For a long time I always associated Easter with guilt. Although my family would try to stuff me with chocolate, and church would try to tell me it was joyful with antiquated, mournful melodies, it is the feeling of guilt that lingers in my memory. I partially blame it on Aunt Lil.

Aunt Lil wasn’t a real aunt – just a kind lady that used to provide hospitality and a warm fireplace to a lost adolescent. Relatively recently, after two years in psychotherapy, my therapist and I concluded that I have spent my whole life looking for my mother. Aunt Lil was one of the many that I have found en route.

For all sorts of reasons that I won’t bore you with now, my mother was ‘absent’ for a lot of my formative years. After my mother died when I was a teenager, my father and I often popped round to Aunt Lil’s – a kind lady from the local Methodist church who would sometimes cook a meal for us and offer cheese and biscuits when my father came out of the pub. She was a widow and seemed to welcome the company, and we appreciated her care. I spent a lot of time round Aunt Lil’s chatting and drinking tea, listening to how much she missed her husband, and sharing my own teenage angst.

Although Aunt Lil and I shared a sense of mischief, Easter Sunday was always very serious. When we first knew her, she wouldn’t go to the Easter morning communion service. Although she would take communion throughout the year, she wouldn’t on Easter Sunday. She told us she wasn’t good enough. Jesus had died for her. Easter was special. She wasn’t good enough for Jesus, especially on the weekend that we celebrated his death, so she couldn’t bring herself to eat his flesh and drink his blood.

When the minister got to hear of it, he apparently gave her a good Christian talking to. I wasn’t there, but having been around churches for most of the early and middle part of my life, I can imagine what was said. Communion is not for people who feel good enough, but for those who are sorry. We can never be good enough for god, that is why he sent his son as a sacrifice (to himself). We shouldn’t hold back from god, but draw close to him.

That apparently did the trick, and Aunt Lil started to go to communion on Easter Sunday morning. But, there was a catch. In order to demonstrate how sorry she was that she had caused the humiliating and painful execution of god’s son by the heinousness of her sin, she would fast – go without food and drink (other than water) – between teatime on Saturday until teatime on Easter Sunday. It would somehow demonstrate to an all-knowing god how really, really, really sorry she was, and how seriously she was taking the whole thing. After church on Easter Sunday morning, I could have a cup of tea round Aunt Lil’s, but she couldn’t. She felt guilty about Easter, and I couldn’t avoid seeing it.

I don’t know why I was enslaved for so long to a story of a deity that has to cause his own son to be tortured to death in order to appease himself, and that somehow this appeasement worked for all time for the whole world for those who apparently chose to believe in him (but who somehow had also been mysteriously pre-ordained to do so). However, now that I am not, I am gladly able to shed the guilt for my part in the death of a first century religious leader in a country a long way from where I was born.

Do I feel guilt about things I have done wrong? Sure. Do I feel regret and pain for some of the big things I have done wrong years ago? Yes, I do. But interestingly, I would still feel that pain and regret, whether or not I believed that Jesus died for my sins and had forgiven me.

Now that I am free from a barbaric myth about an expiatory execution that is supposed to both induce guilt and somehow free me from it, and now I know that life is not a dress-rehearsal, but the real thing, guilt is a real emotion that I have to deal with. Let me share some questions that I occasionally find myself asking.

1. Is this guilt legitimate or illegitimate? Do I really need to feel guilty about this? So, and so is trying to make me feel guilty and accusing me of upsetting them, but I have done nothing wrong, what I said was true and I said it in an appropriate way. They have chosen to take it badly, but that is not my responsibility. I spoke authentically about my feelings in an appropriate way. I don’t need to accept the guilt they are trying to load onto me.
2. Is this guilt proportionate disproportionate? Ok, going five miles an hour over the speed limit was bad, but I wasn’t drunk or on drugs or driving without due care and attention, so I was wrong here, but I didn’t behave extremely badly.
3. Is this guilt boundaried or unlimited? There is a time to feel guilty, and a time to stop. I have choices about whether I continue to wallow in unproductive guilt, or whether I can deal with the paralysis and move on. If unforgiveness is choosing to hold something against someone, and forgiveness is choosing not to go on holding something against someone, I have real choices about whether or not I forgive myself. I can choose to put a boundary on my guilt by consciously choosing to forgive myself (whether or not others have forgiven me). God may demand perfection, but I know I am living with a fallible human being.
4. Is this guilt productive or wasted? What have I learned from my failings? What steps have I put in place to help me avoid messing up again? How will this experience of failure make my life better?

Easter never used to be a particularly good time for me, but I can now honestly say that I wasn’t there and I didn’t do it. It’s great to be free from all that!

- AThinkingMan

The book is divided into four sections: his life as a believer; his loss of faith; more detailed reasons for rejecting Christianity; his present work for the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF).

His faith didn’t disappear overnight, and I could certainly identify with the agony of the period where he felt so hypocritical.  On the outside everything was OK and everybody was looking to him for Christian leadership and teaching, but on the inside the certainty of his faith was shifting dramatically. And once the faith had really disappeared, his experience certainly shed light on my own clinging to a pretence for so long. Not only was I clinging to a culture and people that I had known for most of my adult life, but I was also clinging to a public reputation that I had established.  In our cases, faith wasn’t just a private matter, but it also came with a history, a community, and an important identity.  The faith was private, but the ‘ baggage’ was public and, in some ways, was more ‘psychologically sticky’.

Once he had decided to ‘come out’ as an atheist and resign his Christian employment, he sent out over 50 letters to people just to inform them of the change.  It was both amusing and painful to see some of the replies he received.  Although some people have remained good friends, many tried to cope with the rejection of his faith (and of their faith) by saying the following kinds of things.  You must be rejecting your faith because: you dislike authority; or, you want to live a sinful life; or, you like stiring up trouble; or, you are arrogant; or, you have been badly hurt by Christians; or, you are disappointed that your prayers haven’t been answered; or, you are an angry person; or, you have been seduced by scientists; or, you don’t know the meaning of love; or, you never were a real Christian in the first place.

