Reflections on Daniel Dennett’s argument that Religion is a natural phenomenon

Not Daniel Dennett

First, let me begin by saying happy New Year to both of you reading this (hi, mom). Let’s just all agree that 2021 was the worst and never speak of it again outside of a therapist’s office. Deal? Deal.

It’s been a while since I wrote anything for this blog but since I’ve finally had some downtime over the holiday break, I thought now would be a good time to jump back in. In keeping with every parent/teacher evaluation I ever received in grades 1-12, though, I procrastinated until the last day of my holiday break to actually write anything. In my defense, The Witcher season 2 just came out on Netflix, so I’ve been preoccupied. Nudity, fight scenes, monsters, Henry Cavill talking like Batman while shirtless in a hot tub.. It’s got everything. Stop reading for f**k sake and go watch.

Still here? Come on, why? DID YOU NOT HEAR ME SAY HENRY CAVILL SHIRTLESS IN A HOT TUB??

Really? You’re still reading this? Alright, weirdo… this is on you. Don’t say I didn’t give you an out.

The prompt for this post came from my long-time friend Blake, who asked me what my thoughts were on the famous philosopher and cognitive scientist Dan Dennett’s argument for an evolutionary/naturalistic origin for religion. Dennett’s case is laid out in his now famous (infamous?) 2006 book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. Dennett, for those who don’t know him, is considered to be the most mild-mannered of the so-called “Four Horsemen” of the New Atheist movement, with the other three being Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. Some other time I’ll write about those three and how much they annoy me, but for now let’s stay on topic.

I first read “Breaking the Spell” many years ago when I was just starting to come to terms with my own atheism. It was a long weird road to get there, and I was excitedly reading all the new literature on the subject I could get my hands on. Because it’s been many years, though, I must concede that my recollection of the book is quite vague at this point. I watched several interviews with Dennett to refresh my memory, which isn’t the same as re-reading the book but it will have to suffice.

Dennett’s primary arguments seem to be that: 

1. Religious belief is the product of biological predispositions innate to human beings
2. Religions themselves display evolutionary behaviors in keeping with the meme theory of both individual and generational transfer of culture and knowledge.
3. Because religion is a natural phenomenon, it should be studied using a critical scientific/historical methodology.

Because I want this blog to be accessible to all without any prerequisite reading, I’ll briefly explain these three points. Excited? You shouldn’t be. You’re literally choosing this over watching monsters fight Henry Cavill… weirdo.

“Religious belief is the product of biological predispositions innate to human beings”

The primary argument here asserts that what humans are inherently gifted at is pattern recognition and establishing causal relationships between things we observe. Evolution did not bless humans with wings, claws or top end sprint speed, but instead what we inherited was a powerful brain. We may not be able to outrun a cheetah or outswim a gator, but after witnessing 1 or 2 gazelles get dragged into the water while trying to drink from a lake, we are very quick to recognize that a new strategy is needed for quenching our thirst.

Dennet’s argument, essentially, is that this ability to recognize patterns and ascribe cause to them can also backfire. Imagine, for example, that you are standing alone in the desert. There is not a person, animal or anything other than sand for as far as your eyes can see. Suddenly, though, a rock falls out of the sky and hits you right in the head. A meteorite maybe. The human tendency to look for patterns and ascribe cause might lead you to assume that the odds of a single piece of random falling space debris hitting you in the head when there are hundreds of square miles of sand in every direction are so low that this must have been an intentional act. With no individual around to have done this, though, it must have been an intentional act by some unseen force. Human minds, so the argument goes, are ill-equipped to deal with randomness because our evolutionary gift is seeing through randomness and recognizing patterns in order to avoid making the same dangerous mistakes over and over, thus increasing the likelihood of the survival of ourselves and our species.

This initial misattribution of something random as something intentional, then, may lead to the formation of what Dennett refers to as proto-religious belief. The human, with a painful lump now growing on their head, begins evaluating. “What part of the desert was I standing in when that rock fell out of the sky and hit me?” “Maybe there is some force that does not want me on this particular sand dune”. “Maybe this part of the desert is sacred/evil/special/forbidden/etc.”

So a belief begins…

Religions themselves display evolutionary behaviors in keeping with the meme theory of generational transfer of culture and knowledge.

This portion of Dennett’s argument draws on the work of one his fellow “4 horsemen,” Richard Dawkins. in his 1976 Book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins proposed that knowledge or cultural information can be passed on from person to person in the form of a meme (a meme is “unit of culture” – not just that scary smirking girl standing in front of the burning house). Using an analogy to Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, Dawkins proposed that information or culture can be passed from one person to another, or from one generation to another, adapting over time for circumstance/relevance or via random alteration, and that that “meme” may take on something of a life of its own.

Going back to our lumpy headed human and their rock in the desert, the person who was struck by the rock may go back to their significant other and tell them about what happened. They may then elaborate and exposing how they think that this is a sign that they should avoid that area of the desert. The couple passes this information on to their children, who grow up avoiding this area. This information gets passed down a few more generations, but at some point one generation of descendants decides that the original person who was struck by the rock must have been special for this to have happened to them, therefore they build a stone marker in the desert in lumpy’s honor to commemorate the rock in the head event. A few more generations pass and lumpy is now seen as having received a message directly from the god(s) and is revered as somehow a semi-divine figure themself, with people bringing random stones to leave on the marker in the desert created in their honor, and worshiping this marker as a kind of sacred altar.

This is obviously a made up scenario, but it is a quick example of how a single random event, interpreted as intentional, may be passed on and evolve to become a kind of proto-religion.

Because religion is a natural phenomenon, it must be studied using a critical scientific/historical toolset

This does not need much explanation. This is the “spell” Dennett os referring to when he discusses “Breaking the Spell.” He argues that we need to stop handling religion and religious belief with kid’s gloves, and start scrutinizing it and studying it as we do any other non-sacred human phenomenon. If religion is a natural phenomenon, Dennett argues, let’s study it as one and start imposing standards of scientific/historical research methodology onto these studies instead of treating religion as a topic of adoration that is beyond the scope of critical evaluation.

So, I hope that helps clarify Dennet’s arguments a bit, now my thoughts.

For the most part I agree with Dennett – particularly the straw man version of his argument I have created 10 years after reading his book – though I am not really sure where that gets us. Any religion, even if it were true, is necessarily a natural phenomenon because it is something that is carried out by humans in the natural world. So saying that religion is a natural phenomenon doesn’t seem to me to be a particularly groundbreaking claim. In fact, I would argue that religious and non-religious people alike have understood religion this way for centuries. Very few people treat Roman Mythology with anything resembling adoration when studying it, and humans have recognized for centuries that something resembling religious belief seems to be a ubiquitous trait in human history. Humans have recorded, collected and compiled thousands of religious ideologies and beliefs into wall paintings, oral traditions, religious texts and later text books and databases over thousands of years. The trick isn’t in convincing people to study religion as a natural phenomenon, most people do that, but rather the trick is in convincing people to study THEIR religion as a natural phenomenon. This appears to be Dennett’s actual goal, and in that I think he falls short.

There are many problems with Dennet’s effort, but I’ll discuss just a couple

Intellectual bludgeoning as a tool for changing someone’s mind

This is a problem that has been thrown into sharp relief during this Covid era. Dennett and the “Four Horsemen” all represented a kind of new era of atheism that sought to assert itself as an intellectually rooted movement away from superstition, that sought nothing more than objective reality and a step away from the evils done in the name of religion in the past. What we have seen, though (and what we should have known from the past) is that if someone is firmly entrenched in any belief (whether true or not), there is no degree of linguistic prowess that can be leveraged, no amount of statistics brought to bear and no syllogism perfectly crafted enough to really shake people from their belief. We see this with religious belief, but we also see it in the reluctance of some academics to entertain theories antithetical to their published positions. Pride is a beast. As much as we like to think that we are rational beings with an emotional side, the truth is that we are emotional beings with a rational side. For the vast majority of people who have either freely left or joined a faith tradition, it was a connection with another person or a feeling within themselves that served as the catalyst for that change, not a single argument or newly learned fact.

Now, this is not to say that I think discussions about the intellectual moorings of someone’s predispositions are useless. I think that it is very much for the benefit of all that we learn to have open discussions about our ideological predispositions and biases, and indeed that would at first glance seem to be what Dennett is calling for himself, but I think that this is something of a trojan horse for Dennett and the other “Four Horsemen.”

The issue is this. In most basic terms, if you have one person with a religious background and one person of a scientific background and you bring them together for what you know will be a contentious discussion, it is a hard sell to say to the religious person, “since it is your position that is in question, we will be having this debate using the rules and biases of my position as our ground truth.” That is just a non-starter. Now, I can hear all of you out there (who am I kidding… nobody has read this far) with a scientific background saying, “but wait, it is our discipline, our methodology that is designed to understand the material world around us, and that is all that we can collectively agree that we share, so these should be the ground rules!” I agree. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? I agree with you because I agree with your underlying predispositions. Simply put, I agree with you because I already agreed with you. I’m not the one someone like Dennett is trying to persuade, though counterintuitively I do appear to be his target audience.

These tough conversations, if they are ever productive, must start from a place of willingness to engage, mutual respect and an honest recognition of the biases that everyone is bringing to the table. At least in my experience. Thus 446 pages of telling someone their beliefs are both likely wrong and also that they are forgiven for believing them because it’s just in their genes so they just couldn’t help it probably isn’t a great place to start.

Many religions are rooted in historical claims

This is a problem very closely related to the previous, but not exactly the same. Dennett talks about the memetic transmission of beliefs from person to person and generation to generation in a way that, frankly, makes sense. It’s compelling, and I think likely correct. The problem is that many of the world’s largest religions are rooted in actual historical claims about actual historical people and actual historical events, albeit miracles, not just stories in a vacuum. Dennett, drawing on David Hume who is one of his intellectual heroes, precludes the study of miracles from any legitimate study of science/history because they would necessarily require a suspension of the natural order to take place. This again creates a tension between methodologies.

