Category Archives: Apostasy

Apologetics Now, Redux

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Two outstanding Texas treasures.

Two outstanding Texas treasures.

As I mentioned last year when I visited an apologetics conference at Watermark Church in Dallas, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s report on the rise of the “Nones” in America was just another in a long series of warnings to the American Christian Church. Society, the Church has said for decades, is slouching into secularity; now the data suggest that more and more people are not even interested in the pretense of a religious label.

This pronounced rejection of religious affiliation has a strikingly demographic bent. While 90% of those 65 and older still consider themselves affiliated with a religious organization, only two-thirds of those younger than 30 are similarly labeled. And trends in the data over the past decade indicate that this disparity is only going to grow wider.

Among American Christendom, the hardest hit are Protestant denominations, both evangelical and otherwise. Since the 1970’s, the percentage of American Protestants has declined from almost two-thirds of the population to now just barely half, while the percentage of Catholics has remained the same (presumably due to immigration) and the percentage of “Nones” has more than doubled.

In response to this inevitable sociologic trend, Dallas Theological Seminary has expanded the scope of their Hendricks Center for Christian Leadership which since 1986 has existed to support pastoral leadership development. In December of 2012, DTS announced that Dr. Darrell Bock, a world-class New Testament scholar and expert in the theology of Luke-Acts and the Historical Jesus Quests, would be appointed the new Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at the Hendricks Center alongside Dr. Andy Seidel.

In this new role, Bock has sought to reach out beyond the ivory tower to connect with the public through a series of podcasts. The literally-named “The Table Podcast” features Bock with a rotating selection of Christian guests discussing issues seated around a bare table, adorned only with state-of-the-art recording equipment. Available in both studio quality video and audio versions, the goal of these podcasts is to “help Christians think biblically and theologically about issues and how to engage them in a gracious and forthright manner.”

In this, they succeed amazingly well. Podcasts produced thus far are clear, respectful discussions among people who have interesting things to say about how Christians can interact with homosexuality, the media and the arts, and other religious traditions in the context of a changing American culture. Unfortunately, these discussions have been manifested thus far as mutual confirmation sessions (i.e., Christians agreeing with Christians), designed apparently to provide questions for answers, and not the other way around.

Dr. Bock in his element.

Dr. Bock in his element.

I saw the same phenomenon repeated at the first “Table Conference,” held on a warm spring weekend in Dallas and given the theme, “Presenting God to Those Who See Christianity Differently.” As one of the rapidly growing number of people in Dallas who does, in fact, “see Christianity differently,” I couldn’t keep myself away. Bock, the architect of the conference, had assembled a small number of highly-respected New Testament scholars for the event. These included Dr. Daniel Wallace, a fellow DTS faculty member, one of two worldwide masters of New Testament textual criticism and most likely the world’s foremost expert on Biblical Greek; Dr. Craig Blomberg of Denver Seminary, an expert in parables and Historical Jesus studies; Dr. Charles Hill of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, who is an expert in John’s Gospel and the early canon; and finally Dr. Michael Svigel also of DTS, a junior faculty member there who specializes in study of the history and theology of the early Christian Church. To open the conference, Bock had invited Lee Strobel to speak, the bestselling author of several pop-apologetics books cast in the same mold as his original “The Case for Christ.”

Though the conference was obviously Bock’s baby, that Strobel had been chosen to set the tone for the weekend spoke volumes; this was not to be an event where Christians could grapple with real-world issues and criticisms, be asked to think critically about their faith, or even to seriously consider a different point of view. Rather than actually “engage” with the perspective of the “Nones,” much less that of the explicit apostates that are also captured in that designation, the only atheism on display were Bock’s recollections of being a (somewhat boring) middle-school agnostic, and Strobel’s dramatic testimony where his life as an atheist included routine inebriation, domestic violence, and self-loathing. Such a caricature is painfully unfamiliar to me in my travels among atheists, and I know of far too many instances of troubled Christians for this emotional appeal to resonate with me. But I can see the value of having Strobel’s participation, aside from his celebrity in the pop-Christian circuit; in addition to his loudly trumpeted intellectual bona fides as a legal journalist, he really does seem to reflect the earnestness that apologetic-minded American Christians routinely demonstrate.

