Religions: People Will Believe Anything

Recently, I did a post on Scientology. This religion was founded by the science fiction author, L. Ron Hubbard. Its teachings are bizarre yet they have a number of faithful followers including many Hollywood celebrities.

Mormonism seems a lot like science fiction as well. Yet, it has millions of followers including some otherwise intelligent people. When I lived in Arizona, I knew a number of Mormons who were intelligent people including lawyers, doctors, and other professionals. I wondered how could they believe the nonsense that their religion teaches. See below:



Many Evangelical Christians will mock the teachings of Mormonism and Scientology as ridiculous absurdities. However, one could make the case that Evangelical Christianity is also absurd.

Craig Blomberg on De-Conversion

Craig Blomberg is a well-known Evangelical scholar. He is Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary (Conservative Baptist Association). He offers three "consistent factors" that "trigger" a rejection of Christianity. On his blogpost dated Oct. 1, 2010, he writes:

Studies of deconversions find three fairly consistent factors or kinds of experiences that trigger such rejection of Christianity. First, a crisis of some kind unexpectedly intrudes into a person’s life. Maybe it is the loss of a loved one, a major personal failure or even sin, a life-changing injury, a divorce or a devastating financial loss. Second, the community to which this individual has normally turned to for support in hard times turns on that individual instead. Perhaps it is a kind of church discipline that does not seem geared to lead to rehabilitation. Perhaps it involves pat theological slogans that don’t adequately address the complexity of the situation. Perhaps it includes interpersonal estrangement rather than empathy. Third, the hurting person is introduced to and/or for the first time takes seriously and investigates seriously an alternate world view. This may be a different religion or, as it commonly seems today to be, some form of agnosticism or atheism.

According to the studies of de-conversion which he fails to cite, an apostate typically experiences:

1. A personal crisis.
2. A let-down by the church.
3. A questioning of his or her world view.

I don't know about others but in my case, #'s 1 and 2 were not involved. I increasingly came to the conclusion that the Evangelical Christian world-view was inconsistent and incoherent. It did not "mesh" with the real world in which I was living. There was no more reason to believe the Bible was really a divine revelation than there was to believe the Koran or any other "holy book." They all reflected the religious ideas that were prevalent in their time and in their culture.

It is interesting how Blomberg phrases his #3. The person is introduced to and/or for the first time takes seriously and investigates seriously (emphasis mine) an alternate world view.

I think he has hit the nail on the head here. Most Evangelical Christians will not take seriously the possiblity that their world-view (which includes an inspired and inerrant Bible, a bloody human sacrifice which satisfies God's wrath against sin, an eternal hell, and so on) might be wrong. Their minds are closed to that possibility. If you can ever get them to seriously question their world-view and seriously investigate other world-views, there is an excellent possiblity that they will de-convert.

Richard Dawkins on Viruses of the Mind

I recently came across this article by Richard Dawkins in which he compares faith to a computer virus. I think he makes some interesting points.

Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won't know it, and may even vigorously deny it. Accepting that a virus might be difficult to detect in your own mind, what tell-tale signs might you look out for? I shall answer by imaging how a medical textbook might describe the typical symptoms of a sufferer (arbitrarily assumed to be male).

1. The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as "faith."

2. Patients typically make a positive virtue of faith's being strong and unshakable, in spite of not being based upon evidence. Indeed, they may feel that the less evidence there is, the more virtuous the belief.

3. A related symptom, which a faith-sufferer may also present, is the conviction that ``mystery,'' per se, is a good thing. It is not a virtue to solve mysteries. Rather we should enjoy them, even revel in their insolubility.

4. The sufferer may find himself behaving intolerantly towards vectors of rival faiths, in extreme cases even killing them or advocating their deaths. He may be similarly violent in his disposition towards apostates (people who once held the faith but have renounced it); or towards heretics (people who espouse a different --- often, perhaps significantly, only very slightly different --- version of the faith). He may also feel hostile towards other modes of thought that are potentially inimical to his faith, such as the method of scientific reason which may function rather like a piece of anti-viral software.

5. The patient may notice that the particular convictions that he holds, while having nothing to do with evidence, do seem to owe a great deal to epidemiology. Why, he may wonder, do I hold this set of convictions rather than that set? Is it because I surveyed all the world's faiths and chose the one whose claims seemed most convincing? Almost certainly not. If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had.

6. If the patient is one of the rare exceptions who follows a different religion from his parents, the explanation may still be epidemiological. To be sure, it is possible that he dispassionately surveyed the world's faiths and chose the most convincing one. But it is statistically more probable that he has been exposed to a particularly potent infective agent --- a John Wesley, a Jim Jones or a St. Paul. Here we are talking about horizontal transmission, as in measles. Before, the epidemiology was that of vertical transmission, as in Huntington's Chorea.--Richard Dawkins, "Viruses of the Mind," in Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind, ed. Bo Dahlbom (1993), 13-27.

Church of Scientology Exposed

The Church of Scientology was founded by Science Fiction Author and con-man extraordinaire, L. Ron Hubbard in 1953. According to Sam Moskowitz, a reporter and writer, Hubbard said: "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." It certainly worked for him, according to Forbes, he was worth over $200M when he died in 1986. The Church has grown dramatically since that time and today has holdings that no doubt exceed $1B. All of it in the US, is of course, tax free.

Here is a sample of what Scientologists actually believe (here is the entire South Park episode):




Many celebrities including Tom Cruise, Kirsti Alley, and John Travolta are scientologists. The church has enormous power in the entertainment field. It is known for its heavy handed intimidation of any who oppose it. According to Penn Jillette, Showtime will not allow him to expose Scientology on his program Bullshit. He says:

We haven't tackled Scientology because Showtime doesn't want us to. Maybe they have deals with individual Scientologists —- I'm not sure. And we haven't tackled Islam because we have families.

Below is a recent Documentary on the Church of Scientology by  BBC reporter John Sweeney. You may wonder why I would put something about scientology on my blog, since my purpose is to explain why I de-converted from Evangelical Christianity. It is to show that religion, no matter how bizarre, can find devout followers and can hold enormous sway over people's lives.

"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."--Stephen Roberts

The above quotation attributed to Stephen Roberts is, I think, profound. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson points out:

The same cognitive bias that leads pagans to believe in witches and multiple gods leads theists to believe in God. Indeed, once the explanatory principle--to ascribe worldly events that bear on human well-being to the intentions and powers of unseen spirits, when no actual person is observed to have caused them--is admitted, it is hard to deny that the evidence for polytheism and spiritualism of all heretical varieties is exactly on a par with the evidence for theism (("If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted," in Philosophers without Gods, ed. Louise Antony [2007],p. 227).

