Archive for category Religion
The Great Faith Debate Recap
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Religion on September 18, 2009
Christopher Hitchens vs. Dinesh D’Souza. Mano y mano. Two men wielding nothing but intellect on the battlefield of reason. Unfortunately, one of them left their intellect at home, probably sitting on the dining room table where they forgot to pick it up before heading out the door. I do that with my wallet sometimes.
I really went into this expecting to hear a good debate. I hadn’t read or seen D’Souza before, but I’d heard the name and assumed that if someone of Hitchens’ stature was debating him, he must be a good christian apologist. They’d both have arguments and counter-arguments and it would be intellectually stimulating. I was hoping that it would make me think; make me consider things from a different view point. I didn’t think that D’Souza would have anything earthshattering that would totally turn me around 180 degrees, but I figured there would be points made that I would have to think about. Even if he were only good rhetorically it would be interesting.
What I wasn’t expecting was a complete lack of depth from D’Souza or so many examples of rather painfully wrong logic that my 6 year old could have countered. I honestly think that I could have done a better job for christian apologetics, and I’m an atheist. I’m not as well-versed in the formal logical fallacies or technical debate terms as I’d like to be, but there were copious examples of severely flawed logic; false analogies, arguments from ignorance, even some flat out factual inaccuracies. Several times I (and the people around me) couldn’t contain the expressions of stunned disbelief at something D’Souza said.
I was live Tweeting the event and was having some technical difficulties at the beginning, so I probably missed some of the details. Hitchens opened with 5 minutes on the question/topic What about God? The one thing that struck me was his comment that, of all the supposed virtues, faith is the most worthless. It doesn’t get us anything, doesn’t further our understanding of anything, it’s basically useless and can be downright dangerous. D’Souza’s rebuttal was based on false premises from the start. He tried to assert that he was debating on the same level as Hitchens, that he would rely on reason rather than scripture. And in order to prove that they were at the same level, he starts in with some nonsense about how religion is just as valid as science because neither know everything. Then he launched into some lame thing about how the jews 2000 years ago had determined that the universe had been created, had a definite beginning, and since science has now validated that, somehow that proves the existence of god. Or something like that. I honestly had a hard time making out exactly how what he was saying logically connected.
Due to my extensive Twitter coverage, I sort of lost track of which topic they were on. Supposedly there was a structure; 5 minutes to speak, two minute rebuttal and a two minute counter rebuttal. I think. It seemed that they went back and forth a few more times than that. I do recall that the moderator (who was really just an MC rather than a moderator) was pretty flexible with letting them have counter-counter-counter rebuttals.
I think the second question/topic was What about Science? D’Souza started this one off by claiming that the universe was so complex, that the signs of intelligence were embedded all throughout it, therefore it had to be created by someone/something. He basically trotted out the standard Intelligent Design stuff. There were many misrepresentations about what science is and does. Basically just a garbled mess.
Apparently D’Souza is from some parallel universe because he started talking about how “New Atheism” had gotten started as a reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Somehow all this loud atheism stuff was in response to islam. He then proceeded to say that, even though those attacks were motivated by islam, there were no other examples of religious violence in the world. Where are the buddhist suicide bombers? he asked. There are no hindu extremists or christians out there killing people, he maintained. Furthermore, he went on to claim that there are no historical examples of such religious violence. At this point, there were a lot of vocal exclamations of disbelief amongst the audience. I, among others, called out, “The Crusades!” when he rhetorically asked what examples of christian violence were there. The damn fool was actually trying to make the claim that only the muslims engage in religious violence. This wasn’t the only slam on muslims during the night.
Hitchens responded that it’s a pretty sad reason to be glad about christianity, because, hey, it’s not al qaeda. He then pointed out concrete examples of buddhist suicide bombers: the kamikaze, in WWII. Not to mention all the other explicit examples of religions hatred and violence. He said that you could replace the word “fascist” with “Roman catholic church” in a history of eastern Europe with out changing any other words and it wouldn’t make a difference. Hitchens continues by saying that love was essentially meaningless when it is demanded of you by religion.
During his rebuttal to the rebuttal (I’d kinda lost track as to who’s turn it really was), D’Souza said that any suicide bombings, any war, they weren’t because of religion. No, the leaders and the people involved just happened to be religious. He actually said that religion had nothing to do with the Israelis and the Palestinians, it was just about land.
