I’m not sure which is more abhorrent, the psychotic mentality that drives men to commit “vile acts of violence”, or the manipulative powers of the media to yet again divest Americans of their sense of proportions, and to twist them to the expression of false and ugly opinions.

It has been brought to my attention that on the same day of the attack on Boston there was a series of coordinated attacks in Iraq, killing more than 40 people and injuring hundreds. CNN has thought it satisfactory to devote only a short article to this story, whilst on their homepage there are pages after pages of intensive coverage on the Boston bombings. It’s not unexpected considering that CNN is an American network, but my actual critique goes beyond a numerical fact.

Over the hours following the attack, CNN published some of the most creative and emotionally-charged headlines imaginable. Torn limbs, broken bones, burnt human tissue and massive pools of blood all took turns in the limelight. In fact, they updated their headlines so regularly that one imagines CNN writers could easily have depleted an entire thesaurus by the time the day was over!

I don’t doubt that the event was surreal, chaotic, tragic, and all of the above combined. But when was the last time such emotional descriptions were assigned to a Middle Eastern crisis? Such things are unheard of. “Dozens dead, hundreds injured” suffice as headlines. Where, I wonder, are the broken bones, blood spills and torn limbs? Where are the families separated, children maimed and innocence lost?

Rather we get detached accounts of tragedies reduced to banalities. Unless of course it involves our own soldiers, or our own children caught in the crossfire, then immediately it’s headline-worthy.

News reporters can be forgiven a little for their biases, for surely a public of country X can’t possibly be expected to concern itself with tragedies of country Y, because things that happen far from home are not interesting, even less so if they happen to brown people (am I being too blunt?). Such events are not newsworthy. If for example an American drone goes off killing scores of people overseas, hardly anybody ever talks about it — it never makes the headlines. Yet explosions, minor I daresay, in the heart of Boston, and immediately the “civilised” world reacts with utter anger for the (yet unidentified) perpetrators, and sympathy for those victimised. Meanwhile the real terrors of our age happen everyday, not least from the perversion of country X’s own foreign policies and war-mongering habits, but such events are deemed unimportant — for the lives of others are worth less than the lives of our own.

For what it’s worth, I will mention that my thoughts go out to those affected by the Boston explosions. However, they also go out to victims of terrorism elsewhere in the world. And may I add in retrospect that the real terrors of humanity come often in subtler and  unspoken forms? Real and present evils linger like dust under an imaginary carpet, of which Boston is but an emerging and no less significant speck.

In light of the incident yesterday, I predict that in the following weeks there will be talk of revising or even strengthening anti-terrorist policies, the global reverberations of which will not be insubstantial. I think it best for America to keep this in mind, so that she will not easily allow herself to be persuaded to taking desperate measures by cheap tricks of her not-so-disinterested media and authorities.

Another nutter will get elected because in order to qualify for popeship you’d have to be a nutter. And you wouldn’t conceive of becoming one unless you were a religious nutter in the first place. So the vicious cycle goes on and on. Forever.

My prediction is that Tim Minchin’s song will still apply to the next pope as well. Well done.

But I think more importantly I’ve learnt a few things about myself. I’ve learnt that I am, in every sense of the word, intolerant of religion. I am not against the right for people to have or exercise religion, but am intolerant of organised religion in itself, and their popes, their preachers, their teachers, their missionaries and their claims to privileged and divine Truth. I’ve learnt that everyday I am less atheist and more apathetic to the entire question of the Divine, for I’ve come to realise that so long as men suffer with no hint of intervention, their problems cannot be prayed away, or wished away, but they can only be dealt with with doubt and humility, and by collective humanitarian efforts as those not conditional upon the promise of heaven or with external agendas of evangelism. Let it be said that I have little to no concern for the existence of God. The question intrigues me but pales in comparison to the harm that has been done in the hands of those who affirm that they have the ultimate answer to the mystery of life. They ignore what is known in their anticipation of the after-life, and convince themselves that our present is simply transitory — a teleological trial-period with an expiration date stamped on its lid. They teach their children that they are sinful, that they carry the guilt of Adam, that they are powerless and that they are servants of an unseeable deity. They teach them irrational distrust of man, distrust of humanistic methods, of logic, of science. They trouble them with threats of hell-fire, of the vision of their friends gasping from outlets of said fire because of their self-inflicted infidelism, they tell them to evangelise, not to doubt, to do as tradition tells them, that morality can only be gauged from an ancient book of myths, so that they must surrender their humanity to the barbarism of the yesteryear.

