Category: Religion

The Power of Prayer, Part Two.

Here’s the link to this article.

Avatar photoby CAPTAIN CASSIDY

JUN 02, 2013

pray all you want, the results are the same
Sure, why not? (Dennis Jarvis, CC-SA.)

I was reeling from so many sources by now. I’d just graduated from college and had a nice shiny degree that was more or less useless by itself. I was married to a handsome and impossibly fervent minister husband who had some measure of respect in our denomination. I had a decent little job doing something I enjoyed tolerably enough. I was a busy bee all right. But beneath that surface happiness, tension roiled like a stormcloud and nothing was what it seemed. I needed answers about prayer, and I needed them now.

pray all you want, the results are the same
Sure, why not? (Dennis Jarvis, CC-SA.)

We all have a number of props and supports for our religious ideas. Mine were as varied as anybody else’s. But they were getting knocked out from under me at a frightening pace.

Probably the very last one I had was that the Bible’s god was faithful to his people and an omnimax being who loved us (“omnimax” means omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent–omni-everything, if you will). And the best way for me to evaluate that claim was to examine my god’s response to prayer.

God loves prayer. All through the Bible, his people are told to pray and God listens to those prayers. We are also told that God uses prayers as a barometer of our needs and desires, and responds to those prayers in ways that will benefit his followers. Among many other exhortations, we have Jesus in Luke 18:1 telling us that we should always be praying. Out of every single thing that a Christian is almost always totally sure of, it’s that his or her god hears those prayers and cares about each and every one. If I found out that prayer wasn’t what it seemed, not much was going to be left.

The Bible Verses

First we’ll lay out the verses:

Mark is usually thought to be the first Gospel written (see Markan Priority), though this isn’t a totally universal idea. I think it’s first, so I’m starting there. In Mark, we see these passages:

Mark 11:23-4: Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” There’s a bit of weaseling and fine print here (the stipulation is that the praying person have absolute faith that he or she will receive whatever is requested) that is absent in later-written Matthew, but overall the intention seems clear: if you just believe enough, you’ll get whatever you want.

Mark 16:17 follows up the general trend this way: “These signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” So about those snake handlers who keep dying of snake bites… In my church, we regarded ourselves as a bit more sophisticated than that. My first Pentecostal pastor (remember, the good egg who discouraged Biff from running off to Waco) refused to handle snakes, and refused to let anybody in the congregation do it either. And I never once saw or heard of any group out there deliberately drinking poisons just to show the miraculous power of God, which if you think about it is *way* more impressive than handling snakes which might or might not bite. Why was that, I wondered that night as I pored over my study Bible? Why wasn’t snake handling and poison-drinking more popular? Why didn’t anybody do it in perfect safety, knowing the Bible flat-out said they could do this as a specific sign and testament given by Jesus Christ himself? (Now I know this passage is in all likelihood a later addition to Mark and as likely to have been said by Jesus himself as a Transformers quote, but at the time, I took it all as one big piece.)

Matthew 7 has Jesus telling us all about how we will be given whatever we ask for: “Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” Well, that sounds really strong, doesn’t it? No less than the savior of humankind is saying that whatever we want, we’ll get, and he isn’t using any fine print here at all. (HelLO prosperity gospel! We’ll be discussing this concept in detail at some point.)

In Matthew 17, Jesus expands on this mysticism thusly: “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” Well, that sounds pretty positive too, doesn’t it? He doubles down on it in Matthew 21 when he’s just gotten done cursing that fig tree (you know, the one that wasn’t doing anything wrong at all except being out of season when Jesus had a major munchie fit for figs): “If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Now, note that the fig tree cursing is a specific power he’s telling believers they’ll have. So all those Christians saying a prayer didn’t get answered because it was “selfish” have some explaining to do.

In Matthew 18:18-20, we even get a look at how powerful groups of Christians are (is there a word for a group of Christians, like a flock of geese or a lamentation of swans? “Congregation” is too specifically churchy): “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” So whatever the magic power is of one Christian praying, it’s even more powerful when more than one gets together and prays. In almost every one of the church services I attended throughout the Protestant system, this verse got invoked, by the way–especially when the church prayed for one particular thing (like that pastor’s healing of brain cancer).

John’s probably the last of the gospels, and it has the strongest of all the assurances. In John 14, we see this: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” Straightforward enough.

But now let’s look at the weaseling out of these strong assurances in the rest of the Bible:

1 John 3:22: “Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” So a Christian who sins won’t get what’s requested. Well, that’s about all of us, because nobody’s righteous but Jesus (Romans 3:10, but see this writeup which mysteriously we didn’t know about as Christians).

Philippians 4:19: “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Jesus Christ.” Well, that implies that if we don’t need it, we won’t get it.

James 1:5-7: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.” Another one that implies that faith is required. All right.

James 4:3: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” If you don’t get what you asked for, you probably were asking in the wrong spirit–you just wanted it out of some selfish or sinful impulse (you know, like wanting figs out of season). So it’s your fault. That does kind of knock the prosperity gospel Christians right in the nads and it’s definitely not in keeping with Jesus’ earlier assurances that he’d do whatever we asked, especially if we asked in groups, but it’s a pretty standard deflection I heard to explain away the problem.

James 5:13-18:” Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him. . .  The effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” This one predicts healings aplenty and reaffirms that righteousness is required. Seems like a poisoned well excuse, doesn’t it? If someone doesn’t get what was requested, there’s probably some taint involved.

The only requirements I can see in the Gospels is that whoever’s praying for something needs to be very very fervent in believing that whatever is being requested will happen. The later books of the New Testament add a few stipulations, but overall, the insistence is there that yes, God answers prayers.

The Reality of the Bible Verses.

But that’s not how it works.

That’s not how it works at all.

And this “yes/no/later” thing that Christians repeat like a mantra isn’t mentioned in any of these verses. Ever. I didn’t even see how such a concept could be inferred from these verses. Either God answered the prayer every single time by giving the praying person what was requested, or in the later weasel words, God flat refuses due to some inadequacy on the part of the petitioner–not out of the person’s best interest, but out of inadequacy. What I’d been told about prayer just wasn’t true if the Bible was any kind of guide in the matter.

As I studied, I wondered again to myself: just when had I stopped asking for anything really supernatural? Every time I got in my car, I prayed that I’d get to my destination “safely and unharmed,” as I had learned from the older members of my church. When I went to the mall with Christian friends, they prayed that we’d get a good parking spot (and one year, on Christmas Eve, we did! Right up front! It was a miracle!). I prayed that work would go smoothly, that God would bless me in general, that God would bring my errant family to salvation (not a single one was saved yet).

But when I prayed for specific things, did I really get them? No, not normally, not any more than I might get them with random chance or my own hard work. Were parking spots really a miracle? Why would God let me get to work without a car accident when tons of other people, many who presumably prayed the same sort of way, did not get to their destinations safely? When Biff had invaded Pastor Daniel’s deathbed vigil, I tell you he’d have been quite positive he could bring about Daniel’s healing–but he got thrown out by the very people who should have most known that prayer worked. And I can tell you that thousands upon thousands of Christians banded together to beg God for Daniel’s healing, only to be denied. Are we to assume that they were all inadequate in some way?

Forget all the rationalizations. Forget all the fine print (because whoa Nelly there is a lot of fine print). Forget all the justifications for why. Just look at the situation.

The god this Bible described says over and over again that he is a wonder-working god. This god says he listens to prayer. He answers prayer. No “yes/no/later” bullshit. Yes. If you believe, yes. The later books of the Bible, written long after Jesus didn’t return as he’d said he would, were clearly scrambling for explanations for why prayers weren’t getting answered (and settled on the approach Christians would use for centuries to come: “It’s all your fault”).

I never once while a Christian ever heard of any supernatural answer to prayer that was accompanied by credible, objective evidence for the claim. I never saw evidence of supernatural healing. I never saw any mountains moved. I never experienced a single “answered prayer” that couldn’t be explained easily by some other means. And 2000 years after these promises were made, we’ve still got slavery, murder, disease, and a host of other things that prayer was specifically said to be able to stop. Not a single mountain has been moved. Nobody’s ever documented any big-time healing. No amputees have been regenerated. No missing eyeballs brought back. No dead people raised. No poison drunk safely. Reality simply did not conform to what the Bible promised.

When had I stopped bothering to ask for anything that big? I already suspected in my heart of hearts, I realized as I studied, that prayer was a waste of time. Once I’d been positive about it, yes. I knew that. But somewhere along the way I learned the hard lessons that all Christians learn, and I’d internalized those doublespeak arguments meant to stop my thinking about it and make me content to labor in delusion. Now that I wasn’t bound by those old thought-stoppers, I could think about the matter honestly for the first time.

And I rejected it all in one fell swoop. It made no sense, and I was not obligated to keep twisting and contorting my mind to accept all these contradictions and complete fallacies. Nothing held me anymore–there was no fear left in me, and whatever love I’d felt had dissolved over time and with repeated disappointments (something that was happening simultaneously with my “godly” marriage).

With the sadness of a mourner at a funeral, I closed my Bible. Biff would be home soon from his lying–er, witnessing session at the Crisis Pregnancy Center. Tomorrow was Sunday. I didn’t know what I was going to do at this point. I couldn’t just not go–I was a minister’s wife. But I couldn’t hold the truth in any longer. My eyes had been opened. I’d made my saving roll to disbelieve at last, at last, at last. I couldn’t force myself to believe again any more than you, reader, could force yourself to believe once more in Santa. I’d seen too much, learned too much, suffered too much. This religion was not true (the question of “well, is it valid then at least?” hadn’t occurred to me), and I would no longer ally myself with lies.

