Posts
Many of my problems with Christianity are inherent to the religion, and not a reflection of the actions of its followers.
I have a problem with the concept that disobedience to any entity, no matter which specific entity it is, must always necessarily constitute a sin. There is nothing wrong with seeking knowledge, but Genesis tells us it is wrong when God says so. Sometimes the noblest act is defiance of a powerful authority, rather than submission.
I have a problem with the tendency of all gods in all religions to draw a line in the sand and state, "Beyond here, no mortal shall trespass." This is illustrated in the story of the Tower of Babel, wherein God reminds the puny mortals of their role as his inferiors. This is the sort of thing that retards scientific progress, such as stem cell research or cloning, or causes people to fight back against it, such as the HPV vaccine, based on the apparent assumption that some problems are just not meant to be solved.
I have a problem with the scapegoating found throughout all Christianity, from the original sin passed down to me because a snake convinced a rib woman to eat a fruit, to Jesus being sacrificed for the times I've lied, to God's specification in the Third Commandment that he will punish your great-grandchildren if you reject him. My "sins" are my own, I don't want anyone else taking that responsibility from me, and I refuse responsibility for anyone else's sins.
I have a problem with the concept of infinite punishment for finite crimes. There is no crime I can imagine that warrants eternal torture. When lack of belief, or belief in another god, is held as one of the crimes most obviously deserving this punishment, it is illustrative of a flaw in the system. Even under the interpretation of Hell as simple separation from God (which, in my experience, hasn't been so bad), the suggestion that there can be no redemption after death for disbelief in the face of an overwhelming lack of evidence is fundamentally unethical.
I have a problem with the free pass given to God for atrocities either committed or commanded. The mass murder of children is never justified - certainly not because their Pharoah refused God's authority. This kind of story encourages a tolerance for "collateral damage" that should be obviously vile. The many justifications trotted out by apologists for these crimes are insufficient defense, and I would be happy to debate the specifics with anyone who cares to challenge this assertion.
I have a problem with lauding unthinking obedience to any authority figure as a virtue. Abraham nearly sacrificed his son on God's word. The only thing that separates him from the many "God told me to do it" convicts we see murdering their children, or innocent bystanders, or whoever, is that God stopped him at the last second. But what if the word never came? No, the correct answer was, "No, Lord, I will not murder my son for you. And if this disobedience invokes your wrath, then let it be on my head alone." Unquestioning obedience to orders is not a virtue; it is a short route to atrocity.
I have a problem with human sacrifice. If you buy into the apologetics that she wasn't sacrificed, but only delivered into the clergy for the rest of her life (I don't), I have a problem with the assumption that uninvolved parties are obligated to someone else's agreement with God.
I have a serious, serious problem with teaching that the end of the world is soon, unavoidable, and generally a good thing. Modern technology has brought the ability to end the world closer to the reach of vastly more people than ever before. All it requires, today, is a fanatic with access to the right buttons. The availability of those buttons is likely to only increase - the world's populace simply [i]must[/i] learn that the apocalypse is to be averted, not sought. This is why the USA is trying so hard to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. And yes, it's a Christian problem, too.
I have a problem with the concept that being human is inherently bad - so bad that we deserve to die just because of the fact that we were born human. This is a central concept to all Christianity. The reason Jesus had to be killed was to save us from a horrible fate that we entirely deserve. It is because God is "just" that he could not simply forgive these apparent failings, and required a blood sacrifice to appease him. This is how cults behave - they tell you that you are worthless, that you deserve only pity at best, but then they "save" you. This is manipulative. This is evil. And it's a core part of Christianity.
I could go on. Do I lay these failings at the feet of Christians? Not usually, no. Most Christians/Jews I know tend to gloss over these and other problems with their scripture. Most Christians seem to agree that the Ten Commandments form the foundation of American law and tradition, despite the fact that the First and Second Commandments are in direct violation of the First Amendment.
It sounds great to say that religions basically just teach you to be good to other people, but only by ignoring the vast majority of any given religion's scriptures could you come to that conclusion. Humanism, however, does actually teach you to be good to other people, and nothing more. This has nothing to do with why I believe religions are not true, but it does address some of the reasons I'm glad that they aren't true. I am not one of those who wishes he could believe, or who believes religion is just a set of stories that help us be more moral. The Bible teaches submission, either to God, fate, or ignorance. I reject it, thoroughly.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
You'll Understand When You're Older
Quite some time ago, an acquaintance of mine, who is not a theist but was taking their side in this argument, came the closest I've seen to solving the problem of evil.
He suggested to me that, from God's perspective, the apparent tragedies endured by people are insignificant. Essentially, in a very Buddhist way, that our suffering is illusory and, once the test is passed, we would be let in on this secret. He drew a comparison to a parent refusing a child a simple treat, having the child's long-term health in mind. The child may scream and cry and view the denial of what seems a perfectly reasonable request as an act of great injustice. When the child becomes an adult, however, he or she will see that the cookie was minor and it was really in his or her best interest not to eat it.
This, in some sense, does equate unthinkable atrocities with the simple greed of a child, but I don't think that's invalid given the context. The entirety of our experience of the material may very well seem trivial from the perspective of the immaterial (or transcendent, which is probably the word theists would prefer to use).
The problem of evil, as I'm sure you know, is that God either allows suffering or is powerless to stop it. If he allows it, he's not that good. If he's powerless to stop it, he's not God. This, of course, assumes an omnipotent god.
