assholes about twenty miles up the road from me, in Irving, TX, did recently. That’s all kosher, for many Christians. The moment you dare to criticize Christian prayer’s efficacy, however, many of them are up in arms.

I wonder if that (at least partly) has to do with the Bible.

For example — have you heard that story about the Man of God who commanded the slaughter of people who were fervently praying? Hardly the stuff of child-rearing.

And yet, I heard it as a child because it was in I Kings, which was fascinating. I Kings has wars, murders, kings, queens, intrigue, secrecy, scandals…within the seeming tameness of my straight-laced conservative Christian upbringing, I found the unrelenting R-rating-worthy, cruelty-filled excitement that was I Kings almost as engaging as the softcore porn of Song of Solomon.

The star of this story about praying is the prophet Elijah. He’s really a badass.  For example: Only three people in the Bible were such great people that God supposedly took them up into heaven while they were alive: Jesus, Enoch (some random guy in the Old Testament who for some reason didn’t die because “God took him away”), and Elijah. Of these three, Elijah has the most interesting exit — a goddamn chariot of fire, with horses of fire, came down out of the sky and picked Elijah up in the middle of a whirlwind, while his successor Elisha just watched him ride away (in a move that would put the prophet Muhammed to shame)…

No other Man of God in the Bible — not even Jesus, who just kinda boringly floated up into heaven — had that kind of exit. He was so awesome, in fact, that the Gospel of Matthew claims that people supposedly thought that Jesus was Elijah reincarnated. And then, when Jesus supposedly met people from the past in the Gospels, the two people he met with were Moses and Elijah.

Long story short, Elijah was a Big Deal in the Bible, and as a young kid looking for a role model in the Bible, a kid whose middle name was “Elisha” (the guy Elijah passed the torch of being a prophet to after taking his chariot of fire into heaven), Elijah was my role model. He wasn’t just a side character in the book of I Kings; he was the main course of it.

Elijah, Man of God extraordinaire.

So…anyway, the chapter in which Elijah — a role model “Man of God” for me and adventure-seeking, god-fearing children everywhere — has 450 people slaughtered for praying is I Kings 18.

At the beginning of this chapter, God tells Elijah to go see the king of Israel, Ahab.  Ahab’s wife is Jezebel, and Jezebel is really into this god named Baal. Over the past three years or so, the prophets of Baal have gained a large market share in religious worship within Israel, so Israelites tend to waver between Baal and the Old Testament God (Yahweh).

Elijah wants to settle this wavering once and for all so that people follow Yahweh, so when he catches up to King Ahab he convinces him to get the country together for a showdown between himself and 450 prophets of Baal.  Ahab agrees, the date is set, and the games begin.

The setup: Each side has their own altar — the Baal guys made their own, and Elijah repaired a broken-down Yahweh altar for his own. Each side also chooses a bull to sacrifice. They each cut up their respective bull and prepare it however their religious tradition was supposed to do it, and then pray to their respective gods. And the god that answered…that was the real god (the sacrifice to the other god. presumably, would just be a bunch of bull — sorry, I had to).

(By the way…we’ve done similar experiments recently, with much better setups, and they don’t always come out in the Christians’ favor — in fact, the most comprehensive experiment regarding prayer showed that saying “I’ll pray for you” can actually make things worse.)

The prophets of Baal go first.

They pray with heartbreaking fervency — anxiously, from morning, till the noon, exhausting themselves with passionate dancing.  And Elijah looked on respectfully, patiently waiting his turn.

Just kidding.

At noon Elijah began to taunt them. “Shout louder!” he said. “Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.” 

Can you imagine if an atheist taunted prayer like that? Christians would be infuriated.  It’s perfectly fine for Elijah, the great Man of God and role model prophet of the Old Testament, to set an example by insulting someone from another faith, in spite of the fervency of their prayers. The double standard Elijah uses is the same one that insulates Christianity from criticism while granting it the hypocritical license to criticize every other religion.

Then the story gets more disturbing, because the prophets of Baal’s prayers grow even more anxious and sincere in response to the taunts of great Man of God Elijah:

So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice.

