On Christianity

I am an agnostic. I believe in myself; I know that I exist inside here—you just have to trust me on that. I believe in Free Will. I believe in logic and reason. I believe in the scientific process. I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything else unless it can be established through logic, reason, and the scientific process. I did grow up as a Christian in the Episcopal Church. Although always liberal in my beliefs, I was strong in my Christian faith. I attended church regularly; I served as lead acolyte in my church for years; I prayed and read the Bible regularly; I even participated in Bible study in college. After college, my faith evaporated, and I was able to look at Christianity in a more logical, rational way. The results weren’t pretty. Before explaining what I mean by that, let’s talk a bit about God (the Christian concept of God, that is) and Free Will.

God. There are three critical attributes of the Christian God:

• God is omnipresent. That is, God is everywhere. He’s sitting right beside you even now as you read my blasphemous writing.

• God is omniscient. God knows everything.

• God is omnipotent. God is all powerful. There is nothing He can’t do.

These attributes come right out of the Bible. They are well understood and agreed upon by Christians. So, I won’t spend much time explaining them here. Take a look at the following links for biblical verses backing each attribute:

• http://www.parentcompany.com/awareness_of_god/aog11.htm

• http://www.parentcompany.com/awareness_of_god/aog12.htm

• http://www.parentcompany.com/awareness_of_god/aog13.htm

Free Will. Free Will is a recurring theme in this essay. So, let’s talk about it a bit up front. I believe that Free Will is the single most important aspect of being alive. In Christian beliefs, it’s the single most important gift from God to mankind. It’s even more important than the death and resurrection of Jesus, since without Free Will, man wouldn’t be able to sin and thus wouldn’t need a savior. It’s so important that I’ll capitalize it throughout this essay. Free Will is the ability to think how you want and act how you want. Whenever you’re faced with a decision, it’s Free Will that gives you the ability to choose course A, B, or C.

It’s easy to confuse Free Will with Freedom. Freedom is a higher bar; it’s the ability to act upon your Free Will without fear of recrimination from authority figures. The ideal is that authorities leave you free to do what you want as long as you don’t interfere with the rights of others. Throughout history, authorities have suppressed freedom, but they have never suppressed Free Will. American slaves had no freedom, but they certainly had Free Will. Even under the most brutal slave masters, slaves could think whatever they wanted and take whatever actions they wanted, though certainly the consequences for asserting their Free Will could be brutal and horrifying. If a slave wanted to call his master a bastard, he could certainly do that. That’s Free Will. Would the master beat the slave and possibly kill him as a result? Sure. That’s lack of freedom.

There are two points here. First, Free Will is at the core of being human, of being alive. It’s what separates us from computers. Second, no person in history—no matter how evil, no matter how powerful, no matter how dictatorial—has succeeded in suppressing Free Will.

Given this background, here are two startling conclusions I came to when thinking logically about Christianity:

• God is evil.

• Heaven is terrifying.

Let’s consider these in detail.

God is evil. Blasphemy, you say! I’ll take it a step further: God is the most evil being in the universe, or perhaps it would be better to say that God is the most evil being that transcends the universe. Take Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Saddam, Idi Amin, Mao Tse-Tung, and all the other butchers from history. God is more evil than any of them. He’s more evil than all of them combined!

Here’s why. Bad things happen to good people. And by bad things, I’m not talking about having a bad day at work or losing money in the stock market. I’m talking about gut-wrenching tragedies. I’m talking about death, disease, unbearable pain, both physical and emotional.

Now, a good chunk of these bad things can be attributed to Free Will. If I have Free Will, then I can choose to use it to hurt other people. That’s an unfortunate consequence of Free Will, but Free Will is so important that we have to just accept this consequence. And there’s not much that God can do to prevent these types of tragedies without taking away our Free Will. In His infinite wisdom, God realizes that Free Will is more important than the tragedies it sometimes causes. I agree with Him, and applaud his restraint in allowing these tragedies to happen.

So, when innocent people are killed in war, I don’t blame God. When people are raped or murdered, I don’t blame God. When a child is molested, I don’t blame God. When industry dumps dangerous chemicals into the environment causing mass cancer in nearby towns, I don’t blame God. When a hurricane devastates New Orleans, I don’t blame God. After all, it was Free Will that led us to build a city in a low-lying coastal area that was prone to hurricanes. It was Free Will that led New Orleans to choose to save money rather than plan proper evacuation procedures or proper levees. My point is that many of the awful things that happen in this world are the result of Free Will. And sometimes, if you think about it for a bit, tragedies that don’t initially seem to have anything to do with Free Will really do in fact have roots in Free Will. Let’s take all these types of tragedies off the table. I don’t blame God for any of them.

And sometimes older people get horrible diseases that destroy their bodies or minds and ultimately lead to death. It’s certainly tragic when an older person gets cancer or Alzheimer’s or ALS. I have lost all of my grandparents to old age and disease. My mother died of breast cancer. My father is currently battling terminal lymphoma. I certainly understand how difficult it is when people reach the end of their lives, and I don’t mean to make light of these situations. But, we all have to die sometime. While tragic, when I say that bad things happen to good people, I’m not talking about people who die after living a full life.