This response partially grants the first point - that God allows the evil - but it follows with a caveat that it's not really "evil," which makes it somewhat more compelling than the usual Problem of Evil responses (which invariably grant either the first or the second conclusion, but those making the responses never seem to realize that).
It is, however, an invalid response. At the very least, it demonstrates a God who is without any consistent standard or message. The foundation of this argument rests on the assumption that the material is trivial, and the transcendent is vastly more significant. Childhood versus adulthood - the minutiae of childhood seems laughably simple compared to the challenges and, indeed, the consequences of adulthood.
However, while expecting us to be aware of the transitory and trivial nature of the material, God also assigns incredible importance to our actions in the material world. Our entire transcendent existence is predicated on the method with which we conduct ourselves in the material. The punishment for indulging those supposedly trivial urges is eternal torture. Even the most generous interpretation of Hell (i.e. separation from God, or annihilation) would seem to be extreme reactions to these behaviors.
To carry on the metaphor - the child demands a cookie. The adult refuses. The child whines and screams and, when the adult isn't watching, steals and eats the cookie. The adult, in response, sends the child to prison for the remainder of his or her existence. The more generous adult ceases all contact with the child; completely cuts the child off. When the child has grown to adulthood, presumably he or she regrets eating the cookie - but it is simply too late. There is no repairing the harm done. The individual simply should have known better when it was a child, and now it must endure the consequences. There can be no reparation.
Either the material matters, or it does not. If it does, then God still either permits or is unable to prevent suffering. If it does not, then morality is an illusion, and "Do what thou wilt" shall be the whole of the law.
He suggested to me that, from God's perspective, the apparent tragedies endured by people are insignificant. Essentially, in a very Buddhist way, that our suffering is illusory and, once the test is passed, we would be let in on this secret. He drew a comparison to a parent refusing a child a simple treat, having the child's long-term health in mind. The child may scream and cry and view the denial of what seems a perfectly reasonable request as an act of great injustice. When the child becomes an adult, however, he or she will see that the cookie was minor and it was really in his or her best interest not to eat it.
This, in some sense, does equate unthinkable atrocities with the simple greed of a child, but I don't think that's invalid given the context. The entirety of our experience of the material may very well seem trivial from the perspective of the immaterial (or transcendent, which is probably the word theists would prefer to use).
The problem of evil, as I'm sure you know, is that God either allows suffering or is powerless to stop it. If he allows it, he's not that good. If he's powerless to stop it, he's not God. This, of course, assumes an omnipotent god.
This response partially grants the first point - that God allows the evil - but it follows with a caveat that it's not really "evil," which makes it somewhat more compelling than the usual Problem of Evil responses (which invariably grant either the first or the second conclusion, but those making the responses never seem to realize that).
It is, however, an invalid response. At the very least, it demonstrates a God who is without any consistent standard or message. The foundation of this argument rests on the assumption that the material is trivial, and the transcendent is vastly more significant. Childhood versus adulthood - the minutiae of childhood seems laughably simple compared to the challenges and, indeed, the consequences of adulthood.
However, while expecting us to be aware of the transitory and trivial nature of the material, God also assigns incredible importance to our actions in the material world. Our entire transcendent existence is predicated on the method with which we conduct ourselves in the material. The punishment for indulging those supposedly trivial urges is eternal torture. Even the most generous interpretation of Hell (i.e. separation from God, or annihilation) would seem to be extreme reactions to these behaviors.
To carry on the metaphor - the child demands a cookie. The adult refuses. The child whines and screams and, when the adult isn't watching, steals and eats the cookie. The adult, in response, sends the child to prison for the remainder of his or her existence. The more generous adult ceases all contact with the child; completely cuts the child off. When the child has grown to adulthood, presumably he or she regrets eating the cookie - but it is simply too late. There is no repairing the harm done. The individual simply should have known better when it was a child, and now it must endure the consequences. There can be no reparation.
Either the material matters, or it does not. If it does, then God still either permits or is unable to prevent suffering. If it does not, then morality is an illusion, and "Do what thou wilt" shall be the whole of the law.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Deconversion Part 4
Continued:
Even though I was feeling decent about myself by the time Nikki and I broke up, I still found myself in a somewhat precarious position as far as the future was concerned. At that time, I had a shit job. Like the kind that doesn't require you to graduate high school to get. My degree turned out to be only slightly better than useless. It was a video game design degree that I ended up getting because I, as a very young person who had found his "soul mate," followed Samantha to her college of choice and selected a program that interested me somewhat. I liked video games. Still do. It wasn't until I was just about done with the degree that I realized I was not cut out for the business of making video games. Also, I specialized in writing for games which, as it turns out, isn't so much a job that people get paid to do. At least, not very often. And those who do generally have a few published novels.
Anyway, I began to fear I'd be trapped in my horrible little failure-job forever. When you go through something like that, you get philosophical. Well, maybe you don't. I get philosophical. The job, which, by the way, was delivering pizzas, required me to be in my car for long stretches of time doing nothing in particular. Just driving around. So I started listening to a lot of audiobooks and, eventually, podcasts.
This is, I'm sad to say, where the skeptic you know today was born. It must be anti-climactic, but the fact is that I considered myself a de facto atheist before Nikki and I broke up, and I read [i]The God Delusion[/i] and became a much stronger atheist. [i]The God Delusion[/i] didn't go far enough for me, though, so I moved on to the other Horsemen, and then into the podcasting world with The Non-Prophets, Point of Inquiry, Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Skeptoid. Very quickly, I learned how logic works. I learned the fallacies. I learned the science behind the claims. Over time, I picked up more sophisticated podcasts, delving further into philosophical and theological questions: The Atheist Experience (by the same people as Non-Prophets, but it's a call-in show that tends to lead to some pretty esoteric topics), Apologia (debates being theists and atheists on dozens of specifics topics that each worldview might inform), and, most recently, Reasonable Doubts (a very sophisticated exercise in the psychology of belief, counter-apologetics, and Biblical fact-checking, while still being entertaining). I jumped into classics, like Russell, Hume and Lucretius.
