Coming Out - Enlightenment

Continued from Part 2.  Here's Part 1.

Through the nineties, I still called myself a Christian but was honestly more of a deist.  I believed in a kind, loving god who would not condemn people to torture for differences in beliefs or petty crimes.  I did not believe that any being who could create the entire Universe would give a crap about some of the ridiculous "sins" that Christians (and Muslims) raise to the level of mass murder.  The idea of a petty, vengeful god who deserved to be feared was absolutely nonsensical to me.  The god I believed in made sense and was in all ways good.

But then things began to change.

Although it will likely chagrin him to learn it, my brother was a big factor.  I don’t know for sure but I believe that his church was becoming more conservative during the late nineties.  They were hosting creationist, right-wing evangelical speakers like Ken Ham and focusing more and more on Biblical literalism.  When we visited my family in Indiana, my brother would raise some of the creationist topics and we would discuss them as much as we could stand.  Topics like the age of the Earth, the existence of dinosaurs, and biblical literalism were all discussed.

Even though I still considered myself a Christian, I couldn't agree with him that counter to all scientific finding, the Earth was only 6000 years old.  I couldn't agree that dinosaurs existed within that time frame, were mentioned in the Bible and that fossils were planted by Satan or God as a test of faith.  I couldn't agree that the Bible was literally true in all aspects and trumped scientific fact.  But when my brother asked me if I believed that Jesus was the only way to eternal life, I still felt like I had to answer "yes" and did so. 

In a way, I feel that I let my brother down.  As we discussed these issues, I didn't have the information to answer his questions.  He may only have been trying to get me to validate the conservative Christian worldview, but at some level I like to think that he realized the arguments he was being exposed to in church didn't make sense.  He's a smart guy and recognized the contradictions and rationalizations and so raised them with me.  Unfortunately, at the time, I couldn't give him the answers he sought in order to reject these ideas.  So I may have cemented his belief in some of the anti-intellectual mumbo-jumbo through my inability to effectively counter it.

But if I failed to convince him, the seeds of skepticism and rationality had been planted in my mind and were taking root.  I continued thinking about these topics and started seeking the answers for myself.  And, perhaps more importantly, I started thinking about why people hold such irrational beliefs.

At some point in the late nineties, I discovered the James Randi Educational Foundation.  The JREF is the organization founded by magician and skeptic James "The Amazing" Randi.  I don't remember how I first found the site, but I was initially attracted by the fascinating articles he posted every week debunking all sorts of paranormal and pseudo-scientific nonsense.  Religious belief often makes you susceptible to other silly beliefs.  My sister-in-law, for example, believes in alternative "cures" which do absolutely nothing.  Before discovering the JREF, I had never really thought through the concepts of ghosts, dowsing, homeopathy, the existence of the soul, the effectiveness of accupuncture and "eastern medicine" or many other ideas.  I guess I was agnostic on these things.  I didn't know.

Randi's weekly columns straight-forwardly and devastatingly destroyed these supernatural ideas.  There is no proof of  such things as ghosts or the soul.  Dowsing never works when confronted with actual scientific testing.  Eastern medicine has no data to backup its claims.  Homeopathy would violate the laws of physics if it actually worked.

Skepticism, properly applied, allows you to see past the bad science, the lack of adequate controls in testing, the anecdotal evidence, the confirmation bias that almost always accompanies outrageous claims.  Looking at fantastic claims through the prism of the scientific method is an effective way of identifying trash ideas.  I also joined the JREF Forum, an on-line community populated by skeptics (and believers) who discussed all sorts of issues, from science to religion to politics.  It could be brutal, but you could get nowhere without evidence to back up your arguments;  it was a great way to earn your skeptical, logical and rational chops.  I owe a great deal to the JREF.

I was very active on the JREF Forum for a number of years.  The key event, a turning point in my life, came fairly early.  I was reading Randi's weekly column and he was discussing some pseudo-scientific "energy" claim (I don't remember the actual topic).  He made a statement to the effect that there are no "miracles", no "supernatural" energy.  And I, in all my believer-y goodness, added silently, "except for God."  And as soon as I added that in my mind, I realized for the first time that Randi wouldn't ever add that.  He couldn't.  I realized that the inexorable conclusion to Randi's writings were that he didn't believe in God.

I was shaken.  It had never occurred to me that The Amazing Randi was an atheist.  (Actually, atheism had never occurred to me at all.  After all, I was sure in my heart that there was a god.  Weren't atheists just people who "hate god"?)

The article I was reading didn't explicitly say so, but I was now sure Randi was a non-believer.  For Randi to believe in God would be a total betrayal of everything he had written in his columns, everything he said he believed.  And for the very first time I thought about the logical application of my growing skepticism, the application of that skepticism to religion.

After that, as I became more adept at viewing the world through eyes skeptical of fantastic claims, religion came further and further into my sights.  As Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."  Did I have any evidence for my religious beliefs?  Did any Christian?  As far as I could tell, your religious beliefs are mostly dependent on where you were born.  Did my family have proof that I didn't?  Going back in time, did anyone have any proof?  Why should I believe in ideas fostered by bronze-age herders who didn't understand germ theory or heliocentrism?  Should I believe just because it's popular in my community, my country and my family?  Or should I have actual evidence before believing the extraordinary claims made by religion?

I don't remember the exact date, sometime around the year 2000, but I remember the time and place.  I was on the bus after work, rounding the Clopper Road exit off I-270 heading for the park-and-ride lot.  I was thinking about my beliefs and my utter lack of evidence for them.  I could think of no reason to believe in something for which I had no evidence.  If I was to be intellectually honest, I had to admit that.

And just like that, my "faith" slipped away and I abandoned it utterly.  The last fleeting "religious" thought I had was that Jesus would be mad at me.  I instantly recognized that as a church-conditioned response, a last desperate attempt at belief through fear.  I let it go.

I was free.

To be concluded . . .