Anderson recounts her experience at the summer fair in Ann Arbor, Michigan where various religious groups have booths from which to propagate their faith.

Along one street one finds booths of Catholics, Baptists, Calvinists, Christian Orthodox ... Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'i, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews for Jesus, Wiccans, Scientologists, New Age believers--representatives of nearly every religion that has a significant presence in the United States. The believers in each booth offer evidence of exactly the same kind to advance their religion. Every faith points to its own holy texts and oral traditions, its spiritual experiences, miracles and prophets, its testimonies of wayward lives turned around by conversion, rebirth of faith, or return to the church. Each religion takes these experiences and reports them as conclusive evidence for its peculiar set of beliefs.

... [I] am always struck by the fact that they are staffed by people who are convinced of their own revelations and miracles, while most so readily disparage the revelations and miracles of other faiths. To a mainstream Christian, Jew, or Muslim, nothing is more obvious than that founders and prophets of other religions, such as Joseph Smith, the Rev. Moon, Mary Baker Eddy, and L. Ron Hubbard, are either frauds or delusional, their purported miracles or cures tricks played upon a credulous audience, their prophecies false, their metaphysics absurd. To me, nothing is more obvious than that the evidence cited on behalf of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is of exactly the same type and quality cited on behalf of such despised religons. Indeed, it is on a par with the evidence for Zeus, Baal, Thor, and other long-abandoned gods, who are now considered ridiculous by nearly everyone (Ibid., pp. 226-27).

Man seems to be a religious animal and will look for something beyond the natural world to explain what he does not understand. When one becomes a true believer in a particular religion, other contradictory religions are written off as delusional. Yet, if one applied the same standards to his own religion as he is applying to the ones he rejects, he would reject his own as well (This is essentially "The Outsider Test of Faith" popularized by John Loftus). As Robert Heinlein quipped: One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.

When I was an evangelical Christian, I remember wondering how any intelligent person could believe the teaching of Mormonism. Yet, I encountered intelligent lawyers, doctors, and other professionals who were Mormons. This was always something of a mystery to me. I concluded that they must believe, if they really do, without thinking much about it. They must be Mormons because their families have been Mormons for generations. In other words, they believed not based on an impartial examination of the evidence but because of societal and cultural influences. But when I applied the same logic to my own belief system, I looked for excuses as to why my beliefs were rational and not merely due to cultural considerations. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it is no more logical to believe that God appeared to Moses than it was to believe he appeared to Joseph Smith (or Muhammad or any of the other thousands who have claimed to hear directly from God).

Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?

Alix Spiegel wrote an interesting article entitled, Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous? He begins:

In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system. And when a human behavior is so universal, scientists often argue that it must be an evolutionary adaptation along the lines of standing upright. That is, something so helpful that the people who had it thrived, and the people who didn't slowly died out until we were all left with the trait. But what could be the evolutionary advantage of believing in God?

Spiegel discusses the work of two psychologists, Jesse Bering and Dominic Johnson. He quotes Bering:

Everybody experiences the illusion that God — or some type of supernatural agent — is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives. These supernatural agents might have very different names. What some call God, others call Karma. There are literally thousands of names. Whether it's a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they're watching you, your behavior is going to be affected.

Bering did an experiment with children ages 5 to 9 in which he measured the likelihood of cheating among three groups: (1) with no one watching, (2) with an invisible, magical person watching and (3) with him watching. The first group cheated much more than the other two. The second group cheated at about the same rate as the third group. His conclusion is that if someone believes that someone else is watching, even an invisible person, they are much less likely to cheat. How does this relate to a belief in god(s) being advantageous? He says that the belief served in our past to better enable man to cooperate with one another and to "cheat" less.

Man's ability to cooperate with his fellow man is what has enabled him to flourish. As Spiegel notes:

This cooperation makes all kinds of things possible, of course. Because we can cooperate, we can build sophisticated machines and create whole cities —communities that require huge amounts of coordination. We can do things that no individual or small group could do.

It is one of the keys to man's evolutionary success but how did it come about? This is a subject of continuing study and debate. Dominic Johnson has a theory.

In those early human communities when someone did something wrong, someone else in the small human group would have to punish them. But as Johnson points out, punishing itself is often dangerous because the person being punished probably won't like it. "That person has a family; that person has a memory and is going to develop a grudge," Johnson says. "So there are going to be potentially quite disruptive consequences of people taking the law into their own hands." On the other hand, Johnson says, if there are Gods or a God who must be obeyed, these strains are reduced. After all, the punisher isn't a vigilante; he's simply enforcing God's law. "You have a very nice situation," Johnson says. "There are no reprisals against punishers. And the other nice thing about supernatural agents is that they are often omniscient and omnipresent." If God is everywhere and sees everything, people curb their selfish impulses even when there's no one around. Because with God, there is no escape. "God knows what you did," Johnson says, "and God is going to punish you for it and that's an incredibly powerful deterrent. If you do it again, he's going to know and he is going to tally up your good deals and bad deeds and you will suffer the consequences for it either in this life or in an afterlife ."

Thus, according to Johnson, human groups with a religious belief system survived better because they worked better together. There was more cooperation and more obedience to the rules of society because they thought someone was always watching.

I don't know if this can explain the nearly universal belief in supernatural agents but it is certainly an interesting theory. For related posts, see Is Religion Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake?, What are the Functions of Religion?, and The Evolution of God.

How Does a Believer Know the Bible is the Word of God?

I have often made the claim that evangelical Christians believe things in the Bible that they would reject in other ancient literature due to their prior faith commitment to the Bible as the Word of God. Christians typically do not come to believe because of evidence and arguments. They come to believe for a number of emotional, psychological and social reasons. Once they have made this commitment and especially if they have some religious experience connected with it, no amount of reason or evidence will convince them they are wrong. I have been criticized by some who say that their belief in the Bible is not due to a "faith commitment." But listen to what John Calvin taught:

Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit. Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgement or that of others, that the Scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgement, feel perfectly assured—as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it -that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God. We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgement, but we subject our intellect and judgement to it as too transcendent for us to estimate. This, however, we do, not in the manner in which some are wont to fasten on an unknown object, which, as soon as known, displeases, but because we have a thorough conviction that, in holding it, we hold unassailable truth; not like miserable men, whose minds are enslaved by superstition, but because we feel a divine energy living and breathing in it—an energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge. (Institutes, 1.7.5)

While not all evangelical Christians may believe just because of some faith commitment or religious experience, I think the majority do. Once one has made this commitment then he or she will be determined to defend whatever is in the Bible. Even if they can't defend it, they will still believe, because the Spirit told them its true. One of the leading Christian apologists, William Lane Craig, admits as much.