So there's my secret laid bare. I'm no genius. I figured out the problem of evil for myself in high school, but wouldn't have known what to do with the Transcendental Argument even today without the aid of the giants who came before me, and the giants who came before them. I listened to both sides and picked what I perceive as the winner. Religion has done me no great harm, but I think it is harmful. I remember the fear I had when I thought God would kill me as a child, or the distant but present worry of Hell until I finally dismissed that notion in college.
There will be those who claim that my heart's always been closed to God, but to make that claim is to suggest something very insidious about God. When I was a child, I sincerely believed. I wanted God and Jesus to be real. But every time I prayed, I always knew I was talking to myself. There was no other voice. I was given no revelation, no experience, nothing beyond what I forced on my own. My entire experience with Christianity could be reasonably compared to my experience accepting Jesus into my heart - I imagined it happening, and I knew at the time I was imagining it, but assumed that this utter lack of communication on God's part was how it was supposed to be. After all, the adults all seem to believe it. They're always right.
But to make the claim that I never opened my heart to God is to claim not only that God elected not to reveal himself to me in any way that I would describe (even at the age of seven) as meaningful, but that he specifically made me (or allowed me to be made) in such a way that I would be closed to him, and thus condemned to Hell, from birth.
I have no doubt that the shallowness I experienced of sitting in silence and having a conversation with my own inner monologue, combined with the clear assumption of belief on the part of, as far as I could see, every person in my immediate environment, led to me questioning even in elementary school. If God existed, and had responded in any way that could be construed as even slightly inspirational, I expect I would be a very different person today. I would never have questioned its existence.
But I can't say I learned nothing from prayer and seeking God. The silence of all but my own inner monologue taught me that, within my own head, I am truly, utterly alone. And when I leave the company of others, there is nothing that comes with me. Solitude is a fact of life. And it does offer its own peace.
The most spiritual (though I hate that word) experiences of my life have been spent in contemplation of solitude and insignificance. When the Sun goes down, go outside and stare into the night sky for an hour.
Even though I was feeling decent about myself by the time Nikki and I broke up, I still found myself in a somewhat precarious position as far as the future was concerned. At that time, I had a shit job. Like the kind that doesn't require you to graduate high school to get. My degree turned out to be only slightly better than useless. It was a video game design degree that I ended up getting because I, as a very young person who had found his "soul mate," followed Samantha to her college of choice and selected a program that interested me somewhat. I liked video games. Still do. It wasn't until I was just about done with the degree that I realized I was not cut out for the business of making video games. Also, I specialized in writing for games which, as it turns out, isn't so much a job that people get paid to do. At least, not very often. And those who do generally have a few published novels.
Anyway, I began to fear I'd be trapped in my horrible little failure-job forever. When you go through something like that, you get philosophical. Well, maybe you don't. I get philosophical. The job, which, by the way, was delivering pizzas, required me to be in my car for long stretches of time doing nothing in particular. Just driving around. So I started listening to a lot of audiobooks and, eventually, podcasts.
This is, I'm sad to say, where the skeptic you know today was born. It must be anti-climactic, but the fact is that I considered myself a de facto atheist before Nikki and I broke up, and I read [i]The God Delusion[/i] and became a much stronger atheist. [i]The God Delusion[/i] didn't go far enough for me, though, so I moved on to the other Horsemen, and then into the podcasting world with The Non-Prophets, Point of Inquiry, Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, Skeptoid. Very quickly, I learned how logic works. I learned the fallacies. I learned the science behind the claims. Over time, I picked up more sophisticated podcasts, delving further into philosophical and theological questions: The Atheist Experience (by the same people as Non-Prophets, but it's a call-in show that tends to lead to some pretty esoteric topics), Apologia (debates being theists and atheists on dozens of specifics topics that each worldview might inform), and, most recently, Reasonable Doubts (a very sophisticated exercise in the psychology of belief, counter-apologetics, and Biblical fact-checking, while still being entertaining). I jumped into classics, like Russell, Hume and Lucretius.
So there's my secret laid bare. I'm no genius. I figured out the problem of evil for myself in high school, but wouldn't have known what to do with the Transcendental Argument even today without the aid of the giants who came before me, and the giants who came before them. I listened to both sides and picked what I perceive as the winner. Religion has done me no great harm, but I think it is harmful. I remember the fear I had when I thought God would kill me as a child, or the distant but present worry of Hell until I finally dismissed that notion in college.
There will be those who claim that my heart's always been closed to God, but to make that claim is to suggest something very insidious about God. When I was a child, I sincerely believed. I wanted God and Jesus to be real. But every time I prayed, I always knew I was talking to myself. There was no other voice. I was given no revelation, no experience, nothing beyond what I forced on my own. My entire experience with Christianity could be reasonably compared to my experience accepting Jesus into my heart - I imagined it happening, and I knew at the time I was imagining it, but assumed that this utter lack of communication on God's part was how it was supposed to be. After all, the adults all seem to believe it. They're always right.
But to make the claim that I never opened my heart to God is to claim not only that God elected not to reveal himself to me in any way that I would describe (even at the age of seven) as meaningful, but that he specifically made me (or allowed me to be made) in such a way that I would be closed to him, and thus condemned to Hell, from birth.