But sometimes, bad things happen to good people. Terrible, unspeakable things happen to innocent people. And no matter how hard you try, there is no way to make Free Will or anything else the culprit. These are the tragedies that I’m concerned with.

Here’s an example. For the last 10-15 years of her career, my mother ran the vanguard program at a school in Houston called T.H. Rogers. T.H. Rogers is an interesting school. It has no “normal” students. All students fall in one of three groups. First, there are the vanguard students. These are gifted and talented students that are bussed in from all over Houston. They are among the best and brightest students in all of Houston. Second, there are deaf students. T.H. Rogers has a large program strictly for deaf students. Third, there are multiply-handicapped students. Students in this third group range from highly functioning kids with Down’s Syndrome—kids who can walk, say at least a few words, perform some jobs—to kids who can’t talk, are wheel-chair bound, and still in diapers despite being teenagers.

At the end of every school year, T.H. Rogers has a memorial service to remember staff, former staff, and students who died during the year. After my mother died, my father and I were invited to the memorial service. The service was very nice, and a former principal gave a very moving eulogy for my mother. But what really stood out to me that day had nothing to do with my mother; rather it was the kids who were being remembered. Kids with severe mental disabilities typically don’t live long, and there were several children who had died that year. I spent the service staring at their smiling pictures. These were beautiful, happy children who were struck down in childhood. I looked at their families. These were people who had gone through a gut-wrenching emotional roller coaster… the joy of pregnancy, coming to terms with having a disabled child, seeing the beauty, joy, and love in their child, and then having it all ripped away by an all-too-early death. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain these families have been through. The pictures of those beautiful kids will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Here’s another more personal example. In 2004, my wife gave birth to a beautiful girl named Emilie. Emilie was perfectly healthy at birth. But 45-minutes after birth, Emilie stopped breathing for reasons that we’ll never know. She was resuscitated, but only after suffering severe brain damage from lack of oxygen. Emilie lived out the remainder of her life in a comatose state in the NICU. She died one month after she was born.

Any readers who have ever given birth or watched their child’s birth know that it’s the greatest emotional high of your life. When my oldest son Jonathon was born, the doctor asked me if I wanted to cut the umbilical cord. I declined. It wasn’t that I was squeamish about doing it. Rather, the moment right after Jonathon’s birth was so emotional that I felt like if I moved even one inch, I would break down crying out of joy. I was literally paralyzed by joy.

Now imagine watching a nurse pull a code blue because your child isn’t breathing, watching a resuscitation team run into the room, watching the team work feverishly on your child, not knowing if your child will live or die. Imagine seeing your child with a tube down her throat and a ventilator breathing for her. Imagine trying to hold and comfort your wife through all of this. Imagine having to call your parents—the child’s grandparents—to tell them that something terrible had happened. As you can imagine, it’s the lowest emotional low of your life.

So, in a matter of 45 minutes, my wife and I went from the highest point of our lives to the lowest point of our lives. The human body isn’t equipped for that big an emotional swing. I had a very real physical reaction. After holding my wife for a few minutes, I had to stop and sit down. My vision got blurry, I became dizzy, and my heart was pounding so hard and fast I thought it was going to explode. I should have asked for medical attention but I didn’t want to draw any medical attention away from my daughter, and I didn’t want to worry my wife; she had enough going on at the moment.

The month we spent in the NICU was so difficult. Every day, we went in hoping that the doctors were wrong and hoping that Emilie would show some signs of consciousness. Every day, we were disappointed. The night Emilie died was the most difficult of all. Several hours before she died, she lost all her muscle tone. It was as if every one of the joints in her neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees were replaced by strings. It became difficult to pick her up. When we did, a leg would flop out, and then when we put the leg back in our arms, an arm would flop out, and so on. Finally, we turned off Emilie’s oxygen and laid her on the bed. She breathed for a few minutes, opened her eyes—this was the first time she had opened her eyes in a month—and then stopped breathing. My wife broke down crying thinking that Emilie had died. We both thought she had died. But after about one minute, Emilie jerked, made a loud screeching noise, took one deep breath, and then lay still again without breathing. It was horrific, and it startled us greatly. Emilie repeated this about once a minute for a full 45 minutes before she finally died while being rocked in my wife’s arms. This was without a doubt the most horrible and horrific night of my life.

We went through tremendous pain after Emilie’s death. I wanted to check out. I don’t mean that I wanted to kill myself or try to erase the pain with drugs or alcohol. I just wanted to check out. I wanted to get away from everybody and everything and just lock myself up in a room somewhere, anywhere and stare at the wall for a few years until the pain went away. But I couldn’t. I had a son and wife to take care of. I worked in a high-pressure job. I had a house. But for a full year, I struggled every day to drag myself out of the car and walk into the office for work.

These are just some of the many cases of tragedies that have nothing to do with Free Will and nothing to do with getting old and dying. There are millions and millions of other examples that are just as tragic. Bad things happen to good people, and nobody is to blame.