The level of stupid just kept rising with every sentence D’Souza spoke. As they got into the third topic, about science and religion, he drug out the old trope that because science has been wrong about things in the past, there’s no reason to assume that they’re right about anything they’re telling us now about the nature of the universe. Some more crap about Ptolemy and Newton and orbits and therefore god. I guess. I couldn’t follow his point. Intelligent design made a comeback, something about Shakespeare writing Hamlet, therefore god. Because the universe is just like a book, but bigger. Since someone made a book, god made the universe. QED, bitches! (Not quite)
There was some other stuff in there, none of it was sticking to the wall. The next section of the debate was for each of them to ask the other a question. Hitchens went first by asking D’Souza, since your god is so good and you’re so confident in your particular god, which would you rather I (Hitchens) be: an atheist or a muslim. After a couple of hems and haws, D’Souza came out with, “I feel much safer debating you as an atheist.” Anyone else pick up on the muslim bashing going on here?
Now it was D’Souza’s turn. He asked Hitchens, have you ever had any doubts in your atheism and, if so, what caused those doubts. Hitchens went off on a tangent about Pascal’s Wager and how pathetic it really is. It’s basically saying that your god is too stupid to know the difference between real and fake belief. Getting back to the question (sort of) Hitchens says that if, when he dies, he finds out he’s wrong and he’s standing there before god, and god wants to know why he didn’t believe, he’ll tell him, you didn’t give me enough information to form that belief. And that anyone can make an honest mistake and that he was damn proud of this particular one.
This is getting long, so I’ll try to sum up. D’Souza claimed that the crusades weren’t really done in the name of christianity, because the leaders weren’t true christians. Yes, he actually used the No True Scottsman fallacy. He then tried to equate Marxism with atheism by quoting that line from Marx about religion being the opiate of the masses. Hitchens responded beautifully with the actual full quote from that book, and the context totally doesn’t bear out the interpretation that D’Souza was trying to claim. I’ll have to dig up the actual quote because I don’t remember the details. But it was a fantastic smackdown.
Here comes the part where my brain asploded. They were each asked some questions submitted via the internets. D’Souza was asked why, if god could heal as so many christians claim, he has never healed an amputee. The amazingly insensitive and completely assholic response? Well, they’re alive, aren’t they? Isn’t it better for them to be alive than dead? Besides, it’s all really about the spiritual healing. If there is any physical healing happening, it is as a tool of the spiritual healing.
This spew of offensive shit is what finally did me in. I found myself sitting there with my mouth open, totally snarkless. The good news was that was the end of the debate.
All-in-all, I was extremely disappointed with D’Souza’s performance. Hitchens was brilliant, and wickedly funny, but he didn’t even have to try. D’Souza made it way too easy.
Whew! Big post. Sorry for my long-windedness. Check out my stream on Twitter for the play by play action: @CyberLizard. Now that I’ve gotten the overview out of the way while it was still fresh in my mind, I can concentrate on my post about the experience itself. I got to meet the Orlando Atheists & Freethinkers group for the first time (which was cool) and there were many conversations to be had. And I even drank a beer! Well, Strongbow Cider, actually, but close enough. I’ll fill y’all in tomorrow.
The Great Faith Debate: Final Update!
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Religion on September 17, 2009
If you are planning on attending this along with members of Orlando Atheists & Freethinkers, here’s the final word on what’s going down. I hope I can find my way around UCF. It looks nothing like it did when I went there.
FINAL Update!
PARKINGParking will fill up QUICKLY. Please come early. Those joining us for the 5:00 dinner will have the least stressful experience of all attendees.
Parking is FREE in Garage F and Garage D; however, we will be competing with students for parking. Parking in all other garages/lots is charged – you can find the yellow kiosks that take cash or credit in every garage/lot.MEETING Areas
There is NO reserved seating for our group; however, we are going to attempt to reserve some seats together on the second level. Please look for the RED balloons. The doors to the event open at 6:00PM; you will be able to enter at 6PM and find our section.
How to find us:
5:00 – Dinner at Knightro’s (near Garage F, across from Tailgater’s)
6:00 – enter the Arena & look for the RED balloon OR
6:15 – meetup in front of the Box Office (RED balloon)
7:00 – debate begins
9:00 – (after debate) Tailgater’s Smokehouse (Near Garage F, across from Knightro’s)
What debate?
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Religion on September 17, 2009
After my posts pimping The Great Faith Debate, several people have wanted to know, “what is there to debate?” and “why should we debate this, it should be a personal issue”. Things like that. Good questions.
