Being a secret atheist has its perks, but it also has its moments when you want nothing more than to speak up.

I was out to dinner with a few coworkers when one of them said, “I was watching TED talks and clicked a Richard Dawkins video just to see how long I could put up with it.  That man is infuriating.”  She went on to say that if he truly believes religious fervor is bad, then he should see that being just as strongly atheistic makes you the same as a fundamentalist Christian.  This argument is as tired and old as all of the arguments are.  It has been made before and will be made again, but it will not stop being made because the repudiation of it also explains why Christians will never understand. 

Fittingly, the best man for this job, as he often is, is Dawkins himself who addresses this very issue in chapter 8 of The God Delusion.  Dawkins points out that the Bible is an axiomatic truth, something that is true because it says it’s true, and it derives its truth from this very fact.  Therefor, “if evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out.”  By contrast, atheism (and its close bedfellow, science) have principals that are believed not because they are self-evidently true, but because we studied the evidence. 

This means not only that our truths are not axiomatic and that we have affirmed our beliefs and dismissed their beliefs through evidence, but also that they will, regardless of explanation, not understand.  Our counterpoint to their point is in direct opposition to their axiomatic truths and must therefor be dismissed by them.

Again, Dawkins put it best when he wrote, “when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them.  It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.  And that justifies passion on the other side.”

So that is why he, and we for that matter, are passionate, and more importantly, it’s why we are quite different than fundamentalists.

I’ve always told myself that I can weather any Christian storm, that I have experienced everything they have to offer and I can deal with it.  I just never thought I would have to deal with it in these quantities.  Where once I experienced a mind-numbing level of “faith” and “commitment” on perhaps a monthly basis, I now work with those very people.  The amount of prayer and pious pomp is almost too much to bear. 

We had an after school meeting on Tuesday from 5-7:30 and I was under the impression we would be talking about the new school year and curricula.  Like someone suffering from a head injury I again believed that something planned by our administration was going to be helpful or insightful.  We talked about problems we are having in class, and I still sat gleefully under the delusion that we would then help each other solve these problems.  Instead we had “group prayer”, which as someone raised Catholic means nothing to me.  Everyone murmured audibly in a circle while another person prayed loudly over everyone.  I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.  I sat in the circle and whispered, “I don’t know whether to kill myself or all of you” for 10 minutes while we wasted time in the most pointless way imaginable.

Is anything more useless than prayer? Asking someone that doesn’t exist to solve our problems for us?  Asking him for a brain and a heart and courage not realizing that he isn’t even a man behind a curtain.  We are simply talking to ourselves.

My principal has a serious crush on King David, and I can’t figure out why.  She finds every imaginable reason to mention him and how great he is.  She talks about him singing, being a shepherd, a king, etc.  I think her reasoning is two-fold; he is the perfect man in her eyes, talented, handsome, powerful, but also, he is the only person in the old testament you can really say anything great about.

At our orientation with our new super-christian coworkers, she asked if we want to be like David, an honest man, or a liar.  This struck me as odd, and to be honest I would prefer not to be like David.  Like everything else in the Bible, Christians are so eager to forget the bad and paint their world view with the few good passages.  Sure, David took care of sheep, he may have been a decent ruler, he murdered Goliath, a man who we are told was bad. For some reason though, Bathsheba seems to slip everyone’s mind.

For those of you unacquainted with Bathsheba, she was the wife of Uriah.  David saw her bathing and, inflamed with passion, impregnated her.  We assume it was consensual because what woman wouldn’t want to be impregnated by David.  Afterward, David goes into damage control and gives Uriah, a Hittite soldier, leave to visit his wife in the hopes that he will believe the child is his own.  Uriah, being a man of great virtue declines the opportunity to sleep with his wife because it would not be just to enjoy such pleasures while his fellow soldiers fight and die in the field.  This was a problem, but one easily solved for a king.  He simply told Uriah’s commanding officer Joab to put Uriah at the forefront of the most heated battle.  Uriah was killed and David breathed a sign of relief.

To recap, David cuckolds Uriah, lies and tries to trick him into covering it up, and then murders him for the crime of being virtuous enough to decline a pleasure his fellow soldiers do not get enjoy.  So, while it would be rather nice to be a shepherd, a child-soldier, or slightly effective king, I’m slightly less willing to forget what you might call the trappings of his power.