To highlight this, take Christianity, which is where my personal experience and the majority of my studies lie. Christianity is based on the belief that Jesus Christ, an actual historical figure, was crucified by by Pontius Pilate, another actual historical figure, and three days later his tomb was found empty, an actual historical claim. Now, there are two thousand years worth of additional layers to these stories and their supporting text, but at its core Christianity is rooted in purported historical events and miracle claims. Again, here is the rub. The “proof” of (some of) Christianity’s claims would be in the resurrected Christ, but according to Dennett’s own methodology, a resurrection would be a miracle and would therefore be outside of the purview of scientific or historical methodology.

Once more, I agree with Dennett. I think that Dennett and Hume are justified in the preclusion of miracle claims from proper historical and scientific methodology, after all what good is studying the natural order if it can suddenly change without warning or without leaving a trace, but once again I agree because I already agreed, so this gets us nowhere. While scientists and atheists have for years been lamenting that religious belief seems to evolve to intentionally evade scientific inquiry, I think that many religious people are equally frustrated that scientific inquiry seems to have similarly evolved to preclude consideration of religious claims.

In summary, if Dennett calls for religion and religious belief to be studied using scientific/historical research methodology, but then advocates a prima facie preclusion of the investigation of religious truth claims, how is this going to be interpreted by any religious person as anything more than intellectual gatekeeping?

Conclusion

Broadly, my thoughts about Breaking the Spell is that most of what people (not Dennett) seem to have interpreted as a paradigm shift in terms of the study of religion and its origins from Dennett’s book wasn’t actually new. That being said, in typical Dennett fashion he presented it in a more accessible and intriguing way than other cognitive scientists today seem capable of. The conversation that Dennett started may be the most enduring legacy of the book, but as I detailed above I’m not at all sure that the conversations are taking place within the walls of the institutions Dennett wishes they were taking place in. I think Dennett is likely right about the underlying genetic and cognitive traits that make humans so prone to religious belief. I think that religious belief is a natural phenomenon. I think that it should be studied critically, in fact I’ve done that myself. I also think that religion being acknowledged as a natural phenomenon does nothing to address the truth of any religious claim. But at the end of the day, and at the risk of falsely ascribing intention myself, I am quite comfortable saying that I think Dennett’s real goal with this book was to lay the groundwork for a lessening of religious influence in this world, and if that actually was his goal I think he likely missed the mark.

Now get out of here and go watch The Witcher, I need more of this and if we don’t get a third season because you were too busy reading my yammerings I’m holding you personally responsible.

“As an atheist, what do you get out of studying the Bible?”

I recently asked my friends and family on social media for questions that they would like me to answer for this blog. The question that serves as the prompt and title for this post was one of the questions posed (thanks Krista!), and I realized that I had never given this question a standalone treatment in this forum. So, today, I will answer this question. I realize that discussing my reasoning for my own personal studies will not be terribly interesting to most people, so, if you are already bored here is your chance to bail and go check Twitter. Search #TheInternetNamesAnimals and thank me later.

 

Ok… Great. Now, if you are still reading this then I can assume that you are either genuinely interested in my answer or you are one of those unfortunate souls whom I have a close relationship with and you are worried that at some get together in the future there may be a test. Either way, you’re here, so let’s get to it.

 

First, I should note for anyone who doesn’t know my backstory that I have not always been an atheist. I grew up in the Presbyterian church. In fact, my parents were co-pastors at a church for many years, so when I say I grew up in the church I mean that both figuratively and literally. I grew up inside the church. I attended Sunday School, I went through confirmation, I was in youth group, I ran the sound board for church services, I sang in praise services on occasion, I gave the senior sermon my last year of high school (on Doubting Thomas, ironically), I did after service bible study, I did Habitat for Humanity trips, my best friends growing up were often from my church group, I sat in my parent’s offices during meetings when they couldn’t find babysitters, one of my first crushes was a girl a year older than me in youth group, heck, the first time my brother ever rode a bike on his own was in the church parking lot while my parents were in a meeting. I literally grew up in the church.

But things started to change for me when I was in my late teens and early 20s. During middle school and high school I began to realize that the local Evangelical Church was becoming more and more popular. I got a chance to attend a couple services and a lock-in (overnight stay in the church… a church sleepover, as weird as that feels to type now) with friends of mine, and what I realized was that their services, their theology and their whole organizational energy was very different from what I knew. I began talking with friends over AOL Instant Messenger and private chat rooms (I’m not old, you are!) occasionally, trying to defend my church’s theology versus that of the Evangelicals. What I learned instead, though, was that I didn’t really understand my own church’s theology well enough to do this, and more than that, I didn’t really understand the Bible well enough to know what I should even be looking for in a proper theology. I knew what I had grown up with, and I knew that I needed to learn more.

This realization came at a somewhat unfortunate time in my life. As a wayward teenager, I started ticking off all of the angsty, rebellious teenager clichés. I started smoking cigarettes, I started drinking, I snuck out of my parents house when I wasn’t supposed to, and I generally took it upon myself to do whatever it was that people told me I should not do. In short, I was preoccupied with a lot of things other than theological study or self-reflection. That said, I never lost interest in theology or the Bible, and I had not yet abandoned my faith. Even in those somewhat hazy years, my shelf started filling up with books with titles such as God: The Evidence – The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World, and The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Sound like a real page turners, right? The reason that I was buying books like this was because my family, in addition to being very rooted in the church, was also incredibly – intimidatingly – academic and intellectual. At family get-togethers we frequently joke about the pressure my grandfather and grandmother exert on their kids/grandkids to add to the family wall of diplomas and/or the shelf in their private library which contained only publications from our extended family. The fact that I somehow maintained the mistaken assumption that most grandparents were as bookish as mine until my late twenties is something I’ll have to work out with a therapist at a later date. This is all to say, when I decided that I needed to learn more about my faith, I attacked it the way that I had been taught to attack big questions, through study.

As I studied, several things became clear to me

1. There was FAR more variation in Christian belief/practice than I had ever realized
2. Trying to determine which set of beliefs was “right” was going to be much harder than I had been led to believe
3. Most Christians have about a 1% grasp of the foundations of their own deeply held beliefs.

And,

4. I really REALLY enjoyed studying the Bible and Christian history.

For your sake, as likely the only person who has read this far, I will not bore you with a full recounting of how my studies slowly led me away from my faith, that is a whole blog post of its own, and maybe I’ll do that another time, but suffice it to say that this period of my life sparked something in me that continues to this day, a serious passion for studying the Bible and Christianity. I also knew, once I had come to terms with the fact that I was no longer a Christian, that if I was going to be an atheist in my family, I damn well better be prepared to either defend my position or suffer intellectual embarrassment in front of the family bookshelf.

So, this brief background provides some context about why I study the Bible on a personal level but there is more to my interest than just the desire to not be the family dunce. If not looking like an idiot was my only motivation I would not still take the time to study. I am, afterall, at an age where I no longer particularly care about suffering personal embarrassment (← the last two sentences are total lies, but judging from the way other people write I have concluded that this is something I’m supposed to say now that I’m in my thirties so people think I’m well adjusted).

The rest of the story about what I take from studying the Bible is this: the Bible provides me with context.

The history of Western Civilization does not make sense outside of the context of Biblical interpretation and Christianity. Think of anything. Any topic pertinent to the “Western” world as we understand it today and somewhere along the line that topic was influenced by Christianity and Biblical interpretation, and this goes beyond the obvious topics like gay marriage or abortion. The history of science and the development of the scientific method? Impacted by Christian theological positions. Support or opposition to environmentalism? Impacted by Christian theological positions. Development of social safety net programs like welfare or social security? Impacted by Christian theological positions. Support AND opposition to these same social safety net programs? Impacted by Christian theological positions. The popularity of tulips as a decorative flower? Influenced by Christian theological positions. Utah’s status as one of the 50 recognized states in the US? Impacted by Christian theological traditions. Common idioms in the English language? impacted by Christian theological traditions….

Every one of these phrases entered the English language as a result of one particular Bible translation published originally in 1611, the King James Bible:

• A labor of love
• The ends of the earth
• The root of the matter
• The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak (a special shoutout to Zapp Brannigan for his version of this in season 3 episode one of Futurama)
• Fell by the wayside
• Holier than thou
• Money is the root of all evil
• Vengeance is Mine
• The skin of my teeth
• Put words in my mouth
• How the Mighty are fallen
• Fight the good fight
• Fell flat on his face
• The writing on the wall
• A house divided against itself cannot stand
• A man after my own heart
• Eat, drink and be merry

So, you see, from the important to the mundane, the Bible and Christian influence is everywhere.

What I came to realize in studying the Bible, was that whether I believed in God or not, I live in a world where these things were, and in many cases still are, much more influential than most people realize. Even the creation of the US government as a distinctly secular institution only makes sense within the context of non-secular governments in Europe and the long history of wars between competing religious factions.

Finally, shortly after leaving my faith I made the decision to be an outspoken atheist. Outspoken atheists, if you haven’t noticed, don’t always make a great name for themselves (Christopher Hitchens was an irredeemable asshole and this is a hill I will die on). One of the things that I decided early on was that I was not going to be a walking, talking internet troll. At one point, early in my atheism, I had a bit more of an edge, but these days what I really want to do is just be able to meet people where they are at. If someone wants to talk about the Bible, I want to be able to do that intelligently. If someone wants to ask my opinion about a question regarding Christian history, I want to be able to provide them with the best answer possible. If someone has a belief that I believe to be dangerous or problematic, I want to be able to speak their language and challenge that belief in a way that communicates the complexity of theological interpretation without forcing someone into being defensive by challenging their entire religious foundation. On the rare occasions when I see someone intentionally hurting others with their beliefs (e.g. the street preacher who visited Iowa State when I was there who just screamed at young women for “dressing like whores” for an entire day), I want to be able to disabuse anyone with the misfortune of hearing that individual of the notion that they have any clue what they are talking about.*

     *side note, when I confronted this street preacher about his absurd interpretations of scripture, he told me that he knew what he was talking about because he had read the New Testament in its original Hebrew… I would have been impressed if the New Testament was…. you know…. actually written in Hebrew instead of Greek. He was eventually escorted off campus thanks in part to a large Christian student group.