In a perfect world, where religion was in its appropriate place (which is right around the same place as knitting and masturbation: it’s something a lot of people do, it makes them feel good and they don’t go around trying to get everyone else to do it too*) then there wouldn’t be a “debate”. It would be just another philosophical topic to burn some extra intellectual energy on.
But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where religionists are forcing their views into our government. We live in a world where those who promote religion are trying to invade our science classrooms. We live in a world where children are being killed and mutilated in the name of religion and it’s attendant superstitions. We live in a world where prominent politicians joyfully align themselves with those who would participate in such activities. We live in a world where a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body is being violently attacked in the name of religion. We live in a world where those who don’t believe in the predominant religion are relegated to second-class citizens and a president even says that they should not even be considered citizens.
So this debate takes on greater meaning. It extends beyond existential musings and thought exercises and enters the real world with real world consequences. It is an attempt to bring rationality and acceptance of differing views to the forefront. This has become a human rights issue, as a percentage of the population of the world are being discriminated against, and in some cases physically attacked, simply for not accepting the premise of a supreme being or beings. A debate like this is one form of promoting the acceptance of non-believers. And if it makes people think and consider their own positions and those of others, that can’t be anything but a good thing, right?
* Credit for this awesome analogy goes to PZ Myers
The Great Faith Debate
Posted by CyberLizard in Religion on September 16, 2009
Orlando Atheists & Freethinkers
On Thursday, September 17th at 7:00 PM at the UCF Arena, an event is taking place that is being billed as The Great Faith Debate. Christopher Hitchens will be debating Dinesh D’Souza on the value of religion, the existence of God, and the effects of religion on society. Tickets (free!) are were available here. Unfortunately, general admission seems to be sold out. Do not despair, for the Orlando Atheists & Freethinkers reserved a block of tickets and they still have a good number left. Here are the details.
I will definitely be there. It should be interesting and (hopefully) entertaining to see one of the Four Horsemen of the Atheist Apocalypse speak in person. I’ll have a full report after the event. I’ll probably be twittering it as well, so be sure and follow @CyberLizard.
Here’s how the website TheGreatFaithDebate.com pumps up the participants:
Christopher Hitchens, an atheist and anti-theist, is well-known for his critique of religion, which he says is “immoral”, “mythical”, and “man-made”. He is well known for his work as a journalist and for his authorship of the controversial book “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”.
Dinesh D’Souza is the author of several bestsellers, including “What’s So Great About Christianity” and “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11”. He uses intellectual reasoning to promote conservative values and defends traditional religious culture from a social and historical standpoint.
Both speakers are well-versed in current cultural events, and are extremely adept at addressing the challenging issues that face today’s society. Hitchens is witty, humorous, and a little daring. D’Souza is animated, polite, and occasionally mischievous.
Come expecting some surprising twists in the conversation as the two tackle the topic of religion and atheism from scientific, historical, and social perspectives.
If you’re a local, or even semi-local, come check it out! And come say “hi” to me.
I am uncivil. In other news, the sun rises in the east
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Blogging, Responses on September 14, 2009
I am engaged in a discussion over at Attempts of Rational Behavior where an asshat theist commented in a condescending and arrogant manner that the blog owner should get to know god the way he knows god before condemning religion. This was in response to a piece about the significance of 9/11 and how it influenced her emotional journey away from religion. I chimed in and, in my usual charming way, managed to offend the commenter, who called me “violent, unreasonable, uncivil, and inappropriate”. Go read the comments for the whole story. It’s a fun ride. He ends up by suggesting that I am going to strap explosives to myself and blow up a cathedral.
But that isn’t what I want to talk about. The exchange mentioned above led to an interesting conversation IRL (yes, I do actually speak to people in real life. Just not to you). This person I was speaking with was someone who knows me well and had a completely different take on what the asshat was saying. She felt that the commenter had some valid points and that I came across as extremely rude and offensive. Which kinda was my intent, but be that as it may, it upset her to think that people would read my comments and, not knowing anything else about me, think I was basically a giant asshole.
I made a valiant effort to explain the source of my anger and my loss of patience with the condescending treatment of atheists by theists. Unfortunately, I tend towards incoherent babble when trying to speak extemporaneously, and so I didn’t convey my points very well. So I’m going to babble about them here, hopefully more coherently.