Wow. That is seriously sincere prayer  — shouting louder and louder till they lose their voices, crying out to their god, slashing themselves to get the god’s attention until their blood was flowing, frantically continuing the fervency until that evening. Even though I know the story is fiction, I can’t help but feel sorry for them.  They may be wrong — but is it really nice to make fun of people while they are praying so fervently? I may disagree, but maybe just…a little compassion? They’re slashing themselves with swords and spears in frantic anxiousness for god, screaming desperately at the top of their lungs…maybe just a little empathy?

Predictably, Baal doesn’t set the altar on fire. So the next verses say that this does not prove Baal doesn’t exist, just like most Christians say “unanswered” prayers don’t prove God doesn’t exist. Maybe Baal (like the Christian God a lot of the time) just said no, or doesn’t like to be tested. There are a lot of ways to explain it, as conversations with Christians make clear using arguments such as this one from Christianity Today:

Sometimes it does seem like our prayers are just bouncing off the ceiling. But what we feel isn’t always the same as what’s really true.

The Bible teaches us that God does answer our prayers (John 16:24). But there are a few things we have to remember: God’s answer may not always be what we were hoping for. His answer sometimes is simply “no.” And his answer might be something we’ll never completely understand. In any case, his answer is always the best answer. He loves us dearly, and his answers to our prayers are always what we need … even if they’re not necessarily what we want.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFdI_A7qbSQ[/youtube]

So, of course, the scripture extends the same courtesy and reasoning to the Baal followers.

Naw, just kidding. When it comes to someone else’s god, suddenly the logic comes in and followers of the Bible can see that silence means that the lack of a response means that the god doesn’t exist – as the writer of I Kings did when they wrote:

But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.

Ugh. What a double standard. If I were to use that logic on a Christian, there’d be all kinds of, “Wait — maybe the answer was no” or “maybe we just have to wait” or “you can’t test god like that.” But here it’s OK to simply say no one’s paying attention.

Then Elijah does his little magic show, dumping water all over his altar before doing a grandiose prayer. And of course, God sends fire down on Elijah’s altar in such fantastic fashion that everyone in the onlooking crowd start shouting out that Yahweh is the one true God.

And then Elijah and the crowd tend to the wounds of the prophets of Baal as anyone with half a heart would do. Elijah’s a good sport — realizing he beat the prophets of Baal sorely, he shakes their hands with a polite smile for their effort, and apologizes for making fun of them.

Just kidding.

He has the crowd slaughter them to death.

Elijah commanded them, “Seize the prophets of Baal. Don’t let anyone get away!” They seized them, and Elijah had them brought down to the Kishon Valley and slaughtered there.

Now, I think that prayer should be criticized, but I hope we can all agree that this slaughter is, to put it mildly, a bit too rude.

All of us atheists, of course. Christians have a dilemma.

What would you do, Christian? Would you have seized those prophets and slaughtered them for failing in their prayer? Don’t stall. Don’t weasel around it. What’s your answer?

If it’s “no,” you might understand us atheists’ objections to the Bible more than you think.

And if it’s “yes”…I’m worried about your children. That doesn’t seem like a good answer to teach them.

Thank you for reading.

[Image via izarbeltza under CCL 2.0]

 

Donald Trump.

I’ve been speechless at how offensive some of the things he’s said are. But I don’t think the complaints really matter all that much. Donald Trump’s voters only intensify the more offensive he gets. It’s fascinatingly disturbing.

And Trump knows how loyal his voters are. He knows that they are willing to blindly follow his lead. And even this statement — even something as insulting as him saying that he knows people will blindly follow him if he shoots someone in cold blood– even laying that bare will not deter his base.

He is so confident that he can say, to applause from his audience, while he’s being recorded, that he could shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose votes.  As CBS News reports:

According to Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, his supporters are a staunchly loyal bunch — so loyal, in fact, that the billionaire could get away with some pretty drastic acts and his fanbase wouldn’t bat an eye.

“My people are so smart — and you know what else they say about my people? The polls?” Trump asked a crowd at a Sioux Center, Iowa, rally. “I have the most loyal people — did you ever see that?”

“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” he said, referring to the major street in New York City that cuts through Manhattan’s large commercial district. “It’s, like, incredible.”

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTACH1eVIaA[/youtube]

Notice how he says two things: that his people are smart, and that they’ll follow him even if he shoots somebody on the busiest street of New York City.

How is that smart? How are those two statements compatible?

