As a student of religion, I try (with varying degrees of success) to be empathetic to the beliefs of others that differ from my own. It is one of the goals of my personal philosophy to reconcile the disparate views of the many human religions towards a perennial “truth” of sorts and establish a common ground. Still, I often find myself very critical of certain practices, not just because they are alien to me, but because they fly in the face of greater principles which I see reflected in all of the worlds cultures and religions.

For example – Christians – at various times throughout history, and into the present, in spite of the principles of good will and universal love scattered throughout their holy text, have been perpetrators of some of the worst crimes ever committed – like burning women at the stake – and in the name of their religion. This is the case made against the religion by the more bull-headed atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Myopic as their views may be, it is easy to understand why someone would be cynical of any doctrine that preaches universal love on one hand and advocates murder on the other.

The truth of the matter is that where doctrine leaves room for interpretation – as it always does – and also intersects with any human deficiency – such as ignorance, fear, greed, malevolence – the interpretations that emerge are likely to be unfavorable. Papua New Guinea is currently stricken with the AIDS epidemic, a threat the likes of which their spiritual and medicinal practices (or ours for that matter) are not fully equipped to contend with. People dying in relatively large numbers for no conceivable reason would seem to have a mystical quality to it, if it were something you nor anyone else you knew had ever encountered.

Western rationality tells us to investigate where we do not understand something, to analyze and then come to a reasonable conclusion. But there are hardly any of us who can do that in every situation, because in addition to being rational animals, we humans are also very emotional. So there is hardly a doubt that the Papua New Guineans who have been burning people alive – this was not the first case, afterall – were acting on their fears. Much like the Europeans who engaged in this horrific behavior centuries earlier – and who gave the Papua New Guineans the idea in the first place.

While I do not believe that there is an onus on any people to change in a particular direction, to acquire any particular ideas or customs, there are certain abstract ideological threads that necessarily run through every culture, every religion, and of which most human beings have at least a minimal understanding. One of those is a reverence for life, which if not present would see every human society and institution fall apart.

If there is ever a reason to employ rationality, it is in making decisions that will damage or destroy the lives of others. There should be no place in this world for witch hunts. They were a travesty in Salem in 1692, post-WWII United States, Iraq in 2003, most recently in Papua New Guinea, and ongoing in the Gaza strip. The people responsible in every case should be brought to task for violating one of the essential principles that allow for humanity’s continued existence.

And when they are, we must resist any impulse to burn them alive.

It followed in short order that the political and cultural developments of the next two centuries would be inevitably shaped by the Bible, or rather, the people’s interpretation of it. It is obvious in almost every aspect of American life, from our fluctuating but never disappearing sanctification and/or demonization of sexuality, to the “under God” in our pledge of allegiance. Now one could argue that sexual taboos and the word “God” aren’t unique to Christianity, and certainly they are not, but when a U.S. president quotes the Christian Bible in a state address, only replacing “Jesus Christ” with “America”, the evidence that we live in a “Christian nation” isn’t so subtle or ambiguous. The statistics tell a similar story as well. According to a survey conducted by the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2005, just about 77% of Americans identify themselves as Christian.

The same survey also shows that this percentage has decreased from 86% in 1990, while the percentage of people who do not identify with any religious group, or simply refused to answer the question, increased by 6% and 3% respectively. Is America becoming less Christian? That is one conclusion, but another even more likely possibility is that many Americans are becoming more wary of wearing their religiosity on their sleeves. Stephen Carter, in his book The Culture of Disbelief, tells a similar story. He says that although surveys show that most people in America are quite religious, and that it has much to do with their daily decision-making and general ethical framework, people are becoming more disinclined to reveal that fact in public discourse.

In the American mainstream…those who believe in God are encouraged to keep it a secret, and often a shameful one at that. Aside from the ritual appeals to God that are expected of our politicians, for Americans to take their religions seriously, to treat them as ordained rather than chosen, is to risk assignment to the lunatic fringe.

The reasons for this are not difficult to grasp. In the 1980s, 1990s, and perhaps even more so in the current decade, there was a resurgence of the religious right. On top of that, there has been a marked increase in terrorist activity with an underlying religious motivation. Both of these groups – the overt religious right, and religiously-motivated terrorists – make it obvious that their actions are driven by faith. Out of fear of being classified alongside them, and further justified by repeat citations of the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment, Americans have become wary of religion in the public square. As a result, we have – at least publicly – styled ourselves as a secular nation, even though the actuality of our religiosity hasn’t changed much at all.

There is a precarious balance struck here in America between freedom of religion and the avoidance of religious dominance in public policy. It often seems as though the two ideals are irreconcilable. If someone is criticized or ostracized the moment they speak religious rhetoric in public discourse, then that would seem to be the very opposite of freedom of religion. For this reason, Carter – who claims to be a firm believer in the separation of church and state – questions the taboo on public religious expression. Yet, as is the case with many ethical quandaries and issues of proper etiquette, politicians are held to a different standard than the average person. Actually, it is not that they are held to a different standard, but that their adherence (or failure to adhere) to the general standards is always under the public microscope.

Many others have written on this issue, and some of them suggest that there is a danger in restricting religion from the public discourse. They argue that if religion is the foundation for our ethical framework, then suppressing our religious identity may cause us to stray from our moral ideals. Despite America being a fundamentally Christian nation (not to be confused with a fundamentalist Christian nation), there is a great diversity of people and ideals that must be represented by our public policy. In order to accommodate that diversity, it is not prudent, nor is it even polite, for people to overtly espouse their religious views in the public square.

