Christianity

Examining even more Parallels Between Jesus and Dionysus: Looking at Archetypal Literary Criticism, The Raglan Scale, Mythemes, and the Hero archetype

In literary criticism there is an entire field of study devoted to archetypal literary criticism. This branch of study focuses on the parallels between the various myths, pointing out such things as common mythemes and things like the hero archetype which are present in many of the ancient stories of myth and religion.
Usually, when introducing people to this subject matter for the first time, I like to mention the Raglan scale as a good starting place when discussing the subject of comparative myth and legend and historical figures.
The Raglan scale lists 22 basic traits that most mythical and legendary figures typically share. If a figure from antiquity shares many of the traits with other well known myths, then they are more likely to be legendary in nature. Likewise, if they share relatively few of the traits then they are probably more or less historical.
The Raglan scale follows as such:
1. Hero’s mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grand father to kill him, but
7. He is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster -parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor and
13. And becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill,
20. His children, if any do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchres.
Now this scale is just a good gauge to use when determining if a figure of antiquity is more or less likely to be a historical figure or if it seems they may have been impregnated with some myth and legend. Many historical figures, such as Pythagoras and Alexander the Great (just to name a couple), have been highly mythologized and turned into enduring legends. The Raglan scale itself, however, doesn’t prove any direct correlation between the corresponding myths exactly, since depending on translations, and writing styles, similarities can change in terms of accuracy and consistency. But, I find, it is a good list to help learn as one sets to the task of recognizing potential literary influences and storytelling archetypes found in our literary traditions, both past and present. Simply put, it’s a useful tool for highlighting what may turn out to be more than just a coincidence.

At the same time, if we should discover that there is a direct correlation between two figures, or two literary works, then that would be extremely interesting. Take for example the story of Moses and Superman. These two figures, although entirely different, arising in different cultures and different time periods, share some surprising yet undeniable correlations.

The fact is, the parallels between the biblical Moses and Superman are there because Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster modeled Superman, in part, on the biblical patriarch Moses. That is to say, Moses is an archetypal model for Superman.
Superman biographer Larry Tye, for example, suggests in his book Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero, that Superman’s Kryptonian name, “Kal-El,” resembles the Hebrew words קל-אל, which can be taken to mean “voice of God.” The suffix “el,” meaning “(of) God,” is also found in the name of angels (e.g. Gabriel and Ariel), who are human looking agents of good with superhuman powers and can fly. Tye suggests that this “Voice of God” is an allusion to Moses’ role as a prophet of God, literally the man who brings God’s word down from Mt. Sinai to his people. (pp. 65-67)
Moreover, those familiar the the origin story of Moses will recognize that, like Moses, Kal-El’s parents send him away in a small vessel in order to save him from impending doom, delivering him to new adoptive parents in an alien culture, where he is raised as one of their own. He grows up moral and just, and then learns he has great powers, after which he fights for the underdogs and becomes a savior to the people.
As Larry Tye says, “The narratives of Krypton’s birth and death borrowed the language of Genesis.”
According to the biblical scholar and historian Dennis R. MacDonald there are extensive connections between the Gospel stories found in the New Testament and the Greek myths and legends of old. In fact, MacDonald has gone further than anyone in showing that these links are more than just mere parallels but, in many instances, has revealed there to be Greek phrases lifted right out of the Iliad and Odyssey verbatim.
If these borrowings are as undeniable as MacDonald contends they are, then what about other parallels and similarities to the ancient Greek stories and the New Testament? Shouldn’t these exist as well? I contend that they do.

In fact, I firmly believe that like the above Moses and Superman example, that the myth of Dionysus, specifically Euripides’ epic The Bacchae, in all likelihood has had a large influence of the Gospel narrative of Jesus Christ.


Although I’ve talked about the parallels between Jesus and Dionysus in depth before, allow me to briefly recap some of the more striking parallels I have found. Once I’ve detailed my findings I’ll let you judge whether or not they are pertinent of if I’m just grasping at straws (also, take note of how many of these fall on the Raglan scale).
1. In the opening lines of The Bacchae it states Dionysus changes in shape from God to man. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate, an idea they get from the NT written by Greek authors who were, in all likelihood, well verse in the Greek epics.
2. Both Dionysus and Jesus’ followers consisted of distinct male and female groups. The procession of followers of Dionysus were comprised of the thiasus (i.e., an ecstatic retinue), the bearded styrs and the loyal women the maenads. In the case of Jesus, his followers consist of the twelve Apostles (also an ecstatic retinue, and most of whom had beards) and the loyal women, namely the three Marys (and most likely other women as well). 
3. Both Dionysus and Jesus are linked to wine symbolism, and the harvest, and fit the pattern of dying and rising gods, or Corn Kings, a term C.S. Lewis used and derived from Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, in which Frazer refers to the archetypal “sacrificial-scapegoat,” such as the dying and rising gods Osiris, Lityerses, Adonis, and Bacchae as the “Korn King.” Additionally, Peter Wick has shown how Jesus turning water into wine at the Marriage of Cana (cf. John 2:1-11; and John 2:3-5 with The Bacchae lines 254-56; 493-96; and 834-35) was intended to show that Jesus was superior to his pagan counterpart Dionysus.
4. In The Bacchae, Dionysus frequently refers to himself as the “Son of God” or “Child of God” whereas Jesus is frequently referred to as the Son of God in the Gospels. Later on, both are referred to as “God’s true Son” (cf. 1 John 5:20 with The Bacchae line 1050).
5. Both Dionysus and Jesus are raised by foster parents with royal ties. King Athamas and his wife Ino raise Dionysus and Joseph and Mary of the royal bloodline of King David raise Jesus. 
6. In both cases the foster parents are instructed by angelic figures (the winged Hermes in for Dionysus and the winged Gabriel for Jesus) to raise the child in a specific way or manner. 
7. Both infants are birthed in secrecy while fleeing from the powers that would seek to have them killed; the ever jealous queen of the gods Hera in the case of Dionysus and King Herod the Great in the case of Jesus.
8. Comparing the Gospel stories of Jesus’ trial with the trial of Dionysus in The Bacchae, we discover that both Jesus and Dionysus get arrested and, subsequently are interrogated by the appointed ruler of the land; Pontius Pilate and King Pentheus respectively. 
9. After they are questioned about their intentions, both give vague responses in much the same way, the most notable being that they both claim to “bare witness to the truth.”
10. Dionysus, when facing the charge of treason for claiming divinity (which, we shall not forget, Jesus faces similar, if not the very same, charges against himself), he refers to himself as a lion walking into a net (The Bacchae, line 1036) thus predicting his own demise. This mirrors Jesus’ prediction of his own death as well. Although it could be claimed a rather loose parallel, Jesus too is likened to the Lion of Judah in Revelation 5:5. It is simply interesting to note that both figures were likened to lions by those who authored their stories.
11. Jesus, like Dionysus, was also accused of drinking too much wine and with known drunkards, and that he himself was a known glutton and a drunkard (Mat. 11:19), an accusation he never denied.
12. Both are sacrificed on a hill (cf. Mark 15:22 with The Bacchae line 1047), and both rise into the heavens upon the clouds (cf. Matt. 26:64 and Mark 14:62 with The Bacchae lines 1685-86).
13. Regarding Jesus and Dionysus, both of their sacrifices guarantees the salvation from sin for their followers (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 with The Bacchae line 1037).
14. During their final hours before death, both are surrounded by their most loyal female followers (in the case of Jesus the book of John mentions it’s the three Marys – his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the wife of Cleopas – and for Dionysus it’s Agave and her women attendants) and upon rising from death it is specifically these loyal female followers who discover them risen.
15. Both overcome death and then rise upon clouds of glory.
16. After being reborn and then spirited away, it is said each will be “exalted on high.”
Although not specifically a parallel between Dionysus and Jesus, we do find further parallels between the Gospel narrative and The Bacchae, this time involving each stories main antagonists.
For example, both Pontius Pilate and King Pentheus meet similar ends, dying atop mountains. According to legend, Pontius Pilate is filled with sorrow and remorse after Jesus’ death, and commits suicide during the first year of Caligula’s reign, while another legend places his death at Mount Pilatus, in Switzerland.
Likewise, King Pentheus, whose name literally means ‘man of sorrow’ (from the greek word péntho [πένθος] which means sorrow), is driven mad and runs into the woods of Mount Cithaeron, and is killed when he runs into the Bacchanalia (the all-female Maenads), the followers of Dionysus, who cut off his head.
Now, I’m not saying these parallels represent any form of plaigarism. Just that it seems more than a little bit likely that the Greek authors of the Gospel stories knew the classics and that Euripides epic The Bacchae may have been one of the dominant influences on the Jesus narrative, especially his trial, death, and resurrection. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that from the moment of the trial to the moment of his death, Jesus’ narrative follows the Dionysian narrative point by point in chronological order, which is peculiar — to say the least.
Finally, I personally find it interesting that both Jesus and Dionysus begin in religions that were once polytheistic but later become monotheisms. Although unrelated to the types of mythemes I’m considering here, it still proves to be highly fascinating from an anthropological point of view.
Ultimately, however, whether one defends or contends the parallels, the point isn’t that these are verbatim borrowings but, rather, that we have an archetype where popular themes, motifs, and ideas get retold in similar ways regarding similar religious figures.

Unlike many who are quick to dismiss such literary similarities as unrelated coincidence, I feel that the connection between Dionysus and Jesus Christ may be greater than some tend to think, not only because it is well understood that the story of Jesus turning water to wine seems to have been specifically designed to compete with the popular Dionysian mystery cult at the time, but also because, knowing this, we might come to find the rest of Jesus narrative was designed to compete as a more contemporary, popular version of Dionysus as well, perhaps as a means to win over pagan converts. I find this gives us reason enough to think maybe, just maybe, these parallels are more profound than just simple mythemes and random similarities. There may be a genuine influence of one narrative upon the other, and vice verse, and that’s something worth thinking about.

[Update: Since publishing this article, I’ve received two emails by concerned Christians expressing how offensive they found the content. Of course, my intention was not to offend, merely enlighten. My only goal here was to raise some interesting points, ones I personally feel are worth pondering, and which others may or may not have been aware of. I also made sure to mention that being offended by the mere suggestion that there might be some parallels between Jesus and Dionysus would be a lot like getting offended over the obvious parallels between Moses and Superman. It’s all rather silly, if you stop to think about it.]