Even Donald Trump is saying what we’re all saying and calling his followers (who are numerous enough to make him the Republican nominee for President of the United States) blind to their faces, and they’re still going to blindly following him.

To say this is a sad commentary on the intelligence and judgement of the Republican Party is an understatement.

Asking, “If there is no God, what is the purpose of life?” is like asking, “If there is no master, whose slave will I be?” If your purpose of life is to submit as a slave, then your meaning comes from flattering the ego of a person whom you should detest.

— Dan Barker

“Live as God’s slaves.”

— 1 Peter 2:16

Most Christian apologists will admit that yes, atheists have meaning. It just doesn’t have the caliber of Christian meaning.

And they’re right.

Take William Lane Craig, for instance. This apologist argues that atheist decide their own “subjective”meaning; it’s not given to them from an outside source. Christians, on the other hand, receive their meaning from God, making it “objective” and more “real” than flimsy atheist meaning.

Of course William Lane Craig and all the other apologists who argue this (Alister McGrath is a recent example) are right in saying that, unlike Christians, atheists don’t see meaning as something that is assigned by God.

But they’re wrong on just about everything else, and I suspect most Christians get too enthusiastic about having a way to distinguish their lives from atheists to see why. It’s time to move on from something so obvious. Yes, Christians, you’ve shown us a distinction between the way you think about meaning and the way that most atheists think about meaning. Let’s take a closer look and see which one makes sense and is more meaningful.

When I did this as a Christian, I found that I had been blind to seeing the ways such apologists use a special Christian definition of “objective” meaning to steal meaning from human beings. These apologists have taken the notion of an outside being who has absolute tyranny and rather intrusive authority to tell you what your life is for, and then dressed it up with the word “meaning” to make it sound nice when it really robs your life of your own sense of meaning (which is the only real sense of “meaning” in the game — God, who doesn’t exist, is just a way to steal it from you). In reality, it’s a pretty disturbing concept.

But, perhaps more important than that, it is a concept that simply doesn’t make logical sense.

Here’s why:

Suppose your buddy was like, “You get your meaning in life from your own desires, experiences, relationships, etc. That’s all subjective. I get my meaning from an outside source. His name is ‘Joe.’ Therefore, my meaning is objective and superior to yours.”

I don’t like it. I don’t want some guy named “Joe” to tell me what my purpose is. I don’t care if Joe is a great guy. I don’t care if he’s all powerful, super-smart, or if you assure me that he’s super-nice. I don’t want some outside guy to have absolute authority to tell me, “This is your meaning, whether you like it or not.” To say that it seems really intrusive is an understatement.

And besides…what is this Joe guy’s meaning? Does he get meaning from an outside source?  No?  Then his meaning is just as subjective as mine — it depends on his subjective whims.

So…this is where things really stop making sense. In Joe-follower’s philosophy, if someone uses their subjective judgement to assign meaning to themselves, it’s subjective…but if someone uses that same subjective judgement to assign meaning to someone else, it’s suddenly objective? The logic is nonsense or a meaningless rearranging of words.

Seems to me that if someone — be it God or Joe — uses their subjective judgement to assign meaning to someone else, it’s subjective meaning because it came from their subjective judgement. And it’s also a bit…rude. I have my own life; let me define what it means.

So…that’s how I feel about God. The Christian is right — I don’t have some outside being telling me my life has a meaning I have to fulfill whether I want to or not. So yes, we’re different there, and I don’t mind keeping it that way.

“But,” some Christians protest, “You don’t get it. God has greater knowledge than we do. So it’s not like he decides on a whim. His greater knowledge enables him to determine what the most meaningful way to live our life is.”

The difficult thing here is in determining what “meaningful” means. If “meaningful” isn’t defined by us or assigned by God, what does “meaningful” mean? You can say that it means power, happiness, etc. — but these are all subjective desires. They are things that we subjectively judge as meaningful based on what we want out of our experiences. There really is no such thing as a meaning for life that is disconnected from subjectivity. It simply doesn’t exist. Try to think of it. You may feel like you’re thinking about something “deep,” but you won’t come up with anything. It’s not profundity; it’s nonsense.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IFueSGQ94I[/youtube]

And even if it were possible to have meaning that was outside of subjective judgement…it would simply exist…outside of God’s desires and subjective preferences and our own.

How boring. Who would want a disembodied meaning?