But wait a second. God is omnipresent. So, He is there during these tragedies. God is omniscient. So, He fully understands our pain during these tragedies. God is omnipotent. So, He fully has the power to prevent these tragedies. Why in the hell does God sit on his ass and do nothing? I tell you that God is evil. He’s sick. He’s a butcher. There’s no other explanation.

Let’s suppose you have a child in preschool and that your child’s teacher carries a gun for protection (for whatever reason, the school allows this). One day the teacher decides to walk the kids to the neighborhood playground. While the kids are walking, an unarmed man comes up, grabs your child, and begins choking him to death. The teacher—remember, who is armed with a gun—does nothing but stand there and watch as your child dies. Because the teacher is armed and the attacker is not, the teacher could have easily stopped the attacker. But for whatever reason she chose not to and instead just let your child die.

Certainly the attacker who killed your child is despicable, evil. But how would you feel about the teacher? Would you praise her? Would you give her money? Would you worship her? Would you devote your life to her? Of course not. You would hate her. You would want her to rot in jail, if not be killed herself. Yet God behaves exactly like this teacher, and we praise Him, we give Him money, we worship Him, and we devote our lives to Him. It makes no sense.

If there is a Christian God, he is evil, and he deserves every swear word and every amount of hatred we can throw at him, consequences be damned. Otherwise, we’re nothing more than a bunch of spineless worms too afraid to stand up to the Cosmic Butcher because we’re afraid of Hell. Better to maintain our integrity and dignity and rot in Hell than to worship a monster!

Heaven is terrifying. We’re all taught from an early age that Heaven is a wonderful place. It’s a place of eternal beauty and happiness. No death. No evil. No sadness. When you go to Heaven, you spend forever in bliss in the presence of a loving, kind God. Forever!

That would be nice, but unfortunately it doesn’t stand up to logical scrutiny. First of all, I’ve already established that God is not loving and kind. So, Heaven is about spending eternity in the presence of a sick, murderous butcher. You get to spend eternity worshiping the most evil being imaginable. But let’s put aside the nature of God for a bit and think about the nature of Heaven. We’ll discover some horrifying subtleties.

First, what are the consequences of living in a society with nothing but good and happiness, a society without sadness, pain, or evil? My arguments here are right out of Dostoyevsky’s book Notes from Underground. It’s a fantastic book that is well worth reading. Dostoyevsky wrote about the problems of establishing perfect societies here on earth. I’m just extending his arguments to apply to perfect societies in Heaven.

Dostoyevsky says it much more eloquently than I, but quite simply, Free Will and perfect societies are incompatible. It’s impossible to have a society without sadness, pain and evil while at the same time having Free Will. Why? Because one of the consequences of having Free Will is that you can freely choose to do things that hurt other people. You can’t have Free Will without pain and suffering. If I have to make a decision between choice A and choice B, and if choice A causes happiness while choice B causes sadness, I must be able to sometimes choose choice B. Otherwise, I have no Free Will. And don’t try to argue that people in Heaven do get to decide between choice A and B, but they always choose choice A. You’re grasping at straws. Why do they always choose choice A? The answer is that something has taken away their Free Will to ever choose choice B. If people really have Free Will, then sooner or later someone must choose choice B, thus causing pain and suffering in Heaven.

Now, maybe that person who is brave enough to assert his Free Will will be cast out of Heaven and into the pits of Hell so that he can cause no more pain and suffering. But that makes Heaven even more terrifying. You have Free Will, but if you step out of line even once, even the tiniest little bit, you’ll be cast out and into Hell. You have to act good for eternity out of fear! I suspect that after a billion, billion, billion years, most everyone would have been cast out.

No. If Heaven is a place of perfect happiness, then its residents have no Free Will. And remember, Free Will is the most important aspect of being alive; it’s at the core of being human; it’s God’s greatest gift to us. Yet God is going to take it away from us so that we can spend eternity as lobotomized zombies eternally worshiping Him? No thanks.

And what about those condemned to Hell? More importantly, what about our loved ones who are condemned to Hell? Even the most hard-core Christians have loved ones, people they care about quite deeply, who aren’t Christians. Despite their best efforts at conversion, despite their best preaching, these loved ones are going to spend eternity burning in Hell. It’s tragic, more tragic than anything else we could ever dream up! So, how is the Christian going to be able to spend eternity in happiness knowing that his loved ones are suffering in Hell?

The only answer I’ve ever heard is that people in Heaven will have all their memories of those in Hell erased. Wow! God wants to erase my memories of my loved ones so that I can party it up in Heaven while they suffer in Hell? That’s just sick. And my memories, especially those of my loved ones, are things that I treasure dearly. I’ll not give them up without a fight. Frankly, I’d rather be tortured in Hell and get to keep my memories than live in Heaven without them.

And even though we won’t remember our loved ones or know of their suffering once we get to Heaven, we know them now and we can anticipate their suffering now. Isn’t this just as bad as if we knew about their suffering when we’re in Heaven? Given that we know this ahead of time, how can we continue to worship a god who would do this to us?

Finally, I’m not a Biblical scholar, but I’m not aware of any Biblical basis for this memory-erasing theory. It really smacks of being a quick, and frankly stupid, answer to a difficult question. Maybe there are verses backing this theory, and I just don’t know them.

