Which Shall Come First - The Rapture or the Fall of Religion?

When good things happen, such as the fall of a dictator's totalitarian government, other hopeful possibilities come to mind. Could Iran's theocracy be next? How about Mugabe in Zimbabwe? How about Ratzinger in Vatican City? Yes, the latter would be on a fantasy list of ignoble states I'd love to see go down.

Ingersoll wrote extensively about the decline of religion and predicted it would be rare in the century to come (writing in the final years of the 19th century). His optimism was not prophetic. Philosopher-historian Will Durant half a century later also professed the coming decline of religion, not just within this country but in all Western democracies. Durant saw it as the basic event that would define modern times. Another half century has passed and we are still hip deep in the muck of religious babble, fervor and nastiness.

Is there a freethinker in today's America announcing the end of faith? Well, there is Sam Harris, who wrote a best-seller by this title. And most recently, there is the highly regarded reporter James A. Haught, author of many wonderful books on the hazards of religion (e.g., Holy Horrors, one of my favorites), doing just that - saying in effect that the end is nigh. In Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age, Haught anticipates this consummation devoutedly to be wished. But, is Haught's hopeful vision any more likely to come to pass than the prognostications of the brilliant Ingersoll and the genius Durant?

Well, things look pretty good in Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan and other advanced democracies, where religious affiliation is down to five to ten percent of the populations. Don't you just love it when the pope laments as follows: Europe has developed a culture that, in a manner unknown before now to humanity, excludes God from the public conscience. Go Europe.

Alas, American is another story. We have no fewer than 350,000 churches. Religion takes in $100 billion annually - and it's almost all exempt from taxation. There are rich mega-churches, Rapture books are best-sellers, evolution is controversial and under attack from fundamentalists, televangelists are flourishing in the media and Billy Graham has still not been indicted for fraud. Pentecostals are babbling and evangelicals have taken over the Republican Party.

Where does Haught get off suggesting religion is on the decline?

Well, for starters there are data he offers that suggest we are, albeit slowly, following in Europe's footsteps. Secularism is on the rise, especially among younger age cohorts. Numerous polls document a rise in Nones, respondents who choose none when asked for a religious preference. It seems 45 million U.S. adults (about 15 percent) are what the devout might consider unchurched. Some suggest it's much higher. Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone stated that 40 percent of young Americans answer none in faith surveys.

Also, membership in mainline churches has collapsed. No less than 20 million Americans have quit Catholicism - one-tenth of U.S. adults are ex-Catholics, myself included. (Of course, like everyone else, I started out as an atheist. My parents declared that I was a little Catholic and tried over the course of my first ten years to make me believe it. By eleven, I was convinced they had me confused with someone else.)

There has also been a decline in the power of religions to constrain personal liberties and choices. When I was young, church-sponsored laws and customs and community rituals were far more pervasive than today. Think of Sunday blue laws, censorship of magazines and movies, restaurant and other restrictions on liquor, the limits on access to birth control information and devices, the absence of sex education, the inability of unwed couples to rent a room or buy a home. Recall the role of religion in criminalizing abortion and the damage to the wall separating church and state with the addition of under God to the Pledge of Allegiance. As Haught writes in Fading Faith:

Gradually, decade by decade, religion is moving from the advanced First World to the less-developed Third World. Faith retains enormous power in Muslim lands. Pentecostalism is booming in Africa and South America. Yet the West steadily turns more secular. Arguably, it's one of the biggest news stories during our lives - although most of us are too busy to notice. Durant may have been correct when he wrote that it is the basic event of modern times.  

Maybe Ingersoll was right, too, but it's simply taken an extra century to become evident. That would be consistent with his observation in Some Mistakes of Moses:  

It is hard for many people to give up the religion in which they were born; to admit that their fathers were utterly mistaken, and that the sacred records of their country are but collections of myths and fables.

To paraphrase the late great comic Lenny Bruce, I think it's about time we gave up religion and tried reason, science and common sense for a change. 

POSTSCRIPT: I sent this essay to the TPJ columnist we all know and love, namely, the Science Junkie. I asked for comments. I thought you would enjoy his take on the issues as much as I did.

THE SCIENCE JUNKIE: Very well said. It is very refreshing to read something plausibly hopeful about this declining nation.