All “meaning” is based in our experiences, in what gives us hope, in what makes us laugh, cry, love and the rest.  I don’t want to miss out on the adventure of experiencing meaning in my life due to some imaginary wagging finger or some disembodied principle (even if such a thing were even possible) that I have to dedicate my actual subjectively experienced life to. Both sound unpleasant — as if they would suck all of my own sense of meaning from my life.

“But,” some Christians respond, “What I mean by ‘objective meaning’ is ‘universal meaning’ — God knows what we will eventually want, what will fulfill all our wants and desires, and that’s the meaning he has in store for our lives.”

There are so many problems with that logic that it’s hard to know where to begin…but I’ll try.

First, if God knew what would fulfill all our wants and desires, why did he make a world in which all our wants and desires wouldn’t be fulfilled? Second, why set so many rules in opposition to our desires? Third — is it true, as most Christians say, that God doesn’t send people to hell, people choose to go there? So God’s meaning obviously isn’t working for a lot of people there. Fourth, how do you know that your God has access to all of my wants and desires? No one seems to have enough knowledge of my life to know that — isn’t it better for me to say what my wants and desires are rather than trust, for example, a random book that seems to run, in the real world, counter to millions of people’s natural desires? Fifth, why should I think that your God has access to what I ultimately want when he clearly is getting so much of it wrong here in the present moment? He really has a terrible track record.

I probably could say more, but you get the gist. If the knowledge of meaning you’re saying God has is based on what all human beings in the world want…why trust a nonexistent God for it? Why not actually — here’s a thought — ask the human beings, valuing their subjective judgments of their lives, and see the commonalities between human beings as instances of more widely held meaning? I’d rather go directly to the people who do exist in the flesh and right in front of me than to a God who doesn’t seem to exist that no one has ever seen, especially since we are the ones whose lives are being defined as having meaning.

So…that’s why I think objective meaning, as Christian apologists define it, is unsavory, intrusively framed nonsense, and that, rationally speaking, human subjective experience is far more important than any theory of God in any attempt to define meaning.

Thanks for reading.

And now, this, from world-class rock climber and atheist Alex Honnold:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFuy0gergBE[/youtube]

It seems so strange to me now that I once took the Bible seriously. So much of it is so…weird. Like, for example, the story of Cain and Abel (In Genesis 4). I heard it a lot growing up, but today I don’t know, for the life of me, what I’m supposed to get out of it outside of God being a guy who has a serious thing about vegetables. Seriously. What is his deal?

You’ve heard about the creation story — well, this is right after that. Cain and Abel are, in the myth, the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain’s the oldest, and then there’s Abel.

Quick note you gotta know about this that often gets missed: one of the curses of God for that whole scenario where a talking snake told Adam and Eve to eat a fruit that told them they were naked and had to wear leaves (apparently God was happier with them naked…) is that the ground was going to produce thorns and thistles that would make it really hard to grow crops. The punishment for the woman was pain in childbirth. So this whole ground-producing-thorns-and-thistles thing was supposed to be a Big Deal.

Anyways, Cain and his brother Abel like God so much that they work their asses off to give him a sacrifice. And Cain — in this cursed ground remember — goes through a whole lot of trouble to make vegetables, cursed ground and all, in the days before Round Up. Extraordinary. And he gathers up his best.

Abel, on the other hand, had a flock and killed a few of them. He didn’t have to till the land to do this. His job was probably a bit easier than Cain’s. And he killed stuff that God had supposedly made — animals that breathed and walked around and felt pain.

So, Cain gets this best of the best and sacrifices it to God. Great vegetables. If God was going to endorse PETA, this was his chance.

But the Bible says, “[God] did not have regard for Cain and his offering.”

That’s it.

It doesn’t go into detail. It’s almost as if God is, like, five years old, turning his nose up at vegetables. He just doesn’t like them. They were hard as shit to make, and God is all, “nope.”

But he loves the slaughtered, bleeding flock of Abel’s and smiles, looking at it with favor.

Then it starts getting weirder. God gets all passive aggressive. Here is Cain, who sweat his heart out in cursed ground to produce plants for God…and God (who CREATED vegetables, by the way, and made them so doggone hard to make) does the equivalent of a five year old’s throwing his carrots on the ground. Of course Cain is pissed off. It doesn’t take a genius to see that he’s pissed off for good reason. But either God is a bit slow, or he’s trying to piss Cain off even more when tautingly asks, “Why are you furious? And why are you downcast?”