There’s another aspect of Heaven that bothers me greatly. It’s the tediousness of eternity, especially the tediousness of an eternity without pain, suffering, or sadness. It’s the tediousness of an eternity without adventure or accomplishments. Adventure and accomplishments imply a chance of failure, a chance of sadness or pain or suffering. They’re not possible in Heaven. Heaven is really nothing more than a bunch of people sitting around smiling saying, “Yeah, this is great”… FOREVER! That would be fun for an evening, a week, maybe a month. But forever?

It’s difficult to imagine an infinite amount of time, but when I try, I can’t help thinking how tedious it would be. Think about it. After a billion, billion, billion, billion, billion years, you would have met every person that there is to meet in Heaven; you would have seen everything there is to see; you would have had every conversation there is to have; you would have done everything there is to do. But yet you wouldn’t have even served 1% of your time in Heaven, not even close. Add a few more billions to the time line, and you’ve done everything there is to do a billion times, literally! You’ve had every conversation a billion times. You’ve watched every possible combination of outcomes in a football game a billion times. And you still haven’t served anywhere close to 1% of your time in Heaven.

What exactly do people do in Heaven to stay entertained for eternity? To me, it sounds eternally tedious and boring.

Here’s a final uncomfortable question about Heaven. If Heaven is such a great place, why did Satan rebel against God knowing that he’d be kicked out of Heaven? Why was Satan able to raise an army of 1/3 of the angels when they too knew that they’d certainly be kicked out of Heaven? Satan and his army must have known they’d lose and be cast out since they were up against an omnipotent force. Yet they chose to rebel anyway. Why?

One easy answer is that Satan is pure evil. So, of course he’d rebel against God. But that answer doesn’t fly, and it’s not in line with traditional Roman Catholic thinking going back to the time of Aquinas. The problem is that if Satan is pure evil, where did he come from? The Bible tells us that God is the Creator of all things in Heaven and on earth. So, God must have created Satan. But if God is pure good (ignore my arguments above), how could He have created pure evil? It just can’t work that way.

No. The traditional Christian thinking is that God created Satan just like us, namely, good but with Free Will. Satan just chose to exercise his Free Will to a greater extent than any of us would dare do, and he completely, totally rejected God, and got tossed out of Heaven in the process. Again, this is not my thinking; it’s traditional Christian thinking, and it’s really the only way a concept of Satan makes any sense.

So Satan didn’t rebel because he was some inherently evil automaton who had no choice in the matter. Satan rebelled because he freely chose to reject God and Heaven. Which brings us back to the question of why Satan freely chose to reject Heaven if it’s such a great place? Maybe he chose to reject Heaven because he could no longer worship a god who acted like a monster. Maybe he chose to reject Heaven because he could no longer suppress his Free Will out of fear. Maybe he chose to reject Heaven because he couldn’t stand the thought of pretending to be happy in Heaven knowing that future souls would suffer terribly in Hell. Maybe he rejected Heaven because after billions upon billions upon billions of years, he was bored out of his mind, and the thought of swimming in a fiery lake sounded better than having the exact same conversation with the exact same person for the trillionth time. Maybe Satan had some other motivation. But, the point is that Satan freely chose to exchange Heaven for eternal suffering in Hell. If Heaven is such a great place, you’ve got to wonder why?

Like Satan, I too reject the terrifying concept of Heaven. Better to keep my Free Will and spend eternity being tortured in a burning lake where at least I’m free to eternally curse God for standing idly by while my daughter died. I’ll pass on spending eternity as a lobotomized zombie worshiping an evil god.

I started out by saying that I’m an agnostic, but then followed a line of reasoning that seems to conclude with, I suppose, Satanism. What gives? Well, we started by accepting the notion of an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Christian God. Given that, I suppose I would be a Satanist. The problem, of course, is that I don’t believe in the concept of a Christian God. Let’s explore why.

The telephone game. Why is it that we have to come to God through faith? Why can’t He appear as a big head in the sky with a booming loud voice issuing commandments? Why can’t He show us one massive example of his power. Surely, we would all drop to our knees and worship and believe in him then! Why does God need us to believe through faith? Why is this better? Can you imagine if we had no physical evidence of the President of the United States? Can you imagine if the President had never appeared in public, or on TV, if nobody had ever seen the President or heard his voice? That would be absurd. Why is it any less absurd with God?

Of course, according to the Bible, this hasn’t always been the case. God used to physically reveal himself to mankind on a regular basis. He appeared to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He appeared to Noah and Abraham. He appeared to Moses, first as a burning bush, second as a pillar of fire leading the Israelites out of Egypt, and finally on Mount Sinai while personally delivering the Ten Commandments. God appeared as Jesus and performed miracles such as turning water into wine, casting out demons, healing the sick, and even raising the dead. But God hasn’t made a real, physical appearance in 2000 years. Why? And isn’t it convenient that when God did appear, it was at a time when there were no cameras or video cameras or news channels or computers or cell phones to record it?