It seems to me to be a simple matter for people to adjust their discourse without compromising their ideals. As political discourse in particular is mostly rhetoric anyway, there is no reason not to structure our language as to be more universally applicable to the people at large. Still, in any case, in spite of any secular tone, it is no secret that the moral choices Americans make are shaped by religious values. This is true even of atheists, because whether or not they wish to acknowledge it, the whole of western society has been irrevocably shaped by Christianity, and therefore so has the entire context of American identity. To suggest that such decisions are made with complete disregard to religion would be a complete misrepresentation of the facts. As Richard John Neuhaus states in his book, The Naked Public Square:

Without such an engagement of religion [a public ethic] cannot be reestablished in a way that would be viewed as democratically legitimate. The reason for this is that, in sociological fact, the values of the American people are deeply rooted in religion.

Under the pretext of separation of church and state, we disregard religion’s continued role in public policy, which allows it to operate subversively in influencing the socio-political sphere. The danger of “secularism” is not – as religious pundits declare – that is compromises moral values, nor is it – as Carter argues – that it leads to any suppression of religious expression. The real danger is that if we, as a secular society, pretend that religion is irrelevant, we ignore the very real ways that it affects us. It is much the same as the difference between the overt racism of an organization like the Ku Klux Klan and racism of the more subtle and institutionalized variety. Give me the former over the latter anytime, because at least I can see it coming, and can prepare myself to deal with it.

Now perhaps I am not giving the American public enough credit, and indeed my assertion that we take the role of religion in the public ethic for granted is mostly based on conjecture. The reason for this is that many grievous wrongs have been and continue to be committed in the name of religion, or with a religious motivation. While many of these actions are carried out by, or on behalf of the religious right, the rest of us seem to stand idle and complacent, which in a democratic society also makes us complicit. If I am to have any faith in Americans as a whole, then, I must assume that they are simply unaware of what’s happening right under their noses.

For example, let us consider the issue of school vouchers. School vouchers are financial grants given to families by the government, under the pretext of providing their children with more educational options – namely, making private schools more affordable. The whole idea seems to be based on the assumption that if people are presented with a choice of either sending their children to public schools – havens for liberal depravity to hear the religious right speak of them – or a private school, then of course they’ll choose the latter. What is the real motivation here?

It seems to be a curious coincidence that the program finds strong support from the religious right, and that the majority of private schools are parochial. This being the case means that federal money is indirectly being used to support religious institutions, which goes completely against the constitutional mandate of church and state separation. And is it just another coincidence that the money for these vouchers is drawn from the general education budget, the same one that is supposed to fund the renovation of the public school system? The motivation behind the school voucher program – at least for the purposes of the religious right – is the complete destruction of the public school system. Never was the goal stated so explicitly as by Robert Thoburn in The Children Trap:

Our goal is not to make the schools better…the goal is to hamper them, so they cannot grow…Our goal as God-fearing, uncompromised Christians is to shut down the public schools…step by step, school by school, district by district.

There seems to be a similar motivation behind the “No Child Left Behind” program (NCLB), an act whose name represents the kind of lofty rhetoric that keeps the goals of the Christian Right and the administration they advocate afloat. The general terms of NCLB are that students will be given aptitude tests, and where scoring is the highest, federal funding will be provided. Schools that score low will be punished by a withdrawal or withholding of funding. The logic here is as spurious as only providing overweight people with food because they have the appetites to accommodate it, while withholding food from the malnourished because they cannot eat as much, and therefore would only waste it.

To hear supporters tell it, NCLB will encourage teachers and administrators to push their students harder, to make sure they perform admirably on these tests. Surely, they think, that can only be better for the children. That point of view, of course, is contingent upon the false pretext of all things being equal, which simply is not the case. Many children in public schools, which are under- funded and under-managed, do not have access to the best education, and therefore are ill-equipped to meet the arbitrary standards set by NCLB. No matter how much teachers pressure their kids, it is likely that the schools that already have the best resources, i.e. those with the most money, will score highly while those with meager resources (urban) will score lower. Is it too difficult to see the glaring flaw in this plan? It is actually quite possible that this is a provision of the act, rather than a flaw, although its creators would never say as much explicitly.

The result is that many of these under-funded institutions will be forced to shut down altogether – as has already been seen with the closing of several public schools. It is not difficult to make the connection between the public school sabotage agenda of the Christian Right and No Child Left Behind. Perhaps it is not clear why the religious right would want to destroy public schools. If private schools are predominantly parochial, then children attending them are bound to be indoctrinated with religion – and that, above all else – is the goal. It is a plan based on the assumption that the public school system cannot be “saved”, in spite of countless attempts by the religious zealotry, such as mandating the teaching of creationism alongside evolution or school prayer.

For those who are unaware of this kind of subversive maneuvering, it is easy to simply observe any given political agenda superficially, and fail to recognize the underlying religious motivations. After all, we live in a secular society. Another example of hidden religious motivation can be found in America’s foreign policy. By now, even the President himself has admitted to making a mistake in committing so many lives, so much money, and so much time, to the Iraq war, which is far removed from the original stated objective of protecting America from terrorism. Given the fact that there is anti-American sentiment all across the globe, why did America turn to Iraq? Meanwhile, North Korea continued to present a more deliberate threat to the safety of America and its allies, plainly admitting to the development of nuclear weapons, and even testing them in the sea near Japan. Yet we seemed more concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, in spite of their government’s claim that they are developing nuclear power only as a resource. So the question must then be why is America so preoccupied with the Middle East?