One thing I have been worrying about is an imminent takeover by the coalition of right-wing crazies, in which the religious right will play a prominent, perhaps dominant, role. Appalling as it seems, there is a very real possibility that the lunatics will be voted into power in the next election, after which we may well look back on the Bush administration as a bastion of rationality.

There are other hopeful signs besides polls: Just take a look at popular culture through the lens of TV for a few days. All that crassness, violence, exhibitionism, consumerism, and mindless self-indulgence does not bode well for aspiring theocrats. So I say, Bring it on, popular culture! If this is what huge numbers of Americans like to do with their precious spare time, it's hard to see how the religious fanatics are going to get them to take Jesus seriously. Maybe that's where religion really stands: a relatively small group of hard-core zealots propped up by a great majority of hypocritical hedonists who pay lip service to the Lord without having the slightest idea what they're doing just because . . . well, just because that's what they think everyone else expects them to do. Or something like that.

So I find it hard to believe that the frivolous morons who populate TV's vast wasteland can be serious about religion, or anything else for that matter. And that may be a lesser-of-evils blessing, because religion tends to be dangerous in direct proportion to how seriously people take it. Thanks, now I feel better.

Donald B. Ardell is the Well Infidel. He favors evidence over faith, reason over revelation and meaning and purpose over spirituality. His enthusiasm for reason, exuberance and liberty are reflected in his books (14), newsletter (564 editions of a weekly report) and lectures across North America and a dozen other countries. Write Don at awr.realwellness@gmail.com

Super Bowl Sunday: How Wonderfully More Secular Than Sabbaths of Old

In the first part of the last century and even more so before that era, laws limiting activities on the Sabbath were the norm. The religious forces, far more powerful than today, did not cotton to frivolity on Sundays, or anything else that kept the population from showing up for church services.

n the first part of the last century and even more so before that era, laws limiting activities on the Sabbath were the norm. The religious forces, far more powerful than today, did not cotton to frivolity on Sundays, or anything else that kept the population from showing up for church services.

In a book entitled, "Fifty Years of Freethought" (Vol. II, 1929), George Mac Donald described how preachers tried to shut down the Super Bowl of the time, namely, the Chicago World's Fair, from opening on Sunday, the sabbath.

“The Chicago World's Fair having been decreed, the kind of church people who adopt meddling as a means of grace saw that now was their day of salvation. Hitherto, with their fussy restrictions on Sunday work and amusements, they had been obliged to function merely as local nuisances. Now they would close the World's Fair on Sunday and make themselves felt as pests by all nations. . .The meddlers resolved to memorialize Congress to pay no money, make no appropriations in behalf of the Fair, save on the promise that the key should be turned on the exhibits every Saturday night, with no relief until Monday morning. They circulated petitions to this effect, and did such a business in collecting names that in some places they claimed more signatures than there were people.”

This Sunday before, during and after the Super Bowl, the people will have a day to enjoy, Those who wish to attend churches are free to do so and many will, and many more will spend some part of the day in prayer. Maybe a few fundamentalists will sacrifice a goat or something, but they will not attempt to discourage others to have a good time or do what they like on this Sabbath day, as once was the case in America and around the Christian world. 

Robert Green Ingersoll, the famous lawyer, politician, and orator, once told a reporter in Cleveland that the ministers wanted every place closed on the Sabbath except the churches. He said this was a terrible imposition. He favored Sunday baseball, adding that it always gave him pleasure to see the Sabbath broken. He continued: "On that day, I love to hear the violins and see the boys and girls dancing. I love to hear the music in the parks, love to see the bathers in the surf, love to see people on their wheels, love to see little children gathering flowers, love to see people sailing, love to see them playing golf or ball. All this is so much better and sweeter than going to church, hearing horrible hymns in horrible tunes, horrible sermons about the harps of heaven and the tortures of hell. Away with the sacred Sabbath, say I. Man was not made for the sabbath." (Source: Frank Smith, "Robert Green Ingersoll: A Life," Prometheus, 1990, p. 378.) 

Ingersoll told a story to illustrate what would happen if the ministers got their way: "The people will go to church as the man went staggering home at two o'clock in the morning. His poor wife said, 'John, how could you come home at such a time?' And John replied: 'Mary, the fact is every other place is shut up.'" 