A Long and Scary Night.

I was in bed by the time Biff got home. I don’t remember talking to him or anything else that happened. I don’t think I slept a wink all night. I didn’t weep, though; I was out of tears. I had spent them all earlier that night. I was over Christianity, and just as you know when a romantic relationship is well and truly over, I knew this “relationship” I’d built in my own head was over too.

All night long, I tossed and turned. Later I would read about the philosopher Epicurus who presented a dilemma called “The Problem of Evil” that illustrated perfectly what was going on in my head in a far more primitive and less eloquent form. If God really was omnipotent, then he certainly could easily do anything one of his followers asked. If he really were omnibenevolent, then I couldn’t see any rational reason why he wouldn’t do simple things like heal disease or end war or violence that might hurt his children (and “well you know God, he’s just so confusing sometimes” thought terminators didn’t cut it anymore, remember?). If he really were omniscient, then it didn’t make sense why he even needed his beloved spouse to even need to ask him for anything–he should know already. The truth was clear: there was no way that the god I’d worshiped all this time was omnimax. I couldn’t trust the Bible’s history or science, and I couldn’t trust Christianity’s assertions about his power, love, or grace. I wasn’t that sad by the time morning came, really; I felt a curious sense of detachment from myself that liberated me and freed me. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in many days and had hit that stage in starvation when the human body just doesn’t feel hungry anymore.

I felt gaunt and wrung-out. But I also felt a strange exhilaration. I didn’t have to bash my brains out trying to reconcile those things which are not by their nature reconcilable. I no longer had to struggle to understand that which makes no sense whatsoever. Slowly I began to feel strength coursing back into my body as my liberation became more and more clear. I was free. And I would never be enslaved again.

As the grey morning light began its creep across my bedroom floor toward the bed, I realized I could just not go to church. I could just skip out. I could just quit going. And nobody could make me go if I didn’t want to go. That is where you first joined me in this blog, dear reader; this very bedroom and this very dawn is where you first met me. I had just closed an old book full of mold and fungus and rot, and I’d just made a new beginning that was fresh and clean and full of hope. And this new beginning is where we shall start our journey together. Thank you for making it with me.

XXX

This was a huge post for me, and like all big projects, it didn’t happen without help. I’d like to give a grateful tip of the hat to Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?, which very devastatingly and sensitively covers the argument against prayer’s effectiveness in greater (and probably way more eloquent and relevant) detail. I used the site as a gathering-point for many of the Bible verses as I don’t pretend to remember them all now. I’d also like to thank Skeptic’s Annotated Bible, which has such a great search function and such helpful collections of the Bible’s various flaws and absurdities. I wish these sites had existed when I was a Christian; their existence would have made my transition a lot easier and faster. I encourage those who question and doubt to check those sites out.

The Power of Prayer, Part One

Here’s the link to this article.

Avatar photoby CAPTAIN CASSIDY

MAY 25, 2013

A month or two after the David Koresh compound went up in smoke, my church got some horrible, horrible news. Our co-pastor had late-stage brain cancer.

Daniel was an awesome man (our sign-language ministry even had a sign for him–the “D” symbol run over the top of the head like a lion’s mane). His wife was the lead pastor’s daughter, a slender and beautiful young woman, and they had two generally fervent sons in their teens who didn’t show any signs of becoming stereotypically rebellious “preacher’s kids.” When our lead pastor began to feel like he was getting a bit old to be doing all-night prayer meetings, he asked Daniel to come in to help lessen the burden. He’d only been our co-pastor for a short while, maybe six months or a year, before out of nowhere we learned he had cancer. And it was that super-fast-moving sort too. Immediately he went into treatment, with surgery and all that, and just as immediately the “prayer wagon” got rolling.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people were praying for his recovery. As I’ve mentioned, our pastor was one of the Big Name Fans in our denomination; we had ties to mission churches all over the world as well. I was one of the people who spent quite some time on her knees praying for Daniel’s recovery. Even Biff, who very rarely prayed anywhere but in church, prayed for him. We were absolutely convinced that God would heal him. Why wouldn’t he? Daniel was doing marvelous things for God; he had a family to support; he was an amazing person in every single way.

C’mon. You don’t need to ask what happened next. Daniel died a miserable death from cancer. Of course he did. What were you expecting? If there’s any disease worse than cancer, if there’s any disease that proves there can’t possibly be a loving god in this universe with ultimate power, I don’t know what else it might be if it isn’t this one (well, okay, maybe filoviruses, but still, cancer is horrible). Daniel left behind a grieving widow and two confused sons, and a world full of fundamentalists scrambling to explain why God hadn’t answered our prayers. This scrambling for the contortions required to make it totally okay that God had let Daniel die so horribly was even worse for me  than the fear of his death, the crushing disappointment when he died, and the mourning for his remaining family and friends. I’d never lost anybody before, so Daniel’s death hit me hard. And I couldn’t accept the doublespeak. As Calvin said in Calvin and Hobbes, “Either it’s mean or it’s arbitrary, and either way, it gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

At this point I noticed something strange. I’d pretty much stopped asking God for anything. Anything at all. Until I was asked specifically to pray for Daniel, it’d been a long time since I’d actually petitioned or beseeched God for anything. I praised him, yes. I told him about my day and explored my thoughts with him. I thanked him for things I thought he’d done (a minister told me once that I had the most thankful and grateful spirit he’d ever encountered). I felt what I thought was his presence in me. But I did not usually ask him for anything. Why should I, I thought? Either what I wanted was God’s will anyway, in which case it was going to happen regardless of what I said about the matter, or else it wasn’t, in which case I sure wasn’t going to strong-arm God into doing something that wasn’t his will. I perceived that God didn’t care about popularity contests or even very sincere petitioning; he was going to do whatever he thought best anyway. And it seemed hugely immoral of a “parent” to demand his “children” ask him for the basics of their lives–what father demands his children beg him for dinner every day before they’re allowed food to eat? Or for healthcare? Or for their very lives or those of their own children? Or to spare them from car accidents or abuse? Any deity who values and encourages those sorts of supplications now seems downright malevolent to me. At the time it just seemed pointless at best and a setup for disappointment at worst. If God’s will was so totally unknowable and mysterious, there seemed to be no way whatsoever to know if a request was actually in his plan or not.

I’d begun to perceive that Christians tend to treat God like a combo ATM machine and errand boy, ordering him around and demanding stuff of him. Even worse, I’d begun to see how hugely impotent preachers looked when they triumphantly shouted “I claim a healing in the name of Jesus Christ!” when they didn’t know even the tiniest bit about whether or not that healing was going to happen at all. It sounded mighty fine, yes, but the results were decidedly not supernatural in the least. When the healing didn’t happen, or it only sort of half-happened if you squinted and tilted your head and looked at it just the right way, they either ignored that they’d ever made the claim, I mean completely ignored it like it never happened as the soul-sick bunnies at Strawberry’s warren did in Watership Down, or else blew it up into some huge evidence of their god’s “wonder-working” power. The whole predatory charade was starting to sicken me and make me question just how much else in this religion was a charade.

Right after Daniel’s death, Biff told me we were going to start attending another pastor’s church. Brother Gene had just gotten married for the first time rather late in life to a sweet older lady who’d also “saved herself” until rather late in life, and they’d decided to start a little storefront church. They needed parishioners, and Gene had asked my husband to please consider joining up. Their church was in our general stomping grounds and we were on friendly terms with both of them, so it seemed like a no-brainer. I was not consulted about this move, but I didn’t especially care where I went to church by this time. Plus, I really liked Gene and his wife, who were nice folks who were obviously in love. I was content to let Biff dictate this move.

It was a pretty little church. Obviously the pastor’s wife had decorated it; she’d used the most tasteful and popular hues of the day: dusty rose carpet, cream walls, and pink chairs, with periwinkle accents all over and artificial flowers everywhere. It looked a bit like a wedding reception hall. I don’t think the congregation got bigger than about 20 people all told in the year or two we attended, but I liked the place and the people involved with it.

About six months later, when Biff and I attended our original church for a revival, though, I got a big shock.

He was off doing his usual bombastic routine at the altar and I was in the pew clapping to the music and enjoying the wash of emotions and goodwill from all the people up at the front, when a woman came up to me. I vaguely knew her by sight; she was an older woman in the inner circle of the Cool Kids’ Club. She wasn’t someone I normally talked to because of our age difference and the simple fact that I didn’t think she approved of me much. She began to make friendly conversation with me about Gene’s church before dropping a bombshell.

“I guess I’m not surprised you two went there, after what Biff did at Daniel’s deathbed vigil.”

I stopped cold and stared at her. “What do you mean?” I asked, a lump forming in my stomach.

She looked surprised. “He didn’t tell you? He invaded Daniel’s hospital room with a bottle of oil and wanted to pray over him for healing the night he died.” She went on to share that Biff’s demands had really disturbed and rattled the lead pastor and his wife (Daniel’s in-laws, remember) and Daniel’s distraught family. They’d more or less thrown him out on his ear. That night Daniel had died. The very next Sunday we were at Gene’s church.

Somehow Biff hadn’t told me about this incident.

The world froze. We talk about it as a metaphor, but it really felt like the world froze right then as I absorbed her words.