Jesus the Corn King: Examining some Parallels Between Jesus and Dionysus


Jesus the Corn King: Examining some Parallels Between Jesus and Dionysus
According to the biblical scholar and historian Dennis MacDonald there are extensive connections between the Gospel stories found in the New Testament and the Greek myths and legends of old. In fact, MacDonald has gone further than anyone by showing that these links are more than just mere parallels but has shown, in many instances, these links to be exact copies of Greek phrases lifted right out of the Iliadand Odyssey.[1]
If these borrowings are undeniable, as MacDonald contends they are, then what about other parallels and similarities to the ancient Greek stories and the New Testament? Shouldn’t these exist as well? I contend that they do, and more specifically, I contend that the Jesus narrative closely follows, if not borrows from, the myth of Dionysus.
Modern scholars such as Friedrich Holderlin, Martin Hengel, Barry Powell, Robert M. Price, and Peter Wick, among others, have argued that there are distinct parallels between the ancient Dionysian religion and early Christianity. Perhaps more striking than this, however, are the parallels between Jesus himself and the pagan god Dionysus, especially when it come to ritual, wine, and symbolism.[2]
In fact, there seems to have been a direct rivalry between early early Christianity and the popular Dionysian religion. Scholar E. Kessler has detailed that the Dionysian cult had developed into a monotheism by the 4thcentury CE giving direct competition to early Christianity.[3] It does not take a leap of faith to imagine this rivalry existed prior to the Dionysian cult’s transformation as well.
Meanwhile, Peter Wick has shown how Jesus turning water into wine at the Marriage of Cana (John 2:1-11; and John 2:3-5) was intended to show that Jesus was superior to his pagan counterpart Dionysus. Wick notes that the numerous references to wine, miracle and wine, and ritual and wine cannot possibly represent a Christian vs. Jewish controversy, as there is no discernible wine symbolism in Judaism, but that the entire book of John is laden with such wine symbolism as it is meant as a Christian attempt to depict Jesus as superior to Dionysus.[4]
Studies in comparative myth have shown how Jesus shares the dying and rising god mytheme.[5]
Even the beloved Christian apologist C.S. Lewis acknowledged the Dionysian elements in the Jesus narrative often referring to Jesus as the dying and rising “Corn King” which parallels the symbolic celebration of the harvest, which Dionysus is traditionally representative of.[6] Lewis obviously took his language from Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, in which Frazer refers to the archetypal ‘sacrificial-scapegoat’, such as the dying and rising gods Osiris, Lityerses, Adonis, and Bacchae as the “Corn King.”
The dying and rising Dionysus was more than just symbolic of the seasons, however, as in Euripides play The Bacchae (405 BC) it is said that through Dionysus’ death and the spilling of his blood, like wine, freed his followers from sin.[7]
Other similarities exist too. After his discussion with King Pentheus, facing the charges of claiming divinity, Dionysus is refers to himself as a lion walking into a net (The Bacchae, line 1036). These uncanny parallels can be seen in Jesus of the Gospels as contained in the discussion with Pontius Pilate, for the same charges against him,[8][9]and Jesus too is likened to the Lion of Judah in Revelation 5:5. Although it could be claimed this is a rather loose parallel, it is interesting to note that both figures were likened to lions as well as having wine symbolism, are both dying and rising corn-gods, and offer salvation from sin.
In fact, the Pontius Pilate and King Pentheus discourses the parallels are so ripe and numerous that the only way to really take them all in is to read both accounts side by side. It almost seems as if those anonymous Greek writers of the Gospels were so enamored with the discourse between Dionysus and Pentheus that they retold it using their favorite character Jesus Christ, another dying and rising Corn King, with ties to wine rituals (Mat. 9:11, Luke 5:30, John 2:5-11, John 6:55-56).
Other notable similarities are in Dionysus frequent drunkenness and the accusations of Christ drinking more than he should, so much so it is said he was unable to sit up straight while drinking with known drunkards and that he was a glutton and a drunkard (Mat. 11:19), an accusation he never denied.
At the marriage in Cana (John 2:1-11), Jesus turns the water into wine, and takes on the ceremonial role of Dionysus who fills the empty wine flasks of his followers. It is worth noting that, along with the guests, Jesus and his disciples had drunk all of the wine (whether or not they get drunk isn’t mentioned, but one can assume it a likely possibility given what follows). This prompted the call for more wine, and instead of performing the Dionysian miracle of simply refilling everyone’s flask just once, Jesus goes above and beyond and changes 180 gallons of water into wine.
Needless to say 180 gallons of wine is far more than required for such a small wedding. Was Jesus trying to get everyone drunk? Or did he think his subsequent parable would go down better with a 180 gallons of wine? Whatever the case may be, there was no doubt that Jesus loved his wine.
Now these parallels do not mean that various aspects of the Jesus narrative was based in any way on the Dionysian myth, but the parallels are so numerous that it would be unwise to dismiss such a possibility.
In fact, the Pontius Pilate and Jesus dialog mirrors the King Pentheus and Dionysus dialog in such profound and undeniable ways that I am more than inclined to think it was the template for that particular discussion found in the New Testament. Both Jesus and Dionysus are interrogated by the authoritarian figure of the land, they both get asked similar questions about their intentions, both give similar answers, the most notable being that they both claim to ‘bare witness to the truth’, and they both are accused of sedition and ultimately killed in what represents a symbolic sacrifice to cleanse their followers sins.
Additionally, both Pontius Pilate and King Pentheus meet similar ends, dying atop mountains. According to legend, Pontius Pilate is filled with sorrow and remorse after Jesus’ death, and commits suicide during the first year of Caligula’s reign, while another legend places his death at Mount Pilatus, in Switzerland. King Penthius, whose name literally means ‘man of sorrow’ (from the greek word péntho[πένθος] which means sorrow), is driven mad and runs into the woods  of Mount Cithaeron, and is killed when he runs into the Bacchanalia (in this case the all female Maenads), the followers of Dionysus.
Besides the above dialog other similarities exist between Jesus and Dionysus as well. In Euripides The Bacchae, Dionysus refers to himself as the Child of God and Jesus is frequently referred to as the Son of God, and both are atoning for the sins of their people. Both are raised by foster parents with royal ties (King Athamas and his wife Ino in the case of Dionysus and Joseph and Mary of the royal bloodline of King David in the case of Jesus) and in both cases the foster parents are instructed by angelic figures (the winged Hermes in the case of Dionysus and the winged Gabriel in the case of Jesus) to raise the child in a specific way or manner. Both infants are birthed in secrecy while fleeing from the powers that would seek to have their blood spilled and their lives snuffed out (the ever jealous queen of the gods Hera in the case of Dionysus and King Herod the Great in the case of Jesus). Both Jesus and Dionysus get sentenced to death and both overcome death. After being reborn it is said each will be ‘exalted on high’.
Given these similarities, I have to ask myself were the Gospel writers, who were educated Greeks and trained in the ancient myths and stories of their culture, wouldn’t have put such references into the Gospel narrative of Jesus deliberately? If it is all a big coincidence, what a coincidence indeed! A whole string of them! All seeming to form a distinct pattern connecting Jesus to Dionysus!
As noted earlier, there is no prevalent wine-symbolism in Jewish culture, but suddenly it is ripe within Hellenistic Christianity and the Jesus narrative. Why should it be so prevalent here in association to Jesus if not to pay homage to the Dionysian myths by retelling them using the new Corn King? It makes sense that those living in the first, second, and third centuries would have been familiar with the Dionysian myth and Euripides The Bacchae, and would have instantly seen the parallels. I can only imagine that in the Hellenistic minds of the time, Greeks seeing Jesus as the new and improved Dionysus would be more inclined to accept Christianity. Why shouldn’t they?
It is only modern Christians, most of whom haven’t read Euripides and remain largely unaware of these parallels, who would find the suggestion that the Gospel writers were deliberately trying to make Jesus into a revamped Dionysus a troublesome consideration. But to those early Greeks, in a time when Christianity was rapidly expanding, such deliberate parallels would have made excellent pieces of early Christian propaganda for gaining pagan converts and allowing Jesus Christ to usurp the pagan gods of the old religion and replace them, thus gaining status as the definitive Corn King.

[1] See Dennis MacDonalds two books on this topic: The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark and Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? by Yale University Press.
[2] See: Pausanias, Description of Greece 6. 26. 1 – 2, and cf. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 2. 34a.
[3] E. Kessler, “Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire,” Exeter, pp. 17-20, July 2006.
[4] Peter Wick, “Jesus gegen Dionysos? Ein Beitrag zur Kontextualisierung des Johannesevangeliums,”  Biblica (Rome:Pontifical Biblical Institute) Vol. 85 (2004) 179-198.
[5] See: Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion, 1985, pp. 64, 132. Also see: The Christ Myth (Westminster College Oxford Classics in the Study of Religion) by Arthur Drews, 1998, p. 170. Also see: Deconstructing Jesus by Robert M. Price, 2000, pp. 86-93, and all of chatper 7. Also see James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.
[6] C.S. Lewis, The Complete Signature Classics, 2002, HarperCollins, p. 402.
[7] See the Gilbert Murray translation of The Bacchae, lines 800-1199. Available online: http://www.bartleby.com/8/8/3.html
[8] Barry B. Powell. Classical Myth Second ed. With new translations of ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1998.
[9]  Martin Hegnel, Studies in Early Christology, 2005, p.331.

Faith vs. Religion (If not the same thing)



Many people do not make a distinction between faith and religion. Millions of Muslims, for example, believe that Faith is the submission to the will of God. In other words, it is obedience to the religion of Islam. Other people to make a distinction. Numerous Christians, for example, claim they dislike organized religion but practice faith.


But for me faith and religion are inseparably wed together.


One might object that I have simply defined faith and religion differently than they have–and all are valid descriptions of the same sort of spiritual experience, more or less. I am going to argue that semantics, although highly important to clarify our subject matter, is besides the point in this case. Allow me to explain.


Logically speaking, faith is the byproduct of religion. It’s not a semantics issue so much as a pragmatic issue. Without any religious beliefs there simply could be no faith to be had in these beliefs to begin with.


A reader recently asked me, “Faith is religion enacted? Hmmm…. I’ve always thought of it as the reverse. Faith is what’s in the head, religion is the outward behaviours associated with it, isn’t it?”


She’s not wrong, mind you, but she is only seeing half of the picture.


I find this to be a really good question, because it highlights the confusion many people have with regard to faith. Lots of people are confusing generic faith, i.e. the faith that I will wake up in the morning, or that the sun will continue to rise, or that the weather forecast will be accurate with the more specialized form of religious faith.


The thing about generic faith is that, on occasion, you can be mistaken. Perhaps you will have a heart attack in your sleep, or you wake up to a rare instance of a solar eclipse, or the weather forecast turns out to be wrong–as it so often does. This sort of faith is *not the kind of Faith religious people are prescribing to when they claim to have faith in some supernatural entity, such as God, or some religious claim. 


