While We're Young

I was going through all the ancient stuff I had buried at the bottom of my desk drawers and came across this:

It's a letter from my former church congratulating me on becoming a Christian, from way back in July of '96. I was seven at the time.

Seems so innocuous, doesn't it? They were so glad to welcome me into the fold. They assured me I had made the right choice, a vital choice, renewing the sense of relief I had from avoiding damnation. They invited me to the Clubhouse—the name has that enticing air of exclusiveness about it. Actually, they didn't invite me: the subtle use of "when" made it a foregone conclusion that I would attend. Tell your parents what time you want to come, they suggested. Have fun, watch puppet shows, sing songs. And oh, by the way, bring your friends!

It really was fun. They put on an engaging production in the church auditorium, surprisingly polished for a kid's program. There were engrossing quiz games, props and puppets flying everywhere, funny voiceovers over the loudspeaker—more like watching an interactive play than attending a sermon. The stuff for older kids was considerably more dry and dull, but they really knew how to reel in the six-to-ten crowd. They understood the importance of grabbing our attention from a young age.

I'm probably making all this sound too sinister. I can only assume that these were genuinely nice people with pure intentions. The goal was not to snare hapless children in some nefarious trap. But when good people are misguided, when they're incredibly motivated, when they have years and decades and centuries to hone their sales pitch, when their target audience still believes in the tooth fairy... well, it's not exactly a fair fight.

Church Happenings

One of the perks of being out as an atheist is that I no longer have to attend church every Sunday. Although I didn't usually mention it here—that's what my Twitter account is for—there were always several moments where I couldn't help but cringe. I thought I'd mention a few such moments from weeks past.

Recently one pastor, Phillip, had taken to sharing stories about his atheist neighbors. (When he mentioned that they were atheists, a lady next to me went, "Whoa!"—as if he were describing his close encounter with a great white shark.) He portrayed them as deeply angry people who become enraged at any mention of Christianity. He joked that his neighbor's wizard Halloween costume looked a lot like Moses, and the neighbor was deeply offended. The congregation cheered in delight, as though celebrating some small victory over "the enemy." Even if Phillip's depiction was completely accurate, presenting it on its own was irresponsible: since most of these people know little about atheism, many will undoubtedly use these stories to make judgements about atheists as a whole. Thanks to situations like these, it's no wonder that we rank among the most disliked and distrusted minority groups in America.

Phillip also made references to aerial photos of Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat and gilded chariot wheels found in the Red Sea from the Egyptians drowning during the Exodus. The former is a confirmed hoax, and the latter is highly suspect to say the least. The wheel claims originate from amateur archaeologist Ron Wyatt, who also claims to have found the Ark of the Covenant, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, and the original sites of Sodom, Gomorrah and the tower of Babel. Even the cripplingly biased creationist organization Answers in Genesis has called Wyatt's claims "fraudulent." Curiously, no evidence has been presented for the existence of the chariot wheel beyond a few blurry photos.

The pictured object looks suspiciously modern, and despite supposedly being made of gold, it doesn't seem to have been buried at all over what would amount to roughly 3,500 years. Meanwhile, the Egyptians themselves, who are known to archaeologists as meticulous record-keepers, made reference neither to owning 2 million Hebrew slaves nor to letting them escape, which would surely have been one of the most significant events in their multi-thousand-year history.

Pastor Mike is an even worse offender. A few months ago he demonstrated his deep understanding of evolution by calling it a "primordial jelly oozing monkey business theory." Another time, while reading Mark 16, he repeatedly went out of his way to emphasize how incredibly reliable the Bible is. Yet he didn't even mention what must undoubtedly have been the reason for this tangent: since Mark 16 is absent from the earliest manuscripts and fits poorly with the preceding text, it's widely regarded as a forgery. It's as though he wanted to reassure his congregants, but thought their faith was so fragile that he didn't dare even tell them that this opposing viewpoint exists at all.

Mike also mentioned that the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote about Jesus. I wasn't particularly shocked when he didn't mention that scholars consider much or all of the Testimonium Flavianum to have been inserted later by Christians—that's to be expected from a fundamentalist preacher. My jaw only dropped when he said that Josephus became a Christian based on the evidence of Jesus, which to my knowledge not even conservative scholars believe. I don't think he was being intentionally deceptive, but it boggles my mind that a pastor can stand in front of a thousand people and demonstrate such ignorance of something so basic to early Christianity.