I looked up toward the altar where Biff was praying with people and babbling in “tongues.” He was already glistening with sweat from his exertions as he rocked someone back and forth who was about to get “infilled” as dozens of Christians surrounded them both and prayed over Biff’s victim. This command performance was his favorite part of going to church, but he never got to do that at Gene’s church; everybody there was already Christian, and Gene wasn’t that kind of emotional pastor. Plus, the sort of emotional catharsis that feels wonderful in big crowds feels a bit bizarre in small ones. Biff also fancied himself a “youth minister,” but Gene’s church only had two kids in it. In a flash of insight I realized what a mismatch Biff was for Gene’s church, yet my husband never complained or suggested returning to our original church home. Now I understood why that might be.

Biff hadn’t told me about going to Daniel’s hospital room at all. He’d never even mentioned it. He hadn’t said a word. He’d gone to the church that night, he’d said, while I stayed home studying. He’d presented our move to Gene’s church as just a logical step to support our friends in their effort to plant a new church.

I wasn’t that angry about his deception–remember, I liked Gene and his wife and that little church, and I had known for quite some time that Biff was a deceiver and liar; it wasn’t shocking at all that he might omit important details if those details made him look really bad. But I was more disturbed than I could say about one thing that loomed in my mind above all else.

Of all people, the pastor and his wife, Daniel’s in-laws, Daniel’s wife, Daniel’s kids, they should have known that prayer worked. Of all people, they above all should have welcomed a man of deep faith and conviction coming in to anoint a sick man to heal him. Whatever else you could say about Biff, and believe me you could say a lot about him that wasn’t really complimentary, he was so far past “rock-solid” in this religion thing that he probably wouldn’t even register on the scales of sincerity. But the people in that room had thrown him out.

Now I see that of course they reacted that way. Biff’s behavior was hugely disrespectful at a time when they were trying to say goodbye in as dignified a manner as they could to a much-beloved friend and family member. I knew exactly how Biff would have stomped in there and how dramatically he’d have declared his intentions. It would have been a Hollywood-worthy scene. My “now” eye sees the scene and cringes, and I totally understand why they did what they did. But at the time, their reaction destroyed something I’d been clinging to very hard.

When push came to shove, the people who preached the most about the power of prayer didn’t really believe prayer worked. They knew Biff’s actions wouldn’t heal Daniel and they knew that Daniel was doomed despite all their prayers and “claims of healing” of God. Just as every other sane person in the world did, they lived their actual everyday lives with all the human assurances necessary to get through the day: insurance, medicine, jobs, etc. We all talked a really big game about prayer and what it could do, but none of us really believed it. Not even me; I hadn’t even bothered asking for some time. When people actually tried to live the words out by refusing medical care for themselves or something, we rightly called those people nutbars and made sure their kids at least weren’t suffering for their parents’ zealotry.

I saw these things in a split-second while the church lady prattled on in fake sympathy about how embarrassed everybody had been for Biff, and how happy they all were to see Biff back here to make up with Daniel’s family, and of course nobody held it against him that he’d tried his best to help. I don’t even remember what-all she said specifically. I was dazed–shell-shocked. I wonder today if she knows how much she had to do with my later deconversion; even today I have no idea whatsoever just what her goal was in telling me what she did. (If you have a reasonable guess, you’re welcome to comment it. You know as much about the situation now as I ever did.)

On the way home, I decided that it was high time I did a Bible study asking for discernment regarding prayer, and soon you will hear what led me to decide not to go back to church on that fateful morning not long after this day.

Oh, and I asked Biff about what’d happened at Daniel’s deathbed vigil, but I could tell this was a really tender, sore topic for my husband. I very quickly dropped it, and we never mentioned it again, not even in fights, not even at the peak of my apostasy. I understood completely and even today don’t hold against him that he didn’t want to discuss the matter.

Some stuff you just don’t talk about.

How Christians reframe prayer to sound exciting and effective

Here’s the link to this article.

For decades, Christians have lamented their inability to pray regularly. And for decades, they’ve tried dishonest reframing to make prayer sound infinitely more exciting and effective than it really is.

Avatar photoby CAPTAIN CASSIDY

JAN 20, 2023

Unsplash

If there’s one universal complaint I’ve heard from Christians, one monolithic sore spot that seems to affect almost all of them, it is their inability to establish prayer habits. Even the most fervent and gung-ho of them willingly admit that their prayer lives are lacking.

But instead of stressing the real-world good of cultivating such a habit, Christians tend to try to drill down harder on the imaginary aspects of what they’re doing.

Prayer 101

Religious people call the process of talking to their god(s) prayer. Christians almost universally believe that prayer works all kinds of miracles. Their Bible commands them to pray without ceasing. In the gospels, Jesus is often seen praying and admonishing his followers to pray.

In the modern day, Christians believe that their god actually listens to their prayers. Many even believe that he responds to them in some way: giving them comfort, answering their questions, telling them what to do next, and more. They’ve even defined different kinds of prayer:

  • Praise and adoration
  • Petition (asking for stuff)
  • Intercession (asking for stuff still, but for someone else)
  • Confession (apologizing for stuff so they don’t go to Hell)
  • Thanksgiving (for the stuff they think their god did for them)

In times of great stress, Christians learn that they should pray for help and comfort. (I recently saw The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). One hostage character prayed almost the entire way through the movie. This wasn’t particularly played for laughs.)

But Christians also learn that they should pray all the rest of the time too, and to cultivate what they call a prayer life. Their leaders teach them that prayer is a sublime and fulfilling experience—a sort of red Bat-Phone call straight to Heaven.

And the problem: Christians tend to neglect prayer

Despite centuries of consistent education on this topic, Christians don’t pray much at all. A 2021 Pew Research survey found that the number of Christians claiming to pray daily fell from 58% in 2007 to 45% in 2021. Meanwhile, the number of people saying they seldom or never pray rose from 18% in 2007 to 32% in 2021. Those are some serious shifts!

I use the word “claiming” up there on purpose. I’m pretty sure that Christians not only vastly inflate how much prayer they do, but that they also count any kind of prayer as prayer. That means quick blessings over their meals, ritualistic requests for divine protection before they start driving anywhere, or the brief little prayers they say over social media entreaties. These are simple magical invocations, no different from Wiccans saying “so mote it be.” And they’re certainly not what Christian leaders mean when they talk about cultivating a prayer life.

I can absolutely assure you that 45% of Americans are not actually getting on their knees in their war room to pray for hours on end for Republicans to win the next election and Aunt Nancy’s Stage IV cancer to go into spontaneous remission—much less to tell Jesus for hours at a time how wonderful he is.

Even in the most fervent evangelical circles, it’s always perfectly safe to lament one’s neglect of prayer. Usually, this confession prompts everyone listening to nod along in chagrined silence.

The stakes for neglecting prayer

One evangelical site, The Gospel Coalition (TGC), understands exactly what the stakes are here:

It’s shameful but true. Christians have long struggled to exercise their most astounding privilege: permission to approach the throne of grace and talk to God, communicating with the One who makes and rules the world, who creates and redeems, who loves with an everlasting love that has overcome the power of sin, death, and the Devil. Though such a privilege takes our breath away when rightly understood, it is all-too-often neglected, taken for granted, and performed as if what we profess about God isn’t true.The Gospel Coalition

That last bit is the most telling: “performed as if what we profess about God isn’t true.”

Whatever Christians say they believe about prayer, their actual behavior reveals the truth. They’re well aware that prayer doesn’t actually spark miracles, get them tangible help in their lives, or offer them any gods standing by to take their calls—much less waiting on pins and needles to respond to them.

But their writer shoots himself in the foot by making a testable truth claim about the results of regular long-form prayer:

Imagine what would happen if we inched our way closer to prayer without ceasing. Imagine if we cultivated the faith, godly discipline, and habit of communicating with God as if he really were with us all the time, ruling our lives and our world in the way Scripture says.The Gospel Coalition

If only. But he’s right about one thing:

We must imagine this result, because there really aren’t any real-world examples he can point out to us.

Why Christians spend so little time on prayer, according to Christians

There’s no shortage of guesses in the Christ-o-sphere about why Christians have such a problem with prayer. One pastor begins his list of guesses with the usual confession:

Over the years I have been amazed at the paltry desire I’ve felt to pray. I am especially aware of this aversion just prior to the times that I’ve specifically set aside to pray, whether in private or with others.Daniel Henderson

His guesses about why this is the case include demons and Bad Christians™, of course:

  1. “The independence of the flesh.” (In Christianese, the flesh means the material world, our bodies, and our very human desires and motivations.)
  2. “The relentless attack of the enemy.” (In Christianese, the enemy always means demons. They are—as Umberto Eco once defined fascism so well—both enormously powerful and ridiculously weak.)
  3. “The busyness of our modern lives.” (He name-drops Charles Spurgeon, who gaslit evangelicals for decades to come by defining prayer as “a saving of time.”)
  4. “The unpleasant memory of previous experiences.” (He goes on to explain that anyone who turns Christians off to prayer meetings is just a Bad Christian™ who has forgotten what Original First-Century Christianity is all about.)

Overall, his guesses can be found repeated all throughout the Christ-o-sphere. TGC adds an interesting new guess in their own post: “Surely,” he asserts, “this has a great deal to do with our lack of understanding about the nature of prayer.” (Even his own cited sources don’t come close to supporting that guess!)

And don’t call us Shirley.

The solution: Reframing prayer as exciting!

As you might have noticed already, Christians have a couple of different strategies for dealing with this lack of prayer in their ranks. TGC’s writer thought that the solution was simply (re-)telling Christians what he thinks the Bible says about prayer.