I have no doubt that the shallowness I experienced of sitting in silence and having a conversation with my own inner monologue, combined with the clear assumption of belief on the part of, as far as I could see, every person in my immediate environment, led to me questioning even in elementary school. If God existed, and had responded in any way that could be construed as even slightly inspirational, I expect I would be a very different person today. I would never have questioned its existence.
But I can't say I learned nothing from prayer and seeking God. The silence of all but my own inner monologue taught me that, within my own head, I am truly, utterly alone. And when I leave the company of others, there is nothing that comes with me. Solitude is a fact of life. And it does offer its own peace.
The most spiritual (though I hate that word) experiences of my life have been spent in contemplation of solitude and insignificance. When the Sun goes down, go outside and stare into the night sky for an hour.
Deconversion Part 3
Continued:
I was in high school and quickly learned the art of taking myself [i]very[/i] seriously. This is also where I made friends with Mike, who was the first up-front atheist I'd met. Until that, I don't think I'd ever considered that some people might not believe in God.
It didn't bother me that he didn't, but the first arguments he threw at me were dumb. The "can he make a rock so big" variety. I didn't have trouble dismissing those.
At this age I had also become a fanatical devotee of The Smashing Pumpkins. I enjoyed reading the lyrics, trying to piece together the song meanings. Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness became my Bible.
It was through Billy Corgan's friendship with Marilyn Manson that I eventually came to listen to him, which spurred me on to more alternative reading. Sometime in this period, I started calling myself an agnostic. I read The Satanic Bible (too credulous, at that age, to question how honest LaVey was being about his own life), had many (many) "deep" conversations with friends on the subject, and eventually started calling myself an atheist.
High School is also when a complete stranger and several of his friends cornered me in the hallway and demanded to know what I had against Jesus. Until that point, I didn't realize that I had anything against Jesus, and I didn't know how they knew I did.
This was also my first attempt to really read the Bible. I didn't make it through the Old Testament. I couldn't understand why foreskin was so important.
Though high school was the longest four years of my life, in the context of this story it just came and went and there aren't many details to share. College was where I started being honest.
It had to be Philosophy 101, of course, that challenged me. I was calling myself an atheist, and had talked about why with friends, but they weren't knowledgeable enough to really challenge me, nor was I familiar enough with the workings of logic to understand the flaws in my arguments. Go public education.
I did really well in Philosophy. While my understanding was rudimentary, I was interested in the subject and had explored it at least a little. That put me miles ahead of everyone else in the class. I was going to be a philosophy major (until a counselor convinced me that there are no jobs for philosophers - thanks a lot for that one, asshole. How about if I'd gone into Law after that? But I digress.)
I liked the class. It exposed people's hidden assumptions and bigotries. I also met Samantha there, who I somehow got the courage to ask out, and who I'd spend the next five years of my life with. (Side advice: Don't spend all of college dating one person. There's a very good chance it won't work out, and you learn a lot of important lessons about socializing with the opposite sex in college that you don't get in high school. Thus, I remain single, having dated one girl since Samantha and I split. She married a guy about twelve to fourteen years older than her and moved to England with him. Didn't see that one coming.)
Regarding bigotries, my favorite moment was when a guy, who I'd spoken with and knew was a decent guy, made the following statement: "I just think it matters that they're good people, not that they're Christian *gestures to himself*, Jewish *gestures to the girl who had discussed her Judaism*, or even in a cult *gestures to Samantha and I*."
My teacher, Leonard O'Brian, convinced me to start calling myself agnostic again with two arguments combined. First, the transcendental argument, which essentially proves that an omnipotent god would not have to be bound by logical possibilities. Logical contradictions and disproofs are not an obstacle for omnipotence.
Second, and I haven't heard this one since, he questioned whether God might best be expressed in metaphor, rather than logically. I wrote an essay in response to this, essentially arguing that this may be the case, but it effectively makes the concept of God unintelligible in any real sense. It's impossible to discern any attributes or motivations of a metaphorical god, even if it does exist. That's when it clicked. Oh. That sounds an awful lot like agnosticism.
So I was an agnostic for the rest of college. When Samantha left me for the older guy, after college, I went through a pretty severe depression. I'd built all my expectations for the future around her - again, stupid move. I made an effort to get out of it, looked at myself objectively and decided I wouldn't want to be with me either, and resolved to do something about it. Thus began my effort to improve myself physically, mentally, and professionally. Physical came first, and I went from 140lbs to 165lbs over the span of about a year - the gain all being muscle. I'm not bragging; it's all gone now.
The mental improvement ended up being placed on hold because Nikki essentially dropped out of thin air and into my lap. She went to college with me, wanted to go out with me but couldn't because of Samantha, found out we broke up, and found me with Google. I had more superficially in common with her than any other girl I've ever dated, and I never really felt passionate about her. She was fun, I liked her, but that was about as far as it went on my side. We eventually did break up, because she recognized I just wasn't getting there, and she was. Smart girl.
Her mom owned a metaphysical book store, so I got to see all kinds of ridiculous New Age crap with her. It was with her that I first heard of and watched The Secret. This film, I think, reminded me that I needed to get smarter. Shortly before Nikki and I broke up, I started reading again.
I was in high school and quickly learned the art of taking myself [i]very[/i] seriously. This is also where I made friends with Mike, who was the first up-front atheist I'd met. Until that, I don't think I'd ever considered that some people might not believe in God.