The answer is simple: because the Middle East is a stronghold for Islamic belief, which ever since the Middle Ages means it is a threat to Christendom. And lest we forget, America is a Christian nation, and for some believers, the head of the spear in Christianity’s fight against all other faiths. But we are nearly a millennium removed from the Crusades, and since then, Christendom has learned to fight the battle more subversively. However, it still retains the nasty practice of sending children needlessly to their deaths.

That underlying the other conflicts is a fundamentally religious one becomes obvious in the case of Iran. In 1979 the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who had come into power due in no small part to financial support from the United States, was dethroned and exiled. The leader of the revolution which deposed him, and his successor, was Ayatollah Khomeini, recognized by the people of Iran as both a political and religious leader (an imam). It is an essential characteristic of Islamic culture for politics and religion to blend together. There is often not a clear delineation between religious and political leaders, or religious and political decisions. The Qur’an is recognized as the foundation for the laws of many Muslim states.

One of the main differences between Islamic states and America is that the fusion of religion and politics in the former is obvious. It is not taken for granted nor denied, Muslims take pride in a system built upon the Qur’an. Today, Iran is governed by a democratically elected president, who for the most part conducts public policy, but the people – including the president – also defer to the “Supreme Leader”, or Ayatollah, who is also the religious leader. Despite our delusions to the contrary, America is also a religious state, and so it is not Iran’s religious character in itself that is a problem, but that the religion in question is not Christianity. If viewing Iran not from the perspective of American safety, but from a need to protect the sovereignty of Christendom, it is easy to see how their nuclear program would be seen as a greater threat than the boastful performance by North Korea.

To go on a brief tangent, I would like to state my opinion that were Iran to fully develop its nuclear program uninhibited, and were to as it claims, use it only for power, then it would establish itself as a viable Islamic power in the world. A strong economic foundation in the Middle East could presumably bring prosperity for the people living there, which would in turn make the harvesting fields for terrorism less fertile. In the long term, this would seem to be a better strategy against terrorism than America’s seeming desire to undermine all attempts for political and economic growth in the region. If this is true, then it again becomes clear that the religious motivations of U.S. Christendom supersede even the safety of its citizens.

The Iraq situation, on the other hand, has been one disaster after another. Here is another case which begins with the United States intervening in foreign affairs where perhaps it was best to stay out. The chief fear during the Cold War was countries “succumbing” to the promises made through Communist ideology. It was primarily by that motivation that the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein’s rise to power. Hussein, in spite of being a self-identified Sunni Muslim, led Iraq as a mostly secular state. That a secular state was almost entirely ill-representative of his constituency is a topic for another paper, but in any case it is easy to see the underlying Christian motive behind America’s choice of Hussein. In the name of “secularism” – a term which here most importantly signified “not Muslim” – the United States was willing to ignore decades of human rights violations, terrorism, and genocide committed by Hussein against his own people.

That was until President Bush – on the basis of absolutely no information, and in fact a wealth of information to the contrary, connected Hussein to Osama bin Laden, a well-known religious zealot and terrorist. This non-fact alone was enough to stir up fears of an Iraqi alliance with the massive and ephemeral entity known as “terrorism”, which is at war with America. This non-fact, not his countless other crimes, was enough of a reason for the United States to depose a leader they had helped into power in the first place. Bin Laden is somewhat unique amongst those who engage in terrorist activities, because his actions are not out of desperation, although he recruits those who are themselves desperate. Bin Laden’s goal is nothing less than the establishment of a new Islamic Caliphate – a Muslim balance to the Christian America. Saddam Hussein knew this, and it was because such a thing would not benefit the rich circumstances he had already established for himself under a secular pretext that he rejected bin Laden, and why the two were ideological enemies.

In a recent speech, President Bush made a call for the principles of secular humanism to be exercised worldwide. This would seem to be a complete contradiction to the views of the religious right with which Bush has so clearly aligned himself. If we take his words at face value, one could say that perhaps the president is changing his tune. However, if we look deeper, perhaps we will uncover more of the subversive maneuvering that I have been discussing so far. The prevailing context of the speech – as the president can hardly say a word on foreign policy without mentioning it – was the Iraq war. Is it really any compromise in his position, then, to call for secularism anywhere in the predominantly Islamic Middle East? Absolutely not. He has said many times that it is America’s goal to instill within Iraq the values of freedom and democracy. Like Neuhaus said, those values – by American standards – simply do not exist independently of the values of Christianity. So the real plan, it would seem, is to diminish the role of Islam in fashioning the new Iraqi state, under the guise of “secular humanism”, while introducing Christian values, encoded as they may be within non-religious rhetoric.

It would be well beyond the scope of this paper, and perhaps even an impossible task to fully document all of the hidden religious motivation behind American public policy. The purpose here was simply to bring to light some of these agendas, and to demonstrate just how subversive religion can be in shaping the American socio-political climate, both domestically and abroad. In our “secular” American society, we assume that the decisions made which affect us are made without respect to religion. This in turn makes us ignorant to the fact that many politicians, business leaders, and lobbyists conceal very religious agendas with secular rhetoric. As would-be participants in the most powerful democratic republic in the world, one that not only determines how we live, but is also playing a large part in the lives of people around the world, it is our duty as Americans to be well -informed as to the motivations and agendas behind our politics.

