Does God make Humanity Evil? Part 1 – If God gets the credit, then do you get the blame?

Right, first things first, I want to thank all those who posted positive responses that this blog has attracted so far. I know I speak for PB, as well as myself, when I say that we were absolutely delighted with the responses we got – particularly from people who don’t really agree with us, but still want to debate it out. As we expected we’ve had a bit of negative comment as well – but this has generally provoked some good debate as well. If anyone has any further issues or points on this site generally then take a look at porridgebrain’s post ‘The times they are a changing’; and join in the debate there. But for now, as we’ve written quite a bit on our general position, I think the time is right to get onto a specific issue.

So today it’s going to be all about an issue that was raised in the ’5 ways’ discussion – the claim that some Christians make (some more strongly and centrally than others), that man is inherently and intuitively bad and that God is needed for any redemption.

I’ve broken this into two parts – mainly because it’s long! This part will deal with that question specifically, barely scratching the surface on a few points – and part 2 will deal with a practical and serious example of what can happen when this assumption takes hold in the education of children. So to part 1…

Many Christians are happy to make the following two claims:

1. All good comes from God.

2. Man is intuitively bad

This usually leads on to a third claim:

3. Man needs God to absolve their inherent badness and make themselves good.

A lot of Christian ritual follows from this. Many believe that Christianity is ultimately the only way to become a good person and ‘get into heaven’ – and that letting God into your life is essential for you to be anything other than sinful. It results in christenings, where the inherent sin that children are born with is absolved by ritual; and baptisms where sin is ‘cleansed’ from a person by the acceptance of the Christian faith. I’m sure the Christians reading this would be able to come up with more examples!

There is quite a few things that really bug me about this belief position. Firstly, it seems to demonise children right from the start; I simply can’t understand how a newborn baby can be of sin. What has it done to deserve that? Is it because it has selfish instincts; it cries when it’s hungry or tired? Is that enough to make it damned? How does God make that okay? Part 2 will look at bit more at this…

A second point – which I’m going to focus on now – is what does this belief do to our own sense of self-worth? This is a question that comes up quite a lot for me; I know quite a few Christians and it’s almost alarming to me how much this assumption is in their world view. It’s more obvious if I spell it out with a hypothetical example, a Christian called, er… (thinks of name…) Bernie!:

If Bernie does something really good that brings him considerable praise or success, he will thank God for blessing him with such good fortune.

If Bernie does something really bad that accidentally causes considerable criticism or condemnation then he will apologise to God and ask for forgiveness.

Did you notice what happened there? When something good happened to Bernie, it was God. When something bad happens, it was Bernie. So Bernie, in a sense, can’t win. There is no situation where Bernie can do something positive and take the praise for it, as anything good he does wasn’t him at all – but was God. Then of course, if he does something bad then it can’t have been God – God is good – so it must have been bad old Bernie.

Now, I think there’s three important things that follow from this. Firstly, what we seem to get is Bernie with something of a self-esteem problem. His beliefs actually prevent him from seeing his actions in any positive way – at best, he is passive, and at worst, he is at fault. Now Bernie may not be aware he thinks like this; he may simply say that what happens to him is ‘meant to be’ and out of his control, and that he is fortunate to have any goodness in his life at all… but isn’t that just so… depressing? Now I know many Christians will want to say that God enhances their self-worth rather than damages it – maybe you who’s reading this can tell me how? Why does believing yourself to be naturally bad make you feel better?

Secondly, this kind of belief often gets combined with a sort of fatalism; a belief that everything that happens to them is out of their control and under the watchful eye of God, who will generally keep am eye on things and make sure it all works out. I know quite a few agnostic people who still think like this! The problem with it, when combined with the above point, is that it makes man even more passive. Bernie might be quite happy to hand the whole responsibility for his life onto a higher power; and consequently not only can he not take any self worth from his actions, his actions aren’t even really his own… (It must be said this is particularly bugging me at the moment as I’ve been unemployed for a while and after 7 months of endless applications I’ve finally found something good. All the Christians I know responded with “See? It was just meant to be!” – unwittingly undermining all the actual effort I put in and any personal achievement in it by deferring all the credit to fate…)

Finally (yes, I know this is long), undermining man’s worth is so often the tactic employed by the street-preaching, fundamentalist, (incredibly annoying) Christians who try to convert the ungodly. There general tactic is to try and make us feel so bad about ourselves that we feel desperate to find absolution by finding God. In effect, they invent the problem of our inherent badness, in order to wield the power over us, to give us the only salvation. There’s LOADS to say on this… but not now!