Following his testimony, Strobel was interviewed by Bock onstage at the eponymous table. He relayed a story which I found quite fascinating: although his wife’s conversion precipitated his own, neither of them were able to make any headway towards converting her father to Christianity. A lifelong skeptic (presented as a bit of a curmudgeon by Strobel), he was tolerant of their religious revolution but didn’t want any part of it for himself. That is, until the end of his life when, afflicted by multiple strokes, he was virtually on his deathbed, watched over by his son-in-law. Strobel recounted how he hounded and harassed the man to consider converting, a process that took several of his father-in-law’s final hours. At long last, he agreed to accept Jesus as Savior, and the family celebrated until that evening when another stroke occurred, and his wife’s father was whisked away by ambulance to the hospital where he finally passed. His last words to Strobel were given indirectly through his wife, “Tell Lee I said ‘thank you’.”

For Strobel, this was a triumphant vindication of several decades worth of prayer and evangelism. Mere moments from Death’s grasp, he was able to save his father-in-law from eternal torment.

But I wonder.

Told from Strobel’s perspective, to a Christian audience, that’s no doubt the most plausible explanation, but I heard a story about a long-suffering atheist who was able to tolerate and love a son-in-law who went from being a rational thinker to a faith-driven evangelist and apologist, and who spent an entire afternoon pleading with him to accept his worldview under the approaching specter of death. Perhaps Strobel’s father-in-law felt sorry for him and his daughter, knew the pain that they would feel if they thought that he died without Christ. Perhaps he chose to show one more kindness to a man who would soon need it much more than him, and simply pretended to assent. I don’t know. It’s possible, and there are several atheists I know who would do the same in that kind of situation.

Including atheists who’ve been exposed to so-called “faithbuster” classes, as Bock mentioned several times during his tenure at the podium. The unstated thesis of the weekend seemed to be that there is bad information being presented to our culture about religion in general and Christianity specifically, and if Christians simply became better educated with good information (as taught by DTS, natch), they’d be better able to resist the faithbusting influences in their lives, and potentially be able to win over their skeptical family and friends to Christ. This promise was tempting, and as someone whose faith had been “busted” about a decade earlier, in no small measure due to textual and critical analysis of the Bible, I was hopeful that there would be a plethora of new information that would prompt me to rethink at least some of my previous conclusions.

Although the weekend was enjoyable and informational, it was not as educational as I had hoped, at least not for me. Though the gathered scholars were clearly able to expound with much more sophistication and subtlety in other company, the introductory-level material they shared with the lay audience was known already to me. Oddly enough, an ongoing theme became apparent as Bock and his colleagues repeatedly dragged out the still-living ghost of Bart Ehrman, who through archived video clips savaged the worldview of the gathered Christian attendees. Indeed, so often was the straw beaten out of Ehrman over the course of the conference that I wondered eventually whether it should rather have been titled “The Bend Bart Ehrman Over A Table Conference.” I suppose it makes sense to target so much of their criticism towards Ehrman; the books he’s written for a popular audience are seeming to have as much of a cultural impact as Bock’s own. And as a highly-respected New Testament scholar with a deconversion testimony from Christian to agnostic, Ehrman is something of a mirror-image of the scholar archetype that DTS seeks to elevate. An “Antibock,” if you will.

I was of two minds during the lectures: on the one hand, these were the highest-level Bible scholars with which one could hope to spend time, but on the other hand, their presentations were awash with warmed-over apologetic tropes the likes of which had been hammered to death within the first year of my apostasy. Things like Lewis’ Trilemma, the analogy of multiple witnesses at a car wreck, implicit trust of Eusebius, heavy-handed harmonizations, defining early alternative Christianities as deviations, and interpreting possibilities as strong probabilities. In this last instance, Wallace, also Executive Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (which itself had held its first conference a few weeks earlier and a few miles away, with Bock as a speaker), argued that since there is insufficient evidence to show that Greek was spoken in the region of Galilee during the first century C.E., there is thus insufficient evidence to show that it wasn’t spoken, therefore it probably was! And thus of course we can assume that Jesus himself spoke Greek, and thus of course we can assume that his disciples did as well, and thus of course we can assume that fully half of them could write Greek, and thus of course we can assume they wrote the autographs of the Gospels.

