Why the (ultra-) religious are so anti-science

John William Waterhouse: Pandora, 1896

There have been so many ideas swimming around in my head lately that I'd love to blog about, but as a mom to three small children, my time is very rarely my own! In lieu of that, I thought I'd just draw your attention to a great piece from Dale McGowan's blog.

It's an interesting take on why religion is in such conflict with science. Not ALL PoF's are anti-science, of course, but it seems that the ultra-religious are. Take my next-door neighbors, the anti-medical-science-homeschool-because-public-schools-promote-humanism-whip-your-children-if-they-question-your-authority-Pentecostals, for example (no, really...PLEASE take them!). Or my aforementioned Facebook friend, who once told my husband he needed to "step outside the realm of science," and that she basically agreed with Pat Robertson's stance that bad things happen in the world because people are shutting God out.

At the most basic level, science is the act of asking questions and seeking evidence to help answer those questions. It is fueled by curiosity and exploration...the very things that are DISCOURAGED by most religions (in which, historically, blind faith and obedience were highly rewarded, and curiosity was punished).

I really like Dale's take on it, and the story's pretty entertaining (and by the way, those Brothers Grimm were a gory duo...were those stories really directed toward children?!). Take a look and let me know what you think:

No cats were harmed...

Book Review: I Sold My Soul on eBay: Viewing Faith through an Atheist's Eyes by Hemant Mehta

As an avid reader of Hemant's blog for the past year or so, I thought it was about time I read the book that catapulted him to semi-celebrity status. I checked it out of the local library a couple days ago, and it was a surprisingly quick read. It was not at all what I expected (somehow I expected a humorous, slightly irreverent book directed toward an atheist audience...I was wrong), but I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. The book is actually published by a distributor of Christian books, and the text and tone makes it obvious that the intended audience is a Christian one.

Hemant's journey began when he, an atheist and former Jainist, expressed his curiosity about the Christian faith. He wondered if there was something he was missing; questions about God that could be answered through a worldview he had not yet explored. He decided to visit churches and document the process so that others could view and comment on what he was doing. He knew that, in order to get the feedback he was looking for, he would need to publicize his activity. To this end, he advertised on eBay: "Send an atheist to his local church!" For each $10 bid by the winner, Hemant promised to attend one church service. The eventual winner was Christian author and former pastor, Jim Henderson. They agreed that Hemant would attend 15 church services, blog about his observations on Henderson's website, and participate in any publicity opportunities that arose from the agreement (click here for details on the auction and its outcome).

I Sold My Soul on eBay arose from this experience. In the first section of the book, Hemant describes his own religious upbringing, as well as his journey to being an atheist. Then he describes (in general) what nonreligious people *do* believe in an attempt to help readers better understand his perspective before giving his impressions of the various church services. What interested me most about his writing was

(1) the striking similarity between Hemant's journey to unbelief and my own. At times I felt as though *I* could have written, verbatim, his description. It makes me wonder if all atheists (or at least most of them) go through similar phases of doubt and questioning at similar ages.

(2) the accuracy with which he describes, in nonthreatening terms (i.e. not saying "we atheists think you Christians are wrong because..."), what most nonreligious people believe. I think he does a pretty good job of showing that nonreligious people actually have more in common with most religious people (particularly in terms of values and a moral compass) than we have differences.

(3) that at a similar age (I was 24), I also started seeking answers and decided to explore Christianity. I actually became very deeply involved in one church at that time (but more on that in a later blog post in the "Let's Start at the Very Beginning..." series). My reasons were exactly the same as his, or at least as the way he presents them when he writes:

When I launched this experiment, I wanted to know if I may have missed any sign of God in my path to atheism. I thought that by visiting churches I might see hints of God that I had missed before. I was looking for compelling evidence that would change my thinking.

In the next section of the book, Hemant goes on to describe his observations at each of the church services he attended, pointing out both positive and negative aspects of each. The goal of this, as described in the book, is to help Christians to see themselves through the eyes of an outsider. It is also meant to help them understand how to make their church services more effective, particularly with respect to appealing to those who are questioning their faith or seeking answers through religion. I found his observations fascinating, as I made many of the same observations when I first became involved in the church.

Hemant ends the book by summarizing the good and bad points of Christian worship (as he observed them), and gives a pretty good discussion of what it would take to convert him to a person of faith (I agreed with his points, and I think it gives a window into how we "freethinkers" view religious belief in general). Chapters 9 and 10 are ones I wish every Christian would read. The first is subtitled "Suggestions to help you reach out to non-Christians" and the second is titled "What it would take to convert me."