Another De-Conversion Story

There is an interesting video series on youtube by a former Christian in which he painstakingly details the reasons for his de-conversion. Its in many parts but I what I have seen of it is done very well. I especially liked this clip below in which he explains that its not just one thing that causes a Christian to de-convert. There might be one thing that was the "final straw" but there are always multiple reasons. He also shows how that when a Christian doubts one aspect of their religion, they can rely on other parts of it to continue believing. Another important fact he mentions is that de-conversion typically takes years. Its not something that happens overnight.

Atheists in the Pulpit (Repeat)

This is the first time I have ever repeated a post; but since I have had a flood of traffic today due to P.Z. Meyer's reference to the Evangelical Pastors are Discouraged and Depressed post from yesterday, I decided to repeat an earlier post about Atheists in the Pulpit.

Here it is:

I came across a fascinating article in the Washington Post by Daniel Dennett entitled, Skeptical Clergy a Silent Majority. The article deals with a study that was done by Dennett and Linda LaScola of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He begins the article by saying:

Here are some questions that have haunted me for years. How many preachers actually believe what they say from the pulpit? We know that every year some clergy abandon their calling, no longer able to execute their duties with conviction. This can never be a decision taken lightly, and many of them labored on for years before taking the leap. Are they the tip of an iceberg? Is there a problem of deep hypocrisy separating many pastors from their flocks? What is it like to be a non-believing preacher? How do they reconcile their private skepticism with the obligations of their position? And how did they get into their predicament?

Dennett and LaScola interviewed five Protestant pastors who are all still currently serving their churches, yet have given up belief in God (you can read full interviews here). Three of these men are in liberal churches and two are in conservative churches. Some people, I think, would initially react by saying, how hypocritical of these men to continue preaching when they no longer believe what they preach. I can sympathize with that sentiment but I can also sympathize with the preachers because I used to be in their same shoes.

I started having serious doubts about my faith sometime in the year 1994. I can remember being in El Paso, Texas preaching in a Baptist church and during the middle of my sermon, the thought hit me, you don't really believe what you are saying. It was a frightening thought and almost disrupted my sermon. I was taught to attribute such thoughts to the devil. So I went back to my room and prayed for the Lord to defeat the devil in my life and to increase my faith. I decided to investigate as thoroughly as I could all of the issues that were causing me to doubt my evangelical theology. I was in my 8th year of teaching in a Bible college. I never shared with anyone the nature of my doubts because frankly that is not allowed in strict evangelical circles. It was okay for students or new Christians to have doubts but not for a leader and especially not for someone with a Ph.D. in Theology who was entrusted to teach young people studying for the ministry.

At the end of the 1995 school year, I decided that maybe what I needed was a less academic role and a more pastoral role. Thus, I accepted a position as a Pastor at a local Baptist church in Arizona. I spent two years there and my doubts became worse. The last 6 months of my stay, I was convinced that the Bible was not the Word of God and that evangelical Christianity was like every other religion that exists, man-made. Those 6 months were difficult because I felt like a complete hypocrite. I had to get up and teach something that I personally could no longer believe.

The honorable thing, some would say, would have been to resign immediately. I agree but its difficult when you are married, your wife doesn't work, you have two small children, a mortgage and no marketable skills. What could I do? Resign and go to work at Walmart? It was a very difficult situation. Fortunately, in my case, someone approached me who was starting a new business, a recruiting business, and asked me if I would like to run the administrative part of it. I was delighted. I resigned the church and began my new career. It has worked out very well for me and I have been in the executive recruiting business now for 13 years.

So, I do sympathize with these men, but I also think that they need to find a way to get out of the ministry for the sake of their own sanity and self-esteem. In addition, they need to get out for the sake of their parishoners. I believe its wrong to intentionally mislead them. One of the pastors had this to say about his role:

Here’s how I’m handling my job on Sunday mornings: I see it as play acting. I kind of see myself as taking on a role of a believer in a worship service, and performing. Because I know what to say. I know how to pray publicly. I can lead singing. I love singing. I don’t believe what I’m saying anymore in some of these songs. But I see it as taking on the role and performing. Maybe that’s what it takes for me to get myself through this, but that’s what I’m doing.

I think that is sad and its unhealthy for the church and for the preacher. I wonder how many preachers are doing the same thing as this man every Sunday?

Here is the story of Scott Campbell , an evangelical Baptist pastor who found himself in the pulpit although he no longer believed.



I must also ask why do Christians have so many doubts if the Christian religion is true? Someone in the comment section on the article by Dennett and LaScola said this: Even the most devout and confident among us will have days when we step into the pulpit praying, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." To which another person replied:

I have often heard religious people say this, and frankly, it boggles my mind. This kind of crisis of confidence seldom, if ever, happen to people in other lines of work. A programmer does not wake up thinking that computers don't really work after all. Biologists don't worry that natural selection doesn't exist. Farmers do not question the wisdom or benefit of growing carrots. With all due respect, it seems to me that if you have difficulty believing something, or you keep coming up with reasons to doubt, you should immediately stop trying to believe it. Put aside religion and if compelling evidence emerges later on, you can always go back to believing. (I'll grant it would hard to do that if religion is your livelihood.) When a programmer develops grave doubts about a design, it is time to abandon that approach and try something new. A Democrat who decides Republican ideology makes more sense should change parties (and vice versa!). What possible benefit can there be to holding back and trying to persuade yourself to ignore a logical conclusion that fits the facts? It is an abuse of your own intellect. You can't do it anyway; your mind rebels. You just give yourself a headache -- or neurosis. It is like trying to eat food that tastes rotten.

He is correct. We don't doubt most things that we believe. Why do so many doubt Christianity? Could it be because its really not true?

Is This a Religion?

I saw this documentary, Inside North Korea, on the Nat Geo channel recently and I was startled to see how the people of North Korea worship their dictator, Kim Jong Il. They call him the "Dear Leader," and worship him as divine. As I was watching this, I was struck by the similarity between the people's actions and what goes on in some evangelical churches. The narrator, Lisa Ling, says that the devotion to the Dear Leader is because of generations of indoctrination. Why do these people worship Kim Jong Il? Because they have been indoctrinated (brainwashed) to do so. Their devotion to him is their religion. This illustrates again why I think religion is ultimately very dangerous. It causes people to become fanatical. It causes them to do things that otherwise rational people would not do. Watch this short video below beginning at 2:55.

Is Religion Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake?

Yesterday, I ran a post that included a video by Sam Harris on the dangers of religion. Is religion really dangerous or is it mostly harmless? Paul Thagard calls it Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake. For most American Christians, that is probably an apt description. But too much cheesecake could also be dangerous to one's health.