For the religious person, Faith is more of a profession of piety, the loyal unquestioning devotional acceptance of a religious proposition, ideology, creed, practice, or tenet. 


Needless to say, religious Faith is not the same as every day mundane faith. I am not implying that’s what our reader meant. She merely assumed that faith was the belief (or sum of beliefs) one holds, and religion is the behavior compelled by the total framework of that belief system. I would say, yes, this is accurate. But there is another aspect to faith we can’t ignore. Faith based acts are predicated on religious propositions as much as holding the religious beliefs in the first place is predicated on one’s willingness to accept them as true.


I guess the way I go about it is by asking the question how, in the first place, could one possibly have faith in something if there were not prior beliefs about that something to believe in? 


In otherwords, what is it one is professing faith in, if not specific beliefs based on the claims of their particular religion? Basically, beliefs about one’s religion equate to religious faith. But I do not think we can say that faith is simply believing; it is also doing. 

For example, Christians profess faith in the belief that Jesus is the begotten Son of God, that he came to earth to atone for the sins of mankind, that he was sentenced to death upon the cross, and that three days after his death he rose again in a glorious resurrection. These are the basic beliefs one must prescribe to, and believe as true, in order to accurately call oneself a believer in Christ. 

This helps paint the picture of what Christians are actually professing faith in. They are professing faith in the acceptance of the premise that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died and resurrected, and that through his sacrifice and shedding of blood he washed away the sins of mankind. Moreover, they are accepting the belief that the religion requires them to think, act, and behave in a certain way. In other words, we discover that faith is the unquestioning acceptance of these beliefs.

But then the question becomes, where do we get these beliefs from in the first place? After all, you don’t start with faith and then generate beliefs. You first need the belief to have faith in. 

Well, it seems to me these beliefs are found in the tenets, creeds, principles, and practices of religion. Religion is a complex human construct. It involves philosophical ideas, various traditions, and highly ritualized practices which are all inseparably tied to human culture, psychology, and experience. Many people form their very identities based on their religions. Many more choose to live their lives according to their religious beliefs. This is what I call Faith. It is religion followed out in devotional acts of faithful adherence to the aforesaid tenets, creeds, principles, and practices contained within religion.  

Therefore, it stems to reason that the religion is the bedrock for faith. Religion has to exist before it can give rise to faith based beliefs and rituals. Just as you cannot have belief in Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior without the Bible, without the tenets, creeds, and established traditions of Christianity as a guideline of what to believe and what manner to conduct oneself as Christian, so too must faith come out of religion. 

But to call oneself a Christian one must accept certain claims about moral conduct, follow certain practices such as baptism, and must live life according to the teachings of Christ. A person could believe in Christ all they wanted to, but believing alone isn’t enough, you have to follow the teachings as well. 

Genuine faith asks you to accept a specific set of beliefs derived from the religious realm. Many of these beliefs are supernatural propositions. That is, in the absence of any evidence to support the religious claim, you have to take it on faith that these supernatural claims are true. 


When a believer prays to God, they are practicing a religious act based on the religious claim that God hears, and occasionally, answers their prayers. If you believed in prayer, however, but never prayed–then could you really say with honesty that you thought prayer was valid? How would you separate your faith from atheism? An atheist doesn’t believe in prayer so that’s why they refrain from the practice. No, I think it is rather quite clear why people pray. Life sucks. God, according to their religion, promises them a little something better if only they pray hard enough and believe deeply enough. Therefore the believer is called upon to put their religious beliefs, their faith, into practice.


So you see, faith is religion enacted.

Here we discover an important chronological order we must take into consideration when discussing the issue of religious faith. To picture it another way, religion is like a tree, and faith is like a branch on that tree. Many religions spawn numerous faiths, but the faiths might differ slightly in what religious propositions they accept as true and which religious doctrines they emphasize as most important to abide by and obey. A Calvinist believes something slightly different than a Lutheran and a Catholic believes in a slightly different variation of the religion still. But these various branches of faith all sprout from the same tree. 


***


I’d like to note, as an aside, that religion, indeed all religions, are derived from the human tendency to formulate supernatural explanations/beliefs for that which we don’t fully understand. 


This is in part due to how human brains are wired and how our basic psychology causes us to be pattern seekers. So to be entirely pedantic, religion requires one to be prone to a certain level of supernatural thinking before religious beliefs can be properly generated and, likewise, faith can come out of the religion. 


As such, I view religious faith as a type of supernatural belief, not a rational or pragmatic one. Many theologians claim that faith can be had rationally, but I do not see how this is possible, unless one relinquishes all faith in supernatural claims in the first place. But if one did this, then religion couldn’t arise and there would be no faith. 


Rational inquiry and skepticism seem to kill off the tendency we have to take supernatural claims for granted–because it asks us to be critical of anything that is lacking in evidence or doesn’t line up with the facts. Since religion relies on the supernatural, so too faith. A supernatural claim cannot be entertained rationally apart from any valid support to establish the belief as reliable. This usually requires evidence, and supernatural claims usually fail to support themselves with evidence. So faith, in my opinion, will always suffer from a certain level of irrationality which is built into it due to its reliance on supernatural religious propositions which ask you to believe minus any trustworthy empirical understanding.



I only mention this as an aside, since it goes a long way to help explain why so many religious beliefs and practices are bat-shit insane. If religion relies on the supernatural, and the supernatural cannot be completely rational, then faith is bound to be irrational more often than not. Thus all the practices and customs derived from religious faith risk suffering from the same sort of irrationality.


It’s was makes people entertain the absurd notion that God cares whether or not they masturbate, whether or not they take birth control, whether or not they eat pork, whether or not women may attend religious service when they are menstruation, whether or not one covers their head or takes of their shoes in church, whether or not one prays kneeling toward the East or with palms pressed together and heads bowed slightly, it is what makes people think Holy Communion is real and that circumcision is a good idea. It is why so many believers write horribly stupid things on Facebook–such as the endless thanks and praise of God for, you know, curing their cancer, or not getting cancer, or getting an A on a report card, or scoring the winning touch down. 


Yet all of these religious practices and beliefs prove to be entirely irrational in response to events which can all be understood rationally. There is not a single shred of evidence, apart from the sheer willingness to accept these fantastic religious claims unconditionally, that they constitute any sort of supernatural intervention on the believer’s behalf.  They are merely the peculiar, irrational, religious beliefs leading to peculiar, often irrational, demonstrations of faith.


Although people aren’t fully rational all of the time, I think the case can be made that religion often asks highly rational people to be less than rational in favor of slightly irrational supernatural propositions. 







Was America Founded As a Christian Nation: Part 1 The Founding Fathers


It is often preached from the pulpit that America was founded as a “Christian Nation.” Perhaps worse than the blatant fallacy behind this is that so many people buy into it. However, to anyone who has spent a little time investigating the matter, the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation is unequivocally false.


It is not really a claim which needs to be refuted since, the simple fact of the matter is, America was the first country founded on the principle that all religions deserved equal respect and none deserved unrequited favor. The Christian doctrine of exclusivity was, to the minds of the founding fathers, incompatible with their loftier principles of a united republic, a United States. The vision they had was one of an autonomous nation where your religion was just one part of what defined you–but at the end of the day–each and every citizen, man or woman, could proudly call themselves free–they could call themselves–Americans.

In the minds of Christians, however, many tend to make-believe an alternative history where America was founded as a Christian nation and the term American is just a synonym for Christian. This could no more be further from the truth than if I were to claim that a centimeter was just a synonym for an inch. Yet such falsehoods are often preached as a matter of fact within the folds of the Christian faith. Sadly, the insistence of these falsehoods as truths has persuaded many to believe it and perpetuated the myth that America is a Christian nation.

In the first part of this series I will investigate a few of the founding fathers in order to follow up on the question whether or not all of the founding fathers were Christian. It stems to reason that if America was truly founded as a “Christian Nation” then all of the founding fathers would ubiquitously subscribe to the religious and moral ideals of Christianity. If we should find exception to this rule, then it would be safe to assume that, contrary to popular opinion, the United States was not founded as a Christian nation, let alone on Christian principles. The claim would hence be refuted. 



The freethinker Thomas Paine was one of the primary voices of reason in the early United States. His letters urging Thomas Jefferson to emancipate the slaves in lieu of the booming sugar trade, as well as his writing calling for equal rights for man, something Paine believed to be common sense, would greatly affect the thinking of the founding fathers. Paine’s personal calls for the abolition of slavery also greatly impacted Abraham Lincoln who wrote a defense of Paine in 1835 (Lincoln by the way was, as far as anyone knows, a nonbeliever–at least after the death of his son–and claimed he did not belong to any Christian denomination and had to face charges of impious infidelity). 


Spending most of the 1790’s in France, Paine was deeply involved in the French Revolution. Upon being arrested and imprisoned, Paine suspected he would be executed as a revolutionary radical, and so was motivated to write his scathing attack on the Christian religion, his last hurrah so to speak. This infamous book is better known as The Age of Reason. In this influential work Paine calls for “free rational inquiry” into all subjects. Paine was a self professed Deist.

Here we shall look at some of Paine’s most recognizable quotes and see whether or not he adhered to Christian principles to help us discover whether this founding father was of the mind of someone who would help forge a nation in the name of Christianity.

When asked by Dr. Manley, “Do you believe, or do you wish to believe, that Jesus Christ is the son of God?”

Thomas Paine succinctly replied, “I have no wish to believe on that subject.” (As quoted by Robert G. Ingersoll in A Vindication of Thomas Paine, 1891) 

Paine once stated that Christianity was merely “atheism dressed up as mannism.” This scathing remark was followed by his comment that, “The christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ, in the place of the Sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the Sun.”

As for the Holy Scripture, the religious text all Christians revere as divinely inspired truth, Paine had this to say:

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.” (A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason. The Age of Reason. Boston: Josiah L. Mendum. 1797-05-12. p. 205)


These (above) quotes are telling for several reasons. It proves that Paine did not believe in Jesus Christ as anything other than a mere mortal and that he despised the teaching of the Bible, renouncing it as contemptible, cruel, and vile.

Many of Paine’s quotes echo the sentiments of modern day atheist and religious critics. It should come as no surprise, for the shared belief among all freethinkers of any age has been that of free and rational inquiry, which has always, in every age, rubber religion the wrong way.

Paine once prophetically quipped:

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics.” (The Age of Reason, Chapter III: Conclusion)


So clearly Paine was nothing like the Christian theists of today. In many instances Thomas Paine sounds more like the atheists, freethinkers, and skeptics of today.

