The Allegory of the Orphanage

A father once had many children. Immediately after birth, the children were sent to an orphanage where they were alternately beaten and caressed, made sick and healed, starved and feasted. With the father’s consent, some of the children were allowed to die, so that those who remained would be more grateful for their lives.

The children were not allowed to have any direct contact with their father. The workers in the orphanage would often assure the children that their father was alive and that he loved them. When the children asked why their father never came to them in person, the workers insisted that the father wanted to teach his children to trust him. The workers also presented the children with some very old papers containing stories about their father, supposedly written by people who knew him. However, different workers gave the children different documents, many of which contradicted the others. Although every worker insisted that his own documents were genuine, all but one set were forgeries.

At the end of a number of years, a few children, who read and believed the genuine papers and who believed, in spite of their misery, that their father was alive and loved them, were allowed to go home to him, where they were showered with love and affection. All the rest of the children were transferred to another orphanage, much worse than the first, where they were tortured continually for the rest of their lives.

 Would you call this man a kind and loving father?

Plumpes Denken 1: the Sartorial Savior

The expression "Plumpes Denken" was used by Bertolt Brecht to describe a type of "crude thinking" that has no patience with obfuscation. I've been having fun lately applying such thinking to the Bible.

Reading Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary the other day, I came upon the following passage under "ghost":

"There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or 'in his habit as he lived.' To believe in him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics."

That started a whole chain of thoughts related to religion. The first was this: was Jesus naked when he appeared to his disciples after his resurrection? The gospels are careful to emphasize that, when he rose again, he left behind the grave clothes.

At some point, he must've acquired an outfit because, when the disciples met him on the road to Emmaus, they didn't see anything out of the ordinary in his appearance. Perhaps he killed someone for his clothes, like the Terminator? Or perhaps his Heavenly Father made him a spiritual garment. After all, they couldn't have been normal clothes because Jesus was able to appear magically within locked rooms. Even if Jesus himself could teleport through the walls, it seems as if ordinary clothes would snag on something.

God and the Japanese Earthquake (Theodicy Shmeodicy Again)

I received an email from one of our church’s missionaries in Japan. She asked our church to pray that God would use the earthquake and tsunami to save the Japanese people.  I had heard such statements before, but for the first time it struck me how distasteful such a request is—especially for what it says about the missionary’s conception of God. I see at least three disturbing implications in the email concerning the nature of God:

1.       The Divine Rube Goldberg: God is apparently unable to simply communicate with individuals, offering them proof of His existence. Instead, like the elaborate contraptions envisioned by Rube Goldberg, tectonic plates and tsunamis are the best methods God has to get people’s attention. (Anytime you hear someone claim that “God works in mysterious ways,” they are referring to this kind of God.)

Of course, our missionary wouldn’t claim that God caused the earthquake to save people. (At least, I hope she wouldn’t), which brings us to the next conception of God implied by her request.

2.       The Divine FEMA: God doesn’t cause natural disasters; He just shows up afterward to help people get through them.  I don’t even think the missionary is aware that this conception of God is very different from that of the omnipotent creator God who controls the universe.  The dilemma seems unavoidable: either God can control earthquakes, and He chose to unleash one on Japan; or God cannot control earthquakes, and is therefore not omnipotent. (The latter is Harold Kushner’s view of God, as expressed in When Bad Things Happen to Good People.)

But the missionary didn’t just ask us to pray that God would comfort the suffering Japanese people; she asked that God would use the disaster to save them, which leads to the final conception of God.

3.       The Divine Ambulance Chaser: God takes advantage of people’s suffering, catching them in a moment of weakness to manipulate them into converting to His religion. This implication is what disturbed me most about the missionary’s email. It is the same as the preacher who uses a funeral to preach about salvation to the survivors. (I’m sorry to say that I have sat through such funerals.)

Whether or not our missionary believed that God was somehow involved in what happened in Japan, she revealed astonishing insensitivity by thinking about such a tragedy in terms of furthering her own religious agenda.