It didn't bother me that he didn't, but the first arguments he threw at me were dumb. The "can he make a rock so big" variety. I didn't have trouble dismissing those.
At this age I had also become a fanatical devotee of The Smashing Pumpkins. I enjoyed reading the lyrics, trying to piece together the song meanings. Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness became my Bible.
It was through Billy Corgan's friendship with Marilyn Manson that I eventually came to listen to him, which spurred me on to more alternative reading. Sometime in this period, I started calling myself an agnostic. I read The Satanic Bible (too credulous, at that age, to question how honest LaVey was being about his own life), had many (many) "deep" conversations with friends on the subject, and eventually started calling myself an atheist.
High School is also when a complete stranger and several of his friends cornered me in the hallway and demanded to know what I had against Jesus. Until that point, I didn't realize that I had anything against Jesus, and I didn't know how they knew I did.
This was also my first attempt to really read the Bible. I didn't make it through the Old Testament. I couldn't understand why foreskin was so important.
Though high school was the longest four years of my life, in the context of this story it just came and went and there aren't many details to share. College was where I started being honest.
It had to be Philosophy 101, of course, that challenged me. I was calling myself an atheist, and had talked about why with friends, but they weren't knowledgeable enough to really challenge me, nor was I familiar enough with the workings of logic to understand the flaws in my arguments. Go public education.
I did really well in Philosophy. While my understanding was rudimentary, I was interested in the subject and had explored it at least a little. That put me miles ahead of everyone else in the class. I was going to be a philosophy major (until a counselor convinced me that there are no jobs for philosophers - thanks a lot for that one, asshole. How about if I'd gone into Law after that? But I digress.)
I liked the class. It exposed people's hidden assumptions and bigotries. I also met Samantha there, who I somehow got the courage to ask out, and who I'd spend the next five years of my life with. (Side advice: Don't spend all of college dating one person. There's a very good chance it won't work out, and you learn a lot of important lessons about socializing with the opposite sex in college that you don't get in high school. Thus, I remain single, having dated one girl since Samantha and I split. She married a guy about twelve to fourteen years older than her and moved to England with him. Didn't see that one coming.)
Regarding bigotries, my favorite moment was when a guy, who I'd spoken with and knew was a decent guy, made the following statement: "I just think it matters that they're good people, not that they're Christian *gestures to himself*, Jewish *gestures to the girl who had discussed her Judaism*, or even in a cult *gestures to Samantha and I*."
My teacher, Leonard O'Brian, convinced me to start calling myself agnostic again with two arguments combined. First, the transcendental argument, which essentially proves that an omnipotent god would not have to be bound by logical possibilities. Logical contradictions and disproofs are not an obstacle for omnipotence.
Second, and I haven't heard this one since, he questioned whether God might best be expressed in metaphor, rather than logically. I wrote an essay in response to this, essentially arguing that this may be the case, but it effectively makes the concept of God unintelligible in any real sense. It's impossible to discern any attributes or motivations of a metaphorical god, even if it does exist. That's when it clicked. Oh. That sounds an awful lot like agnosticism.
So I was an agnostic for the rest of college. When Samantha left me for the older guy, after college, I went through a pretty severe depression. I'd built all my expectations for the future around her - again, stupid move. I made an effort to get out of it, looked at myself objectively and decided I wouldn't want to be with me either, and resolved to do something about it. Thus began my effort to improve myself physically, mentally, and professionally. Physical came first, and I went from 140lbs to 165lbs over the span of about a year - the gain all being muscle. I'm not bragging; it's all gone now.
The mental improvement ended up being placed on hold because Nikki essentially dropped out of thin air and into my lap. She went to college with me, wanted to go out with me but couldn't because of Samantha, found out we broke up, and found me with Google. I had more superficially in common with her than any other girl I've ever dated, and I never really felt passionate about her. She was fun, I liked her, but that was about as far as it went on my side. We eventually did break up, because she recognized I just wasn't getting there, and she was. Smart girl.
Her mom owned a metaphysical book store, so I got to see all kinds of ridiculous New Age crap with her. It was with her that I first heard of and watched The Secret. This film, I think, reminded me that I needed to get smarter. Shortly before Nikki and I broke up, I started reading again.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Deconversion, Part 2
I was mostly done with the third grade by the time we moved to Arizona, and I was to switch schools at the start of the fourth grade, so I didn't really make any friendships until then.
Franklin AuYeung was my first really close friend. I don't remember exactly how we got to know each other in the first place, but we were best buds for quite some time. In California I had a lot of friends I valued equally, but Franklin and I understood each other very well and got along famously.
It's his presence that led me to think of myself as a "smart kid," which is the social identity that made me who I am today. Franklin was very much a stereotype. His parents had moved to the USA from China, he was an overachiever (always, always straight As, great at piano, the whole Asian-kid routine), he even wore glasses. At that age, glasses always meant smart kid. Or nerd. Same thing.
He was Buddhist in the same sense that I was Christian - when people asked, that's what he knew to say. But, like me, he took a personal, unguided interest in the subject of God. He and I would talk about it often, philosophizing at a level slightly above what people would expect of our age, but not by much. We were, after all, smart kids. Smart. But kids. We never questioned whether or not God existed, but we tried to figure out how to get to know it better.
Organized religion wasn't for either of us. After Sparky's, I'd been to a few church events and they were always dreadful. When I was trying to learn about God, it had to feel like something between solving a puzzle and exploring new ideas. Church was just people telling me the rules. Even at that age, with all my interest in the subject, I never wanted to have to deal with church.