So enjoy the Super Bowl, if that's your pleasure and/or all the other wonderful things you can choose to do in a secular society. In this country, everyone, devout and secular, is free to do as he/she likes on the sabbath and every other day. Let's be grateful that people like Mac Donald, Ingersoll and so many other freethinkers came before us. As the Great Agnostic observed, "Man was not made for the sabbath."

Is Religion A Mental Handicap?

Play a parlor game with me for the moment. Which of three choices about religion comes closest to reflecting your point of view on this topic?

1. Religion is the foundation of civilization; while some forms are better than others, only one is true. Yet, just about any religion is better than having none at all.

2. Many if not most religions do more harm than good, but one religion is the way, the truth and the light leading to everlasting salvation. If everyone followed its precepts, we would have heaven on Earth before eventually getting to enjoy the real thing in the Hereafter.

3.  Religion is a pox, a pestilence and an unmitigated fraud that represents a mental handicap for all caught up in belief systems all of which are preposterous, vapid and insane. 

I personally embrace the third option. I have considerable company amongst the best and brightest, living and dead who are or were the wisest, kindest and most luminous of humankind

Daily do I read of horrors inspired by religion. Today's religious news in America includes the story of a bible-devoted woman in South Carolina who tied a dog to a tree and burned it to death. Why? The animal had chewed on her holy book. This pales with the murderous act of a suicide bomber in a Russian airport, almost surely an Islamist motivated by anticipated sex acts with virgins and countless other religion-driven crimes against humanity and nature. Still, the dog story makes my point that religion is a mental handicap. 

We are early on in the 21st century. Great strides have been made in human consciousness. Science, particularly theoretical physics, relativity and quantum mechanics, has given us more knowledge about the cosmos than the greatest minds of earlier times could have imagined. Yet, most people today, educated and not, embrace fairy tale explanations about the origins of life, the nature of existence and the rules for living that religions explain were revealed by one god or another. It would be comical if not so deadly. Actually, it IS comical - and deadly. 

In many Islamic countries and even in the West, religion is privileged. In the former states, blasphemy is a serious crime; in the West religion is simply privileged - protected from criticism by media outlets and in other ways. 

Those of us who can do so without fear of prosecution should reject the idea that  religion merits any privilege - and do so at every opportunity, as I am doing by writing this essay. Any challenge is a contribution to society - and a mental health gift for anyone who might listen with an open mind.

Shall We "Tone It Down" Or "Tune It Out?" Choose Freedom of Speech - Go with the Latter!

Did you see the images of the mobs in the streets of Pakistan calling for death to those who favor changing the blasphemy law of that country that outlaws speech deemed critical of Islam? These fascist lunatics make Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and the hate-mongers on the Far Right seem moderate. Yet, the two groups, one there - the other here, are separated only by cultural norms - if the named Americans were in Pakistan, I have little doubt but that they would be in the streets calling for the heads of Democrats and any freethinkers who dared offend their passionate medieval worldviews.

But, it is futile and otherwise unhelpful to expect or hope for reason to ensue from the Right as a consequence of the killings in Tucson. One reason is that these fanatics won't change. Already statements from Beck, Limbaugh, Palin and that crowd of shrill demonizers have made that clear. They are not about to cease and desist in their crazed, inflammatory talk. Be real - this is what they do, who they are. They won't change - this is their bread and butter. But the larger reason is that there are simply too many out there just like them - the depravity in this country and amongst the Islamic extremists elsewhere differs only in degrees - for now. As to the idea that their venom might set off those who are mentally unstable, well, I think the connections there are a little tenuous. Surely it does the disturbed no good to hear hate talk in any form,. However, people afflicted with mental problems, estimated at 45 million in the U.S., are so numerous any actions are likely to be insufficient. Many are predisposed to go off for many different reasons. It’s surprisingly, really, that it happens as seldom as it does, given the incendiary rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh and Palin et. al.

The healthier strategy on a personal level is to ignore the Right Wing hate-mongers in order not to get stressed and made ill from the poisons that spew into the atmosphere. Being exposed to their hot airs is to suffer unbreathable stressors. Just stay out of their range. Seek a bit of peace and happiness (or a lot of such) elsewhere, out of range of the madness.

Fortunately, there are plenty of people of good sense pushing back with some influence and effectiveness. They deserve our support.