(Here, I’ll note only this: My last real act as a Christian, besides one last agonized prayer, was studying what the Bible says about prayer. That’s when I finally understood that it looks nothing like how Christians describe it, and nothing like reality either. Just like that, one of the most important taps feeding my faith pool turned off.)

But most Christians go another route. They try to make prayer sound incredibly exciting, rewarding, and magically effective. In other words, they reframe prayer. We’ve already seen one such attempt in the quotes I’ve offered above.

There’s nothing wrong with reframing, as long as the results are still true and accurate. It can be a healthy way to get past a problem. Sometimes people just need another way to look at a situation. When it’s done to manipulate, though, and it describes something that isn’t true or accurate, then there’s a lot wrong with it. Then, it becomes gaslighting.

In this case, Christians already know that prayer is boring, unrewarding, and the opposite of effective. They’ve done enough prayer to know! They’ve watched themselves do it!

Reframing in action

In 2019, a Calvinist evangelical, Derek Rishmawy, tried hard to reframe prayer:

There are many reasons I don’t pray: distraction, busyness, or the sense that I should be doing something. These are all terrible, of course, but I think the saddest reason is simply boredom. If you’ve grown up in church or simply acclimatized to the secular air we breathe, prayer can appear as small potatoes. It’s something good you know you’re supposed to do because God, like your Great Aunt Suzy, would like you to call more often. But there is little urgency or anticipation.

How much would change, I wonder, if we looked to the story of Moses and the burning bush as our paradigm for prayer?Derek Rishmawy, Christianity Today

He ends with a crescendo of reframed enthusiasm:

Certainly, there is no place for lethargy or boredom. To pray is to enter the Temple, the high and exalted place, where the Holy One dwells in majestic light (Isa. 57:15). It is to call on the name of Yahweh, the fear of Israel (Isa. 8:13).

Considering the One we are praying to, there should be an exhilarating rush of adrenaline and a quickening of the pulse when we take God’s name on our lips. [. . .] Prayer is nothing less than an intimate encounter with the voice from the Flame.Derek Rishmawy, Christianity Today

Impressive, eh? But I wonder how well this reframing attempt worked for him. Does he still find it difficult to find time to pray, even after positioning prayer in this impossibly grandiose way? I bet he does, because back in my Pentecostal days decades ago, my crowd did the exact same thing. And yet we still had trouble finding time to pray.

When the reframing attempt draws a picture that the target knows isn’t true, then it becomes dishonest. The Bible can talk about burning bushes all it wants. Any Christian who’s done more than a few prayer sessions knows perfectly well that it doesn’t feel even a little like “an intimate encounter with the voice from the Flame.” That Bible story describes an encounter that looks like the polar opposite of prayer.

Christians’ dishonest reframing attempts might even backfire by making their targets curious, as I once was, about what the Bible really says about prayer.

When rubber meets the road, Christians vote with their time

We make time for that which is important to us. If we say we know something is terribly important, but we don’t make time for it, that should tip us off about our real priorities.

Sure, we do this all the time with stuff we know is actually good for us. Right now, gym members are likely still dealing with the “resolutioners” who flood their facilities every January. In a few more weeks, most of those folks will be gone.

Exercise is important. It’s one of the best ways humans have to stay happy, healthy, and long-lived. In the moment of exercising, our bodies release all kinds of feel-good chemicals. We’re meant to be active. Our bodies suffer greatly when we’re not. And yet somehow our busy lives get in the way of doing the thing.

The difference between exercise and prayer should be obvious, however. One is a proven-effective activity with observable results. The other has never been shown to do anything that Christians frequently claim it does.

One activity similar to prayer, meditation, appears to have real benefits for those practicing it. Practiced in a similar way, prayer might accomplish similar benefits. But I doubt Christians would ever officially adopt that style of prayer, even if they evolve singly, Christian by Christian, informal redefinitions that inch closer to the truth of the matter (as I also did).

By now, Christians have developed a cultural view of prayer that is both impossibly lofty and completely removed from even their own reality. Nothing else will please most of them. So dishonest reframing it is and shall be forevermore!

Christians will keep dishonestly reframing prayer to try to motivate themselves to do it more often, and they will still keep having trouble finding time to pray. Truly, there’s nothing new under the sun.

The Silence of Pliny the Elder (1st-Century Fridays #7)

Here’s the link to this article.

Avatar photoby CAPTAIN CASSIDY

AUG 06, 2021

City and Lake of Como, painted 1834 by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. It looked way different in Pliny’s day, and it looks even more different now.

Hi and welcome back! As it’s now Friday, let’s turn our gaze to another author alive during the supposed lifetime of Jesus Christ — one who should have known about the creator of Christianity and those earliest Christians he inspired. 

Today, our focus rests upon Gaius Plinius Secundus, more popularly known as Pliny the Elder. As he lived between 23/24 CE – 79 CE and was good friends with Emperor Vespasian (who ruled from 69-79 CE), he was very well-placed to know all about this stuff. Let’s see if he did.

City and Lake of Como, painted 1834 by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. It looked way different in the days of Pliny the Elder, and it looks even more different now.

(In 1st-Century Fridays, we meet the ancient contemporaries of Jesus. We’re using the real definition of the word “contemporaneous” here, not the one Biblical scholars have weaseled to give themselves some leeway with their utter lack of evidence that their Savior actually existed. No, the people we’ll meet here must have been alive during that critical time of 30-35 CE. AND they must have had a good chance of hearing about what Christians claim was happening in Jerusalem at the time. Here’s the largely-canonical list of contemporaries you might have seen around. I prefer this diagram made by one of our other link writers. And here are some other lists.)

Everyone, Meet Pliny the Elder.

Pliny the Elder was a Roman writer, philosopher, and military commander. He lived from 23/24 to 79 CE. At least, we think that’s his birth year. In truth, we don’t know much about his early life. Neither he nor his nephew (Pliny the Younger, natch) said much about his parents. We also think he was born in Como, in way northern Italy. His sister bore his nephew, Pliny the Younger.

As is normal for wealthy highborn Romans, Pliny the Elder enjoyed a good education. In this case, he learned lawmaking. At some point, he seems to have adopted Stoic beliefs. Once that was done, he began that course of military positions and whatnot that would prepare him for a grand future in Roman politics.

The following is a list of the most commented articles in the last 7 days.

He sounds like quite the traditionalist. Though he became quite wealthy, he adopted an archaic lifestyle. For example, he ate austere, reasonable meals instead of huge feasts. He never married or had kids, either. Instead, he adopted his nephew as his heir after his sister’s husband died.

He left the military right around when Nero became emperor. It really looks like Pliny did everything he could to avoid drawing Nero’s attention during those dangerous years of his rule from 54-68 CE. Instead, he worked as a lawyer. He also wrote books about safe topics: grammar, education, etc.

Anything else was too dangerous to contemplate.

Pliny the Elder and His Later Life.

After the tumultuous Year of Four Emperors, Vespasian became emperor in 69 CE. He was, like Pliny, a man of the equestrian class. He’d lived a very similar life. And his #1 priority in those early years of his reign was to get the empire stabilized. He wanted to secure things after all the upsets Rome had experienced recently.

Vespasian called to Pliny to serve him. Pliny responded to that call. He gave up his law practice to become a high-ranking official in various important provinces. The men seem to have become friends. Indeed, Pliny often visited Vespasian in the early morning before going about his own duties.

Toward the end of his life, Pliny published the first books of his Natural History. It was a 37-volume encyclopedia. He used his own experience and other previously-written works to create it. In it, he covered every single topic he could think of. Regarding the title, he meant by it not just what we’d think of as “natural history,” but stuff about life itself, all aspects of it.

And I do mean “all” up there. Various volumes of his Natural History covered Africa, China, and other such places that Roman expansionism had touched and absorbed.

The Last Day of Pliny the Elder.

By now, Vespasian had appointed him the praefectus classis in Miseno. That’s toward the north end of the Bay of Naples. Here it is on a map:

miseno, pompeii, stabiae
The Bay of Naples. Miseno is in the north, Pompeii and Stabiae in the middle. The black smudge represents the eruption itself

In 79 CE, Pliny stood and watched a weird cloud arising from Mount Vesuvius. It was shaped like a “pine-tree,” or so his nephew says (Book 6, Letter 16, “To Tacitus.”)

Either way, Pliny the Elder wanted to find out what that cloud was all about. Just watching from afar didn’t satisfy him.

He was in the north end of the bay with a fleet of ships. Why not use ’em? After watching the cloud from afar, he ordered a galley to be prepared to sail closer for a better look.

I wonder if he wanted to put this info into his Natural History!

The Death of Pliny the Elder.

But there was another reason why Pliny the Elder wanted to sail into danger.

In the midst of his preparations to explore, he received a letter from his frantic friend Rectina. She had a villa close by the mountain in Stabiae. And she was getting more and more frightened by the moment. She begged Pliny to rescue her. He’d already been getting a galley ready to sail out that way. Now, though, his efforts became focused on rescue. In all, a number of galleys sailed out on the rescue trip. He intended to help as many people as he could.

Pliny invited his nephew to come along, but the younger man declined; he had some work to finish up. So his uncle set off without him. (Lucky nephew! He dodged that one!)

He did rescue at least one other person in Stabiae: his friend Senator Pomponianus.

Then, his ship got stuck in Stabiae.

Alas, Pliny had hung around Stabiae too long. Perhaps he inhaled too much volcanic ash or toxic gas. Or perhaps he had a heart attack. We don’t know if his rescued friend survived, either. Nor do we know if he ever reached Rectina — or even what happened to her.