Theodicy Shmeodicy

Last spring, while painting his house, a seventy-year-old man from our church fell off a ladder and seriously hurt himself. The situation reminded me of Ivan’s accident in Tolstoy's story "The Death of Ivan Illyich," so mundane as to be ridiculous. But this man (I'll call him Fred) was seriously injured—a punctured kidney, broken ribs. He was in ICU for weeks, and had to have a feeding tube installed. All because of painting his house.

It was very interesting to hear people at church discussing the situation. They thanked God that Fred was alive and that, eventually, he was well enough to leave ICU. But what about blaming God for letting Fred fall? Imagine if someone intentionally shot another person, then put a tourniquet around the wound and saved his life. Would we say, “Thank you for saving Jim’s life?” Of course not—we’d arrest him for attempted murder. Why do we let God off so easily? He gets all the credit when someone recovers (or even, in a case like Fred’s, when someone only marginally improves); but He gets none of the blame. Of course, some would argue that I'm creating a false analogy; God didn't intentionally push Fred off the ladder. Well, I suppose that depends on one's idea of God's sovereignty. But, if people don't blame God because he didn't directly hurt Fred, it seems inconsistent to credit God with Fred's (partial) recovery; God didn't directly help Fred either.

Last Sunday, Fred was well enough to come back to church. I was very curious to hear what he would say. He assured everyone that he was “a miracle.” He described his accident, blaming it on a strong gust of wind—God was noticeably absent from that part of his story. But then he went on to describe his very lengthy recovery, after weeks in a coma and after numerous operations. During all that time, he said, God was taking care of him, guiding the doctors’ hands, heeding the prayers of the faithful. He was sure that God had a purpose for him, since He had spared his life. I don’t understand how he couldn’t see the contradiction in his own attitude. Where was God when he was up on that ladder? Why does God get all the credit for guiding human ingenuity and effort (and this from a Baptist, who would insist on human free will), but no credit for guiding natural phenomena? Fred's whole experience seems to be an example of confirmation bias. Fred already believes in God, so he will ignore anything that seems to call His existence into question. Instead, he focuses on facts that seem to confirm His existence--no matter how tenuous those “facts” are.

The Book of Job Redux

After my de-conversion, I've been reading the Bible with new eyes. Recently, I re-read the book of Job and found it really disturbing. In a moment of "inspiration," I wrote this version, to highlight what bothered me about the book.

Allegory of the insecure father

Once a father was sitting on a park bench, watching his 7-year-old son play. The father was very proud of his son, who was obedient and always tried to please his father as best he could.

An acquaintance of the father came up and sat down beside him.

“What have you been up to?” asked the father.

“Just wandering around,” replied the other.

“Well, have you noticed my son? Isn’t he a good boy?”

“Perhaps. But, to be honest, I think he’s only good because you’re so nice to him. You always take care of him and give him everything he needs. I bet that, if thing’s weren’t going so well for him, he wouldn’t be such a good boy.”

“Fine," replied the father. "Do whatever you want to him, and we’ll see what happens. I’ll bet you he’ll still be a good boy.”

So, while the father sat watching, the acquaintance walked over to the boy and smashed all his toys. The boy had been playing with a puppy; the man took it and wrung its neck. Finally, he kicked and punched the boy repeatedly, leaving him bruised and bloody.

The little boy ran crying to his father, “Daddy, you saw what that man was doing—why didn’t you stop him? I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Be quiet!” the father replied sternly. “I’m bigger and stronger than you, and I’ve been alive much longer. You’ve got no right to question me!”

The boy lowered his head. “You’re right,” he said softly. “I’m small and weak compared to you.”

The father was so pleased that he bought the boy some even better toys, and he gave him a new puppy for his pet.

Would you call this man a kind and loving father?

