Life in the Open

In church for Christmas. Nice decor, but
it could maybe use a few more trees.

It's been a little over a year since I came out to my family as an atheist, and surprisingly little has changed. Certainly, they were upset at first. My mom asked me tearfully over lunch why I hadn't told them sooner. A little while later she asked me, not threateningly but solemnly, if I realized what happens if I'm wrong about Christianity. And my dad and I had a few brief, cordial lunchtime debates on religious topics.

Sometimes my parents asked me if I wanted to go with them to church, which I politely turned down except for a few times when it seemed especially important to them—Christmas and Easter, for instance. And a couple of weeks before Christmas they got me a book of arguments for God, which I may work through here if it turns out to be worthwhile. (If so, I'm also thinking about formulating a version of my 30 questions for them to read in return.)

But what I listed above is basically the full extent of their reaction over the past fourteen months. Given that I spend time with them virtually every day, it's surprisingly subdued. For the most part, the topic of my atheism was barely touched after just a couple of weeks.

I have mixed feelings about my family's relative lack of interest in my unbelief. On the one hand, it's great. It's wonderful to be able to talk and have fun with them without feeling distant or uncomfortable. And to be clear, I certainly wouldn't trade this outcome for one where I'm constantly arguing. Still, part of me can't help but be amazed at what a small impact my coming out has had. Having grown up as a Christian, it's all too easy for me to think about my situation from the believer's perspective. If I were an ardent Christian and my sister told me she was an atheist, what would I do? Hmm...

My reaction is confusion, then horror. One of the people I love most in the entire world will be spending eternity weeping and gnashing her teeth in outer darkness! I have to do something, anything to convince her that she's strayed from the straight and narrow! I try to tread carefully around this sensitive topic, but I'm far too curious not to ask what changed her mind. Based on her response, I spend hours researching, steeped in books and articles from renowned apologists, training myself to make the perfect case for the Christian faith. Then, when the timing is right, I broach the subject as tactfully as I can and present my talking points.

Given the seriousness of eternal punishment, the only response that makes sense to me is to expend every available resource in pursuit of saving the lives of my loved ones. Granted, it's important not to come on too strong and drive them further away, but neither will it work to skirt the issue almost entirely.

...So why is avoidance the response I'm seeing here?

It's certainly not that my family is too selfish and unmotivated to come to my aid. They've demonstrated their affection in so many other ways that this holds no water at all. And it isn't that they don't believe what they claim to, just because their behavior doesn't perfectly match their beliefs. I hate it when people draw this conclusion about religious people. It could be that they're nervous about driving me away, just as I would be, but that's probably not the whole story.

I think the best explanation is that humans don't always think through the full consequences of their beliefs. Religious or not, we rarely make optimal decisions given the information available to us. In a way it's not strange to believe in a world of epic spiritual warfare, yet still fret more about what we're having for lunch tomorrow than about saving people from horrific eternal fates. After all, how much time and effort do we devote to worrying about trivial problems like morning rush hour, compared to serious ones like the millions of people suffering from starvation and disease? It's the same basic principle, minus the eschatology.

This may be the most important set of insights that leaving Christianity has taught me—is still teaching me.

Humans are irrational. We make bad, short-sighted decisions. And if we want to bring about as much good as we can, it's imperative that we improve our decision-making, both for our own sake and for others.

So I'm glad that I can live a life in the open, where I'm free to believe what I like without looking over my shoulder. But the next step is much more difficult. Can I live a life where I'm open with myself? Where I constantly challenge the mental weaknesses that keep me from achieving what really matters?

Can you?

5 Things I Don't Believe About Believers

My intention with this blog is not to attack religious people, but rather to criticize religion itself. As such, I think it would be a good idea to repudiate certain negative notions about believers. Many of these views are held only by a small minority of atheists, but even so, it's good to clear up such misconceptions. As a former Christian, I sympathize with the religious in some ways and know firsthand that the following blanket statements are untrue.

"Believers Are Stupid"
Let's get one thing out of the way first: it's true that IQ does correlate somewhat with religiosity. A 2008 study examined data from 137 countries to come up with the following graph comparing countries' average IQ to percentage of atheists:

There are a few points to note here, however. Despite the clear positive trend, a few countries on the far left rank higher in IQ than those on the far right, and a "best fit" line would appear to flatten out at around 20% unbelief. And see all those countries pressed up against the left margin? Those are mostly third world countries with low rates of education. As for the extremely high rates of belief in God, many sociologists see it as a coping mechanism to deal with their low quality of life.

