As someone who reads much history and actually remembers a good chunk of it, I must admit to feeling very isolated and alone, even ostracized at times, for saying out loud what my study, conscience, and reason tell me is true: there is probably no god, certainly not a white guy in a beard and a toga in the clouds.
Beliefs are funny things. All 3 Mediterranean Monotheistic faiths (Judaism admittedly less so) believe we will be judged not just for what we do, but what we believe, or what we say we believe. Although we can try to make ourselves receptive to other beliefs, or even sympathetic to them, we can no more force ourselves to believe something we don't than we can change our height or age simply by willing it.
There seems something inherently unfair, even capricious, in the idea of being judged for something you cannot control and that probably does not matter all that much anyway. Gravity exists whether I believe it in or not, whether I call it gravity or the Great Pulling Force or Fred; why should the same not be true for god? Gravity is not weakened or strengthened one bit by me or a thousand people denying or believing in it or lighting a candle and singing a song in its honor.
We claim to be a tolerant, pluralistic society, but certain belief systems are more equal than others. Studies show people would vote for a pedophile more than an atheist. Although I am not an atheist (even that is too definite a metaphysical stand to take - we do not have enough evidence to rule out the presence of some overreaching intelligence in the universe anymore than we have evidence to rule one in), it's hard not to doubt sometimes, to wonder whether the problem lies with those of us who won't just shut up and go along with the program, who say things out loud that we know will ruffle some people's feathers.
If those of us who question and doubt are the ones with the psychosis and those who claim to commune with Jesus every morning over Corn Flakes are the grounded ones, then of course we would not know (delusions by definition are fixed and the person does not have awareness they are false). It is all very mind-bending.
But I can only believe what I believe, not pretend to believe something it would be more convenient or popular or less frightening to believe.
Most of those who share my doubts or who are even outright atheists seem to do so in a calmer manner. Some are quietly amused, but not offended when they walk into an institution that says we are going to be tortured forever and ever because someone didn't sprinkle water on us when we were babies or we didn't choose correctly among the extant religions, including 27,000 denominations of Christianity, but I cannot respond with anything less than outrage.
I support Amnesty International to end torture here on earth; why would I not fight like hell (no pun intended) to make people rethink the idea of worshiping and rooting for a Stalin in the sky whose torture chambers never close and whose interrogations never end?
I travel often to historically Catholic places - Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice come to mind - and of course church visits are always on the itinerary. The pictures of torture, of children's throats being slashed (as was shown in a particularly gory mural in Saint Marc's Basilica in Venice), of promised eternal punishment (often given in graphic detail in huge paintings) for those who don't at least say they believe in the authority of Rome as god's only representative on earth are beyond depressing. I try very hard to be sensitive to those who find inspiration in these graphic depictions of torture and execution (assuming they are not inspired to replicate the horrors they view), but my conscience will not let me. It's as though I can hear myself lying to myself and if there is a god as described in the Bible, then that god would know if I was faking it.
And who knows if god is not judging us for our honesty, our determination to stick to our convictions, however unpopular or radical some might consider them? Indeed, all of the stories of the early Christian martyrs are of just such unreasonable people whom the Romans persecuted (although never to the extent they would persecute non-Christians once Christianity became the only legal state religion) not so much for what they believed as for what they renounced. Christians because of their odd exclusivity doctrine, renounced the gods that Romans knew protected their crops, their families, their health, their society.
Who knows if they weren't right? The Roman Empire collapsed shortly after it renounced its faith in favor of this new Mediterranean import, and Europe under Christian domination was a dark, deeply superstitious place until the shackles of the church were thrown off a millennium and a half later. Mediterranean Monotheism, with its inherent intolerance of competing belief systems, including variations on particular interpretations of itself, brought us all of the elements we now associate with totalitarian regimes: book burnings; torture (including water torture, invented during the Spanish Inquisition); crushing of dissent; a hunt for witches (substitute "counter-revolutionaries" or "terrorists" and the idea is the same); public executions with sadistically imaginative cruelty; propaganda (a word invented by the Catholic church to "propagate" the faith); and ethnic cleansing (the
Edict of Expulsion in 1492 forced Muslims, Jews, and free thinkers on the Iberian Peninsula to convert, flee, or die; yet for 13,000
conversos even conversion did not save them - they were murdered in the first 12 years of the Spanish Inquisition). In a prelude to the 20th Century industrial genocide,
Christians murdered one third of all Jews in Europe during the first Crusade in 1096.