This was the stage where I really learned to ask questions, and think creatively. I credit Franklin with all that. We remained close friends from fourth grade until high school, where we each ended up going to different schools. We would call each other and chat every once in a while, but we essentially lost touch.
On February 23, 1998, I was watching the local news with my family and learned that Franklin was killed in a car crash that day. He was the sole fatality.
Franklin AuYeung was my first really close friend. I don't remember exactly how we got to know each other in the first place, but we were best buds for quite some time. In California I had a lot of friends I valued equally, but Franklin and I understood each other very well and got along famously.
It's his presence that led me to think of myself as a "smart kid," which is the social identity that made me who I am today. Franklin was very much a stereotype. His parents had moved to the USA from China, he was an overachiever (always, always straight As, great at piano, the whole Asian-kid routine), he even wore glasses. At that age, glasses always meant smart kid. Or nerd. Same thing.
He was Buddhist in the same sense that I was Christian - when people asked, that's what he knew to say. But, like me, he took a personal, unguided interest in the subject of God. He and I would talk about it often, philosophizing at a level slightly above what people would expect of our age, but not by much. We were, after all, smart kids. Smart. But kids. We never questioned whether or not God existed, but we tried to figure out how to get to know it better.
Organized religion wasn't for either of us. After Sparky's, I'd been to a few church events and they were always dreadful. When I was trying to learn about God, it had to feel like something between solving a puzzle and exploring new ideas. Church was just people telling me the rules. Even at that age, with all my interest in the subject, I never wanted to have to deal with church.
This was the stage where I really learned to ask questions, and think creatively. I credit Franklin with all that. We remained close friends from fourth grade until high school, where we each ended up going to different schools. We would call each other and chat every once in a while, but we essentially lost touch.
On February 23, 1998, I was watching the local news with my family and learned that Franklin was killed in a car crash that day. He was the sole fatality.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
How I Got Here
You'd almost think I'd lost interest in the subject, but I haven't. I am, however, recognizing my own limitations on this subject (or subjects since, after all, I tried my hand at scientific skepticism with this blog as well), recognizing that I'm rephrasing and repeating arguments that have already been made in many forms over hundreds of years. There's nothing wrong with that, I made an effort to provide a unique perspective or twist on those arguments, but there are people who've done it all before, and better.
That's not to say that I have nothing to contribute, though. I do have a plan. But that's only in my head, and I won't go into it here. Not while it's so undeveloped, anyway.
But in the mean time, I thought I'd share my "deconversion" story.
I put deconversion in quotes because, though I was raised Christian on paper, it was about a half-step away from a secular upbringing. God was mentioned, so were angels, I think Jesus was at some points, but mostly it wasn't our problem.
My first memory of God was a nightmare I had when I was about five, maybe younger. Memories from that age are always fuzzy and confused, but I remember certain details of this dream pretty clearly. It took place in a black void which somehow had a solid, but invisible, floor. My mom was sadly playing piano, and I approached and asked what was wrong. She told me that God was going to kill me. My mom never lied to me, so this scared me out of my wits. God himself showed up and told me it was true. He looked a lot like George Washington, including the tricorner hat.
He always had that hat. Most people's default image of God is a guy in a white robe with a beard, but mine wears a navy blue tricorner hat.
Anyway.
God told me that I could spend a few moments with my mom, but there would be three chimes. On the third chime, my throat would swell up and I would die. The first chime rang, then the second, then I woke up. Opening my eyes, I heard the third chime. I specifically remember that one coming after I woke up, because that's what scared me so much.
I ran to my parents, I don't remember crying but I probably was, telling them about my nightmare and how the third chime rang after I already woke up. They told me it was probably Ethel, a sweet old lady who lived next door and whose house my bedroom window faced, watching Wheel of Fortune loudly. I did my best to believe that, but even now it seems unlikely. My parents were, presumably, unaware that hallucinations are extremely common in the half-waking state immediately following a nightmare like that. Part of your brain is still pursuing the dream, and it doesn't know how to differentiate. Maybe they did know that and just didn't know how to explain it to a five-year-old.
Apart from that, God didn't really come up in any significant way until the second grade. My dad's mom was (and is) a devout Christian, so I'm sure she talked about it with me at times, but it was certainly never any fire and brimstone or even any guilt talk. It would have been all about God's love.
In second grade, though, I met Danny Olson. As is so easy at that age, we became friends. I liked Danny, I liked going over to his house. We played Contra together, and his mom would enter in the cheat code (up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start) at the beginning for us so we could get infinite lives or whatever it was. Funny how I remember the code but not its effect.
Danny's family always prayed before eating. My family never did, so it felt a little awkward, but I got used to it after the first or second time. One day, Danny showed me this awesome sash he got from a club he was in. It had three crowns sewn in: one bronze, one silver, one gold. The bronze was full of gems, and the silver was half-full, while the gold was empty. He got all this awesome stuff at a club he attended called Sparky's. I don't remember if I asked my parents (or if the Olson parents did) before going, but I went to a Sparky's meeting with Danny and his family on a trial run.
Oh man, it was awesome. Or rad, as I probably would have said at that age. They gave us cookies, and juice, and we played some game I don't really remember today but it seems kind of like wiffle ball in my memory. I just remember it was a blast.
So I convinced my parents to sign my up, and every week I went to Sparky's. This, however, was bullshit. I'd show up, we'd sit in a circle and hold hands in the area where last time we played wiffle ball (or whatever). No wiffle ball tonight, though. We're going to break into teams and play something else!