Also, let’s not forget about his homosexual partnership with Jonathan, but then that’s only considered a flaw if you’re a Christian.

One time in college I was taking a life-drawing class.  It was enjoyable.  One day in class, the model, while in a reclining pose, vomited a torrent of bile all over her own naked body and then went naked through the building to wash in the bathroom.  As of this past weekend that is the second strangest thing I have experienced.

A friend is leaving our school and the country to go back to the US.  She is one of the most christian people I know, but she has enough social graces to keep it to herself around me despite not knowing I’m an atheist.  Last Sunday she invited me to her going away party at her church, and, seeing as she has been a good friend, I accepted.

The entire party was normal enough.  There was a certain air to everything that set it apart from normal get-togethers in a way that can only be described as very “Jesus-y.”  Everyone was just a bit too strangely dressed and their language was a bit too pure and naive.  These were clearly people living at the top of the hierarchy of religious crazies, but, like any other person, they interacted as normally as anyone can.  That is of course until the party began to wind down.

I had intended to leave immediately after dessert, but I stuck around for curiosity’s sake when they said they would be praying.  They said that they would all pray together and then some people would pray on their own, and that’s when the world fell apart and a room full of 100 normal people became the craziest human beings I’ve spent time with.

The friend that is leaving sat in a chair in the center of the room, and the Christians formed concentric circles around her either laying their hands directly on her or allowing them to hover in the air above people or things around them.  Someone with a microphone announced that we would be bidding her farewell and thanking “father god” for this and that blah-de-blah.  Then, as if rehearsed for the sole purpose of frightening strangers, every person in the room began murmuring, whispering and moaning at a level about on par with how you might speak in a theater during the trailers.  The noises rose in pitch and volume over the course of about 5 minutes while I stood there shocked and confused.

Just when I was hoping it would end, individuals began lining up at the microphone to testify or whatever they call it.  While everyone stood around murmuring and quietly wailing, tears streaming down their cheeks, the individuals began what you might call “free-style” praying.  With no seeming plan or direction, they blazed a trail through the limits of what is normally considered a cohesive, well formed thought while ending and beginning every poorly-strung-together statement with “father god” (an epithet I was not personally familiar with).  “Father god, we thank you for giving us such a sister and, father god, we just hope that you, father god, will give her the grace and salvation she needs, father god, to continue in her journey to the kingdom that you, father god, have given to us, father god, so that we can give ourselves to you, father god.”  As each speaker said those christian key-words like “kingdom” or “salvation” or “grace”, that crowd would respond with moans, nods of approval and whines. 

Suddenly, as quickly as it all began, the tears stopped, the murmuring stopped, the testifying stopped, and they all dispersed and mingled as if they hadn’t just spent the last 30 minutes behaving like cult-followers with mental disorders.  I thanked my friend for a good time and took the bus home feeling nothing if not strange.

It was a strange feeling knowing that I was alone, in that room full of people.  The only person there who could see what they were doing for what it was, lunacy.  Their prayers, their crying, their whispers were absorbed into the walls and ended there.  Their bizarre ritual extended no further than the front door of that room, and the world was no different for their efforts.  I fail to see how what they did was any more comforting or moving than simply standing in front of a group of friends and telling them how much you are going to miss your friend, how much she means to you.  But instead, they closed their eyes, blocked out everyone around them, and whispered to themselves how thankful they were.  As I left, a coworker stopped me and asked, this being the last day before the school year, if I would like to join her and the other coworkers in meeting at her place and praying for the new year.  “No thank you,” I said, “I need to go home and prepare.”

At chapel last Friday, our principal hosted a “Lord’s Prayer” memorization contest.  She is of course confusing “memorization” with “recitation”, because a memorization contest would be the most boring contest on Earth.  During the course of her telling the school that we would be coming on stage class-by-class to “memorize” the prayer, she stressed to the children the importance of god and the absurdities we learn at chapel.  Since the end of the year is rolling around and the 7-years will be leaving soon, she focused on them in particular.  “If you forget everything we taught you here, and you forget your teachers and their names and what they taught you,” she began,  “that is okay. As Long as you remember one thing.  Jesus died on the cross for you.”  As the person who actually is the teacher she is telling them they can forget who spent a year teaching them the things she said it is okay to forget, I wanted to explode. 