Ew. I mean, if I were Cain in this mythical story, I’d be pissed off. Stop playing dumb. You know why, God. It’s because you’re being an asshole.

But God doesn’t stop there. He says, “If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted?”

Stop the script. Stop. Hold up. Not liking vegetables — OK, that’s infantile. But who gets all moralistic about it? That’s a whole level even the wrinkled toddler’s face doesn’t seem to approach.

I mean, what did Cain do that was so goddamn wrong? He worked his ass off to give God vegetables, and God’s sitting here moralizing because for some reason he doesn’t like vegetables. No.

Cain is frickin’ awesome. Cain is your buddy, your friend, your voluntarily dedicated manservant who is going to go out into cursed ground and grow vegetables just for you so that you can be like, “Thanks, Cain. You must really care about me, Cain. I’m a bit veggie-allergic, but I appreciate the effort, Cain.” But instead you’re rejecting him, then preaching sermons about how he doesn’t have the right to be pissed off at you because he should have known better… than to give you vegetables.

There’s supposed to be some kind of moral to this story? Right…

Now, Cain is looking at his asshole brother — Mr. Holier-Than-Thou who didn’t work his ass off cultivating cursed ground for God. And after God winds Cain up with this talk, he gets more jealous — heated by God’s passive aggressive nonsense. So he kills his brother Abel — which, honestly, is a little troubling. But God coulda stopped the whole thing with “Thank you.” Instead he did this passive aggressive song-and-dance that seemed calculated to piss Cain off.

You see what I’m saying? I don’t think this story is true, of course, but even looking at it metaphorically, the only moral I’m really getting here is that God is grade-a asshole.

Here’s the icing on the cake.

What is the punishment God gives to Cain? Remember, the ground is already cursed.

He says, “When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you.”

God curses the ground for Cain AGAIN. Wow. God must really, really, really not want Cain to grow any more vegetables for him.

And then, throughout the Bible — it’s always slaughtered animals for the bloodthirsty carnivore. Never vegetables.

Honestly. What’s God’s deal? What am I supposed to get out of the story?

All I’m really getting is that the God of the Old Testament is an infantile asshole.

And that’s what the concept of God seems like, so much of the time, in every day life. People go around saying that God is this wise guy with a plan, but during my last years as a Christian I saw that didn’t fit. The people who were most dedicated to God got the least, oftentimes, while the people who were more-or-less nonchalant about God tended to get more. It didn’t seem fair. If there is a God, why does he bless obnoxious American millionaires but seem to turn up his nose at starving children in third-world countries? What’s his deal?

Maybe there is no God. Maybe saying “God blessed me with x” while other people don’t have it is an excuse to feel superior. Maybe making the world better has to do more with chance, circumstances, and strategic, humanistically grounded, scientifically based hard work, and God doesn’t exist (and would be an irrational asshole if he did).

You don’t think so? Then tell me, please, how it’s rational for your God to let an obnoxious millionaire have a fleet of cars while a beautiful child in a poor third-world country starves to death.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnoE1ho4Hhc[/youtube]

I’ll wait.

Thanks for reading.

I’ve been fighting hard for or against one ideology or the other most of my life.

When I was a Christian, I fought hard for people to be saved. When I became an agnostic ex-Christian I fought for the dignity of other people who Christendom defined as “unsaved sinners.” When I declared myself an atheist, I fought against the concept of God and its consequences. And as a liberal atheist who often gets labeled as a social justice warrior (sjw), I am very concerned about the most marginalized people in the world. I desperately, fervently want them to have better lives in this world, and to this end I frequently write my heart out to fight for those who have been unjustly forced on the margins based on their lack of religious affiliation, their color, their gender, or their socioeconomic background. This passion has given me many enemies, it has given me friends I disagree with frequently, and it has also, at times, led to a lot of discouragement when it seems that advances are too rare and hard to come by. The battle to make the world a better place is very difficult. As my favorite author, Zora Neale Hurston, once said, “If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding.” 