The conclusion of the book has a good message, I think. It goes hand-in-hand with my biggest beef regarding my relationships with Christians: the "US versus THEM" mentality that pervades so many of our interactions. Hemant says:

Now that my experiment is over, I realize I didn't find God, but I saw the incredible power a church can have. I hope that power is used to benefit society instead of hurting it through creating unnecessary divisions between Christians and non-Christians. I hope what I've said will help you, if you are a Christian, to think differently about those who don't share your beliefs.

I have set out on a mission of my own, if you will, to show the world the friendly face of atheism. I would love to meet more friendly Christians. And so would every atheist I know.

Atheists and other religious outsiders are all around you. We work at the same places, live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same movies, and walk our dogs in the same parks. Don't you think it's time we got to know one another?

I couldn't have said it better.

Me, too!

Just a quickie, since I read something today that struck a chord with me. It's from another blog, written by a woman who joined "A Week" on Facebook. I could have written this myself (and kinda wish I had)!

Her full blog can be found at: My knitting has gone to the dogs...

I’m finding it difficult to find the words to describe what I was going through. An analogy that might work: Do you remember when you stopped believing in Santa Claus? It didn’t happen all at once. When I was little, I believed in Santa with all my heart. Then I started getting little clues that something wasn’t quite right. I still believed, but there was an underlying feeling that it wasn’t real. The more that I learned, the more the belief just slipped away. Eventually, I finally admitted to myself that I no longer believed in Santa Claus.

This is the same feeling I had with God. The more that I learned, the more the belief just slipped away. I finally admitted to myself that I no longer believed in God, the same way I no longer believed in the Santa, or the Tooth Fairy, or leprechauns, or unicorns. There is an utter lack of evidence for any of them. There are “feelings” and “belief”, but no actual hard evidence. I have as much proof for the Christian god as I do for the Norse gods or the Greek gods. Lots of stories, but nothing else.

Why haven’t I made this post before? Because “coming out” as an atheist is scary. I’ve had friends lose their families over it. People who’ve been completely cut off from their family because they happen to believe in something as “wrong” as atheism. It’s intimidating. There is a whole community of atheists online, because sometimes that’s the only place we can go to be with other people who understand us. There are atheists in some countries who don’t dare tell a soul because it could mean imprisonment or death, and others who don’t understand why we Americans make such a big deal over the whole thing.

Germinating the seeds of doubt (Let's Start...part 2)

(image from Vivio World)

The teenage years are confusing and difficult for everyone, but I think mine were compounded by my struggles with a lack of religious identity. I guess I would have characterized myself as agnostic back then (or at least my understanding of the word at the time...that I had serious questions about the existence of God, but I just wasn't sure). I spent most of my teen years thinking I was one of very few people in the world who felt this way...I felt very isolated and alone in the community (even if much of that feeling was caused by my own perceptions).

One of the many things I am grateful to my parents for is that we were raised in an environment where it was okay to ask questions about ANYTHING. Even the existence of God. We had Bibles in our house, alongside books of Zen-inspired poetry and Yoga texts; crosses next to miniature Buddha statues and ankh pendants. We listed to Ravi Shankar records alongside Genesis, Neil Diamond, and The Beatles. We didn't have money for a lot of vacations, but when we DID go places, they were focused on venues like The Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg, various zoos, tours of historical sites, planetariums, and the like. My parents made our home environment a very rich one, and great value was placed on learning and asking questions.

It stood in stark contrast to what I felt and learned in school. Remember the Bible school teacher I mentioned before? She taught me there were certain questions that were "not nice" to ask. And I was a good kid--a really good kid. I prided myself on being nice and doing what my teachers and other adults told me to do. I remember feeling completely humiliated and embarrassed because I had, in my innocence, just asked a question that was "not nice."

Something similar happened when I was in High School. I was in a home economics class, and our teacher, Mrs. B, was talking about heaven and the afterlife, etc. I asked an honest question, wondering how we know these things. She grew visibly agitated, and sounded angry as she snapped an answer back at me. I realize now that she was responding from emotion, as she told me about how she refuses to believe that her mother, who died before her kids were born, didn't get a chance to meet her own grandsons. She let me know, both verbally and with nonverbal cues, that I had just asked another one of those questions that was "not nice"; not okay. I remember feeling embarrassed and shocked...I didn't think my innocent question deserved an angry, hurt response and complete shutdown.

Talking to my dad was a huge help for me. Knowing that he felt much the same way as I did, and was willing to talk about it, was really my saving grace (for lack of better terminology)! My home was my intellectual safe haven; the place where it was okay to ask questions and explore. The one other place I felt like that was in Mr. T's classroom (no, not THAT Mr. T!).