It's not accurate to make the generalization that "religious people are stupid": the data shows that as a whole the religious are only slightly less intelligent (often for unrelated reasons), and the brightest believers (e.g. Francis Collins) are certainly just as smart as the brightest non-believers. In fact, I don't think religiosity relates directly to intelligence at all. Intelligent people can be religious because they compartmentalize—they don't apply their intelligence to their religion. Religion is in a psychological category all its own, one that's perceived as incompatible with skeptical inquiry. Many were raised to hold certain comforting beliefs, grew up in a culture that supports those beliefs, made friends with others who believe as they do. Often they've never been taught to question those core values—and if they do, greater intelligence can help them invent more elaborate explanations that allow them to continue believing.

"Believers Are Hateful"
The word "hateful" is tossed around a lot. Sometimes it's used accurately (toward the Westboro Baptist Church, for example), but the term is so powerful and intense that it can be tempting to apply it to one's opponents even when it's undeserved. Religious people in general certainly don't deserve to be described as "hateful"—nor even do many fundamentalists.

Growing up as a evangelical Christian, I didn't "hate" gay people. It was strange to me that people could think and behave in that way, and I considered their actions sinful. That's as far as it went, and I think the same can be said for most fundamentalists. To disapprove of one aspect of a person's identity and to be weirded out by their sexuality is not the same as hatred of that person. The old saying "love the sinner, hate the sin" may seem trite to nonbelievers, but it's a genuine sentiment that's just as valid as saying "love the believer, hate the belief." I think we should avoid devaluing the word "hateful" and reserve it for those who actually detest another human being.

"Believers Are Crazy"
It can also be tempting to say that religious people have a mental disorder. After all, they believe strange and outlandish things, often fervently and without any logical basis. The idea that one can communicate with an invisible person wherever one goes does bear a resemblance to schizophrenia.

But ultimately, they've merely had a particularly enticing set of false beliefs ingrained into their psyches from an early age. That's not enough to call religiosity a mental illness in any sense except as a provocative rhetorical device. That being said, there's certainly some gray area here. What about those who roll around on the ground speaking in tongues, or actually claim to see angels and hear God's voice audibly? At what point do enculturation, social pressure and self-deception become pathology? I'll leave that for the mental health professionals to decide.

"Believers Know They're Wrong"
This one pops up more rarely, but some people really do think that believers realize deep down that their beliefs are false. Even David Silverman, president of American Atheists, said on The O'Reilly Factor that "everybody knows religion's a scam."

It should really go without saying that this is absolutely not the case. Certainly, there are many people who harbor serious doubts but convince themselves to continue believing due to wishful thinking. But the majority of believers accept their respective doctrines without reservation. For many years, I was one of them. To suggest that religious people are atheists in denial is just as insulting as suggesting that the reverse is true of atheists (an idea that rears its head with frustrating regularity).

"Believers Can't Be Reasoned With"
This sentiment is often expressed in terms of a quote: "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into." As Matt Dillahunty of The Atheist Experience puts it, this is absolute "bull."

Is it difficult? Sure. Rare? Relatively speaking, yes. But it happens. Millions of atheists were raised as believers, but reached their own conclusions after either investigating on their own or being convinced by others. Once again, I'm one of them. According to this quote, I don't exist.

Maybe I'm being pedantic. Maybe most people interpret this as a general pattern rather than a hard-and-fast rule. But on more than one occasion I've heard it suggested that arguing with religious people is pointless, because none of them ever change their position. The idea that the faithful are immune to reason can be a serious obstacle to helping humanity move away from religion. Believers deserve more than dismissal from the non-believing community. Many of them are intellectually honest people who are willing to change their minds when they find that they can't defend their views. And even those who continue to believe may gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of their own doctrines. Putting our most deeply cherished convictions under a microscope is hard for everyone. We owe it to believers to be there to help.

Keeping an Open Mind

This one may be a little too open.

The challenging task of the skeptic is to maintain a careful balance between rejecting claims with insufficient evidence, but accepting even the most extraordinary claims once the standard of evidence is met. In other words, to adhere to the age-old maxim:

Keep your mind open, but not so open that your brain falls out.

When I talked about my atheism with my sister, she was very accepting but rightly insisted that I continue to be open to opposing views. But things get tricky when applying this principle of openness to claims as extraordinary as "God exists" (or even more so, "Christianity is true"). It requires me to ask myself, "What evidence would convince me that God exists?"