But again, I’ve been doing this for most of my life, this fighting. Although I’m only 32 years old, I’ve fought and struggled more than many I know — when I was a Christian, and later as an atheist, I often spent all-nighters on message boards or other online arenas trying to talk to people about their points of view, along with hours of reading to try to sharpen or further inform my arguments, as well as in-person discussions hours long, and a lot of crushing angst has filled me when influential people seemed to abuse others due to harmful misunderstandings I keep uncovering. I am not naive; I know I can’t change the entire world. I’ve just been too restless, oftentimes, for a better world to really enjoy the world here and now, and that has led me to spend a lot of time “out riding fences” that represent the boundaries of my ideals.

I still think that one of the most valuable things I can do in my life is fight for a better world for myself and others as well as I can and with all the knowledge I have. But…I don’t want to die as one  who desperately fought all his life, complaining for the entirety of it, and never stopped to enjoy or appreciate the people around him. Yes, many people are very wrong, but in contrast to the constant arguments there is also plenty of delight to be found in letting go sometimes and laughing with people, sharing lives with people, and loving people, whether I agree with them or not. Increasingly, I’ve wondered: What is the value of life in which I fight all the time and never stop to enjoy the world I’m fighting for, a world that consists of people from thousands of different perspectives and passions?

More and more I’m finding that the pleasure of loving people comes, largely, in loving people in addition, and perhaps over and above, ideals. I can’t embrace an ideal; I can’t be a shoulder to cry on for mere ideals; I can’t ask an ideal how its day gave it joy or pain. For this, I need to love people. And yes, this care for people can give rise to ideals…but I want to live a life dedicated to embodied ideals as opposed to abstractions. Ideals that arise from love and care for people that I can see — people who agree with me and people who don’t.

What’s bringing these thoughts to my mind today is the news that Glenn Frey of the Eagles died. My favorite song of his is “Desperado” — a song he co-wrote with Don Henley (Don Henley sings it).

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

And in that song I heard a good portion of my life.  I’m not going to stop fighting for what seems to be justice…but I want to smile with more people. I want to shake more hands. I want to give more hugs. I want to embrace people on my side of the lines and across them, even if we have differences in the ways we feel we can make the world a better place.  I’m beginning to think it’s possible to love and enjoy friendship with people on the other sides of my viewpoints without agreeing with their opinions. Yes, there are truly toxic people that do not improve my experience of life…but I am also increasingly finding that letting people see the care in my heart dissolves the caricatures boundaries often create in ways that, perhaps, can melt the harmful dividing lines that cause oppression. When I talk about loving people, of course, I’m not talking about weakness — more like a passionate, unapologetic being in the world, with opinions that are connected to a real flesh and blood person who genuinely shows and feels care for other people.

When I was a Christian I came across something like this way of thinking in what was called “incarnational evangelism” or “relational evangelism.” At the time I thought it disingenuous, because it didn’t convince people through arguments and reasoning, but through social engineering.  When I first became an atheist I rejected it as manipulative and resolved to stick to reasoning and arguments. Over time, however, I’ve wondered if focusing on relationships more than religion is a key to making religion increasingly irrelevant. I still thinking reasoning and arguments carry a lot of importance, but I also think that if God doesn’t exist, and humans do…maybe the concept of God isn’t as important as human beings.  Maybe a focus on human relationships is powerful in itself, and instead of merely basing relationships on whether someone believes in God we atheists can just ignore the concept of God and care about people in our day-to-day interactions.

In other words, I’m wondering if one of the ways to move past the question of whether God exists, in everyday human relationships with people across ideological lines, is often to simply ignore it and focus on loving and being loved by the human beings who do exist, letting God fade into the background, overtaken by the beauty of human relationships.

And I’m starting to do that a little more in my personal life. I am still an anti-theist; I don’t think the concept of God is a good idea, and I don’t hide this position. I also think that on a public level we need to talk about the harm of religions, and that when it comes up in day-to-day discussion it’s part of a relationship to be honest about my stance. At the same time, in my everyday, walking-eating-breathing life, I am finding more freedom to just enjoy caring about other people and being cared about by other people, and have found that decisions to ignore the whole God bit often show that the concept of God is irrelevant in many of the areas within my relationships with the human beings in my life that I love.  In my day-to-day real world life I don’t have to be a constant crusader, respecting the divisions of religion by focusing on them more than seeing through them to the people behind them.  I can simply ignore the divisions until they overtly come up, while focusing on the common humanity that transcends them.