The first proof is an argument first presented by the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384 – 322 CE), that of the “Prime Mover”. The basic idea here is that all things that are in motion were put into motion by something else, which can be called a mover. Since there cannot be infinite movers, there had to be – at the start of this chain of motion – a mover who started it all. According to Aquinas’ extrapolation of the concept:

The problem with this “proof”, and one we shall find common to all five, is that it is built upon a number of presuppositions. First and foremost is the assumption that at any time in the universe there was no motion at all. A “first mover”, by definition, would have had to perpetrate a “first motion”, meaning that prior to that event there was an absence of motion. On what infallible pretext are we to base this notion? What evidence is there that the universe was ever anything other than “in motion”, in some respect? There is no such evidence.

As we understand the universe today – and Aquinas can be forgiven his lack of foresight into the discoveries of science five hundred years after his death – all energy and matter are conserved. That is to say they cannot be “destroyed”, or made to not exist. If all energy is conserved, then that means that all energy in the universe today has always existed. Existence then, in these terms, has no necessary prerequisites. Furthermore, motion requires energy; in fact, energy alone is often the “mover” for a thing. If energy has always existed, then its action upon any given thing to make it move was always a possibility. Energy itself is always in motion, being transferred from one thing to the next, through one medium or another. Even when talking about the “potential energy” of a non-moving object, that energy exists in the form of interplay between the constituent parts of that object, going as far “down” or perhaps even deeper than the atom.

Not only is there no evidence for the idea that there was ever no motion, but literally everything in the universe that we can conceive of suggests the opposite to be true – that motion itself is a fundamental property of the universe. Should anyone suggest that this “pre-motion” state of the universe lies outside the realm of human cognition, they should also acknowledge that there really is no point in a human trying to logically “prove” anything that operates outside of that realm. That would altogether negate Aquinas’ first proof. That spurious reasoning aside, the only way that the first mover argument holds is if we assume that all energy and matter at one time did not exist, and was introduced into an empty universe. If “God” was the agent that brought matter and energy into this void, this nothingness, then God itself would also have to be nothing. This is what I was referring to when I suggested that Aquinas’ arguments were proof for nothing. At least it can be said at this point that he has not successfully proven anything.

The second proof for the existence of God has to do with causality. For every event there was an earlier event that caused it, and since there cannot be an infinite series of causes, there had to have been a “first cause”. As Aquinas put it himself:

Since the second proof is more or less a rephrasing of the first, the arguments used above could be reapplied. However, there is an important point to be made about causality that provides a further argument against the second proof. Hardly any event is “caused”, in the pure sense of “A” acting to produce “B”. Most, if not all, events in the universe are the result of numerous contributing factors, some having greater effect than others. The chain of “causality” is actually a web of correlation. The innumerable phenomena of our universe, from the quantum to the celestial, all play off of one another as energy flows throughout the system.

Even where a given “effect” can be traced to a specific “cause”, it is impossible for any one thing to operate on any other single thing without also influencing the things around it. Conversely, no one thing can affect another without contributions from those things around it. If we simplify this argument, and concede that there are discrete “effects”, but that indeed that must have had multiple causes, we would have a causal branching that would spread out to infinity. This would mean that there were an infinite number of first causes, not just one. If the “first cause” or “God is an infinity, then it must include all of us, making us all constituents of God, and therefore meaning that the first effects were of God causing itself. Yet according to Aquinas:

I am not suggesting this to be the case, but merely offering this point to counter the idea that there need even be any identifiable chain of causality, such as to require a “first cause”.

There is another assumption central to both the first and second proofs just begging to be mentioned, but it must wait. To give the reader a hint, I will say that it has to do with a certain quintessentially “western” way of perceiving the world. Moving on to the third proof, we find the same argument again, only presented in slightly different terms. Aquinas states:

From here Aquinas goes on to restate the second proof, and how this “necessary existence” – which he considers to be God – brought everything else out of non-existence. It goes without saying by now that the same arguments against first mover and first cause could be applied here. The additional fallacy in the third proof is that nowhere in the universe do we witness existence emerging from non -existence or nothingness. Such would defy the law of conservation. What we do see in nature is that the “creation” of any new thing results technically from the “destruction” of other things. Everything is composed of energy and/or matter, both of which by the law of conservation must have always existed. Therefore, all “creation” and “destruction” can only be manifestations of change, and do not merely exist or fail to exist. Furthermore, if God, as that necessary existence, has always existed, it is reasonable to assume that other things could have always existed as well – indeed as all energy and matter must have. The argument of “first existence” thus becomes unnecessary.

The fourth proof discusses the properties of things and the degrees to which they exhibit those properties. Aquinas says that the way we measure any property of a thing is by determining how close it comes to that which exhibits that property to the highest degree:

The fundamental flaw in Aquinas’ reasoning is that he speaks of absolutes, as if for all properties there must be a maximum. Worse, he assumes that for every property there is something which exhibits it to that maximum, and by that something we judge all others. Using Aquinas’ own example, we can show how this is simply not true. Heat is a form of energy, and so for something to be the “hottest”, it would have to contain all energy in the universe. This is because if any other energy existed outside of this hottest thing, then adding that energy to it would make it hotter still, meaning that it was not the hottest possible. If any one thing contained all the energy in the universe, then nothing else would exist, and there could be no quantitative comparison for the property of “hotness”.