It’s as if the God faucet used to run full blast, but it was shut off 2000 years ago, and all we’re left with now is a tradition of faith passed down from generation to generation.

Did you ever play the telephone game when you were a kid? In the telephone game, you line up maybe 15 or 20 people in a row. Then, you whisper a secret to the first person in line. That person whispers the secret to the second person, who whispers the secret to the third, and so on until the last person gets the secret. The last person then tells the group what he was told. Inevitably, the message from the last person is totally different from the starting message. The message was garbled as it went from person to person.

Christian faith has been passed down to us through a telephone game, only instead of having 15 or 20 people involved, the faith has passed through 2000 years of the telephone game! And to make it worse, there has been undeniable corruption in the Church along the way. Consider the corruption of the Church in the middle ages. Many priests and nuns ignored their vows of celibacy. Popes Innocent VIII and Alexander VI—supposedly infallible—fathered children. Clergy exploited their positions to live luxurious lifestyles, paying for these lifestyles by selling indulgences and charging admission fees to see religious relics. Consider the brutality of the Crusades and the Inquisition, both driven by the Church and seemingly anti-Christian. Consider Constantine who blended Christianity with paganism for political gains. In modern times, consider the child molestation abuses within the Catholic Church and the ensuing cover-ups. Or consider the evangelicals who have fallen from grace such as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker. What about Peter Popoff, the “faith healer” who was busted when radio surveillance discovered his staff in the booth transmitting secret information about sick audience members by radio to his hidden ear-piece? His staff even laughed over the radio about how one overweight lady with cancer came bouncing down the aisle to be healed.

My point isn’t to harp on and on about church corruption. Rather, my point is that the Church has been a critical link in passing down Christian faith and “truth” from generation to generation. Given 2000 years of the telephone game and given the corruption in the Church at various steps along the way, how can we be so sure that the religious “truth” we’re getting today even remotely resembles the religious “truth” that was pumped into the pipeline 2000 years ago? Christians may be preaching the exact opposite of what God intended for all we know. Couldn’t God just appear and make an undeniable statement of religious truth that we could capture on camera? Surely God must be smart enough to understand that His Word has been corrupted over the years and needs clarification.

Of course, my bigger point is that I doubt any of God’s revelations from 2000 or more years ago really happened. There’s just no credible evidence to support them.

Brainwashing children. Several years ago, I saw a website that explained some of the mythology behind Scientology (http://altreligion.about.com/od/mythologicalfigures/a/xenu.htm). I have no idea if the information on that website is really what Scientologists believe, but it really doesn’t matter for my purposes here. The claim is that there was an overlord named Xenu who ruled the Galactic Federation 75 million years ago. Due to overpopulation problems, he killed large numbers of people, captured their souls, and dumped them on the earth. He then destroyed the souls on earth with nuclear bombs. As near as I can make out from the stories, we humans are made up of the pieces of these destroyed souls. Luckily, Xenu was eventually overthrown and imprisoned on a deserted planet where he lives to this very day. My wife and I read the story and laughed wondering how anyone could believe such nonsense.

But then I started thinking about the mythology behind Christianity. Among other things, we’ve got a god who created a woman from the rib of a man. A god who wiped out nearly all life on earth with a flood. A god who brought down curses on Egypt including turning the entire Nile River (the world’s longest river) into blood, frogs, gnats, wild animals, disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and death of the firstborn son. A god who led his people as a pillar of fire and who separated the seas so that his people could cross. We’ve got Sampson who derived his strength from his long hair. We’ve got Jesus who performed miracles and resurrected himself from the dead.

Why is it that the mythology of Xenu seems so ridiculous to us but the mythology behind Christianity doesn’t? They’re both pretty far “out there”. I believe it’s because we’re brainwashed into Christianity when we’re children. We think Christianity is normal and we accept it as not being ridiculous only because we are immersed in it from the time we are young. Suppose you took 1,000 kids and somehow raised them in a bubble so that they were not exposed to any religious teachings. When they became adults, you then exposed them to Xenu and Jesus. What do you think would happen? A small handful would latch onto Xenu and become Scientologists. A small handful would latch onto Jesus and become Christians. But the overwhelming majority would reject both Xenu and Jesus as being absurd.

This is precisely why we focus so much on teaching religion to young kids who don’t have the capability to think logically, rationally, and critically. This is precisely why people push for prayer in school. If you teach kids from a young age that Christianity is normal, they’ll accept it. If not, you’ll lose them forever. Putting a more sinister twist on this, if you teach kids from a young age to fear Hell, they’ll be Christians forever.

Here’s a question for my Christian readers. Why are you a Christian? For the overwhelming majority of you, the honest answer is because you grew up in a Christian family, or that you were in an environment where you were surrounded by Christians. That’s obviously not true in every case, but it is true in most cases. Can you honestly tell me that you’d still be a Christian if you grew up in a Muslim family in the middle of Pakistan? Of course not! In all likelihood, you’d be a hard-core Muslim, and you’d be thinking that Christians are going to Hell. What about if you grew up in a Buddhist family in China, or a Hindu family in India? Of course, there are examples of people leaving one religion for another. I’m sure you can find examples of hard-core Christians who converted from Islam. But these are the exceptions; most people don’t convert. An impartial observer would have to look at the mess of religions and wonder if any are true or if more likely they’re just myths being passed down from generation to generation.