The question becomes–was Thomas Paine likely to have sponsored, let alone allowed, for the United States to be founded as a “Christian Nation” knowing his sheer repugnance toward Christianity? It doesn’t seem likely. With respect to Christianity, Paine was an atheist. He did not believe in its god or its message.

Before we proceed with our investigation of the founding fathers, and what they purportedly believed, I wish to share two of my favorite Thomas Paine quotes:

“It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.” (The Age of Reason Part 1, 1793)

“The study of theology as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and admits of no conclusion. Not any thing can be studied as a science without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is not the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.” 
(The Age of Reason, Chapter III: Conclusion)


[Note: Clearly Paine believed [G]od could be discovered by the tools of science. A deist, in the proper sense, but one who was highly critical of Christianity none-the-less.]



If Thomas Paine, “a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination,” was our archetypal religious critic, then Thomas Jefferson was our archetypal freethinker. What was Jefferson’s mind when it came to Christianity?

Jefferson writes in his correspondence that his greatest success was in drafting the the Virginia statute, the article which would go on to provide the basis for America’s Constitutional division between Church and State. This separation of Church and State is commonly referred to as: “The Wall of Separation between Church and State.”


Jefferson, one of the original drafters of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, believed all Religion deserved equal respect, and that to favor one over another was one of the worst forms of bigotry. Needless to say, such an opinion is incompatible with traditional Christian orthodox thinking. 

Additionally, like Paine, Jefferson was also critical of Christianity. Like Paine, he felt that Theology had no place in the University, stating in his 1814 letter to Thomas Cooper about establishing the University of Virginia that “Theology should have no place in our institution.” 


It is no secret that Jefferson placed a higher importance on the difference of opinion than on the orthodox conformity to a dogmatically conditioned like-mindedness.


“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?” (From Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVII)


Still, I have been privileged, if you could call it that, to meet several Christians who have told me to my face that Thomas Jefferson was a Theist in tune with Christian morals and thought. Many people have often used the following quote to prove Jefferson was a Christian:

“I am a Christian, in the only sense he [Jesus] wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; and believing he never claimed any other.” (Letter to Benjamin Rush, 12 April, 1803)


[Note: technically speaking, by his admission that Jesus was merely human and not divine, Jefferson would be deemed a “Gnostic,” which by orthodox Christian standards is viewed as heretical.]

Apparently modern Christians weren’t the only one who made the mistake of thinking Thomas Jefferson to be a Christian though. A reporter made the same mistake, to which Jefferson wrote a letter to set the record straight, informing, “Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was “I say nothing of my religion.” (Letter to John Adams, 11 January, 1817)


In his letter to Ezra Stile Ely, Jefferson stressed the point, “You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.” (25 June 1819)

Those familiar with Jefferson’s original writing will be keen to note that in his original writings Jefferson never capitalized the term god. It is always written in the lowercase. Only later did editors correct for this obvious “error” to put the proper reverence back into the term, and so too Jefferson’s own writings, once again, wrongly assuming he believed in their concept of god. He did not. Luckily, the original writing, in his own hand, has survived for posterity so as to allow us this invaluable lesson.


Even so, the question becomes, to what is this self proclaimed sect to which Jefferson subscribed? 

Perhaps we find clues in an unsuspecting letter of encouragement to his nephew, Peter Carr, about the young man’s investigation into religious faith and of his beliefs. Jefferson writes:

“Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.” (10 August 1787)


In not so many words, Jefferson tells his very own nephew, whom he loved, that it was perfectly alright to become an atheist! This should shed some light on perhaps what Jefferson meant by this unmentioned sect he was so guarded about.

Would any decent God fearing Christian instruct their very own flesh and blood that it was perfectly acceptable to become an atheist? No. This line of reasoning is wholly at odds with the teachings and doctrines of Christianity. 


Like Tom Paine, it seems that Thomas Jefferson would not have been  likely to have sponsored, let alone allowed, for the United States to be founded as a “Christian Nation.” Although less critical of Christianity than Paine, it is clear that Jefferson’s thinking was in tune with modern religious critics and modern day atheists. Jefferson even went as far as to instruct his own nephew that it would be perfectly acceptable, even virtuous, to find a belief in no god at all–i.e., atheism.

After having given it fair consideration, I am inclined to think Jefferson was not a Christian, since he frequently denied the virgin birth, Jesus’s divinity, and all the miracles of the Bible. On top of this, he instructed his nephew that atheism was a perfectly virtuous conclusion, not even a Unitarian would have said this!

As for the public claims that he was a practicing Christian, he denied them all, and simply kept his religious beliefs a closely guarded secret. As I quoted earlier, Jefferson denies being a Christian whenever that assumption was made of him. 


For his denial of the miracles of the Bible, many are found in his his letters to John Adams. Additionally, he addresses the issue in his introduction to his defense of editing the Bible and writing The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.

We know that Jefferson was against the idea of immaterial and transcendent beings: 

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise … without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820)


Moreover, Jefferson found the idea of a virgin birth archaic and little more than fable and mythology.


The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823)


If this wasn’t enough to disprove Jefferson was in any way a Christian, Jefferson also denied the Christian notion of the Holy Trinity for logical reasons, equating the dogma of the Trinity with polytheism and calling it more unintelligible than paganism.
 

The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere relapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible. The religion of Jesus is founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly, gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. (In his letter to Rev Jared Sparks; November 4, 1820)

Another instance where Jefferson denies Christian theology, comparing it to an absurd myth and calling it “hocus-pocus,” is in a bold letter to James Smith.


The hocus-pocus phantasm of a god like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs. (Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, December 8, 1822)


By Jefferson’s own words we learn his exact level of disillusionment with Christianity. Although he may have found a strong sense of Platonism in the many teachings of Jesus, it is clear that Jefferson felt the majority of Christianity was founded upon absurdities and myths.


Conclusion
After closer inspection, we find that not all of the founding fathers subscribed to the religious and moral ideals of Christianity. In fact, we find two prime examples of two founding fathers being vehemently against Christianity, and therefore could not presumably have been part of any agenda to sponsor, let alone create, a “Christian Nation.” 



On Early Christianity and the "Church"


A Christian reader asked a good question.

“Who did Paul address his letters to the Galatians , Corinthians and Thessalonians to, except the Churches in those areas? Also Romans 16:16 all the churches of Christ greet you, Paul’s journeys recorder in the book of acts were for the very purpose of Setting up individual autonomous churches in each area he traveled to.”


My response is as follows:

Paul refers to the ‘church ‘ as the “body of Christ.” The clusters of early Christians that Paul is writing to are not organized institutions as we commonly think of when thinking about modern churches. Paul, as he himself states numerous times in his letters, is working diligently to unify the “body of Christ,” that is the early Christian communities he is in contact with, and get them spiritually ready for the Second Coming.

It seems to me a historiographical mistake to confuse our modern concept of the church with what Paul actually meant.

My Christian friend responded:

“For the most part I agree the New Testament church is nothing like the churches we see today, but it is a local congregation or assembly of Christians in a given area, and it had certain rules and regulations to adhere to. It is nothing like today’s churches in that it was always only a local congregation ruling itself from the bible, there is no head office no meeting of the elders of several churches to see whats the best plan for the church it was always meant to be just an autonomous assembly of christians serving the lord in a given area, but it was still planned, organised and defined by rules so from that stand point it was an institution.”


It seems to me, from what I have read, that there wasn’t any such semblance of organization in the groups of Gentile Christians as spoken about in Paul’s letters–at least not to the extent you seem to be thinking. 


Again, just to clarify, Paul merely only meant “church” insofar as it represented “the Body of Christ.” The terms “church” and “the Body of Christ” are used synonymously throughout the NT for the early Christian community (i.e., those who have come accept Christ as the redeemer).

Perhaps I should explain further why I do not believe there was any evidence of organization, with no actualized rules, and with little in the way of agreed thought or opinion within the early Christian community.

It is well known in the ancient letters outside of the Bible that even 200 years after Christ that most people were still in the dark as to what constituted a Christian or what it is that Christians even believed. For example, in the scrolls of Octavius, written by the third-century author Minucius Felix, there are comments of locals recorded in which people are baffled as to what the practices and rights of Christians really were.

Ancient people were weary of Christians because they frequently met after dark or before dawn, and their meetings changed from home to home each week, and these *secret meetings were exclusive to *only Christians. There were rumors that “Christian love” was a metaphor for incest and sex orgies supposedly held after dark during these highly secretive meetings. One of the popular rumors in the ancient times was that Christians ate babies and drank their infant blood!

People didn’t say all this because they hated Christians. They said this because early Christians were so secretive–to the point of being exclusionary. Whereas Pagan religions intermingled, Christians kept to themselves, yet shunned all other religions as false. Most early Christians didn’t invite trust or encourage understanding in others. People reacted out of *fear toward Christians–the fear of not knowing.

Christian persecution under Nero was probably largely related to the same effect, since Christians refused to partake in the national religious observances, and kept to themselves, and seemingly worshiped a political radical who was criminally condemned and sentenced to death, Nero was worried that there might be an uprising and rebellion, as Tacitus wrote, and so persecuted Christians as a means to weed out their supposed plot to overthrow the empire. It is even rumored that Nero himself may have started the fires which decimated large parts of Rome in 64 A.D. as a means to drive out the Christian populace for strategic reasons, at least according to Suetonius.


The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, writing in 180 A.D., went through great pains to alleviate the unjust attacks on Christians–yet he too admitted in his Meditations that he didn’t know what Christians actually believed.

My point here is that although it seems there is a minuscule amount of organization within the small assemblies of Christians gathering in the second to fourth centuries–we are still completely in the dark as to their official beliefs and practices as a community–except for the nasty rumor mill which showed a weariness toward Christian custom and behavior which was both highly exclusivist and secretive. 


Suffice to say, this lack of understanding of ancients with regard to Christianity compounds our contemporary lack of understanding for the same time periods. It is all shrouded in mystery, especially since nobody then knew what Christians might have believed–or how they organized themselves–or by what religious observances they gathered in secret to practice–we simply cannot assume they were well organized or structured. 


At best these assemblies, and I use the term loosely, resembled rural peoples gathering for festivities more than actual planned religious meetings. As Christian orthodoxy has always been an ongoing enterprise, it seems that institutional thought couldn’t have fully developed before Paul actually had written much of it down, and then it would still be hundreds of years more until orthodox thought and opinion finally congealed, long after the early church fathers and theologians had set down doctrines, regulations, agreed upon creeds, and began to build a hierarchy of institutional observances to better define the Christian faith by. Only after all this was there something for Christians to unite around. Before these events, however, Christianity is a vague hodgepodge of thoughts and opinions–almost none of them agreeing.  