But, on a personal basis, there is little to be gained and much serenity to be lost focusing on or attending to unsettling news stories or watching the toxic bloviators on programs like Fox TV and other media outlets.

Exercise your right to free speech, as I do here, but spend the bulk of your time pursuing a good and decent life of learning, love, exuberance, kindness and happiness, looking after yourself as best you can. This trumps fretting over the deplorable state of human affairs in this country and elsewhere.

Good luck.

REAL Wellness Volunteers Needed - A Call to Advance Reason and Free Expression

There is a great deal of zealotry on the loose in this country, which would be a good thing if only the zealots on the loose were zealous about the right things. But, what animates most of the ordinary American zealots are the tax cuts, fear of big government and the slogan-based patriotism of the Tea Party-Sarah Palin-Rush Limbaugh-Michele Bachman Right-Wing extremists. The masses are thus zealots with fascist impulses seeking to impose fundamentalist Christian values, laws, restrictions and beliefs on society. There is a great need, therefore, for undercover freethinkers to volunteer for the cause of a 21st century Enlightenment. Freethinkers who have allowed neighbors, family, friends and business associates to assume they are god-fearing, miracle-believing, going-to-heaven someday believers, should consider disabusing people who believe such things about them. How? By coming out in support of a counter-movement already underway, one that offers rational if polite zealotry in the cause of reason and free expression.

Philipp Blom has written an important book entitled, "A Wicked Company." It outlines the forgotten radicalism of the Enlightenment. Reading it makes me think that it may be time to remember this period in Europe during the 18th century, a time when conditions of church/state integration existed that contemporary Republicans seem set on recreating today.

Blom devotes much attention to the promotion of reason and free expression credited to Spinoza, Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Jean d'Alembert, Kant, Hume and Baron d'Holbach, among others, names often cited by America's 19th century champion of freethought, Robert Green Ingersoll. These men were the freethinkers or "New Atheists," humanists and rationalists who in the 18th century advanced ideas still under assault today and defended by rationalist organizations such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, The Center for Inquiry and the Secular Coalition of America, as well as prominent individual writers such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, P.Z. Myers and Tom Flynn, among many others.

What were the key ideas professed by Enlightenment zealots? It is important, I believe, that we not forget that many of the rights we take for granted were once thought radical and even criminal to promote, such as:

* Support for democratic forms of government rather than either monarchy or aristocracy.

* The promotion of racial and gender equality.

* A belief in the inherent right of all citizens to choose individual ways of life.

* Freedom of thought and expression.

* Religious freedom and tolerance for non-belief with the right to freely express such views in print and otherwise.

Philosophic reason was valued over religious faith. These REAL wellness advocates were also, according to Mr. Blom, very much interested in the exuberance dimension of a quality lifestyle. The author reports at length on what one novelist (Laurence Sterne) called "an infinitude of gaiety and civility (that) reigned among them."  

Nobody will ever say that about the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michele Bachman and the other Right-Wing extremists of our time. They all strike me as an angry, mirthless bunch who, like the Puritans, worried most of all about the possibility that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time. The Puritans would not have appreciated or suffered the presence of Enlightenment thinkers among them. The Catholic Church (and Calvinists in Geneva and other Protestant strongholds elsewhere throughout Europe) were power-addled reactionaries, burning books and heathens alike in attempts to enforce their ludicrous faiths. Freethought then was a lot more dangerous than it is today, in good part because those brave wellness pioneers lived and risked as they did. We are the beneficiaries of their heroism. It might be appropriate for us to do our part for future generations.

So, if you favor a philosophy consistent with that of secular progressives who support evidence over faith, reason over religion, science over superstition -consider becoming a visible volunteer for the New Enlightenment of REAL wellness advocacy. There are so many of us still undercover, often for strategic, fear of discrimination reasons. This is a luxury non-enthusiasts for the hazards that could come from Republican rule can no longer afford. An America dominated by Christian reactionary conservatives will be no place for freethinkers fond of the hard-earned guarantees of our Constitution. And remember, despite what is asserted in the Pledge of Allegiance to the contrary, we are still under the Constitution, not a generic god or any of the specific imaginary deities who have ruled over people since the dawn of human times.