What we do know is that Pliny the Elder died in 79 CE in Stabiae.

What Did Pliny the Elder Write About Jesus and Christianity?

So we’ve got this account of a well-traveled, well-read Roman leader who very deliberately and purposefully gathered and wrote down absolutely everything about everything he could find. His encyclopedia has influenced similar efforts for thousands of years.

Thankfully, we can access Natural History in translation here.

And I can tell you now that it does not mention anything about Jesus or the earliest Christians.

Not a word. You can search it yourself if you like! There’s an excellent search function right there.

All you’ll find for these terms are footnotes added by Christians. They clearly felt tetchy about, say, Pliny’s mention of Tyana. I can see why.

After all, that’s where Apollonius of Tyana was from. I’m sure they would indeed have bristled at this reminder of his existence.

Sidebar: The Essenes Have Entered the Chat.

Pliny the Elder does talk a little about Judea in Book V, Chapter 15. Interestingly, he mentions the Essenes. They were a mystic Jewish sect that existed from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE. Of them, Pliny writes:

Lying on the west of Asphaltites, and sufficiently distant to escape its noxious exhalations, are the Esseni, a people that live apart from the world, and marvellous beyond all others throughout the whole earth, for they have no women among them; to sexual desire they are strangers; money they have none; the palm-trees are their only companions. Day after day, however, their numbers are fully recruited by multitudes of strangers that resort to them, driven thither to adopt their usages by the tempests of fortune, and wearied with the miseries of life. Thus it is, that through thousands of ages, incredible to relate, this people eternally prolongs its existence, without a single birth taking place there; so fruitful a source of population to it is that weariness of life which is felt by others.

Yep, that sounds about like the Essenes we’ve met. Off and on through his work, Pliny might also be referring to various Essene people, but it doesn’t sound like historians are completely sure about that. In addition, this same chapter mentions Galilee, the Jordan River, and Herodium.

Otherwise, we see nothing whatsoever of Jesus or Christianity in this vast encyclopedia. All the same, it’s interesting stuff. I especially liked this chapter (VI.37) about “The Fortunate Isles.”

What Pliny the Elder Never Knew.

Like we saw with Seneca the Younger last week, Pliny the Elder really, truly destroys Christian claims of Jesus’ importance. He also wrecks their own historical claims about their religion’s earliest years and their claims about its rapid early growth.

Pliny the Elder was writing and gathering information for his Natural History till his death. His work covered every single aspect of the world Romans knew.

As a well-traveled and well-read Roman leader, he really was in the perfect place to have at least heard about the new religion and its firebrand of a leader — especially if, as Christians like to claim, the new religion swept through the Roman Empire because it was just so, I dunno, DIFFERENT, I guess.

But no. That silence surprised even me a bit, because I expected at least a mention of Christians somewhere in his work.

And yet, Pliny the Elder seems to have known nothing at all of any of it.

Grading Pliny the Elder.

I’m giving Pliny the Elder an A+.

I don’t think we’ve yet found another 1st-century writer better-situated than he was to know about the earliest Christians and Jesus Christ than him. And yet he is utterly silent on both topics. He most definitely belongs on our list of vetted 1st-century writers who really should have known about this stuff but didn’t.

I’m very glad to have learned about him. And I hope you’ll find his adventurous life as interesting as I did!

Two Fantastic Quotes from Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll: On Willful Disbelief & A Designer In Need Of Design

Here’s the link to this article.

By John W. Loftus at 5/28/2023

#1 On Willful Disbelief: Can we control our thought? Can we tell what we are going to think tomorrow? Can we stop thinking? Is belief the result of that which to us is evidence, or is it a product of the will? Can the scales in which reason weighs evidence be turned by the will? Why then should evidence be weighed? If it all depends on the will, what is evidence? Is there any opportunity of being dishonest in the formation of an opinion? Must not the man who forms the opinion know what it is? He cannot knowingly cheat himself. He cannot be deceived with dice that he loads. He cannot play unfairly at solitaire without knowing that he has lost the game. He cannot knowingly weigh with false scales and believe in the correctness of the result.

The Bible quotes Jesus with having said, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” The Christians say that it is the duty of every person to read, to understand, and to believe this revelation – that a man should use his reason; but if he honestly concludes that the Bible is not a revelation from God, and dies with that conclusion in his mind, he will be tormented forever. They say,” Read,” and then add: “Believe, or be damned.” Suppose then I read this Bible honestly, fairly, and when I get through I am compelled to say, “The book is not true.” If this is the honest result, if the book and my brain are both the work of the same Infinite God, whose fault is it that the book and the brain do not agree? Either God should have written a book to fit my brain, or should have made my brain to fit his book. The brain thinks without asking our consent; we believe, or disbelieve, without an effort of the will. Belief is a result. It is the effect of evidence upon the mind. The scales turn in spite of him who watches. There is no opportunity of being honest or dishonest in the formation of an opinion. The conclusion is entirely independent of desire. We must believe, or we must doubt, in spite of what we wish. –From Col. Ingersoll to Mr. Gladstone

#2 On A Designer In Need Of Design: The idea that a design must have a beginning and that a designer need not, is a simple expression of human ignorance. We find a watch, and we say: “So curious and wonderful a thing must have had a maker.” We find the watch-maker, and we say: “So curious and wonderful a thing as man must have had a maker.”

We find God, and we then say: “He is so wonderful that he must not have had a maker.” In other words, all things a little wonderful must have been created, but it is possible for something to be so wonderful that it always existed. One would suppose that just as the wonder increased the necessity for a creator increased, because it is the wonder of the thing that suggests the idea of creation. Is it possible that a designer exists from all eternity without design? Was there no design in having an infinite designer? For me, it is hard to see the plan or design in earthquakes and pestilences. It is somewhat difficult to discern the design or the benevolence in so making the world that billions of animals live only on the agonies of others. The justice of God is not visible to me in the history of this world. When I think of the suffering and death, of the poverty and crime, of the cruelty and malice, of the heartlessness of this “design” and “plan,” where beak and claw and tooth tear and rend the quivering flesh of weakness and despair, I cannot convince myself that it is the result of infinite wisdom, benevolence, and justice. –From Ingersoll vs Black, A former Chief Justice of US.

Cruelty, Crime and Abuse in the Name of Jesus

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 5/26/2023


It never seems to stop

How does religion get away with it? It relies on the ignorance, gullibility and, yes, the complacency of those are committed to piety. And the consequences can be calamitous. In an article I posted here in January, Humanity’s Urgent Need to Outgrow Religion, I mentioned the plan to spend big bucks to build what amounts to a theme-park at the supposed site of Jesus’ baptism—but the developers have been careful not to call it a theme park. It’s a scam, a prank, a joke, because nobody knows where Jesus was baptized, in fact the gospel of John omits any mention of Jesus setting foot in the River Jordan. Yes, John the Baptist is there, but mainly to announce that Jesus is the “lamb of God who takes way the sins of the world.”  

But a baptism theme-park is a minor offense. We keep being hit with news about the cruelties, crimes, and abuses done in Jesus’ name. Three headlines of recent vintage illustrate the ongoing problem.

One:

The New York Times, 14 May 2023: He told followers to starve to meet Jesus. Why did so many do it? by Andrew Higgins. This happened in Kenya, when members of a cult founded by Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, “a former taxi driver turned televangelist” urged his followers to flee to Shakahola, “an evangelical Christian sanctuary from the fast-approaching apocalypse.” 

“Instead of a haven, however, the 800-acre property, a sun-scorched wasteland of scrub and spindly trees, is now a gruesome crime scene, scattered with the shallow graves of believers who starved themselves to death — or, as Mr. Mackenzie would have it, crucified themselves so that they could meet Jesus.” 

The article notes that, so far, 179 bodies have been found, and many people are still missing.  

“Mr. Mackenzie’s journey from destitute taxi driver to cult leader with his own television channel began in 2002 in a stone courtyard opposite a Catholic primary school in Malindi.” 

“Evangelical Christianity and freelance preachers have surged in popularity across Africa, part of a religious boom on the continent that stands in stark contrast to the rapid secularization of former colonial powers like Britain, which governed Kenya until 1963. About half of Kenyans are evangelicals, a far higher proportion than in the United States.” 

Mr. Mackenzie “…said that he would stay alive to help lead his followers to ‘meet Jesus’ through starvation but that once this work was done, he, too, would starve himself to death ahead of what he said was the imminent end of the world.” 

But guess who is still alive and under arrest! The venality of Mackenzie is clear from his story reported in the article. We can suspect that he promoted the scam without really believing it himself. Do Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen, who have become super wealthy through their “ministries,” really believe what they’re preaching? Whatever the case, they have discovered that ancient superstitions about meeting savior-Jesus work. The most natural thing in the world is that people are afraid of death—and this fear is so easily exploited. Thousands of religions have promoted so many different gimmicks to get out of dying, and the apostle Paul especially pushed the idea that Jesus would arrive on the clouds soon to rescue those who believe. It is no benefit whatever to humanity—now, in 2023—that so many minds are captive to goofy ideas: about half of Kenyans are evangelicals! 

Two:

How U.S. Evangelicals Helped Homophobia Flourish in Africa: Anti-gay sentiment had previously existed on the continent, but white American religious groups have given it a boost, by Nigerian journalist Caleb Okereke, foreignpolicy.com, 19 March 2023.

