It took a few years, a few rewrites, and I’m still not completely finished. But at some point in 2012, my novel “Zealot” will be published. If you know me, or my blog, you can probably guess what this is about.

I’ve started another blog about it here.

Ciao!

My overtly stated purpose was simply to confront society with the danger that religion is posing to us all (which I still ardently believe.) But beneath that purpose was a subconscious impetus, which has since moved into my conscious and I will freely state it now: I wanted to convince Christians that faith is a bad choice.

I feel certain that I possessed some psychological underpinning that drove me to “fix” the flaw in other people that I deemed to be a simple error in thinking. The journey out of faith for me was emotionally traumatizing but intellectually simple. I spent 20 years of my life believing and trusting in God as a divine “friend,” believing in the ultimate reward of eternal life, believing that I was a horrible sinner at my core, believing that society was being corrupted by Satan, and believing that it was my duty to risk life and limb to salvage the eternal souls of other people.

Then, I accidentally learned how to think (mostly by reading books, attending college, and talking to other thinkers.) The doubts I confronted gave me the courage to start thinking correctly and honestly. Once I did that, my faith dried up, shriveled, and fell off me like a scab.

The damage of realizing that my faith was a huge lie will probably stay with me until I die. I have no desire for your sympathy or sadness because even at age 13 my choice to embark on a misguided life of faith was mine, and I take responsibility for it. But I realize now that perhaps my desire to “save” other people from this fateful decision was really an attempt to heal myself of the aforementioned damage.

While attempting to heal myself by helping others, I learned that many Christians do not think that intelligence is a virtue. They eschew logic as flawed. For them, science is suspect, and facts lead to deception. For them, the only way to find knowledge is to embrace ignorance. Their choice to remain blissfully attached to a cancerous, iron-age philosophy is not the result of a lack of intelligence, but merely a fearful abandonment of intellectual courage.

Though I resisted it for some time, the meat of the matter is this: people of faith are not fixable by any external means. Those to be fixed will, as I did, fix themselves. My erstwhile subconscious goal was futile, and so I will now officially stop.

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.” – Jonathan Swift

In the meantime, here’s something to listen to:

http://www.archive.org/details/ptc1978-11-18.flac16

When a “radical” Muslim kills in the name of their religion, there is usually a chorus of disapproval from the moderate Muslims.  Many experts have pointed out that these moderate Muslims create a context wherein the radicals may operate.  Those of us at a distance are able to rub our chins and wonder … “perhaps it is not just the radicals, but all of Muslims that are to blame.” 

As if on queue after this shooting, many Christian leaders have come out against this type of thing, and in so doing, offer us a profound comparison between Christianity and Islam. They really aren’t much different. Any time a person becomes disciplined in disengaging their rational mind in order to adhere to a principle, profoundly illogical leaps like this become more common. I believe that the cause of this type of violence is the outcome of years of cognitive dissonance. A person becomes practiced in switching between the logical world and illogical faith until their mind becomes almost totally bifurcated. Eventually, they can lose touch with reality altogether. When that happens, a person might kill a Doctor, or wage war on a country thinking they are the embodiment of Biblical prophecy.

The root of the problem is not insanity—it is irrational faith. The murderer  believed that what he was doing was justifiable homicide. I can speak from experience when I say that there are many Christians who will outwardly say this is a terrible way to deal with the situation—but inwardly they quietly approve. They do believe this is justifiable homicide. That tacit agreement from moderates allows the radical movements to thrive—and the terrorism will continue.

Bush is believed to have told Chirac: “This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.

To my Christian readers: this is why it is unwise to believe that the Bible is a magic book. You will do crazy, incoherent things because you will compare reality to a book written by crazed prophets thousands of years ago. And I’m not just talking about the lunatic fringe of Christianity—this was the President of the United States! A man YOU prayed for on a regular basis. A man YOU voted for (probably). A man YOU believed was placed in authority over us BY GOD. YOU gave him his power. You should give account for 4,600 coalition deaths in Iraq. You should give account for over 36,000 coalition wounded. And worst of all, You should give account for the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians.

Do any of you really believe that Iraq is Magog? DO YOU?

The argument of “People aren’t perfect, just forgiven” just doesn’t work. We’re talking about a religion that has systematically tortured people for a millennium. In related news, it turns out that religious people are more likely to be in favor of torture. I wonder why? Perhaps it is because they view God’s love as perfect love. If God is even there, he is silent, detatched, and utterly uncaring about our pain and woes. This “example” of love seems to trickle down to his followers, for whom torture is a natural expression of compassion.

(In other news, my class final is Thursday so I will be badgering you all with greater regularity after that.)

My reaction may surprise you, and I’m even disagreeing with the venerable PZ Myers, who I quoted below. But I think there are some important reasons why this decision was the right one. Before I get into that, however, let me say that I respect Dr. Corbett for his stance, and completely agree with him in content. There is nothing he’s said that I would blink twice about saying here on my blog. But it’s the context of his statements that make me feel as if the law has done its job by setting fairly reasonable boundaries.

Here’s the thing … even the most correct world view can be guilty of harassment and tyranny. The French Revolution is a great example. They were extremely well-meaning people with extremely forthright principles who ran roughshod over an entire culture. Dr. Corbett, while he is correct in his philosophy, should not have promoted hostility toward any other group—no matter how wrong or silly that group may be. Because—unlike my blog—his classroom represents our government. When looking at cases like this, we shouldn’t weigh the merits of the decision on the basis of how it complements or contradicts our own beliefs. What we should do is weigh the precedent against what would happen if the tables were reversed.

This is Orange County, after all. What would happen if a Creationist teacher said in a classroom that atheists were morons who were just trying to justify their sinful desires? That statement would be the hostile equivalent of what Corbett said, and it should not be tolerated. On the other hand, since this was a classroom, a teacher should never be required to teach creation. It does not hold up under scientific scrutiny, and therefore has no place in secular education. But a teacher should be able to teach evolution without showing hostility to specific cultural or religious groups who do not agree with it. If it were a college classroom, it might be different, but a High School student ostensibly has no choice but to sit in a certain public school and listen to a teacher. Hostility should not be tolerated.

As many have said on this blog, atheists are capable of atrocities. Hopefully that will never happen in our country, due to a set of laws that are pretty good about protecting minorities.

While I don’t consider myself a “public intellectual,” I still abide by much of PZ’s advice. Here are two paragraphs that I found most inspiring:

- Here’s another one you may take for granted, but I assure you, much of the world outside your circle of nerds does not: Criticize. It’s one of the most powerful tools in the scientific toolbox, and self-criticism and constant testing and evaluation of our ideas is how we make our understanding greater. If you haven’t gotten out of the lab much in the last few years, you may be surprised at how much shock and dismay you can generate with the simple words, “I think you’re wrong, and here’s why.” Don’t be shy about using them!

- Go ahead, be offensive. I’m offensive all the time, and I’ve got reams of hate mail to prove it. I say that women should have the right to decide what to do with their own bodies, and are just as good at science as men, and the angry mail streams in. I say that gay people should have the same rights as straight people, and I have offended a vocal horde right there. I say that all religion is foolish tosh and an affront to reason and the dignity of humankind, and boy, do I get outraged letters. And it’s all good. You don’t have to agree with everything I say, because the role of the public intellectual is to spark the argument and provoke change, not to dictate it. Do it.