Why the fuck would that be okay?  Is there anything sane you can say that can be prefaced with, “If you forget everything you’ve learned that’s okay if…”?  That is religion in one statement.  If you forget everything you know that’s okay as long as you know Jesus died for you.  Yes, you.  He died for you personally, and it’s okay to forget meaningful relationships and facts if it means saving precious, limited space in your head necessary to remember that.  What kind of school philosophy is that?  It is not okay under any circumstances for them to forget everything we taught them.  If that’s the case, why did I bother reading any book other than the bible.  It would have been a lot easier to teach them that Jesus died than it would be to teach them about gerunds two days after they learn what verbs and nouns are.

Without even meaning to, my principal summed up one of my biggest problems with religion;  it is okay to ignore what you learn as long as you remember god.  It doesn’t matter what you learn in school or what has been shown to be true, what really matters is how well you know god.  Somehow this has even become a good thing.  It’s considered a virtue to cast aside information and knowledge in exchange for blind faith.  To believe in spite of facts is true faith, and that is about as absurd as it gets.  I admit, it’s a clever way to get doubters to hold fast.  Tell them that if they can believe even when presented with contrary evidence, then they are truly blessed.  Unfortunately, unlike god, if you stop believing in facts, they don’t cease to exist.

We were sitting in chapel listening to another offensive “sermon” being given by our principal, and she ended it with a non-nonsensical prayer.  She requested, in so many misused words, that the students bow their heads in blind subservience to her imaginary god.  The children did, because they are after all children and will do anything you tell them.  Except for one, Bryan, the boy who loves animals and reads science books for fun, a favorite of mine.  “Why aren’t you bowing your head, Bryan?”, I asked out of obligation despite the stress it puts on my brain to defend these practices (it is after all my job).  Bryan leaned closer so as not to be heard and said, “I don’t think Jesus was real…and I don’t believe in angels either.”  “I know,” I said patting him on the head, “I know.”

“A man who reads bad books is no better than a man who cannot read them”
~Mark Twain

It’s been a while since I’ve updated since writing out all of my greatest frustrations has helped me to cope with them, but like anything as omnipresent as religion, it will work itself back under your skin.

Before I worked as a kindergarten teacher, I worked as a head cashier at a fine bookstore.  It was an excellent job.  Everyone read immense amount of books, the religious people were a minority, and I got to read quite a lot of books myself.  I’m the sort of person who enjoys nearly every subject; woodworking, economics, art, philology, and of course, religion.  I read books of all varieties, fiction, non-fiction, good, bad, it didn’t matter.  I read constantly, and even if I didn’t finish every book, I got far enough in to enjoy what it had to offer.  I read a lot of good books, and since those are part of the minority, I also read many more bad books. Very bad books. Some I knew would be bad, like things by Ann Coulter or Snooki, others, I was pleasantly surprised by how bad they were.  None compared to “Heaven is for Real” though. 

“Heaven is for Real” is, and I say this without hyperbole, the worst book I have ever read in my life, and that isn’t just from an atheist point of view but from a literary point of view as well.  I didn’t think much of it.  I finished it literally in a day over lunch, and put it back on the shelf.  It was so bad it wasn’t even worth talking to other people about.  It was too easy, too ridiculous.  The gist of it is, and I’m sorry to spoil it for all of you, that a pastor’s son underwent an emergency operation that left him sedated, and after the operation over the course of a year or so, he slowly revealed to them all that he saw and experienced in heaven.  The absurdity of this runs so deep I almost don’t know where to begin.

It goes without saying that anything that someone experiences when they are sedated didn’t happen, but that didn’t stop the Burpos from believing that their son had left his mortal body to ascend into heaven (like Jesus and Mary) to visit relatives who were long dead and to talk to Jesus himself.  Unfortunately, during this personal encounter, Jesus did not manage to impart any information that might be useful for the progress of mankind.  He did have blood on his hands though.  That part was important.  The evidence for this mockery of reason is that the child, in the words of his father, had to have actually gone because he has never talked to his son explicitly about some of the details of heaven and Jesus that his son cited.  Chief among these details were Jesus’ preferred clothing, what angels wings look like, and, again, the blood on Jesus’ hands.