When the reverse question is applied to theists, the results are telling to say the least. For most believers—sometimes even by their own admission—there is no possible state of affairs, no logical argument, nothing that would convince them to stop believing. Adam Lee of Ebon Musings challenged theists to describe some circumstance that would cause them to become atheists. In ten years, only six people have taken up his challenge, and their requirements for becoming atheists are usually vague, confused or completely unreasonable—for example, demanding proof that all miracle claims are false, when of course the burden is on theists to show that they're legitimate.

In the same essay, Adam outlines a number of circumstances that would cause him to believe in God or convert to a specific religion. Here's the basic summary:

• Verified, specific prophecies that couldn't have been contrived.
• Scientific knowledge in holy books that wasn't available at the time.
• Miraculous occurrences, especially if brought about through prayer.
• Any direct manifestation of the divine.
• Aliens who believed in the exact same religion.

It's an interesting list of very specific possibilities, all of which would be well within the abilities of an omnipotent being. However, I can't help but think that this entire approach is problematic. If God came down from heaven in a flash of light and appeared before me, I sincerely hope that the first thing I would do is seek professional help. For the five criteria above, some combination of coincidence (in the case of the first three) and insanity seem like a better explanation than some uberbeing that defies everything we know about the universe. Extraterrestrials and Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis are other unlikely but viable possibilities.

This leaves me in a tough position. To say that nothing would convince me of the existence of God strikes me as incredibly close-minded. And of course, it would leave my lack of belief in gods unfalsifiable: if gods do exist, I would have no way of correcting my mistake.

Maybe the right approach is to say that the proposition "God exists" was once falsifiable, but is no longer. If I'd been born into a world in which spirits manifested themselves regularly, people constantly predicted the future with pinpoint accuracy, lightning crashed down from heaven to smite unbelievers on a daily basis, then God and the supernatural would be an ordinary part of life. But instead, I live in a world where things always behave according to physical laws, where every seemingly paranormal phenomenon that's thoroughly tested either disappears or turns out to be explainable by natural means, where visions and religious experiences have neurological origins. I didn't have to be born into a world where everything happens just as we would expect it to if no gods existed—but I was.

Maybe the hypothesis "God exists" has already been tested, and has been found to be so wildly inconsistent with the data as to be completely unsalvageable.

I don't know. I honestly don't want it to be. I don't want any conclusion to lie entirely beyond my grasp.

Still, while I'm not really sure what would convince me that God exists, there are likely to be some things out there that would. If God appeared to me and I sought a psychiatrist who declared me sane, I could be imagining that as well, but at a certain point it would probably be simpler to assume my experiences were real rather than an increasingly elaborate hallucination.

Then there are the unknowns: there may be some concept floating out there in the vast sea of ideaspace that could change my whole outlook towards how the world works, or some a priori argument with logic so straightforward that I would be compelled to accept it. I'm also far from perfectly rational, so there are probably some circumstances that would convince me even if they shouldn't. Finally, there's the fact that an omniscient, all-good God would know what evidence would be sufficient for me and could provide it just as he has for theists. One could say that it's his job to convince me, not mine.

In any case, I'll continue to be as open-minded as I can—but I'll always be ready to catch my brain if it starts to fall.

Jesus in an Alternate Universe

A few months ago I wrote an alternate version of the story of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac, one that values reasonable skepticism over faith. Below is the story of the healing of the centurion's servant, which I've reimagined in a similar way.

As Jesus entered the town of Capernaum, a centurion came up to him and pleaded, "Lord, my servant is lying at home in bed with a grave illness."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but I'm not a doctor. What do you want me to do about it?" asked Jesus.

"Ahahah! A holy prophet of God and a comedian!" the centurion exclaimed. "Well, I suppose I could ask you to come to my house and heal him, but to be honest I don't think I'm even worthy of you entering under my roof. But I believe in you, Lord. I know your power is so great that all you have to do is give the word, and my servant will be healed. I have a bit of authority myself—all I have to do is bark an order to my soldiers and they'll carry it out immediately. I'm sure that you can do the same."

Jesus was shocked. "My good sir! I have to tell you, I've never seen faith like yours before in my life! Not in Israel or anywhere else."

"Oh, thank you! What a great honor it is to hear you say that."

"Er... what? Why on earth would that be an honor?"

"Why, Lord!" the centurion exclaimed. "Just last week the local potter told me that his niece said, that her neighbor said, that you said that just having faith the size of a mustard seed would let one move mountains! I may not have that much faith, but I hope I have enough to ask you this one favor."