From my childish acceptance of God, to my sincerest devotion to God, to my immature resentment against God, to my youthful rejection of God, and now to the plainest manifestation of apatheism that excludes the importance of the God Question, I feel that with each step of the way I am brought farther away from the shores of confidence, sent drifting into the merciless sea of perpetual doubt. I have set out in search for Truth, but since no Great Truths be given I am only faced with the reality of our human conditions, and the forces which restrict our intellectual (or even spiritual) liberation, which endorse our divisive hatred for one another, our theological racism, and deprive us of our future, as well as that of our children. I am in all faith, if I am to have faith at all, that if theological questions cannot be settled at all, then time is being wasted in pointless exercises in exegesis, in pointless anticipations for the return of Christ, and in pointless worships of self-appointed prophets, because such exercises are only carried out to ensure that the conveniences and comfort that such faiths generally bring will not be lost to the disconcerting whirlpools of uncertainty and subsequent humility. From this I see no other escape than to do away with man’s innate attitude of taking dogma without hint of doubt, insofar as I am allowed my freedom of speech, to argue against its fundamental baseness and falsehood, and hopefully to offer a solution in its stead. I am in no possession of such an ultimate solution. The only solution approaching it that I can think of is a world in which all religions are not only exercised freely, but also debated freely. In my desperate optimism I envision a world of tolerance, but whose intellectual atmosphere does not keep men in closed traditions as a result of excessive tolerance, such that they may learn to take from others as others may learn to take from them. Nothing is achieved if everyone chooses to hide behind the presumed infallibility of his god or gods that secularity allows, and regurgitates the wisdom of men who lived thousands of years ago without hint of being inclined to modify and improve upon them post-mortem. Education, I believe, should teach children to doubt, not merely to follow their teachers, as children are so inclined to do so owing perhaps to the mystery of their genetics; they should learn that their teachers are also humans capable of error, and teachers should take heed of their own infallibility and recognise that their mission is not to regurgitate facts, but more importantly to inspire children to investigate these facts for themselves rather than to follow in everybody else’s footsteps. I believe strongly that education, both engagingly intellectual and moral (but not dogmatically so), is the more effective cure to the hopelessness of our present situation. Above all, I have become convinced that certain traditional precepts of religion are simply immoral; and I have come to the conclusion that evil things must naturally be opposed with the greatest forces of doubt and criticism that anyone can afford to give, which is the reason for many of my disapproving (or at times cynical) rants which you see on this blog. I have no desire to restrict anybody’s religious freedom, so long as they do not intend to violate the freedom of others; but I believe that I have every reason to disagree with you, and every moral obligation to give my arguments whenever I feel they are needed (simply for the fact that someone somewhere might find it remotely beneficial), and it is important that I should give them in the only way that should not affect anybody’s freedom of religious practice — which is by way of writing. I write under no illusion that I should be able to convince anyone of my points or conclusions, particularly the religious folks with whom there appears no easy road to happy reconciliation, but I do hope that someone, somewhere, might find what I say in some wise helpful to his own difficult journey amidst our common seas of perpetual doubt. To me, writing this blog has been a tedious process of personal discovery (or perhaps of the un-discovery of the person I once was), and on that note I’d like to thank everyone who has constantly supplied me with supportive or adverse thoughts along the way. I have learnt so much from me, as I have learnt so much from you. Yet we all have learnt so little — which is why we must remember to always share our best thoughts, and not to keep them solely to ourselves.

The first question is a simple one:
Do you think it is moral to tie your child up on an altar and slit his throat? (Apologies for the graphic imagery, but I’d like to make my point as succinctly as possible).

The question that follows is:
Can you think of a circumstance in which this would be a moral thing to do?

But now we introduce God, then next question becomes:
If you were 100% that God personally communicated with you and told you to do it, would you do it?

According to Christian theology, faith would require that you do as God tells you.
The counter-argument that ‘God would ask of no such thing’ would prove your own ignorance of the very book which you call ‘holy’. In the OT God commanded the genocide of entire populations; He commanded men to eat their own sons and daughters; and for bears to attack unruly teenagers — so considering that these biblical accounts are true, and assuming that you are not ignorant of your own Bible, the question holds:

Would you do it?

If you would, then well done, you would be a true Christian; for such is the grand nature of Faith. You would trust God to take precedence over own sense of morality. After all, why wouldn’t you? Who are you to question the will of God, and who are you allow your human sense of morality to disrupt his divine plan?

To be a Christian is to allow for this possibility — for the possibility that your moral sense can be overridden, so long as your God is behind it.

Therefore, and especially given the track record of God having commanded such acts, I think it is safe to say that no sincerely moral person should be a Christian.

***

NB: Morality* here can be taken to mean god-given or otherwise; I don’t think the argument is weakened in any way so long as you answered “no” to the first question. Nor do I think a long debate as to the semantic variances or existence per se of morality would be necessary for the purpose of the argument that is here put forward (but you are welcome to be the judge of that).