I’m not embracing this possibility because it’s inherently morally superior; I think that claim nonsense, and such moralism honestly makes me a bit nauseous. I am beginning to embrace it simply because I want to.

I only have one life, I’m a social person, and I want to enjoy my time here, so my discovery that there can be a love of fellow human beings due to a common humanity that transcends religious lines makes my life more beautiful to live. I can see the possibilities of the future without missing out all my life on the beauty of the present; I can look for ways to improve relationships without ignoring the healthy elements to be found in the relationships I share; I can fight for ideals that are not fulfilled while laughing and embracing the beauty of the moment.

I don’t have to live my whole life yearning for a utopia so much that I can’t enjoy the “fine things laid upon [my] table,” as Glenn Frey put it.

And it’s also not lost on me that other people — some who agree with me, some who do not — only have one life in which to receive the care I have for them. I don’t need to spend it all as a “desperado” cordoning those who don’t agree with me off; I can “let somebody [love me]” and love others in return in my day-to-day life, so that even if the world never breaks down its harmful barriers, I’ll be somewhat of a vessel of love and care in specific on-the-ground relationships, breaking barriers in the way I care about humanity beyond the man-made mythical lines. In short, I’m wondering if the most satisfying part of changing this world into a more humanistic, secular, loving one is embodying that change in a boundary-defying love I have within myself.

That’s what, after listening to it again today, I’ve gathered from the song…

RIP, Glenn Frey, and thank you.

[Featured Image By Airwolfhound under CCL 2.0]

I’ve been wondering if Donald Trump will run as an independent. Yeah, I know he signed that pledge awhile ago saying that he wouldn’t run as an independent.  I suspected then that the decision wasn’t sincere — just a strategy to get people on his side, something he’d leave at a moment’s notice if it he was not well supported.

I was right, it turns out.

O’Reilly asked Trump tonight if he will run on a third party ticket if he doesn’t get the delegates to win the nomination. After some pressing, Trump said,

If I’m treated fairly I would never do it. If I’m not treated fairly I might very well do it. Because frankly, my deal was that I have to be treated fairly.

As several Republicans have come out in criticism of Trump’s recent statement that we should not let any Muslims into the country — including Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Lindsay Graham, Paul Ryan, and others — and worldwide criticism from even the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu has arisen, it seems increasingly clear that Trump is a liability for the party.

If Trump wanted to put the Republican Party in an awkward, embarrassing position, he couldn’t have planned it better; if he ran as a third party candidate, he would hand the election to the Democratic nominee on a silver platter.

Lately, several people have told me that being squarely against religion is not healthy. Instead, I should try to focus more on what’s good for the world, cooperating with religious ideology in order to encourage healthy living.

I disagree strongly.

For me, religious ideology is more dangerous than slavery.  Seeing as how this week marks the 150th anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States, it seems timely here to explain why.

I am not the first one to link the two. James Baldwin did so once, rather poignantly:

“If I discover that those songs the darkies sang and sing were not just the innocent expressions of a primitive people, but extremely subtle, difficult, dangerous and tragic expressions of what it felt like to be in chains, then by one’s presence — by the attempt to walk from here to there — you’ve begun to frighten the white world.

“They have always known that you are not a mule. They have always known that no one wishes to be a slave. They have always known that the bales of cotton and the textile mills and entire metropolises built on black labor, that the black was not doing it out of love. They were doing it under the whip, the threat of the gun, and the even more desperate and subtle threat of the bible.” — James Baldwin 

What is the threat of the Bible? It is the one that says you must turn the other cheek, obey your master, and forgive those who persecute you — verses often nailed in by slaveholders and backed up by a God who was seen as superior to human experience and reason. To be fair, liberation theology has, largely, taken the slave mentality inherent in the Bible and turned it against the influence of racism in the United States, much as a slave may snatch the whip from its master in order to reverse the power dynamic, which is why I have a bit more respect for liberation theology than I do for most of religion. But at its base, it’s still the same slavery mentality that insists everything you are must be in complete and total service to an imaginary being. 

The Bible frequently recognizes this fact when it portrays belief in God as a master-slave relationship. 

For example, God presents himself, clearly, as a slavemaster in Malachi 1:6:

“A son honors his father, and a slave his master. If I am a father, where is the honor due me? If I am a master, where is the respect due me?” says the Lord Almighty. 