Jesus sighed. "I see people have been twisting my words again. What I said was that it makes no difference whether your faith is the size of a mustard seed or a mountain: what matters is your actions. Honestly, why would anyone think that believing something really hard is enough to accomplish anything? And without any good reason to believe it, no less?"

"Oh, but I do have good reasons! I've heard all the stories about you. Why, just the other day my wife told me that her brother told her that—"

"Wait just a minute!" Jesus interrupted. "You think I can do miracles just because someone told you they heard that I could? What kind of reason is that?"

"So... you can't do miracles?"

"That's beside the point. What I'm saying is that you can't just believe everything you hear, especially about something as amazing as healing the sick or turning water into wine."

"You can water into wine?" said the centurion excitedly.

"Oh for goodness' sake. Stop yammering and pay attention! Even if I seemed to turn water into wine right in front of you, that still shouldn't be enough to convince you that I actually did it. There are men who make good money profiting from gullibility like yours, men who can make things appear to happen when they really didn't."

The centurion stared, eyes wide with a mixture of solemnity and confusion. "They must be very powerful sorcerers indeed."

"Are you even listening to me? All right, forget it. Sir, please go find a doctor for your servant as quickly as possible. I have to go now."

With that, Jesus continued to walk towards the center of Capernaum. The centurion, stunned for a moment, blinked and followed after him, shouting, "Lord, wait! If you won't heal my servant, could you at least direct me to those sorcerers you mentioned?"

A Time for Remembrance

We won't forget.

Here we are, 10 years from one of the most terrible and most significant events in American history. It's a time to reflect upon the nearly 3,000 people who died, and how it changed our way of thinking as a society. It's also a time to reflect on what causes senseless killings like this to occur. The answer is not so simple as "Islam" or "religion." Nor can we simply narrow it down to "religious extremism." In truth, this is but one symptom of a deeper ailment.

What really causes people to do these things is an unshakable conviction in their beliefs, including the belief that violence is the best way to accomplish their goals. If someone is absolutely convinced that the most effective way to protest a perceived problem with the government is to bomb innocent people, they may end up like Timothy McVeigh. If someone truly believes that God has told them to become a martyr and kill themselves along with the infidels, they may end up like those 19 hijackers. Once a violent belief has taken hold of a true believer, nothing will convince them otherwise. The mind of a true believer does not respond to logic or reason. Quite the contrary, in fact: such people will not only reject them, but also be proud of having seen through the evil deception of their enemies.

The root of the problem does not lie with a specific religion, or with religion in general, or even with ideological extremism. The very heart of what causes people to kill innocents is a rejection of the tools that have been proven to reliably find truth (like logic, science and skepticism) in favor of others (like dogma, faith and special revelation) that are superficially and subjectively convincing but hold no weight upon careful inspection. That doesn't mean that every religious or credulous person will fly a plane into a building. Far from it. But using the wrong tools for finding truth creates many more possibilities to arrive at the wrong conclusions. Wrong conclusions lead to false beliefs, and false beliefs can have very real and even catastrophic consequences.

So, this September 11th, I remember the victims with great sorrow, and the perpetrators with disgust. But I also remember the warped and biased methods they used to arrive at their conclusions. These, in the end, are what we're really fighting against.

Abraham in an Alternate Universe

In the original story of Abraham nearly sacrificing Isaac, God praises Abraham's faith and willingness to do whatever he says, regardless of the end result. This "alternate universe" version represents how the tale would have gone if God were truly loving and just, demanding reasonable skepticism rather than faith.

One day, God appeared to Abraham and said, "Take your only son, Isaac, into the mountains and sacrifice him as a burnt offering to Me."

Abraham was distraught. I love my son, he thought, but I have to obey God. Besides, I'm sure He knows what He's doing. So he reluctantly but dutifully chopped wood for a burnt offering and took Isaac up to the peak of a nearby mountain.

"Where's the lamb that we're using for the sacrifice?" asked Isaac.

Abraham forced a smile. "Don't worry. God will provide one."

Abraham tied Isaac up with rope, ignoring the confused and desperate shouts of protest. He laid his child down on the flat boulder that he would be using as an altar and surrounded him with firewood. God, please don't make me do this, Abraham prayed.

"Father, what's going on?" cried Isaac. "Are you really going to kill me?"

"Believe me, my son, this is not my wish," said Abraham. "But God's commands are always righteous and just." He swallowed hard. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He prayed one last time, but heard nothing in response. Abraham raised the gleaming knife high into the air, and...

...just as he was about to bring it down and slice into his beloved son's soft flesh, God appeared to him as a ball of blinding light encompassed by a whirlwind.

"What. Are. You. DOING?"