So why not let’s just drop this absurd and self-abusing belief and maybe… try thinking positively about ourselves? You really don’t need God to be GREAT!

So now, after my collection of thoughts, over to you…

Dx

The times they are a changing

I’ve just been watching a television talk-show  debating whether Christians are being ‘persecuted’ in this country within the emerging multi-faith society we now find ourselves in, and inspired by this, and by recent comments to the blog, I’d just like to share a few thoughts.

I firstly want to reiterate that I respect all people’s right to follow the religion that they choose, and to believe in what they choose to believe. THAT is, however, until that religion starts to infringe on my own right to believe in something different. Christianity does not teach equality of belief or spiritual expression. It teaches that it is the ONLY way, the ONLY truth and codemns all others. Once again I will say these ideas do not exist in isolation. They infringe upon my politics; on my society’s understanding of ethics, morality and the law; on the eductation system that my son will be a part of. 

This is not just about me judging Christianity or it’s followers. It’s about them judging me. My family, my friends, the lives we lead and the choices we make. Christians would tell me that my life is ungodly and sinful and that I am going to hell. Surely that judgement gives me the right to defend my position? To argue why I don’t think that this is true? By claiming a monopoly on the truth Christianity opens itself to counter debate.

In doing so of course I am going to end up disagreeing with Christian teaching and Christians themselves. But disagreement is not the same thing as persecution. I will not tell you why I think you shouldn’t believe. But I will present ‘evidence’ and critical thinking that explains why I do not and which explore some the flaws of Christianity as I perceive them. What you do with that information is your choice.

Christianity has held a privileged position for the last couple of centuries, perpetuating mostly unchallenged yet persistently challenging others.

Perhaps this is just the tables turning at last.

A Personal Rejection

 Hello. Porridgebrain here.

I hope that one of the (many!) reasons why this blog may be a bit different and a bit more interesting to you all is because my fellow contributor and I come at this whole thing from very different directions.

I am NOT an atheist. Not even remotely so.

In fact, you could even go as far to say that I actually have a faith of some sort. I certainly have beliefs. Rejecting Christianity and religion in general does not mean you have to reject the concept of spirituality, something I hope I represent through my ‘voice’ here, and in the way I choose to live my life.

I do believe in an ‘unseen’ reality, a spiritual dimension as it were, that holds power and effects our physical reality. I have even had what I would deem spiritual experiences of sorts. But the details of this and the essence of my beliefs are not overly important at this point. Surfice it to say for now that my beliefs and experiences and my interpretation of them are world’s apart from that which Christianity would have me believe.

So working forward from the framework laid down by BB in the last post, here it is. The reason’s why I PERSONALLY reject Christianity and Christian thinking. I plan to elaborate on each one at a later date (and as and when maniac son and other writing projects allow) but just so you can get an idea where I’m coming from here’s a summary…  

1. I don’t need it.

 I don’t ‘need’ Christianity. Or even religion for that matter. I am perfectly capable of constructing my own personal philosophy and spirituality without the need for dogma, churches, religious leaders or anything else. We all are. As human beings we have a unique and intrinsic ability to find meaning in things, to ask questions of the world around us. We don’t ’need’ someone to give us the answers – in fact that’s just a big cop out. Because there ARE no answers in the world of spiritual ponderings. We are dealing with intangibles, subjective and fluid. Dependent on time, and culture and personal experience. And none of the ‘trimmings’ of religion make you any more qualified to try to answer these questions or any more spiritually enlightened. They just provide you with an interpretation and a pretty rigid and inflexible one at that. So throw it all out the window and do it yourself. It’s much more fun.

 

2. I don’t believe it.

I just don’t agree with many of things that Christianity tells me to be ‘true’. I don’t believe in original sin, or an after-life, or a monotheistic deity who can be both personal and caring and simultaneously ignore the world’s suffering. I don’t believe in heaven and hell or the devil or that Jesus was the son of God. I certainly don’t think that the Bible was the word of God, far from it, but do think it is a particularly unsuitable and flawed book on which to base both a religion and personal faith.

