[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2lNvgqQ8PM[/youtube]
I want to talk a little more about atheist prayer, and religion in general.
Penn Jillette states something in the video above that I really like — that many atheists are intent on throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Now, there’s a lot I disagree with Penn Jillette on, but I think I partially agree with him here. I’m not saying that everyone needs to seek out things that were working in their former religious practice after leaving religion. In many ways that’s liable to be unhealthy, because there are many aspects of religion that simply don’t work. What I’m saying is that it may be useful, at times, to access some of the parts of your religious life that you found worked while you were religious to cope with your own individual concerns and interactions with the community surrounding you. Your life, and your coping mechanisms, are a buffet; you don’t have to use mechanisms you formerly felt you had to use, but oftentimes they are available to you.
I hope it’s clear here that I am not trying to advocate further restriction for atheists here. I’m saying that if you’re thinking about becoming an atheist, you don’t have to throw everything away. If you’re an atheist who yearns for some of the religious experiences you used to have, you are free to experience that.
Now, I know that a lot of atheists are gonna think that you’re being weird, or that your mechanisms of getting through shit only show that you’re weak, etc…but fuck ’em. If a coping mechanism that you learned helps you get through life, and it’s not hurting anybody, I think it’s cool for you to use it. Why the hell not? It’s helping you, not hurting you and others around you.
Penn Jillette gets this when he says that he sees nothing wrong with praying to an imaginary friend, as long as you think it is imaginary.
Here’s something that may be controversial, but I really think it’s true: A lot of Christians don’t really believe in God. That’s not just me saying that, either. Almost every Sunday, the pastor of my megachurch would rail against Christians who treated their religion like a hobby, accusing people of just going through the motions. These are the folks who are going to church for a sense of community and use the image of an imaginary friend in God to get through difficult moments in their lives. But they don’t necessarily believe in God. They don’t necessarily think that God is going to solve their problems.
When I first left Christianity, someone contacted me from my local church, asking to take me to lunch. He was fairly prominent in the church, so I thought he was gonna rake me over the coals and shit about leaving Christianity, because back in that day that kinda seemed the way most people who were Christian wanted to deal with me.
So we’re sitting in the restaurant, eating, and I start by giving him the same old shit about why I left that I gave a zillion other people before. I mean, reviously, on Facebook, he had been pretty strident in his criticism of my decision, so I thought he’d do that here. I was prepared, y’know? Like when you gotta talk to one of those hellfire-and-brimstone Christians. Ready.
And then I’m done talking, and he says, casually, that he wants to keep this conversation confidential. I can tell other people that we had this conversation, but he works at the church and stuff, so I can’t tell other people I had it with him. And then he says that he has a lot of doubts about the Bible itself, from studying in college. He knows it has a lot of problems. And then he hesitates for a few seconds, and finally breaks down and says that he doesn’t really think that a lot of other people really believe it either. Or at least, they don’t take it seriously. It’s like a hobby; casual, y’know? You get up with your family, dress up all nice, see a great rock performance at the megachurch, sing at the top of your fucking lungs (which feels good, honestly, if you’ve ever tried it), see your friends, get a great pep-talk from a guy who gets paid six figures to give weekly pep talks and shit, and then you go to dinner and laugh at the Olive Garden till you come home with your buddies, flip on the TV and watch a bit of football. It’s just a lifestyle, like anything else. Routine. Something you do that balances your life out.
And that’s what I saw. But I still have to admit that these guys bugged the hell out of me when I was a Christian in my final weeks, and they bug the heck outta me as an atheist sometimes. I mean, the book says some really radical, life-disrupting shit, if it’s real. It should turn people inside out. But it so often doesn’t, especially here in the West.
And this guy I’m eating lunch with — he saw that. And, to be dead honest, he didn’t seem to have a problem with it.
I saw that that same attitude in other people, too. People didn’t necessarily rake me over the coals; some of those people were curious about where I’d find community, or how I’d find people to hang out with or eat dinner with on a Sunday afternoon. Church was like a fucking celestial country club.
And then there were the practices that people felt really attached to. The prayer. The comfort and confidence in thinking you had some truth. The light feeling you had from being cleansed of crippling guilt. The prayers when times got rough, and the camaraderie you felt when people prayed for you and you prayed for other people.
But anyways, he’s saying this shit, and I’m just sitting there taking it in. Didn’t have time to process it then, but here I am, four years later, and I’ve had time to think about it. And I’m starting to think to myself that, maybe, for a lot of people, it’s not important whether or not God is real. These are often people who don’t want to argue about whether or not God exists, and haven’t looked into it. What gives them comfort is what gets them through the day — that whole collection of activities, community, and lifestyle that keeps their lives moving along, and they label that God.
I think that’s part of why I dropped the label “anti-theist.” I’m not against a lot of the activities, the community, even the hobby of hobnobbing with an imaginary friend — as even Penn Jillette said, an imaginary friend can even be helpful, as long as you think that it’s imaginary. So, I think that these “slacker” Christians aren’t necessarily too far off the mark. The problem is where their societies are too insulated with a really, really bad Bible that is an excuse, to protect a kind of country-club, exclusivistic mentality. And even though I’m not an anti-theist, I think there’s a lot of problems with that mentality (which, truth be told, I’ve seen a bunch of atheists embody, as well). One way to fight it is to fight aggressively against the harm these communities perpetuate, even more than fighting against the belief in God itself. The pursuit is less harm and greater love towards human beings.
So even though there are a lot of problems with theism as it’s expressed in most of organized religion, I don’t want to, as Penn Jillette put it, throw the baby out with the bathwater. If there are aspects, practices, routines, etc. that enrich people’s lives that they associate with church and God, I don’t think they suddenly have to give all that up, and it may be a waste of time to be overly broad about what I’m against in a way that indicates they have to. If I’m convinced an aspect needs to go in order to reduce the pain and harm in the world, I’ll be in line to protest. But I see that people obviously perceive something in this figure they label “God,” and I’m seeing that it’s made up of a host of components that differ according to different people, so I’m just trying to be careful to be exact about what I’m saying needs to go. My decision and arguments are careful pickings-out of what causes harm, rather than a blanket barrier on all things religious.
There’s just so much involved that people slap the word “God” on — and so much to doubt in the sincerity of a substantial number of Christians — that I’m not sure getting rid of God is the point, so much as pointing out the harm that communities do in the world. But if people find that some of the practices they associated with God once enable them to live happier, fuller lives, I’m not exactly the first in line telling them they need to quit unless they are harming others.
Hopefully that makes a bit of sense.
Thank you for reading.
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