Now let’s go back earlier, to the first century, when Paul lived and wrote.

What stands out to me, especially in Paul’s letters to the “churches,” was that he was addressing the social problems of individuals. In one Christian community (which is all Paul’s term of “church” signifies) a guy is accused of incest, of sleeping with his step-mother, while in another an unspecified person is still practicing pagan rights alongside their newly established Christian ones. Within the all of the “churches” there is insensible bickering of what Christian beliefs, practices, and spiritual rights should be, which ones are to be deemed correct and which are not, and the only thing which is clear (at least to me) is that nobody (and I mean nobody at all!) had a firm idea of what Christianity meant.


Except for, perhaps, Paul–who was always certain. He was on a mission to right every wrong. Which is why he wrote these letters to his “churches.” He wanted them to conform to his standard of Christian values, practices, and beliefs. 

[I should note here that most of the Christian communities Paul wrote to were unaware of anything he said in the other letters which that he sent to the other “churches.” That is, the Galatians didn’t know what it is Paul wrote to the Corinthians, or vice versa. In other words, one community of Christians had no way to compare their notes with another community of Christians and discover the correct teachings (according to Paul). But this just goes to show that Paul wasn’t interested in establishing a core set of tenets for everyone to abide by, but that he was trying to prepare each individual community for the Second Coming, and get them spiritually conditioned for “The Day of the Lord.”]


Early Christianity is an enigma. Nobody really knows how it formed with any certainty. All we can do is create historical reconstructions which best account for all the available data. Even so, it is important that we remember Paul’s version of Christianity is just the one that ultimately won out. But in his day, there were numerous strands of Christian thought all volleying for the dominant position. There was the Peter/James group, there were Gnostics, there were Simonians, there were Docetists, and many more varieties of Christianity just in Paul’s day alone!

So all we really know about the early “church” was that there wasn’t one.

Christians met in secretive locations–a practice which lasted up to three hundred years, they frequently changed locations, they had no leadership–which is why Paul kept writing to them demanding that they get their houses in order–so to speak, they had no unity of thought, they bickered constantly, and so on and so forth. I find it hard to see how any of this signifies an institution of cohesion of thought and opinion. Indeed, I don’t believe we see strands of orthodoxy emerge until the mid to late second century–so there would be nothing for the early Christians to unify around–therefore there truly could be no Christian institutions until much later.

Meanwhile, Paul tried to wrangle in the groups he was primarily responsible for creating in the first place–his gentile Christian mission–and his letters show his struggle to unify them and prepare them spiritually for the end times. But I see no semblance of institutional thought–at least not until a time when there is a more rigid form of orthodoxy to adhere to, which begins to emerge primarily in the latter half of the second century. 


Without any infrastructure or organization within the early Christian community, however, it’s difficult for me to see precisely what Paul’s use of “church” is meant to signify–other than to say it represented the loosely assembled, yet highly disorganized, Christian communities he wrote to. 

I hope that helps to answer your initial question. Thanks for the great conversation starter!


Slavery in the Bible


I have always had a difficult time explaining to Christians all the numerous reasons why I have come to detest the Bible and its teachings contained therein. Of the the Bible’s contemptible teachings one of the worst is that of it’s defense (and in many cases indifference) of slavery. 

Many Christians claim that I have read or interpreted the Bible incorrectly. I usually get so frustrated by their hardheadedness and tactless comments that I preemptively end the conversation. Call me “sensitive,” whatever, but I out right refuse to have a “serious” discussion with anyone who would defend something as horrible as slavery based on nothing more than the feeling that I am mistaken without giving it any further consideration. 

I don’t like being talked down to in such a condescending manner–as if I couldn’t read or comprehend the book I studied for three long decades. As if having two college degrees has somehow made me too sophist in my philosophical inquiries. Imagine my dismay when these are the very same conflicted allegations I continue to receive today. Yeah, either I am a moron or an intellectual elitist. That clears things up. 

Such slander doesn’t sit well with me–and to make it worse Christians usually throw it out there as a matter of fact–either way–I’m an idiot or elitist snob–either way I am wrong because I do not prescribe to their Christian worldview. But why is the Christian worldview merely assumed to be right? This is the question I had roughly twenty-nine odd years ago, and upon investigating the matter I discovered that… contrary to the ubiquitous opinion of the unquestioning religious… Christianity is not a perfect belief system.

Perhaps, however, my self defensiveness has always had a way of getting in the way of me explaining the exact reasons why I think that the Bible is detestable, contemptible, and immoral.

In my past popular articles, like The Imperfect and Immoral Teachings of Jesus Christ, I have frequently raised several objections to the moral character of the person Christians worship by pointing out his acceptance of human bondage and slavery.

Predictably, however, the Christian defense erupts with claims that I am mistaken, wrong, and arrogant. Who would have the audacity to claim the perfect son of God is in anyway immoral or would gladly allow such a thing as lowly and despicable as slavery? Only a cold hearted atheist who is angry at God–well–that’s the usual (and totally inaccurate) spiel of the Christian apologist who has entirely missed the point I was attempting to make. 


In the end, however, am I really wrong? 

No. I don’t think so. And here is the why.

In what follows is an extensive, and highly detailed look, at Biblical slavery by the YouTube blogger Discovering Religion. In it he shows beyond a shadow of doubt that the Bible not only condones slavery (rather than condemning it) but also (in part 3) explains my very same concerns as why this destroys the “loving” God theology of Christianity utterly and totally.  

Without a doubt–there is NO redemption for the Bible or its most ardent defenders. Christianity is a corrupt ideology through and through and the good bits (what little there is) are overshadowed by the predominant horrors that it condones. It doesn’t matter that modern sensibilities have overridden the unjust practice of slavery–the teachings continue to exist within the Bible as a mark indicating the exact depth of its moral corruption–and taken in their proper context–there is no denying that these teachings are highly unethical, if not downright evil.

Please watch these videos. They explain my line of reasoning with a clarity I sometimes lack. 


Slavery Anti-Apologetics (Introduction) 

Slavery in the Bible: Slavery Dialogs (1 of 3)
Slavery in the Bible: Slavery Dialogs (2 of 3)
Slavery in the Bible: Slavery Dialogs (3 of 3) 
Transcript: 

Christan Nazism or Nazi Christianity? Perhaps Both?



I know it’s a repeat, but it’s an important point. Hitler and the Nazi party were technically (and formally under Nazi regulations and laws) a Christian entity. They weren’t pretending to be Christian–they were for all intents and purposes–one of many crooked branches of Christianity.


In fact all of Germany was a Christian nation, before and after Hitler. As controversial as it is though we must keep in mind that the ties between Christianity and Nazism are quite strong, and impossible to ignore.


1) Hitler was raised a devout Catholic, attended Catholic school in a Benedictine cloister in Lembach, and even sang in the church choir;


2) The Nazi party prescribed to Positive Christianity (as Point 24 in the Nazi Party Program indicates) and held to an age old Christian tradition of Anti-Judaism;


3) The Nazi plan for Jews is nearly identical to Martin Luther’s seven-point plan to rid the world of Jews in his (extremely sinister) essay On the Jews and Their Lies, and moreover, Luther’s anti-Jewish tract was the basis for anti-Jewish policies implemented by Nazi Germany (which even leading Lutheran scholars agree, e.g., Martin H. Bertram);


4) Hitler praised Martin Luther (who’s theology initiated the Reformation) in Mein Kampf as one of his three main influences;


5) Many of Hitler’s speeches pay lip service to the Christian God and the savior Jesus Christ, and often mimics the Jewish extermination rhetoric of Pope Innocent III;


6) On April 26, 1933 in a conversation with the bishop of Osnabruck, Hermann Wilhelm Berning, Hitler stated he believed he was doing a continuation of what Catholic policy had done for 1,500 years, something which Holocaust historian, Geunter Lewy, has also keenly pointed out;


7) Hitler cited the 1933 Concordat between the Catholic Church and the Nazi Party as helping to further his cause;


8) I refer you a quote in which Hitler calls himself a Christian and references the Bible for support for his ideologies (a habit most Christians have);

“My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison and as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.” (Norman H. Baynes, ed. The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922-August 1939. Vol. 1 of 2, pp. 19-20. Oxford University Press, 1942).



9) Regardless of what anyone may think, by any other definition, Hitler was a believing Christian;


10) On top of this, the old canard that Hitler was following out an atheistic or Social Darwinist agenda is patently false. Hitler never once mentions Darwin (or any of Darwin’s works) in any of his speeches, writings, or dinner conversations which definitively rules out any ties to Darwinism. Subsequently, it appears that Christianity was most likely the main contributing force behind Hitler’s superstitious reasoning as well as political and personal ideologies.



Damn it All to Hell: I Get Mail

I’ve been having the weirdest non-blogging vacation. It seems I can’t stop blogging. Especially when I get caught up in riveting conversations like the following (which I’m currently having in the comments section of my old post Demon Haunted World). And by riveting I mean: fairly amusing. Damn it all to hell–I just can’t seem to help myself.

What follows is a follow up to a previous series of comments. However, I felt responding to this person deserved a little more consideration than a simple comments blurb could allow.

 
My commenter said: 
“people can live decent lives with a broken relationship with their parents.”

I have a perfectly fine relationship with my parents. Thank you.

“He [God] gave you free will to live a deluded life in denial that He’s the biggest reality of this universe.”

These are both unverified metaphysical claims. The onus is on you to validate them before I have any obligation to take them serious.

“But what happens after death?”

I imagine it is a lot like what happens before life. I’m sure before your existence you didn’t have any problem with not existing. I won’t have any problem after death—in the meantime I am making the most of my life.

“why can’t we just go killing and murdering and have incest and all that stuff?”

Because it’s wrong. W-R-O-N-G. Wrong.

“ There’s no clear definition to what’s right and wrong.”

Um, I think you might be referring to relativistic morality. But even within the field of meta-ethics right is right and wrong is still wrong.

“And that’s why moral standards are degrading”

What moral standards? You just claimed morality was relativistic. Unless you meant to imply that’s what I believe, but I don’t. So I’m having a little trouble following your reasoning.


“Secondly, if I wish to commit suicide, who is someone to stop me?”

That would be an interesting experiment. You should try it sometime. (On second thought, you’d better not. One life is all you get–make the best of it!)

“Do you think hamburgers and TV and even your atheistic theories can sustain you for eternity?”

Hamburgers are nice. I am extremely selective about the television I watch. And I only watch about four shows per week, and I digitally record them so I can enjoy them on the weekend, while this frees my week up to read non-stop.  Although, I’ve never heard of this metaphysical eternal hamburger you are alluding to, but it sure sounds nice. I do love me a cheeseburger deluxe with everything on it. Yummm… eternal goodness. 