When we move to properties such as “goodness” or “truth”, those which simply cannot be quantified, how can we even attempt to measure them? And if we cannot measure them, how can we determine what is “more good” or “more noble”? The answer is that we cannot. As I mentioned earlier, the problem here is speaking of things in absolute terms. Qualities such as goodness are relative – infinitely so – as those values change with respect to a thing’s surroundings. When Aquinas says “goodness”, one can only assume he means in the ethical sense, as in not doing harm to others directly or indirectly – by proxy or by inaction in the face of harmful acts being performed. As any Christian (like Aquinas) would be forced to admit (or be accused of hypocrisy), doing harm to another can be justified. For the party being harmed, such actions are “evil” or at least not good, while for the harming party, or a third party for which it acts as agent, its actions may be good. This relativism of good and evil further shows that there is no universal way of measuring goodness. If there is no way of measuring it, then there can be no identifying a “greatest” good, either. Thus does the fourth proof fall apart at the seams.

The fifth proof advocates intelligent design. According to Aquinas, things that lack intelligence are incapable of acting towards any specific goal. Therefore, where their actions are towards a certain end, it must be that they are being driven by an intelligent being. Using the same logic as proofs one, two, and three, the suggestion here is that at the beginning of all things set into action towards any given end, there must have been an intelligent designer. In Aquinas’ own words:

The first problem with this argument, again, lies with an incorrect assumption. There are many things in the universe which act towards an end that neither have intelligence nor are compelled to act by any outside intelligence. It is generally agreed that most animals are not “intelligent” – at least not as we apply the term to humans, or as we could only presume to apply to God. Yet they most certainly act towards certain ends – the most prevalent of which are procreation and survival. Unless we assume that God is acting upon every animal directly, their actions do not presume nor require any intelligence whatsoever. The inevitable counter-argument must be that God would not have to act upon the animals directly if he intelligently designed them to perform all of the actions they do. The problem with that explanation is that it again implies a certain chain of causality – the same one central to the first three proofs.

Here, finally, I will present another criticism of that idea. It is a truly western assumption that all things in time and space operate only in a linear fashion. All things always must either come “before” or “after”, maintaining discrete positions in time or the “chain” of causality. As I insinuated through the more accurate term “web of correlation”, the interplay of phenomena throughout the universe is anything but linear. We see cyclical action and reaction in everything from the microcosmic to the macrocosmic, and so it does not even take a “leap of faith” to assume that causality operates in the same way.

There is yet another problem with the fifth proof, one that is in fact contained within all of the proofs. At the end of each, Aquinas makes a statement which assumes that everyone believes in or acknowledges the existence of God.

“…and this everyone understands to be God.”

If everyone understood it, if everyone believed or acknowledged it, then the labor of “proving” the existence of god would be entirely pointless. Clearly, by sheer fact, and in that Aquinas felt the need to offer his proofs, not everyone understands or believes. Even if we were to ignore all of the other glaring flaws in Aquinas’ proofs, and accept their most basic claims, there are many possible conclusions that could’ve been drawn. If there was a “first mover”, why must we assume that it was something as great and intelligent as a god, as opposed to some random instigator? If there was a “first cause”, are we to assume that that first action, and the immeasurably complicated network of effects stemming from it, was all part of some brilliant plan?

This certainly calls into question the concept of free will, which most god-fearing people must believe in if they are to reconcile the existence of a benevolent god with humanity’s rejection of tyranny. And while I feel no need to argue against the possible role of an intelligent designer in our universe, there is huge leap between the suggestion that unintelligent things do not act towards an end, and the necessity that their actions are driven by an outside intelligence. The other, perhaps more likely possibility, is that some things simply do not act towards an end, or with a purpose, at all.

In conclusion, I must reiterate what I said at the beginning of this essay. If Aquinas’ quinquae viae were indeed “proofs” for the existence of God, then I would not be able to argue against them at all. If even one point that I have made against them has even an iota of validity, then that alone automatically disqualifies them as proofs. Aquinas’ attempts were noble (how noble? It is impossible to know!), but in the end, his arguments do not hold. Indeed, the five proofs are exceeded in their greatness as a philosophical examination of reality only by their monumental failure in what they purport to accomplish.

It begins with a story from my childhood. I wasn’t raised under the umbrella of any particular faith, which left me open to discover religion on my own. I found Christianity by way of an Evangelist youth group; a friend of mine from school invited me to attend a recreational event, and I was having such a good time playing basketball and hanging out with other kids that it wasn’t too much of a leap for me to listen to what they had to say about God. For awhile I was really into it; there was something satisfying about placing your hopes into a higher presence. I used to even go up to the altar during prayer sessions.

One day that all changed.

It only took one incident. I was talking to one of the group leaders, and he “informed” me that people who don’t accept Christ as their personal savior go to Hell. I asked him “What about the people in third world countries who never hear about Christ?”. He said that that’s what missionaries are for. As for the people those missionaries didn’t reach – well, it was unfortunate, but they too would be going to hell. I’m sure the progressive Christians out there reading this are shaking their heads. I know now that this view misrepresents the religion, but as a pre-adolescent, none of that mattered. You see, back then my mother was exploring other religions, and was practicing Buddhism.

I asked the group leader if my mother was going to hell since she was a Buddhist, and he said yes, and that I should work to “bring her back”. Can you imagine what went through my head? My mother at that time was the single most important person in my life. One negative word about her usually made me ready to fight someone. As I thought about what this guy was suggesting, I weighed the influence of God vs. the influence of my mother in my life. My mother was a reliable constant – a tangible being who had been there for me since the very beginning. There was never a time that I felt I couldn’t depend on her. God, on the other hand, while “he” represented an ideal that I had been willing to subscribe to, did not have that kind of real presence.