The other conference speakers took similar liberties with logic at various points during the weekend. Blomberg had no trouble claiming that since Luke’s version of Jesus’ anointing is so different from the other Gospels’ it’s possible that it happened twice, therefore it must have happened that way. Svigel noted that without a historical resurrection, the Diversity and Conflict model of the early Church development is most likely, but since we all know the resurrection had to happen, it’s not a viable option. And Hill suggested that the early canon was assembled because the early Christians were able to “recognize” authentic books from inauthentic the same way that one might recognize one’s mother in a crowded room.

The best thing by far that I experienced at the conference was the suggestion by Bock that Christians should be seeking out conversations with religious skeptics, approaching these with patience and kindness, and leaving the onus of conversion to the Holy Spirit and the skeptic herself. This was underlined at the end of the conference with a short skit by some of the DTS students helping to run the event. One pretended to be a religious skeptic, while the other acted out the Christian side of the conversation that Bock had earlier recommended. It was a little silly and ham-handed (as skits tend to be), but I couldn’t help but feel the irony of being an atheist seeking conversation with Christians in the middle of a conference where the only example of that on display required a Christian to play-act at being a nonbeliever.

Interestingly enough, this conference was held across the street from the massive Prestonwood Baptist Church where Christopher Hitchens had been invited years ago to provide students there with an actual atheist to listen to and engage with. That event, whatever the motivation of the Prestonwood organizers, presented students with a fair assessment of atheist objections, with Hitchens in his own words and in real-time, able to defend himself and mount his own attacks. Perhaps next year’s Table Conference will take that much-needed step of inviting Ehrman to speak on his own behalf, rather than quoted conveniently to play counterpoint to seminary professors.

Or even better, perhaps the Executive Director for Cultural Engagement would be interested in actually engaging with the cultural force of atheism in his own community that claims more and more Christians like me each year. It’s possible that Bock and his colleagues are still under the impression that the godless among them are little more than village atheists, opposed to Christianity for no better reason than a preacher looked at them crossways. To the contrary, we are more likely to come from Christian backgrounds than ever before, we’ve done our theological homework, and we tend to be better-informed about Christianity and other religions than their own adherents. We are a new breed of atheist, and we aren’t just in need of a kind Christian to patiently talk with us.

Dr. Bock answers questions from Christian students.

Dr. Bock answers questions from Christian students.

I don’t mean to sound too critical of Bock and his inaugural Table Conference; I very much enjoyed the lectures and helping with their photo booth during the breaks. And I agree that far too few Christians are aware of the information about the Bible and the early Church that one might learn at DTS or other seminaries. The weekend was, essentially, a series of 101-level lectures that all Christians (and atheists) should climb over each other to attend. But I do find it problematic that the information is presented with the conclusion already determined. As a Christian seminary, DTS is not actually interested in exploring other religious possibilities, it’s interested in providing intellectual support to a particular set of doctrine. I’ve met several former DTS students who’ve told me that in order to matriculate there, they had to sign assent to the Core Beliefs* of the DTS Doctrinal Statement, and they had to re-sign it in order to graduate. More than one have admitted that it was difficult to sign it a second time, and one individual flat-out refused to sign it, gave up his degree, and transferred to a secular university instead. He noted the irony of having to waive assent to a list of doctrines due to the education he’d received at the very institution which taught them.

If Christians are to remain relevant in American culture, they don’t just need to get smarter about the doctrines their pastors tell them they believe in. They don’t even need to become intellectually confident about their doctrines to the point where they’re comfortable discussing them with other Christians and religious skeptics. It really doesn’t matter how many proof texts you can provide for your belief in dispensationalism or eternal security when you’re talking with an atheist in line at a coffee shop. For both Watermark’s and this conference, I didn’t leave with a sense that my fellow attendees were well-prepared to have a casual conversation with me about the real issues that matter. Nor that they had any sense of what modern religious skeptics’ actual objections are to Christianity and other faiths. Being able to critique a handful of Ehrman sound bytes is a far distance from being able to engage with an real live atheist, especially a well-educated former Christian, right in one’s own hometown.

I’m hopeful that next year’s Table Conference takes its mission to engage with “those who see Christianity differently” a bit more seriously. Otherwise, Bock and his colleagues, for all their best intentions and highest expectations, are just play-acting.