"Breaking into teams" meant separating the bronze, silver, and gold crown kids. "Something else" meant reading stories from the Bible and being quizzed on them. This... did not seem like what I signed up for. But whatever, it's easy, maybe there'll be wiffle ball next time. And I did get the sash with all the crowns, and they even gave me a gem that first night... so maybe it wasn't so bad.
I have very few specific memories of the rest of my time at Sparky's, because it mostly runs together into a sea of quizzes on parables. Something about a man who build his house on sand. I remember not doing very well on my gem collection, mostly just getting gems for showing up each week.
There was one talk at the beginning of one week where they made a big deal out of accepting Jesus into your heart. I sort of thought everyone had already done that, I didn't realize I had to specifically tell Jesus I was Christian. So sometime that week, while I was in bed, I closed my eyes and thought to myself (or to Jesus, I suppose), "Jesus, I accept you into my heart." And after sitting around for a couple minutes thinking, "Is that it?" I decided that I had to imagine Jesus answering, so I imagined Jesus entering my heart. The next week, I mentioned to someone, probably Danny's mom or dad, that I had accepted Jesus into my heart and he or she told the group leader who made a big deal out of it. I still didn't really get why it was such a big deal.
Eventually I moved up to the silver crown, but I must've quit or Sparky's was over with the school year or something like that because I stopped there. Or maybe my parents told me Sparky's was ending because they wanted to pull me out.
I have no memory of this, but my mom told me how I acted while I was in Sparky's. I'd frequently just launch into God/Jesus-talk, telling people about some of the stuff I heard was in the Bible. Even my grandma was worried about me. I never sensed it at that age, though, and considered myself Christian for quite some time to come.
We moved from California to Arizona while I was in the third grade. I'll pick this up there in my next post.
That's not to say that I have nothing to contribute, though. I do have a plan. But that's only in my head, and I won't go into it here. Not while it's so undeveloped, anyway.
But in the mean time, I thought I'd share my "deconversion" story.
I put deconversion in quotes because, though I was raised Christian on paper, it was about a half-step away from a secular upbringing. God was mentioned, so were angels, I think Jesus was at some points, but mostly it wasn't our problem.
My first memory of God was a nightmare I had when I was about five, maybe younger. Memories from that age are always fuzzy and confused, but I remember certain details of this dream pretty clearly. It took place in a black void which somehow had a solid, but invisible, floor. My mom was sadly playing piano, and I approached and asked what was wrong. She told me that God was going to kill me. My mom never lied to me, so this scared me out of my wits. God himself showed up and told me it was true. He looked a lot like George Washington, including the tricorner hat.
He always had that hat. Most people's default image of God is a guy in a white robe with a beard, but mine wears a navy blue tricorner hat.
Anyway.
God told me that I could spend a few moments with my mom, but there would be three chimes. On the third chime, my throat would swell up and I would die. The first chime rang, then the second, then I woke up. Opening my eyes, I heard the third chime. I specifically remember that one coming after I woke up, because that's what scared me so much.
I ran to my parents, I don't remember crying but I probably was, telling them about my nightmare and how the third chime rang after I already woke up. They told me it was probably Ethel, a sweet old lady who lived next door and whose house my bedroom window faced, watching Wheel of Fortune loudly. I did my best to believe that, but even now it seems unlikely. My parents were, presumably, unaware that hallucinations are extremely common in the half-waking state immediately following a nightmare like that. Part of your brain is still pursuing the dream, and it doesn't know how to differentiate. Maybe they did know that and just didn't know how to explain it to a five-year-old.
Apart from that, God didn't really come up in any significant way until the second grade. My dad's mom was (and is) a devout Christian, so I'm sure she talked about it with me at times, but it was certainly never any fire and brimstone or even any guilt talk. It would have been all about God's love.
In second grade, though, I met Danny Olson. As is so easy at that age, we became friends. I liked Danny, I liked going over to his house. We played Contra together, and his mom would enter in the cheat code (up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start) at the beginning for us so we could get infinite lives or whatever it was. Funny how I remember the code but not its effect.
Danny's family always prayed before eating. My family never did, so it felt a little awkward, but I got used to it after the first or second time. One day, Danny showed me this awesome sash he got from a club he was in. It had three crowns sewn in: one bronze, one silver, one gold. The bronze was full of gems, and the silver was half-full, while the gold was empty. He got all this awesome stuff at a club he attended called Sparky's. I don't remember if I asked my parents (or if the Olson parents did) before going, but I went to a Sparky's meeting with Danny and his family on a trial run.
Oh man, it was awesome. Or rad, as I probably would have said at that age. They gave us cookies, and juice, and we played some game I don't really remember today but it seems kind of like wiffle ball in my memory. I just remember it was a blast.
So I convinced my parents to sign my up, and every week I went to Sparky's. This, however, was bullshit. I'd show up, we'd sit in a circle and hold hands in the area where last time we played wiffle ball (or whatever). No wiffle ball tonight, though. We're going to break into teams and play something else!
"Breaking into teams" meant separating the bronze, silver, and gold crown kids. "Something else" meant reading stories from the Bible and being quizzed on them. This... did not seem like what I signed up for. But whatever, it's easy, maybe there'll be wiffle ball next time. And I did get the sash with all the crowns, and they even gave me a gem that first night... so maybe it wasn't so bad.
I have very few specific memories of the rest of my time at Sparky's, because it mostly runs together into a sea of quizzes on parables. Something about a man who build his house on sand. I remember not doing very well on my gem collection, mostly just getting gems for showing up each week.