As an aside, I am appalled at the idea of brainwashing kids with religion. I am appalled at the idea of presenting religious “truths” to people who are too young to think critically. I much prefer teaching kids about all the religions without presenting any as the truth. When the kids become adults and can think critically, they can choose whatever religion they want, or perhaps choose no religion at all. Either way, they come about their beliefs honestly and with Free Will. If you’re so secure in your religious beliefs and so sure they’re right, why not let kids wait until they’re adults to choose their religions? If your religion is so clearly right, won’t they choose yours? What are you so worried about?

Easy answers to difficult questions. So how do religions like Christianity come about if they aren’t true? Like many non-believers, I suspect it’s because religions provide easy answers to difficult questions. Where do we come from? What happens when we die? Why is there evil in the world? In older times, why do we get sick? What are the stars? What is the moon? Sometimes it’s really hard to just say, “I don’t know.” Sometimes it’s easier to make up stories about a god than to tell the truth.

When my mother died, my oldest son was 4 years old. Because my wife and I are raising are children as agnostics, it was very difficult for me to tell my son that Grandma had died and we weren’t going to see her anymore. When my son inevitably asked what happens when you die, it was very difficult for me to say, “I don’t know.” My son was just too young to be able to deal with death without a crutch like eternal life in Heaven to fall back on. It would have been so much easier to explain death from a Christian perspective. Grandma is living in perfect happiness for eternity in Heaven. She’s looking down on us now and smiling. Someday, we’ll see her again. We should be happy for Grandma, not sad.

The point is that in difficult situations, when you really don’t have a good answer for your kids, sometimes it’s easier to try to comfort them with stories of God and Heaven. I suspect this has a lot to do with how religions propagate through the ages.

Before moving on, let’s not forget that sometimes religions’ easy answers to difficult questions are later proven incorrect by science. The Bible claims that the earth is several thousand years old; science has now proven that it is several billion years old. The Church used to claim that the earth was at the center of the universe; science has now proven that the earth is just a tiny planet on the outer edge of a galaxy containing hundreds of billions of stars. This galaxy in turn is part of a universe of hundreds of billions of other galaxies. The Church used to teach that sickness was caused by demon possession. We’ve since learned about viruses, bacteria, genetic diseases, cancer, and so on. How could the Church be so wrong about so many things and yet still proclaim to teach the “truth”? How do we know what current Church teachings will later be dis-proven by science, or are we naive enough to think that all the incorrect teachings have already been weeded out?

Philosophical questions. Let’s say for the sake of argument that we were in fact created by God. Great, but in my mind, that doesn’t answer anything. Where did God come from? Don’t tell me he’s always existed. My logical mind knows that things that exist come about through some sort of process. That is, there is a point in time where they don’t exist and then a point in time where they do exist. How did God come about? I’ve got another very esoteric problem with God existing infinitely in the past and infinitely into the future. If that’s the case, do you know what the odds are that an impartial observer would look at a time line and come to the finite point on the line where earth exists? That would have a 0% chance of happening. And I mean exactly 0%, not nearly 0%. If the earth is 5 billion years old, then 5 billion divided by an infinite time span is exactly 0. There is literally no chance that we should all find ourselves together at this point in time together on our little planet if God is infinitely old.

As long as we’re dealing with mathematics, let’s talk about dimensions. We live in a universe with 4 dimensions, three spatial dimensions plus a time dimension. Actually, physicists will tell you there are lots of other dimensions. But let’s keep it simple and limit the discussion to the 4 dimensions we can easily observe in our every day lives. Now, are these 4 dimensions part of the universe, or do they transcend the universe?

Let’s assume that the 4 dimensions are part of the universe. Since God created the universe, that means God created the 4 dimensions. That means that God doesn’t live in time and spatial dimensions. I have a difficult time fathoming what that really even means. The concepts of taking up space and moving through space and time are so fundamental to everything I know that I can’t comprehend a being who takes up no space nor who moves through space and time. To complicate things further, the Bible says that we’re created in God’s image. Doesn’t that mean that we physically resemble God? But our physical appearances are driven by the space that our bodies take up. How could we be in God’s image if we take up space while God has no spacial dimensions? Clearly our assumption that the 4 dimensions are part of the universe is wrong. The dimensions must transcend the universe, they must transcend God’s creations, and He must live within the spacial and time dimensions just like we do.

But wait a minute! Either God is omnipotent or He’s not. If God is omnipotent, how can he be constrained to live within the spacial and time dimensions? Doesn’t that make the dimensions more powerful than God?

We’ve clearly reached a paradox here, or perhaps a singularity in Christian thinking. Perhaps Christian thinking needs a bit of redesign to better deal with this problem!