*edited to specify “Core Beliefs of”, 5/8/2013

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The Death of God

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When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, “Behold, He is calling for Elijah.” Someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink, saying, “Let us see whether Elijah will come to take Him down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed His last. And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. When the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

-Mark, Chapter 15

For a religion that purports to bring joy to the world, Christianity seems preternaturally focused on death. Indeed, without the death of Jesus as God, atonement within Christian theology would be impossible. So great is this event, that Christians around the world commemorate it as “Good Friday.”

On this point, we can hopefully find no small level of agreement.

The death of God is of incredible significance for those who have moved beyond traditional religious beliefs and practices, and seek now to advance a humanistic ethic in a world where we have no benevolent deities to beg for blessings, nor tyrant gods to blame for miseries.

Humans have been commemorating the deaths of gods as far back as the Mesopotamian culture, in which the goddess Ishtar dies and ventures into the underworld, only to return days later in triumph. In the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, the goddess Persephone goes below and her return marks the beginning of Spring, as celebrated by the Eleusinian mystery cult during the time of Jesus. Among the Old English tribes, the goddess Ëastre (also called Ôstara by the Germans) represented rebirth and new life; the Christian scholar Bede noted that her name had been appropriated by Christians to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the latest god to seek death for the benefit of humans.

Is_God_DeadThomas J. J. Altizer, writing in The Gospel of Christian Atheism, acknowledges that “the death of God is a Christian confession of faith.” However, unlike traditional Christian orthodox views of atonement, Altizer suggests that “through the events that faith knows as the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, God empties himself of his sovereignty and transcendence, and not only does this kenotic sacrifice effect the dissolution of the opposition between Father and Son in the new epiphany of God as universal Spirit, but so likewise vanishes the opposition between God and the world.” In other words, God (as Christ) actually died on Good Friday, emptying Himself into the world and collapsing any division between them. Thus, rather than viewing the world as a dark place still in rebellion against God, Altizer sees the world as filled with God, following the self-negation of His transcendence.

Though the theology of Christian atheism is not resonant for me, I appreciate its directional tack. The America we live in is increasingly hostile to God – not only explicitly, through the rise of the New Atheist movement and encroaching secularism in government, but also implicitly, through the rise of the Nones and diminishing interest in religious institutions. To be an evangelical Christian in 21st-century America is to be always on the defensive, but to be a Christian atheist in the Altizer mold is to revel in the many permutations of divine manifestations in our art, literature, and scientific achievements. The Humanist in me recognizes that, whether we realize it or not, we have become the Gods of our own overlapping Universes, and that it is incumbent on us to rise to the responsibilities we face with such a title.

In Mark 16, the followers of Christ seek his dead body, but it is gone. In the original version of the story, there is nothing more to tell; confronted by supernatural visitors, the earliest Christians disobey their directives and flee from the truth. I wonder at times if the Easter season doesn’t suffer from the typical fast-forward from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. Although trumpeting the resurrection of the god does put the Spring back in one’s step, it also resets the clock for the next iteration of the cycle, another repetition of the death and rebirth of the deity next year. Perhaps if Good Friday were punctuated, at least with a comma, but hopefully with a semicolon, Christians might reflect on the significance of the death of God in their lives, and in the lives of their Humanist friends and neighbors.

Regardless, it is my sincere hope that we all can celebrate together during this season of death and rebirth; while my Christian brothers and sisters are able to find joy in the sacrifice of the figure of Christ Jesus, my Humanist siblings are likewise jubilant at the death of God, and we embrace the necessity of sacrifice from one for each other, in the interest of advancing a human-centered ethic that benefits us all.

A very Good Friday to you, and a very happy Easter to all your friends and family that celebrate it.

The Good Atheist

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I can remember it like it was yesterday.

Standing at a microphone in the back room of his large Southern Baptist church, a young guy with an short but athletic build and close-cropped red hair stared blankly at the three atheists who were being interviewed for an adult Sunday School class. One of their number, a thin middle-aged man with glasses and a limp brown ponytail, had just asked the redhead what he would do if he discovered that God, in fact, did not exist.

“I suppose,” he began with some trepidation, “I’d go out and rape and steal and murder.”

The atheist replied, “Then I think we’ve all learned something about your character, no matter whether or not there’s a God.”