Whatever the truth, or falsehood of those statements, Barker makes the telling point that they are all addressed at attacking the person, and not one of them seriously tries to understand or get to grips with the reasons he gave for no longer believing in the bible or the god of the bible.  Barker lost his faith when he started to read and question what he had been given.  But nobody in his associates were willing to engage in a debate with him about historical accuracy, textual criticism. or contradictions.  To use his supposedly god-given brain meant that he was evil.  I certainly have shared the same sense of disappointment and frustration at the unwillingness of believers to engage in a debate using reason and fact to consider claims of truth.

At this point, the book really started to take off for me.  Barker spends some considerable time explaining in detail why he is an atheist.  I found it refreshing to be reminded of familiar things and compelling to be taken in detail into areas that I hadn’t yet faced up to myself.

Examples of the familiar:

• Numbers don’t mean anything by themselves.  Claiming that Christianity must be true because so many people believe it is pointless.  Millions of people may be wrong (and have been in the past).  And if numbers validates truth, what about the millions of people who believe in religions that are opposed to Christianity (Islam and Judaism, for example).
• Personal experience doesn’t prove anything.  It is well documented that we create meaning by interpreting personal experiences, but those interpretations can be wrong, and we can have experiences caused by a whole range of things.  Saying: “It must be true because I have experienced it!” can easily by countered by: “I have had an experience that proves that it isn’t true!”

As a believer I often used the books of Josh McDowell to argue the case for Christianity, especially on the historicity of Jesus, and on the proofs of the Resurrection.  Barker carefully drives a coach and horses through this kind of material.  What I found particularly sad is that many liberal Christians would also agree with Barker about the intellectual inadequacy of the evangelical case.  The material has been around for years, but I, and many others, were far too willing to accept second-hand knowledge and not look at the foundation for it.

Examples of material that I personally found compelling, new, and challenging:

• There is no external historical confirmation for the New Testament stories, and the stories themselves are contradictory.  Barker takes us through the references to Jesus in the later secular historians and shows the paucity of the evidence.  The reference to Jesus in Josephus (so loved by evangelicals) magically appears in versions of Josephus two centuries after Josephus is supposed to have written it.  The historical Jesus is far more a shadowy figure than evangelicals would have us believe.
• Barker also shows that the resurrection narratives are contradictory and inconsistent.  He frequently challenges believers to write a simple narrative of the resurrection, using every simple detail from the New Testament, without omitting a single detail.

Both atheists and believers could learn from this book.  Sadly, I know that very few of the latter will dare to read it.  It deserves a wide readership amongst believers, not least because of Barker’s authority.  He knew Christianity form the inside.  He knows the bible inside out and can quote chapter and verse.  Being a charismatic he knew about religious experience in a big way.  Yet, despite that knowledge, the edifice started to crumble when he began to think outside the box of his culture and do the kind of thinking that has helped civilization move forward for millions of years.

- AThinkingMan

There are three things about Ehrman’s writing that help me sit up and listen to what he is saying.

First, he is world renowned scholar in his field.  He has been teaching the bible at university level for years and knows the book and its documents and the scholarship associated with it inside out.

Secondly, he is a very able communicator.  The substance of the Misquoting Jesus is the scholarship surrounding the New Testament documents – a very technical subject.  Despite this, he wrote a very readable book for the non-expert.  In God’s Problem he looks at the subject of suffering and examines how, for him, the answers as to why we suffer provided in the bible seriously fail to convince him that an omnipotent and loving god exists.He moves with ease and grace through the theology and philosophy of the Old and New Testaments, all the time reminding us that despite the words, suffering is a very human problem.  The modern day examples of suffering he discusses are personal and real, and cry out for answers.  We may be able to detach ourselves from the suffering of Old Testament nations, but, as Ehrman reminds us, the obscenity of the Holocaust is closer to home, as is the suffering of our family members and neighbours.

Thirdly, he writes as someone who has had inside knowledge, not only of the bible, but of Christian apologetics.  He knows the kind of things that Christians say because for years, he was one himself.  Before gaining a PhD from Princeton, he had studied at the fundamentalist Moody Bible Institute, the Evangelical Wheaton College and was a church minister.  He doesn’t write from an assumed knowledge of what the church is saying – he knows, and he knows too that for him the answers don’t make sense when critically examined.  And for Ehrman that critical examination is all the more compelling because it is based both on strong academic argument and pastoral experience.

In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the bible to provide answers – or sometimes produce their own glib answers reflecting what they want the bible to say.  The bible, however, does not have one answer but many - and these often contradict one another.  The prophets and many of the history books tell us clearly that suffering is a punishment for sin.  Some of the Wisdom literature tells us either that suffering is a test to be endured, or that suffering is beyond comprehension and has to be accepted.  All apocalyptic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament tell us that god will eventually make right all that is wrong with the world.  Other parts tell us that we suffer because of other sinful human beings.  Other parts tell us that god causes suffering because it is in some way redemptive.  Ehrman establishes the biblical basis for each one of these arguments and then examines the answer in the light of logic and experience.

Despite the potentially bleak subject, and despite what I thought would have been my over-familiarity with the biblical text (I read, studied, and taught the bible for over thirty years), I found this a surprisingly stimulating book.  This, in part, is due to Ehrman’s light but authoritative style and his ability both to present complex issues simply and to make potentially ‘dry stuff’ live.  However, I found it refreshing to read in at least two other ways.