NB 2: I am aware that we live after NT times, and of the objection that may potentially be raised on this point. If so, then allow my question to be but a hypothetical one: assume that you are indeed living in OT times — and the moral dilemma presented would be the same in every way from a modern standpoint. I can also think off the top of my head of one immediate point of contention in response to a similar argument that “But the OT laws have been revoked and God no longer will ask of such things”; if we know that God was once capable of such acts, why are we so confident that he shall not do so again in the near future? Who is to say that NT laws shan’t too be revoked, and what if the next set of laws should call for atrocities twice as gruesome? Seeing as you can accept the atrocities of the OT, am I correct in assuming that such laws if replicated in the future would not disturb you or cause you to abandon your faith? If so then I stand to my point: No moral person should ever be a Christian.

(Don’t say God wouldn’t, because He did.)

God foresees that man is going to screw up big time but made him anyway.

A talking snake tells them to eat an apple, and that is the beginning of all human suffering.

God tells a 600-year-old man to build a floating zoo.

The animals manage to survive the flood and all of life on earth today are descendants of the pairs collected on the ark.

God sets an example of faith by telling a guy to kill his own son.

God tells people to go on killing sprees.

And commands other people to eat their own children.

Then He sends some bears to kill some other children.

A man lives in a whale.

Some guys are trying to build a tower to reach the heavens. For some reason God feels threatened, so he makes them all talk funny so they won’t understand each other.

Jesus introduces the concept of eternal damnation as a solution to human suffering.

God loves His children so much that, to demonstrate his love, He sends His own child down to be gruesomely tortured and killed.

Jesus died for your sins! But, oh wait! He resurrected, so he didn’t die after all.

God knows of our suffering but doesn’t want to intervene, since He gave us free-will — as if he never intervened in the past. [scroll up]

God can help you win a football game but can’t help end poverty.

Because that would be violating our free-will.

Any questions?

No? OK, keep believing.

Objection A: As was God’s intent, we are by nature moral beings, but through Adam we fell from grace; the Bible is simply a means to furthering our moral growth in an already fallen world.
Response: The Bible is not a moral book. The OT is littered with hideous accounts of divinely justified murder, contempt and misogyny. Four of the ten commandments do not deal with interhuman conduct but reek of divine egocentrism; the rest are suspect. The NT answers for these moral deficiencies of the OT by introducing the doctrine of salvation and the threat of hell.

Objection A.1: The OT is not immoral.
Response:  Yes it is. If genocide, slavery and murder are considered immoral then by inference so is the OT.
O: How can you establish that if you have no objective set of morality?
R: How can you establish that the OT is moral, since your premise of God’s existence is susceptible to refutation?

Objection A.2: Jesus said many good things in the Bible.
Response: The bad things in the Bible contradict with, or often outweighs, the good. If the Bible is moral then I daresay so is Mein Kampf.

Objective A.3: You are taking the Bible out of context.
Response: Video.

Objection B: The Bible teaches salvation. Man is by nature sinful and only through Jesus Christ can we be saved.
Response: The OT is still immoral. The fact that old laws are replaced by new ones does not negate the charge of immorality. The NT avoids the moral question by superseding it with an eschatological one, conceding that we cannot by our own work redeem ourselves. Therefore the Bible still does not have a monopoly on morality.

Objection C: The Bible was the first book to properly addresses moral questions.
Response: See Grecian philosophy. See Buddhism. See Confucianism.

Objection C.1: The Bible was the first/only book of morality authored by God.
Response: It says so in the Bible.

Objection D: Without the Bible there can be no objective set of morality.
Response: Your claim to objectivity hinges upon highly dubious and subjective premises. A Muslim could easily use the same argument with the Quran, and he would sound just as convincing, ie. not too convincing at all.

Objection E: The way to God is by faith and faith alone. In other words, whatever you say, I shall still believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God.
Response: I know, which is what worries me.

Objection E.1: God works in mysterious ways. Sometimes he orders genocide. Sometimes he orders children and babies to be dashed to death. Sometimes he orders a bear on unruly youths. Sometimes he orders people to be stoned to death for seemingly stupid reasons, like gathering sticks on Sabbath. Sometimes he punishes people for their sexuality, after having created them so. Sometimes he commands circumcision. Sometimes appears to condone slavery and misogyny. After all, who are we to question his will?
Response: I rest my case.

Not long after they had buried Nicholas in the earth, that they had gone through with the formality of lowering his casket, and had promised me that his soul had long fled to the kingdom of better angels (as if to reassure me that the purpose of the little box wasn’t so as to suffocate him), the reality of his absence began, in very small doses, to sink in. The first few hours and days were the strangest to me, because then loss hadn’t remotely begun to feel like loss, and sadness was only inflicted upon me by the sight of other people grieving, that I felt obliged to grieve with them — and I must have been that peculiar child who was always slowest to react to uncomfortable situations, that only until after the others had stopped mourning, after the school had paid its tribute, and after the church had said its prayers, that I began to feel it proper to grieve out of my own volition.