It is simplistic, self-limiting way of looking at the world and I just don’t buy it.

I don’t even think it’s particularly original. A re-hash of much older beliefs and stories and mythologies, shared by indigenous cultures and emerging religions the world over, that point at a deeper mystery perhaps, but certainly don’t tell us anything new. It’s all been done before. And, for the most part, done a lot better. It’s not a co-incidence that this summary is told in three parts. The concept of three, of trinity being important? Old idea…

 

3. I don’t like it.

In addition I am fundamentally, intellectually, emotionally, instinctually (and lots of other words ending in ally) opposed to A LOT of what Christianity teaches. And am quite passionate on that opposition (as this blog will testify). Not only do I think that most of what it teaches is wrong, I think most of what it teaches is also damaging, destructive and dangerous. I don’t like what it has done to our world and our society. And most of all I don’t like the arrogance of a system that claims a monopoly on ‘the truth’.

It wouldn’t be so bad if Christianity existed in isolation as a belief system – I have no problem with what others choose to believe in the privacy of their own heads and homes. But it doesn’t. It’s everywhere, all pervasive. In our politics, our schools, our laws, even in what we accept as ‘fact‘ about our history and the world around us. There’s no escaping from it. And as a non-believer I find that both appalling and terrifying.

——————————————————

So what do YOU think? Perhaps you would like to comment. Perhaps you would like to disagree. Perhaps you would like to add your own personal reasons for rejecting Christianity. Don’t be shy…

A context for future ranting – 5 ways to have a crack at Christianity…

To help put everything in context, I’m going to very briefly sketch this out, just swing with me on this…

There are five big ways to argue against Christianity. What are they I hear you silently ask? Well…

• Scientific – “God created the world 8000 years ago and put dinosaur fossils in the ground to test our faith…”

This is the one that gets lots of press. Scientists take the view that religion was basically used as a way of offering explanations about the world when we didn’t know any better. So, things like God being angry causing thunderstorms, the Garden of Eden rather than evolution, and fiery demons tempting us to hell rather than simply a voice in your head saying ‘wouldn’t a large cake be nice about now?’… Richard Dawkins and the like, like to bang on about this sort of thing, occasionally quite well.

This is obviously a rather important step in human progress; it stops us burning witches, torturing people for their own good, and listening to evangelists. However there is a tiny problem with doing this – and that is that people of faith are unlikely to listen. That is because they are people of faith, and not of reason or empirical evidence; and they trust the voice in the head more than the voice from the scientist, or even what they see themselves. Consequently, very few believers are likely to be won over by scientific arguments… people simply are too irrational for that – perhaps America is the living proof…

• Rational – “I love you. Now piss off.”

  This tends to get used alongside the science type ones, and basically says things like: “How can God do everything – could God create a curry so hot that he, himself, could not eat it?” Think about it…

  Sure enough there is lots of irrationality in religion and pointing it out is not only quite a lot of fun but quite an important thing to do. But again, religious folk simply aren’t rational are they? Reason sits blandly behind faith and can be ignored… hence why some Christians can simultaneously believe in loving everybody equally and discriminating against those who are female / black / opinionated / clever / gay / atheist / don’t agree / believe something else / don’t look right.

•  Politics – “Well, I believe in God so that means everyone should!”

The first two were concerned with how true Christianity is… this one isn’t so much, but more focused on how religious beliefs and believers affect other things in politics and society. This fine work, such as done by the National Secular Society (http://www.secularism.org.uk/) fights for the rights of atheists and does wonderful things like stopping the spread of faith schooling and politicians enforcing their beliefs on policies for everyone. This is worth lots of attention, so go to the website, check it out and fight the good fight.

But again, this won’t convince anyone who believes – in fact it would probably just piss them off… so for the purposes of this blog we still haven’t got anything to convince anybody…

• Spiritual – “The Holy Spirit came to me and told me I was right, everybody else was wrong, and that I looked particularly holy and beautiful today.”

  The last two actually deal with the reality of the experience of religion and faith so might actually get us somewhere… Lots of people attack Christianity on a spiritual basis, which doesn’t deny that God might exist in some form, or that there is some form of spirit – but says that Christianity is so full of bullshit that any meaning to be found from it has got rather twisted and deformed. Hence you get all sorts of spiritual people, with beliefs of their own, and with spiritual experiences of their own – and cut the crap of dogma.