“You’re gonna be so bored to death that you’ll go crazy, and you’ll beg God to destroy you. And that is why those who do not love God and accept Him as Lord will go to hell”

Because the eternal hamburgers didn’t sustain the atheist heathens they all went crazy and got sent straight to hell? You’ll have to pardon my confusion, but what the hell kind of God do you believe in? 

“(I don’t subscribe to the torture in hell theory – I believe hell is a mental state of mind)…”

  
But then stated immediately afterword (in the same sentence none-the-less):

“That is why only believers in Christ can live eternally, we could go on praising God forever and ever and never grow tired. The rest are thrown into the lake of fire so the soul can be destroyed eternally.”

So hell isn’t a place for torture, but a state of mind, but is really a lake of fire so the soul can be destroyed by horrible flames? So which is it? A state of mind or a physical place of torture?

“Demons exist. Demons are fallen angels.”

Thanks for clearing that up. Never having met one I was really beginning to worry.

“when I first stepped into a church accepting Christ, I could sense the place was a place full of light. As contrasted to demonic lairs of other religions where it was dark and depressive.”

That’s because many churches have windows. However, I don’t quite know what you mean when you say the ‘demonic lairs of other religions’ which were “dark and depressive.” Muslims have mosques, but they also have windows. Buddhist temples have windows too.  Shinto shrines have lots of windows too. All of them are filled with light. Maybe you are speaking metaphorically about a ‘spiritual light’ and ‘windows’ is just an allegory for finding the right pathway to reach that light? If so, what do demonic lairs have to do with anything?

“People who have come from dabbling in the demon world are more sensitive to places of light, because they were in darkness for so long.”

Um… as I stated before, and have made abundantly clear on this blog, I was an Evangelical Christian for three decades before deconverting. So I didn’t “dabble in the demon world” if that’s what you think.

“Come [on] tell me God is a lie?”

I never said that God was a lie. The god concept is real for many. But the thing is, most delusional people don’t actually know they are delusional. God belief is a lot like a delusion in that respect. Meanwhile, there are lots of ways to debunk various concepts of God. Just as you believe all other religions are “demonic” the only reason you say that is because you cater to a bias—but when you come to understand why you don’t believe in anyone else’s gods you will come to understand why I don’t believe in yours. 

“I KNOW for sure demons exist…”

You have verified this have you?

“Give up on atheism. It’s built on oppositional identity. If you didn’t have the Bible (Word of God) and theological claims, there wouldn’t be atheism, because there wouldn’t be anything to argue about.”

Well, to answer in reverse order: Yes. That’s very true. In such a case the whole world would be atheist. About oppositional identity, I think you mean that atheism is antonymous with theism, and that’s true also. Give up on atheism? I don’t know what you mean by this.

“The religious texts of other ‘religions’ aren’t even worth arguing because they don’t really offer any formidable philosophical arguments.”

You’ve read them all have you?

“But because the Bible answers everything…”

It does? Okay, so how to I get iTunes to burn a double layer CD… cuz I’m sort of having trouble figuring that out. Oh, wait… I know, I’ll just consult my Bible!  

“…you have atheism that tries to dispute everything the Bible says…you take ideas from God’s Word and twist it…that’s not new…that has been done since Genesis..’Did God really say that’ The snake asked. If the Bible were fiction, it must be the cleverest piece of fiction in history.’”

I think you should go back and read your Bible, Exodus 1-3 to be exact, because when the snake asks “Did God really say that” it is because God actually had told a lie, saying that Adam and Eve ‘would surely die’ if they ate of the fruit. But they didn’t “surely die” and the snake revealed God’s deception. I’ve talked about this before. Also, the verse is not talking about “spiritual death” as some apologists have suggested, because the original Hebrew grammar does not allow for such an interpretation—God is referring specifically to physical death. You’re just going have to deal with the fact that God lied and the serpent spoke the truth, as told in the Bible.

“Read The Screwtape Letters if you have time, by C.S. Lewis.”

Actually, I’ve read it three times. My first copy was highlighted so severely that some of the pages dissolved and I had to buy a second copy. You should see my copy of C.S. Lewis’ Miracles. It looks like a 2,000 year old Dead Sea Scroll fragment!

“So if you wish for His presence, say to God, “Even if I don’t feel like it, I would like to say sorry and repent for all that I’ve done against You and to displease You. Please draw near to me so I can sense Your presence and worship You again. Let me regain my first love.”

I’ve never understood why believers think that the moment you become atheist you lose the Holy Spirit and God’s presence. The Bible doesn’t say that anywhere. Believe me, I’ve looked into it. Besides, how can you “lose” love? You can fall out of love, but you cannot lose such a thing. This whole spiel about how atheists are fallen from grace is just a baseless assumption self-righteous Christians make, because they can’t get comfortable with the idea that unbelievers can lead moral lives and be perfectly content without God. Believe me, I didn’t lose anything, because there was never anything really to lose.

Appreciations are the Way (My Personal Tao)

