What to do when nice [religious] people disagree with you

A few days ago I wrote a post about religious justification for spousal abuse, linking to Michael Cogdill’s excellent post about his horrific experience as a child in an abusive family.

Cogdill linked to the post from his Facebook page and offered some commentary of his own on the post itself. He was very complimentary about my post, saying “I love this passage from Carolina Atheist for what it says about the failures of hyper-religious fit throwing.” But he also said some things that I disagree strongly with, like “Atheism, I believe, is a way of seeking, of thinking critically into the wilderness [of] questions about mortality.” I don’t think atheism has much to say at all about mortality, except perhaps to point out the failure of theism to offer sound reasoning on mortality.

But Cogdill’s post — and indeed, his entire life — does demonstrate that a person can live in a very ethical and rational manner but still believe in God. People can even be convinced that this belief somehow causes or facilitates ethical and rational behavior, and many of these people really do subsequently behave ethically and rationally. So is right for me to dwell on the one point of difference between myself and Cogdill? Is Cogdill really doing any harm? Shouldn’t I join forces with the likes of Cogdill and set my sights on the people who truly abuse religious power?

To a certain extent, that’s what I am doing. After all, I quoted Cogdill quite sympathetically in my initial post. There are lots of people in the world who are doing wonderful things but happen to have beliefs that I disagree with. For example, former president George Bush (senior) recently shaved his head in support of a 2-year-old with leukemia. That’s awesome! But it doesn’t mean I don’t disagree with him on a whole lot of other issues.

But I also want to make it clear that, just as I don’t think praying for the child with leukemia will make any difference in his prognosis, I don’t think the Christian religions offer very sound advice about when a divorce is acceptable. Cogdill doesn’t really offer much in the way of biblical support for his position that it’s okay to divorce an abusive spouse. Cogdill arrives at his position through reasoning, not faith — and it’s reasoning I agree with.

I think it’s sweet that the folks in the comment thread on my spousal abuse post offer to invoke God on my behalf, but I also think they are misguided. It’s not that I don’t believe they get comfort and support from their religious community; they most certainly do! But I think there are other sources of comfort and support that are much more philosophically consistent and rational.

As the atheist community grows, we need to identify the institutions that will fill the ever-present need for social support and comfort that most Americans turn to religion for. I’m not suggesting that overtly atheist groups would fill this need, although they could be a part of it. The point is not that every institution actively support disbelief, it’s that they don’t support false belief, which is a different proposition entirely. In an ideal world, no one would need to self-identify as an “atheist” because there would be no theists to oppose. Instead, folks might identify by a particular approach to reasoning, like “reductionist” or “relativist.” Support communities might build off of other interests, like cycling or music or politics, and maybe these interest groups would have counseling wings, just like churchgoers today can attend counseling sessions or support groups when they have problems.

In the interim, and especially in the Bible belt, encounters with folks like Cogdill are going to be the rule rather than the exception. For now I prefer to keep face-to-face confrontations on ideology to a minimum. But I’ve carved this pseudonymous online space specifically to confront the areas of difference between atheists and theists, so that’s what I’m going to do here. While I appreciate Cogdill’s words of support, in this space I must also point out where we differ.

Are moderate churches any better than extreme churches?

There are places where you can still be treated extremely harshly simply for not sharing a religious belief. I had a high school friend who was ejected from his church for going to a dance club. More commonly, fundamentalist churches across America routinely try to impose their beliefs on others through advocacy of legislation such as anti-abortion laws, restrictions on birth control, and denying rights to gays and lesbians.

Meanwhile, the church my wife attends preaches tolerance. It supports gay marriage and is ambivalent about abortion. In many ways, the behaviors it advocates for its members are all things I support: Helping the poor, accepting those who are different from you, trying to focus your life on good works. What’s the harm in that?

I suppose there’s not any real harm, but there’s not much goodness either, for all that is put into it. I once had a chance to look at the church’s budget, and of the millions of dollars it collected from its parishioners each year, nearly all of it went into maintaining the institution itself: The building, the staff, and so on, all untaxed, funded by tax-deductible donations. Sure, they had a day of service once a year, and every spring they sent a “mission trip” off to a third-world country to “help” for a few days. But don’t you think they could have done more with those millions of dollars if they had had a staff of one or two, dedicated to directing the money where it would do the most good? Most of the money goes to the ceremony every week in the giant building with the million-dollar organ and the 60-member choir.