So it shouldn't be too surprising that I'm glad to be largely finished with church attendance. But then again, I won't mind coming back every now and then, if only to get a reminder of what I no longer have to endure.

The Little Things Add Up

A lot of terrible things have been either caused or perpetuated by religion: war, slavery, intolerance, rape, ignorance, murder. But it's easy to get so caught up in the big things that we miss the little ones. For example, how much time will the average believer spend in church throughout their lifetime? Let's find out.

Let's assume that a moderately strong Christian goes to church once a week for two hours, and fifty times a year (accounting for illness or vacations). If they're a lifelong believer in a first-world country, they might go for about 80 years, including Sunday school. That makes:

2 hours a week x 50 weeks a year x 80 years = 8,000 hours

That's quite a sum, but how much is it in practical terms? To think of it from a real-life standpoint, let's spread those hours out into 16-waking-hour days:

8,000 hours / 16 hours a day = 500 days

So what do we end up with? A total of 1 year, 4 months and 2 weeks. That's the amount of time that a churchgoer squanders in their lifetime. Sitting restlessly in the pews, listening to a half-coherent sermon. Standing with arms lifted on high, singing a song that will never reach its intended listener.

Dear Lacey, Jasmine and Jaimie: I'm so sorry.

Just think of the things we can do with that time.

With all the time we've avoided wasting—more than 16 precious months—we could:

• Learn an instrument
• Research the history and psychology of religion
• Make new friends
• Read dozens of books
• Write a book
• Serve thousands of meals at a local soup kitchen
• Train for a marathon
• Learn to cook
• Master critical thinking skills

The possibilities are endless. We can decide to use this time to improve ourselves, or even to go out into the world and help our fellow human beings. No matter what we choose to do, though, we will be enjoying our lives as we see fit. When we think of it in these terms, it's easy to see that when religion robs us of the little things, like those two hours every Sunday morning, they really do add up.

Souls and Human Cloning

My sister and I are both anime fans, and recently we watched Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, an excellent science fiction series that deals with the societal effects of huge advances in artificial intelligence and the widespread use of synthetic bodies and brains. In the thirteenth episode, a girl is suspected to be a clone of a kidnapped CEO's daughter. While we were watching, my sister asked me an interesting question: A clone wouldn't have a soul, she said, so what would it act like? She seemed genuinely stumped by the question. I couldn't just tell her that there's no such thing as a soul, so I said, "That's hard for me to answer. You should take some philosophy classes."

Both of those statements were technically true. Nevertheless, the question does deserve an answer. Basically, a human clone would be nothing more than an identical twin of the original person (albeit one born at a later date). They would probably behave at least somewhat similarly to the original, since they would share the original's genetic code. However, they would certainly have differences in personality, since they would grow up in a completely different environment.

Human cloning is one of the many issues that highlights the problems with the Christian conception of the soul. There doesn't seem to be anything in particular that would distinguish humans who do and don't have souls—in other words, the idea of a "soul" is useless; it explains nothing that can't be explained by natural means. According to Occam's razor, souls would qualify as "unnecessary entities," and so we have no reason to incorporate them into our worldview.

The view that a human clone wouldn't have a soul is actually a fairly common one, and the Bible is even cited in support of it. In Genesis 2:7, it says:

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."

Since it seems that in the Bible God personally imbues man with a soul, many Christians believe that a man-made clone wouldn't have one. In fact, some predict that creating a live human clone will be impossible, and will instead result in a lifeless body. Once or twice I've also heard the pastor of my church make a very startling claim: if living clones are produced, they will only appear to be "alive" because the bodies are inhabited by demons. I can easily envision a future in which clones are persecuted or even killed by a faction of extreme fundamentalist Christians. After all, if clones are merely lifeless, demon-possessed puppets, to "kill" them would be a perfectly acceptable (perhaps even commendable) act according to a Christian worldview.

And if many years from now people have their minds uploaded into artificial brains as in Ghost in the Shell, I suspect that many Christians wouldn't believe that the soul would be transferred. They might apply the same explanation of demon possession to living bodies containing mind uploads. Thus, the potential harm that Christianity poses is not limited to present issues such as gay marriage and stem cell research. As technology opens up new paradigms, it may actually create opportunities for the most fanatical Christians to kill innocent people.