So let me get this straight, I thought. Because my mother doesn’t follow your (the Christian) belief system, she’s going to be condemned to an eternity in hell, despite being a kind, compassionate, and selfless person? My hackles were up. I almost hit the guy. Any god who would do such a thing would be a monster, and surely not worthy of my devotion. Fuck your god – that’s how I felt in that instant. That was the impetus for my challenge of Christian doctrine, and from there my skepticism only increased, reinforced again and again by my own personal research. I don’t remember at which point my skepticism turned to cynicism, and my distaste turned to something very close to hatred, but that’s where I am right now. You never tell a boy that his mother’s going to hell. That one guy, in all of his idiocy, planted the seed for a new antichrist.

That was only the beginning. As I grew older, I became an increasingly rational, logical, and analytical person. The beliefs, practices, and rituals of Christianity, as well as other organized religions no longer had a place in my mind. They became ridiculous. Who was it that ascribed divine status upon Jesus, declaring him the “Son of God”; if he said it himself, are we to take it literally or figuratively? It has been convenient throughout history for religious adherents to exalt their figureheads to divinity as a means of justifying power. Another example would be the Egyptian pharoahs, who were obeyed as rulers, and worshipped as gods. Jesus’s divinity was a decision – made by whom I couldn’t tell you – but most likely made for the purpose of either establishing or sustaining a power structure.

Susan Blackmore, in her book “The Meme Machine“, mentions something called the “altruism trick” for spreading memes. If I make it a habit to do nice things for you, to be kind to you at all times, and to go out of my way to help you, won’t you be more inclined to listen to what I have to say? Will it not be easier for me to convince you of something which may at first even be counter-intuitive? In a sense, you will feel as though you owe it to me to give my argument the benefit of the doubt. So consider missionaries, who travel to places only grazed by the technological boon, and therefore are not privy to the wellspring of information available to the people of the industrialized world. If the people in a given region are suffering from disease or famine, and these “messengers of God” come bearing gifts of food and medicine, then surely the least the people can do is listen to the ideas that allegedly inspired this good will, right?

What if you lived in a culture that subscribed to a religion involving ritual sacrifice, and as part of the commoner class you were subject to being “offered to the gods”? Along comes a group of strangers, and they tell you that your sadistic gods are false – that there is in fact only one god. Furthermore, not only would he never sacrifice you, he sent his own son to be sacrificed in order to absolve your sins. Changing your beliefs in this case result in immediate benefits, as you no longer accept “divine justification” of ritual sacrifice. When presented with this new information, you suddenly seem to have options that maybe you never considered before. And this guy, Jesus? He died for YOU. There can be no greater form of altruism. There is the trick at work once again. Of course none of this invalidates the genuine acts of good will that religious proselytizers perform in the name of their faith, but intricately nested within all of this is a mechanism for spreading that doctrine. You can even see how this mechanism was at work in that youth group I mentioned earlier. They shared with me their facilities, their resources, and showed me a good time, which made me open to listening to what they had to say.

How about desperation? Imagine being in a situation that seems hopeless, from which there seems to be no escape – such as slavery. You’ve seen many people attempt many different solutions – running away, hiding, or fighting back – only to incur even greater penalties. The government has laws that forbid these conditions but these laws only apply to human beings, and you have been relegated to the status of only a little better than an animal, and disposable property. No help to be found there. If no worldly solution presents itself, it follows in short order that a person would turn to forces greater than themselves, greater than those that enslave them. Pray to god, and perhaps he will come to your aid. If not, then at the very least you can take solace in the idea that when this earthly suffering has ended, your devotion will guarantee you a place in a world of beauty and light. All you have to do is acknowledge god’s son and his sacrifice for your sins! Nevermind that these ideas were passed on to you by the very people who enslave you, and who by this same idea can find a place right alongside you in that wonderful place, despite the fact that they subjugated you mercilessly. Apparently this “god” has no sense of justice, or a cruel sense of irony.

Considering these things, and the inherent contradictions and hypocrisies in every organized religion, it is easy to see how someone would question them. Afterall, if you’re not a skeptic, then you’re a sheep. If this wasn’t enough, I would later learn more about the history of organized religion, namely their origins in the Indo-European invasions of 6000 years ago, and how they propagated behind the power of conquest. If presented with the choice of remaining loyal to your own gods and being murdered, or converting to the religion of your invaders and surviving, which would you pick? If by some measure of idealism you’re thinking you’d stay true to your faith, consider that that may be because people today are more resourceful, more educated, and recognize The Individualy options available to them. Also, people today are not often faced with such a ridiculously black and white situation.

Finally, since this is becoming long-winded, there is the issue of mythology vs. history. Every religion began as a collection of stories passed on by oral tradition and often co-evolving as they were shared amongst increasingly larger groups of people. Out of the thousands of religions that once existed, only a few still remain, and even fewer have a reach much greater than their land of origin. Those “obsolete” religions have been relegated to the status of “myth” or “legend”, because that was the decision of the dominant, who insisted that only their own religion was the “truth”. Most of these old stories that have made up religions are recognized as untrue or highly improbable, and yet some – like those of the “Big Three” (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) are regarded by many as historical accounts. The more progressive followers of these religions, being more rational, have adapted their interpretation of the old texts so that they are merely symbolic. That’s pretty convenient. How many times will adherents have to “change their interpretations” of their religions so that they remain relevant?