Why "Cold Souls" left me cold

I recently rented the movie Cold Souls. I usually enjoy that kind of Kaufmanesque film, but not this time, which got me thinking. I eventually decided the problem was that the filmmakers were confused about how having no soul would affect a person. In the film, the soul isn’t the same thing as the mind, because Paul (the main character) is still intellectually competent after his operation. Instead, the writers seem to equate the soul with emotion. Paul’s feelings are altered by the operation. But even then, the film is inconsistent; Paul doesn't suffer from complete loss of affect. (For example, he worries about being soulless.)

Unintentionally, the film reveals that modern cognitive science has rendered the whole notion of a soul superfluous. If the soul isn’t thought, or feeling, or personality, what is it?

Everyone admits that thoughts and feelings come from the physical brain. Ritalin doesn’t help the soul to focus better. And even Christians take anti-depressants; they don’t believe that they’re medicating their souls. Increasingly, the functions of the soul have been replaced by the chemistry of the brain.

People also admit that personality is a function of the brain; look at all the ways that changes to the brain (strokes, injuries, drugs, etc.) alter personality. Does that mean that the immortal soul has no individual personality? If so, why would somebody even hope for a bland, thoughtless, emotionless, soul with no recognizable personality? What exactly is it that is supposed to walk through the pearly gates?

Modern science has forced God to become what Bonhoeffer referred to as the God of the gaps. The soul, likewise, has become the Organ of the gaps. But, in the case of the soul, there is no discernible gap left for it to fill. Descartes found the seat of the soul in the tiny pineal gland. But I don’t think there’s a gland small enough to do what the soul does—nothing. It's the ultimate vestigial organ.

Losing My Religion

I grew up in the baptist church. I've played the organ in church for thirty years. But, somehow, I seem to have become an atheist malgre lui, or at least a strong agnostic. The process has been long and slow. Since I'm still the church organist, I don't really feel free to discuss these changes with my friends in church. That's why I'm writing all of this here. 

Looking back over my life, I can see how I arrived here. (But I always worry about the bias of distorting my own memories to fit my current self-image.) As a child, I never had any kind of deep religious feeling. I walked down the aisle and “got saved” because I felt pressure from my parents and because I felt guilty about my own sinfulness. I remember lying on the couch that Sunday afternoon, hearing the neighbors mowing their lawns, and thinking that nothing felt any different, that I was still the exact same person that I was before. I’ve always envied the Pauls of the world—those who are radically transformed by a salvation experience. (Although, if I think about it, Paul wasn’t really that different afterwards. He went from being an inflexible Jewish ideologue to being an inflexible Christian ideologue.)

In high school, I was outwardly religious, but I didn’t really think deeply about religion. I do remember scandalizing my cousin by saying that I didn’t believe in angels. I thought that, if God was omnipotent and omnipresent, why did he need minions to fly around and deliver his divine messages?

In college, I was more of a New Age/Thoreau/Transcendentalist than an orthodox Christian. I’ve found some writings from that time that show that, at least sometimes, I didn’t feel the Bible had any more authority than, say, the Baghavad Gita.
During graduate school, I seem to have been at my most orthodox. I now cringe with shame when I remember trying to convince students in my classes that Darwinism wasn’t proven, that evolution was just a theory. Reading Derrida and other deconstructionists made a profound impression on me, as did reading Hume’s radical skepticism. I remember telling a friend that skepticism was the only true philosophy, that Christianity required a leap of faith (Kierkegaard’s Sickness Unto Death had also impressed me—I started reading scripture more critically afterward). The friend insisted that there was evidence for belief, but I wasn’t convinced.

The cracks in my faith continued to widen as I started reading science books in earnest. The one I remember as having the biggest impact on me was The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. The more I read, the more the universe started to make more sense without a God than with one. In River Out of Eden, Dawkins was discussing religious leaders who were trying to understand a bus accident that killed many children. The leaders were making their vain attempts at a theodicy. But Dawkins said that the universe looks exactly as it would if there were no God:

Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, others are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. (132-133)

That's where I stand now. The real problem at this point is how to "come out" to my baptist friends. I still care deeply about them, and I don't want to hurt them. But I just can't believe the same things they believe any more.