First, he opened windows on the familiar biblical text, enabling me to see something different for the first time.  At times we are invited to soar over the mountains with the eagles as he draws his subject out of large parts of the bible.  We get the global picture – the woods as well as the trees.  That enabled me to have a new context for understanding particular books.  But then he deftly swoops down to some detail and provides new insights into over-familiar passages.  I especially enjoyed his commentary on the prophets, and in particular his exegesis of some of the classic suffering servant sections of Isaiah.

Secondly, he asks the real, awkward questions, that I was unwilling to seriously face when I was a Christian.  And because he asks them with such compassion and such compelling evidence from experience, it is hard for them to go away or to be dealt with by less than adequate theology and philosophy.  Here is just a sample of some of them:

• If suffering is a punishment by god for sin (a major theme of much of the bible), why are some notoriously evil people allowed to live long and healthy lives in luxury while innocent babies are killed in car crashes or are born with birth defects?  Does everyone killed in flooding or earthquakes merit such pain and devastation?
• Why does there have to be suffering because of sin?  Why can’t god do what you or I might choose to do?  If my child is disobedient I may express disapproval, but there doesn’t have to be a death (either of the child, or a substitute – the pet cat?)
• If suffering is caused by the sinful actions of others, and if god is all powerful and loving, why doesn’t s(he) intervene more often to stop it.  Clearly s(he) does at times in the bible.  Why not more often?  Why allow people to have free-will sometimes and not others?
• If suffering is redemptive in some way, what has that got to do with the eighty year old woman who was raped and strangled?
• Why does god cause suffering so that s(he) might be glorified?  Where is the compassion and the free-will in that?

As Epicurus asked two and a half thousand years ago:

Is god willing to prevent evil, but not able?  Then he is impotent.

Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?  Then why is there evil?

In some ways this is a very personal book.  Ehrman describes the problem of suffering and the inadequacy of the biblical answers as the biggest factor in his own loss of faith.  He was a very reluctant de-convert.  Whether or not you agree with Ehrman’s conclusions, he presents a compelling case that the Christian answers do not do justice to the weight and range of human suffering and to the enormity of the awkward questions.

- AThinkingMan

Should he buy it, or shouldn’t he? If he didn’t decide soon, it would be too late. He had the money. Some had been left by his father; the rest had been painfully saved over the past ten years. But now, at the moment of decision, he seemed paralysed, unable to jump. It was such an important decision, such a lot of money, and he urgently needed a message from the gods. His wife had sent him to Delphi because her sister had been helped. Rumour and family superstition or experience had combined to help Spiros half believe that the Delphic Oracle would make the divine will known.

And behind all this Spiros was driven by factors that were working at a less conscious level. Of course, he missed his father dreadfully, and at night, or alone in the harbour, suppressed questions surfaced. Was there life beyond the grave? Would he be good enough to please the gods? Would he ever see his father again? Were the gods really in control? Did the gods really exist?

Perhaps the visit to the temple of Apollo would count for something. It might even provide a few answers.

Spiros felt his shyness acutely as he approached the temple. He tried to look serious and avoided eye contact with the others as he stood uneasily in the queue and waited for his turn to come. Perhaps he should have listened to his wife after all and worn the other clothes. The place seemed so strange and the glum faces of the other enquirers depressed him even more. He comforted himself with the fact that the embarrassment of leaving now and of pushing past the others to get out would be greater than the threat of staying. The ease of home was now as far away as the boat of his dreams.

Spiros knew that they would want his money (religious people usually did), but even so, the price that he had to pay for the sacrificial lamb still came as rather a shock. As he handed over the precious coins with poise and feigned devotion, he allowed himself to chuckle inwardly as he remembered the joke about the sinking ship. As it was going down in one of the storms off Crete, a desperate sailor had screamed out: “Somebody do something religious. We are about to die!” And at that point another sailor picked up a plate and started taking a collection. Spiros now felt the bitterness of the boat more keenly than ever.

As the lamb was routinely disembowelled, Spiros noticed the priest’s indifference to the blood and the gore. The religious man had seen it all before many, many times. Spiros wasn’t normally squeamish, but this spectacle offended his sensibilities and made him want to vomit. He wouldn’t be coming back in a hurry to such an horrific scene.

After briefly inspecting the carcass, the priest assured him that the omens were good. But Spiros had no intention of hanging around to ask questions, and nobody seemed willing to tell him more. After all, the man had spoken, so who was Spiros to challenge the initiated?

A man in strange clothes and a hard face took more money and then put Spiros’ request on to a lead tablet. Again, there was more ceremony that Spiros didn’t understand before he was eventually ushered into the inner temple and mystery. At last! The route to possible understanding had been long, embarrassing, and costly (not least for the dead lamb).

A few yards in front of him a priestess in ritual garments was sitting on a stool near a chasm in the rock. She ignored his presence, and this apparent aloofness made Spiros feel both angry and afraid. Was she mad? It certainly looked as if she was out of control. He remembered that his sister-in-law has said something about a woman fainting. The fumes from the chasm were obviously important to the ceremony. The priestess inhaled them eagerly and mumbled incomprehensibly. So this was it, thought Spiros, the heart of the religious experience.

He strained forward to catch her words. It was no good. He would never remember what she was saying and it made no clear sense anyway. Religious mumbo-jumbo? A foreign language? How was he to know?

Spiros could feel his contempt rising, although he was afraid to show his anger in the apparent presence of Apollo. How could he make sense of all this? As he looked around seeking scraps of information, and an escape, he noticed a scribe writing frantically. Perhaps the scribe knew the language. A few more scribbles and contortions of the face (obviously reflecting inspiration) and then the man looked at Spiros (or rather through him) and spoke: “One of the signs of the growing of truth is the clouds in the heavens. Look to the winds for the direction of life and the shifting of treasure.”