In the U.S., evangelicals have faced considerable pushback in their hostility to gay people, whose battle cry has become, “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not taking it anymore.” This resistance to hatred and abuse culminated in the Marriage Equality ruling by the Supreme Court in 2015. But conservative have the Bible on their side—they’re sure of it—because of the so-called clobber verses that show for sure that their god hates homosexuality. And armed with that certainty, some evangelicals saw Africa as a venue for advancing anti-gay hatreds and abuse. 

Full disclosure here: I am gay, and just this week my husband and I celebrated our 45th anniversary. I realized my orientation as a teenager, and was curious to know how that had happened. My father was a doctor, and among his books I found Alfred Kinsey’s 1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. There were the statistics, i.e., maybe five percentage of males are homosexual. No condemnation, no scolding: just the facts of the matter. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its Diagnostic Manual because evidence was lacking that same-sex attraction is a disorder. Therapists should focus on helping their clients achieve productive lives acknowledging same-sex attraction. 

Despite what we now know—after exhaustive study—about homosexuality, evangelicals are sure it’s a moral evil, and irrationally champion the few Bible verses that seem to make their case, e.g. Leviticus 20:13 and Paul’s condemnation in Romans 1:26-27. They have their blinders on: they don’t follow most of the other laws in Leviticus, and they laugh off Paul’s advice to heterosexual couples: “…it is best for a man not to touch a woman…” (1 Corinthians 7:1) and “those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24).   

Caleb Okereke’s article calls attention to the lies and misinformation perpetuated by the anti-gay campaign in Africa: “It has deep links to white evangelical Christianity and is an export of a made-in-the-USA movement and ideology that is polarizing African countries and harming and endangering LGBTQ+ people.” The article concludes:

“Proponents of ex-gay and anti-gay philosophies depend on the permanence of gay people for their message to be relevant. They require an enemy for their fight to be valid, and they go to great lengths to construct this enemy as a well-funded and all-powerful foreign movement while falsely presenting the local anti-gay movement as a grassroots underdog, despite its heavy reliance on U.S. evangelicals for publicity.” 

This certainly qualifies as cruelty and abuse in the name of Jesus. How we wish evangelical would grow up. They zealously promote hate under the guise of love.

Three:

Sex Abuse in Catholic Church: Over 1,900 Minors Abused in Illinois, State Says: A new report by the attorney general of Illinois covering decades names more than 450 credibly accused sexual abusers, including priests and lay religious brothers, by Ruth Graham, 23 May 2023, The New York Times.

It’s a mystery to me that membership in the Catholic Church isn’t down to zero by now. These headlines have become routine for a long time, prompting Richard Carrier’s verdict:


“In actual fact the Catholic Church is an international rape factory. And has been for decades; possibly untold centuries. Religious belief not only allowed that to happen, it is still allowing it to happen, as believers refuse to leave the church, refusing to effect any substantive reform that would prevent it, refusing to find a less deadly and destructive religion to believe in and support.” (What’s the Harm: Why Religious Belief Is Always Bad, 10 September 2018)

Why in the world do believers refuse to leave the church? In the wake of this crime, cruelty, and abuse, Catholic churches in Illinois should now be empty. I have argued that, from the very first week of his papacy, beloved Pope Francis should have been holding weekly press conferences to let the world know exactly what has been accomplished to put an end to priests raping children: 

·      This is how many priests have been handed over to the police. 

·      This is how we have upgraded recruiting and training practices to screen for pedophiles. 

·      This is what we have done to ensure that criminal priests are not transferred to other parishes. 

Above all: 

·      This is what we have done to teach priests about human sexuality. 

In his book, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, Frédéric Martel notes that young men who loath their same-sex orientation opt for the priesthood to avoid suspicion. As soon as their decision is announced, questions about “Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” cease. But how do they not perceive what a huge mistake it is to opt to live in an all-male environment! Martel demonstrates (based on four years of research and interviews) that so many of the gays in the Vatican itself are virulently homophobic. This was sustained especially by popes John-Paul II and Benedict XVI, who brought their own versions of gay-hate with them to the Vatican from Poland and Germany. Even now the Vatican describes homosexuality as an intrinsic disorder.

So the pressure is there—for priests everywhere—to keep a lid on it, to follow the supposed ideal of Paul, “…those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” But this doesn’t work, hence children, for whom priests are ultimate authority figures, become the victims. How do priests explain to children what they’re about to do? “Don’t worry, Jesus is okay with this.” Do they clear their own consciences by going to confession?

Not that all priests are closeted gays, but even the straight priests who have sworn vows of celibacy become aware that keeping a lid on it is an unnecessary torment. Hence priest-on-priest action happens as well, as Tom Rastrelli documents in his book, Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary.

By the way, in this context, “playing dress up” is not a best practice. What are they playing at? Trying to dazzle the folks who show up at church? Creating a distraction? The Vatican—to set an example for priests everywhere—should tone down theatrical ritual and absurd costuming. Its motto should not be, “There’s no business like show business.” The reputation of the Catholic church has been damaged severely, and it
cannot be repaired by the over-the-top worship outfits: get back to the reality of child abuse that needs to be eliminated. And oh—here’s a thought—pay attention to the Jesus-script in the Sermon on the Mount about not giving much thought to what to wear: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these” (Matthew 6:28-29). Yet the Vatican seems determined to outdo Solomon is all his glory. But instead they have accumulated so much shame.

 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith (2016; 2018 Foreword by John Loftus) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

His YouTube channel is here. He has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.

Musings of Daniel Mocsny

Here’s the link to this article.

By John W. Loftus at 5/22/2023

Lately Daniel Mocsny wrote a few separate comments for us. Here are some of them. Enjoy!

At risk of committing the No True Scotsman fallacy, I suggest that someone who deconverts from a religion and then easily reconverts probably wasn’t entirely deconverted in the first place. And the converse applies as well: a religion may attract new converts who quickly “backslide.” Religious hucksters are aware of the backsliding tendency, so they have systems in place to combat it, such as regular church attendance, and creating an entire religious environment for their marks to inhabit. A new convert is like a seedling plant – it has not reached its adult size yet and is much more vulnerable to drought and plant predators. A church may have training courses for new converts, to catch them up on the brainwashing they missed. Atheists tend to have none of that infrastructure, as we don’t normally have our own atheist churches or local communities. This may be part of the reason that religion began declining in the USA after the Internet became widely available – now we have online atheist / freethinker communities. Atheism doesn’t have to be an entirely do-it-yourself exercise now.

Removing religion from one’s brain may be like pulling weeds from your lawn. Failing to dig out every last weed root results in weeds quickly resprouting. It takes multiple sessions of weed-pulling to get all the weeds, and even then new weed seeds are constantly arriving on the wind or in bird poop, so occasional maintenance is an ongoing need.

The falsehoods of religion have been honed by thousands of years of selection – the religions that emerge from cutthroat competition tend to have the “stickiest” lies. Overcoming them, after a lifetime of brainwashing, may require a lot of cognitive work. Reading atheist books such as those written or edited by John Loftus is a big part of this. Unfortunately, many people rarely read books, or when they do, they read useless fiction, or disinformation.

Many religions declare threats for people who doubt them. Often the threats are more immediate, such as angry gods sending plagues, storms, or hostile human enemies unless we placate them with sacrifices. The concept of an eternal afterlife of unending torture at the hands of the loving God is an idea that evolved gradually. See Bart Ehrman’s Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife (2020) to learn how the concept gradually evolved within the Abrahamic tradition.

The Outsider Test for Faith always applies, of course. Probably no one among the world’s two billion Christians has ever lost sleep over the Muslim Hell, and conversely I doubt that any Muslims worry about the Christian hell. I would agree that most of the time you can’t argue an incorrect idiot into being correct, and you certainly cannot add a point to anyone’s IQ by arguing with them. But (and this is a but big enough to warrant Sir Mixalot’s scrutiny) it’s hard to win a war without showing up. The disinformation machine doesn’t worry about the difficulty of changing people’s minds. It understands that repetition is the most potent form of persuasion. Trump for example was able to fool about 30% of Americans into disblieving in our elections. For most of American history, there was no widespread doubt about our elections. People often didn’t like the outcome, but they understand that elections really do reflect the will of the people. Trump was able to destroy over 200 years of that belief in a few short years.

Christianity in the USA is losing about 1% of market share per year. So it’s clear that somebody is getting through to idiots with the voice of reason. Maybe we can speed that up a little by getting and staying in the game. Fox News doesn’t need to be the only voice they hear.

During the… COVID-19 pandemic, religious people complained loudly about the lockdowns that denied them their weekly churchy fix. Religious people have an ongoing need for group reinforcement. In contrast, once you learn some science, you don’t have to keep going back to science class every week to keep yourself convinced. Atheists may have griped about lockdowns too, but not because isolation in any way threatened to change their beliefs.

Inside every religious believer is a latent unbeliever waiting to manifest. In the modern environment, any number of potential triggers for change are constantly present. If outside influences like prayer or meddling gods cannot be excluded, then science cannot proceed – it won’t work. The same experiment will get different results depending on who was praying somewhere in the world, or on the whim of some god. Science doesn’t just assume that we only use natural explanations, it actually requires that only natural phenomena exist. Otherwise you can’t reliably replicate a result. Replication is fundamental to science, and even more important for industries built on science, which replicate the same products billions of times.

Thus the very existence of science is strong evidence against the kinds of gods people worship – gods who intervene routinely in the natural order. The burden of proof is therefore on the theist to explain how we can have science and smartphones that undeniably exist, and at the same time we have their God whose existence and behavior would make science impossible. The plain fact that during the past two centuries the intellectual elite (i.e., those who actually have some claim to expertise on matters of religion, philosophy, and science) have indeed become overwhelmingly skeptical in regard to the existence of a “conscious Creator.”