Some days later I braved to return to sleeping in my own bedroom. During the day it would have been easy for me to convince myself that the worst was over, but night was not as kind, and the absence of my roommate less so. I remember burrowing under the blanket as if to minimise the empty void around me, and taking regular trips to the toilet (which actually became a habit of mine for months to follow). It was in one of these dark and sleepless nights, spent alone, that God came and comforted me. He beckoned me (not physically) to come out from underneath the blanket, and He reassured me that everything would be all right.

When God spoke to me, I chose to believe Him with all my heart. I didn’t understand why it had to happen, only that it did happen, and that I could be at peace in the knowledge that He, too, was aware of its happening. But it wasn’t for me to understand His ways, nor to question His will. My duty was in faith, not in negotiation for the return of what was mine which had since been lost, but rather — in anticipation of what greater things can and will be gained when the time is right. The Bible teaches me that our lives are but transient, and those who part first shall be reunited with us in the kingdom of His glory, and never again will they be separated from us. Believing this, I pledged to remember God’s kindness, to remember how He appeared to me when I needed Him most, as I still remember it now, and as I will for as long as I may live.

When I told you that losing God was the greatest casualty following my eventual loss of faith, I actually meant the second greatest. For the greatest casualty had to be the cold truth that I may never be reunited with Nick again; or worse, that he never went to be an angel in heaven, but that he simply expired, as all living things do in the end. I find no real comfort in this view of life, but only a humble reminder that for all the time we have left on this earth, we should hold our loved ones near and dear, as tightly as we can, and do nothing that we think might ever hurt them. For these things, however insignificant, we will come to regret when they are gone; and by these and greater things they, too, must hope to remember us, one day when we are gone also.

“Atheists ask that question a lot and I tend to think – if you’re going to give God responsibility for all the bad in this world, you better be giving Him responsibility for all the good in this world too.”

Atheists do not believe in God, ergo, they do not “give God responsibility for all the bad in this world”. Somehow I think you misunderstand the basis for such an argument, being that Christians often thank God “for all the good in this world”, all the while they see foul things as a product of man’s free-will gone awry.

I know I am preaching to the wrong choir here, but had the justification for free-will been as easy as demonstrating that a baby can make his own choices regardless of parental oversight you will have saved generations of philosophers a whole lot of philosophising. I cannot hope to elucidate the complexity of the issue here, nor do I feel properly equipped to do so, but I say your lack of concern for genetical, cultural and experiential processes adds agreeably to my suspicion of the validity of your entire method of reasoning. Especially in light of the advances of modern science (in particular the neurosciences) I find such simplistic explanations to be quite wholly untenable.

The greatest irony is that the certitude with which you wrote this article speaks volumes against the defensive position which you took when writing “Understanding God”. It goes without saying that no logical argument against those which you proposed will suffice to falsify them, so long as God operates on a higher plane than that of our understanding. Therefore, can we not admit that such dithery logicising can be of no worth unless the wielder of said logic is prepared to go the entire length, and to follow logic where it leads, not where he wishes it to lead? I understand many people appreciate your spiritual blogsmanship, and so will find that my opinion quite expectedly leaves a bad taste in the mouth — but I fear you mislead them by assuming a position of logic, only to abandon it when the going gets tough. But, I assure you, nothing leaves a worse aftertaste than the sight of complacent “men of logic” who justify human suffering by saying God has no say in it (whilst thanking God for curing his illnesses), or by saying, “well, at least some good can/does come out of it”.

Tim [17/01/13]

First we remember that evolution in general requires a mechanism of selection. Theistic (as opposed to deistic) evolution would imply that God guided this selective process to ensure the results he intended. Divine selection rather than natural selection would not, however, dispute the fact that the better-equipped for survival are those selected for multiplication, regardless of the being to whom we attribute the selective process. This is an observed fact. We are thus faced with the question as to why God should promote so cruel a condition that the selfish are destined to thrive and survive, whereas Christianity is supposedly a selfless doctrine of the meek! But the general tendency of social evolution was the accommodation of selfless values which, though still egoistic in nature, were somehow beneficial to the society as a whole that it became increasingly advantageous to adopt them. The real conflict occurs when we gauge this history with the doctrine of the “fallen man” so common in Christian theology. Surely the theistic evolutionist cannot hold that man fell from grace, when we think the reverse that man evolved from selfish conditions to become more altruistic and, to an extent, selfless. Rather, to use Christian jargon, man was created without grace so that he may find it in the long course of his maturation. But this, whilst poetic in itself, points to the fact that God created us sinful rather than sinless; so that the whole idea of salvation collapses upon the condition that God created us sinful and demands us to account for this as though it were our own mistake. And just as the urgency of salvation is removed due to this view of life, so we find that its alleged outcome is also made exceptionally doubtful. At which point exactly in the history of our evolution was this thing called the “soul” breathed into us? If we did evolve from soulless states then again the case can be argued that the soul was breathed into a mechanism  inherently prone to sinful acts. If the soul had been there from the start then we may begin to entertain the possibility that the fall of man was, in fact, the fall of a multicellular organism who “chose” to selfishly divide and conquer at the expense of the well-being of his other multicellular neighbours in the Primordial Soup of Eden.