On his blog, Thagard writes:

Religion is not innate, but rather a cultural development that we might call "cognitive-emotional cheesecake". I adapt this metaphor from Steven Pinker's claim that music is not innate, but rather amounts to "auditory cheesecake". A preference for cheesecake is not innate, since cheesecake did not exist during the early stages of human development. But preferences for sugar and fat are innate, and cheesecake cleverly combines them in an appealing way. Similarly, I conjecture, religion is appealing because it combines the psychological needs for explanations and emotional reassurance.

He believes man's belief in god(s) is not innate (as in the God Gene or a God-spot in the brain), but rather is due to it's pyschological and emotional appeal.

Another blog, Epiphenom: The Science of Religon and Non-Belief, has a recent post entitled, What's the evidence that anxiety and insecurity turns people to religion?. In the post, the author refers to several scientific studies that show the following increase a person's interest in religion:

1. Being reminded of death.

Ara Norenzayan has shown that subtly reminding people of death makes them say they are more religious. That's probably related to something called 'World View Defence' - when you remind people about death, they tend to grab onto their traditional, cultural values.
Research shows that having a positive view of the afterlife (i.e., heaven or paradise) seems to be good for one's mental health, whereas having a negative view (i.e., hell or annihilation) brings no psychological benefit.

2. Feeling loss of control.

Aaron Kay has shown that making people feel like they are not in control strengthens their belief in a controlling god - in other words, they compensate for lack of control in their own lives by believing in a god that has it all in hand.

3. Dealing with negative life-events.

Kurt Gray has shown that people invoke god as a moral agent to explain negative (but acausal) events. In other words, instead of saying that a major life event happened by chance, one prefers to think that it was caused by an intentional agent, usually god(s).

4. Feeling lonely.

Nicholas Epley has shown that making people feel lonely increases their belief in the supernatural. Many people turn to religion when they feel all alone in the world. You've got a friend in Jesus is very appealing.

5. Feeling anxious.

Researchers from the University of Toronto have shown that religious believers get less 'error-related negativity' (ERN) - a neurological response that's associated with conflict anxiety - when they make mistakes (Religion: Xanax of the People?). Perhaps, Marx was right when he called religion the "Opiate of the Masses." It definitely seems to relieve stress (especially prayer and meditation ).

6. Having financial hardship.

Matt Bradshaw and Chris Ellison have shown that religion can reduce the stress caused by financial hardship.

Andrew Clark found that European Protestants and Catholics are less fearful of unemployment than the non religious.

If these studies are correct, they reveal why religion is so appealing to people. It provides comfort and certainty in a cold, hard world. However, if the benefit provided is really a delusion, is it not dangerous ultimately? Does it not cause one to stop looking for real solutions to life's problems? I think so but it's hard to resist cheesecake.

What are the Functions of Religion?

As I indicated in prior posts, I have been fascinated by the writings of David Eller, an anthropologist. He is the author of two chapters in John Loftus', The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails. He is also the author of a college textbook entitled, Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate (Routledge, 2007). On pages 10 and 11, he gives six functions of religion:

1. Filling individual needs, especially psychological or emotional needs. Religion provides comfort, hope, perhaps love, definitely a sense of control, and relief from fear and despair.

2. Explanation, especially of origins or causes. Humans wonder why things are as they are. How did the world start? How did humans start? . . .

3. Source of rules and norms. . . . religion can provide the answer to where the traditions and laws of the society came from. . . . This is the charter function of religion: It acts as the the "charter" or guideline or authority by which we organize ourselves in particular ways and follow particular standards. Why do we practice monogamy? Because a religious being or precedent says to, or because the first humans did, etc. Why do other societies practice polygamy? Perhaps because their religious being or precedent (say, the ancestor or founder) said it or did it.

4. Source of "ultimate sanctions." Religion is, among other things, a means of social control. . . . a large part of religion is about what we should do, how we should live. . . . Human agents of social control cannot be everywhere and cannot see everything, and the rewards and punishments they can mete out are finite. . . .

5. Solution of immediate problems. . . . If we are sick or distressed, are the beings or forces angry with us? What should we do about it? If there is an important social or political decision to make (say, going to war), is there a way to discover the preferences or plans of the beings and forces--to "read their mind"? Can we ask them for favors, give them gifts, or do anything at all to influence their actions and intentions?

6. Fill "needs of society." . . . Certainly, not everything that a religion teaches or practices is good for every individual: Human sacrifice is not about fulfilling the needs of sacrificial victims. Nor does religion always soothe individual fears and anxieties; for instance, the belief in a punitive afterlife may cause people to fear more, and concerns about proper conduct of rituals can cause anxiety. However, belief in a punitive afterlife can cause people to obey norms, which is good for society. The primary need of society, beyond the needs of individuals, is integration, cohesion, and perpetuation, and religion can provide an important "glue" toward that end.

I think these "functions of religion," as Eller calls them, goes a long way in explaining why religion is so very important to people. These functions are not unique to any one particular religion but common to them all. They help us to understand why religion is intricately interwoven into our societies and why it is very difficult, if not impossible, to ever eradicate it.

Neuroscientific Study Shows Believers Put Brain in Neutral

I have recently become fascinated with neuroscience. We are learning so much more about how the brain works literally every day in this new field. A recent study by four Danish scientists, Uffe Schjoedt, Hans Stødkilde-Jørgensen, Armin W. Geertz, Torben E. Lund and Andreas Roepstorff, reveals that devoted religious believers will "switch off" their critical faculties when listening to a religious leader that they trust implicitly. A report of the study, The power of charisma—perceived charisma inhibits the frontal executive network of believers in intercessory prayer, was published in the Oxford Journal, Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience (April 2010). I learned of it from a blog I read regularly called: Epiphenom.

Brain imaging was done on a small group of Pentecostal Christians while they were listening to prayers given by three different people. They were told that the prayers would be given by a non-Christian, an "ordinary" Christian and a Charismatic Christian who had a healing ministry. Each person was identified to the group before the praying began. In reality, all three were "ordinary" (I assume they mean non-Pentecostal) Christians.

What the scientists observed was that

specific regions of the pentecostalist's brains became somewhat activated when listening to the prayer from the 'non-believer', but highly deactivated when listening to the prayer from the 'charismatic healer'. The prayer from the ordinary Christian resulted in deactivation too, but on a small scale.

And the regions that were deactivated by the "charismatic healer" were all associated with "executive function" - the part of the mind that evaluates, monitors, and makes decisions. A similar response has been seen in the brains of people undergoing hypnosis - as well as meditation.

In other words, they went into a bit of a trance.

What Schjødt thinks is happening here is that, when we listen someone we trust implicitly, we switch off our critical faculties, and just let what they are saying wash over us. In the words of the researchers, "subjects suspend or 'hand over' their critical faculty to the trusted person."