That moment stuck with me, hard. The entire experience did, in fact. I spent the next couple years with feet in both worlds; on most Sundays, I could be found right back at that Southern Baptist church, listening and discussing issues of theology and apologetics with the others in that Sunday School class. And once a month, I made my home with the atheists who’d come out that day, learning with them and discussing issues of philosophy, ethics, and the human experience.

I was attracted to both groups for a number of reasons. For one, I had only recently apostatized from orthodox Christianity, and I was exploring the idea of retaining my Christian identity while realigning my beliefs as a freethinker. For another, I was frankly disturbed to read about the terrible experiences my fellow apostates posted with relentless regularity online; I had grown up with only good experiences in churches, and with fellow believers, and I was hoping to reassure myself that houses of worship were still home to many, many good people. And finally, although spending time with the freethinking atheists was a tremendous joy for me intellectually, it did little to exercise my charitable impulses.

For that, I had to spend time with the Christians.

My favorite activity was something the church called their “Evening Stars” program. One Friday a month, members and other volunteers show up at the church’s children’s center at 6:00PM where families can drop off their special-needs children (and siblings) for an evening of respite. For my wife and I, it was a bit out of our comfort zone (having no children of our own, and precious little experience with them either), but at only a few hours a month it was an easy thing to do. And not, unfortunately, an activity that we could find among our local atheist organizations.

But that began to change. As our band of heathens began to expand and mature, those of us with experience in community outreach began to suggest activities that were less cerebral, and more charitable. Soon, I found myself doing as much good in my neighborhood in the company of infidels as I had previously with the faithful. And then when I heard that Dale McGowan, already considered by many to be the man who beat the humanist heart of the New Atheist movement, was starting a new foundation to encourage and empower charitable expression among the growing demographic of nonbelievers, I latched on immediately.

The Foundation Beyond Belief started in 2010 with little more than Dale’s good intentions and hard work, entering a landscape already dominated with some of secular humanism’s heaviest hitters. Both the American Humanist Association and the Center For Inquiry had charitable initiatives that had been in place for several years, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation had also recently started its very own. However, these existing charities all focused primarily on disaster relief, whereas the Foundation Beyond Belief sought to encourage regular giving patterns among atheists and humanists. As if that wasn’t enough of an uphill battle, Dale also felt strongly that the Foundation Beyond Belief should be able to work together with non-proselytizing religious charities who share our humanist values, despite their deep and profound theological disagreements with the atheists he hoped to recruit as members.

And yet, somehow it worked.

Today, the Foundation Beyond Belief has announced that their effort to herd the cats of the atheist community around the banner of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has resulted in a total donation of $430,000, the largest-ever amount raised by a non-corporate team for the Society’s “Light the Night Walk.” Co-sponsored by the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, who matched every individual donation dollar for dollar, this achievement brought together 150 teams of atheists all over the country, all over North America even, with contributions and support by local and national groups like American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, Atheist Alliance of America, Camp Quest, the Center for Inquiry, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Secular Student Alliance, and the United Coalition of Reason.

But that’s only part of the story. The Foundation Beyond Belief also has over 1300 members who in just a few short years have donated enough to bring the grand total of humanist giving through the Foundation to nearly $900,000. And the Foundation Beyond Belief isn’t just all about the money. There is a network of grassroots organizations, just like my own in Dallas, which participates in volunteer outreach activities like bringing meals to lonely veterans, spending time with animals in shelters, and donating gallons of blood to patients in desperate need. Nearly three thousand atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists participate in the Volunteers Beyond Belief program, each of whom give of themselves, give of their time, give of their talents, not because a book tells them to, not because a god tells them to, but because their conscience, their empathy, their basic human decency propels them into it.

I’m not worried about how I would respond to a world without gods. I have no inclination to rape, murder, and steal; my previous beliefs did not bind my worst instincts, but neither did they give flight to the better angels of my nature. As my fellow freethinkers begin to experience the thrill of secular charity, or the humanist compassion that is embodied by organizations like the Foundation Beyond Belief, then I think that people like my redheaded friend will find that life’s most perplexing questions have answers they didn’t quite expect.

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On the Virtue of Disagreement

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For most of my young life, I went with the flow. I was a good kid, following orders, obeying my parents, doing well in school. I can count on one hand the number of times I actually had any discipline issues with authority figures.