My first point was that I interpreted the comments as being extremely condescending and arrogant and that I felt he was basically telling the blogger that they were doing it wrong, that she should just get to know god. As an atheist, we hear this crap all the time. One of the most basic techniques of the theists is to tell the non-believer that they just didn’t have enough faith, or that they didn’t really want jebus to come into their hearts, or that they went to the wrong church or listened to the wrong preacher on TV. Anything to turn the problem around and make it the atheists fault for not believing, rather than face the fact that they’ve provided absolutely no evidence to support their belief or to convince others to believe. This particular commenter couched this with all kinds of philosophical crap and intellectual-sounding lines, but the bottom line was that the lack of belief was the bloggers’ own fault. I get tired of that shit, and am going to smack it down whenever I run into it, probably quite uncivilly. ‘Cause that’s the way I roll, bitches.
My second point was that, in the real-life discussion, I felt that my right to anger was being questioned. I have lived my entire life unwittingly experiencing the benefits of privilege. I am a white upper-middle class male who, for most of his upbringing, identified as a WASP. Coming out as an atheist has introduced me to a whole world of discrimination and being treated as a second-class citizen that I’ve never directly experienced before. I am beginning to have a deeper understanding of what it is like to be part of a marginalized community. And I now realise that one necessary voice from those marginalized communities is the “angry” voice. Greta Christina expresses this much better than I can:
Because anger has driven every major movement for social change in this country, and probably in the world. The labor movement, the civil rights movement, the women’s suffrage movement, the modern feminist movement, the gay rights movement, the anti-war movement in the Sixties, the anti-war movement today, you name it… all of them have had, as a major driving force, a tremendous amount of anger. Anger over injustice, anger over mistreatment and brutality, anger over helplessness.
She goes on to explain why telling the marginalized not to be angry is effectively participating in the marginalization of that group:
So when you tell an atheist (or for that matter, a woman or a queer or a person of color or whatever) not to be so angry, you are, in essence, telling us to disempower ourselves. You’re telling us to lay down one of the single most powerful tools we have at our disposal. You’re telling us to lay down a tool that no social change movement has ever been able to do without. You’re telling us to be polite and diplomatic, when history shows that polite diplomacy in a social change movement works far, far better when it’s coupled with passionate anger. In a battle between David and Goliath, you’re telling David to put down his slingshot and just… I don’t know. Gnaw Goliath on the ankles or something.
My efforts to explain the similarities of the atheist movement with other communities wasn’t an attempt to portray myself as a martyr. Rather it was an effort to highlight the fact that atheists are a marginalized community and that it takes a certain amount of effort and energy to overcome the inertia of centuries and bring the issue to the forefront of public consciousness so that something can be done about it. Expressing our anger is a valuable tool in accomplishing that.
In addition, my verbal sparring partner also suggested that, by expressing anger the way I do, I was not helping the cause, that I was just reinforcing the true believer’s ideas about atheists. PZ Myers took on this trope a little while ago. In response to the opposition to the comparisons between the atheist movement and the feminist movement:
Try reading the literature of the feminist pioneers. They weren’t just rude, they were howling at injustice, they were breaking deep social mores, and they were abused, despised, and imprisoned for it — and they still are. Jebus. You think all women had to do to get recognition of their basic rights was to be polite? You think they got the right to vote by asking nicely? That soft voices and meekness are the answers?
I take it back. I should be embarrassed for us atheists. When I look at the history of feminism, I see a ferocity and a record of sacrifice that puts us tame godless people to shame. Maybe we need to get more outraged and outrageous.
I wholeheartedly agree. Twisted Sister had it right when they sang, “We’re not gonna take it!” It may be uncomfortable, it may be rude, it may even be aggressive, but it has to be out there. Otherwise we let them continue the status quo and keep us marginalized.
Here is some further reading by some bloggers who are much more coherent than I:
Atheists and Anger: A reply to the hurricane
Carnival of the Godless for Aug. 23
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Blogging on August 27, 2009
I’m such a slacker. I completely forgot about the latest Carnival of the Godless, hosted by Radical Atheist. Go read it while I go hang my head in shame for being a bad blogger 
Gov. Crist makes god put up a force field
Posted by CyberLizard in Local & State, Politics, Religion on August 26, 2009
According to Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, we’ve been spared from the hurricanes because he stuffed a little piece of paper in a hole in a wall. Of course, it requires the wall to be in Jerusalem and the paper has to have a prayer on it to get direct action from god. In this case, god responded by putting up a force field around Florida to protect the nation’s wang from the mean old storms.
