This is the sixth part of an on-going series about my conversion to atheism. To start at the beginning, follow this link.
The central conflict of my spiritual life has been this: even if belief in God is technically wrong (as in "incorrect"), that doesn't make it wrong wrong, does it? There's nothing wrong with sticking with a belief system you know to be wrong if it makes you feel better. Right?
The first conclusion that I arrived at is that there is nothing inherently wrong with buying into a convenient or appealing lie. It's something we all do naturally--we believe we (or our children) are smarter, better-looking, and more talented than they actually are. We believe that we are safe in our cars or our homes. We do this because doing so allows us to function from day to day. We tell our wives that they don't look fat in those pants, even when they do. We tell our friends that everything's fine, even when it isn't. The lying is not what's bad, it's the lie that gets us into trouble. Lying to ourselves about God is fine, provided that the costs of such a lie are insignificant next to the benefits. I will argue that this is not the case.
1. God steals from the poor.
According to the National Council of Churches, the 65 church denominations represented by the council reported receiving donations in excess of $34 billion in 2007. Adjusted for inflation, this was down from 2006. That's a lot of money, but as long as most of it goes to faith-based charity programs, there's nothing wrong with that (any charitable organization is going to have some overhead costs). According to that same study, "Benevolence giving – financial contributions to church programs such as relief efforts and feeding or housing the homeless – remained flat at 15 percent."
15%. 15 per-fucking-cent?!?!?!?! Where the hell is the other 85% going? It's not like churches are these huge, ornate buildings with kick-ass sound systems that occupy prime real estate. Except that it's EXACTLY like that. This 15% better be going to cure cancer. What sort of "programs" are we talking about here? Well, the examples cited in the report include transportation for the elderly, soup-kitchen meals, and church-sponsored day-care.
People only have so much charity in them. They give to their church because they believe that it's going to a good cause. What I'm saying is this: if everyone stopped giving money to their churches, and gave it to charity instead, but people were less "moved by the spirit" such that they only gave 20% as much, we'd still be better off.
2. God steals from the government.
In spite of the numbers I've just given you, churches are considered non-profit organizations, so they get tax breaks. Not much of a point, I know, but just to bring this discussion full-circle, I'll throw in a bonus stat. The U.S. is one of the most religious nations in the world (with roughly 80% of Americans identifying themselves as Christians), but it is one of the least generous with foreign aid. Look at this chart, which details foreign aid as a percentage of Gross National Income. See if you can find the U.S. I'll wait.
3. God discounts the future.
In economics "discounting the future" is when you undervalue future events on the grounds that you might not be around to face them. This is the whole reason we have borrowing at interest, because $50 today is worth more to you than $50 next week. Perfectly normal.
But throw God into the mix and this is a real problem. We can't even have a serious public discussion of climate change because people are convinced at a) the end of the world is imminent anyway, and b) if it's a serious problem, God will take care of it. And it's not just laymen. Here is video of a U.S. congressman rebutting global warming with the Bible, referring t0--and I quote--"a theological debate that this a is a carbon-starved planet". Bwah? He cites two separate Bible passages, one from Genesis saying that the world will never end and another from Matthew saying that, actually, the world is going to end, but God will decide when. That's right. Representative Shimkus of Illinois couldn't be bothered to find two scriptures that don't contradict each other before reading them on national television.
Extrapolating from that...
4. God is a convenient excuse to not take responsibility for anything.
And not just in matters of public debate. I'm talking about our day to day lives. According to the church, what do you do when you are facing adversity? You pray. When you don't know what to do? Pray. When you're having financial troubles? Pray (and go ahead and donate to the church anyway... seriously, it's in there). Nowhere does the church ever say, "do something about it" or, "get help".
Extrapolating from that...
5. God gives shitty advice.
A preacher once told me that I should regard every woman I ever date as a candidate for marriage. I now realize that this is quite possibly the worst advice I ever received. Dating is for a) fun, b) getting practice at being in a relationship, c) finding out what qualities I most want in a potential mate, and, finally, d) finding potential candidates for marriage. Of course, the problem with getting shitty advice from the Bible is that you have tremendous incentives to follow it anyway. Granted, not all of the lessons from scripture are completely irrelevant, but I'm of the opinion that there's nothing in the Bible so revolutionary that it wouldn't come up through other means. And there's a whole hell of a lot in there that is irrelevant. I have no need, for example, for a detailed description of how to sacrifice pigeons.
Why should this be surprising? Parts of the Bible were written during agrarian and pre-agrarian eras of human history. Society has been utterly reshaped many, many times since then. The face of the known world has changed since then. There are plenty of things that constituted good advice in the first century that are bad advice now. Slavery comes to mind.
Extrapolating, still, from that...