The authors of the Bible were wise to insist caution against “false knowledge”. I daresay it is more rational for a Christian to deny evolution altogether than to half-arsedly accept it. At least then, you wouldn’t have to pretend that there is no jarring conflict between your preferred ‘theory’ of talking snakes and floating zoos against the scientific theory of “descent with modification”, more succinctly known as “the nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions for embryonic construction”.

Addendum. As it has been called to my attention, the actual procession of social evolution is at best scientific conjecture. For now, let us presume the alternative that man was created altruistic and have over the course of evolution deteriorated into egoism and selfishness. I can think of a few problems with this hypothesis, but all are conditional upon the fact that the selective criteria were altered after the “fall of man”. I feel that history is unkind to this perspective (eg. what of the trilobites?). The question is whether evolution has made us psychological altruists as opposed to egoists, and if our departure from that somehow corresponds with the Christian view of “the fall”? Or can it not be argued that the benefits of altruism are by necessity self-regardant? Even that does not remove the argument that natural/divine selection tends to the vicious process of elimination. Consider the absurdity that the Creator would hold us accountable for being offensive players rather than altruistic ones in the “game of life” which favours the fittest players or, more correctly, those most adaptable to change. Had the “fall from grace” been less comparable with the “fall into conformity with the actual and harsh conditions of nature” we may feel more responsible for taking a sword to an evolutionary arms race. But all this is not unthinkable and does pose problems for my current argumentation. Perhaps some of my readers will be able to contribute a few thoughts on this matter. For more on altruism see the following webpage.

• We are led to believe that the sacrifice was so great that it should demand our attention. After all, all of mankind was supposedly at stake on this occasion. But the sacrifice pales in comparison to so many other kinds of human suffering, which makes it altogether unimpressive. A few hours on the cross compared to a lifetime of poverty? Or to years of cancer? Apart from the fact that Jesus was the son of God, his sacrifice was in fact rather insignificant and unimposing.

• The irony of it all is that Jesus didn’t even die (per se). The sacrifice was hardly permanent; therefore, its worth was owing not to the virtue of a heroic death but only to the degree of the suffering actually inflicted, which we have above dismissed as quite insignificant. On the third day Jesus resurrected and returned to his throne in heaven, supposedly as proof of his being the son of God. (In retrospect we should take more seriously the historical claims of other recorded resurrections; perhaps God had other sons and daughters around the world too that we should be wary of.)

• If God wanted to show how much he loved and cared for his “children” on earth, he wouldn’t send his own child down to suffer and die as an example of his good intentions. We would expect him to show a kind act, not a horrendous one.  Some people would be appalled by such a story as that of a father sending his son to die for reasons and conditions he himself invented. To even think that this is good fatherly behaviour should be an insult to fathers all around the world!

• The sacrifice was altogether unnecessary. It would be so easy to name an alternative that wasn’t so horrendously primitive as human sacrifice — or perhaps one that is at least twice more convincing! It raises the question as to how sincerely God truly feels about us being allowed to enter into his Kingdom of Heaven. Given the lack of evidence that such an occasion ever occurred (second-hand accounts of 2000-year-old eye-witness accounts of illiterate and superstitious people hardly counts as convincing evidence, to say the very least), and given that there are thousands of myths of this type that we could instead be believing in, it is as though God has set us up to fail, rather than to succeed.

• God could have judged us with or without the sacrifice, for he is omniscient and omnipotent. In all honesty this method has worked years before Jesus came to visit Earth, and I presume would work just as well afterwards (and the fact that God needed to revise his plan does say something about his alleged omniscience!). Jesus could have lived and be remembered by history for his deeds and not his sacrifice. We could be judged to the extent of our good deeds which would make a lot more sense, even granted that we are imperfect beings. To strive to be “like-Christ” does not require that Christ had to die a gruesome death. The sacrifice was therefore more eschatological than it was ever essentially a moral act.

• Adding insult to injury, the Tower of Babel has made it impossibly unlikely that people would ever come to know Christ within their lifetimes, which means that the majority of people will presumably be going to hell on sheer account of their ignorance. If hell is not the default destination for these people, then the sacrifice itself is reduced to a local event, for it no longer affects all of humanity but only those who are accustomed to the story. Therefore, a missionary who goes abroad to evangelise is simply doing these unwary men a disservice by opening them to the high likelihood of being sent to hell on account of being now in possession of such dangerous knowledge.

• If it were a method of atonement for our sins then we may ask of the fate of those who lived before Christ. Before the Christian hell was invented in the New Testament, what was the fate of those sinners who died? If their souls weren’t transported to hell, since the concept of eternal damnation was then nigh nonexistent, we may consider Christ’s appearance as a curse and hardly a blessing, for with him eternal suffering became a valid condition!