It’s a good show, to be sure, and the music is really quite entertaining, but it’s certainly not as good as the local symphony orchestra a few miles away. Some of the acts aren’t even at the level of what you’d find in the local coffee shop. Even worse, in order to be entertained, you have to be subjected to the inanity of the sermons and the prayers, which take up more than half of the service.

This may, to some extent, explain the popularity of evangelical churches: They put on a better show! Even the sermons are more entertaining, often accompanied by PowerPoint and delivered in a slick, bombastic package. But typically the “Christian Rock” delivered at these spots is still nowhere near as well-done as secular music you can hear on the radio, or at the local arena, for a fraction of the cost.

In either case, however, the costliest demand of church membership is the part that’s ostensibly “free.” You must believe. You must pledge, repeatedly, your faith in a bizarre series of stories that somehow is supposed to generate a rational framework for the “good works” of the church. Take the Lord’s Prayer, for example. I think I have it down in memory*:

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily  bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Not many “Christians” live up to the few demands made of them in this prayer. How many people truly do forgive those who trespass against them? A remarkable few. That’s why the scene in Les Miserables where the bishop gives Jean Valjean the silver he stole is so memorable and poignant. No one, clergy or otherwise, would really do that! Yet this is supposed to be a core tenet of Christian faith, recited every Sunday by millions of people around the world.

Granted, not all churches use the Lord’s Prayer every week, but pretty much all Catholics and many protestant denominations do. Forgiving our enemies is a common theme throughout the New Testament, and yet we rarely see actual Christians behaving this way. In short, they are not rationally applying the lessons of the Bible and other church teachings, and this is just one example. And yet in church, Christians constantly repeat this stuff: The Apostle’s Creed, the Doxology, John 3:16. It’s not like these are obscure, little-read texts. These are supposed to be the basic ingredients of faith. And yet people behave as if they are like speed limit signs: technically true, but made to be ignored.

All this buttressing, all this textual and physical apparatus that supports the church, it’s all practically irrelevant to most Christians’ daily lives, yet it’s where most of those millions and millions of dollars go. And it’s not just the parishioners that pay it  — all of us do, because we must then subsidize these tax-exempt organizations with our own tax dollars. Even worse is when this church exemption encroaches on what would normally be secular institutions. If a parent doesn’t want to send her or his kids to a church-run preschool, they have to use their own after-tax dollars to pay for a private school, which is more expensive in the first place because the business must pay taxes on its profits and the property it sits on.

We all pay for that, whether the church is the wacko fundamentalist type or the slightly-saner traditional type.

So I’d say that while moderate churches are somewhat more tolerable because they do make some effort not to impose their extreme views on others, overall, they’re still pretty bad, and they’re horribly inefficient at whatever good they manage to accomplish. It’s much simpler to just get rid of them all rather than try and figure out how to preserve whatever small bit of good the moderate churches accomplish.

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  * Actually, I looked this up, and I did miss a few things, so the above is a corrected version

A place to discuss issues of belief / skepticism in the South

I’ve lived in the South for 19 years now, longer than I’ve lived in any other part of the country. Like it or not, I’m a part of this region, even though many aspects of it still seem foreign to me. The most foreign aspect is, to put it bluntly, the in-your-face religion espoused by most people around here.

I still have trouble comprehending why people expect others to pray for them when their pets die or their kids get in trouble at school. But I do realize that it’s something I’m going to have to live with — probably at least until I retire. This blog is going to be a place where I can discuss these issues frankly, and, hopefully, without my [religious] friends figuring out that I am doing it.

It’s not that I keep my atheism a secret — I don’t — it’s more that, given how much I dislike the in-your-faceness of religion around here, I want to see if I can discuss these issues in a different way. For now, I think that means it’s best to keep my extended discussions about religion and atheism anonymous (or technically, pseudonymous, as I’ve adopted the pseudonym “Carolina Atheist”).

So…here goes. I’m looking forward to seeing where this discussion leads!