Knowing all this, I find visiting churches beyond depressing, like visiting shrines devoted to Steven King novels with people lighting candles to hope they are really true.
Abraham's attempted murder of his son is no less horrific than the protagonist of the Shining attempting to kill his.
Modern secular version: from left to right: villain, terrified mother who is able defend herself and save her son; terrified son who is favorably portrayed and for whom the audience roots.
Biblical version: from left to right: faithful servant obeying voices from above telling him to murder his son; edited out (women did not generally count in the Bible and any woman who stood up to her husband, much less assaulted him, would have been stoned to death); first born son and designated human sacrifice.
Throughout the Bible, slaughter of children is advocated, encouraged or executed by god, not for anything they did but "for the iniquity of their fathers." Isaiah 14:21
The only difference is that Stephen King, unlike the Biblical authors, do not take the side of the man attempting infanticide or claim that god wants this murder to take place (the fact that Yahweh allegedly called off this mock execution at the last minute is irrelevant; the horror is that Abraham's child murder is considered a model for how Jews and Christians are to behave.
Every crucifix makes my wrists and ankles hurt. If they had a corpse in an electric chair I would feel equally disgusted. I know these things happened. The Romans crucified countless people and it saddens me greatly to think that Jesus was among those wrongful executions, but do we really need to be reminded of it - when on vacation? Do we have to expose our children to it? Why? Why? Why? If Jesus were to walk among us, might he not be ashamed and pained to see that of the almost 10,000 days of his life, we single out the most painful and humiliating one by which to remember him? He did have quite a bit to teach, messages that would be as affective, if not more so, if we weren't distracted by the gore. We can read
Cicero without seeing images of his
severed head and hand?
Fulvia, Antony's wife, who had been married to Clodius, Cicero's implacable enemy, vented her hatred on the dead orator as well. Cassius Dio (XLVII.8.4) writes that, before the head and right hand of Cicero were exposed on the Rostra, she took the head in her hands and spat on it. Then, setting it on her knees, opened the mouth and, with pins from her hair, pierced the tongue that had argued so eloquently against her husband.
My heart goes out to the victims of torture, of wrongful execution, from Jesus to the
daughter of Jephthah, to the poor residents (and their innocent animals) of
Jericho (that mass slaughter is a
cheerful children's song ("There’s None Like Good Old Joshua"), to the
thousands of innocent women burned alive by Christians to the millions of non-Christians tortured, murdered, or dispossessed over the centuries, to the victims of the Holocaust and in Rwanda, genocides committed in predominantly Christian (Catholic) countries. Christianity may not have caused the killing, but it certainly did not prevent it, so the idea of Jesus ushering in a "Kingdom of God" seems at some level a cruel joke unless he was talking about an abstract internal state, as seems evident in the Gospel of Thomas at least.
I have seen much horror and randomness - a few days in any hospital will give you a taste - so cannot find it in my heart to blame it on some god. The image of god the father offends me deeply for several reasons, not least the appalling, neglectful absence of this father when his children were murdering each other over the pettiest of differences about how to worship him. Indeed, the evidence very much favors those of us who believe that daddy either never existed or isn't coming back anytime soon and would not want us to starve to death or murder each other while waiting for him in any case.
I actually admire most of Jesus' teachings, not that they were all that unique. He borrowed heavily from compassionate Axial Age philosophies, as Karen Armstrong documents in great detail, and I only half joke that he was a good Buddhist (Buddhism of course is 5-6 centuries older than Christianity and what other gifts were those "wise men from the East" bearing?). But as Gandhi once said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. So unlike your Christ."
Perhaps I should just shut up and keep my convictions and beliefs to myself which is no doubt what generations of Jews, Muslims, and free thinkers did to preserve their lives, their possessions, and their sanity when this bullying new religion spread like a virus across Europe, but part of me screams out not to, that too many brave men and women have endured so much worse for remaining true to their convictions, so I should be able to withstand the cold silences and angry verbal exchanges that speaking the truth as I see it out loud seems to evoke.