Take the initiative - start telling people that you favor reason and free expression, that you do not think that a sky god is necessary for moral awareness and decency, that you want to do what you can to improve human welfare in this world and that we are the source for the greatest meaning, values, and ethics, not the priestly classes. We must develop and adhere to our own values based on what best serves a good society that values integrity, trustworthiness, benevolence, fairness and other common decencies. A REAL wellness mindset is the best path to fulfilling and humane lives that are rich intellectually, ethically and emotionally, without reliance on religious faith.

Compared with other volunteer possibilities, coming out to volunteer for outspoken REAL wellness, particularly the New Enlightenment of reason and free expression in conservative Republican-oriented 21st century America, is a courageous, ambitious and greatly needed public service.

I hope you will do it - today, in your own fashion. For freethinkers, it's time to stop living under the unspoken but powerful norm of don't ask, don't tell. Tell everyone, whether they ask or not. The dialogue that follows is more likely to advance a new Enlightenment than an invitation to appear before some new version of the Roman Catholic Inquisition.

Be well and enjoy your life - and your freedoms.

But If It Gives Comfort, What's the Harm?

A good friend, a secular Jew, told me he was pleasantly surprised and a bit impressed by a recent encounter he had with Catholicism. Inasmuch as he had lived 70-some years without ever having been so impressed, I was curious. "What was that all about," I asked? He said he attended a funeral for a Catholic friend and business associate, and came away with the sense that the mourners were much comforted by the rituals and promises of a grand reunion someday in "a better place."

I thought, "my friend is showing symptoms of senility."

Unlike my friend, I know Catholicism based upon close and personal encounters in grades K through 12. I think he might be surprised if he knew more about the costs of Catholic make-believe.

Is it really harmless to embrace fantasies that "comfort," delusions that "give hope" and preposterous claims that mitigate the pains of loss? I don't think so - and I'll tell you why.

For starters, it's a bad habit to believe some things, even for utilitarian reasons, absent good evidence. It's a harmless-at-first habit that might begin with a few seemingly benign religious fables. However, doing so might add a comfort level for accepting other convenient propositions, wilder claims for which there is scant evidence. Such reality-bending propositions can be extended by different kinds of power players, including shysters and con artists with or without television ministries raising money 24 hours a day. One might start out going along with the hope of heaven and, before you know it, you are OK with virgin births and holy mysteries galore, including three-in-one and body and blood mind twisters.

No rational person should accept beliefs that the keepers of the dogma vaults want protected from inquiry, criticism, doubt and modification. The Catholic Church does not welcome or invite questions or delegate authority for impartial investigations of sacred tenets.

Beliefs that embrace the absurdity of immortality are grotesque on the face of it - they are demeaning and unworthy of educated modern humans living in a scientific era. At some level of self-awareness, those who embrace fables might lose self-respect. Gentle, pain-relief scenarios that momentarily comfort also lend credibility to nastier beliefs that come later. Many comforted by thoughts of reunions in heaven tend to forget the equal (or, according to Calvin, far greater) possibility of reunions in what Ingersoll termed, "the dungeon of eternal pain." How many nightmares might that option inspire?

There is little virtue in disabling reason in this life, the only existence anyone knows anything about. It simply is not and never will be reasonable to believe things for no good reason, just because it lets people feel better, for a while.

The amazing thing about religions is that most people who profess belief in their tenets have more in common with non-believers, secular rationalists or freethinkers than with believers in other religions. Catholics don't believe in the same god as the Baptist preacher who wanted to burn Korans recently to protest an Islamic-owned club going in at a site a mile or so from the sainted ground zero of 9/11 - or the god worshipped by the lunatic rulers of Iran. Needless to say, their varied ideas of heaven have little in common. This is not surprising when you think about it, since they all made stuff up about heaven without consulting each other.

Richard Dawkins has famously observed, "Everybody is an atheist in saying that there is a god - from Ra to Shiva - in which he does not believe. All that the serious and objective atheist does is to take the next step and to say that there is just one more god to disbelieve in."

There is no need or much value in efforts to convince the faithful that "feel good" beliefs about an afterlife are almost surely illusory and certainly without any factual validity. Such attempts are low-return investments of time and energy. However, when otherwise sensible people talk about being impressed upon first encounters with a religion, it seems that the responsible thing is to suggest that there is more to be considered than that which met the eye on first encounter.

What do you think? Comments welcomed.