So, what studying the Bible does for me is it allows me to more thoroughly understand my place in history, my place in my particular cultural context, and my place in my own family. It also opens doors for dialogue that would be closed to someone who lacked my background knowledge of the Bible and Christianity.

 

Plus, it’s just fun….

 

That won’t be on the test.

 

 

Sobriety, Treatment in the US, secular exclusion, and Christian Slater

Sobriety, Addictions Treatment in the USA and Secular Exclusion

By Christjahn Beck

Hi, my name is Christjahn Beck and I’m an alcoholic. This very familiar greeting formula is the way that I introduced myself to rooms full of strangers for a short time in my life. I am also a recent transplant from the United States to Canada, the child of two ministers, and a baseball fanatic, but those parts of my life are a topic for another time. I recently passed a milestone in my life which had me doing some thinking, so I sat down to type out my thoughts. What follows is my reflection on my own addiction, the truly terrible system for treating substance abuse that currently exists in the US, and why that system leaves many secular people out in the cold. While I am new to Canada, I have learned in a my short time here that the substance abuse treatment system is, in many ways, quite similar to that in the US, and I know that there have been efforts at “secular sobriety” programs here that make this article germane.  This isn’t going to a real pick-me-upper, but it’s something that I have firsthand experience in. This experience comes both from my time spent trying to drink all of the alcohol in central Iowa, and from research on addiction/treatment and its relation to public policy & administration in the US that I did while I was working on my master’s degree. So, relax, put down your favorite drink, and let’s kill some buzzes.

At the end of last month, it had been 7 years since I stopped drinking. Admittedly, 7 years is not a sexy round number like 5, 10, or 25 to celebrate, but for me it meant that I have now been sober for as long as I was effectively an alcoholic. The legal drinking age in the US is 21. I drank before that age (cue the gasps), but I didn’t really begin drinking in a way that I consider in retrospect to be problematic until after my 21^st birthday. After my 21^st birthday, though, I was all in. During this time, with few exceptions, I drank every day, and I drank a LOT most days.

Although I was unquestionably an idiot during this time of my life, I was also very lucky in many ways. Among the things that made me lucky were that my family never gave up on me, though I have to imagine they were getting close, I never got into any legal trouble as a result of my drinking, which is frankly a miracle, I maintained full-time employment, though not as a particularly good employee, and I even completed an associate’s degree, though not as a particularly good student. I was what some people call a functioning alcoholic, but barely. Luck aside, and I’ll spare you the details because they don’t matter, during my last year of drinking things started to spiral. I was physically ill almost every day, I was spending nearly all of my income on alcohol, and I was becoming more and more anti-social even when I was surrounded by people at various bars and pubs. So, two weeks after my 28^th birthday I decided (very hungover) that I was finally ready to stop drinking (fingers crossed), and I did what any self-respecting (which I wasn’t) emotionally mature (yea right) 28-year old man (debatable) does when they make a life altering decision, I called my mom. So began a journey that allowed me to experience the American substance abuse treatment system from the inside, a journey which, I discovered, made almost no sense, and which would infuriate me for years to come.

Substance abuse treatment in the US is a train wreck. Let me just state that outright in case there was any ambiguity about where I stand after the last sentence in the preceding paragraph. There are good programs in the US, but they are few and far between and they are often prohibitively expensive for most of the population. If you are financially vulnerable, which many addicts are and I certainly was, then the system is a train wreck compounded by an on-board nuclear bomb. Think Broken Arrow, that terrible 90s movie with John Travolta and Christian Slater (side note: why is Christian Slater always squinting? Can someone dim the lights or get some sunglasses for that poor guy?!). For financially vulnerable individuals, the most common option is some version the 12-step program model. The most common of these 12-step programs are Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA), but there are many other programs that are modeled on AA and NA, though they may not be directly affiliated. AA is virtually synonymous with substance abuse treatment in the United States. Even if you have never touched a drink in your life, I would bet the amount of all my bar tabs combined that you have still heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. In fact, 12-step programs are so common that in 2015 even a professional in the field like Dr. Lance Dodes, the  former director of Harvard’s alcoholism treatment unit at Boston’s McLean Hospital, said, “Almost all residential treatment programs in the United States are 12-step based… (Munro, 2015)” The wonderful thing about the 12-step model is that most (though not all) 12-step programs are free, relying almost entirely on voluntary donations. This makes them accessible to virtually anyone in need of help. The problem, or rather problems, which I will focus on for the rest of this article, are 1) it is inherently exclusive to secular individuals and 2) it simply doesn’t work.

Ok, so let’s start with my second point, that AA (which I will focus on as a case study rather than trying to individually address all 12-step programs) just doesn’t work. I want to begin here because I know that this claim will strike some people as hard to believe given AA’s supremacy on the substance abuse treatment scene, and the longevity of its reign. I’ll start by saying this, when I say that AA “just doesn’t work,” I do not mean that it has never worked. It has worked for many people, full stop. Now, what I do mean when I say it “just doesn’t work” is that it does not have nearly the success rate that you would expect from a program that presumably specializes in helping individuals to achieve sobriety.

So, how do I know this?

Well, in recent years (very recent years as a lot of this research has come out since I quit drinking) there has been an increased amount of attention paid to the efficacy of 12-step programs in treating addiction. This research is can be quite difficult due to the anonymous nature of most 12-step programs. What we do know is that “Alcoholics Anonymous” (otherwise known as “The Big Book”) AA’s primary guidance tool for helping individuals achieve sobriety, states in the Forward to the Second Edition that 50% of individuals who join AA achieve sobriety “at once” and 25% more struggle at first but eventually achieve sobriety. According to this document 75% of those who “really tried” found the AA 12-step method to be effective long term. (Wilson, 1939)

Sounds pretty good, right?

There are two problems to note here. First, there is no information provided to indicate where AA actually gets these numbers. Second, and far more problematic, AA is only reporting numbers for those considered to be “really trying.” Individuals who are “Really trying,” by AA’s programmatic definition, means individuals who are attending meetings, staying in contact with their sponsor, and abstaining from alcohol. If you stop attending meetings, fall out of contact with your sponsor, or start drinking, AA considers you to have left the program, thus not “really trying” and they do not take your outcome into consideration when self-reporting their success rates. Put more simply, a program that claims to help people achieve sobriety excludes from their self-reported success rate individuals who fail to achieve sobriety. Which seems to me to be…. Well… kind of the point?

This is a problem beyond just AA’s self-reported numbers. A series of academic studies that have purported to demonstrate the effectiveness of AA’s treatment model have come under scrutiny in recent years for not including in their final reporting the outcomes of patients who started drinking and stopped responding to their surveys.[1]

So, then what is the real success rate of AA?

Lance Dodes, the Harvard addictions researcher I quoted earlier, wrote a book along with his son Zachary entitled The Sober Truth (Dodes & Dodes, 2014) in which they studied the 12-step program industry. According to the Dodes’ research, the actual long-term success rate of AA, taking into account relapses and dropouts, is somewhere between 5-8%. While a 5-8% recovery rate is certainly well below the 50-75% self-reported rate that AA publishes, it is also nothing to scoff at. It is worth taking a moment, however, to put this into perspective. Two studies that Dodes cites in his research, one a 1975 study by R.G. Smart entitled Spontaneous Recovery in Alcoholics: A Review and Analysis of the Available Research (Smart, 1975-1976), the other a 1982 meta-study entitled The Clinical Management of Alcoholism (Zimberg, 1982), place the rate of “spontaneous remission” of alcohol abuse disorder, that is cessation of alcohol related substance abuse without any intervention at all, between 3.7-7.4%, for Smart and 4-18% for Zimberg. The fact that AA’s actual success rate is well within the measured range of individuals achieving sobriety without any treatment at all is, needless to say, not encouraging.

What makes this even more troubling, given the lack of evidence for efficacy, is AA’s popularity with the US criminal justice system as a referral for those struggling with addiction. Alcoholics Anonymous reports that they have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 million active members in the US alone. From public records, we know that around 12% of all attendees to AA in the United States are court ordered. This means that at any given time over 150,000 individuals in the US are attending AA as a requirement of their parole/probation, with little evidence that this will ultimately lead to a recovery from addiction.[2]

More problems: The moralizing of addiction

Another major problem with the AA 12-step model is the moralizing of addiction. According to AA’s 12-step guide to recovery, addiction isn’t a medical or psychological issue, but rather it is a moral defect.

AA’s 12 steps, #s 4-7

1. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
2. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
3. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
4. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings*

*the capital “H” in “him” is not a typo, that’s original to AA’s literature, more on that to come

Additionally, the very first paragraph of chapter 5 of “the Big Book,” contains this rather ignominious quote:

• “Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty.”

This quote demonstrates exactly what I mean when I talk about the moralization of addiction within 12-step programs. If you “fail”, with failure being defined narrowly as encompassing essentially anything other than complete and permanent abstinence, it is not because you simply made a mistake, because addiction is a hell of a disease to beat, or because the program itself is flawed, it is because you are “constitutionally incapable of being honest” with yourself. Not only is this false, but it is counter-productive to effective recovery as nearly EVERYONE stumbles at some point in their road to sobriety.