The human body is poorly designed. I’m a software developer. I develop complex software systems for a living. I’m a mere mortal who has only had 40 years to learn what I know. I’m not an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent being who has gathered an infinite amount of knowledge over an infinite time span. But even I know enough that when I design software systems, I always design them with redundancy for fault tolerance. Avoid single points of failure. In a real computer system, hard drives crash, computers go down, and parts of the system fail. But you always design the system so that it has enough redundancy to keep running when one part fails. So, you have multiple application servers, hot backup database servers, backup load balancers ready to go live when the primary load balancer fails, and so on. Why do you think that the entire Google application doesn’t crash when one of its computers crashes? Redundancy!

If we mere mortals can design a system with redundancy, why can’t God do the same, especially given all of His infinite wisdom? Let’s face it, the human body is a poor design. Sure we have redundancy in our kidneys. We have two but really only need one. (Ironically, kidneys—the part of our body with the most redundancy—are the body parts for which we’ve had the best luck building artificial replacements.) But, why don’t we have a backup heart or stomach or liver? Why is our brain—the control center for our entire body—way off at one side of our body where it can easily get disconnected. Our necks seem like a fragile way to connect the command center to the body. Wouldn’t you want the command center buried deep in the center of the body where it is best protected? And why is the brain connected to the rest of the body by only a single spinal cord? Isn’t that like designing a data center without a backup power source? I could go on and on. Why do we have an appendix, which serves no useful purpose but can only cause big problems when it becomes infected or ruptures?

Clearly, our bodies are an imperfect design. If we were made by God, wouldn’t you expect Him to have done a better job?

Early Christian history. I find the history of the early Church to be fascinating. I used to think that the history of the early Church was fairly simple. The disciples/apostles formed the earliest churches. Paul expanded these churches out to include non-Jewish groups. The Gospels were from people who knew Jesus personally, or at least were passed down orally from those with direct knowledge of Jesus to later generations who transcribed the oral traditions. There was little disagreement in the early Church on basic truths about God and Jesus. Sure, there was debate about little things like circumcision and inclusion of gentiles. But on fundamental issues such as Jesus being God, the Resurrection, the virgin birth, and Jesus’s teachings, there was little debate. Christianity started from a single, unified source and grew and grew, despite unspeakable persecution, until it was adopted by Constantine as the official Roman religion.

This view, however, is not true. Christianity did not evolve from a single, unified source. Nor were the Gospels passed down from the time of Jesus. Early Christians were divided into many disagreeing factions. The three most important were Jewish Christianity, Gnostic Christianity, and Pauline Christianity.

The Jewish Christian movement was a Jerusalem-based group formed by Jesus’s disciples after his death. Jesus’s brother James was the movement’s early leader. This group considered itself a reform movement within Judaism rather than a separate religion. They observed Jewish holy days, followed a kosher diet, and practiced circumcision and animal sacrifice. Most importantly, they did not view Jesus as God, but rather as a prophet and great teacher. It is critically important—and it should be somewhat unsettling to Christians—that the early Christian movement most closely linked to Jesus’s life did not view him as being part of a Holy Trinity with God and the Holy Spirit. The Jewish Christian movement was largely wiped out in 70 AD when the Romans attacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. Along with other Jewish sects, the Jewish Christians were killed or enslaved, and the movement effectively came to an end.

Gnostic Christians held beliefs we would consider quite radical today. They believed that the God of the Old Testament is a false and imperfect god. To put it bluntly, God is evil and stupid. In his incompetence, God created an imperfect universe and trapped man’s perfect souls within this imperfect universe. Jesus was a pure spiritual being sent to tell mankind the truth about God and thus free mankind’s souls. Jesus was not human at all. His human body was merely an illusion. The Gnostics were a major force in early Christianity from the time of Jesus’s death until the Council of Nicea in 325 AD when Gnosticism was largely stamped out.

The final major early Christian faction, Pauline Christianity, interestingly had little direct connection to Jesus. Pauline Christianity was a movement started by Paul. We all know the story. Paul started out life as Saul. He was a devout Jew who persecuted early Christians, and was even present at the stoning of the Christian martyr Stephen. While on his way to persecute Christians in Damascus, Saul had a vision of Jesus, converted to Christianity, changed his name to Paul, and became the greatest Christian evangelist of his age. He brought the message of Jesus to the gentiles, founding many churches that became the basis for modern-day Christianity. Paul’s letters to his churches form much of the New Testament. In fact, Paul’s letters are the earliest writings in the New Testament. The Gospels, Acts, and Revelations all were written after Paul’s letters.

What is troubling about Paul is that he had little direct connection to Jesus. He had little contact with Jesus’s actual disciples, and when he did speak with them, it was only several years after he had begun his ministry. In fact, Paul writes in his letters that his teachings come directly from Jesus, not from knowledge passed on to him from other people. As a result, Paul knew remarkably little about Jesus’s life. He never mentions the virgin birth, the Sermon on the Mount, or the miracles. Paul never quotes Jesus. It’s unclear whether Paul even knows if Jesus lived hundreds of years earlier or only decades earlier. What is clear is that Paul created modern Christianity, and his writings were the earliest writings in the New Testament. The other writings in the New Testament grew out of Paul’s movement and came about later.