This is very interesting and I think it may explain why many Christians truly are brainwashed.

In all fairness, I don't think its only Christians who may be guilty of this. I think it is probably a human tendency to "let our guard down" and accept what we hear from those that we know agree with us. This is no doubt true regardless of the ideology involved. In other words, a person who is conservative politically is going to be less critical in listening to another conservative and a liberal will be less critical listening to another liberal.

What does this teach us? I think it shows us that it is imperative to be just as analytical and critical in listening to those with whom we agree as with those with whom we disagree.

Are Religious Experiences Evidence for God?

The particular wing of Christianity that I was a member of for 20 years did not really emphasize mystical experiences. As a matter of fact, we were very critical of Charismatic Christians who claim to experience the supernatural on a regular basis. Our wing emphasized the "born-again" experience as a life-changing experience but even that was not always accompanied with any type of unusual feelings except maybe relief and gratitude. We were more concerned about doctrine and dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" when it came to our theology. We were quick to judge other groups whose doctrines weren't as perfectly aligned with the Bible as we perceived ours to be. We also criticized those Christian groups that seemed to minimize doctrinal purity in favor of personal experiences of the divine.

While the description above is definitely true of certain elements of evangelicalism, especially those with an allegiance to Reformed theology, the fact is that the majority of Christians and the majority of religions seek to experience the divine. The great popularity of "worship music" in the evangelical church, I think, is emblematic of this trend. People will sing the same few words over and over again as they close their eyes and look toward heaven. They are looking to experience "the presence of God." Others meditate and pray in beautiful cathedrals with stained glass windows and inspiring organ music and sit in silence and awe of the majesty of their God. These uplifting emotional experiences are Christianity for many people. They interpret them as proof that they have a real relationship with God and that their faith is real. This sense of transcendency is what draws many people to religion.

Neuroscientists are making some interesting discoveries relative to these "religious experiences," and it has some Christians worried. A recent article in Christianity Today the mouthpiece of evangelical Christianity in America is entitled: "The End of Christianity as We Know It," by Mark Galli. He writes:

This sort of thing makes many a Christian nervous, and for good reason. We live in an age in which religious experience is the centerpiece of faith for many, many Christians. We disdain faith that is mere intellectual assent or empty formality. We want a faith that is authentic, that makes us feel something—in particular, one that enables us to experience God. When we describe the one time in the week when we put ourselves in the presence of God, we talk less and less about "worshipping God" and more about "the worship experience." The charismatic movement, with its emphasis on experiencing the Holy Spirit, has penetrated nearly all churches. This religious mood, which characterizes our era, is epitomized by the title of Henry Blackaby's continuing best seller, Experiencing God.

A decade ago, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg did a series of scans on Buddhists while they were meditating. What he found was fascinating. Bob Holmes in New Scientist Magazine (21 April 2001), reported the following:

The researchers found intense activity in the parts of the brain that regulate attention--a sign of the meditators' deep concentration. But they saw something else, too. During meditation, part of the parietal lobe, towards the top and rear of the brain, was much less active than when the volunteers were merely sitting still. With a thrill, Newberg and d'Aquili realised that this was the exact region of the brain where the distinction between self and other originates.

Broadly speaking, the left-hemisphere side of this region deals with the individual's sense of their own body image, while its right-hemisphere equivalent handles its context--the space and time inhabited by the self. Maybe, the researchers thought, as the meditators developed the feeling of oneness, they gradually cut these areas off from the usual touch and position signals that help create the body image.

"When you look at people in meditation, they really do turn off their sensations to the outside world. Sights and sounds don't disturb them any more. That may be why the parietal lobe gets no input," says Newberg. Deprived of their usual grist, these regions no longer function normally, and the person feels the boundary between self and other begin to dissolve. And as the spatial and temporal context also disappears, the person feels a sense of infinite space and eternity.

More recently, Newberg has repeated the experiment with Franciscan nuns in prayer. The nuns--whose prayer centers on words, rather than images--showed activation of the language areas of the brain. But they, too, shut down the same self regions of the brain that the meditators did as their sense of oneness reached its peak.

This sense of unity with the Universe isn't the only characteristic of intense religious experiences. They also carry a hefty emotional charge, a feeling of awe and deep significance. Neuroscientists generally agree that this sensation originates in a region of the brain distinct from the parietal lobe: the "emotional brain", or limbic system, lying deep within the temporal lobes on the sides of the brain.

Neuroscience can now duplicate the mystical experiences claimed by religious people over the years in two different ways. One is through the use of hallucinogenic drugs such as ketamine and psilocybin. The other is through electrical stimulation of certain parts of the brain.

Karl Jansen, M.D., Ph.D., a is a leading neuroscientist and a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. In an article entitled, "Neuroscience, Ketamine, and the Near Death Experience," published in The Near-Death Experience: A Reader (ed. Lee Worth Bailey and Jenny L. Yates) he writes:

There is overwhelming evidence that the mind is produced by the brain. The effects on the mind of adding drugs to the brain, and the religious experiences which sometimes result, provide further evidence (p. 267).

Jansen's research shows that drugs such as ketamine produce out of the body experiences or the sensation of experiencing the divine which are virtually identical to many near death experiences.

Brain scientists have also found that

electrode stimulation of the temporal lobes evokes experiences which become part of the subjective stream of consciousness, embedded into the very fabric of the personality, such that the personality, and even sexual orientation may be altered. Moreover, patients may experience profound visual and auditory hallucinations and even feel as if they have left their bodies and are floating in space or soaring across the heavens (Rhawn Joseph, Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, Clinical Neuroscience , 3rd Edition, chapter 9).

What does this research on how the brain operates tell us about religious experiences? I think it makes clear that there is no reason to suppose there is a supernatural element at all. Thus, another one of the "proofs" for Christianity evaporates.

Is it Possible to be Objective?

In the last post, John Loftus' Outsider Test for Faith was discussed. One of the objections raised against it is the impossibility of being objective. I wanted to explore that question a little more deeply today.

It is true that objective knowledge is not possible for human beings. All of our knowledge is subjective. Since we are subjects, it is obvious that whatever knowledge we have, we obtained as subjects and therefore is subjective. The information we receive is interpreted by us, not only in light of our worldview (set of presuppositions we have about how the world is and how it operates), which is what most objectors to the concept of objectivity have in mind, but also and equally important, in light of our life experiences, including our personal interactions and attachments with other people, our emotional frame of mind when we encounter the new information, psychological factors such as how the interpretation of the information impacts us personally, and our neurophysiological make-up. Neuroscientists are discovering that each one of us is wired somewhat differently. For example, some people are more prone to risk-taking and self-confidence and others are more prone to worry, contemplation, and low self-confidence. So, not only does worldview impact how one interprets the information that one receives but so does sociology, psychology, neurophysiology, as well as many other factors that one may not even be aware of. Each one of us is truly a unique individual.