The problem with our societal tendency to view addiction as a moral failing rather than a treatable psychological or medical condition extends beyond the unfortunate overlooking or non-use of empirically supported treatments like therapy or medication. This moralized view of addiction is so prevalent in the United States that, according to the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), American medical professionals routinely fail to diagnose alcoholism as a potential cause for a given set of symptoms common to alcohol dependency. In a survey conducted by CASA in the year 2000, “94% of primary care physicians (excluding pediatricians) failed to identify addiction as a possible diagnosis when asked to offer five possible diagnoses of a patient with symptoms of risky alcohol use (Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, 2012).” Viewing addiction/alcoholism as a moral failing is so persistent in the US that even medical professionals may be less likely to consider alcohol dependency as a medical diagnosis, and thus many doctors are potentially misdiagnosing and mistreating patients suffering from addiction.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the incredibly low diagnostic rates among American doctors, a shockingly low percentage of the overall referrals for addictions treatment in the US come from health care providers. The 2012 CASA study mentioned above found that only 5.7% of all referrals to publicly funded addiction treatment programs in the US came from health care providers. Accentuating the point that in the US addiction has been moralized, in this same study the single largest source of referrals for individuals to publicly funded substance abuse treatment programs came from the criminal justice system, which accounted for nearly half of all referrals. The criminal justice system, according to this research, accounted for significantly more referrals for treatment than community resources, addiction treatment providers, health care providers, schools and employers combined. Consider the implications of this both for addicts, and for those tasked with treating addiction. Addicts are often being forced to seek treatment, which is not conducive to recovery, and the treatment counselors are often first encountering their clients in an adversarial setting. Yikes…

The exclusion of secular individuals

Before I knew anything about the inefficacy of the 12-step program model, I already knew that AA was not for me. This wasn’t because I didn’t take sobriety seriously, I absolutely did and still do, rather many of the steps of the 12-step process already struck me as being necessarily exclusive to individuals like myself, as an atheist. Here are the 12 steps:

1. We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him*.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs (Wilson, 1939)

*once again, the capitalized “H” and “G” is original to AA’s own document.

As an atheist, you can understand why I would have an immediate reaction against this. Over half of the 12 steps directly implicate God or a higher power. Reading on, in Chapter 6 of Alcoholics Anonymous, during a discussion of how to approach those that one may have harmed during the course of their addiction, there is this not so subtle hint that AA might not be for secular folks:

To some people we need not, and probably should not emphasize the spiritual feature on our first approach. We might prejudice them. At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself. Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God… (Wilson, 1939)

My decision to quit drinking had nothing to do with fitting myself to be of maximum service to god, turning my life over to a power greater than myself, or believing that I needed any external intervention in order to “restore me to sanity.” Instead, sobriety was about reestablishing control over my life and proving to myself that I had the strength and the willpower to improve my life on my own. The very idea of turning my will and my life over to “the care of God” ran entirely contrary to what sobriety represented in my mind, not just from a spiritual perspective (or lack thereof), but from a philosophical approach as well.

I should mention at this point, in the interest of fairness, that there are thriving agnostic AA groups throughout the world.[3][4] As with the melding of any two beliefs or philosophies, it is possible to adapt one’s own approach to an overarching philosophy in such a way that no contradiction is to be found, just like it is similarly possible to accept that you are operating within a contradiction and go on functioning in spite of that. There is nothing inherently wrong with this (in fact, we all likely do it without realizing it), and if it helps some agnostics manage their life to create a secular version of AA, I am all for it. I would never tell someone in recovery they are “doing it wrong” just because I happen to find that their approach doesn’t work for me. While it is undeniable that AA is rooted in Christianity, as was the Oxford Group which both of AA’s founders belonged to prior to forming AA, it is noteworthy that “as they understand Him” is a core part of the original 12 steps. While the capitalization of “H,” as I’ve noted above, leaves a not-so-subtle clue about the Christian roots AA is founded upon (Christians always capitalize the “H” in “Him” or “His” when talking about God), not all participants choose to read this passage as overtly Christian or even spiritual, and thus non-Christians are still able to follow the steps in a way that makes sense to them.

AA members will tell you that even if you are secular you are just as welcome as anyone else, and my experience has led me to believe that this is absolutely true. I’ve never met someone from AA or any other 12-step program who even hinted that my atheism would preclude me from involvement in their group. Even so, the language itself is so fundamentally at odds with my worldview that I have simply never found it useful to try and manage my recovery from within this philosophical structure. I now go into conversations about 12-step programs fully prepared to discuss the information that I know about the efficacy of this method, if the situation calls for it, while simultaneously being sincerely ready to tell anyone that if they think a 12-step program is what they need in order to get their life in order that I hope they do it. This, however, brings me to my final point.

The implications of failure in 12-step programs

Because of the legacy of 12-step programs, there is often an all-or-nothing approach to recovery. Once you are an alcoholic you are always an alcoholic, and you either abstain from alcohol completely or you are still an active addict. I know this is true because I find that I have internalized it myself, even though I think it is a load of garbage. Due to the history of moralizing addiction, where any slip-up in recovery is treated as a moral failure and an abandonment of treatment altogether, we continue to believe that once someone has demonstrated that they are unable to handle alcohol for even a short period of their life that this necessarily means that they are permanently damaged and will never be able to drink responsibly again. While it seems to be true that some people are genetically predisposed to a lack of impulse control which can contribute to addiction[5], and some may metabolize alcohol differently than others putting them at increased risk of abuse[6], it is also true that many (perhaps most) people who may go through a period of time where they struggle with unhealthy levels of drinking do not fall into these risk categories. With more empirically rooted approaches to treating addiction/alcoholism, for instance, it is common that addicts work with their doctor or therapist to set their own goals for managing their addiction. For some this may mean voluntary long-term/permanent abstinence, while for others this can just mean taking some time to change their patterns of behavior or addressing underlying triggers, then returning to drinking in moderation at safe levels. Many factors such as stressful personal circumstances, social groups/habits, geographical isolation, or even simultaneously occurring mental health issues affect a person’s desire to drink, especially in excess. If, for example, someone has gone through their life drinking in moderation at safe levels, but then a divorce serves as a trigger that results in them self-medicating their anxiety/depression for a period of time (even a prolonged period of time), it is not necessarily the case that when this individual’s period of personal turmoil has passed that they would suddenly be incapable of returning to the safe level of alcohol consumption that they had previously maintained throughout their life. With the all-or-nothing 12-step approach, though, individuals are pushed into believing that if they have struggled with alcoholism for any period of time during their life, that they are therefore damaged, defective, lack control over their own life, are reliant upon a higher power in order to maintain sobriety, and should consider themselves to be an active alcoholic for the rest of their life.

Personally, I think that this approach to recovery is bogus and that it flies in the face of just about everything that we know about human nature. I think that people ARE capable of change and I think that just because you made a mistake (or even a series of them) during one point in your life does not mean that you are doomed to repeat them ad infinitum. BUT, I still don’t drink. I think I probably could, but I have thus far chosen not to. I made this decision because I saw just how badly my life can go when I over-indulge, and I decided that the benefits of drinking (occasional fun, ease of social interaction, the taste of whisky… because yum) were far outweighed by the consequences given even a slight chance that I return to my previous unhealthy level of consumption. I’m hyper-aware, though, that despite my extensive consideration of this topic, my fear that I’m only one slip up away from returning to alcoholism is, at least in part, based on the internalized terror that I have had pounded into my head for years that once you are an alcoholic you are always an alcoholic. To individuals who were raised in the church and have gone through the often painful process of deconversion, this internalized guilt, fear, and self-doubt will sound quite familiar.

Wrapping up

When I quit drinking, I did it, for the most part, on my own. I spent the first several nights staying at my mother’s house, in order to change my routine and have someone to talk to, and I went to a doctor in order to determine how much damage I had done to myself physically. After talking to my doctor, I was given two options, a very expensive in-patient facility that rehabreviews.com reports costs, on average, $16,800 for a 14-day stay, or attend a free 12-step program that would take place entirely separate from medical/psychological supervision. I was uninsured at the time and certainly could not afford $16,800 for two weeks of treatment, so I made the decision to go with the 12-step program. Put off by the innate spirituality of the 12-step program I attended, and deeply concerned by the obvious lack of expertise present in my group, I soon made the decision to leave this program as well and pursue my sobriety entirely on my own.

The lack of expertise in 12-step programs is a real problem. According to an April 2015 article in The Atlantic:

There is no mandatory national certification exam for addiction counselors (in the US). The 2012 Columbia University report on addiction medicine found that only six states required alcohol- and substance-abuse counselors to have at least a bachelor’s degree and that only one state, Vermont, required a master’s degree. Fourteen states had no license requirements whatsoever—not even a GED or an introductory training course was necessary—and yet counselors are often called on by the judicial system and medical boards to give expert opinions on their clients’ prospects for recovery. (Glaser, 2015)

For some perspective on this lack of a licensing requirement, in the US, all 50 states currently require training and licensing in order to be certified as a cosmetologist. Now, please do not interpret this as me denigrating cosmetologists, I am not. I am glad that individuals whose profession includes the application of potentially harmful chemicals onto the skin of their fellow citizens are required to have training and be licensed. I simply wish that the US had at least the same standard for individuals who are going to be responsible for their client’s recovery from a deadly disease.

The entire 12-step model, sometimes referred to as the “mutual support model”, is predicated upon surrounding yourself with fellow addicts who have been through the same thing. While this support system is undeniably useful and has its place in recovery, it should be seen as a supplement to treatment rather than being conflated with treatment itself. Imagine if we treated any other mental health or medical problem this way. Imagine an individual struggling with suicidal thoughts working up the courage to go to a hospital and ask for help, but instead of being admitted and referred to a mental health professional they were just given a physical, discharged, and told to go the basement of the local Methodist church every Monday and Thursday so that they could have coffee and donuts with a room full of other suicidal people, none of whom have any training or mental health credentials. We would justifiably be incensed if this were happening.

12-step programs are to substance abuse treatment what abstinence only curricula are to sex education. That is the level of empiricism and regressiveness that we are talking about. if you know someone who is struggling with addiction, particularly if they are struggling alone, be there for them. Secular support systems are few and far between, and I know all too well how hard it is to try to recover alone. But, also, if you know someone going through this, help them begin looking into more foundationally empirical addiction treatment programs. Programs like this do exist, and there are ways to get help with costs. By being there for someone struggling with addiction you might literally be saving their life.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled guilt free cocktail.

 

Christjahn Beck

 

 

Bibliography

Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. (2012). Addiction Medicine: Closing the Gap between Science and Practice. New York: Columbia University.

Dodes, L., & Dodes, Z. (2014). The Sober Truth: Debunking the bad science behind 12-step programs and the rehab industry. Boston: Beacon Press.

Glaser, G. (2015, April). The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Atlantic.

Munro, D. (2015, April 27). Inside The $35 Billion Addiction Treatment Industry. Retrieved from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2015/04/27/inside-the-35-billion-addiction-treatment-industry/#59c27c2b17dc

Smart, R. (1975-1976). Spontaneous Recovery in Alcoholics: A Review and Analysis of the Available Research. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 284.