6. God enables oppression.
Nearly every tyrannical regime in the history of the planet has used religion as a tool, saying that their goals were sanctioned by God or cutting through the red tape and saying that they were God. The Nazis were extremely catholic (I'm invoking Godwin' Law, I know, but it's actually TRUE). The notable exception to the rule is the U.S.S.R. which was an atheistic government. But I can't help thinking that if they had been Russian Orthodox they might have lasted more than forty years.
Even on the home front, Christians oppress dissidents. Right now the big topic of debate is gay marriage. The entire force against it bases their claim on religion. There is no atheistic anti-gay-marriage movement. We don't care. Not that our opinion matters, anyway. 50% of Americans would vote against an atheist running for president. Section 4 of Texas' Bill of Rights excludes atheists and agnostics from even holding public office (thankfully it's overruled by the U.S. Constitution), and there are seven other states with similar exclusionary language in at least one of their governing documents.
Even a former president, George Bush, said that he didn't consider atheists to be citizens or patriots. We all know W is a fundamentalist, but the quote doesn't come from W, it's from George H.W. Bush!
This is a movement of oppression by a people--and this is the really fucked up bit--who are convinced that they are the ones being oppressed! You see that number I gave you where 80% of Americans are self-identifying Christians? Yeah. Those 80% are, apparently, being boxed in and forced to have gay sex by the rest of us who want nothing so much as to be left-the-hell-alone and don't understand why we can't buy beer before 11:00am on a Sunday.
Of course, none of this holds a candle to the centuries of murder, theft, and rape at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition.
Extrapolating from that...
7. God is a terrorist.
The brutal and public murder of George Tiller is a shining example of what Christians are capable of when they succumb to the delusion of God. This is not to say that Scott Roeder isn't a deeply troubled individual. Without Christianity as an excuse, he might still have committed murder somewhere, but we can't possibly know that. What we do know is that he remains convinced of his innocence and has told us that there will be more actions to come. A sect of Christianity has declared war on a group of Americans. What the hell are we going to do to them?
Well, many Christians have openly denounced Roeder's actions. So, that's a start, I guess. They say it was an isolated incident by a crazed madman, and maybe they're right. Wow, this is an emotionally charged issue, so let's remove Christianity from the equation. Take however shocked you were at George Tiller's death and double it and double it and double it again (and again and again and again). Because the murder of one doctor is insignificant compared to the routine terrorist violence that is carried out in God's name across the globe. Look at the conflict in Israel-Palestine. Look at the various Islamic groups blowing people up throughout the Middle-East. Yes, there are political motivations, but "politics" can only motivate a soldier, and a soldier doesn't strap a bomb to his chest so he can blow up children in the public market.
You can't have that kind of terrorism without God.
So if you find God comforting and feel that belief is justified because it makes you feel better, I understand. I hope it makes you feel really good.
I just don't think it's worth it.
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2 comments:
It seems to me that God is becoming a scapegoat for all the bad things you see in the world, as you've taken a lot of human traits and imposed them on Him. To that, I can only conclude that you have a startlingly optimistic view of human beings acting in their own capacity :)
Religion (or the perception thereof) has made a convenient excuse for all kinds of calamity throughout history and today. But do you really think that the absence of that tool would have prevented the events? That, lacking that single religious excuse, we would change into a species prone to wisdom, tolerance, generosity and goodwill toward man?
You've mentioned the USSR, and the 60 million people killed in the name of atheism. The Japanese didn't need religion to spur an intense siege of brutality during their occupation of Singapore, etc. Do you really think the crusades, the spanish inquisition and other "holy wars" wouldn't have occurred without the religious goals? Religion was merely an afterthought, not the actual reason for the military operations.
On a lighter note, bad dating advice abounds everywhere, independent of religion.
Conflict, selfishness, stupidity, irresponsibility, dishonesty, hypocrisy, being fearful of or disliking people who are different from oneself, using brute force to attain one's goals... those are not a result of God or religion. Those are human nature.
Religion has never been immune to human nature, and I have a hard time believing that an absence of religion would make a dent in making us better people. To the contrary, studies show that regular people are significantly more likely to do "bad" things if they don't believe they will be held accountable for their actions.
Yes, the argument is an exaggeration. I don't think that religion caused all of these ills, but I do believe that it enabled them and that certainly some of them wouldn't have happened, though I agree that some of them undoubtedly would.
The Inquisition is a particularly potent example because yes, it was an excuse to kill people and take their land, but it was an irrefutable one. If it had been merely a political body acting, rather than a religious body, I think people would have felt justified in fighting back.
Stepping back, at this point I've already laid out why I don't think that there is a god; I'm not accusing god of anything--that would be pretty hypocritical of me.
My true aim is to criticize a portrait of god that others have painted. If god is really responsible for everything (or even many of the things) that are attributed to him by his followers, then god's a messed up son of a bitch that I want nothing to do with.
Put another way, as you mention, bad dating advice abounds independent of religion. What I'm saying is that bad advice has extra weight when it comes from someone who claims to speak for god.
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