"My Lord! I... I was only carrying out the instructions you gave me!" said Abraham, shaking but relieved.

"You would really do anything I say, even if it means killing your own son? What on earth is wrong with you?"

The Deity's voice reverberated throughout Abraham's entire body. "I didn't want to. It was so terrible I could hardly bear it. But Lord, I know that your commands are always good. I was hoping that you would change your mind, but if you bid me to kill my son, then that's what is right, and that's what I must do!"

"You fool!" roared God. "Is your faith so blind that you would do anything I say, no matter how obviously immoral?"

Abraham's mouth opened and closed like a fish drowning in air.

"I gave you a brain, and I expect you to use it! Don't just follow every instruction I give like some mindless drone. Why should you assume that I'm some ultimate standard of righteousness just because I'm powerful and have treated you relatively well?"

"B–But you said you would always c–care for and protect me if I had fai—" stuttered Abraham.

"And give me one good reason you should take me at my word regardless of the circumstances."

"Well I..." Abraham started, but after a few thoughtful minutes his mind was still blank.

"I thought so," said God. "And besides, let's assume for the sake of argument that I am the ultimate standard of goodness. What if it wasn't me who commanded you to kill your son? What if you were actually talking to a demon in disguise? Or what if you were hallucinating?"

"I... guess that never occurred to me."

"Well, in the future I expect you to be skeptical of your God. Ask questions, think for yourself, and if the consequences of your commands are clearly out of step with your moral compass, for My sake, say no."

Then the light faded away, the whirlwind dissipated, and Abraham realized by the look on his son's face that he had some serious explaining to do.

Why Creationists Should Drop the Issue

Just fill in the quote marks around
"museum" using your imagination.

As a child of about ten, I enthusiastically embraced young earth creationism because at the time I thought it gave me concrete support for what I believed. A few years ago I became curious about what evolution supporters had to say about various issues, and I was blown away at how much sense it all made. It took a long time for me to eventually deconvert from Christianity, but the evolution/creation issue was one of the major factors that caused me to start questioning my faith.

Here's the deal: creationism is obviously wrong, and that should be enough reason to stop promoting it. But for creationists themselves, who can't see the evidence staring them right in the face, there's a more pragmatic reason not to try and press this issue. Nearly all creationists in the West are also fundamentalist Christians, and thus presumably consider saving souls to be more important than promoting what they think is the correct view of our origins. Evangelism is paramount; creationism is an important but still peripheral side issue.

I think that such creationists are doing more harm than good, even from their own perspective. There are many others like me, former creationists whose discovery of the real science behind our origins led us to wonder what else we had been lied to about. Unfortunately much of my evidence is anecdotal—I've heard and read a great many stories about people like these—but based on one informal poll, "science-based reasoning" was the number-one factor that led to people to leave the faith.

By promoting creationism as the only valid interpretation of the Bible and demonizing evolution as "atheistic," creationists are creating what many (especially theistic evolutionists) see as a false dichotomy. This leads people who reject creationism to reject their religion wholesale rather than adopting a more liberal form of it. Personally, I have my own reasons for finding theistic evolution unsatisfactory, but who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe millions of people are marching straight into hell because they switched quickly from conservative Christianity to atheism, with creationists unwittingly holding open the gates.

So from their own point of view, creationists should probably stop pushing so hard. And from mine? It's true that I find their alternate narrative irritatingly immune to reality and hate to see people taken in by it. However, I do appreciate them helping to create a fast track from fundamentalism to unbelief, allowing millions to neatly avoid the vague and wishy-washy quagmire that is liberal religion. Even if creationists refuse to drop the issue, though, I think it will slowly fade away whether they like it or not. Although public opinion is moving at a snail's pace, science is gradually prevailing.

Doubts on the Horizon

I've already written about my formal conversion to Christianity. Now I want to talk about a few of my other memories from my life as a Christian: the times during which I was troubled and the experiences that helped lead my eventual deconversion.

Questions About Prayer
One of my earliest childhood memories—I was probably five or so—is from when I was first coming to grasp basic Christian doctrines. I asked my parents whether heaven was "further than space." They told me I should pray and ask God that question. I closed my eyes and solemnly asked, "Dear God, is heaven further than space?"

I received no answer. I was confused. I told my parents as much. This was roughly their reply: "He won't speak to you in an audible voice. You have to listen on the inside." I prayed again, and when I received no answer, I created a voice in my head that said, "Yes, Timmy, it is." I did this in the same sort of way that a child might narrate the speech of the dolls they play with. And part of me could tell it wasn't real, so I was left unsatisfied.