Joshi doesn’t present statistics, but it is at least anecdotally obvious that there are numerous fields of science and scholarship that are toxic to faith. The result is that people who acquire expertise in any of these fields, let alone several or all of them, rarely emerge with faith intact. At the barest minimum, the intellectually competent believer has to triangulate their way into some sort of liberal faith stripped of the most blatantly incorrect faith claims (such as Young Earth Creationism). But even the liberal believer must keep their eyes at least half-shut on their residual superstition.

If everybody could know what the intellectual elites know (that is, what the people who actually read a lot of books know), then religion would recede to the status of an oddball hobby like stamp collecting. —By Daniel Mocsny.

A Hugely Defective Gospel Sequel

Here’s the link to this article.

By David Madison at 5/19/2023

A high quotient of fake news

The red flags in scripture are all over the place, and easy to spot. By this I mean story elements that alert readers to be suspicious. If we came across these in a Disney fantasy or in Harry Potter story, we’d say, “Very entertaining, but not to be taken seriously.” There are so many red flags in the gospels, and they show up in the first chapters of each. In Mark, a voice from the sky tells Jesus, “You are my beloved son”—right after his baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus had sins? A god yelling from the sky doesn’t sound at all like a real-world event.

The first thing we find in Matthew’s gospel is a genealogy that is supposed to prove that Jesus was descended from King David, but then Matthew reports that Jesus didn’t have a human father—nullifying the value of the genealogy. It was in a dream that an angel told Joseph that Mary got pregnant by a holy spirit. Red flag: Today if anyone tells us that they get messages from a god through angels in dreams, our reaction is likely to be, yah, sure. In Luke’s first chapter as well, angels have speaking roles, revealing the destiny of John the Baptist and Jesus to their parents. Red flag: this isn’t history, it’s fantasy literature. The author of John’s gospel claims in his opening chapter that Jesus, the Galilean peasant preacher—as portrayed in the first three gospels—was present at creation. Huge red flag: here’s a theologian presenting his speculations as fact. Any curious reader should want to know how he knows this: show us the reliable, verifiable, objective evidence. 

Surely the champion red flag winner is the author of the Book of Acts. He reports in his first chapter that newly alive Jesus left earth by ascending to heaven—he disappeared through the clouds. And in chapter 7, Stephen, about to be martyred, sees Jesus in heaven: “…filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:55-56) Christian doctrine would have us believe that this holy spirit that “filled him” is part of god—so couldn’t this ghost have done a better job helping separate fact from fiction? No: Jesus and god are not standing next to each other somewhere miles out in space. Any Christian today who has any understanding of how the Cosmos is built, i.e., that the earth orbits the sun, which orbits the galactic center—in the vacuum of space—can grasp that the Acts 1 story is naïve fiction. Why couldn’t the holy spirit have shared these insights with humans centuries ago?

I have made many posts on this blog about the Book of Acts, but I return to it now to call attention to Richard Carrier’s blog article dated 21 April 2023: How We Know Acts Is a Fake History. This augments his 25-page chapter on Acts in On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, pp. 359-385. He wrote this new article in response to apologist Greg Boyd’s position that Acts in basically trustworthy. 

How can that be? The red flag pop-up frequently in the first few chapters of Acts. In Acts 5, people are healed when Peter’s shadow falls on them, and an angel helps the apostles escape from prison (this also happens in Acts 12). In Acts 10, an angel instructs a centurion named Cornelius to summon Peter. In Acts 18, the Lord in a vision tells Paul to preach—and he will be protected. The naïve, gullible first readers of Acts may have been impressed, but informed adults today, not so much: “Very entertaining, but not to be taken seriously.” Angels, healings, visions are markers of fantasy literature. 

These are surface details that should provoke skepticism about Acts, but Carrier draws attention to issues that demonstrate just how phony this book is. It is fake history. The author of Acts seemingly wasn’t aware that his story is undermined by what we find in the letters of Paul, as Carrier notes:

“If one needs Acts to be a reliable history, and not revisionist history (a.k.a. “bullshit”), one needs to ‘leave out’ all the evidence that it repeatedly contradicts the eyewitness testimony of Paul, and in precisely the ways that suit its author’s agendas, and that it mimics known tropes and features distinctive of fiction and propaganda…”

In Acts 9:26-28, we read this account of Paul’s return from Damascus—after his famous conversion experience:

“When he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples, and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. So he went in and out among them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord.”   

In Galatians 1:16-20, however, we find what Paul himself says:

“…I did not confer with any human, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterward I returned to Damascus. Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter} and stayed with him fifteen days, but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother. In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!”

Then there was the contentious issue of circumcision. In Galatians 2:1-3, Paul reports:

“Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain. But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.”

Yet this is what we read in Acts 16:3: “Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him, and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.”

Carrier calls the fake historian to account: 

“Acts gets the guy wrong (it was Titus, not Timothy, who was under pressure to circumcise), as well as the place and time (Acts has this happen after the event Paul himself relates, and far from Judea where it makes even less sense for any such pressure to exist)…”

“The author of Acts is inventing a story contrary to events as related by Paul. Moreover, this invented story completely contradicts Paul’s entire mission statement: Paul explicitly says he was not flexible about this, that this was his line in the sand, such that had he caved ‘the truth of the gospel’ would not ‘be preserved.’ In other words, resisting this pressure was of dire existential importance to Paul and his entire mission.”

“Acts thus gets history totally wrong here, contradicting Paul’s own eyewitness testimony, blatantly and in multiple ways. Its author was clearly uninterested in recounting anything true about Paul and his companions, actions, and mission; but to the contrary, only in ‘rewriting’ history to make Paul conform to the author’s own agenda to unify the factions of Christendom, by depicting its Jewish and Gentile wings as always in harmony and willing to cooperate.”

Late in the Book of Acts, Paul is arrested, and preparations are made to have him sent to Felix the governor (Acts 23:23): “Get ready to leave by nine o’clock tonight for Caesarea with two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen.” How can that possibly have been true: an escort of this size for a crazy cult preacher? The author of Acts wanted to impress his readers: look how important Paul was!

Carrier notes that this is an “outrageous number of troops removed from their duties to protect one man.” But just as unbelievable is the text of the letter—quoted in Acts 23:26-30—that Claudius Lysias supposedly wrote to Felix. Carrier notes that it “conspicuously lacks all the details a real one would contain…”, and he provides several examples of the mistakes made by the author: “It seems far more certain Luke just made this letter up—and he didn’t know what a real one looked like so as to even produce a plausible fraud.” 

This Carrier article is rich in details that illustrate just how fake Acts is. Near the beginning of the article he lists more than twenty other books of acts that didn’t make it into the canon, 

“… all of which even most fundamentalists (and all actual experts) agree are bogus—making ‘bogus’ by far the normal status of any Christian ‘Acts’…Our Acts contains no indication of being any more honest or reliable; to the contrary, it’s rife with indications of being no better. Indeed, we have two entire versions of it, one some ten percent longer—and scholars cannot honestly tell which is actually the original. That is how freely Christians were willing to doctor it to suit their wishes. In actual fact, faking histories was the norm for Christians; even beyond the damning example of the entire Acts genre, the religion was always awash with forgery and lies.”

Forgery and lies—and extremism. On 5 May 2023, here on this blog, I argued that core Christian beliefs qualify it as a cult. There is one story especially in Acts that offers a perfect snapshot of a cult. In Acts 5 we find the story of Ananias and Sapphira, a couple who sold a field, but didn’t give all the money to the church: Ananias “brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 5:2). Peter flew into a rage, scolding Ananias for lying to the holy spirit, because Satan was in his heart. Ananias dropped dead on the spot, and was buried immediately. A few hours later Sapphira showed up and received the same scolding—and she dropped dead too, and right away was buried beside her husband. The story closes with verse 11: “And great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.” There is not a hint here that Peter—yes, that Peter, the rock upon which the church was built—had been too severe. I’m sure not many laypeople today who read this story would say, “Well, how cool is that, it’s okay with me.”

Cults thrive because they encourage “great fear” among their devotees, which means undivided loyalties. It’s no surprise if Acts and Luke were written by the same guy: the Jesus-script in Luke 14:26 stipulates that hatred of family and even life itself is required of those who follow their cult hero.

Serious Bible study requires in-depth homework, as is provided by this Carrier article. He includes dozens of links to other sources, and thoroughly exposes the cheap tricks of apologists who desperately want Acts to be reliable history. What a pity that it’s hard enough to get laypeople to even read the gospels and Acts, let alone do any penetrating study of these documents. 

Carrier tells it like it is:

“The evidence stacks quite high that the author of Acts is fabricating a mythological history for his religion, and didn’t have any personal knowledge of what he relates, but is relying on old sources that he deliberately alters, reference books that he uses only for local color, and his imagination. There is simply no way a companion of Paul wrote this, or anyone of his generation. Indeed he conspicuously never claims he was—and since he would have claimed any authority he actually had, his silence proves he couldn’t claim this.” 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith (2016; 2018 Foreword by John Loftus) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

His YouTube channel is here. He has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here. 

When science goes south

Here’s the link to this article by Dale McGowan.

Photo by KokoColey | Pixabay

I’m sometimes asked by religious friends why I make such a big deal over evolution in particular. Some suggest that secular types beat the drum for evolution only because it’s a sharp stick in the religious eyeball.

The question itself is a good one. The answer is even better.