See? Here’s the latest one bouncing off of the invisible sky daddy’s power:
Danny misses FL and heads towards New England, as god intended.
I mean, how could there be any other explanation? Either no one has previously prayed for hurricanes to miss Florida or else god just really likes Crist. I’ll bet god said, “Fuck the prayers from people in other states, I’m gonna protect Florida ’cause Charlie is such a good guy!”
Charlie is quite the modest one, though, despite his influence over an omnipotent supreme being:
[Crist] said he’s not taking credit for the lack of storms in this hurricane-prone state.
“I give that to God,” Crist said. “But it’s nice.”
I love kids!
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Religion on August 25, 2009
Their minds are amazing. The simplicity of their logic sometimes gets right to the crux of the matter. Watching them grow and learn is such a thrill.
I met my wife and kids at the bookstore the other day. We were switching cars so that I could take the young’uns home and she could go out. After a few minutes of perusing such literary classics as Fancy Nancy and The Boxcar Children, the two rugrats and I went outside with the kids while my wife checked out with the armful of books they had selected.
The bookstore had some nice benches right outside the front entrance. My daughter eschewed the bench for the pleasures of sitting on the ground (“See dese ants? They are my babies! I yuv dem!”). My son sat with me on the bench and proceeded to chat. He’s a big fan of chatting.
“I know you don’t believe in god,” he said.
We’ve always told him that various people believe different things. He knows that the ancient greeks (among others) had a number of different gods. He liked the story about the sun being pulled through the sky by a god in a chariot. Especially since he knows that the sun is ginormous ball of plasma out in space. And we’ve explained the Jesus thing to some degree; christmas and easter kinda needed that part so that he wasn’t thoroughly lost when visiting my mother. But we never had much talk about “god” in general.
A while back he mentioned god and it occurred to me to ask what he thought god was. “He’s just this guy who invented nature,” was the reply. Not bad for someone with limited exposure to religious types. We left it there.
He’s been curious about this lately. And since his favorite past time is listening to the conversations of my wife and I, he’s starting to pick up on things that we used to talk over his head about. So he wanted to know about hell. “Some people believe…” we began as we usually do, “that if you don’t believe in their god you go to a place called hell where you are tortured for all eternity.” “That doesn’t sound very nice,” he phlegmatically replied. And he left it alone.
He heard the term atheist and wanted to know what that was. “It’s someone who doesn’t believe in gods,” I told him. “Are you an atheist?” he wanted to know. “Yes,” I replied. And he left it alone.
I’ve been reluctant to follow up with him on this subject. He is an extremely inquisitive kid, so I figured that if he wanted to know more he would ask. I didn’t want to indoctrinate him by preaching my set of beliefs (or lack thereof) any more than I wanted my mother to indoctrinate him with stories of Jesus. I hadn’t come up with any sort of official “talk” to have with him about religion, though my wife and I have discussed how we want to handle it.
“I know you don’t believe in god,” he would occasionally say out of the blue to me. “That’s right,” I would reply, always expecting the usual follow-up question from him: why? But he never went there. I suspect that he was pondering it, as much as a 6 year old can ponder anything, given their attention spans.
So this time, when he told me that he knew I didn’t believe in god, I wasn’t really expecting the conversation to go anywhere. “Why don’t you believe in him?” came the next question. Without missing a beat, and much to my own surprise, I replied, “Because there is no evidence for a god. No one has seen it or found any evidence that one exists.” He responded, “Oh, kinda like Santa Claus. No one sees him, either.”
Oh shit, now I had stepped in it. It’s one thing to have an existential discussion about a deity, but Santa? My wife was gonna kill me. She loves Santa. She’s quite aware that we provide “Santa’s” presents. She’s been up with me at 3 am on christmas morning still wrapping gifts. But she still believes. She loves the magic and the thrill of it, the spirit of Santa. It’s woo, but it’s fun. I don’t buy the crap about how when the “lie” of Santa is revealed it destroys children. I wasn’t devastated when I figured out that Santa had the same handwriting as my dad. For us, it’s about an attitude of giving and knowing doesn’t make it any less rewarding. All that being said, we weren’t going to keep the charade going until he went away to college. The expectation was that as he got older he would begin to figure it out. We wouldn’t lie if he flat-out asked if we were Santa.