To complicate matters even further, none of us has complete information. We are limited in our knowledge. We can only understand new information as it relates to information we already possess. So, unless one is omniscient, a perfect and complete interpretation of new data is impossible.

Thus, it might seem that true knowledge is impossible and we should all be like Descartes, doubting everything except that we doubt. I don't believe that kind of ultimate skepticism is demanded. I think we can achieve  some degree of certainty about our knowledge through various checks and balances.

First, we must be aware as much as possible of all the factors mentioned above. We should realize that we are biased, that we are heavily influenced by our culture and by the people we know and respect, and that our emotions and our physiology can impact how we understand the data. While this awareness will not eliminate the subjectivity, it is a better safeguard than to be unaware  of it. If a person knows that he is colorblind, he is more likely to rely on others to pick out what color tie matches his suit. We should consciously attempt to consider alternative viewpoints which don't share our same biases. We should periodically examine our biases (at least the ones we are aware of) and determine if they are justified. If we are politically liberal, we should watch Fox news on occasion  and try to  see things as the conservative does; on the other hand, if we are politically conservative, an occasional dose of  MSNBC might be helpful. We must realize that people on the other side of our particular ideology are not necessarily dumb. They often have a strong intellectual case for their ideology which makes perfect logical sense within their set of assumptions.

Second, we must be aware of our limited information and refrain from attempting to formulate definitive conclusions until more "returns are in." We all remember the erroneous projections that television networks made in the 2000 election because of their premature assessment of the data. Human beings tend to be impatient. We want an answer and we want it now. This can often lead to a wrong interpretation of the information we have. We must be honest about what we don't know. A. N. Whitehead said: Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge .

Third, we must be humble and willing to change our minds if another interpretation becomes more plausible. We all want to be right and hate to admit that we were ever wrong. We all have some degree of intellectual pride. We all have some emotional attachment to our beliefs. To forsake one way of thinking and adopt an alternative way for some people is as difficult as divorcing a spouse and remarrying. It is traumatic and we humans don't like trauma.

In view of all of the above, I choose to call myself an agnostic. Robert Burton, a neuroscientist writes:

Recognizing the limits of the mind to asses itself should be sufficient for us to dispense with the faded notion of certainty, yet it doesn't mean that we have to throw up our hands in a pique of postmodern nihilism. We thrive on idealized goals that can't be met. In criticizing the limits of reason and objectivity, I do not wish to suggest that properly conducted scientific studies don't give us a pretty good idea of when something is likely to be correct. To me, "pretty good" is a linguistic statistic that falls somewhere in between "more likely than not" and "beyond a reasonable doubt," yet avoids the pitfalls arising from the belief in complete objectivity (On Being Certain, pp. 175-176).

So I agree with Clarence Darrow, the attorney who defended John Scopes in the famous "Scopes Monkey trial" of 1925:  I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means.

The Christian Delusion: Chapter Three--The Malleability of the Human Mind

Today, I continue my review of The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (ed. John Loftus). Chapter three of the book has an article by Dr. Jason Long, entitled: "The Malleability of the Human Mind." Jason is a Pharmacist and a former evangelical Christian. He is the author of two books, Biblical Nonsense: A Review of the Bible for Doubting Christians and The Religious Condition: Answering and Explaining Christian Reasoning Some critics have questioned Jason's credentials for writing against Christianity because he is a pharmacist and not a biblical or theological scholar. I think this is misguided. Jason is a bright young man whose mind has been sharpened through the study of scientific disciplines and he applies that sharp mind to the question of religious belief.

He begins the chapter by stating:

It is a curious thing that most of us ardently believe that we solved the ultimate question of the universe before we even learned how to tie our shoelaces. If philosophers, theologians, and scientists have struggled with the concept of existence for millennia without arriving at a definite solution, our naïve assessment from childhood that a divine entity simply wished it were so certainly requires a reevaluation (p. 65).

Why do people believe in their religion? This is the question that Jason Long attempts to answer in this chapter. He maintains that people believe because of 1) indoctrination, 2) psychological defenses against changing beliefs; and 3) emotional involvement and entanglement with the beliefs.

He points out that most people adopt the religion of their parents. He writes:

It should not be a shocking discovery that parents pass on their religious beliefs through their children. Muslim parents tend to have Muslim children; Christian parents tend to have Christian children; Hindu parents tend to have Hindu children. . . . Likewise, the parents are probably members of their religion because their parents were also members. How far back does this blind tradition continue? . . . people simply bury their heads in the sand and continue to believe whatever religion their ancestors thought they needed, or were perhaps conquered with, centuries ago. They were instilled with the beliefs as children, and they will maintain them as adults (pp. 66-67).

Why are so many people unwilling to seriously question their religious beliefs? Long answers: As humans, we simply are not comfortable considering the notion that we might be wrong. We enjoy being right. Rather than entertaining the possibility that we might be wrong, we strive to convince ourselves that we have followed proper avenues of thought (p. 68). Psychologists refer to this as Intellectual Attribution Bias.

Furthermore, as Long argues, skepticism is not attractive.

The realization that rational skepticism is not as interesting, promising, or comforting as optimistic romanticism is perhaps more formidable than any other obstacle. It’s only human to believe in things that make us happier. . . .Skepticism does not appeal to most people because humans have an innate tendency to search for patterns and simple explanations in order to make sense of the world. Such a practice results in an incorporation of elements that fit into an understandable answer and a neglect of elements that do not. Psychologists often use this phenomenon to explain the reason people believe in clairvoyance, horoscopes, prayer, and other such foolishness. Individuals remember when these methods “work” and forget when they do not (p. 70).

Another psychological defense employed against changing one's beliefs is Cognitive Dissonance , the unpleasantness of holding contradictory beliefs. Long explains:

People simply become increasingly sure of their decisions after they have made them by rationalizing their choice of alternatives, which serves to reduce the cognitive dissonance produced by foregoing the good features of the unchosen alternative and accepting the bad features of the chosen alternative. When it comes to religion, a believer will defend his faith and attack the alternatives in part simply because he has already rendered a decision on the matter (p. 71).

Finally, people continue to believe because of the emotional involvement and entanglement they have with their belief system. Long explains:

The Christian is interested in feeling comfortable with his beliefs, not in dispassionately evaluating them. People want to feel reassured that they are correct in their beliefs, especially when there is a lot of emotion, personality, history, and identity at stake. If the Christian were genuinely interested in the truth, he would analyze the argument critically and thoroughly to see if it adequately addressed the points of the skeptical objection. But he is not questioning; he is defending (p. 72).