Years later a learned friend of his would tell Spiros that he had been taken in by the subconscious effects of the poetry. At the time, Spiros had just been thrilled to hear something in his own language, even if it did sound rather vague and archaic. For more money it was copied out again for him and Spiros left with his answer. At least somebody had communicated what Apollo wanted. Spiros felt that his need had been met.

It was obvious to Spiros that Apollo was telling him to buy the boat. He would make a fortune by using the wind to fill its sails.

Three-and-a-half years later, as he started a life sentence for debt, Spiros began to wonder if he had misunderstood what Apollo had said. The religious man (who, incidentally, had bought the boat that had belonged to the prisoner at a knock-down price) was convinced that Spiros had got into debt, not because Apollo was wrong, but because Spiros must have been a bad man. At least now Spiros would have more time to contemplate both what happened at Delphi, and his decision.

- AThinkingMan

In 1992, the Anglican church finally agreed to ordain women but allowed those who disagreed and who wished to teach against this to keep their jobs. In 2005, the church agreed that women could, in theory, become bishops and finally break through one glass ceiling so firmly trodden on by men. However, in a recent report, the church is still arguing that the toleration of dissent should still be encouraged. As Hobson argues:

Imagine if Parliament had voted for female suffrage, but also allowed conservatives who disagreed with the development to form a parallel parliament untainted by women’s votes.

Either it is right to remove the cultural abuse of women by denying them an equal voice and opportunities, or it is not. If it is right to do so, why continue to fudge the issue and promote abuse and the teaching of abuse?

I find myself angry about this failure to reform for at least three reasons. First, as a humanist it grieves me that women in the church are clearly being disenfranchised in some way. Although I have never been an Anglican, when I was a Christian and in church leadership, I remember thinking how my wife (who is much more gifted in lots of ways than I am) and my talented daughter would never be allowed to have the freedom to use their teaching and leadership abilities in the way that I was. Women and the church are suffering because of their underdevelopment.

Secondly, as one who likes to point out gaps between theory and practice, shouldn’t an organisation concerned with morality and compassion to people be concerned about the immorality of the injustice being done to its women? This is an organisation that ought to be at the forefront of those who speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves. It is failing spectacularly.

Thirdly, it’s about the bible. Regular readers of this blog will know that I don’t particularly have much time for the fallilbly human injunctions from ancient civilizations these days. However, people inside the church claim to take these seriously. I am angry because if they claim to take the bible seriously, why aren’t they doing the serious exegesis of the text and showing that far from keeping women in their place (as some mistakenly argue) the bible actually supports the case for female equality.

Although much male imagery for god exists in the bible, god is also described as a mother (Isaiah 49:13-15; 66:13), a pregnant woman (Isaiah 42:14), a midwife (Psalm 22:9). It is difficult to see how the so-called ’silence’ texts which seem to prohibit women teaching and making spiritual judgements affecting men are valid when other passages are taken into account. Joel had predicted that his sons and daughters would prophesy (Joel 2:28-29), and clearly female prophets existed (Exodus 15:20; Judges 4:4; 2 Kings 22:14; Nehemiah 6:14; Isaiah 8:3; Luke 2:36; Acts 21:9). There was also a female judge (Judges 4:4), and Junia an apostle (Romans 16:7). Priscilla was involved in teaching Apollos (Acts 18:26). 1 Corinthians 14:34 seems to be in conflict with verse 29 in the same chapter, where the whole church (not just the men) is called on to evaluate the prophets, and with 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 where Paul is concerned with uncovered female heads during prophecy, not women prophets. In 1 Corinthians 14 the issue is more likely about chattering and interruption than with women teaching. In 2 Timothy 2:2 the word ‘men’ should be translated as ‘people’.

According to the biblical narrative which these people claim to believe and take as their rule book, god chose women to be the first witnesses to the resurrection and gave his son to break down barriers between Jew and Gentile, slave and free, men and women.

- AThinkingMan

• Women as Catholic Priests: The Time for Change is Now

As a school pupil I had to endure it every day – the compulsory hymn and routine prayers. Just imagine it, 600 teenage boys with their mind focused on one thing (and believe me, it wasn’t god or their Latin homework), growling the hymn as quietly and as nonchalantly as possible (you could get punished for not singing), then standing and trying to provoke other people to laugh during the troubled stillness of the prayers being monotonously intoned by the headteacher. It was a ‘really meaningful’ religious act.

The Roman Catholics were excused, of course. As I remember it, we didn’t persecute them or try to burn them in the school yard at break-times. They were held in awe for having the mysterious secret that enabled them to avoid the daily assembly torture as well as escape the compulsory Religious Education lessons where we quizzed the aging teachers about sex (again, and again, and again, and again).

By the time I became a teacher the hymns had gone, but in the schools I worked in, there had to be an inspiring little homily, usually on a religious theme, and there were still prayers. Although at the time I was a Christian, even I could see the pointlessness of it.

The staff would be betting on how often the headteacher would repeat the same story. When he was often called away at the last minute, the deputy headteacher, knowing I was ‘one of them’, would often grab me with a look of horror as he was about to walk on the stage and say: “You couldn’t just go and do something religious could you?” I was happy to oblige, 1) because helping out the senior management wouldn’t harm my career, and 2) because I worked in church youth groups in my spare time I had a fund of ready made bible stories I could quickly adapt. Staff colleagues seemed to be mystified by the fact that I could pray in public without reading anything from a book, but the teenagers did what all teenagers do during prayers in school – they tried to provoke other people to laugh during the troubled stillness. I could see that it was really far from being a meaningful religious act.