Fortunately, I was able to steer the conversation back to the safer topic of god. As we drove home, he asked a few more questions about my lack of belief. I explained that I thought that the natural world was already such an amazing place that I didn’t feel that we needed to invoke the supernatural to appreciate it. I started talking about the wonder of the universe, of it’s origins in the Big Bang, of the evolution of life and how it led to us.
After a few minutes of listening, he said, “You know what? I’m with you. I don’t believe in god either.” This wasn’t quite what I had expected. “You know,” I said, “you don’t need to make up your mind right this second about this. I’m not trying to convince you or tell you to believe a certain way.” “I know,” he replied, “I just agree with you. God doesn’t make sense.” I went on to continue to assure him that he didn’t have to make a decision right now and that he would have plenty of opportunities throughout his life to evaluate the evidence and ask questions and make up his mind.
So for now, the Turkey doesn’t believe in god.
Update: Edited for grammar so my wife quits making fun of me 
Ponderings on Beliefs Past
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Religion on August 21, 2009
I’ve actually been working on this one for a while; a rather different process than my usual throw-something-snarky-out-there-in-5-minutes style. Jason shamed me into posting it 
Many times during the debate between atheists and christians, the christians often throw out the trope that we atheists just haven’t read the bible enough or been taught the “right” thing about Jesus, despite the fact that a large number of atheists are converts from religions that otherwise produce “true believers”. Our religious education is lacking, they claim. When their claims are proved false, for example by the atheist being an evangelical christian for 30 years before leaving that belief, then the No True Scotsman fallacy is drug out. They weren’t “real christians” or “true believers”. Here’s a peek into my own religious upbringing so you know where I’m coming from. For me, religion wasn’t so much about belief as it was just a part of life. Lemme ‘splain.
I grew up with a solid German Lutheran background: the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod, for those in the know). My grandfather, a second generation German-American with a wonderful gravelly voice, was a pastor in said church. Since we lived in a different city so he wasn’t my pastor. My family went to church every Sunday; I attended sunday school and then confirmation classes when I reached junior high. I participated in the Youth Group, went on retreats, was a member of the adult choir while still in high school (on account of me singing so good) and I was even an acolyte, which meant I got to light the candles before service and collect the empty little glasses after communion (though when I hear the word “acolyte” I think of D&D). My family said prayers before dinner and bed (“Come Lord Jesus” and “Now I Lay Me”, respectively, though not the creepy version of “Now I Lay Me” with the line in it about dying before waking up).
Up until probably the end of high school I would have identified myself as a christian. Mostly due to apathy, I think. It’s not like I was really into it. Sometimes the debate about theological minutia was interesting, in a sort of pseudo-philosophical way, but outside of required activities I gave little thought to what I “believed”. Towards the end of high school I was calling myself an agnostic privately (when I bothered to give it any thought at all) and as soon as I moved away from home at 20 or so I stopped going to church.
When I was a small child I was classified as “hyperactive”, now more clinically called ADHD. This meant that sitting through an hour of mind-numbing talk on uncomfortable benches was rather difficult, to say the least. Many times I was removed from church for the obligatory spanking from my father for not sitting still, not paying attention, not being quiet, etc. (nothing severe, no switches or belts involved, just your old-fashioned butt paddling). As much as I dreaded the spanking, getting out of that dark and oppressive place was refreshing. The absolute best part of church was leaving it, seeing that bright sunshine and fresh air after suffering through the stifling boredom of the past hour.
Church was not a place of fire and brimstone, but rather boredom and monotony, from my point of view anyway. Hell was a rather nebulous concept not so much defined as a literal place but rather as a state of being separated from god’s grace. Whatever the hell that means. Most of the sermons seemed to be about interpreting the bible as to how it applied to our own lives and our own behaviours. There was no excoriation of other groups, no condemnation of the gays or the blacks. Very little of the focus was on evangelizing beyond the whole “This little light of mine” kind of thing. We were encouraged to spread the word, but only if people came asking about it. No standing on street corners handing out fliers for us.
One thing that I always appreciated was that my two pastors growing up were open, honest decent people. Our youth pastor during those tumultuous teen years was especially good at working with kids and talking honestly with us about those sexual feelings we were discovering and dealing with cliques and other teenage torments. We were never made to feel like we were dirty for getting excited at the opposite sex (no one I knew was gay, so that topic didn’t really come up) and we were flat out told that there was nothing wrong with masturbation. Sex was a gift from god, we were taught, that was to be appropriately shared by married people. But we should use a condom if we weren’t going to wait.