Long continues:

People with a high involvement are more resistant to contrary persuasion than less involved persons because any given message has a greater probability of falling into the rejection region. Psychologist Drew Westen was among those who empirically demonstrated, using MRI scanning, that people who were strongly loyal to one candidate in presidential elections did not use areas of the brain associated with reasoning to resolve contradictory statements made by their candidate. The supporters instead relied upon regions of the brain associated with emotion to justify their personal allegiances (p. 74).

If a questioning believer should want to investigate his beliefs, he will probably be directed to the writings of a professional apologist for answers. The apologists, however, have an agenda and that is to prove the credibility of their religion no matter what. As Long asks:

Should we honestly believe that a biblical apologist who began with the notion of an inspired Bible would readily consider the possibility that his holy book is fundamentally flawed? Many of the top Christian apologists even admit that when the data conflicts with the text, we should trust the text. . . . What’s the point in listening to people like this? Such is the problem with all religious apologists, regardless of the specific belief. They will begin by presuming certain premises are true and mold explanations to patch the apparent problems, no matter how insulting the explanations are to common sense. This is how religions thrive in the age of scrutiny and reason (p. 75). 

So, as Long argues in this chapter, it is actually quite easy to understand how religion thrives in our culture. People are indoctrinated into their religion, they have psychological defenses that keep them from seriously questioning their beliefs, and the emotional involvement with the belief system prevents them from contemplating a change.

How is Religion Like Language?

Anthropologist David Eller, in his book Atheism Advanced, draws comparisons between language and religion.

He writes:

The very idea of language must be acquired. In this sense, religion is like language. No particular language is innate, although all humans normally do acquire one and have a capacity (some say an instinct) to acquire one. . . . Which actual language a human acquires depends on his or her social environment.

A person acquires a particular language simply by and because of being raised among others who already speak it; generally, people speak whatever language is spoken around them. . . . no speakers of a particular language would ever claim that their language is "true." The very notion that, for instance, English is true while Spanish is false is nonsensical. 

Interestingly, religion is like language in a number or ways--none of them fortunate for those who want to take religion seriously. First, while most humans end up believing some religion, no particular religion is inborn or natural. Therefore and second, there are very many particular real or potential religions . . . . Third, a person normally acquires religion simply by and because of being raised among others who already do speak it; and generally, people practice whatever religion is practiced around them. The profound difference between language and religion, however, is that all members of a religion think that their religion is true. The very notion that, for instance, a person would say, "I am a Christian, but I don't think Christianity is true" is contradictory and ridiculous (pp. 37-38).

Below I would like to list both comparisons and contrasts between religion and language, some of them from Eller, and some from my own thinking.

Points of comparison:

1. Religion like language is acquired.

2. People are born with a capacity or an instinct to acquire both language and religion.

3. People acquire whatever language or religion they are exposed to as a child.

4. People are better able to function in their culture by adopting the language of the culture and by adopting the religion of the culture.

5. Both language and religion acquisition is advantageous for a person who desires to "fit-in" in their social setting.

6. A person may acquire a second or more languages over the course of a lifetime.

7. In the evolution of language, words and grammatical forms are borrowed from one language and incorporated into another in a type of cross-fertilization. The same phenomena is seen in the evolution of religions.

Points of contrast:

1. Religions are thought to be true, whereas languages are not. A person may think of their language as "true" if it allows them to adequately communicate with other people in their society but they do not conceive of their language as being the only "true" language. If they are aware of other languages, they would acknowledge that those languages are "true" for the people in other cultures.

2. When a person acquires a new language, he does not then reject his old language.

While the analogy is certainly not perfect, I think it is useful in understanding how religion is a cultural phenomena.

The Christian Delusion: Chapter Two--Christian Belief through the Lens of Cognitive Science

Continuing my review of The Christian Delusion, today I explore chapter two: "Christian Belief through the Lens of Cognitive Science," by Dr. Valerie Tarico. Valerie is a psychologist, author and former evangelical Christian. She is a graduate of Wheaton College (Billy Graham's alma mater)  and the author of an interesting book entitled: The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.  She has a new book, which I am anxiously anticipating,  coming out in July, called: Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light.  She is currently on a trip throughout Africa and India. You can read about it on her blog.

In The Christian Delusion, Valerie explores what we have learned from neuroscience about faith. She writes:

The more we learn about the hardware and operating systems of the human brain--the more we understand about human information processing--the more we glean bits of insight  into the religious mind. For example:

• We humans are not rational about anything, let alone religion.
• Certainty is a feeling, not proof of knowing. It can fail to materialize even when evidence is enormous, and can manifest itself independently of any real knowledge.
• The structure of thought itself predisposes us to religious thinking. Given how our minds work, certain kinds of religious beliefs are likely and others are impossible.
• The "born again" experience is a natural phenomenon. It is triggered by specific social and emotional factors, which can occur in both religious and secular settings (p. 48).
  

The Evolution of God

How did we get to the concept of God that is currently held by evangelical Christianity?

Of course, they would say it came to us from revelation. God revealed himself to man and then inspired man to write down those revelations in documents which were subsequently identified and collated into a single book--the Bible.

Let's take another approach. We know today from neuroscience that human beings are born with a brain that seeks to identify patterns and purpose. This is sometimes called agency detection, (Pascal Boyer) which is the inclination to look for and attribute intentionality or mind or will to happenings (David Eller, Atheism Advanced, p. 93). Studies by Paul Bloom on infant reactions shows that humans, even very young humans, seem to attribute states of mind to things, including other humans and non-human objects. If there is the slightest bit of intelligible behavior, we tend to perceive intentional behavior, an act of mind or will (Eller, p. 92). It is a very small step to decide that the intentional component, which is not the same as the physical part, can exist separately from it and survive its destruction (Eller, p. 92). This is how the concept of the soul or spirit originated.

The oldest and most universal religious belief seems to be animism. Anthropologists have discovered this belief among primitive peoples the world over. Animism is the belief that many physical objects have an invisible and intelligent life force that animates them. These forces are usually called spirits and they cause certain events to take place. Primitives believed, for example, that when a volcano erupted, it was due to the spirit of the volcano that was agitated about something, usually human behavior. People also tended to believe that the life force or spirit of their ancestors survived death and perhaps hung around influencing affairs on earth. Man began to think it was necessary to try to please these spirits in order to facilitate their help or at least prevent their negative actions against them. This led to ancestor worship, offerings and sacrifices to various spirits, and so on.

As the evolution of belief continued, certain spirits or gods came to be associated with virtually every aspect of life. There were fertility gods, warrior gods, health gods,sea gods, weather gods , and so on. When one was going to take a journey on the sea, it was necessary to seek the favor of the sea god. In order to facilitate a good harvest, the fertility god must be placated. This belief in many gods is called polytheism.