Mr. T was my 7th and 10th grade Biology teacher, as well as my 12th grade Physics teacher. I looked forward to his class every day. He encouraged us to explore and learn outside of what the book had to say. EVERY question was okay to ask. His room was filled with jars of dead things and aquariums whose walls were so covered in algae you couldn't see what was inside them. They were just asking to be scraped and viewed under a microscope (which we did often), to explore a tiny universe of protozoans in a jungle of seaweed. There were sunny days in the spring where he'd declare we were having class outside. Some days we'd walk to a nearby slough and just spend the hour exploring. I was filled with wonder, and I felt completely in my element. He was the kind of teacher I'd wish for my kids to have (but the kind of teacher that, sadly, is going extinct thanks to "standards-based education" and "No Child Left Behind"). Mr. T's classes were like a refuge to me in an otherwise boring school day.

Unfortunately, not many kids had the same love for Mr. T's class as I had. They thought his classes were "too hard," and they thought he was "really weird." When a student would ask him a question, he wouldn't just answer...he'd make the student talk it through until she found the answer herself. I found that approach challenging and empowering (he often told us, "See? You know...you just don't KNOW you know!"...something I found myself echoing to my own students when I taught science years later). Other students felt like he was ridiculing them by putting them on the spot instead of just giving them the answer.

Mr. T was also an outspoken religious skeptic...and that made him pretty unpopular, too. I remember the kids talking about it. And I remember making a mental note to keep my mouth shut about my own beliefs. At the same time, I was silently his biggest fan (I told him so years later, just a year before he tragically died of a heart attack and complications from bypass surgery at age 56). I still miss him and think of him with admiration as my first scientific mentor.

I graduated Valedictorian of my senior class, gave a speech that a "nice girl" would give, and bit my tongue as we sat through the sermon during Baccalaureate/Commencement (I attended a public school, but it was standard to hold a church service during high school graduation). I couldn't wait to move on to the next phase of my life...I felt like I was escaping! I couldn't wait to explore the world, and I had a great springboard for it. I had been accepted to a 4-week summer program called National Youth Science Camp in West Virginia (more on that later). I was about to board a plane for the first time in my life, and see something other than the plains of North Dakota and Manitoba. I had no idea what to expect, but I was excited and ready!

feeling out the setup for this blog...

I'm still experimenting with some of the features of this blog, but I've discovered I can make more permanent pages (yay!) that are linked at the side of the main blog layout. I've added a page that outlines the basic tenets of "what I believe" in light of the fact that atheists can be, and most often ARE, good people without the influence of god(s) in their lives. You'll find it here (or just click the link on the side bar entitled "Pages"):

What an atheist believes

Unfortunately, I think one of the biggest misconceptions about atheists is that we don't believe in anything, and that we have no basis for morality. I hope the credo on the page linked above can help dispel that myth.

I'll be adding other pages, like notable quotes I've stumbled upon, a list of common misconceptions about atheists/agnostics, as well as a page for famous atheists, agnostics, and religious skeptics. Any other suggestions? I'm happy to hear them!

Let's start at the very beginning... (part 1)

It is, after all (as Julie Andrews sang), a very good place to start. I think sometimes people wonder how an atheist becomes an atheist. This is my personal journey.

Many religious people seem to think that atheists have "decided to turn their back on God" for one reason or another. Perhaps something bad happened, so they "gave up on God." Or maybe they want to live a carefree, hedonistic lifestyle, so they "deny God." The reality is that, for most of us, being an atheist is NOT A CHOICE. The concept of God just doesn't seem real to us. A Person of Faith (heretoafter referred to as a PoF) telling me that I have made a choice to become an atheist would be like me telling them they made a choice to NOT believe in Zeus. Or unicorns. Or the fairies that live under the flowers in my garden.

At the risk of sounding harsh or patronizing, the concept of a personal God seems a little absurd to many of us (as absurd as a belief in flying unicorns might seem to a PoF), and we find it hard to understand how any thinking person could believe such nonsense. Yet, we know that many thinking people DO believe. And while some atheists write PoF's off as absurd or silly, many of us make an honest effort to empathize and try to understand a different viewpoint. In my experience in both social circles, atheists/agnostics/humanists tend to be much more accepting of PoF's than vice versa. Maybe because many of us, at some point in our lives, were PoF's ourselves.

First a bit about my "religious genealogy." My mom grew up with a Presbyterian dad and a Catholic mom, neither of whom were involved in their churches. As a kid, Mom went to church occasionally (not regularly) with her grandparents. She was baptized as an adult when my Grandfather (her dad) had a crisis of conscience and decided all his kids and upbaptized grandkids needed to be baptized (so, incidentally, I was baptized on the same day as my mom, when I was about 3 years old). Dad grew up in a much more religious household, with a dad who was an Evangelical United Bretheren minister (if you're up on your United States church history, you'll know the EUB eventually joined with the Methodists to become the United Methodists).