For starters, his son “confirmed” things that are not fact.  Saying that you went to heaven and Jesus wore purple does not confirm that you went to heaven, merely that you are up to date the current idea about how Jesus is depicted.  More importantly, his father is mentally deficient if he thinks that not explicitly saying these things to his son means that at no point during his time on Earth did he figure them out for himself.  I’ve never seen my mother in her underwear, but I have a pretty good hunch that she wears it too.  It’s all almost too absurd to entertain.  It’s the sort of fairytale, straw-man argument that serves only a masturbatory role in confirming for morons what they already firmly believe.  It serves no other role, and I happily did not entertain any of its inanity until recently.

I try not to be the sort of person who hears people say, “I like this band” or, “that’s my favorite movie” and judge them based on it; people are entitled to like whatever they want, but sometimes it’s too much.  Having all but forgotten about this abomination, I overheard a coworker at my christian school say, “you should read ‘Heaven is for Real’. It’s amazing.”  I felt sick at the mere mention, much less praise for it, and left the room.  A week later, it had spread.  There were copies in Korean on various teachers desks and my coworker’s own copy was floating around amongst the other teachers.  It was an epidemic, and I wanted desperately not to catch whatever made you think this was a good book.

I’m certain they will read it and have a circle jerking telling each other how insightful and moving and convincing it all is because they want to be convinced, and more importantly, they want people to know they are convinced.  They want everyone to see what a good Christian they are.  As stated before, I found this book absurd long before I worked at a school.  Now that I teach children the same age as Colton Burpo, the metaphysical traveler himself, it has taken on a whole new level of insanity.  I know now that you can convince children of anything, literally anything, and young Mr. Burpo is no different. 

I eat a chocolate bar every day and every day I tell my children it is medicine so that they do not ask for any.  They believe me every day.  Every time I take a shit I tell them I am going to the bank and they believe me.  Every time.  One child thinks I am 100 years old and that seems like a perfectly reasonable age for an adult in his eyes.  That is actually the beautiful part about children, their eagerness and willingness to absorb new information.  The trouble is, they do not have the wisdom to know who to trust; they trust everyone.  The child of a pastor told everyone that while he was sedated he went to heaven.  Could anything be any more transparent? 

Having a child espouse your beliefs is not proof that they are true, simply that you are willing to use a child for your own benefit.  It changes nothing to wonder, but I can’t help but think what sort of difference could be made if they read a book that conflicted with their deeply held beliefs, if only to inspire an inkling that could one day become serious thought.

Our inept principal left for a month to take classes at a school in the United States.  These were the greatest four weeks at our job so far.  Everyone was able to function autonomously.  Our supervisors were there to answer questions and provide material, we finished our work without being bothered.  It was a wonderful place to work.  More importantly, while she was gone, there was no one to lead chapel once a week, so they brought in guests from the church located above us in our building.  I would have happily written about any of the people who came to talk to the kids, but I just didn’t have it in me.  I would write drafts, revise them, edit them, but it wasn’t the same.  They just couldn’t bring the crazy like she could.  Had I become jaded?

No, and our last guest proved that.  He began it all by introducing his little four-year-old daughter and made her say hello to the room full of people.  He then told us that every night before bed, he asks his daughter, “how much does daddy love you?”  I’m going to overlook my personal qualms with speaking in the third person and instead focus on what follows that.  He then asks, “how do you know?”, and her answer was “because Jesus is in your heart”, and part of me died inside.  I can think of few things stranger or quite frankly worse to tell your children than the fact that you love them because of Jesus.  Is this to say that without Jesus he would not?  Can he not find it in himself to have unconditional love for the child he brought into the world without god or Jesus’ grace? Does he do nothing for her to indicate his love without having to tell her that the man they pray to is “in his heart”? What is he saying?