But midway through high school, I decided to become a contrarian. Clearly, intentionally, and without hesitation. Now, I know that this is in no way unique, but it was a watershed moment for my own development, and I still carry the tendency even today for my brain to start itching ever so slightly if I haven’t had a good dustup in a long while. I adopted the attitude of “if I haven’t pissed off someone today, I haven’t been doing my job.”

Things came to a head when a classmate of mine, a girl for whom I’d previously harbored a secret crush, discovered feminism. She began to test the volume of her roar, and I took that as a signal to respond. Crossing swords over our adolescence-addled understanding of gender theory in English class, in the instrument locker, and at the lunchtable couldn’t have been more ridiculous or less important, but it was FUN.

At least, it was up until the moment of desperate frustration when she said to me, “Where do you get the right to your opinion?”

Whatever that opinion may have been, it’s been lost to the mists of memory. But the question remains, stirring up subtle feelings of shock and anger even today. Where did I get the right to challenge her, to express an opinion that contradicted her, to tell her that she was wrong?

Years later, my opinions, such as they were, have changed dramatically. With regard to feminism, I find myself much more sympathetic to the point of view that she was attempting to articulate at the time, even if my philosophical presuppositions have shifted dramatically from where hers (and mine) used to be (and, I presume, hers still are). I was wrong to think that, as I maintained even through college, the role of women in society should be determined by the writings held sacred by a particular religious community.

Some years back, I went online and searched for a letter I wrote to the student newspaper of my college. Published in the “opinion” section, it was titled “Women are Gifts from God,” and established (so I thought) my utmost respect for a class of people that was so favored by the divine that boundaries had been erected for their own protection. My mother thought it was lovely and shared it with her friends, physical evidence of my upstanding religiosity and faithfulness. A fellow student published a contradictory letter the following day, titled “Women are More than Gifts,” which called out my pious chauvinism and deftly deflated my spiritual ego. Though at the time I was angry and offended, my apostasy has significantly changed that perspective. A few years ago, I found my opponent’s email address and sent her a decade-belated note of appreciation, noting that her criticism at the time had finally been recognized and valued.

As an apostate, being wrong is a part of my history, a part of my identity. The realization that I was truly, seriously, emphatically wrong on one of the most important questions of the human condition is always with me. And I think for many people, there is a significant tendency towards anxiety of error, which is why those in psychology spend time studying the strong effects of confirmation bias.

I can see why that would be the case. Being wrong doesn’t just mean “incorrect” or “untrue.” We use the same word to mean “unjust,” “dishonest,” and “immoral.” The latest billboard campaign by the Freedom From Religion Foundation makes use of this double-meaning to antagonize the Catholic Church.

An erstwhile Catholic, now apostate.

And I think that people in general tend to internalize that second meaning of the word, so much so that to be wrong about something, even sincerely wrong, is to be thought of as being a bad person in some way. But being trained as a scientist, I had to accept being wrong as a fact of professional life. Being wrong about any given hypothesis is, scientifically speaking, just as interesting as being right. And I think that can be true about life in general.

Which is why I’m so in favor of disagreement.

Having a different opinion than someone else, coming to different conclusions, applying a different interpretation – this is essential. Without this interplay, the crossing of rhetorical swords, there’s virtually no chance of change. Assumptions go unchallenged, presuppositions remain undisturbed, and our personal paradigms rest sleepily in our subconscious.

Don’t think that I don’t like to be right. Of course I do, just like we all do, but I don’t want to be right by personal fiat. I want to be right if and only if what I think corresponds with reality. And the best way to test my rightness is to see if I’m wrong. It’s my hope that championing disagreement not as a personal slight, but as an intellectual virtue, will lead to the edification of us all.

So please, let’s agree to disagree. OK?

Why I’m No Longer a Christian

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It all started with a question.

I had been raised to accept the truth of Christianity along with my mother’s milk and father’s protection. The church taught me about the Bible, about the history of the Christian faith, and about my proper role in the Kingdom of Heaven. I eagerly read chapter and verse, seeking intimacy with God and better understanding of His divine purpose for me. Cover to cover I found myself traveling, a dozen times in my young life. And then I began to wonder about others outside my religious cocoon of certainty, people who weren’t as convinced as I thought myself to be. What kind of book is the Bible to someone who’s never read it, who’s never heard of it, who hasn’t been raised to accept it without question?

