The Rapture Edition

As you may know by now, there's a group of mostly American Christians who expect to go to heaven tomorrow (Saturday, May 21, 2011). Left behind to suffer for about five months of floods, earthquakes, fires, and pestilence will be everyone else, including but not limited to the Humanists, the Muslims, the Jews, the Hindus, the Rastafarians, and the Scientologists. Then we'll go to hell and the world will come to an end.

Such a nice theology. 

Rapture cults exhibit the epitome of the exclusionary thinking by which established religious groups grow their mystique. You have to be just so, or you can't have the good stuff that we control. Maybe your mother needs to be of a certain ethnic heritage, or your parents have to baptize you in the correct liquid, or you have to be publicly penitent about something bad that you pretend that you did, or you need to wear a tent in public. Whatever. It's all meant to exert control over your mind, over your behavior, and most of all over your community and culture. The requirements for religious membership become ingrained in community norms, and their obvious foolishness eventually disappears. Everybody drinks the Koolaid.

Why is the Rapture fetish considered so particularly weird? How is it really different from believing that we fly up to heaven after we die, or are reborn in the bodies of others, or can be martyred if we kill someone who doesn't share our religious convictions? 

Come on, people, let's find drama in other places and drop this ridiculous exclusionary cult stuff. My tribe is the human tribe. What's yours?

Marketing God to the Heathens

Hey, have you noticed that my blog about humanism attracts a lot of interesting advertisements from faith-based organizations? Google has an unusual algorithm in place. Today, there are ads for no fewer than three online theology courses, five churches, a pitch for the Lutheran financial planning firm Thrivent (great name, huh?), and my favorite, an ad for a "Christian alternative to bankruptcy." The terms of service don't allow me to click on my own ads, but I'm dying to find out what the Christian alternative to bankruptcy actually is. Someone please let me know!

Secular Studies Hits Higher Ed

The New York Times recently reported on Pitzer College's new department of secular studies. This is terrific news. It's baffling that legitimate places of higher education include theology departments along with science-based programs. That's like offering a major in astronomy with a concentration in astrology. At least the medical school programs that are dipping their toes in non-traditional therapies are making efforts to study their effectiveness, or lack thereof. How can any university--other than a religious one--proudly offer religious studies outside of their sociology or cultural anthropology or history or literature or music programs? Because religion is definitely worth looking at as an historic and cultural phenomenon (I would have said oddity, but it's obviously the secularists who are the odd people out, numbers-wise). But please, let's not offer theological courses as part of a fact-based field of inquiry. Thank you, wise people of Pitzer!

Good News! A.C. Grayling writes the Good Book

Here's a book that looks interesting, by philosopher A.C. Grayling.

From an article in the Guardian:

Atheists, according to Grayling, divide into three broad categories. There are those for whom this secular objection to the privileged status of religion in public life is the driving force of their concern. Then there are those, "like my chum Richard Dawkins", who are principally concerned with the metaphysical question of God's existence. "And I would certainly say there is an intrinsic problem about belief in falsehood." In other words, even if a person's faith did no harm to anybody, Grayling still wouldn't like it. "But the third point is about our ethics – how we live, how we treat one another, what the good life is. And that's the question that really concerns me the most."

The Brainwashing of Babies

One sunny afternoon when my son was barely four years old, I was behind the wheel of the preschool carpool with a load of kids. A little girl in the back seat started talking about God. My ears perked up and I listened to her self-assured mini-sermon about the importance of going to church and believing in Jesus. I silently hoped that she'd stop while still on the basics, but no: she dropped the nuclear option: believe in God or go to hell.  My son, for whom most talk of the supernatural was simply premature, was completely silent. Dear Lord, I thought, how much damage control will I have to do to reassure my son that his friend was not full-on crazy?

Not much later our family started talking in earnest about creation. We kept our discussions to what we could observe--which, when dealing with a preschooler is a pretty awesome talk. Why did he think that the bugs behaved the way they did? Where did the moon come from? Did he remember where he was before he was born? Ever think about how, when everything living dies, it becomes food for another living thing?

It was cool. It was the start of creating a personal theology, based on experience and observation. We left the lies out. (Except, as you know by now, we left Santa in, because Santa rocks.)

You wonder how your kids will turn out if you leave their spiritual education up to them. Will they end up as putty in faith-mongers' hands? Will they become morally-bereft sociopaths? What are they going to miss?