Religion is the problem. It tore my family and our society apart. I never met my grandparents because of religion. Religion has unquestionably fed into the psychosis of vulnerable patients I have treated or has given narcissists grandiose, cosmic cover for their harmful behavior. Religion inspired 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq. Religion has led to people in Palestine being dispossessed of their homes and has inspired others to strap explosives to themselves and walk into cafes or onto buses. Religion is what made otherwise good and decent people vote for torture, preemptive war, and indefinite detention (are we really to believe that so many Catholics would have supported W if he had not said he would do his darndest to prohibit abortion and limit stem cell research?).
It is religion not our opposition to it that creates so much bitterness and anger. And we should not silence ourselves simply because what we say might make some uncomfortable, even angry. As
Sophie Scholl once wrote when opposing Hitler:
We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!
No, we will not be silent.
Simply blaming one side for not being "reasonable" - tacitly consenting to the dominant paradigm - is not a sustainable solution, nor is it in keeping with the values of our post-Enlightenment society. Besides, we are saying things out loud most people, even people who consider themselves religious, agree with. Consider that most Catholics neither believe in nor fully understand transsubstantiation. This idea, that bread is literally - NOT symbolically or metaphorically - transformed into the body of Jesus which is then eaten by his follower, is misunderstood by many Catholics to be an optional belief, a ritual they can partake in without really believing they are engaging in a form of spiritual cannibalism. The
Catholic Encyclopedia is quite helpful in clearing up this point:
With the true instinct of justice, jurists prescribe that in all debatable points the words of a will must be taken in their natural, literal sense; for they are led by the correct conviction, that every testator of sound mind, in drawing up his last will and testament, is deeply concerned to have it done in language at once clear and unencumbered by meaningless metaphors. Now, Christ, according to the literal purport of His testament, has left us as a precious legacy, not mere bread and wine, but His Body and Blood. Are we justified, then, in contradicting Him to His face and exclaiming: "No, this is not your Body, but mere bread, the sign of your Body!"
If this sort of writing appeals to you, the link in question goes on and on for about 14,000 words, "proving" that there is a "Real Presence" (meaning Jesus is literally in the bread or wafer) and and sections with titles such as "The permanence and adorableness of the Eucharist" and more Latin than you can shake a stick at ("Substantia panis materialis et similiter substantia vini materialis remanent in Sacramento altaris" (the material substance of bread and likewise the material substance of wine remain in the Sacrament of the Altar)). As a Catholic publication, it cites itself as evidence ("the
infallible magisterium of the
Church") and goes into painful detail about centuries-old squabbles with those competing for Christian market share such as Luther and Calvin (and concludes of course they were wrong and "the Church" (meaning the Catholic Church) was right). I have to include the concluding paragraph in its entirety to give a flavor of the mind-numbing circular legalism which Catholics in good standing are supposed to study and believe:
There is, furthermore, a fourth kind of multilocation, which, however, has not been realized in the Eucharist, but would be, if Christ's Body were present in its natural mode of existence both in heaven and on earth. Such a miracle might be assumed to have occurred in the conversion of St. Paul before the gates of Damascus, when Christ in person said to him: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" So too the bilocation of saints, sometimes read of in the pages of hagiography, as, e.g., in the case of St. Alphonsus Liguori, cannot be arbitrarily cast aside as untrustworthy. The Thomists and some later theologians, it is true, reject this kind of multilocation as intrinsically impossible and declare bilocation to be nothing more than an "apparition" without corporeal presence. But Cardinal De Lugo is of opinion, and justly so, that to deny its possibility might reflect unfavorably upon the Eucharistic multilocation itself. If there were question of the vagaries of many Nominalists, as, e.g., that a bilocated person could be living in Paris and at the same time dying in London, hating in Paris and at the same time loving in London, the impossibility would be as plain as day, since an individual, remaining such as he is, cannot be the subject of contrary propositions, since they exclude one another. The case assumes a different aspect, when wholly external contrary propositions, relating to position in space, are used in reference to the bilocated individual. In such a bilocation, which leaves the principle of contradiction intact, it would be hard to discover an intrinsic impossibility.