I Visit a Megachurch

The church my family usually goes to, Horizon Christian Fellowship, is fairly large; I would guess its weekly attendance is roughly 2,000 or so. But yesterday, my mom and I went to The Rock Church, which is among the largest churches in America with its weekly attendance of about 12,000. Here's how it went.

The Rock is a very large, newly-built facility, and the church building itself is an impressive state-of-the-art amphitheatre that seats 3,500 people. As we walked in there were tables set up on either side passing out flyers, like a kind of miniature convention. The flyers that I took, along with the sermon's "lesson plan," are pictured below. Interestingly, the bulletin flyer listed several former workers at Horizon (which is both our current church and my former high school) as Rock employees. I also saw an old math teacher of mine from Horizon in the parking lot. These things make me wonder if the Rock is growing at Horizon's expense, both in terms of staff and congregation.

The music during the "worship" portion was decent, and the atmospheric stage lighting made it reminiscent of a concert. Then the pastor, Miles McPherson, interviewed a city councilwoman, which was fairly dull and felt out of place for a church service. When the congregation prayed for the woman, he had them all reach out their hands toward her. I'm not sure why – do they think God's power comes down through them and shoots out through their arms at her?

McPherson is well-suited to being the pastor of a megachurch. He was charismatic, engaging, and had an informal speaking style that appeals to a broad audience. He moved around the stage frequently, and he had the audience parrot certain words back to him to keep them listening. The sermon was pretty light on meaningful content, but on the bright side the topic was community service. If there's one thing I would approve of as the subject of a sermon, that would be it, although the same things can be (and are) accomplished without the religious component.

The atmosphere of the place was a bit overwhelming. The lights, music and charismatic pastor create an environment ideal for manufacturing religious experiences. As I looked around at the massive crowds surrounding me, it struck me how easily this setup amplifies groupthink and the bandwagon effect. Putting so many like-minded people together in such a socially insulated environment reassures them that their beliefs must be true and makes them less likely to question the consensus viewpoint.

The service as a whole was very short at about 75 minutes, and incredibly the actual sermon was probably less than 25. I have a feeling that's part of the whole package; it needs to be short and snappy to get mass appeal. That combined with the freshly constructed, high-tech building and stylish atmosphere is making them quite successful (perhaps at the expense of smaller surrounding churches). As Christianity continues to adapt to the surrounding culture, I predict we'll see churches like these flourish as more traditional ones slowly fade away.

Don't Just Believe...

Yesterday I went to church with my parents, as I do most Sundays. It’s not something I enjoy, but I don’t yet feel comfortable admitting that I’m no longer a Christian. I feel bad about keeping them in the dark, but I don’t know how to tell them, and I’m not sure how they’ll react when I do. On the upside, I use that churchgoing time to think about my beliefs, and it gives me an opportunity to review the mentality of the religion that I’ve left.

The pastor started yesterday by saying that too many people today just say you need to “believe” and leave it at that – and I couldn’t have agreed more. Religious people need to have real evidence for what they believe, not a strong emotional feeling or apologetics that take God's existence and the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible for granted. But it was silly of me to think that he was going to make something like that the topic of his sermon. No, instead we got a generic “faith without works is dead” sermon from James 2.

Of course, good deeds should be important whether you’re a Christian, Hindu, or atheist. But thinking back on the countless hours I spent in Sunday School, church, and “chapels” at the Christian high school I went to, I can’t think of a single time that the topic of the sermon was evidence-based belief. It’s quite simply not even on the radar for the vast majority of Christians.

Sometimes Christians will point to their sheer numbers as though it represented some sort of evidence that what they believe must be true. Let’s ignore for the moment that this is a textbook example of the bandwagon fallacy, and that if another religion was dominant, Christians certainly wouldn’t take it as evidence of that religion’s veracity. All we need to know to understand why Christianity is so prevalent in the world today is that it constantly emphasizes belief, yet cares little for evidence. Sure, there are a few individuals that actually study the stuff – but even then, their goal is usually to confirm what they already “know.”

Finding and interpreting the evidence without letting your personal feelings get in the way is very difficult. In a way I don’t blame Christians for not doing it – but as with so many other aspects of life, sometimes you have to do things you just don’t want to do.