This brings me back to the question of “What am I?”. A few terms come close to explaining it, but don’t quite hit the mark. Atheists believe that there is no God. Some of the best cases for atheism I’ve found come from those scientists and philosophers who subscribe to the idea of an evolutionary algorithm, that is, who believe that Darwin’s idea of natural selection can be used to explain the “mindless” development of our universe. They argue for the “accumulation of design” as opposed to the religious view of “argument by design”. The actions of various mindless “replicators” (e.g. DNA) copying themselves – that being their only “impulse” – and with random copying errors, can explain all the complexity in our universe.

It is a fascinating theory, and I’d recommend that people read more about it on their own. Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene“, “The Extended Phenotype“, and “The Blind Watchmaker“, as well as Daniel Dennett’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” are good references. As provocative as these ideas are, there is something rooted deeply within me – perhaps even some remnant of my religious past – that will not allow me to accept it. Perhaps it is a lingering sense of romanticism which cannot be reconciled with this extremely grim possibility. My personal stance on natural selection, unlike the “Dawkinsians”, is that while it can account for much of the world’s evolutionary processes, there must be some other mechanisms at work. I cannot offer any scientifically valid alternative, but my intuition cries out in opposition. Also, even if the so-called evolutionary algorithm is responsible for creation, that doesn’t disprove the existence of higher entities. While its simplicity suggests that it does not require intelligence, would not such an amazing system be a real credit to divine architects?

My problem with atheism is that it too is composed of “beliefs”. They believe in the nonexistence of God. Their often self-righteous and bullheaded approach to convincing others of this “truth” does not differ much from the aggravating proselytization of Christian evangelists. While I am always willing to engage in conversation with people, and share my personal thoughts on these transcendental issues, I would never declare my ideas as “truth”, and nor would I attempt to “convert” someone to my way of thinking. The only thing I ever try to push on anyone is open-mindedness, and I often insist that people just take the time to examine their beliefs.

Meanwhile, there are the agnostics, who don’t claim to know whether or not God exists, and don’t think that it can be proven one way or the other. This doesn’t quite fit me, because I encourage all efforts to explain the workings of our universe or to uncover the truth about higher presences, even though I am not too confident that these efforts will ever be successful. So, I guess the difference between agnostics and myself is that I am not as apathetic. It is actually quite important to me that there be something out there greater than myself – and all of humanity for that matter. I have to believe that. Another group with which I identify with is the deists, who like I do reject the idea of faith, and think that the existence of God can only be discovered through scientific rationalization. The difference here is that deism, like the other majority creeds, seems to imply the existence of a singular all-powerful god.

This is not an idea that I subscribe to absolutely, but nor do I reject it. I simply don’t know, and so I don’t claim otherwise. Also, the idea of multiple “gods” suits me better for some reason. I put “god” into quotes there because I don’t place much stock into the word itself. I like to entertain the idea of many “higher beings” operating on some level above human perception. If “god” status means that a being is omniscient or omnipotent, then that’s the part I’m less inclined to accept. A popular question asked by people who are skeptical (like myself) is “If God is benevolent, why does “he” allow bad things to happen?”. An easy answer would be that god (or the gods) are not all-powerful, and are not infallible. Where else in the universe do we witness perfection? Nowhere. So is it in anyway realistic to hold “god” to such a standard? I suppose then, that these higher beings – if they exist – cannot be called gods at all.

I also have this vague sense that “truth”, if such a thing exists objectively, is being subverted by humans’ insufficient powers of perception. Sometimes I think things like “If there is a god or gods, how must they feel having their identities, work, or very existence warped by human beings?” A sort of sadness comes over me when I think that these “gods”, through religious perversion, are being grievously misrepresented. As a hypothetical example of what I mean, let us suppose for a moment that Greek mythology is the actual truth, and that the prevalence of later religions – like Christianity – has distorted their roles in the universe, even so far as to invalidate them completely. That would be tragic, wouldn’t it? So, in a way, I feel that by remaining skeptical, by challenging everything, I am leaving an opening for the “gods” to communicate. Established religion, in purporting “truth”, cuts people off from this possibility.

My ideas about these “higher beings” are abstract – ephemeral even – changing constantly as I learn and experience new things. I hesitate to give them concrete form, and in fact cannot, because beyond some vague intuition, I cannot offer any solid evidence to myself or anyone else of their existence. The best I can offer are theories of metaphysical processes which may explain the nature of existence. I can only imagine where these higher beings fit into this scheme. If you’re interested, some of these theories are available here:

• The Existential Wave Theory
• The Universal Will Theory

What do I believe? The simple answer is nothing. Once a person “believes” something, then it is no longer subject to examination, and their mind is closed to truth. Belief is the root of the kind of dogmatic systems that I regularly condemn, and so I choose to only entertain various ideas, all of which are subject to falsification.

Just so it’s clear, the source of my contention is not any fear of Christianity’s validity, but rather a fear that this rigidity may leak out and infect other areas of my life. If I can remain so stalwart in my resistance to religion, then the troublesome routines I find myself falling into may be a result of that same refusal to budge or to change my worldview. To explore this possibility I started trying to read C.S. Lewis’s “Mere Christianity”. That quickly became a chore because of how often my mind conjured up a counterpoint to everything he wrote, and the unshakable feeling that had Lewis been exposed to certain contemporary philosophies, he would’ve been hard pressed to sustain his point of view. At that point I started skimming through, looking for his more crucial arguments. I found a part which spoke of “Pride”, which Lewis defined not merely as being proud, but more like hierarchial behavior, that inclination in human beings to claim some form of superiority or at least uniqueness.