  My co-author will doubtless have something to say on this subject and open up a few good rants against where exactly it all goes wrong…

•  Moral – “Thou shalt not kill. Oh, unless you get a message from God, or are killing unbelievers, or you have a really good reason, or you really want to…”

• The final one is my own personal favourite of the five although it rarely gets as much attention on radio talk shows and whatnot. It doesn’t so much take on Christianity by saying that it’s untrue – although lots of it might be proved that it isn’t – but that Christianity is a destructive ideology which causes more harm than good. A really bad idea, rather than simply a really wrong idea.

  There’s lots to talk about with this approach – which is always a good thing – and tries to work out why notions like original sin, natural order, fundamental truth, deferred responsibility and so on simply don’t make a very nice world for us to live in… and reveals the dark heart of a lot of beliefs…

 So there it is…lots more to come, but now maybe you know where we might be coming from… or at least the cartoons are good?!  It’ll get slightly less broad and a bit more targeted from now on… you’re on for the ride right?

Dx

Brazen Beyond Belief – a Christianity objecting blog with a slightly clever name…

Hello.

 Right, firstly I am not a natural blogger. In fact my spellcheck hasn’t even got the word ‘blog’ or ‘blogger’ in it… (although I have just discovered it doesn’t have the word ‘spellcheck’ in it either… Note to self: get better spillcheck…)

 Start again.

 Unaccustomed as I am to public blogging, the idea for this has been bounding round my head for a while now, and should allow a voice for myself, my fellow collaborator, and with any luck, some of you, to shout out about a topic which at times worries, frightens, comforts, angers, or justifies some or all of us at some point. Welcome to the non-believers take on Christianity.

 It is worth saying at the outset what this blog is not. It is definitely not a mindless and somewhat bigoted dismissal of Christian folk – there’s plenty of them around already; indeed the biggest non-believing group on Facebook is called simply ‘Fuck Christianity’ which while admirably getting to the heart of the matter, does seem to be a little brief in its thinking… Mindless insults are definitely not the point. Nor is this blog, particularly, only aimed at Christianity – many of the things we want to talk about could equally be applied to other dogmatic religions, belief systems and social attitudes. The reason we stick to Christianity in this blog as the main case in point – is quite simply because we know much more about it than we do about say, the Muslim faith. Hopefully we can learn.

 The other thing this blog isn’t is particularly up itself – most of what we say will be personal opinion, based on experiences and bits of reading and thinking of our own, and not lengthy well thought out philosophical discourse. We are quite happy to be wrong – and probably won’t agree with each other on a fair bit of what we say. The point is of course; the debate. And this brings me to the final thing this blog isn’t – and that’s soft. We’re not going to be afraid about putting across strong opinions, even playing devil’s advocate – because of course the point is the reaction to it. It is only an opinion – which hopefully gets people to engage with it.

 OK, so what is it then?!

 Well, the main part will be us writing about some of the issues which most interest, frighten or concern us with regards to the Christian faith, fundamentalism, and belief in monotheistic doctrine. The topics we’ll cover could include anything from the nature of fundamental truths to the hypocrisy of vicars, from musings on the spiritual to what really pisses us off about church. We’ll also try and post a few links to relevant things, and perhaps most importantly of all, invite some discussion and comment where hopefully you can tell us what you think about all of this…

 So that’ll be on the main blog part of the site – next to it on that tab thing up there – is ‘About Us’ which will be all about… um… yeah, and next to that is ‘Brazen Beliefs’. This is a bit which we’ll put together as we go along, but will start to list some of the simple principles that govern this blog – and non-believers in general. Got any suggestions? Let us know. Finally there’ll be a gallery where any particularly relevant, interesting or ludicrously funny pics we come across will go.

 So, that’s about it for now. What this blog is will doubtless become clearer as we write it (especially to us) – and I’ll shortly update the About Us page which may make it a little clearer where we’re coming from… For now I’ll say watch this space, and if anyone is reading this why not send us a suggestion for what sort of thing might interest you? You can follow updates, links and whatnot at the only OFFICIAL Brazen Beyond Belief Twitter account @beyondbelieving.

 For now, much obliged…

 Dx

Coming Soon…

…watch this space.