I was confused if not more than a little appalled, but it would be a lie if I said I wasn’t excited also.  He told us a story.  A story about two puppets who go to school and find it to be very different than they expected.  I will call these puppets Jack and Jill (because those were their names).  The other puppets were mean, and as such, made Jack and Jill mean over time.  Jack and Jill became mean, but this is not what they wanted for themselves.  They wanted to be nice puppets and wanted the other puppets to be nice too.  He would have us believe that they wanted this because they “walked in Christ”, but lets not be ignorant.  Everyone wants to be a good person and have those around them be good people with or without god, and those who don’t are often diagnosed and medicated accordingly.  There is no need to involve “god” in any of this, but we simply must.  They were upset by what had come to pass and went to Jesus.  Literally walked to Jesus and talked to him and then hugged him.  They told him they wanted to be good puppets but the people at school were being mean.  Jesus said it would be okay and sent them on their way.  Over the next few days or weeks or units of time in puppet-land the other puppets were mean but Jack and Jill were nice, relentlessly so.  They shared and were polite and surprised the other puppets with their selflessness.  The other puppets, moved by their actions, became nice as well, Jesus saved the day and everyone was happy.

Where to even begin.  What did Jesus do exactly?  So the puppets acted like good people again, the people they wanted to be all along, and that convinced the others to be good.  Did Jesus help Jack and Jill be good, because it seems like they made a conscious, concerted effort to do that on their own?  Did Jesus make the other puppets be good, because if so, couldn’t he have been less of a dick and just done that from the beginning?

This perhaps makes his initial anecdote about loving his daughter because of Jesus less horrifying in that his story demonstrates that having Jesus in your heart seems to do nothing more than give you something to talk about if unsuspecting classmates or coworkers ever bring it up.  We can at least rest assured that he loves his daughter of his own volition, but is still for some reason willing to attribute it to Jesus.

So here we have two people trying to be good and a man loving his daughter, both attributed to Jesus, both in no seeming way related to Jesus whatsoever.  Why are we giving Jesus credit for these things?  Is simply thinking about Jesus enough to give him credit for the things that come to pass following this mental commune? Why do some people seem to be so successful at loving their children and being good people without talking to Jesus first?  I truly wish I could ask.  I want to know how the inclusion of Jesus in anything improves the outcome at all.  I work with people that are religious enough to consult Jesus about every little matter in their lives, and I can’t help but notice that things go well for them just as often as they do for the non-believers.  I guess if you “go to Jesus” for everything, there is no way of knowing whether or not he is actually playing a role in the outcome.  If this were an experiment, we would call that the control group, the people who lead their lives without asking for Jesus’ guidance or intervention.  One would need only compare the results of the test group to that of the control group to see that the placebo is no more effective than not taking it, but I know how they feel about science.

One of the most wonderfully fascinating things about religion is the behavior of its followers.  We’ve all heard prosaic quotes like, “it’s not Jesus I have a problem with, it’s his followers”, and other such tripe (it is after all rather difficult to dislike an imaginary person too terribly much).  But we can all most certainly agree that his followers are often unlikable.  I cannot say that they are any more so than non-religious people, but then again, a lot of people do a very good job of being unlikable.  And therein lies the point.  Does being a Christian, or any religion for that matter, make you a better person?

Of the people I work with, two (me included) are adamant about our atheism, two are passive about it (would that we could live in a world where atheism was a passive belief) and two seem to have non-opinions for reasons that are equal parts illusive and unimportant (does it really matter why someone doesn’t have religious beliefs so long as they don’t).  The rest are all varying degrees of religious from “God will give us good weather if we ask him nice enough and truly believe it” to “this is a convenient way for me to judge people.”  They are without a doubt the worst group of people I have ever had the misfortune of working with.  If they are not mentally crippled to the point of uselessness by their reliance on God’s will and intervention in our problems, they are so relentlessly caddy and vitriolic that they manage to create a work environment hostile enough to force people to quit.

Of course they all pray.  Some pray on their knees, submitting to God, most pray when it is asked of them, and the office staff all pray by listening to a CD of prayers while they apply each others make-up.  The last option is in my opinion the religious equivalent of peanut butter and jelly in one jar. Can you be any lazier? Surely your god is offended by your complete lack of interest and effort.  If listening to someone pray is enough, what would happen if you overheard a Muslim?

Regardless of their level of commitment or lack, they are all Christians by name and pray at certain times.  What does this achieve? Are they reading the bible? No.  Are they living in accordance with Jesus’ laws? No.  Are they making an effort to love their neighbor, help their fellow man, and all those other thinly veiled messages that every preist would have you believe the bible touts? A resounding no.