• According to popular theology, we are in the first degree sinful because Adam and Eve were sinful; but since the literal story of Genesis is obviously nonsensical (see evolution), the sacrifice was actually pointless in this regard. And even if Adam and Eve did exist and they did sin, the idea that we should inherit their faults on sole account of being related to them is no less absurd. It is like holding an unwitting child answerable for the crimes of his great-great-great grandparents, and further saying that his punishment for being born to this world should be as severe as death and eternal suffering!

Just as well that the whole story was fabricated from Pagan sources, because it makes no sense. Just as well that there is no good evidence to suggest that Jesus ever existed, because his impendent torture and death would also have made no sense. Just as well that Christianity is untrue, because if it were true we would not singly, but doubly, be condemned: first to an absurdly ridiculous doctrine which we must accept as factual, and second to a pointlessly cruel fate that is either an eternity of untold suffering, or that of servile submission to an absurd lawmaker (which, in terms of pains inflicted, would still amount to a competitive equivalence of the former verdict)!

Therefore, even granted that Jesus existed and that Salvation is Fact, we are still morally obliged to decide whether or not to accept it. The general opinion that if we could by some miracle of historiography establish that Jesus did exist, the dishonest thing to do would be to deny his offer of salvation, is seriously flawed in that it denies free-will after having premised it. True, the fact of the matter may influence our conclusion in some way or another, but are we not making an ethical choice whereby the Fact alone is not the sole variable at play? How incredibly childish would it be to say that “I accept this offer because the offerer exists, and his claims are true?”  Nay, the claims, even if true, must first be assessed for their inherent worth. In everyday transactions no offer is ever rationally taken upon solely for the truism of its existence without some act of further deliberation. For ease of argumentation we may draw upon an analogy that is admittedly imperfect but at the very least demonstrative of our present case. If a stranger does offer to give up his life so that you may live you would likely think it immoral to take upon such a handsome offer. But perhaps you have committed a hideous crime and the stranger (himself innocent, but he happens to love and care about you) says he would happily serve prison-time in your stead, you would even think it more repulsive to agree to it even if it were done out of his own volition. Now presume that this crime for which you have been convicted is punishable by cruel torture, or worse by death, and that you would be relieved of it by simply accepting this offer. Now presume that not only would you be relieved of your punishment but you would be rewarded with consummate wealth and happiness, or perhaps with eternal life! And then presume that you never did commit the crimes in question at all! Presume they were the crimes of your forefathers, or of your great-great-great-great-great grandparents whom you could not possibly have met — but that the offer was only conditional upon your admitting to the fact that have de facto committed such hideous sins punishable by eternal death! or that you would in return admit to “loving” this stranger with all your heart! Now presume that there are many other criminals sharing the very same fate as yours; but that, unlike you, they have not once heard of this generous offer that you have so keenly been entertaining (because word of it has not reached all the corners of the world) — and presume that, still, they shall be put to death on count of their ignorance! Now presume! Presume that the offer was made more than two thousand years ago and that the sacrifice had already taken place, whether you insisted upon it or not!?

Now presume that this is the moral dilemma you are presented for consideration. You will find it is no dilemma at all. You will elect to accept the sacrifice because you fear the consequence of not doing so. But you are happy to assert that everybody else shall suffer the fate which you escaped, and that it would be but owing to their moral impediment or foolishness, and in no wise to the ridiculousness of the doctrine that made it universally obligatory. That is the so-called moral man that Christianity makes you become. And I shall gladly have no part of it.

We are thus able to determine that the question of whether we read the Bible literally or figuratively is quite irrelevant insofar as we are concerned, though we, like Matthew Arnold, also grant that a figurative reading may be more pleasant and more relevant to the average modern audience owing to its self-correcting elasticity. But a person may read the Bible literally and critically, and the Bible figuratively and uncritically, therefore this alone is no proof of critical readership — indeed there are critical readers of the Bible who are fundamentalists, and non-critical readers who would happily call themselves moderates. In my article Tailor-Made Christianity I likened Christian moderatism to selectivism, whereby the moderate observer reads (granted that he does read) and takes selectively bits and passages which appeal to him, and consequently ignores the rest as being too literal or old-fashioned. So we must do away altogether with this idea that religious moderates are less “fundamental” than fundamentalists, by taking such liberties in Biblical interpretation, because a person who would still adhere unquestioningly to his religion granted that he could be selective about it is, by definition, a wilful fundamentalist. The very fact that a Christian would consider himself “moderate” is perhaps illustrative of a type of  mind that has not adequately or critically involved itself in the subject-matter inasmuch as to decide that to be only moderately Christian is to be wilfully and obscurely fundamental, and not admit to it. For a “Christian” who truly possesses that moral ability to select with discrimination from the Bible should find that there is nothing stopping him from extending his ability to welcome the wealth of ethical wisdom supplied by other religions apart from that of his own. And a Christian who, in the knowledge of this, would select to adhere to Christianity and Christianity alone as opposed to open-minded moral eclecticism, is in every sense of the word fundamental.