Got it? I think the point of all of this is to distract Catholics from the simple idea that Jesus's body could be magically regenerated as many times as needed and in as many locations as desired in the form of bread, and furthermore that those who follow his teachings should feast on his body. When so expressed, most people would find such an idea absurd, which is why it is instead presented with lots of scholarly-appearing references sandwiched between Latin and - when that does not suffice - outright neologisms, such as "bilocation." It has the appearance, heft, and word count of a scholarly paper or a legal brief but nothing in this lengthy discussion does more than refer the reader to other lengthy discussions by others who were all scouring the same oral traditions in the hope of discerning some magical, metaphysical "proof" that Jesus can somehow be made concrete and edible.
I go into such detail (and believe me, there is painfully much more) on this one issue just to illustrate that I am not making this up. Most educated readers - certainly most Catholics - exposed to this pseudo-scientific babble will see it for what it is - an attempt to elevate a rather strange and idiosyncratic tradition to the level of science, to even "prove" that this tradition is "true" in some externally validated way (even though all of the "proof" offered is internal, circular, and itself speculative).
An easy way to settle the question would be to bless some bread, then take it to the lab for DNA analysis - no DNA, no Jesus. What could be more simple? I am sure the Vatican understands how devastating the results would be, which is why they instead throw out all these words, some of them made up, and rehash historical philosophical arguments.
But transsubstantiation is relatively harmless since there are no real world consequences of such a belief. But to paraphrase Voltaire, if you get someone to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities. Encouraged in one area to suspend critical thinking or healthy doubt, to parrot an absurdity, it is much easier to get the person to believe or at least support policies that will get people killed.
Most Catholics, however, agree with me on this issue. Most American Catholics use contraception and support a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy. In fact, American Catholics are a bit more likely than non-Catholics to get an abortion. Yet some shuffle into their local Catholic franchise and give money that eventually flows to Rome so they can deny poor women the same choices and access they enjoy. Why? When you consider that most of these palaces were built with money scammed from the poor through indulgences, a practice so egregious it split the Western church in 2, then 3, then eventually 27,000 warring denominations and led to centuries of murderous internecine warfare over the stupidest of metaphysical trivialities.
I know that many people of good will who think work out some kind of internal compromise where they quietly reshape this monster into a more humane, just, and less misogynistic deity, but instead of going through the trouble of forming their own church (or worshipping privately in their home as early Christians did before it went from being an illegal radical religion to a corporate, state religion with all the trappings that go with any any corporation (hierarchy, money, power, central authority, demands for obedience to a single dogma), they use the existing corporate franchises set up to worship Yahweh. Yes, using existing corporate religion for your own private purposes is convenient, but is it honest? Is it right? Is it possible that the churches being used in this way will misunderstand the message the non-empty pews are sending and believe they need not change a thing since there are enough dues-paying customers who will continue to support the enterprise, even to turn a profit? If nothing else, they can build up a legal defense fund for the inevitable day when their parish priest gets caught with his hand down the pants of a child entrusted to his care.
Like any organization, the Church will not reform and atone unless it is forced to. Boycotts work. But as long as people of good will continue to drop money into a basket during a religious service, a woman in Africa might not have access to a lifesaving condom so her husband might infect her with HIV. It might prevent the stem cell research that could save your grandchild from some rare tumor or might have allowed Steve Jobs to grow a new pancreas. It could lead to a mother dying from the results of a botched back alley abortion if the church has its way and prohibits safe, legal abortion. It could prohibit certain families from ever having the same legal protections as others simply because of the gender of the parents. It could prevent the life partner of a dying man to be visited on his deathbed or even in the hospital at all in some cases by his lover if his biological family whom he has not seen in decades forbid it. It could lead to the anguish of millions upon millions of children who are taught that masturbation, something natural and universal among healthy males and most females, is a mortal sin to be punished forever. It could help the church's legal defense to block those raped by clergy from getting justice or compensation, or more importantly prevent the church from taking the necessary steps to keep these international crimes from occurring.