Faith vs. Works
Even after I was saved, there were periods during which I had serious doubts about my salvation. What really troubled me was the idea that faith ought to be accompanied by good works and good fruit—or as James 2 puts it, that "faith without works is dead." How did passages like these square with the idea that salvation comes through faith alone?

I eventually reasoned that faith was technically the sole requirement, but spiritual fruit was the indicator of that faith. But how could I know if my behavior and works were good enough? And if they weren't, did that imply I wasn't a true Christian? These questions loomed over me throughout my time as a believer, and to this day I don't think Christians have an answer that I find truly satisfactory.

Worship in the Wilderness
I went to about half a dozen wilderness retreats while attending Christian school. Those were the times each year when a lot of the kids felt closer to God and recommitted themselves to Christ (although I generally didn't see any change at them once school started again). At one particular retreat around eighth grade there was a worship session during which nearly the entire class walked to the front of the room for prayer. There was a lot of crying and laying on of hands, and people assumed that the Holy Spirit had been at work in the room. But I could only stand numbly by my seat. I was frustrated, wondering what I was supposed to be feeling, unsure of why I wasn't up there with them.

During a worship session at another retreat a few years later, I worked up the nerve to close my eyes and lift up my hands as I sang. As I did so I felt a wave of warmth pass over me. We broke up into small groups afterward, and I told them it might have been the first time I had truly experienced God. I tried to convince myself of that at the time, but I never fully believed it. Looking back, it's clear that I had just been extremely shy about closing my eyes and raising my hands. What I felt was a therapeutic surge of relief that I had begun to conquer my fear.

Questioning Christianity

Finally, there's the question that ultimately led to my deconversion. A few years ago it occurred to me that most people in the world believe in something other than Christianity, and believe in it just as strongly as Christians do. I wondered: If this is the case, why are Christians are so confident in their own beliefs? Perhaps we are justified in our beliefs, I thought, but shouldn't we examine the evidence objectively just to be sure?

It was this line of questioning that drove me to investigate my faith. I perused countless online articles and blogs. I read two books, Why I Became an Atheist and The Christian Delusion, which presented a compelling overview of the arguments against Christianity and theism. John Loftus' Outsider Test for Faith presented a more formalized version of the concept I had grasped intuitively: that to be intellectually honest, religious people should scrutinize their faith from the perspective of someone on the outside. I also investigated the creation-evolution question and rejected the young earth creationism I'd been raised with.

Even though I'd already spent years learning about the world from a theistic perspective, I also read The Case for a Creator and reviewed parts of The Case for Faith (required reading for my twelfth grade apologetics class). But in the end, my belief slowly slipped away as I found myself agreeing more and more with the nontheistic arguments. For a time I called myself agnostic, but eventually I realized that I simply had no belief in gods.

My Conversion Story

I was raised in a Christian home. I accepted the tenets of Christianity ever since I was old enough to understand them. But this is the account of how I explicitly, officially "converted" to Christianity. It's not your average conversion story.

I became a Christian because of a Disney movie.

In 1996, when I was seven years old, I saw the animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The main antagonist is a judge named Claude Frollo. He's certainly not a sympathetic character, but throughout the film, he agonizes over his actions and worries that he will suffer everlasting punishment because of them. At the end Frollo dies by falling into a fiery pit that clearly represents hell. Having gone to Sunday school, I was familiar with that doctrine, but that scene was what made it real to me. I couldn't get it out of my head: the Latin chanting, Frollo's unshakable guilt, and that eternal bubbling inferno.

I was familiar with what was necessary for becoming a Christian. The oft-quoted verse from Romans 10 says that "if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." I took that verse quite literally. But even though I sincerely believed and "confessed the Lord Jesus" privately dozens of times, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was still bound for hell. Could I really be sure that I had met all of the requirements? It seemed like it, certainly, but because the stakes were infinitely high, even the tiniest chance I was wrong was cause for alarm. This was my one profound anxiety at the ripe old age of seven.

I tried to comprehend what endless suffering would be like, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. It made me dizzy. I would lie awake in bed imagining as long a period of time as I could and think, surely this is long enough? But I realized that no matter what length of time I imagined, it would not even begin to represent the amount of suffering experienced in hell. So, although I had nominally met the requirements for Christianity, the sheer magnitude of hell was absolutely terrifying to me. The idea that I had somehow missed one was enough to consume me with worry.