Now, here is a very important question you should be asking: How is it that so little was known about Jesus’s life at the time of Paul, yet so much was known several generations later when the Gospels were written? Isn’t it likely that as teachings about Jesus were passed on from generation to generation and from community to community, they were embellished so that the final product (the Gospels) didn’t match the source? I find it highly suspicious that these details about Jesus’s life skipped a generation—and not just any generation, but rather the founding generation—before being written down in detail.

And just to complicate matters, the stories that finally emerged in the Gospels were strikingly similar to other, existing non-Christian mythology. The following URL lists similarities between Jesus and other mythical figures: http://www.geocities.com/inquisitive79/godmen. I’ll repeat some of this information here:

Attis of Phrygia. Attis was born on December 25 to a virgin mother. He was crucified on March 23 to redeem mankind. He was resurrected on March 25. (Incidentally, March 23 and March 25 also coincide with early beliefs about the dates of Jesus’s death and resurrection.) His followers ate bread representing his body.

Dionysus. Dionysus was born on December 25 and placed in a manger after birth. He performed miracles and rode in a triumphal procession on a donkey. He turned water into wine. He rose from the dead on March 25. He was associated with the symbol of a lamb.

Horus. Horus, the mythical son of the Egyptian god Osiris, was viewed as being one and the same as his father. Osiris was known as the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, the Resurrection and the Life, and the Good Shepperd. He was viewed as a god-man who had suffered, died, rose from the dead, and now reigned eternally in Heaven. Three wise men announced the coming of Osiris. As with Attis, his followers ate bread symbolizing his flesh. Regarding Horus, he was born to a virgin on December 25, his father was Seb, a form of Joseph. He taught in the temple as a child at age 12 and then disappeared until his baptism at age 30. The man who baptized him was later beheaded. He had 12 disciples and performed miracles, including walking on water. He was crucified between two thieves, died, and was resurrected.

Krishna. Krishna was born to a virgin mother on December 25. His father was a carpenter who was off on a trip to pay taxes at the time of Krishna’s birth. His birth was signaled by a star. An angry leader ordered the slaughter of thousands of infants in an attempt to kill the baby Krishna. Krishna performed miracles and preached of love for the poor. When he was executed—at roughly the age of 30—the sun turned black. After his execution, he rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. His believers think that he will return to judge mankind and do battle with the “Prince of Evil”.

Mithra. Mithra was born to a virgin mother on December 25. Shepherds brought him gifts at his birth. He had 12 disciples who were promised eternal life. He was sacrificed to save the world and rose from the dead on the third day. He was called the Good Shepherd and associated with the lamb. Mithra’s followers practiced the Eucharist. In fact, Mithra said, “He who shall not eat of my body nor drink of my blood so that he may be one with me and I with him, shall not be saved.”

Zoroaster. Zoroaster was born of a virgin mother, baptized in a river, and as a child, amazed wise men with his wisdom. He was tempted in the wilderness by the devil and began his ministry at age 30. He taught about heaven, hell, resurrection, judgment, and the apocalypse. He was killed. His followers expected him to return again to bring about a new age for mankind.

Just to summarize, the earliest documents from Pauline Christianity (Paul’s letters) do not speak about the details of Jesus’s life. These details only emerged later, and when they did emerge, they bore striking resemblance to other mythology.

Honestly, early Christianity is a bit of a mess. We have groups claiming that that Jesus was not God but rather a great prophet and teacher. We have groups claiming that Jesus was not a person but rather a spirit who came to bring us the truth about an evil God. And we have a group with the least direct connection to Jesus launching a successful religion that bears remarkable similarities to other religions. What are we really to believe from all of this mess?

Given this history, can you honestly look at the Gospels and believe that they are an accurate account of Jesus?

Ultimately, this mess was cleaned up due to political pressure in 325 AD at the Council of Nicea. Constantine was concerned that the disunity within Christianity would threaten the future of Rome. So, he called a council of bishops and ordered them to vote to determine the “truth” about Christianity. The religion that resulted from this vote became the official religion of Rome. Pauline Christianity won out, Jesus was God, and the Holy Trinity was established. Gnosticism came to an end as had Jewish Christianity more than two centuries earlier.

There’s frankly a bit too much controversy here and a bit too much human involvement for me to base my life and beliefs around anything that came out of this mess.

In conclusion, if you accept Christian beliefs about the nature of God, you must logically conclude that God is evil. That he inflicts unspeakable tragedies on innocent people. You must conclude that Heaven is a place where you spend eternity worshiping a monster, without Free Will. But ultimately, Christianity is bunk. It’s something that we only believe because we’re taught that it’s the truth when we’re young, impressionable children without the facilities to question it critically. Its history is questionable, at best, and it has been passed down to us through 2000 years of the telephone game, with unquestionable corruption along the way.

Are there important lessons to learn from Christianity? Absolutely. Peace. Love. Turning the other cheek. Loving and respecting everyone, even the lowliest members of society. The inherent good and value in every person. Sacrificing yourself for the good of mankind. These are all Christian values worth considering in other essays.

But, when it comes to questions of how we got here and what happens when we die, best to look for truth somewhere else besides Christianity.