I urge almost priestly the need to go beyond disbelief; that atheism should not be seen as an endpoint in itself, and that those still attached to the label do not think it justified to presume intellectual superiority over their dissenters. Am I wrong to say that we can at present know with no certainty that no supreme being exists, in any form, or that those who appertain to a philosophy which expresses obstinately as regards the question, be it the unflagging dogmatist carrying the man-made emblem of his denomination, or perversely the fundamentally positive atheist (as opposed to those assuming the null-hypothesis out of necessity), commits equally the error of mistaking doubt for certain weakness? Our lack of knowledge forbids us from making any claim of certainty beyond the realm of reason, and even reason itself is not immune to critique. This to me encapsulates what I find is fundamentally wrong with faith; it is the slavish willingness of its champions to act with confidence in ways not defendable by reason, a confidence which allows them then to heighten their faith so shamelessly to a level of immunity from critical evaluation. Indeed no person who understands the greatness of doubt could assume, with sincerity, a position that relinquishes opportunity for said doubt, therefore the fundamentally religious person and the fundamental disbeliever are both guilty of the same offence.

The positions laid out above supersede the basic question of the existence of god. In order to advance beyond disbelief, this question itself must come under scrutiny, because, although assumed important by many with a disposition to confidence, we of a doubtful kind must not prevent ourselves to question its synthetic relevancy in the formation of our personal philosophy. To give an example, anyone committed to the humanistic task of improving the welfare of life may find that, to this end, disbelief itself must still be extended to nobler aims; he may understand that if disbelief forms the parentage of his philosophy, it cannot too be its own offspring. As a matter of fact, in humanistic considerations the existence of god would appear a non-issue altogether, for as history shows, human suffering has always persisted regardless of divine presence, often affecting indiscriminately both the believer and the infidel alike, and therefore all problems regarding our present and future condition must still be negotiated at the level of humanity, as opposed to that of the divine. Such reasoning would suggest the question of god’s existence as entirely irrelevant in humanistic matters, at least as far as we can establish by our past experience. So that to a disbelieving person in possession of such perspective, the question of god’s existence becomes to him no longer a requisite, but a continual distraction, and an ageless hindrance, to the detriment of his newfound ‘religion’ of humanity.

1. Waste of taxpayer resources
2. Promotion of a competitive and divisive humanity
3. Why do we find enjoyment in other people’s traumatic failures?
4. Disruption to local residents
5. Disruption to apathetic audiences (such as myself)
6. Modern day Hunger Games
7. Public expectation that everyone has to like it and/or support his own country
8. A breeding ground for zealous patriots
9. Flag-waving nonsense
10. Corruption and, well, it’s pretty much all about the money

The dangers of religious moderatism have been addressed elsewhere by other writers, namely Sam Harris, in so pithy a manner that I should not have to elaborate on the topic further than to state the mere obvious. It is a strange circumstance that one who claims himself to strive simply after Christ’s message of love and good conduct should feel the need to attach himself to a label which is so vile and spoilt as Christianity is. It is of an even stranger circumstance that he should wish to do so in the knowledge that his adherence to such a common label is what enables fundamentalists to hide or thrive in the shadow of his numbered existence. Moderates and fundamentalists alike endeavour to defend their label; however, these labels carry very different meanings and so have very different implications altogether.  In the case of the moderate the label implies a system which is less dogmatic and more practical to the moral conduct of his daily life. To the fundamentalist it involves imposing his religious values upon those which do not wish to conform to his dogmatically-informed expectations, often through the democratising or manipulation of law. Yet the fundamentalist position is more Christian in the sense that it more truthfully adheres to the values as espoused in the Bible, some of which are so vivid in meaning and intent that they can hardly be said to be open to any kind of secondary interpretation on the reader’s own part.

To ensconce in a single doctrinal label in pursuit of moral excellence is to insist satisfaction or complacency in the idea of being restricted to that one particular worldview and that alone. The fact remains that one should never need  to consider oneself a Christian in order to be able to appreciate the worthy lessons as can be derived from the exemplary life of Christ. Any person who is sincerely interested in moral pursuits would surely know to select his morality from a multitude of sources, rather than from one. Moreover, to adhere to a tailor-made version of Christianity is to willingly participate in a corrupt enterprise in the full knowledge of its vilest crimes against humanity. A mind vested in the interest of moral goodness should feel it almost an obligation to stand up against any doctrine which has so repeatedly exposed its truest colours from since the time of its earliest inception. To do otherwise is to play blind, to turn the other cheek, or to refuse to speak up for oneself in the spirit of what one feels or knows is right. The parable of sheep and goats surmounts to a create a doctrine premised in fear — and to produce followers who are unwilling to stand upright on their own feet in the fear of eternal punishment. Religion survives for the sole reason that it continues to attract a sufficient multitude of followers who, in their numbers, rally to justify its make-believe significance. The commonest weapon it employs is Fear, and Fear binds the moderate and the fundamentalist as one.