They are no better human beings than anyone else you might meet on a chance encounter, they are no more fulfilled.  Their lives are no more meaningful, and they are no more successful, well-liked, or likely to have their silent dreams answered than someone who whispers their desires and prejudices into their hairdryer before they go to bed at night.  This is all a very passive consequence though.  “When difference does it make?” they might ask.  “At least nothing bad is coming of it.”  Perhaps for those who are Christian by name alone and who paint their nails while some other rube prays through their stereo there is no immediate harm.  They have simply chosen less tasteful listening options while they pretend to work.  For those who try to live it though, are not their peers example enough?  When there is little difference in the lives of a full spectrum of levels of Christian commitment and atheists, why continue? I guess it provides a very convenient way to “be a good person” (or as they would tell us at work “have a good heart”).  Everyone knows that being religious makes you a good person.  Calling yourself a Christian and having direct commune with the creator of the universe gives you a moral leg-up on your detractors, be they Christian, atheist or any other.  No one can tell you whether you are religious enough or not.  That is a personal decision made without any external input.  If you believe yourself to be a Christian, it is so, and that alone should be evidence enough not to believe yourself any more “right” than a lunatic believes himself to be king.

This Friday, like every other, we filed down to the gym and pretend it was a chapel for an hour while our principal played preacher.  This time, it was John 21, the story about the disciples fishing all night only to have Jesus approach them in the morning and instruct them to throw their net over the right side.  They caught so many fish they couldn’t pull the net up! Or so it goes.

Ignoring the finer details, such as why professional fishermen would fish at night or whether the side of the boat you cast over makes a difference, I will instead focus on our pastor/principal’s interpretation.  Our fearless leader informed us that what was actually happening was that Jesus, with all of his limitless powers, was not merely providing the whereabouts of the fish, he was in direct commune with them.  Simply telling the fishermen where the fish were was just the encore to an entire night of telling the fish where the nets were so that they could avoid them.  The purpose of course being that when Jesus did arrive, his instruction would all the more miraculous.  It would not simply have been enough for Jesus to help these men whose livelihood depended upon catching these fish, he needed to prove how awesome he was by creating a stark, fruitless night against which to contrast this wondrous event.  Let me be very clear though, after all this is a blog, not a religious text, she made sure to note (for whatever unknown reason) that this was her interpretation of the events given the limited information provided by the inerrant word of god.

While this is of course absurd and undeniably makes Jesus an asshole, I can’t exactly lambast Christianity for the interpretations of a single individual.  I can on the other hand lambast an institution that bases its entire doctrine on a book that is so irrelevant and vague in our modern time that it is not entirely unreasonable for someone to come to this conclusion about Jesus and his Aquaman powers.  I wish it were limited to only my school and our pretend chapel we hold every week, but it is not.  This is the face of Christianity as a whole.  Every pastor, every evangelist, every loon with a sandwich board telling us how much god hates “fags” came to the same conclusion by reading the same book.  Whats worse is the ease with which each person brushes off the interpretation of another in place of their own equally absurd idea.  It is children getting in a physical altercation over which pokemon is best while all of the adults know that they are all equally stupid.  And the children constitute 90% of the population. 

I find myself going back again and again to the same problem, but at what point would a Christian be willing to admit that a book as morally ambiguous as the bible is not a very good guide for modern, civilized living?  At what point are you willing to denounce a book that has been used for centuries for purposes in direct opposition to each other, sometimes at the same moment in time (fighting to abolish slavery in the United States)?  Why is anyone so willing to look at such a long laundry list of misdeeds and criminality?  People are willing to continue to “follow” a book so clearly used to commit global atrocities for the same reason that the atrocities are committed, interpretation.

It is exactly the grey area, the room for interpretation, the ambiguous nature of the book that allows them to simultaneously use the book to justify their own personal goals and prejudices while dismissing those of others.  A book so unclear in its message can all too easily by adopted by anyone with a dream or hatred or a prophesy.  It is exactly the flawed nature of the book that makes people so willing and ready to accept it as their own and to cast aside all other information, because when someone does something terrible egregious in the name of god, well, “they just got the message wrong.  But me, I’ve got it all figured out!”