Wilson, B. (1939). Alcoholics Anonymous. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.

Zimberg, D. S. (1982). The Clinical Management of Alcholism. New York: Brunner-Routledge.

 

 

[1] For a famous example of this see Rudolph and Bernice Moos 2005 Stanford study titled Paths of entry into alcoholics anonymous: consequences for participation and remission. In this study, the Moos started with a sample size of 628 people but finished with – and thus reported on – only 107, or 17% of the original sample. They have been criticized for not accounting for the outcomes of those who began drinking and stopped responding, or those who died during their survey, possibly as a result of their drinking.

[2] It should be noted that several court cases have challenged the constitutionality of requiring AA/NA attendance as part of a plea/parole/probation mandate on 1^st amendment grounds, arguing that AA is sufficiently religious to qualify as a violation of an individual’s rights. For an example of this see the case of Barry Hazle Jr. https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Atheist-inmate-settles-for-1-95-million-over-5822767.php

[3] https://aaagnostica.org/

[4] https://aabeyondbelief.org/

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2222549/

[6] https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa72/aa72.htm

Ok, now I need to get a caffeine fix.

When Progressive Ideals Collide: The Religous Toleration Question.

Hey, everyone!  I’ve had a lot on my mind recently and last night I had a conversation with a friend of mine that prompted me to write a blog post.  I don’t want to write this as an essay length response to my friend, rather their sentiment reflects something much larger going on within the liberal/progressive community in the United States and I would like to add my two cents.

For context, the exchange that serves as the catalyst for this post is this.  In a moment of irreverence quite typical for me, I posted the following to Facebook:

“Conversation that has never happened:

Patient: Doctor, I haven’t been feeling well for some time now.

Doctor: understood, I think we need to start you on a juice cleanse immediately. Have you ever considered crystals or chakra realignment?”

I’m hilarious, I know….

This prompted a very lengthy exchange between me and this friend of mine, who I will leave anonymous, in which they said (among other things) the following:

“the majority of people on this planet appreciate that any attempt at connecting oneself to spirit or G-D is a respectable pursuit. I also learned that contrary to my own Christian upbringing – that to mock another human’s attempt at connecting with the realm of spirit and deeper awareness of the human experience is born of ignorance and/or immaturity. I respect you. I hate to see you falling into such unbecoming nonsense… You don’t have to respect faith healing, but is it really useful or helpful for you to judge it to be wrong? Are you truly respecting one’s right to hold such beliefs in seeking to judge or discredit those beliefs? I ask because I think this is a huge part of where we, as Americans, get it wrong. To me it goes back to that whole religious persecution argument… So much of what people find objectionable today is based in the idea that they have superior morality or spirituality and are therefore entitled to dictate how others should believe and act. This is slippery territory and as progressives we absolutely must get this right and not let ourselves pander to less astute audiences. Especially at this point, when there’s still time to get it right.”

This is really where I want to begin.

We have a problem within progressive circles, right now, and I agree with my friend when they say “we absolutely must get this right.”

The problem that we are running into is that we seem to be conflating respect and acceptance/support. You can simultaneously respect a person or institution AND criticize it. Those two actions are not mutually exclusive and many progressives’ inability to make this distinction has led to some rather bizarre moments in modern political discourse.

The reason that I write this on my Ask an Atheist blog is because many of these moments have been directly tied to religion.  The problem that routinely arises is one that pits two different progressive ideals against each other.  Commonly, in recent years, this has related to Islam.  For instance, since Donald Trump’s election, there have been many events across the country and across the world where non-Muslim women have worn Hijabs as a sign of solidarity with Islam.  This show of solidarity was very much in order, as Donald Trump both campaigned on and, upon taking office, tried to institute a version of a ban on Muslims entering the United States (idiotic and absurd).  The issue arose when this prompted a flood of responses from former Muslims and moderate Muslims criticizing the left for glorifying what they view as a symbol of systematic female oppression on a massive scale, all in the name of solidarity.

So, in this example, here is the conflict

Ideal #1: Progressive acceptance of minority communities.

Ideal #2: Progressive championing of religious freedom.

And

Ideal #3:  Progressive championing of feminism

Now, any good progressive, myself included, will tell you that all three of these are admirable ideals, worth pursuing in society.  The problem isn’t that one of these is wrong, the problem is that when a religious community (ideal 2), especially a minority religious community in the west (ideal 1), is also viewed as perpetuating the systemic oppression of women (ideal 3), how do you resolve that conflict?  Especially when this charge is levied by former and current members of the community in question.

Let’s look at one more example. This one will make most of us much more comfortable because it involves Christianity, and since Christianity is the majority religion in the United States we all feel much more comfortable criticizing it…. Be honest.

Christian faith healing is a well-known phenomenon.  This is the attempt to heal a sick or injured person through prayer and religious ceremony rather than through medicine.  While this has always been controversial, it has become even more so in recent years as the number of deaths in states like Idaho begins to add up. In Idaho, there is a religious exemption from prosecution for faith-healing parents who deny their children medical care resulting in serious injury or death to their children.  Often times these deaths or injuries result from very treatable diseases like asthma, flu, appendicitis, etc…

 

So, once again, there is a conflict of progressive ideals

Ideal #1:  Care and concern for the health and well-being of dependent citizens, especially children

And

Ideal #2:  Progressive championing of religious freedom.

 

In this case, which is the example that my friend and I were briefly discussing, I have very little trouble deciding which ideal must take precedent.  As a progressive, (and this was true when I was a Christian progressive as well) I fully respect an individual’s autonomy and freedom to believe whatever they like, but I am uncomfortable with that person imposing their belief system on another person in a manner which may negatively impact the other person’s life.  This is doubly true if the person having a belief imposed on them is a dependent in the care of the first individual.

 

This is my major concern.  Progressives CANNOT allow some misunderstood notion of “respect” to turn into a hiding place which we use to shelter ourselves from difficult conversations or decisions.  When something is as demonstrably dangerous as trying to treat appendicitis with prayer, we can and SHOULD be willing to point this out as a poor decision, rather than worrying that by doing so we are going to offend the person who holds that belief.   Similarly, we must be willing to acknowledge that the same books which are used by some as tools of great charity and peace are used by others as weapons of oppression and violence.

 

This nuance seems to be getting lost in the heat of many current political conversations.  Respect for religious freedom means much more than simply accepting all beliefs as if they are equal, simply because someone in the world sincerely believes it.  This, of course, is one of the major problems with religious belief.  There is no objective standard by which we can measure one interpretation of religious practice against another in order to determine which one is correct, if any of them are.  It is all an exercise in subjective thought and interpretation, and if someone is properly informed (or properly uninformed) they are likely capable of justifying just about any action on religious grounds.

 

So…. Some definitions.

Progressive: a person advocating or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas.

Conservative:  holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.

What is really the progressive view here? A thoughtful and evidence-based evaluation of each situation in order to ensure that our laws and collective morality keep up with the times? Or saying that out of respect for the tradition of religious practice that we should not question the decisions of people asserting sincerely held belief?

I am fully aware that as an atheist my views regarding religion are not shared by a majority of my fellow Americans.  I for one do not believe that faith is a virtue.  I do not believe we should be taking moral cues from books thousands of years old. I do not think we should treat women and other ethnic groups as property to be traded or won.  I am also fully aware that the overwhelming majority of religious people in the United States do not think that we should treat be doing that either.  When it comes to my personal moral code I likely have far more in common with Christians in the United States today then I would have had with atheists of 2,000 years ago.  This is the nature of evolving and progressive morality, as well as cultural socialization.

I wanted to write this blog post because there seems to be a fear deeply embedded within the progressive movement today, that if we criticize another culture or religion that this starts a slippery slope to… I don’t know… world war III.  Many people seem to be trending towards the view that respect and toleration cannot coexist with critique and criticism, and this is just an absurdly false dichotomy.  Part of mutual respect between people is an ability to accept varying ideological backgrounds, personal histories, and life influences while working together to find common ground and peaceful way to coexist.  This does NOT mean that if someone does something that is demonstrably harmful to themselves or others that we just throw up our hands and say, “well, they believe it, and I respect them, therefore I will keep my mouth shut.”  Part of respecting someone is believing that they have the capacity to grow as a person. I’m fully aware of how condescending and paternalistic that sounds because it necessarily assumes that one person or point of view is superior and thus has something to teach.  Such is the nature finding a balance between conflicting ideological perspectives, though.  My hope is that everyone engaged in this discussion is humble enough to be able to recognize when they are the one in the wrong… This is very difficult. I struggle with it all the time. Pride is pain. But we can’t stop trying.

 

As part of this process, we all have to work together to check the trend towards absolutism within the progressive movement today.  For the good of the movement, and for our future, and I think that it is time we step back, recommit to being self-reflective, and remember that respect and criticism are not mutually exclusive.

 

Real Christians Vs Fake Christians: The Real War On Christianity

Good evening everybody! Welcome back to my blog. This is the place where I write a bunch of stuff down, pretend like people are going to read it and understand that in reality, no one is reading it.  The cherry on top of the self-involved sundae that is my blog is that every time I write something I think to myself, “one day I may run for office at some level and have to defend these words.”  Clearly, I have delusions of grandeur.

Anyways, I wanted to take some time today to write about something that has been rolling around in my brain for some time.  Indeed, I have hinted at this in a couple other blog posts but I have never devoted a whole piece to it.

What I would like to spend some time reflecting on is the tendency for Christians to call out their fellow believers for being “fake Christians,” “Christians in name only,” “Sunday Soldiers,” etc…  These are all different ways of suggesting the same thing, namely, that despite the knowledge that there are billions of self-proclaimed Christians in the world (and hundreds of millions in the United States alone), that the “actual” numbers are much lower because many people who call themselves Christians are not, in fact, true believers.  Those of you out there with a penchant for philosophy, logic, or neckbeards may quickly recognize this as a classic “no true Scotsman” argument.

For those of you less familiar with how these discussions typically go, let me present a couple quick and simple examples based on real arguments that I have seen/heard play out hundreds of times.