During confirmation classes (aka catechism) we followed Luther’s Small Catechism, which basically meant memorizing the Apostles and Nicene Creeds and the Lord’s Prayer, along with Luther’s explanation of their meaning. We also covered the history of the religion along with a basic overview of the beliefs of other major christian religions and the various minor differences between them. A catholic was just as much a christian as a baptist as a lutheran, even though they did weird things in their services. Mormons were out, however, as were JW’s. Jews for Jesus were probably allright.
So, what was I taught about evolution? Nada. Zip. Zilch. At least, not from the church. It never came up. When I asked my mom about it one time (I was probably in elementary school) she said that she thought that Genesis was metaphorical, at least as far as the whole creating everything in six days business, and that god probably guided evolution to create us. The flood story kinda fell into the same category, at least in my mind. Even as a child I had a very difficult time swallowing the concept that all life was bottlenecked through that ark. Does not compute. Since I was, even then, fairly non-confrontational (not to mention lazy), I never pushed the issue. Those kinds of conversations always ended up with something to the effect of “we’ll have to ask god when we get to heaven to explain that.”
My parents were very active in the church too. They were youth group leaders, served on several committees and my dad was even the President of the congregation for a while. This introduced me to the nastiness that is church politics. I should just say politics, because there is very little different with the church kind. Backroom deals, backstabbing, double-crossing, self-serving; they were all just as much a part of church politics as they are of the more secular kind. I also had another somewhat unique perspective in that my grandfather was a pastor. Hearing my mother bitch about her parents definitely allowed me to realize early on that pastors were just as fallibly human as the rest of us. There was nothing that was more special or divine about them that gave them any more authority. They went to a special college and got a degree, that’s all.
I got married in the same church I grew up in, not out of any particular religious significance, but because when I was a child I had attended a wedding there and had told myself that I would be married there as well. So basically for sentimental and nostalgic reasons. My grandfather performed the ceremony, as he had done for all his children and their children. It wouldn’t have felt right to not have him perform it. Now, as an atheist, I still might have done that way. My Papa and I had a special relationship. We shared a birthday, albeit 50 years apart.
Anyway, to end this rambling, fast forward to today. I came out as an atheist almost a year ago, due in no small part to PZ Myers and Pharyngula and the rest of the bunch over at ScienceBlogs.com that opened my eyes and jumpstarted me into shucking my apathy and standing proud for what I (don’t) believe in.
The “Real” Creation Story
Posted by CyberLizard in Atheism, Me, Religion on August 13, 2009
One memory from childhood stands out as a pivotal moment in the formation of my beliefs. When I was in the fifth grade (I would have been 9) there was one of those Science Bowl competition thingies. The topic for my grade level was “Endangered Species”. Being the bright kid that I was, my science teacher had selected me to be a member on the team. Not that any of this is important, except to serve as a backdrop for this story.
The real Tree of Knowledge?
Being part of the team meant that I got to hang out after school in the science classroom, reviewing the material in preparation for our competition. After one of these review sessions we were all standing around talking, waiting for our parents to pick us up. It was your typical classroom with cinder block walls painted a horrid institutional green. I was standing next to the bulletin board, idly examining the way that the wooden frame had been painted over multiple times, since the chips of paint revealed the layers. I don’t remember how the conversation drifted in the direction it took, but the teacher made an interesting observation. She remarked that some people thought it was possible that humans were really aliens who had crashed on Earth. The whole business about the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden was really a story about the crashed ship’s computer that had gotten garbled over the years.
I still have the pillowcase
Already at that age I was into the science fiction and had a huge Star Wars action figure collection. And Star Wars sheets, pillowcase and blanket. When my friends and I played Star Wars, I got to be Luke because I had blonde hair. So this idea of a space faring people colonizing the Earth was absolutely fascinating to me. It seemed way more plausible than the version that they taught in church. From that point on, any time I heard or thought about Genesis, I couldn’t help but imagine this alternate version of events and what fantasize about what really had happened.
Now, I didn’t actually believe in the literal truth of this alien story any more than I bought into the idea of an omnipotent being creating a golem out of clay. But it definitely introduced me to alternate ways of thinking about religious texts instead of just accepting the “official” position. This memory (and Star Trek) opened my mind to the possibility that the universe was much more fantastic and amazing than boring old god.
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