• Those who have had no reason to question their faith;
• And those who have had too many reasons not to.

Let it be stated that following the premise that God exists no wayward pathway could lead one to atheism, except to a state of rejection or a refusal to submit to said deity. From the Christian point of view this entails a refusal to consider oneself as being owned by any higher being, in this instance Yahweh. The concept that because God created us therefore he owns us is first to be challenged. If scientists recreated life in the lab, do they by sole virtue of creation “own” that living being as to be allowed to do anything they like with it, or do we have certain ethical standards to direct us to the conclusion that ownership of any living object does not entail full authority over its well-being? The question of ownership is not a simple one and there are fundamental issues as to what it even means to “own” or “possess” something. A pet-owner who abuses his pet is not worthy of said ownership, and can have his ownership revoked. But since there is presumably no authority over God it is not likely that any desire to countermand his ownership of us can be brought to fruition. However, this does not negate the fact that any particular being can be unworthy by our standards to assume a role of ownership or authority. The importance of allowing ourselves the integrity to make moral judgments is not always appreciated by members of a religious order. The unquestionable primacy assigned to god-given moral codes such as the Ten Commandments is evidence in this regard. However, it is provable that even the most pious of men constantly impose their own moral judgments in their interpretation of holy texts. Taking the same kinds of liberty as exhibited in those cherry-picking from the Bible into the construct of our own sagacity of judgment, the idea of questioning even God’s own moral compass becomes hardly far-fetched. Following this line of argument, the  premise that God is all-perfect or that everything he does is in reflection of this perfection falls quickly into doubt. Our god-given ability to hold our own opinions allows us the benefit of this doubt. That the Creator is all-perfect becomes rather a conclusion derived from that primary theistic premise than it is part of the premise itself.

Thus the antagonistic theist must wrestle with what God thinks is good and what he himself knows is good. Even presupposing the assumption that God exists, I hope that I have demonstrated that the issue of morality is still not a given. If there is an objective morality under which we are told to operate, our free will grants us the right to oppose it. Whatever we proceed to concoct in the negligence of God’s orders is product of the exercise of our own free will, and as we know the consequence of which could further dictate the exact realm in which we will be spending the afterlife. But this is to point out that to accept that the Christian God exists due to whatever wealth of evidence there is in his favour does not imply that we must surrender any kind of moral bearing which is central to all human relations. The idea that there is an objective moral code does not imply that the code is morally coherent by our human standards. That we assume “God works in mysterious ways” is testament to the fact that we are sometimes unable to justify God’s methods in the light of our own. This incompatibility is crucial in Christian theology as it accommodates a metaphorical leap of faith, that is to say, a person must suspend his humanistic reasoning in pursuit of a higher ideal which is morally questionable even granted the fact that it were objectively true.

The occupation of being a Christian is not one of merely an acceptance of the existence of God but rather an affiliation to the ethical codes which constitute a Christian way of life. The idea of allowing Jesus to enter through the threshold of your heart is dissimilar from that of just acknowledging that he existed and was/is the son of God, and leaving it simply at that. Given that there is overwhelming evidence with which to verify the credibility of the story of Christ or even the existence of a prime mover of the universe, the idea that one should thus convert to a Christian way of life seems logical, but it isn’t. Logic is a human construct and if we are to adhere to our logical side we may as well go the extra mile and follow our own subjective codes of morality, which were also founded upon the very same processes of rational thinking.

A German soldier’s realisation that Hitler exists and has risen to a position of seemingly unquestionable authority does not imply that he must abandon his humanity and subscribe forthwith to Nazi values. These are separate facets requiring different lines of reasoning, and one need not logically necessitate the other. If you are a Christian for the fact that you think there is overwhelming evidence in favour of the doctrine, you are by no means exempt from having to question the moral implications of worshipping a god whom history recalls as violent, jealous and hateful. Your free will exists to be utilised, and it does not end at the moment you have decided beyond any reasonable doubt that God is real. To claim your position as having been logically confronted and then to suspend your criticality when it comes to the question of god-inspired morality, saying that “God works in ways not foreseeable by man”, is to be intellectually dishonest, if not a hypocrite. Those who call themselves Christians and yet still doubt the Creator on these moral grounds are simply exercising their own god-given free will, and “true” Christians who prefer dishonesty ought not despair nor accuse their comrades of bringing a spirit of healthy scepticism into a doctrine which callously breeds and feeds on the lack thereof.