Religious communities have their own schools outside of the state system and have been debating the precise purpose of those schools. For example, in 2001 the Church of England issued a report, “The way ahead: Church of England schools in the new millennium,” which marked a radical shift in its position. The report called, in effect, for a subordination of the service to the nurture function. C of E schools, it announced, should be more “distinctively Christian,” with a mission to “nourish those of the faith; encourage those of other faiths; challenge those who have no faith… religious education and collective worship should be seen as an integrated experience, with collective worship acting as an expression of what is taught in many RE lessons.”

Despite what is happening in the religious schools, the state sector has never seen its role as being overtly evangelical. However, there is an understandable argument that the function of schools is to produce educated, model citizens, and there seems to be this lingering view amongst some in the establishment that one of the best ways of doing this is to give them a forced daily dose of exposure to Christian ritual. (Perhaps with Anglican Bishops still in the House of Lords, and the monarch still as head of the Church, that is not surprising.) Like cod liver oil, a forced daily dose of exposure to Christian ritual may be revolting to take, but it does you good.

It is also worth remembering that this belief in the daily dosage in schools is taking place against a background of predictions that the Church of England, at least, is facing a serious crisis about its survival. The authors of the annual book of church statistics Religious Trends which is produced by Christian statisticians argued that the fall in attendance is so precipitous, the Church will soon become financially unsustainable. As congregations age and die, there will be no money from collection plates to support the Church’s infrastructure and keep on paying the pensions of retired vicars and bishops.

The really good news is that some people are beginning to question whether forcing children to endure exposure to religion is against their human rights. As a recent e-bulletin from the British Humanist Association points out:

A report from Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights (13 May, 2008 ) calls for any child of ‘sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding’ to be given the right to withdraw from compulsory religious worship in schools. Currently, only sixth form students have the right to withdraw themselves, and other children can only be withdrawn at the request of their parents, but the Human Rights Committee have said that this violates children’s rights to freedom of belief and conscience. Writing in support of the Committee’s report to Minister for Schools and Learners, Jim Knight MP, the BHA said, ‘We agree with the JCHR that the law is clearly inconsistent with the European Convention on Human Rights and that children of ‘sufficient maturity, intelligence and understanding’ should be permitted to withdraw themselves from prayer and other worship.’

If there has to be compulsion for school assemblies, god has to go. As Andrew Copson, BHA Director of Education and Public Affairs, commented:

‘The best situation would be the replacement of the law requiring religious worship with a law requiring inclusive assemblies that would be suitable for all children. For as long as the current law remains, however, children must be allowed to decide for themselves whether they wish to participate. To compel them to pray, or worship in other ways, is a clear interference with their right to freedom of belief – one of the most important rights that we enjoy.’

And of course, if I were god, I would want to stop being forced into schools. I would gain no pleasure in gaining worship by compulsion, whether it be from torture or the threat of a school detention. If I were god, I could read hearts and could recognize a sham when I saw one.

- AThinkingMan

“If you have any problem coping in any way, there is a quick and obvious fix. It is free. All you have to do, is just take it. Let it rule your life and you will be free. Compulsive thoughts? No problem, just pray. Depression? No problem, just fast and pray. Addictions? No problem, just learn a couple of New Testament letters off by heart. All the supernatural power outside the world is waiting for you. All you have to do is access it in this simple way. Of course, in former times we might have told you to flagellate yourself, but you don’t need to do that these days. We have moved on. And we do have the answer.”

There is a very interesting post by Lorena – Addiction Recovery: Can It Be Supernatural? – where she describes her contact with a Texan pastor who condemned her contact with a psychological counsellor for depression and recommended a behaviour modification program of prayer, fasting, and memorizing large chunks of the bible instead. Lorena explains her anger at this suggestion, and develops her reasons. So much of her experience and reasoning resonated with my own. It echoed my own anger at a religious faith which occasionally seems so blind to what it is encouraging people to believe and do.

Being a former evangelical church leader, and now a humanist and practising therapist, I think I can write about both of the worlds that Lorena describes with some insider knowledge. However, let me say at the beginning, in discussing the inadequacies of faith and religious ritual as a means of bringing about deep, lasting change in people, I don’t want to imply that therapy is necessarily THE answer either. It won’t solve all things for all people. However, in contrast to religious faith, many talking therapies have a rationale behind them that doesn’t involve talking to imaginary friends, and the one I am involved in (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) has a substantial basis in empirical research.

I am angry at the way some Christians treat all the psychological learning of the past 100 years with such suspicion and contempt and offer up something so illogical in its place. If you read and learn you are delving into the dark arts that will destroy you. For some, going to a secular counsellor is like making a pact with the devil. You might get some benefit, but your risk losing your soul. It is far better to go to biblical counsellors where they will tell you what the bible says about your problem (if you have been going to church for years, you probably know that anyway) – but at least you will be safe. And at least you will know THE answer, even if it ultimately proves worthless.

There are at least five reasons for my contempt for simple religious answers, and for the rejection of a more reasoned and empirically based approach to helping people help themselves move forward.

First, Christians are often inconsistent. Just as they reject parts of the bible they don’t like and only apply the parts that they do, so too they are happy to use learning and knowledge when it suits them, but not when they fear it might challenge what they believe. So, if you are a Christian executive, you will happily trust the modern knowledge that developed the aeroplane and allow yourself to be flown to the conference; and you will happily use what you learned about communication theory to maximize the impact of your presentation; but seeing a psychological therapist in order to help you explore your long-standing depression or your relationship problems could well be regarded as dangerous.

Secondly, religious people often present solutions that are simplistic. All you have to do is select any one, or any combination of the following: pray, pray, pray more, pray again, pray with faith, pray with persistence, pray without sinning, pray and believe that when nothing happens god knows best, pray, fast and pray, read the bible, learn the bible, pray, be holy, pray, give your money away, get baptised in the Spirit, pray, wear culturally strange clothing, pray some more etc.. Of course, many, many Christians and ex-Christians will tell you that they have been doing these things for years, and yet still have not found a way of adequately dealing with what is troubling them. Even if something goes away in the short-term, it doesn’t seem to last.