“Would I myself believe the Bible speaks truth if I hadn’t been raised from birth to think so?”

In an instant, my faith crumbled into dust, blown to the four corners of the Earth by a simple question. I didn’t have to mull it over. I didn’t even really have to answer it myself, since as soon as I asked the question I immediately knew…

…the answer was no.

Looking at my faith as an outsider would showed me what had been hidden for so long, by removing the plank in my own eye. So many assumptions had been fed to me, innocently if ignorantly enough by my parents, my family, my pastor, and my friends over the years that I hadn’t ever realized how many of my religious beliefs were built on sand.

Of course God exists, you can read about Him in the Bible. Of course the Bible is true, because it’s the Word of God. The circularity was breathtaking once I could see it for what it was.

Through it all, I resisted. I wanted Christianity to be true, not only because I didn’t want to be wrong, but also because I didn’t want to think about my parents lying to me, even unknowingly so. But my parents were not gods, they were not infallible. I knew they could make mistakes easily enough, so why should their beliefs about religion be immune from error?

I also clung to God selfishly. For years, I had taken comfort in the knowledge that I was a Special Creation, and that God had a Special Plan for my life. Whatever difficulties I had faced were insignificant, so I thought, compared to the power of the Almighty watching over me.

Losing God meant losing the person to thank for all the good things in my life, and all the fantastic wonders of His creation. But it also meant that I didn’t have to pretend that God wasn’t equally responsible for all the bad things in my life. Nor for the bad things that happened to other people that I could see in the world.

And there were lots of bad things. A shocking amount of evil is loose in a world controlled by what I had thought was an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good God. Did I really still think that divine providence was at work when children were snatched from their homes, brutally raped, strangled, and tossed in a dumpster? Could I still conceive of a God who stood back with arms crossed while terrorists in the name of their God flew airplanes into buildings? Where was the Hand of God when office workers, desperate for a futile chance of survival, leaped hundreds of stories only to splatter on the Manhattan pavement below? And how could I acknowledge the love of a God who cursed my own grandmother before birth with a disease that slowly strangled her to death? Where was God when her family stood beside her bed as the lungs were crushed inside her chest and the life ebbed from her fragile and broken body?

The God of Love, the God that I had placed so much trust in, was a cosmic disappointment.

And yet the failure of God was a blessing in disguise. The chains of unquestioning belief fell away as I began to realize that I no longer needed to look to this false deity for moral guidance. The God who commanded Abraham to kill his only son, and who was willing to send His own Son to the sacrificial altar, was no source of what I recognized as morality. The Bible taught that the faith of Abraham was willingness to kill one’s own child at God’s command. And that this kind of faith was a good thing. This I could no longer tolerate.

The death of God was the birth of my humanity. For the first time, I began to see others as not brothers and sisters in or out of Christ, but simply as brothers and sisters. Without the dictates of an invisible deity, I began to embrace the tenets of Humanism, which regard human well-being and happiness as the greatest virtue. I came to realize that my moral instincts had pointed me in this direction naturally, and that all that was required of me was to cultivate these instincts with deeper consideration and introspection on the nature of the good.

Throughout this process I have continued to hope that my fellow religious travelers could come to appreciate my revelations about the nature of God and the importance of Humanism. The last time I received a sermon in earnest, I looked around me at the congregation during the closing prayer. I was surprised to find many pairs of open eyes catching mine, silently acknowledging the futility in the inevitability of their attendance. I was also shocked to read the desperation on the faces of those deep in prayer, seeking to force a metaphysical experience that creased their brows with expectation and exasperation.

There was a certain ironic comfort in seeing this dichotomy of doubt, which has been echoed in nearly every church I’ve since visited. Christians in America today find themselves in a precarious balance between belief and disbelief. Their families and culture demand belief, if only in tribute, for the right to pass unmolested through the patterned halls of our society. And yet every aspect of the modern world screams in support of disbelief, from the latest discoveries of science to the glaring necessity of pluralism. The average American is a Christian on Sunday, and a Humanist the other six days of the week.

I suppose the biggest benefit of giving up belief in Christianity is the ability to be the same person on Sunday that I am on Saturday.