Yes, it could also help an orphanage somewhere in Central America, but if the Catholic Church was not so omnipresent in that part of the world, the need for orphanages would be much lower, perhaps nonexistent, as women reclaim the right to control their own bodies and the number and timing of their children. There are plenty of secular organizations that could do this work without making it contingent upon conversion or shunting a good chunk of the money to support a celibate all-male hierarchy and their palatial lodgings in Rome.
I just don't see how sentient, compassionate, reasonable people opposed to most of the real world policies the church supports can expose their children to it or give this corporation money. It is like railing against sweat shops then shopping at Walmart, worse really, since you can shop at Walmart without believing (or even knowing about) what the CEO is doing, but the CEO of the Catholic church is very explicit about his plans to block science and force women to have their rapist's child or die rather than get a life-saving abortion. (No, he doesn't put it quite like this, but the results are the same; many Catholics support no rape or incest exception, and a
nun was recently excommunicated for approving an emergency abortion to save the life of the mother - interestingly, none of the men who raped children was so swiftly excommunicated - most kept their jobs and were just shuffled from parish to parish without the new parish being warned).
Fair enough, I can't (and in a free country would never advocate) prevent people from going into a church or giving them money, but I can speak up about it. No one is threatening to shut up the Pope when he tells Africans that condoms cause AIDS but I certainly have the right to speak up and say he is wrong and what he is saying has consequences, moral and medical.
If these are divisive issues that make people angry and bitter, then the church should not wade into these very real world issues in which they have no expertise. I didn't decide to launch the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Holocaust. I didn't decide to excommunicate and silence Galileo for the crime of honestly reporting what he observed (and not fully reversing that decision until 1997). I didn't chain off the streets of Paris during the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre so Protestants could not escape the murdering waves of Catholics who were attempting a Final Solution to the Protestant Problem in France once and for all (as they would attempt another Final Solution to another religious "problem" 2 centuries later). I didn't order, as Pope Gregory XIII did, a Te Deum sung in praise of the slaughter, nor did I issue a medal with an angel and cross over slaughtered Protestants, or declare 11 Sep 1572 a day of deliverance. I did not torture Jean Calais to death because the poor man's son had hanged himself, breaking him on the wheel, then scattering his traumatized family (thankfully, Voltaire posthumously rehabilitated him and gathered the family at Ferney-Voltaire near us, where they lived out the rest of their lives in peace). These are the provocative, nasty, vicious, outrageous acts that I will not forget or condone and for which the Catholic church has never fully apologized or even acknowledged (in the Vatican there was no memorial to the victims of the SB Massacre but a dramatic, self-serving portrait of some priests being hanged around the same time). If it is impolite to bring them up, it is infinitely more impolite to have done them then to try to erase them from history.
Yes, our country was based on slavery and ethnic cleansing, but the difference is that a.) you would not call me anti-American or a zealot or unreasonably divisive for condemning slavery and racism; b.) no President ever claimed infallibility; c.) we have the right to dissent enshrined in our Constitution (the Vatican grants no such right and in fact expressly forbids it); d.) we can and have admitted when we were wrong and have a process of amending our Constitution and changing our laws - the Catholic church has no process of editing or eliminating fraudulent or contradictory claims made in its founding documents or in the Bible; e.) we do not tell all other countries they are wrong and going to hell for not being Americans; f.) other countries who do not believe in us are not forced to support us (only Americans pay American taxes, whereas my tax dollars flow to the Vatican).
I do not mean to pick on the Catholics only, it's just that this is the brand of Mediterranean Monotheism with which I am most familiar and which has the largest plurality of any of the 27,000 Christian denominations, so its proclamations and beliefs and policies are most visible and easy to critique. If our family had been torn apart by Hinduism or Islam or Judaism, no doubt I would be critical of those belief systems, but that was not my experience.
We need to have a true, fair, balanced dialogue. We need to stop lying to ourselves and our children. We need to work toward a society where those of us whose conscience leads us to a position of non-affiliation with the dominant corporate religion in our culture are not considered impolite when we point out the dangers and fallacies of an all male, allegedly celibate hierarchy, most unblessed by much scientific training, none (if they followed their vows) with any direct experience with sexual expression or raising children, issuing edicts from Rome that directly challenge and subvert our democratic and scientific traditions, and undermine our ability to be a pluralistic, tolerant, enlightened people.