And such solutions almost seem insulting – insulting to the 67 year old woman who has prayed all her life and is still traumatized by the sexual abuse at the hands of her father over 60 years ago, insulting to the successful graduate business woman in her forties who is trying to understand why she destroys every close relationship that she engages in and has been told by her pastor it is sinful and has nothing to do with the horrendous childhood she experienced, insulting to the Christian research scientist who has been told that he must pray more and that he is sinfully lazy because for the past 30 year he has had to battle to get out of bed every morning and fight serious depression in order to go to work where he is highly respected and where he often stays late into the evening.

Thirdly, even when there is temporary change or improvement, Christians are sometimes unwilling to accept that there is a perfectly logical explanation for any change without the need to recourse to imaginary friends. As Lorena cogently argues, getting people to do religious things provides a temporary distraction and behaviour modification program that may result in short-term change. Talking of supernatural aid is only one way of interpreting the data. More straight-forward and rational explanations exist.

Next, whenever the simplistic solutions fail, they generate a guilt and a further sense of inadequacy. “Ok, I prayed, but perhaps I didn’t pray enough … I fasted, but I knew I shouldn’t have eaten that chocolate bar … Perhaps I should wear a hat in church … I knew that my conversion wasn’t real … ” Sometimes they encourage people to move from one destructive dependency to another. Addiction to drugs is replaced by addiction to religion.

And finally, any solution which encourages dependency on supernatural aid and looking to an imaginary friend discourages responsibility. And without responsibility people become infantalized and believe that they are powerless (and of course, they can always blame god).

Let me leave you with the wise words of Irvin Yalom, Psychotherapist, and Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Stanford:

• Only I can change the world I have created.
• There is no danger in change.
• To get what I really want, I must change.
• I have the power to change.

Many therapists are working with people to help them realize and achieve the above.

- A Thinking Man

Overeaters Victorious was founded by 248-pound Neva Coyle from Minnesota, who had failed at every commercial diet program she tried. She turned to the Bible and lost 100 pounds. The ingredients provided by faith are motivation, and power to do the impossible.

Faith can provide a positive and a negative motivation. First, there can be the positive desire to please a deity. Programs such as Praise Aerobics, or Praise Moves (the Christian alternative to Yoga) can tap into this motivation in two ways. On a surface level, you can participate in worship as you move to the worship tape that is played as you exercise. On a deeper level you can please ‘the Master’ by caring for your body (the body that he made and gave you as a gift) for him. And subliminally, of course, you are making yourself beautiful for him (Roman Catholic nuns don’t have the monopoly of being married to Jesus).

This aspect of motivation reminds me that the religious diet industry is, of course, aimed at women, not men. We all know that there are no such things as fat Christian men. But if there were, not all of them who might want to shed the odd pound or 20, would find it easy to identify with the deeper, positive (and possibly subliminally sexual) motivation described above.

The second aspect of motivation that faith can provide is guilt. I know, from personal experience, that many over-weight people feel plenty of guilt anyway – guilt about how they think they look and how others see them, guilt about what is happening long-term inside their bodies and how they are shortening their lives, and guilt about their failure to maintain weight-loss, despite momentous efforts over a few inspiring weeks. Faith can just increase that guilt immensely by making size a sin.

Titles such as The Weigh Down Diet, and Free To Be Thin suggest that your spiritual life is lacking in some way if you are fat, that your spiritual development is being ‘held back’. C. S. Lovett’s Help Lord—The Devil Wants Me Fat! was much more direct. The battle is not against flesh and blood (and fat!) but against principalities and powers and Satan himself. If your girth grows you are giving into Satan, and no self-respecting Christian wants to be seen to be doing that. If you are fat you are not a proper Christian and you should feel guilty about that, guilty that you are defiling your body which is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Too much size joins the ranks of pre-marital sex, adultery, dishonesty, alcoholism, drug addiction, and theft. You are a failed dieter and a blatant and obvious sinner.

In addition to providing motivation, faith is also meant to give you access to the secret power, the divine Spirit to enable you to resist temptation. You can pray for strength. There are even books of diet prayers that you can buy especially for the purpose.

I would just love someone to do some long-term studies evaluating the long-term weight loss in secular and faith based programs. Perhaps it has already been done. There is certainly a Ph.D. waiting to be written if not. I suspect that both types of program would show little difference between them, and both would result in little (if any) long-term loss and both may result in weight gain. The fear of god’s disapproval may, for a time, provide extra motivation in resisting deep-fried chocolate bars, and therefore create the illusion that you are receiving divine aid. However, I doubt that it would last.

One reason for my own loss of faith (see Coming Out) was my growing conviction that my faith did not provide any convincing ability to produce deep, long-term change. Christian dieters are encouraged to pray about their weight loss, but as others have argued, if prayer really works, why doesn’t god heal amputees? (See also They Always Win.)

There are several things wrong with this industry. As I have already suggested, it tends to lay the burden on women and ignore men, it is scientifically suspect and likely to lead to weight gain in the long-term, and it increases the layers of guilt that the fat already have which ultimately harms self-esteem. One of the more interesting objection to it comes from R. Marie Griffith (Professor of Religion at Princeton University and author of such books as God’s Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission, and Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit). In an article in The Christian Century Foundation she writes:

What marks the more recent literature as distinctive is not its concern with corporeal thinness and good health per se but the apparent willingness of authors to accept, ardently and without flinching, the somatic standards of the wider culture and convert them into divine decree. “Think of your ‘promised land’ as a thin body,” writes one author. Another insists that God wants us aware that “sloppy fat, hanging all over the place (or even well girdled), is not a good Christian witness and is not healthy.” Here and elsewhere, diet writers display rather too little critical reflection on the profaner sources of these assumptions, such as the modern commodified images of seduction that make an idol out of hungry-looking, sexualized beauty.