As time went on, and stories were told about these gods, they took on many human characteristics (anthropomorphisms). They were seen as interacting with each other and sometimes fighting each other. There developed a hierarchy among these gods. Some were higher than others and one was usually seen as the most high." Another development was for each individual people group to have a tribal god--a god that was in some sense attached to their group. This was the beginning of monolatry or henotheism. This was the idea that only one god should be worshipped even though there were other gods. This idea seem evident in many passages in the OT. It appears that Moses was a henotheist. As the religion of the Hebrews continued to evolve, they adopted monotheism, the notion that there was really only one true God who was the creator and ruler of the whole earth and all other deities were not real. This one, true god continued to have many human characteristics, for example, emotions like love, anger, and jealousy and the ability to repent or change his mind. But this god also had characteristics and powers that were far above man's. He was immortal, very powerful (not necessarily all powerful), perfectly just or righteous and always faithful (Deut. 32:4). The god of the Hebrews also needed to be placated and thus sacrifices were offered to him.

As Christianity came on the scene and adapted many Hellenistic ideas into their concept of this one true god, he took on perfections--omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence. While some of these characteristics are seen in the Hebrew scriptures, they tend to be expanded human capabilities not idealized perfections as in Greek thought. This brought us to the concept of god that has become standard in evangelical Christianity (as well as most versions of conservative Christianity). This concept is best defined by Richard Swinburne: There exists necessarily a person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who necessarily is eternal, perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient , perfectly good, and the creator of all things. (The Existence of God, p. 7). In Christian theology, this god had been once and for all placated through the sacrifice of his own son. No longer was it necessary to offer sacrifices to this god. What was required now was for the follower to offer himself as a living sacrifice to the deity (Romans 12:1-2). Thus, the practice of monasticism with its correlate of celibacy originated.

The description of the Christian god continues to undergo modification because its Hellenized character is in many ways contradictory to the god described in the Hebrew-Christian scriptures as well as contradictory to human reason. For example, problems reconciling this concept of god with human free will and the existence of evil in the world has resulted in a new concept of god sometimes called open theism. Of course, evangelicals, for the most part, oppose any modifications to their description of god; but, nevertheless, it illustrates the continuing evolution of the idea of god.

So, I think the evangelical Christian concept of god can be understood as a natural evolution arising from man's need to ascribe pattern and purpose in nature. Beginning with animism, moving through ancestor worship and the attributing of human characteristics to deities all the way to a single perfect deity.

The Christian Delusion: Chapter One--The Cultures of Christianity

Today, I begin my trek through The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (ed. John W. Loftus). In my overview yesterday, I indicated that in my opinion this is the single best volume available today to debunk evangelical Christianity.

The first chapter is by Dr. David Eller, Professor of Anthropology at The Community College of Denver in Colorado. He is the author of six books: Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives ; Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate;  Violence and Culture: A Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Approach; Natural Atheism; From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict: An Anthropological Perspective on Ethnic Conflict ; and Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker.

In the chapter entitled, "The Culture of Christianities" (pp. 25-46), Eller begins by saying: One of the great mysteries is why, despite the best arguments against it, religion survives . His answer is that religions, including Christianity, survive because they are integrally interwoven into the culture. What is culture?

It is the label anthropologists give to the structured customs and underlying worldview assumptions by which people govern their lives. Culture is a people's way of life, their design for living, their way of coping with their biological, physical, and social environment. It consists of learned, patterned assumptions, concepts and behaviors, plus the resulting artifacts (Charles Kraft cited by Eller, p. 27).

Eller writes:

Christianity, like any religion, is a part of culture. It is learned and shared, and it is integrated with the other systems of the culture, including its economics, its kinship, and its politics (p. 28). It organizes the lives and experiences of its followers--literally provides the terms in and through which they live and experience--and is seldom questioned by them (p. 29). He continues: the United States and the wider Western world are heavily saturated with Christianity throughout their many large and small cultural arrangements. Whether or not they know it--and it is more insidious if they do not know it--non-Christians living in Christian-dominated societies live a life permeated with Christian assumptions and premises. Christian and non-Christian alike are literally immersed in Christian cultural waters, and like fish they take for granted the water they swim in (p. 33).

Eller (pp. 33-38) shows that religion, and specifically Christianity in the United States, becomes intertwined into every aspect of life--vocabulary in the language, important life events such as births, deaths, and marriages, foods, children's names, clothing, institutions, holidays, and so on. It is literally part of almost every aspect of daily life.

Eller also points out that culture is a two-way street:

culture adapts to and is suffused with religion, but religion also adapts to and is suffused with culture (emphasis his). In other words, not only does religion replicate itself through the many parts of culture, but culture replicates itself through the religion, recasting a religion like Christianity in the culture's own image. . . . Since its inception, Christianity has accommodated itself to its cultural surroundings--and necessarily so, since a religion that is incompatible with its cultural context would be unintelligible and therefore unappealing to the people of that society. The consequence is that there is no such thing as a single, unified, global Christianity but instead many, different, local "Christianities," which often do not recognize each other, accept each other, or even comprehend each other (p. 39).

Christianity has been evolving from the beginning. As Eller points out, Christianity itself began as a modification and reinterpretation of Judaism. As it spread out through the Hellenistic world, it evolved further. When it became the official religion of the Roman empire more assimilations and modifications took place. As it has moved into other parts of the world, it has adapted itself to those cultures. American Christianity is thus not unique in its history of innovation, diffusion, loss, reinterpretatiion, syncretism, and schism . . . (p. 41). The freedom of religion in the United States has resulted in even greater innovation as multiple new sects of Christianity have been born (e.g., Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on). Christianity has shown a nearly infinite capacity to multiply and morph to fit its environment, it can accommodate or integrate almost any influence (p. 42). It has manifested itself in such diverse forms as the Ku Klux Klan and the Civil Rights Movement, the Prosperity Gospel and the Amish. Eller says there as many as 38,000 sects and denominations of Christianity in the world. Thus, there is really no such thing as Christianity but rather "Christianities."

Will the Christian underpinnings ever be removed from American or Western culture? Possibly, but it will be a very long and slow process. Its more likely that Christianity will keep reinventing itself to accommodate the changes within culture.

Why can't people see the fallacies involved in their religion and forsake them? Eller's answer is that

Like a pair of glasses, humans see with culture, but they do not usually see culture. Computers do not know they are running a program, they simply follow the instructions. Seeing your glasses, recognizing your program, is a rare thing, acheived by few individuals in even fewer societies. . . . culture provides us with a set of "frames" or "scenarios" with familiar and predictable patterns and outcomes. These frames or scenarios get the average person through the average life with little uncertainty . . . (p. 44).