Example 1

Person 1: Christians do not support gay marriage

Person2: I’m Christian, and I support gay marriage.

Person1: No TRUE Christian supports gay marriage

Example 2

Person 1: The Bible is the literal, infallible word of God. It’s 100% accurate both historically and theologically

Person 2: Actually, the Bible was never meant to be a historical textbook, and the people that wrote it were not aware at the time of writing that what they were composing would one day be considered scripture. To understand the Bible properly, you must understand the author’s historical context, audience, and intentions. Expecting the bible to be without error forces you to believe in contradictions. I believe the Bible is the word of God, but I do not believe that that necessitates that I suspend my critical thinking.

Person 1: TRUE Christians believe the Bible is the infallible word of God. Anything below that and you are placing yourself as the arbiter of truth. The Bible is perfect and if you disagree then you may not be actually Christian.

 

These are two very common, albeit simplified, versions of how conversations like this can go.

So, why do I think this is silly?

 

All claims of “true Christians do X” or “believe X, Y, and Z” are predicated on the idea that a true form of Christianity can be known and put quite simply, it cannot be.  The Bible, like all ancient texts, does not compel its own interpretation.  Well-intentioned people have, since the time of Jesus, pored over his words and reached drastically different conclusions about their meaning. Heck, The Bible itself recounts a debate between Peter and Paul, in the pages of  Acts and  Galatians, about exactly what Jesus taught regarding his follower’s relationship to the law (the first covenant, or the Jewish Old Testament). That was within the first few years after Christ died and involved arguably his two most important apostles. One, in Peter, who knew him in life, and another, in Paul, who reportedly had a postmortem revelation and would eventually become the author of nearly half of the books of the New Testament.

In the years following Christ’s death, groups calling themselves Christian sprung up all across the middle east and northern Africa with wildly differing beliefs. Some groups, like the Marcionites, believed that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament were so temperamentally different that they were, in fact, two different Gods.

For the Ebionites, Christ was not a pre-existent divine being born to a virgin, but rather he was fully human and only became divine through the adoption of God upon his baptism. They based this on an early version of the Gospel of Matthew that scholars believe likely lacked chapters 1 & 2, and contained a textual variant in Chapter 3 verse 17. According to this variant, at the time of Jesus’s baptism, the “voice from heaven”, rather than saying “this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased”, instead quoted Psalm 2:7 “You are my beloved son, today I have begotten you.”

Others believed that Christ was not human at all and any apparent appearances were phantasmal. Other still believed that there was not one God but there were 365 gods. Additionally, there was endless arguing about what books were credible and which were not relating to the establishment of the Biblical Canon. If you want any information on these points please reach out to me, I’ll bore you to tears. For the sake of brevity, however, I’ll move on. Suffice it to say, the range of “Christian” beliefs in the first couple Christian centuries was massive.

In more modern times, Christians have continued to argue about the true nature of Christ. Is he one part of the trinity, or is he the son of God, but not God himself as the Jehovah’s Witnesses believe?

what books of the Bible are canonical? Should we include the Apocrypha like the Catholics? or leave it out like the Protestants?

What is the nature of salvation? Are all human beings saved like universalists believe? Are only the elect saved like Calvinists believe, does salvation require good works like the Catholics believe, can one lose their salvation?

Is the Bible itself infallible like most evangelicals believe? do you have to be born again? Has the period of revelation ended, or are “modern” day prophets continuing to reveal God’s word like the Seventh Day Adventists, and in a much different way the Latter Day Saints, believe?

Does Hell exist? Is eternal torment taught in the Bible? etc etc etc….

This is just a small sampling of the questions that modern day Christians debate fiercely. Many are willing to openly condemn anyone who disagrees with their position as being heretical, or “not truly Christian”. Again, this implies that some level of purity about what “true” Christianity is can be known.

But true compared to what?

Most scholars concede that Christian beliefs in the first couple centuries following the life of Christ varied much more widely than modern-day Christian beliefs do, as I briefly mentioned above. This suggests that if “true” Christianity originates with Jesus’s own teachings that this truth was immediately lost (including with his own disciples as the debate between Peter and Paul indicates).  Are those claiming to be “true” Christians today “pure” compared to this?

Some will argue that the church was guided by the Holy Spirit and began to find its home theologically around the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicea. This is the ecumenical council that began formalizing Christian theology about things like the nature of Christ and the Trinity.  So, maybe people today are saying that this is where “pure” Christianity got its start.  Yet, the second largest single Christian denomination in the world is Eastern Orthodoxy, accounting for over 270 million Christians worldwide, and the divide between Catholics/Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox Church has part of its roots in a disagreement about the nature of Christ, and the wording of a creed dating all the way back to the council of Nicea.  Are all 270 million Eastern Orthodox Christians “not truly Christian”?

The Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that there are over 2.2 billion Christians, subscribing to over 43,000 Christian denominations worldwide.  Any one person or denomination claiming that their translation of the Bible or their understanding of what it means to be Christian is purer than any other is spurious.   After all, doesn’t every Christian think that their church, their denomination, or their personal conviction is correct? Are there people running around out there who know that what they believe about Christ is incorrect, but they persist in believing it anyways?

Often times I find myself in discussions where people insist that Christianity is a more reasonable worldview than atheism. My reply, which often gets misinterpreted as being condescending, is “which Christianity?” To which my counterpart generally just replies “Christianity, there is only one Christianity.” After I spend time explaining that that is not true, and detail exactly what I mean by the question, it is very VERY common for people to then leap to “well there are a lot of people in the world claiming to be Christian who aren’t actually Christian.”  People say this, I think, because it is much more convenient to simply accuse all those that disagree with them of being wrong, rather than having to reflect upon the fact that Christianity is widely varying ideology and there are theological arguments to be made for every variety.

This is the underlying problem. There is no single standard by which we can judge a “true Christian” versus a “fake Christian.” We have no meaningful litmus test or standard bearer.  If people say “Jesus is the standard bearer” that is fine, and if there is an answer to this puzzle that is certainly it.  That said, what Jesus taught has been interpreted in a wide variety of ways since the day he died. So, what people really mean when they say “Jesus is the Standard Bearer” or “The Bible is the litmus test” is “MY understanding of Jesus/the Bible is the standard.”  In effect, without knowing it, people inevitably substitute their interpretation of Christ’s teachings for Christ’s actual teachings, and their interpretation of the Bible, as God’s word itself (if such a thing exists).

Speaking as an atheist and infant Biblical scholar I find it ironic that so many Christians in the United States believe that there is a secular war on religion.  It seems to me that the real “war on Christianity” is Christianity’s own inability to reasonably deal with the pervasive theological pluralism within their own belief structure.

My advice to Christians is this: Stop using “fake Christians” as a rhetorical device to make your life easier. There is much to be studied here, put in the work. If you disagree with someone’s understanding of their faith, talk to them about it, don’t call them “fake”.  They aren’t any more or less fake than you, and simply saying it loudly won’t change that. If we all commit to studying more, conversing with respect, and trying to understand each other rather than tear each other down, maybe we can begin to change the rotten tone of public discourse that this country is currently bogged down in.

1 Peter 3:15-16 “…Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; ¹⁶ yet do it with gentleness and respect…”

 

Dear Christian Friends, Why Don’t You Care?

It’s been a long time since I wrote a post for my Ask An Atheist Blog, and while I know nobody is upset about that, I am sorry anyways. I enjoy writing tremendously, there are a few of you out there who routinely engage with me after I do post something (masochists, I can only assume), and in my vanity I like to pretend as if I am somehow keeping an important conversation alive with my efforts… So, though I should likely just say this into a mirror, I’m sorry for the long break.

 

What finally coaxed me out of my hiatus was a video a friend of mine sent me. This particular friend is a Christian, and one whom I once had the privilege of being a part of a Bible study with.  I can say quite honestly, that this particular Bible study group (me and 3 quite evangelical Christians) was the most fun and productive small Bible study that I’ve ever been a part of. The video that I received was a video by a man named Sean McDowell. Some of you familiar with apologetics will know the McDowell name either through familiarity with Sean, or more likely from knowledge of his father, the famous apologist Josh McDowell. Sean is now a professor at Biola University in Southern California and an up and coming star in the apologist world in his own right.

What Sean did, somewhat bravely, was to use his knowledge of atheistic/scientific arguments against God/Christianity to role play what a conversation with a well-informed atheist looks like. Surprisingly, he did this on a Sunday morning to a church congregation. More surprisingly, he actually did relatively well.

I do not want to spend time in this post refuting any of his points/counter-points (after the role play he went back through and addressed the arguments he had just presented).  Frankly, I’ve written a few times about particular arguments, and there is a ton of literature out there from people much more intelligent and expert than myself. In case you really want to dive in to the arguments, I’ll link the video and you can ask me personally about the points he makes, or, even better, you can jump on Amazon and find one of the thousand books out there on the topic.  What I really want to do is talk about my biggest frustration with my Christian friends and neighbors, which seems to be a frustration that Sean McDowell shares.

 

Why don’t you all care?!?!

 

I’m weird, I know that. I’m an atheist who spends a tremendous amount of time reading and studying religion in general, Christianity in particular, and the Bible more than anything.  Consequently, I really REALLY enjoy talking about these topics. WHY DON’T CHRISTIANS?

 

One of the points that McDowell is seeking to make with this experiment is to expose how woefully unprepared the average church-goer is to have an informed conversation about Christian theology, the Bible, or even people’s own faith!  This, McDowell points out, is not only bizarre considering it seems to be something Christians should care about, but the Bible even specifically calls Christians to this endeavour:

1 Peter 3:14-15 “ in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; ¹⁶ yet do it with gentleness and reverence.^[b] Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.”