There is an irony here that I find pleasingly satisfying. Just as Christmas (the season that results in tonnes of excess fat and produces the annual diet bonanza) was originally a pagan festival that the church kidnapped and used for its own benefit, so too the diet industry which has a large part of its origins in sexual seduction, is now being adapted and used for god’s service.

Before I let you go (for a coffee and doughnut) there is one program that is SO good (it really, really is) it deserves a special mention. It is the Saint Margaret of Cortona Weight Loss Package provided by Cukierski Family Sacramentals. The fat person is reminded of The (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913, VXIII, p. 293 which says:

One of the most remarkable effects of sacramentals is the virtue to drive away evil spirits whose mysterious and baleful operations affect sometimes the physical activity of man. To combat this occult power the Church has recourse to exorcism, and sacramentals.

If you are seeking to lose weight (presumably after having given in to the evil spirits mentioned above – and I don’t think he’s talking about gin here), the site author assures you:

St. Margaret WILL intercede for you and I’m here to help give you earthly support. I pray I can keep you motivated with my journal. In addition, we have a whole group of prayer warriors who will be praying for you, too!

After having helpfully reminded us that our bodies will be raised up on the last day and that we don’t want god having a hard time lifting ours, the author goes on to explain:

Why St. Margaret of Cortona? Because she is the PATRON SAINT AGAINST TEMPTATION! We wouldn’t be needing this package if we had avoided the temptation to “overeat” (I call it the over active fork syndrome!) St. Margaret can help us AVOID the temptation if only we call upon her!

If we are able to make a donation of only $29.99 (perhaps a donation rather than a charge as a way for the site author of avoiding paying tax) we will receive the following to help us in our dieting:

• St Margaret of Cortona Chaplet Beads
• St Margaret of Cortona Prayer Cloth
• A Bottle of Holy Relic Oil – touched to the first class relics of St. Philomena, St. Lucy, St. Anthony, St. Colette, St. Therese the Little Flower, St. Dominic Savio, Holy House of Loreto, St. Pio, St. Therese of Avila, St.Agatha, St. Barbara, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Margaret, St Dorothy & St. Catherine!
• A Special Prayer Card
• A Special Crucifix imported from Italy
• A Holy Oil History Sheet
• A Certificate of Holy Oil Authenticity
• A Bottle of Water with Exorcism Blessing
• A Package of Blessed Salt

I somehow don’t think that I will be ordering a St Margaret of Cortona package to help me battle my bulges. However, I do have a few female friends with birthdays coming up. I wonder …

- AThinkingMan 

This myth is being resurrected again by people ranging from academics trying to counter some of the influence of the recent spate of books challenging faith, to extremists wanting atheists banned from American schools by using the ruling that religion and state must be kept separate.

It was the good Catholic G.K.Chesterton who sought to tease atheists by saying ‘there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it’. Atheists would reject his categories and go on to argue that there are at least three kinds of people; the two that Chesterton mentioned and a third category who know an unhelpful and untrue dogma when they see it and are quite capable of rejecting it.

Atheism, of course, is not another religion. Although non-theistic religions such as Buddhism and Confucianism exist, most religions, are based on a belief in gods or a god, and atheists reject such a notion. Let me quote A.C.Grayling who makes the point so elegantly:

By definition a religion is something centred on belief in the existence of supernatural agencies or entities in the universe; and not merely their existence, but their interest in human beings on the planet; and not merely their interest, but their particularly detailed interest in what humans wear, what they eat, when they eat it, what they read or see, what they treat as clean or unclean, who they have sex with and how and when; and so for a multitude of other things, like making women invisible beneath enveloping clothing, or strapping little boxes to their foreheads, or iterating formulae by rote five time a day, and so endlessly forth; with threats of punishment for getting any of it wrong. But naturalism (atheism) does not premise such belief. (P.29 in Grayling, A.C., (2007) Against All Gods. London: Oberon Books.)

Not only are there no supernatural beings in atheism, there are a whole load of other things that aren’t there either. All religions, including non-theist ones have clearly defined sets of beliefs, rituals, and practices. However, in atheism there are: no common beliefs, no laws or regulations, no churches or rituals, no unified concept of spirituality, no scriptures, no priesthood, no founders, no holidays, no identifying clothing (or underwear), no concept of the afterlife, and no creation myth. Individual atheists are free to work things out for themselves; the only common denominators are a rejection of the supernatural as a force for organising their lives, and a lack of bodies trying to instill uniformity of belief or practice.

Ah, say the theists, you must believe in something. You have replaced god with humankind. You just worship another god.

First, there is no worship, but just an acceptance that as we rely on human beings and the knowledge that they can bring to a matter to sort out the wheel mechanism for safely landing a jumbo jet and the brake mechanism in our cars, we can also listen to what they have to say about a whole range of other matters to, without feeling the need to invoke the supernatural. There is an understanding that human beings are fallible, a willingness to engage in logical argument about premises, a willingness to examine evidence, and a willingness to change in the light of new evidence. This isn’t religious. It is just saying that for most of our lives we use reason and science and common sense to get on with things, and we see no reason to abandon that (without evidence) on other matters.

Secondly, if atheists believe in the abilities of humankind (as opposed to a supernatural being), they believe in the sense of accepting something to be true. I believe that gravity causes things to fall. I believe that if it rains I will get wet. These are not religious beliefs – they are just accepting something as true, knowing that there is really substantial evidence for their truth. A lot of religious beliefs, however, are based on no evidence, or contrary evidence, and faith without proof is seen as a religious virtue.