I found that I couldn’t really disagree with the points he made. He suggested that all the other so -called “sins”, like greed, all stem from pride. He says that extremely wealthy people do not seek more money because they need it, or even can really use it, but because they want to be richer than some other wealthy people. Their pride insists that they prove themselves in some way better than others. So, applying this argument to myself, my passionate “hatred” for Christianity may very well be derived in part from a certain luxury it grants me. It enables me to look down upon adherents of the religion, dismiss them as “wrong” or “stupid”, and thus exalt my own philosophy or worldview as superior.

I will concede that I do just that on a regular basis. I do tend to think of Christians as stupid, or at least misguided people. Of course this view is not simply because they do not adhere to my “superior” philosophy. I have quite a few reasons, but most of which are an argument against biblical literalism and fundamentalist points of view, which do not represent the gestalt of the Christian ideology. Plain and simple, I think that anyone who takes the Bible literally, i.e. considers it some kind of historical account, is an idiot. All it takes is the bare minimum of knowledge about the underlying structure of the religion, and its origins, to realize the folly in taking the Bible at face value.

Two examples: the suppression of the Goddess religion by the Indo-Europeans, and the subsequent demonization of the feminine and her serpent symbolism, from which stemmed the Adam and Eve myth; the co-opting of the story of the Great Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which became the story of Noah’s Ark. This story came out of Mesopotamia, a region trapped between two rivers and prone to flooding. For people of that time, for whom the “world” was quite small, such a flood could be devastating enough to be chronicled as an exaggerated myth. And speaking of Noah, who wasn’t an exceptional man, how could he possibly have known enough to collect two of every animal on the planet? How could he, having no zoological expertise, have identified the different sexes of each one? Can you even imagine the amount of TIME this endeavor would’ve taken? Ah, but then again, according to the Bible, people back then lived for several hundred years. Maybe also he was guided by the voice of God? Yeah, sure.

The idiocy of biblical literalism alone is not enough to spark my hatred, though. It usually comes as a parallel to the kinds of human behavior and world views that stem from it. When I hear a woman say that a man is the rightful head of the household, and Eve condemned herself and all of her kind (women) to live beneath the heel of men because she ate the forbidden fruit, I feel a burning anger swell up in my chest. While I’m talking about that asinine story, I also have an extreme dislike for the mere idea that God forbade Adam and Eve from acquiring knowledge.

Should I mention the Crusades? That the Christian institution hated alternative worldviews enough to justify long bloody wars to suppress them goes hand in hand with that idea of forbidding knowledge. Just as religion was for the conquering Indo-Europeans, Christianity was as much or more of a political weapon as it was a medium for spirituality. There is all kind of speculation out there as to the motives of the Jews in victimizing Christ which revolve around politics, and the alleged fact that he was descended from King David. I really don’t want to spend too much time talking about my specific points of contention, because I’ll never get to my real point. Returning to fundamentalism, the same kinds of problems are being bred from ignorance today – such as wars with an underlying religious motive fought under false pretenses; they suggest a return to a Crusader’s mindset.

As our civilization advances, so do humans’ proficiency and innovation in developing methods to destroy each other, particularly on the grounds of differing ideologies. Now politics and socioeconomic manipulation serve as some of the most powerful weapons. Racism, classism, misogyny – all of these things are propagated through the fundamentalist worldview. It is these things that make me hate Christianity, but also Islam and Judaism, and every other rigid, archaic, ritualistic institution.

Now, I couldn’t call myself open-minded if I believed that the fundamentalists of any religion represent the ideologies of all adherents. I acknowledge that some people merely use religion as a moral guide, or as a loose set of principles by which to live their lives. They “interpret” the Bible in such a way that enables them to reconfigure archaic ideas and apply them to present day situations. Some of these people may say that Jesus as the son of God was merely symbolic, and that all people are ideological “children” of God. Whatever. Here comes my main point. If in order to take anything meaningful or useful or practical from the Bible one has to analyze and reinterpret it – and probably in a way that its authors could never have anticipated, what value does the original text really have? The moral ideals in the Bible are nothing new. Be it human nature or a matter of balancing the conceivable benefits vs. the risk of harm within the context of self-preservation, we know on some innate level that murdering other people is wrong. There is probably no culture in the world that doesn’t condemn stealing, simply because no one wants to be a victim of theft themselves. These ideas existed long before the Bible, and continue to exist well outside the realm of religious ideology.

Whether it be moral guidelines or some sort of transcendent spirituality, what is it that’s specific to Christianity or any other religion that makes people choose to believe them? It seems to me that the answer is NOTHING. If a religion has to be removed from its original historical context, transformed, interpreted, and adapted to fit modern times, does it even keep enough of its original form to be viable? I could choose to worship Shakespeare and adapt The Individualy interpretations of his works to create some kind of framework for living. Does that make Shakespeare holy? So why Christianity? Why Islam? why Judaism? Is it cultural self-identification? Is it to achieve a sense of belonging? It seems to me that there is nothing that institutionalized religion offers that cannot be found by way of other philosophical ventures. Worse, it creates an opening – through literalist interpretation – for the propagation of archaic, counter-progressive, and ultimately destructive ideologies. That, for me, establishes institutionalized religion as unfit for survival in a contemporary world, and provides the grounds for its complete abolition.