I remember flipping a cardboard coin I got at Chuck E. Cheese and mumbling to myself, "heads I go to heaven, tails I go to hell." If it came up heads I tried to convince myself it meant something; if it was tails I rationalized it away as a silly game. I remember going to the supermarket with my mother and helping her load groceries onto the conveyor belt at the checkout counter. I would pretend that I was "packing for hell." I realized that no amount of supplies would be enough, but I continued doing so anyway out of some twisted desperation. I knew I had to do something to quench my uncertainties.

A couple of months later I went to the Harvest Crusade with my mom and dad. At the end of the sermon, they had the altar call, and I told my parents I wanted to go down onto the stadium field to be saved. I remember my parents being pretty surprised—they probably figured that I was basically a Christian already, so it wasn't necessary—but they took me down anyway. Someone walked me through the sinner's prayer, and I got a little illustrated "Ben Born Again" pamphlet. A wave of relief and warmth washed over me. As I walked out of the stadium, holding both my parents' hands, I was beaming ear to ear. The lights in the parking lot shone brilliantly, as though ushering me into salvation. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

In the days that followed I read through the little booklet several times. I got a form letter from my church congratulating me on being saved. I wrote a letter to Jesus on broadly-lined school writing paper thanking him for his sacrifice and expressing my hope that the devil would step on a nail. At the top I wrote "I want to go to heaven with God and Jesus"—I don't think I was aware of the whole "trinity" thing yet. I thought about just going outside and letting it blow away in the breeze in hopes that God would eventually make it float up to heaven, but decided against it since I wasn't sure if he did things like that.

Those were simple, untroubled times for me. Life went on as usual, and for quite a while I was at peace. I can recall being on the elementary school playground, gazing at the empty swing set, thinking, Very soon, when the Rapture comes, this is what the world will look like. When I imagined my future, I basically assumed that I would never make it to college, let alone get a job. When I thought about what I would do when I grew up, I was only half serious. Jesus would surely come back before then. It was a calm, surreal sort of feeling, as though this world were just a fleeting illusion.

On the one hand, I could view the things I did as a Christian at age seven as quaint and naïve. But when I really think about my behavior, I find much of it to be pretty disturbing. I was fixated on the terrifying possibility that I might suffer forever in a place that doesn't exist. I played weird mind games with myself centered around this notion. I asked forgiveness of an imaginary entity, and wrote a follow-up letter in gratitude—and such sentiments were actively encouraged by those around me. I welcomed the Rapture completely at the expense of my life on earth. This is how religion warps the thoughts and beliefs of an innocent child. And although Christianity brought me great happiness at times, I can't look back on it now and say it didn't harm me.

Were We Never Christians At All?

Perhaps the most common claim that Christians make about ex-Christians is that they could not possibly have been "true Christians" in the first place. It can be frustrating to hear this, and from the unbeliever's perspective it seems downright ridiculous. To show why, let's start with an illustration.

Let's take the case of a hypothetical Christian, Jane, who accepts this doctrine. She believes herself to be a "true Christian." She sincerely believes that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised him from the dead, and that she accepted him as the savior of her life. But here's the problem: there is some possibility—even if it's only a small one—that at some point in the remainder of Jane's lifetime she will reject Christianity and either become nonreligious or an adherent of some other religion.

Now, Jane could deny this as a possibility. But life often presents us with unexpected twists and turns, so to rule out such an outcome would be narrow-minded and naïve. So if Jane accepts the possibility that she could reject Christianity in the future, she must accept the possibility that she is not currently a Christian—in spite of her sincere belief! She would likely find this conclusion patently absurd, and I find the conclusion that I was not a Christian absurd for more or less the same reason. 

Now Christians can (hopefully) see how their assertion looks from my perspective. But some of them might say, "I know I'm a Christian because my faith resulted in good works. You unbelievers didn't bear spiritual fruit, so your Christianity was false." But this has two problems. First, the Bible doesn't necessarily require these fruits for salvation. Romans 10:9 states, "That if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." All this verse requires is a sincere confession of belief in Christ's deity and resurrection—no ifs, ands, or buts.

Can one find verses that say there's more to being a Christian than sincere belief? Certainly. But what that shows me is that the Bible is at worst contradictory, and at best startlingly unclear, regarding what is by far the single most important element of Christianity. If we're to be punished or rewarded eternally according to a certain set of criteria, isn't it strange that the Bible doesn't just lay out all in one place (or better yet, in many places) exactly what those criteria are? It seems rather cruel of a supposedly omnibenevolent God to leave the matter even slightly ambiguous.