Thirdly, the ‘you must believe in some god if you don’t believe in mine’ argument is just specious. If I say I don’t believe that unicorns exist, that isn’t a matter of religious faith. I’m not setting up a non-unicorn religion and saying that because I don’t believe in unicorns I have created the non-unicorn god. The fact that someone may not believe in the supernatural doesn’t mean that they therefore must have religious beliefs in a non-supernatural faith. It just means that they do not have evidence which reasonably convinces them that the supernatural exists.

Another twist to the argument has been for some theists to argue that by challenging the religious status quo, atheists are becoming ‘fundamentalist’ in their atheism. Such a charge is an attempt to try to hit below the belt, and it is often brought out every time atheists question the privileged position that some faiths have – for example, government money going to support religious schooling, various tax concessions, and bishops in the House of Lords.

I remember years ago hearing about a sociological study into mixed-sex conversations. It has been known for sometime that, broadly speaking, in mixed-sex conversations, men tend to dominate – for example they choose the conversation topic more often, they talk more, and they interrupt more. The researchers trained some women to behave differently and to try to introduce more topics, to interrupt more often, and to talk for longer. When they measured the interactions they found that the women achieved a tiny fraction of more presence, but to the men, it felt like the women had taken over the conversations. It is a bit like that with atheism and religion. For thousands of years the theists have set the agenda and spoken the loudest, but now the atheists are finding their voice and refusing to be so deferential and silent. If that means that atheists occasionally get called ‘fundamentalist’, so be it. They have a lot of catching up to do.

If the theists have good evidence and good arguments, let them join the debate. An atheist has nothing to fear from honest debate and evidence. Unfortunately many theists are resorting to authoritarian and historical protectionism. Some of them try to attack, not with debate and evidence, but with laws against blasphemy, with fatwas, with thug violence, with banning this and that, with loud screaming. Sadly, it has often been thus.

And if they want to attack by throwing in a faulty red-herring and saying that atheism is just another religion, I, for one, want to seriously challenge that.

- A Thinking Man

See also: Challenging Religious Myths 1: No Morality without Religion

Surely, the argument goes, the benefit of having a god in your life is that it gives you rules to live by. “If God does not exist then everything is permissible,” said Dostoyevsky, and indeed, without the threat of eternal toasting what’s to stop us? And without a moral backbone based on religion, our society would suffer.

Of course, there are plenty of things to stop us from behaving totally selfishly. With, or without religion, human beings have tremendous capacity for empathy and often modify their behaviour because they know of the pain that they might cause others. And although religion is good at shunning, society is good at disapproving of behaviour in order to protect itself too. We have survived in our present form because we are good at stopping those things which are threatening to our tribe. With, or without a god, we are capable of love and altruism and nobility because of choice, rather than the desire to avoid the ultimate, eternal, divine shunning. I am sure that both theist and atheist would agree that morality based on positive choice is preferable to one based on fear.

There is also growing evidence that religion appears to have little clear positive benefit on society, and there is a case to be made that it is, in fact, very detrimental. Although there have certainly been many individuals from a religious perspective working tirelessly to promote good, there have been atheists doing the same, and the cumulative damage done by religion seems to far outweigh any societal benefit.

From a developmental perspective, it can be argued that the West went into the Dark Ages in the fifth century as the church stifled activity in the fields of medicine, technology, education, science, and it took over 1000 years for it to recover. And of course, the present obscene immorality of religion abounds – the decades of slaughter in Northern Ireland and the bloody clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslims over who has the best way of worshipping the same God; the thousands of Africans who have died of AIDS after following the proclamations of Catholic priests that condoms would not protect them against HIV, and the thousands of victims of Catholic sexual abuse; the warped version of Islam that led the 9/11 hijackers to believe that they would be spiritually rewarded for murdering thousands. The human, financial, and societal developmental costs of all these things are huge. No sane government would want to argue that they were somehow benefitting their country.

The financial cost alone to society is enormous, representing a huge drain on limited resources (particularly for poorer nations) – resources that could be better used for the benefit of humankind. In an interesting paper John Perkins tries to assess the economic cost of religion – keeping women from the workforce, time spent on religious activity, cost of defence resulting from religious conflict etc. He concludes: “While religious beliefs may be implausible, counter-factual and irrational, and while religious institutions may be immoral, may encourage outdated cultural practices and may stimulate dangerous conflicts, these faults do not entail religion’s most serious shortcoming. The main negative impact of religion on the world community today is its enormous economic cost, estimated here to be a fixed cost exceeding $US200 billion, which falls mainly on poor countries, and an annual cost, again exceeding $US200 billion, which falls mainly on the industrialised world. The cost of religion is not just a shameful waste of human potential, but also a waste of economic resources often by those who can least afford it. These are resources that should otherwise be used to improve the human condition.” Religion is a developmental brake.

There is mounting evidence from several sources continuing to challenge the myth that religion is somehow helpful to society. Gregory Paul compared data on the level of religiosity of people in 18 developed countries with data on various social ills. If religion is beneficial the level of faith in the population should correlate with people doing fewer bad things. But it doesn’t. The analysis revealed that higher rates of belief in a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion.

A larger analysis by Gary Jensen compared homicide rates with measures of religiosity in 54 nations and found that nations with high numbers of people believing in both God and the Devil have the highest homicide rates. A third study published in 2003 found that levels of conservative Protestantism in cities in the southern US states correlated with homicide rates there: more conservative Protestants, more murders.

Of course, the correlational data between measures of ‘health’ and a lack of religion do not resolve questions of causality. Belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God. However, they suggest that atheism is compatible with the basic assumptions of a civil society, whereas the case for religion has yet to be proved. The above data certainly kicks the idea that faith automatically makes for a better and more moral society firmly into touch.

- A Thinking Man