So, again, why do so few people care to take the time to study? (I could also ask why the “with gentleness and reverence” part of this verse gets tossed out so quickly with so many people, but that’s a matter for another post)

 

I’m not saying I think anyone should drop everything and become a monk or a nun, I’m fully aware that most people out there actually embrace having a social life. But to live in a country where nearly 80% or residents still self-proclaim to be Christian, I find it quite odd that so few people take ANY time out of their lives to even begin to study their faith, or the book that they believe God herself wrote. (<— eh, eh, see what I did there)

 

In my mind, this is a major failing of nearly every Christian denomination today, and it’s making congregation members vulnerable, especially young ones.  It is incredibly easy for someone raised in the Christian tradition, but with no real education in the relevant topics, to go out into the world and suddenly face challenges to their faith they are totally unprepared for.  When this happens, it is relatively likely that that person will abandon their faith if they can’t quickly find adequate responses.  Which, don’t get me wrong, is fine with me. As an atheist, people abandoning their faith is no skin off my back. As someone who loves talking intelligently about the Bible, however, it is damned frustrating!

I can, and have, had incredibly fascinating, nuanced, and in-depth conversations with pastors and priests of most major Christian denominations in the last several years. Almost across the board, these conversations were cordial, intelligent(ish), rewarding, and remarkably fun.  Yet, when I try to have those same conversations with the parishioners of these church leaders I either get accused of lying or misrepresenting the Bible, or I am confronted with an unequivocal lack of interest regarding the subject matter.

Let me be clear, I’m NOT expecting all Christians to be as knowledgeable or well-read as their pastors. They are professionals for a reason(sometimes).  That said, shouldn’t most churches be spending SOME time trying to prepare their congregations to engage with people? Am I wrong to expect that someone who approaches me at an Ask An Atheist Booth specifically to talk to me about their faith should have Bible Study 101 level knowledge? Is it possible that religious leaders have so little trust in their congregations that they don’t think they can handle the controversies surrounding their religious tradition?

All I know for sure is this, there is a major disconnect right now between the way that pastors and priests can converse about their faith and the Bible privately when they have little to lose, and the way they choose to present themselves publicly when they are in front of their congregations, and the result is a nation of people going to church every Sunday and seemingly not learning anything.  So far as I can tell, all most church goers do learn these days is how to very confidently say “I know this is true”, while not even beginning to address HOW they know it, or even what they know… So, to my friends out there who are pastors I say this, have some more faith in your members….

 

 

Christjahn

 

 

PS  I can’t tell you how ironic it is to have just passed another holiday season where various talking heads lamented how the secular war on Christmas and Christianity was undermining the nation’s collective faith, only to talk to individual Christians who go to church every Sunday and aren’t prepared to answer the most basic questions about their faith… That one’s not on us folks!

 

The video:

The Iowa Caucuses make me a jacka**

Several times I have considered writing about something not related to atheism on this blog, and every time I have decided against it. Every time until now.

The Iowa Caucuses have just concluded (mercifully), and I wanted to offer a few thoughts. I am under no illusion that this is something that a lot of you will want to read, and frankly I’ll be shocked if more than a few of you do. For what it is worth I hope that you are reading this, because I think I have something to offer. But, like I’ve said before, at the very least sitting down and organizing my thoughts is something of a stress reliever for me, so here we go.

There is a strange phenomenon that happens during campaign seasons. At some point in the absurdly long process that is election season in the United States, individual candidates completely change what they stand for. And I do not mean that their individual policy positions change, although they may, but I mean something deeper.  At some point in this process those of us who are engaged select someone we want to support, and at that point the candidate stops being an individual person who agrees with us (individual voters) on X number of issues and disagrees on Y number of issues, and they morph into  a symbol. These symbols end up serving as empty vessels which we then fill up with every fear and concern that we have for our country/society, every reform that we think desperately needs to happen, and every hope that we have for our collective future.

Campaign staffers are very aware of this, and they capitalize on it to great effect. That said, this isn’t always a bad thing. This emotional connection serves as the fuel that keeps so many of us engaged, active, and informed.

Something that we all need to recognize, though, and I include myself in this, is that there is a darker side to this phenomenon…

The problem is this, once we have imbued these public figures with all of our individual hopes and fears it becomes very difficult to continue seeing them as human beings.  This is because what they represent is no longer simply an individual that we would like to occupy a particular elected office, rather, these elections become referendums on our entire worldview/way of life.  An individual person may be right, wrong, competent, incompetent, etc… This type of symbol, though, cannot be wrong.  As symbols, our candidates come to represent our interpretation of the world around us, and since it is our interpretation, you cannot prove that it is wrong.  Thus, after a certain point in these election cycles we stop perceiving a challenge to our candidate of choice as a difference of opinion on a public policy issue, and we begin to feel that these challenges are a direct attack on the way that we perceive the world. A direct attack on us. We begin to evaluate everything through this lens. So, questions about a candidate’s electability turn from being a legitimate and pragmatic evaluation of the facts, into a pessimistic worldview and acceptance of the status quo that will doom us all… Questions about a candidate’s trustworthiness move from being legitimate questions about potential scandals that may impact credibility in the future, towards being an all out assault on a someone which has the effect of doing the “other side’s” work for them.  Beyond this, we slowly lose the ability to evaluate our own candidates by the same standard that we apply to others. When our candidate chances their mind it represents growth and flexibility, when the “other” candidate changes their mind it demonstrates opportunism and being willing to do anything to get elected. Our candidate’s experience means they can get things done, while the other candidates experience makes them a corrupted insider who is part of the problem… etc

This is dangerous, because what gets completely lost once people are in this mentality is the ability to have civil dialogue.  When someone is the “enemy” instead of simply being the other candidate, or the other party, you cannot work with them, and certainly cannot support them! Once we have placed someone in that box, or once we paint them as not only disagreeing with us, but as being immoral, not only can we not work with their supporters, but we often feel morally obliged to DISAGREE with them.

I have seen, and been a part of, way too much of this in the last several months.  This country is at a point where we could seriously benefit from a return to civil dialogue. I honestly try my best to display this all the time… aaaaaand I still fail miserably often. But I think that we would collectively be much better off if we all became aware of the fact that when we passionately defend our candidates, we are often not actually defending our candidates.  We can discuss worldviews, we can discuss policies, and we can even discuss corruption, but when we are using the language of political campaigns as proxy arguments for something else altogether we are dooming ourselves to unnecessary fighting….

 

 

 

 

Why I take issue with Biblical Literalists…

I want to write a short post tonight about Biblical literalism. This will be short both because I tend to blather on too long, and because this is frankly a pretty easy question to answer.  The question I am answering tonight is “What do you think about Biblical Literalists?”

First a definition to make sure everyone knows what I’m talking about.. and by everyone I mean both of you who read this…

“Biblical literalism is the theological view that the contents of the Bible should be seen as literally true, as opposed to being interpreted as allegory, literature, or mythology.”

Many, if not most, of the Christians that I routinely talk to during my weekly activities with the Iowa State University Atheist and Agnostic Society fall under the “Biblical Literalism” umbrella.  I am not totally sure why this is, but it would seem that the type of Christians who embrace literalism are more prone to wanting to speak to atheists about it. This is generally fine by me, as the Bible is by a wide margin my favorite subject to study and any opportunity to talk to someone else who is interested in it is something I relish.

That said, my problem with Biblical literalism is this… Studying the Bible is hard. Very hard in fact. Much MUCH harder than even I realized when I started doing it.  To even begin to adequately understand the Bible I have had to study ancient Greek history, Ancient Roman History, early Christian history, the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient literature, folk story motifs, textual criticism, early scientific understandings of the world, hermeneutics, epistemology, philosophy, philosophers, scribal traditions, medieval history, the Reformation, the enlightenment, Catholic history, geography, and most recently I’ve been taking a class in Koine Greek, a type of Greek that is neither spoken nor written anymore, simply because I want to be able to read the New Testament in the original language… and I haven’t even yet mentioned the Bible itself, the manuscript history, the ecumenical council history, or the extra canonical texts that were left out of the Bible for one reason or another.

I have done all of this both as a hobby (I’m weird and have no social life… what of it?!), and academically as much as opportunity has afforded the chance to do.  So here I am, thousands of hours of study into this field, and I am still VERY much an amateur. In order to even begin to call myself an expert I will need to learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin at least, and probably more languages (Syriac, Coptic, etc…).  Beyond this I will have to study much more deeply in ALL of the disciplines I listed above. I plan to devote as much time as I possibly can into this, but you are, I’m sure, starting to get the picture about just how much of a time commitment this is.  People with doctorates in Biblical studies, who have spent decades studying all of these fields STILL do not agree about much of what the Bible “actually” says, or what it means.  Problems of translation alone represent a hurdle that is very difficult for scholars to clear. Understanding the Bible is quite simply really REALLY difficult.

Why do I bother saying this?

I say all of this, because essentially what Biblical literalism is is a shortcut.  Literalists claim that God has maintained the meaning of the words down through the ages in a manner such that the message, when taken literally, can be trusted to  have remained the same. With that assertion being made, all of a sudden literalists do not have to do any of the studying necessary to actually understand the Bible with all of its inherent complexity.  Beyond the simple convenience, though, this is a slap in the face to generations of Biblical Scholars, 99% of whom historically are Christian!

This is where the frustration comes in. As I said before I LOVE having conversations with people about the Bible. I will take every opportunity available to do this, but when I am trying to have an intelligent and nuanced discussion about something that I have dedicated much of my adult life to understanding, and someone plainly tells me that I don’t understand it because I am not Christian, I get frustrated.  At the risk of sounding elitist, or offending someone I really want to continue a conversation with, though, I resist the urge to say, “let’s talk about who really doesn’t understand this.” Commonly what literalists tell me is that any attempt to understand the Bible from a perspective other than a literalist Christian perspective will lead to an incomplete/invalid understanding, I then do my very VERY best not to roll my eyes.