There was one talk at the beginning of one week where they made a big deal out of accepting Jesus into your heart. I sort of thought everyone had already done that, I didn't realize I had to specifically tell Jesus I was Christian. So sometime that week, while I was in bed, I closed my eyes and thought to myself (or to Jesus, I suppose), "Jesus, I accept you into my heart." And after sitting around for a couple minutes thinking, "Is that it?" I decided that I had to imagine Jesus answering, so I imagined Jesus entering my heart. The next week, I mentioned to someone, probably Danny's mom or dad, that I had accepted Jesus into my heart and he or she told the group leader who made a big deal out of it. I still didn't really get why it was such a big deal.
Eventually I moved up to the silver crown, but I must've quit or Sparky's was over with the school year or something like that because I stopped there. Or maybe my parents told me Sparky's was ending because they wanted to pull me out.
I have no memory of this, but my mom told me how I acted while I was in Sparky's. I'd frequently just launch into God/Jesus-talk, telling people about some of the stuff I heard was in the Bible. Even my grandma was worried about me. I never sensed it at that age, though, and considered myself Christian for quite some time to come.
We moved from California to Arizona while I was in the third grade. I'll pick this up there in my next post.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Special Pleading
I was listening to some people debate the merits and faults of the Cosmological Argument for God when I noticed another common thread running through many apologetics' favorite arguments.
The Cosmological Argument is the First Cause argument. Essentially:
1) Everything has to have a cause.
2) There must have been a first cause.
3) That first cause, we call God.
Setting aside the fact that, even granting all these premises, you can't then derive any information about that god from this argument, this argument is self-refuting.
Thomas Aquinas phrased this argument a few different ways and called them all different arguments. But, really, they're all just iterations of the Cosmological Argument.
Below, I'm posting a section of the Transcendental Argument for God from CARM.org, but not the entire thing because it's very lengthy.
Their own summary goes like this:
The first half can be summarized as, "Yes, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, it does indeed make a sound." I agree with that. Sounds are not defined by whether or not they are heard, they are defined by sound waves. All our experience shows that a tree falling creates sound waves.
You might feel a bit of a logical hiccup once you get toward the end of this summary, though. There are a number of them, but this particular hiccup becomes more obvious in the expanded version.
Here's where we get to the point.
Many theological arguments are structured as follows:
1) This rule exists, applies to everything, and cannot be broken.
2) Something must have broken this rule, because it's difficult to conceive another way the universe could come to be.
3) It must have been God.
That's called special pleading. God is exempt from whatever rule it is that they put forward, because he's God. Why is it God that's exempt, and not, say, the universe? Which god is the one that's exempt - Ymir? Nox? Yahweh? Brahman? How do we know such an entity thinks marriage is between a man and a woman? Why did it create cancer?
These can all essentially be broken down to, "Who designed the designer?" Once you ask that question, the special pleading is revealed for what it is, and their efforts to arbitrarily assign a sort of "stopping point" to the logical regression comes to a screeching halt.
There's a decent chance my next post will deal more with the Transcendental Argument. I apologize for that. It's complicated, confusing, and very weird. That, in my opinion, is precisely why some people find it so convincing. It's a logical magic trick.
The Cosmological Argument is the First Cause argument. Essentially:
1) Everything has to have a cause.
2) There must have been a first cause.
3) That first cause, we call God.
Setting aside the fact that, even granting all these premises, you can't then derive any information about that god from this argument, this argument is self-refuting.
Thomas Aquinas phrased this argument a few different ways and called them all different arguments. But, really, they're all just iterations of the Cosmological Argument.
Below, I'm posting a section of the Transcendental Argument for God from CARM.org, but not the entire thing because it's very lengthy.
Their own summary goes like this:
Logical absolutes exist. Logical absolutes are conceptual by nature, are not dependent on space, time, physical properties, or human nature. They are not the product of the physical universe (space, time, matter), because if the physical universe were to disappear, logical absolutes would still be true. Logical Absolutes are not the product of human minds, because human minds are different, not absolute. But, since logical absolutes are always true everywhere, and not dependent upon human minds, it must be an absolute transcendent mind that is authoring them. This mind is called God.
The first half can be summarized as, "Yes, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, it does indeed make a sound." I agree with that. Sounds are not defined by whether or not they are heard, they are defined by sound waves. All our experience shows that a tree falling creates sound waves.
You might feel a bit of a logical hiccup once you get toward the end of this summary, though. There are a number of them, but this particular hiccup becomes more obvious in the expanded version.
Number 2, Section C: Something cannot bring itself into existence. In order for something to bring itself into existence, it has to have attributes in order to perform an action. But if it has attributes, then it already has existence. If something does not exist, it has no attributes and can perform no actions. Therefore, something cannot bring itself into existence.
Here's where we get to the point.
Many theological arguments are structured as follows:
1) This rule exists, applies to everything, and cannot be broken.
2) Something must have broken this rule, because it's difficult to conceive another way the universe could come to be.
3) It must have been God.
That's called special pleading. God is exempt from whatever rule it is that they put forward, because he's God. Why is it God that's exempt, and not, say, the universe? Which god is the one that's exempt - Ymir? Nox? Yahweh? Brahman? How do we know such an entity thinks marriage is between a man and a woman? Why did it create cancer?
These can all essentially be broken down to, "Who designed the designer?" Once you ask that question, the special pleading is revealed for what it is, and their efforts to arbitrarily assign a sort of "stopping point" to the logical regression comes to a screeching halt.
There's a decent chance my next post will deal more with the Transcendental Argument. I apologize for that. It's complicated, confusing, and very weird. That, in my opinion, is precisely why some people find it so convincing. It's a logical magic trick.
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