Marriage, Fidelity, and on Buddhism
Yes, it is an eclectic series of topics. I was asked a few questions by the Christian author of the blog Wide as the Waters. Obviously I felt they were good questions, so without further delay, here are the questions:
What is your opinion of Christian morality regarding sexual fidelity both before and after marriage?
What about it’s constraints concerning homosexuality? I am just curious how your views of those issues track with those of other atheists.
Also, regarding your wife’s Buddhism, do you think Buddhism presents an accurate view of human nature and reality? Why?
Just as a preface, I’d like to remind my readers that I like to think that I have a unique insight to both the Christian position and secular position with regard to these questions. This month I turned 31 years old, and it marks the one year anniversary of my deconversion from Christianity. Now, with respect to the questions, I am going to come right out and say it, atheism has nothing to say on these subjects as it is not a belief system in and of itself. Rather, I find that atheism is the end product of critical thinking, free inquiry, scientific reasoning, and a healthy skepticism. Yet that does not mean my atheism cannot be informed by other appreciations (which I’ll get to momentarily).
Bygone Times: God wants your sons and daughters—not your vegetables!
First, I will begin by making a short statement about homosexuality. When it comes to being a homosexual I am fairly ignorant. I do not know what it is like to be a homosexual anymore than I know what it is truly like to be a woman. Likewise, I do not know what it means to be a black man or an Eskimo, or any other race or gender. Of course, I know many homosexuals, and this year I have learned a lot about it from a gay friend who helped clear up some misconceptions I had. At any rate, what we need to realize that homosexuality is not the way a person chooses to act or behave, but rather, it is how they are made. It’s genetic, it’s natural, and the more comfortable you are with that fact the less likely you will be to make the mistake that homosexuality is anything but an alternative—and prevalent—biological condition. If you can’t accept the fact that homosexuality is a natural condition, then it’s up to you to explain why the past fifty years of genetic research is wrong and you are right.
When it comes to Christianity, however, I firmly feel that the Christian policy with regard to homosexuality is just as ill-conceived as the Christian policy of what to do to Jews who pick up sticks on a Saturday. It appears the Biblical attitude toward homosexuals stems from a Bronze aged mentality. This primitive mentality is consistently being reflected in scripture as well as Christian thought. But it is this archaic thinking, in fact, for why the morality of the Bible is not compatible with today’s evolved moral concerns.
If the Bible is to be considered a moral source, let alone a moral authority, it has to do better than representing the blinkered thinking of goat herders. The God of the Bible, both OT and NT, demands blood sacrifice. This reeks of a primitive, nomadic, goat herding era when blood sacrifice dominated the thinking and acted as a covenant between men and God (i.e., a spurious supernatural claim at best). Purity and cleansing rituals were part of the desert lifestyle, and this finds its way into the religious rites and rituals of early Judaism. If the Christian God was all knowing, however, he would have saw fit to teach his people how to set up agricultural farms, with fully functioning irrigation aqueducts, and so forth. After all, the technology did exist back then. Herod the great made great use of aquifers and aqueducts when he built Caesarea. But no, instead of sacrificing a bushel of carrots, asparagus, and a healthy courgette to the God of the Hebrews, goats were slaughtered and occasionally virgin maidens, just for good measure.
Needless to say, the meat eating culture of a pre-agricultural era requires extensive kosher rules. After all, eating meat gone bad would make one deathly ill. If you’ve ever had a bout of food poisoning, then you’ll know exactly what I mean (believe me when I say it’s not fun). Much of these cleansing rituals were therefore built into the sandy desert lifestyle by necessity, not only because of larger hygienic and dietary health concerns, but also because of the limitations of such a lifestyle. Likewise, families had to be large because so many died out due to illness, starvation, etc. Food needed to be safe for consumption, because if not it could mean your own death—since a fever ridden bout of food poisoning on the desert trail—with no water—would surely be the end of you. Bodies needed to be as clean as possible, because the spread of a flu bug in close knit tribal groups would spread so rapidly that it could threaten to wipe out the entire lot. One haphazard sneeze, and God’s chosen people could have vanished off the face of the Earth.
So when we talk about morality, we need to distinguish between the pre-modern moral concerns of a Bronze age and the moral concerns of a modern age like our own. A simple question will illustrate better my point: Are we to believe that the God of the entire universe and all creation just, as a happy coincidence, supported the primitive cleansing rituals of his chosen people? Or is it more likely that these rituals appear to be inbuilt into the religion because the people themselves devised methods and ways which helped them cope with the harsh conditions of a difficult time in human history? I bring this up only because this is the very mentality we are dealing with when it comes to questions about marriage, sexuality, and the like. Therefore it is important to keep these considerations in mind.
For these reasons, and many more like them, I believe anything the Bible says about homosexuality (and sexuality in general) is antiquated. Most of the notions contained in the cleansing rituals and rights of the early Hebrews are simply defunct. We know how to procure pork safely now, and so there is no longer any dietary reason why Muslims or Jews, or anyone for that matter, ought to abstain from consuming pork, except, that it was written down as an authoritative bit of scriptural law. This insight, however, gives explanation for why there are still religious people who believe homosexuality is a “sin.” Because it is written in their holy books as an authoritative law which must not be transgressed—and thus you get Westboro Baptist nut jobs clinging to an outmoded Bronze aged mentality, with a defunct morality, as they attempt to bring it kicking and screaming into the 21st century. More specifically though, you get moderate Christians thinking homosexuality is a sickness, or form of disease, spurred on by a sinful lifestyle rather than what it really is—a natural born condition—a fact of life.
Personally, I think such an observation is just too evident to miss, but many Christians, or Christian off-shoots like Mormonism, continue to demonize the homosexual (e.g., Prop 8). My question is this: If your God could be wrong about the “sin” of eating pork, what makes you so sure he’s not wrong about homosexuality too? 
It is sort of like the religious who defend circumcision, denying that it is the mutilation of small children’s genitals, because it has since proved to have medically supported hygienic benefits (e.g., it’s easier to keep clean. Although, I guarantee, any medical professional today will simply tell you there is no noticeable benefits to circumcision and will remind you that it’s “highly controversial”). They may even try to pass off this rather lame fact as a sign of God’s wisdom shining through the pages of two thousand year old scripture, but that’s just absurd. Anyone who has read the Bible knows that circumcision was part of a larger blood sacrifice ritual, based on the Jewish law of ‘mitzvah aseh, a sort of marker used for delineating those who shared the covenant with the Hebrew God, the tribe of Abraham (Gen. 17:10), from those who didn’t. It was a way to identify God’s chosen few.
Let’s not kid ourselves, originally this blood ritual had nothing to do with the medical benefits of personal hygiene—especially since the traditional method of circumcision was for the rabbi to bite off the pre-cut foreskin of the penis with his teeth—there is nothing hygienic about it. It’s all about the blood and the religious belief that it would set you right with God. That’s a superstitious basis for a horribly barbaric, and disgusting, act. Not to mention that it is a barbaric custom in violation of Human Rights—so much so that Sweden felt compelled to outlaw circumcision in 2001.
What sane person would then turn around and say, well all that may be true, those things like blood sacrifice and what not are outdated, but the part about homosexuality still rings true. No, I’m afraid the Bible, and Christians in general, are wrong about homosexuality being a moral disease.
That said, not all Christians view homosexuality as a disease. Indeed, there are even gay and lesbian churches today, and there are even lesbian ministers! Now if you feel this is an abomination, and a disgrace to your faith, then I would suggest you put down your bibles and start reading some biology books instead—because until you do the only thing you’re going to prove is your own appalling ignorance. My advice to Christians is to simply ignore the parts of the Bible which condemn homosexuality just as you continue to ignore the parts of the Bible which condemn eating pork. They are equally non-issues when considered from the vantage point of today’s modern understanding of the world.
Marriage and Fidelity
Now that I have brought your attention to the outmoded mentality driving certain moral injunctions within the Bible, I can come back to the question about marriage and fidelity.
What is your opinion of Christian morality regarding sexual fidelity both before and after marriage?
Before I share my thoughts on this, we need to settle on some definitions, as to add clarity to thought. First of all, fidelity is: faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support. (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2005)
Also, I should caution against mistaking fidelity for some kind of purity myth, because it is not about chastity. In fact, purity myths and virgin fetishes, something common to religious thinking and practice, are often harmful to society—especially to women.
Furthermore, we should be careful not to confuse fidelity with the tradition of monogamy. Monogamy stands for: the practice [or habit] of marrying and being married to one person at a time. (Oxford Dictionary of English, 2005)
Traditional marriage was not meant as a means of happiness. In the Biblical sense, marriage was a means to an end. Women were viewed as chattel, property of the man, to be sold and bartered with. This enterprise ensured that the household would remain strong, and marrying women off to wealthier men, or men of higher class, was a way to ensure the overall family’s economic stability and continued existence. Hence women were chattel, dowries were bartered, organized marriages were planned, and bargains were struck.
When it comes to Christian marriage and secular non-Christian marriage, we need to realize there is relatively little difference in terms of traditional practice. China had dowries the same as Jews did. Women, regardless of where they were born, were the unlucky heirs to a patriarchal tradition. I need not remind you of the Biblical passages which enslave a defiled woman to her rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29), claim her value is equal to that of only fifty pieces of silver, or give husbands and fathers the right to murder a woman for being raped against her will (Deuteronomy 22:23-24). The God of the OT allowed his people to keep women as sex slaves (Exodus 21:7-11) and on occasion even commanded the rape of women (Zechariah 14:1-2). Yet it is no simple task to divorce the God of old biblical authority from the God of new biblical authority. Jesus did not put a stop to the end of slavery, nor did he amend his Father’s immoral, sexist, and misogynistic laws regarding women. Even so, Jesus did preach a form of monogamy.
I’ll come back to the subject of monogamy shortly, but first I should point out that Christianity has a long sordid history with oppressing women and suppressing women’s rights. Annie Laurie Gaylor, feminist crusader and founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, reminds us:
The various Christian churches fought tooth and nail against the advancement of women, opposing everything from women’s right to speak in public, to the use of anesthesia in childbirth (since the bible says women must suffer in childbirth) and woman’s suffrage. Today the most organized and formidable opponent of women’s social, economic and sexual rights remains organized religion. (Annie Laurie Gaylor, Nontract #10, “Why Women Need Freedom From Religion,” Available online.)
Nowadays, Islam gets more blame for its oppressive policies against women, but Christianity is not without blame. A 2009 study at Baylor University showed that Women are still made the sexual targets of male clergy and of faith leaders in general. Perhaps more controversial still, according to a 2008 Barna report, Christians have higher divorce rates than atheists and other non-believing secularists. All this seems to suggest that we should perhaps take it with a grain of salt whenever a Christian starts talking about the “sanctity of marriage.” Apparently, it’s anything but.
Monogamy, it seems, goes against our biological conditioning. In fact, many cultures do not practice monogamy but, instead, practice polygamy (e.g., Muslim Arabs, certain African tribes such as the Sudanese and Ethiopians, Egyptians, and early Mormon frontiers folk of America, and some cultures even practice polyamory). Christianity adheres to the concept that God made woman for man, thus creating Eve from Adam’s rib (although this is not without controversy either). Marriage later gets conditioned into a symbolic sacrament, a representation of being married in Christ, as taught by early church fathers such as Augustine (who condemned polygamy). Augustine noted that although fornication was permissible among the ancient fathers, it was no longer permissible in his day, and he viewed monogamy as a more covenant-friendly practice (i.e., marriage between one man and one woman helped to fulfill God’s commandment to his people to be fruitful and multiply).
One of Christianity’s biggest experiments in trying to curb the human biological urge to mate with multiple partners has been an abstinence only policy—but a 2008 study in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management found that there was no significant impact of abstinence only policies on teen sexual activity. Additionally, a similar report by the U.S. Mathematica Policy Research showed that abstinence only policies are not only an abysmal failure—but it also found that youth in these programs were no more likely to have unprotected sex. None-the-less, Christian organizations such as Focus on the Family continue to push abstinence only problems—and continue to put their children at risk by doing so.

Contrary to the conservative opinions that abstinence only education prevents sexual promiscuity, which it doesn’t, it seems that the opposite is true. Healthy and mature sex positive education does improve our sexual understanding and views sex in a positive light, thus reducing the guilt—related to the heavily stigmatized religious premarital “sex is sin” myth which runs unchecked in Christianity—thus allowing for healthier, more responsible, sexual relationships.
Coming back to marriage, we cannot deny that sexual attraction plays a large part our desire to get married (as sexual selection is part of our biological existence). Our emotional love is mostly predicated on our mutual compatibility and physical attraction to another person—basic brain chemistry times biology. In modern times, however, our deeper affections (i.e., romantic love) also seem to play a large role in the reasons people give for desiring to marry.
Marriage is, by today’s standards, an expression of one’s love for another. If two people in love want to use the custom of marriage as a symbol of union, exclusivity, or fidelity—then this is an expression which should not be denied them. To deny anyone the right to marry is basically to deny them the right to love who they will how they will—and such would be criminal. We cannot dictate who people should love or by what standard—yet religion seeks to try and do just this.
My conclusion is that marriage is merely a social construct, a social construct which is indistinguishable from other forms of relationships in terms of what each values. After all, most Americans don’t actually practice monogamy, but a form of monogamy called serial-monogamy. What this means is that they practice multiple short-term relationships, marry a lover, maintain a monogamous lifestyle for a time, and then divorce and do it again. Sometimes this is not by plan or design, sometimes divorce is necessary (e.g., battered wives escaping abusive husbands is one example of many which spring to mind). Many of my evangelical Christian cousins, even my own Christian mother, who are all extremely conservative (unlike me) have all been divorced more than twice and are on their second and third marriages, respectably. The 37% divorce rate among mainstream Christians, as the above Barna poll showed, suggests that over a quarter of Christians in America may also practice serial-monogamy rather than traditional monogamy.
When it comes to relationship models, I personally do not see any moral distinction between one social construct and another, whether it polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, monogamy and so forth, they are merely variant relationship models based within the same ethical playing field. This is not a controversial statement, mind you. None-the-less those who are more conservative will be inclined to disagree—but that’s to be expected as that’s the very definition of conservatism—disagreeing to proposed changes and alternative lifestyles and or worldviews. Regardless of what model you practice, it has been my experience that most successful adult relationships are predicated on fidelity and loyalty, communication and negotiation, trust, honesty, dignity, gender equality, non-possessiveness, mutual support, sharing domestic burdens and so on (you may be surprised to learn that these are the values within polyamory, not monogamy, although some of the values are overlapping).
For me there is no more romantic an ideal than true love, fidelity involves the promise, or personal pledge, that you will be loyal only to one, and one, person—basically it is the promise to maintain this true love. In fact, it is such a compelling notion primarily because we all desire it. We all want to be loved. I suspect we all want to be the object of somebody else’s undying love. Not only is the sheer concept emotionally satisfying, it is also an attempt to actualize an ideal.
Once you find your dream partner, your perfect match, and you both fall madly in love—fidelity is a promise you make to each other. It is a noble and beautiful, heartwarming, sentiment. It is such a powerful sentiment, so powerful in fact, that it sets the stage for every romance and drama which has ever been acted out—it is about the one true love. It is why Romeo and Juliet defied the social norms, went against tradition, and rebelled against the rules of their parents. It is the reason Helen ran away with Paris. It is the reason Tristan and Iseult risked it all to be together. It is the reason Harry met Sally. True love. Powerful stuff.
But is such an ideal even possible to achieve given our limitations and the human propensity to err? Probably not, but that doesn’t make the ideal any less meaningful.
The bottom line is this: marriage is only allotted the meaning we supply to it. But then again, marriage is not for everyone. There is nothing in the rule book which says we are all destined to end up with our perfect mate. Most will never be so lucky. As the Journey song says: “some were born to win, others to lose, and, some were born to sing the blues.”
As a romantic, I cannot help but be proud to commit myself fully to my wife—I for one believe in the ideal—I believe true love, whether or not it is within reach, is an ideal worth striving for. Marriage for me, then, is a way to express my fidelity to the most wonderful woman I have ever known. Although I speak only for myself, I for one agree with the English poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Other Worldviews: On Buddhism
The question was:
Do you think Buddhism presents an accurate view of human nature and reality? Why?
In short, yes and no. There are different types of Buddhism just as there are different types of Christianity. While I do not believe in the supernatural claims of reincarnation, I do think that Buddhism teaches a practical methodology for addressing specific real world concerns, like why do we suffer and how to alleviate the suffering. I could go on and on about Buddhism, but like any belief system, I believe in taking the best parts, or what I call appreciations, and leaving the defunct and useless parts behind. Whether it is a religion or a political policy, I think we can always improve our understanding, and in turn, we must amend outmoded beliefs or defective practices and policies if we want to improve things.
What I like about Buddhism, is that it isn’t afraid to adapt itself with modernity. Christianity is much like Buddhism in this regard. Christianity has a unique ability to adapt itself to various worldviews in various cultures at various times. The difference is that I do not find the Christian teachings all that practical—certainly not all that much more beneficial than any other world philosophy—that is to say I don’t buy into any one ancient form of wisdom. To me they are all valid. Whether or not they are all applicable is a different matter entirely.
Christianity has other problematic elements which confound its practicality as well. The entire concept of sin is extremely problematic. The entire claim hinges on proving certain metaphysical assumptions, involving an archaic fable with a talking snake, and even then the entire concept of sin is not well defined. The Bible even fails to demarcate sin with any accuracy. For example, the Bible says not to kill others, that murder is a sin, it’s even God’s first commandment! But in the next instance in the next few verses God is commanding you to kill those who do not obey the Sabbath. So go figure.
Buddhism is less confusing—certainly less conflicting. There’s no pesky deity to get in the way of its teachings or confound your moral sense as with the Christian God. Buddhism gives you the four noble truths and the noble eight fold path and a certain amount of freedom to interpret the reality you observe without having to resort to making metaphysical assumptions. It allows a clarity which is not distorted by the desire to appease any god, but rather, gain a better understanding of the world and the human condition.
In his book What the Buddha Taught, Walpola Rahula states, “Buddhism recognizes that humans have a measure of freedom of moral choice, and Buddhist practice has essentially to do with acquiring the freedom to choose as one ought to choose with truth: that is of acquiring a freedom from the passions and desires that impel us to distraction and poor decisions.”
I could say a lot more on Buddhism, but perhaps I’ll save it for another time.
Appreciations are the Way (My Personal Tao)
Apostasy is just another way of saying I am no longer be a believer chained to any particular religious creed, even so, this doesn’t mean I can’t borrow the best bits from various faiths, ideologies, and other belief systems and apply them to my own life accordingly. In fact, I believe this may be the best, most reasonable, way to gradually improve my life—literally by taking the best appreciations and using the best philosophies I can find and utilizing them perchance creating a better model of living without the defects (i.e., outmoded and/or blinkered bits) of inferior belief systems and ideologies. 
In a way, I’m creating new forms of morality by testing already proved forms of moral values and ethical guidelines. I mean, isn’t this what Christians do when they cherry-pick from the Bible? Yes, it’s the very same thing. It’s moral relativism. The only difference is my moral relativism is not limited to the confines of just one book (a conflicted book at that). I have an entire realm of ideologies and philosophies to choose from—that is to say—I have an unlimited supply of appreciations I can select from and then apply to my life. It’s a work in progress, involves researching and making educated decisions, involves some trial and error, involves revision, adaptation, evolution, but I’m glad to report that it’s been working splendidly so far.