Second, let's assume the objector is correct. In fact, let's raise the stakes even higher. In  Luke 9:23 Jesus says, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him pick up his cross daily, and follow Me." If we interpret this as a requirement for "true Christianity," then almost the entire church consists of fake Christians. Yet I can point to ex-Christians who met even this ridiculously high standard. Ex-preachers like John Loftus and Dan Barker once dedicated their lives completely to Christ and produced plenty of so-called spiritual fruit. If they weren't "true Christians," then no one is.

Those who claim that ex-Christians weren't Christians at all probably haven't had any experience with them. My advice to them? Read the testimonies linked in the above paragraph. Read the stories from regular people on the ex-christian.net forums. Read Ebonmuse's excellent essay "Into the Clear Air," which describes the agonizing process that Christians go through when they leave Christianity. And read blogger Luke Muelhauser's detailed account of the richness of his former relationship with God. If they've read all that and still believe that ex-Christians must have been insincere, they are only revealing their dogmatic adherence to a view that bears no resemblance to reality.

I Love When Religions Make Testable Predictions

Because when they're in any way significant or interesting, they pretty much always fail. A small faction of Christians has announced that, based on some arcane biblical calculations, the rapture will occur on May 21st of this year. Their leader is an evangelical radio broadcaster named Harold Camping. He had previously predicted that the second coming would occur way back in 1994, but this time he's sure of it. No, really, he's gonna get it this time. He promises.

I actually e-mailed them last September to ask a few questions. I got two responses from a woman who I'll call Ms. M. She was generally very polite, although her responses showed me just how difficult it is to reason with people like these. Here's my first e-mail:

Hello,

I am very interested in your claim that judgment will come on May 21, 2011. In particular, I have three questions for you:

1. Are you aware that hundreds of dates have been predicted for the Rapture, judgment, etc. in the past, all of which have turned out to be wrong?

2. What makes you so certain that your prediction will succeed when all others have failed?

3. What would you do if your prediction turned out to be wrong? Even if you feel this is very unlikely, you must admit that it is at least possible. Would you claim that your prediction had been fulfilled, but in a different way than you had originally thought? Would you claim that you had somehow miscalculated, and then set a new date for judgment? Or would you simply admit that you were wrong? I ask this because these are some of the ways that others have reacted when their predictions turned out to be incorrect.

Please understand that I mean no disrespect by suggesting that your prediction may be wrong. I hope you can understand my skepticism, given the number of incorrect predictions made in the past. Thank you very much, and I look forward to answers to these questions.

—Tim

Instead of answering my questions, Ms. M directed me to a few links on their web site and said that their prediction could not be wrong because the date was appointed by God. There's an obvious problem with this view, and I told her as much in my reply:

Dear Ms. M,

Thank you very much for your response.

I understand your belief that because the date of 5/21/11 is appointed by God, there can be no possibility for error. However, to point solely to God on this matter misses a crucial point: any revelation from God must inevitably be interpreted by man. Human interpretation is always subject to error, and thus you cannot rule out the possibility (however unlikely) that this date could be a misinterpretation of God's word. Even if you believe that God is guiding you so as not to make any errors, this belief could itself be mistaken. Since many past predictions that were also based on God's word failed due to human misinterpretation, I think it makes sense to give this point serious consideration.

In light of this possibility, please reconsider the third question from my previous email.

—Tim

She seemed to understand my argument. By appealing to human fallibility, which Christians have a strong tendency to focus on, I may have actually made a slight dent in her dogmatic armor. But she quickly recovered by comparing their situation to that of Noah: everyone thought he was wrong, but he knew he was right because God had revealed the truth to him. I suppose I could have pointed out that the failed doomsday prophets of the past could have advanced this argument just as easily, and they were still wrong. But I don't think I would have gotten any further with her using that line of reasoning; we probably would have ended up talking in circles. Instead I closed with this:

Dear Ms. M,

Thanks again for your response.

I see that nothing I can say will convince you that your belief may be misguided. Although I disagree with you, I can appreciate why you feel the way you do. However, I do have one last request for you:

Should it happen (and I realize that for you this seems like an impossibility) that May 22nd rolls around and no judgment has taken place, re-read the third question I gave you, and think calmly and carefully about what option to choose.

That shouldn't be a difficult request, since if you are correct you won't need to fulfill it anyway.

—Tim

I doubt she'll actually do it, but I figured it was worth a shot. My concern is that the true believers won't lose their faith after May 21 has come and gone. On the contrary, there's a good chance that it will grow even stronger than before.

I'll be sure to do a follow-up post once the big day has hit. (Update: here it is.)