My parents were married in the local Presbyterian church in the same small town where I was born and raised. When I say small I mean SMALL. It was a Canadian-border town of about 1400 God-fearing people in rural North Dakota. It bordered an Indian reservation (on which almost everyone was Catholic), and the vast majority of people in my hometown were either Lutheran or Catholic (with a smattering of Methodists, Presbyterians, and Assembly of God). Literally EVERY family in town went to church.

Well...every family except ours.

And believe, me, it didn't go unnoticed.

I would categorize my upbringing as nondenominational Protestant. We read Bible stories, learned about Jesus, and we celebrated the Christian holidays. We learned about the Nativity at Christmas time and about Jesus' resurrection at Easter. We learned to say our prayers ("Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, Guide me through the coming night, Wake me with the morning light. God bless Mom, Dad, etc...."). We did not attend a church, however. Mom wasn't a member of any church, and Dad didn't believe in churches. Funny since his dad was a minister, but he had definite opinions on the way money was collected and used by churches. When I was a teenager, my Dad told me he was agnostic. He had a strong interest in learning about other religions and had a hard time with the concept that everyone had the "We're right and everyone else is wrong" attitude.

Because we didn't go to church, my sister and I were ridiculed and teased. We were told we were "Devil worshippers" (among other things). Our next-door neighbors were on a mission to save us...I remember sitting with my friend, J, next to her garage on a summer day when we were playing outside (we couldn't have been more than 7 or 8). She had me recite a version of the Sinner's Prayer, which I did, then we went back to roller skating. I never really thought it was weird at the time, but I remember thinking that it held more significance for her than it did for me. Their parents often invited us to church with them, and my sister and I occasionally went. I couldn't figure out why everyone thought there was something wrong with us that needed to be fixed. We believed in God. My parents were raising us with a good moral compass, and I think that, by and large, my sister and I (who were often the subjects of ridicule for being "different" in our small town) lived more faithfully by the Golden Rule than any of the church-going kids we knew.

This treatment early on spoke volumes to me about keeping my mouth shut about any doubts I might have. We were already being ostracized...why make it worse?

While I DID believe in God, I know I had questions about specifics (like why our religion was right and why other people believed differently if we were the right ones) at a very early age. Case in point: My parents sent me to Bible school once. I don't remember how old I was (maybe 7), but I remember asking a question that the teacher didn't approve of. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it had to do with Jesus dying and being resurrected. I think it was in the realm of "how do we know that for sure?" I was told, "It's not nice to ask questions like that." More confirmation to keep my mouth shut and try to conform as best I could. After all, I wanted to be a nice girl...and those types of questions aren't "nice."

A spiritual turning point in my childhood came when I was nine years old. We had a cat that I was very much in love with...his name was Rocky. He was a fat, teddy-bear of a cat with a big heart and not-so-big intellect. He was my buddy, who played with me, slept in my bed, and loved me unconditionally. When Rocky was about 2 years old, he fell very ill. He stopped eating, and grew thinner and thinner. After several visits to the local vet, Dad took him to a veterinarian in a larger town. This big-town vet did an x-ray and saw what appeared to be a swallowed obstruction, but made an offhand comment that there was a small possibility it could be a tumor. Surgery was scheduled to remove it.

I remember praying to God that he take care of my cat. I remember specifically asking God to make sure my cat didn't have Cancer, and that he'd be okay. The next day came, along with a devastating call from the veterinarian. Rocky was filled with tumors, and there was no hope for my kitty. He was euthanized without ever coming out of surgery. My poor little 9-year-old heart was broken...and for the first time I was wondering...why didn't God listen to me? Why would he torture this innocent little creature with such a horrible disease? Maybe...just maybe...there isn't a God. Maybe...just maybe...God is like Santa Claus. He's a story made up by people so that we do good things (you know, he's keeping track of who's naughty and who's nice).

Of course, I didn't become an atheist at 9 because my cat died. And I know what a PoF would say about unanswered prayers, "God's plan," and the like. My point in telling the Rocky story is this: It's my earliest memory of having true doubt in the existence of God. I had just never really thought about it before. Until that point, I had taken my parents' word at face value that God was real, without really thinking about it. Without question.

So, in looking back, I can pinpoint the moment when the seeds of doubt were planted. My ever-maturing critical thinking skills just allowed those seeds to germinate and grow...