Why Do Christians De-Convert?

It’s an interesting question. Indeed, why do Christians de-convert? I do not suspect the answers to be easy to come by. Even so, this subject has been raised on a Christian site I frequent, and I thought it worth discussing here. 


According to one Christian:

Interestingly the fact that many would walk away from their faith is anticipated by Jesus Himself. He gave three reasons why people walk away from their faith:

1. Spiritual opposition.
2. Persecution.
3. The desire for material pleasures. – Mark 4:13-20

These reasons comport with observations I have made with many interactions I have had with atheist converts. They never merely reject Christianity but they always reject Christian morality as well. It’s never a case where they persist in the lifestyle Christian beliefs require (sexual purity, self-control, self-sacrificial relationships, etc) and only reject its truth claims. And it isn’t necessary for this to be so; they themselves often argue that they are equally moral to Christians. And yet they invariably adopt lifestyles that are morally antagonistic to Christianity. I think it is no coincidence that atheist converts are mostly young men whose lives are most driven by their selfish passions, and who are most willing to subvert belief to desire… The ‘need and desire’ Christianity doesn’t fulfill, and can’t, is the freedom to sleep around guilt free or live a lifestyle that is gratuitously selfish. And as much as these desires drive the choices of young men they provide a strong motivation for rejecting Christianity. I also note that a lot of these guys when they get older and marry and have children are much less antagonistic. They may not return to Christianity, but they certainly don’t see it as the enemy they did of their youth. This isn’t universally true but is often the case for men I see in committed long term relationships with healthy families.

In the end I can only speak from what I observe – but as the intellectual case for materialistic atheism seems to have uncontestable [sic] weaknesses and Christianity is more than rational in it’s understanding both of the natural world and as a foundation for human flourishing, I am inclined to conclude that rejection of Christianity is more often a product fulfilling one’s passions than it is of intellectual satisfaction.

This however, I find, is limited in scope.  Personally, I think the criticism may be applicable to some atheists some of the time. But after reading through the list of (Biblically supported) reasons for why some Christians *think others deconvert and leave Christianity, the more I find that either I am a grand exception or the above generalization isn’t encompassing enough. 

Contrary to the above opinion about atheists and their wild ravenous, lusting, sexual promiscuity I have been with the same woman (my wife) for eight years (and we’ve been happily married for four of them). We have a beautiful daughter. And I don’t have the time nor luxury to sleep around because of my devotion to my family. Not that would ever want to.

My deconversion hinged on my love and passion for Jesus and then, equally, my love and compassion for my wife and who she was as both a Japanese and a free thinking secular Buddhist.

First, in my Christian youth my passion burned for Jesus, I was filled to the brim with the Holy Spirit, I was a Campus Crusader for Christ, I was a Bible camp counselor, was a youth leader in my local church, was part of numerous Christian charities, I helped organize and partook in various youth retreats with the aim of enhancing the bonds of Christian fellowship across the U.S., I wrote Christian apoplogetics on my blog called “The Chronicles of a Sympathetic Christian,” and so on. All this was because I burned with a passion to bring the love of Christ to others.

My zealousy got the better of me though… because I wasn’t satisfied with the stained glass, pristine, Jesus which was being preached from the pulpit any longer. Even then I knew that such a figure was dressed up and/or molded to fit the pastor’s sermon. I knew deep down that such a personage was largely artificial–a Jesus partly evolved from scripture and partly from the collective imagination (i.e., parochiality) of our own devising. 

I felt the Holy Spirit compelling me toward a more intimate relationship with Christ. Therefore I embarked upon a personal spiritual journey to enhance my understanding and grow in my relationship with Jesus. I began by pursuing my desire to have the most intimate relationship possible with my Lord and Savior by learning about the real historical Jesus, the authentic man behind the Gospels, not the watered down Sunday school version. I was bound and determined to learn everything there was to learn about the Gospel Jesus.

Approximately 120 history books later the Jesus of history proved to be much more illusive and problematic than expected. In fact, the Jesus I knew and loved was not the same man as the real historical person. Not even close. The Jesus behind the Gospels (the Jesus which supplied my faith meaning) proved a romantic ideal, meanwhile the historical Jesus became impossible to demarcate. Suddenly the Jesus behind the Gospels vanished and like a sand castle on the beach washing out to sea.

Don’t mistake me, however, I’m not saying there wasn’t a real historical figure called Jesus the Christ. In fact, I believe there is enough internal evidence in the Gospels to make the case that there was a real person–but again, as I stated earlier, it’s relatively impossible to demarcate the historical Jesus. This means we can’t really define the Gospel Jesus as historical, since we don’t know what historical bits to delineate from the non-historical. That’s one of the biggest concerns I have as a historian.
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After that it is just a matter of familiarizing oneself with early Christian history. After which, I think all the clues point to a literary hypothesis based on a legendary figure. This mythologization is traceable, unlike the historicity of the real personage.

At any rate, just as soon as I realized there was no tangible figure to base my faith on, along with the cognitive dissonance certain analytical and historical concerns raised, it dwindled to practically nothing. Even so, my passion of getting to the truth outlived my faith. As it turns out, my faith failed me, not I it.

The second part of my deconversion was more involved as it involved me discovering that there was no genuine moral basis in my Christian belief system. The catalyst for this realization was me meeting my wife and her being of a different background, both culturally and with regard to religion as well. This of course raised other forms of cognitive dissonance, mostly dealing with the moral dynamics of a secular worldview vs. my Christian worldview. This raised new philosophical concerns I had never had to consider before, and it forced me into a very serious Outsider Test of Faith, of sorts.

To make a long story short my Christian moral precepts did not stand up to exacting scrutiny either and yielded no answers to the sorts of questions I was asking. Yet since my OTF involved real world consequences, I had to find a better more evolved, philosophically sturdy, moral system (or systems). 

Interestingly enough, many of the Christian values I held were already inherently a part of other belief systems. It was only a matter of assembling the best moral theories (admittedly a work still in progress) and getting mainly the same moral results minus the limitations of Christianity.

So you see, my journey from belief to nonbelief was mainly intellectual, but at the same time, there were emotional factors involved. Even so, most of the emotional factors were falsely presumed, i.e. I realized my wife’s love was more real than the love I thought I was receiving from Christ, and then keeping this love depended on me learning to love–and frankly, my prior Christianity stifled any attempts to broaden my worldview and love others unhindered by theological concerns and dogma (granted more liberal Christians typically do not have this worry–which is why I suspect Fundamental evangelical Christians, such as I was, have a higher deconversion rate than liberal Christians and even Catholics). In a way, of a sort, I did end up rejecting Christian morality–but not because I wanted to live a heathenish lifestyle or anything of the sort. Rather, it wasn’t compatible with my desire to encompass a broader worldview which allowed for a great compassion and understanding on my part–Christianity was just too insular and its morality was too primitive (i.e., reeked of tribalism of a goat herding age–which is to say Christian morality is entrenched with a simplistic Bronze aged mentality restricted by conventional dogmas).

Well, that’s my deconversion process in a nutshell. Granted, the finer points of the arguments which ultimately convinced me atheism makes more sense than theism are much more nuanced, naturally. But even so, as Paul Harvey would quip, now you know the rest of the story.