It’s not just because evolution is true. That’s never enough. It’s also true that George Washington had no middle name, but I’m unlikely to devote much of my life force to opposing someone who insists that yes he did, and it was Steve, and that only Martha called him George, and only when she was drunk. Even if this hypothetical Stevist insisted on teaching the middle name in American History classes, I might think it was bananas, but I have other fish to fry.

Evolution, on the other hand—that’s a fish I choose to fry. It’s an idea that I want my kids and as many others as possible to know and care about. Because the story I’m about to tell is centered on evolution in schools, I want to start with a quick list of why it’s important:

First, it is an everything-changer. If knowing about evolution hasn’t changed almost everything about the way you see almost everything, dig in deeper with the help of people like Stephen Jay Gould (Wonderful Life and Full House), Richard Dawkins (Blind Watchmaker, River out of Eden, The Selfish Gene, Climbing Mount Improbable) and Daniel Dennett (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea).

Second, it inspires immense, transcendent awe and wonder to grasp that you are a cousin not just to apes, but to sponges and sequoias and butterflies and blue whales.

Third, it annihilates the artificial boundaries between us and the rest of life on Earth.

Fourth, it puts racial difference in proper perspective as utter trivia.

Fifth, when taken as directed, it constitutes one of the four grandest-ever swats of humility to the pompous human tookus.

Sixth, it contributes enormously to our understanding of how and why things work the way they do.

Seventh, that understanding has led in turn to incredible advances in medical science, agriculture, environmental stewardship, and more.

The list goes on.

When my older daughter Erin was in eighth grade, she came home from school one day and sat in front of me with evident drama.

“Guess what.”

“Uh, Norway fell into the sea. You can burp the alphabet. Am I close?”

“Dad, stop.” She leaned forward. “We started evolution in science today.”

A tickle of dread went down my spine. I’m a busy boy. No jonesing for a fracas.

“And?”

“And it’s awesome. He’s teaching all about it, just like you would. He explained what theory really means, and said that the evidence is incredibly strong for evolution, and when kids started saying, ‘But the Bible says blah blah blah,’ he just put his hand up and said, ‘You can talk about that with your minister. In this class, we are learning about science, about what we know.”

I had never seen her so jazzed about a class experience. She knows what a crapshoot it is, knows that she has less than a 50-50 chance of learning about evolution in any depth in the classroom. She lucked out.

So what’s a parent to do? Most, including me, will do a nice cartoon wipe of the brow and go back to the next thing on the plate. That’s a mistake. It’s also simply wrong.

We’re happy to fire off a blistering corrective to the teachers who fall down on the job and take our kids with them. But we’ve got to get just as good and consistent at complimenting the good.

It’s not just a question of good manners. If we really care about quality in the classroom, it’s imperative.

Praise the good

Imagine you’re a biology teacher. The evolution unit is approaching, again, and you know for certain you will get a half dozen scolding emails from angry parents the moment the word crosses your lips. Again. If you’ve never received a note of thanks for tackling the topic honestly, it’s easy to feel isolated and beleaguered. Who could blame you for gradually de-emphasizing the topic until it disappears completely? Even a teacher with the best of intentions can be worn to a nub from years of self-righteous tirades.

And those of us who sit silently, never lifting a finger to reinforce good teaching when we see it, deserve what we get.

I finally woke up to this when Erin was in sixth grade, and I started making a point of shooting off a message of thanks to teachers who rocked my kids’ worlds. This is especially important for middle and high school teachers, who are much less likely to hear any positive feedback through parent conferences and the other frequent contacts elementary teachers get.

When Erin was working her way through a much better-than-average comparative religion unit in social studies, I dashed off a note of appreciation to the teacher, who nearly passed out from the shock. When Connor told me his high school science teacher spent some time explaining what “theory” really means in science, I shot him some kudos. And when Erin came home with this story of courage and integrity, I sent a message expressing my deep and detailed appreciation…and cc’ed the principal.

The teacher replied, telling me how gratifying it was to hear the support. “It’s a passion of mine,” he said. Even passion can be pummeled out of someone. But now, the next time he approaches that unit, he’ll hear not only angry shouts ringing in his ears, but a little bit of encouragement from someone who took the time to make it known.

I’m better at this than I once was, but I’m still about three times as likely to pipe up when I’m pissed as when I’m impressed.

When she was in elementary school, my youngest daughter Delaney wanted to be a scientist.

When Charlie’s Playhouse, a company that made evolution toys and games, announced an Evolution & Art Contest that fall, she was all over it. Imagine an island with a unique environment. Choose an existing animal to put on the island. Fast forward a million years or so and imagine how the animal would evolve as a result of that environment. Draw a picture of the evolved animal. Awesome.

Soon the sketches were flying. Finally, with just days to go before the deadline, Laney showed me her entry.

when science goes south
Used by permission of Delaney McGowan

“The island has purple polka-dotted trees and bushes and quiet predators,” she explained. “And the only food is hard nuts. So after a long, long time, the monkeys evolve to have purple polka dots, huge ears to hear the predators, and sharp teeth to crack the nuts.”

She might not know an allele if it jumped up and mutated all over her, but her grasp of natural selection outstrips that of most adults. And she got this grasp not through lectures but by observing the results of natural selection all around us, and caring enough to think about it.

I described our approach a few episodes back:

If I’m out on a walk in the woods with my own daughter and we see a deer with protective coloration, I’ll often say, “Look—you can barely see it. What if I was an animal trying to find a deer to eat? That one wouldn’t be very easy to find. And its babies would have the same coloring, so I’ll bet they’d be hard to find, too.”

[Then] imagine a poor adaptation. “Hey, what if it was bright pink? I think I’d have a pink one for supper every night, they’d be so easy to catch.” I step on a twig and the deer bolts away. “Ooh, fast too! I’ll bet I’d have to eat slow pink ones every night. Soon there wouldn’t be any slow pink ones left because I’d have eaten them all!”

When she did eventually encounter allele frequencies, cladistics, the modern synthesis and all the rest in high school, it glided (glode?) into place on the foundation she had laid for it. The key when she was young was to keep her engaged.

Winning the national contest for her age group didn’t hurt that one bit. She nearly passed out in excitement. We let her teacher know about it, and he showered her with kudos, then forwarded the news to the front office.

The call

The next week we received a call. It was Ms. Warner, an assistant administrator at the school. Becca answered. I didn’t know who she was talking to, but it was obviously good news of some sort.

Until it wasn’t.

When she hung up, she was clearly upset.

“Laney’s going to be interviewed by the principal on the Eagle News” — that’s a closed-circuit TV program that starts each school day — “about winning the Charlie’s Playhouse contest.”

I waited.

“But Ms. Warner said they’re not going to call it an ‘Evolution & Art’ contest — just an ‘Art’ contest. When I asked why, she said, ‘Because evolution is not in the curriculum.’ I said yes it is, it’s in the high school curriculum, and she said, ‘But it’s not in the elementary curriculum, so it’ll just be described as an ‘Art’ contest.’”

The heat started in my neck and spread to my ears, then into my face. Becca began swearing a blue streak. I sat down and wrote the most fabulously profane email of my life to a friend. Venting is good. Not sure if I was madder about the ignorance or the cowardice or the dishonesty — or the fact that this educator was dismissing the truly exceptional nature of what Laney did.

It wasn’t an art contest, you see. Delaney’s accomplishment had been scientific, not artistic. The drawing is lovely, but it’s just a way of expressing her grasp of the science. To have her school — savor that for a moment, her school — not only disregard her achievement, but send her the message that it’s something to be hidden, to be ashamed of…

I know what you’re thinking. Yes, this is Georgia. But as I’ve said before, in the four years we’ve been here, I’ve had far more opportunity to be pleasantly surprised than not. In addition to living in an area even more culturally and religiously diverse than the one we left in Minneapolis, our kids are getting an incredible education in top-ranked schools.

After many years in the national basement, Georgia’s latest science standards are excellent. And when it comes to the teaching of evolution itself, it ranks in the top tier of the Fordham study (see maps) — above Oregon, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and 24 other states.

Science standards don’t have to be in the South to go south. As Lawrence Lerner put it in the NCSE Journal,

Although there is a disproportionate concentration of ill-treatment of evolution in the Bible Belt, geography is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for such treatment. Georgia and South Carolina, for instance, treated evolution very well while New Hampshire and Wisconsin did not.Lawrence Lerner, “Good, Bad, and Lots of Indifferent: State K-12 Science Standards,” Reports of the National Center for Science Education, vol. 28 no. 3

The most relevant anti-science spectrum in the US (and elsewhere) is not North-South, but urban-suburban-rural. The suburbs of Atlanta have more in common with the suburbs of Philadelphia than either has in common with the small towns in its own state. The quality of science education tends to drop in sync with population density.

But that’s on paper. As Ms. Warner and Mr. Taylor clearly show, individuals in the system will do their level best to undercut even the best standards.

A deeply depressing Penn State study found that only 28 percent of high school biology teachers consistently implement National Research Council recommendations calling for introduction of evidence that evolution occurred. About 13 percent of biology teachers explicitly advocate creationism in the classroom, while 60 percent use at least one of three strategies to avoid controversy: (1) pretending that evolution applies only on the molecular level; (2) telling students it does not matter if they really ‘believe’ in evolution, only that they know it for the test; and/or (3) “teaching the controversy,” which one researcher noted “tells students that well-established concepts can be debated in the same way we debate personal opinions.”

According to the researchers, these conflict-avoiders “may play a far more important role in hindering scientific literacy in the United States than the smaller number of explicit creationists.”

There was no way I was letting this one go.