Just last week my now-grown son and I were taking a walk during winter break. As we passed a rather magnificent local church, I proposed that maybe we'd missed out on some friends and an important support network by avoiding organized faith. He laughed, responding, "I get what you're saying, but I would never be able to live with myself if I set aside my self-respect and all reason just for that."

Amen.

Make-believe beliefs stop earlier for some than others. Here's English comedian Ricky Gervais discussing atheism.

Readers: Thanks for your comments and keep the great links coming!

Bring on the Holidays

I visited a garden store today and was overwhelmed by the beautiful trees and cut garland and boughs and red twigs and fragrant plant matter and big bows and shiny things of all kinds.

It's the winter holiday season! Although I'm neither Jew nor Christian, I love the December holidays. The secular rituals are great and the revelry is divine (did I actually say that?). 

The evangelical PR machine is also making its annual holiday appearance, reminding the public that JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON.

Oh, give me a break.

Now, I'm not going to link you to the scholarly sources that explain the various ancient festivals connected to winter solar activities and farming calendars. This information is readily discovered--heck, look it up on Wikipedia. But, dear rationalist friends, do not let the religious keep you from having as much fun and sharing as much joy and happiness as you wish this season.

So go ahead: put up the lights, bring gifts to the needy, let your kids know the singular joy of Santa Claus (unlike religious instruction, a parental lie I support enthusiastically), throw a party for your friends and neighbors. Do not apologize for "co-opting" someone else's religious holiday--your holiday was there first. 

Wishing you peace and beauty and the return of the sun!

Coming out of the faith closet

Leaving one’s religion behind can be upsetting, so many folks decide that even though they don’t believe, they will keep this news to themselves and continue to "play church." You know these people; they’re everywhere. They make a show of baptizing their children and attending services on holy days, or they eat ritual foods, starve during ritual fasts, and take part in the big deal celebrations. Among their friends or siblings they may ironically scoff at their pretense of belief (“I only do this to keep Mom and Dad happy.”) or they may go along with their more devout spouse just to keep the peace. For the most part, those with false piety are harmless. Lots of families have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for their suspected infidels, and as long as they continue to eat the wafer, as it were, everything remains okay.

In some cultures, however, it’s quite dangerous to reject religion: not just because mother may be cross with you, but because the religious regime in charge might put you in jail or chop off your hands. And in some very insular religious groups the community will shun nonbelievers, expelling them both physically and psychically from their family and social networks. In the face of this kind of fundamentalist lunacy, one wonders how many outwardly religious folks are spiritual scam artists, for reasons of familial unity or self-preservation, or perhaps because they like their hands.

Though for some of us the process of coming out of the faith closet is relatively straightforward and nonthreatening, it is not always very easy. There’s no step-by-step handbook for going rational, no bumper sticker or promise ring or special handshake to seal the deal. It's hard to find a mentor or sponsor because non-religious people generally don't flaunt it in public. The really open rationalists—the activist atheists—aren't very helpful as role models as they can be just as crazy as the faithful.

The marketplace hasn’t caught up to fulfill the needs of the emerging rationalist consumer. You know that a trend has really taken hold when it becomes an enduring part of pop retail self-help culture—think immunity boosters and Chicken Soup books. But religious defectors have no shopping choices. To my knowledge, greeting card companies haven’t launched a special line for those who are announcing their spiritual emancipation, although it would be fun to see.

“Mommy was a crabby Christian, her pastor preaching death and doom, now she’s sleeping in on Sundays, let’s trust her soul won’t go ka-boom. Happy Solstice.”

Leaving one’s faith is a multi-step process. There’s the brief, cathartic act of coming out of the faith closet, and then there’s the rest of your life explaining and defending your beliefs. It’s funny how your beliefs, or lack of them, will now be considered fair game for public and familial discussion and disapproval, even though it’s considered impolite, or even an actionable hate crime, to question or even simply tease members of religious groups about their practices or garb or thinking. But now that you’ve gone on record saying that moral standards are obsolete, and that religious people should be persecuted for their acts of unconscionable political, sexual, and intellectual violence, or… no, wait, you didn’t say any of that. But you may be treated as if you did.

It would be easier if everyone who left formal religious involvement could join a non-religious surrogate or substitute entity, like a spiritual version of the Elks Club (and the Unitarian Church doesn’t count—they try, I know, but they’re hopelessly Christian-y.) Then we could just tell people, “I’m an Elk now,” and we could substitute the new belief set for the old. We could still have weekly meetings to talk about important community and personal issues, a nice building, lots of friends who care about us, and rules and rituals, but without the intellectual silliness. 

That's it: I'm an Elk now.