God’s characterization as a slavemaster is repeated often in the Bible — along with the message that people are better off as slaves to an imaginary being than otherwise (there is a disturbing parallel here to slaveholders who insisted that their slaves were their slaves for their own good). 

This message is far from just an Old Testament one. Take Romans 6:20-22, for instance:

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

Not only does the Bible recognize that serving God is akin to slavery — it makes the connection between slavery to God and slavery to people explicit several times.  In my mind, this connection is fitting —  God doesn’t exist; he is constructed and controlled by human-beings — he is a puppet. As Langston Hughes put it:

The ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond and jade,
Sit silently on their temple shelves
While the people
Are afraid.
Yet the ivory gods,
And the ebony gods,
And the gods of diamond-jade,
Are only silly puppet gods
That the people themselves
Have made.

— Langston Hughes, “Gods”

So God is constructed by humans, and this construction holds those who believe in this God in chains. In my mind that’s not any more OK than being a slave to human beings directly. It is often worse, because the threat of God is greater than any that human beings can provide — it is far more invasive.  As Jesus put it in Matthew 10:28:

“Don’t be afraid of those who want to kill your body; they cannot touch your soul. Fear only God, who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

The Bible, recognizing that God is a greater threat than human beings, often uses slavery to God as an incentive for slaves to not only submit to their masters, but to respect them, fear them, and thoroughly obey them.

One place this connection between being a slave of human beings and a slave of God seems clear is in Ephesians 6:5-6:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart.

A similar sentiment is pronounced in Colossians 3:22:

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.

And being a good slave is directly linked to “God’s name and [the apostles’] teaching” — directly implicating them in the practice of slavery — in 1 Timothy 1:6:

All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare of their slaves.

And the practice of teaching slaves to be subservient is repeated, again — with God’s authority — in Titus 2:9-10:

Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.

And then, finally, in I Peter 2:16-21, slavery to God is almost immediately followed by the encouragement for slaves to submit themselves to even the harshest masters. As God’s slave, you are expected to be the best slave for even the cruelest human beings — even accepting “unjust suffering” and beatings. Lest there be any mistake about this connection, the writer of I Peter (supposedly the first pope) states that slaves are supposed to do this “in reverent fear of God” — who is, remember, their slavemaster (as they are, again, “God’s slaves”):

Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. To this you were called,because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

What really infuriates me is that this is a lie. This is a carrot on a stick that many people, then and now, chase after their entire lives and never get. And I’m expected to sit there on the sidelines during this pursuit, as if it’s all OK? Or just move the carrot in a different direction? No. No. No. A thousand times no. I will not lie to you or anyone else with false promises they will never see. I will not be part of any conspiracy remotely interested in encouraging human beings to give one iota of their lives, minds, or families to a phantom. I feel that it is impossible to say this strongly enough.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6NPq_kPSUM[/youtube]

So…given this, I hope it’s clear that the reason I am an antitheist is that I do not believe in making human beings the slave of an imaginary being, or forwarding that position in any way, shape or form. When someone says, “But we can get people to do good things if we say that God wants them to do them,” my reaction is just as strong as if someone says that we can get people to do good things if we shackle them or threaten them with a whip (or hell) and tell them to do them.

I hate slavery. I hate it. I hate it in every ounce of my being. But if there is something I hate more than the more obvious human slavery, it’s the subtle slavery through an imaginary being, a puppet-God, that is controlled by human beings and used to manipulate the populace. I can’t endorse it. It is frequently difficult for me to find nice things about it, and I don’t usually care to try. I want to be free from its chains, I want to protect those who are free from its chains, and I cannot help but be steadfast in my position that all humankind should be free from its subjugation.

This position, as I’ve said, often gets me labeled an antitheist. If the title fits, I’m happy to wear it.

Thanks for reading.

[Image via Son of Groucho under CCL 2.0]

 

I love when I come into McDonald’s and see someone proud of their job. It’s not just their job many of these people are proud of, of course. It’s their time. They are proud that they are spending their time to make me a burger and fries. They think that’s important. They think smiling at me is important. They think greeting me is important. And it really makes me feel good, y’know? Like…my life has value. The fact that this person is proud of their job makes ME feel valuable.