Here is the really funny part.. Biblical literalism, at least in its modern form as an every day apologetic, is relatively new! The strict literalism that we see so commonly in the evangelical and fundamentalist communities today is often traced back no further than the early 1800’s! As Christian Theologian Laurence Wood Argues in his 2005 book Theology as History and hermeneutics: A Post Critical Conversation with Contemporary Theology, “Before the eighteenth century ecclesiastical writers were unaware of the critical historical problems of Biblical text…After the enlightenment, the question arose if a serious theologian can believe that the Bible reports real history.” He goes on to say, “The really distinguishing feature of fundamentalism was not the specific ‘fundamental’ doctrines, which it espoused, but rather it was a movement that reacted to liberalism by adopting a method of interpreting the Bible in a literalistic way.  The Idea of Biblical literalism was linked to a “domino” attitude– that if everything in the Bible were not literally true, then everything in it would collapse.” Now to be sure, the seeds of literalism go back as far as the original New Testament authors themselves, but as we see here, even Christian theologians recognize that literalism en masse as a feature of fundamentalist dogma may, in fact, trace its roots back no further than a couple hundred years. And that is if I am being generous. The movement that Wood is referencing took place in the 1920’s, less than 100 years ago…

This is where my frustration lies. A particular version of theology that may be younger than some people, claims to have an understanding of a 2,000 year old text which thousands, if not millions of people have devoted their whole lives to understanding.  This is simply lazy, and excuse the pejorative language here, but I need to express my  anger, and “lazy” is the most polite way I could think of to do so.

The reaction to learning about the historical and scientific problems present in a text should not be to dig in, plug your ears, and claim that any apparent problems are either illusory, or the fault of the scholarly disciplines pointing out these errors.  The reaction SHOULD be to dive in deeply, like people have been doing for centuries, and try your best master the relevant fields…

So, to all of you literalists out there, when you get tired of trying to explain how the two completely different version of Jesus’s family lineage are somehow BOTH correct (Matthew 1: 1-17 and Luke 3: 23-38), you can come join me, I’ll be studying Greek.

When I say a god could exist, I DO NOT mean the God of the Bible

I want to clear up a common misconception that people have about my position when I say that I am an agnostic-atheist.  This does not necessarily mean that I think any of the gods of the major religions could exist.  Most relevant to Life in the United States, this does not mean that I believe that the God of the Bible could exist. Let me explain…

Commonly, people perceive my continued use of the self-identification “agnostic” as a suggestion that with regard to their personal choice of a deity that I am still undecided. As if I occupy some middle ground between belief, and outright rejection. This is not at all what I (or many people) mean when I say that I am agnostic.

So what DO I mean when I say I am agnostic about the existence of a god??

When I call myself an agnostic it is because I can conceive of gods that are philosophically possible, internally consistent from a logical point of view, and are unfalsifiable… That is to say I can imagine a god that at least theoretically COULD exist, and even if this god does not exist I would be unable to prove it.  So, in order to be intellectually honest and admit my limitations, I continue to say that I am an agnostic.

As I said to begin this post, however, this is a much different issue from saying that I am undecided about the existence of Yahweh,as described by the Bible.  IF Yahweh DOES exist, I am very comfortable in saying it is not accurately described by the Bible.  This is not to imply that I understand what the nature of God should be, could be, or is, but rather because Yahweh as described by the Bible is contradictory. The nature of Yahweh as described by the Bible does not remain constant, but instead changes drastically. This is true despite Biblical suggestions that this is NOT true. For example, Malachi 3:6 “I the LORD do not Change”, Numbers 23:19 “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being that he should change his mind”, Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever”.

The problem is, it is evident from a critical reading of the Bible that this simply isn’t true.

One of the oldest questions facing Christian theologians is why is there such a sharp disconnect between the God of the Old Testament, and the God of the New Testament.  In the Old Testament God orders the genocide of entire peoples (Deuteronomy 20:17 “Completely destroy them–the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites–as the LORD your God has commanded you.”), and indeed we see this command play out (1 Samuel 15:3 “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”). We contrast this with the teachings of the New Testament, Matthew 5:44 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, or Matthew 5:38-39 “You have heard that it was said, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.’ 39″But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.”  This disconnect is discussed in some detail in a work called Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. In this book four Christian scholars all offer various explanations for the drastic difference in the temperament of God over the course of the Bible.  The explanations range from the Rev. Daniel Gard arguing for “spiritual continuity”, to Dr. C.S. Cowles arguing for “radical discontinuity”.   Regardless of the argument, what all four Christian scholars in this book acknowledge is that there is, in fact, a disconnect that must be addressed.  So it would seem that even Christian scholars acknowledge that God seems to change over the course of the Bible.

What about the claim from Numbers 23 that God does not lie?

Well… 1 Kings 22:23 “So now the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The LORD has decreed disaster for you.”, and 2 Chronicles 18:21 “Now therefore, behold, the LORD has put a deceiving spirit in the mouth of these your prophets, for the LORD has proclaimed disaster against you.”

Often when confronted with these passages Christians will say, “it is not God, but a spirit acting under God’s command that tells the lie, therefore it is completely consistent to say that God cannot tell a lie.” To most people I know, Christians included, this is entirely unconvincing.  Presumably this spirit cannot go against the will of God, and in fact is acting directly on God’s behalf.  It is hardly excusable to say that because God ordered a lie to be told, but did not do it himself, that God is exculpated from responsibility here.  So, here we see again that the nature of God, as described by the Bible itself, does not remain constant.

I will not continue to beat a dead horse here. I know that people tire of Biblical explanations for or against aspects of faith.  I could go on to demonstrate how in some Biblical traditions Yahweh is an anthropomorphic figure who quite literally walks among the people (think the Garden of Eden, Jacob literally Wrestling with God, or God appearing to Abraham during the heat of the day at the entrance to a tent), while in others he is a figure that does not appear in physical form because that would be too much for human senses to handle ( Exodus 33:20 ” But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”… John 1:18 “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”… or 1 John 4:12″No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.” ), but I will instead move on. Suffice it to say there are many MANY examples that one can use to demonstrate that virtually every aspect of God Evolves over the course of the Bible, despite insistence from the text itself, and subsequently theologians ever since, that this is not the case.

So what does all of this mean relative to my initial point regarding agnosticism?

Well, I think that I am justified in saying that the nature of God is not accurately described by the Bible.  If you totally accept the Biblical description of Yahweh, then you are forced to accept contradictions.  So, as a result, while I cannot know with absolute certainty that Yahweh does not exist, I do know that literal interpretations of scripture fail to reveal its nature.  Beyond this, without a reliable guide to access the nature of God, individual attempts at describing its nature lack any demonstrable validity.  What we are left with, then, is millions of people claiming to understand the nature of God, a seemingly endless amount of disagreement about what this nature actually is, and no objective measure by which we can determine who is correct, and who is not.

So, while I cannot say with absolute certainty that no conceivable god COULD exist, and thus will remain partially agnostic, I can say with the closest thing to certainty that intellectual honesty permits, that God is not accurately depicted by either the Bible, or modern Christian theologians.

The Problem With Faith as an Avenue to Truth

I wanted to write a post tonight, because there is a question that I have been going rounds with a friend of mine about for some time, and while I’ve discussed it before I have never dedicated an entire post to it. That is the question of whether or not faith is a valid avenue to discovering truth.

The difficulty in addressing this questions is not in providing a clear answer, the answer is no. The difficulty in answering this question is making the answer palatable to a society that still regards faith as a virtue.  So, that being the case, I am going to do my best to make this as civil and respectful as I possibly can.

We still live in a society where religiosity is viewed overwhelmingly as a positive thing, and while this is not ideal from my perspective, it is the world we live in. Faith, of course, is an important part of the religious experience.  Because of that, any challenge coming from an atheist like myself is inevitably going to be perceived as not only a biased assertion, but as something that is likely motivated by an emotional rejection of something that I see as potentially dangerous, rather than a reasonable conclusion based on logic. So I intend on trying to demonstrate why it is that faith is not a valid method for understanding the world we live in, rather than just asserting that, and then pointing to times where faith has failed.

Any time someone is asked about the validity of their system for understanding the world around them there are a couple of questions that are implied.. 1) how reliable are your conclusions. and 2) are you able to demonstrate the reliability of those conclusions?  Put more simply, does your method produce correct answers, and can you prove it? This is the test we use when we evaluate any system that claims to explain the world around us.  The first prong of the test, “How reliable are your conclusions” is easy to understand. If the conclusions a system produces are poor then it would be very hard to make the case that your system is reliable at explaining reality. The second prong, “Are you able to demonstrate the reliability of those conclusions” is more difficult to understand, but no less important.  This question is based on the notion that it is not only the conclusions of a method that are important, but also the ability to verify those conclusions which make a method valid.  For example, if someone claims that they have developed a method which allows them to explain some phenomenon, but refuse to provide the method or the data which allowed them to reach that explanation, anyone should be justifiably skeptical.

So, does faith meet either of these standards?  The answer is a resounding no.

Prong one, “how reliable are your conclusions?”  Well, considering that faith is used by people of essentially all major religions, and they reach contradictory conclusions, we would have to say that as a method faith seems to produce unreliable conclusions.

Prong two, “Can you demonstrate the reliability of your conclusions?” With regard to this the answer is an insistent “no.”  Indeed, people who rely on faith will very passionately tell you that it is the case that in order to agree with their conclusions, you must first HAVE faith.. In essence, rather than demonstrating that faith is a valid means to reach conclusions about the world, people are asked to accept that it IS a valid method, and then told that the conclusions will make sense after they have accepted this as a fact.

It is here that we get to the root of the problem. Faith itself is not actually a method at all. Faith is an assertion of truth in spite of, or contrary to the evidence, not a systematic effort of explaining the world around us.

What we are left with, then, is not a valid method for uncovering truth in the world around us, but rather a lens through which believers interpret the world around us.  Faith is not what reveals facts to us, it is the lens through which the faithful process those facts. Sometimes these two worldviews do not conflict, and sometimes they do…

In a particularly telling moment of honesty my friend who I engaged in this discussion with said this, “I believe in science, but when science conflicts with my faith I trust my faith, because that’s what the Bible tells me to do, and God is the author of science.”  According to my friend, faith, which by its nature cannot be verified, must take a back seat to science, because that is what faith demands. This betrays the notion that faith is an avenue for discovering truth. Reliable methodologies for understanding the world around us embrace challenging concepts as one more opportunity to prove their validity, they do not simply reject them because that’s what their pre-existing worldview compels them to do.

Faith may be a reliable theological tool, but since it produces neither reliable conclusions, nor provides a means of verifying those conclusions, it is not a valid method for discovering truth.