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Why I Am Not a Christian
In 1927 the great 20th-century British philosopher Bertrand Russell delivered a lecture entitled “Why I Am Not a Christian.” After first defining a Christian, essentially, as one who believes in God and immortality and who regards Jesus Christ as “if not divine, at least the best and wisest of men,” Russell then proceeded to explain why he was not a Christian, in terms of both these fundamentals. First, he found unpersuasive the leading arguments for the existence of God (the “first-cause” argument, the natural-law argument, the “argument from design”, and various “moral” arguments), concluding that “what really moves people” to believe in God is not reason – “not any intellectual arguments at all” – but rather emotional feelings and thoughtlessness. “Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason,” he noted. “Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a big brother who will look after you. That plays a very profound part in influencing people’s desire for a belief in God.” (Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957, p. 14.) With regard to Jesus Christ, Russell explained that although he granted him “a very high degree of moral goodness,” he did not regard him as “the best and wisest of men.” After identifying several defects in Christ’s teaching, Russell then discussed what he regarded as a “very serious defect” in Christ’s moral character: his belief in hell. “I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. Christ certainly as depicted in the Gospels did believe in everlasting punishment, and one does find repeatedly a vindictive fury against those people who would not listen to His preaching – an attitude which is not uncommon with preachers, but which does somewhat detract from superlative excellence.” (Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, p. 17.) Russell maintained that the real reason why people accept religion, including Christianity, is on emotional grounds, specifically fear. “Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.” Russell added that because fear is “the parent of cruelty,” it therefore is “no wonder” that cruelty and religion have gone “hand in hand.” Although one is often told that it is wrong to attack religion, “because religion makes men virtuous,” he observed that, historically, the very opposite has been true: “It seems to me that the people who have held to it [the Christian religion] have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.”
Russell added that “every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, . . . every moral progress that there has been in the world,” has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. “I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.” In the modern era the church, “by its insistence upon what it chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people undeserved and unnecessary suffering”; and it remains the main opponent of progress and improvement in morality “because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness” and, in fact, has insisted that the object of morals is not to make people happy. Russell then concluded with an eloquent call for “What We Must Do”: “We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world – its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the fact. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. . . .”
(Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, pp. 21-23.) Like Russell, I am not a Christian. Although I agree with his basic definition of a Christian and with many of his reasons for disbelief, I actually go further than Russell in disagreeing with Christianity, in both its theology and its moral philosophy. My dispute with Christian dogma is rooted not merely in disbelief or philosophical skepticism, as was Russell’s, but in my own profoundly different personal philosophy of life and also in my conviction, as a historian, that Christianity indeed has been a principal source of human unhappiness and even suffering throughout history – and continues to be so, today. That’s why I decided to explain my own reasons for rejecting Christianity. First, some brief autobiographical comments are in order. Growing up, everything I learned about Christianity (and other religions, too), from my studies and from popular culture, persuaded me that I did not want to base my life on blind religious faith. (My parents, who were at most just nominal Christians – my mother had been baptized as a Lutheran, and my father was a lapsed Catholic – were not religious in the traditional sense, and I was raised without the dogmas of religion.) I’ve always valued my rational mind – my capacity to perceive the world, considering the direct evidence of my own senses as well as the perceptions of others, and then to use logical reasoning to reach my own conclusions about what is true and what is false. By the time of my sophomore year as an undergraduate in college I began studying America’s founding and the political philosophy of that key Founder, Thomas Jefferson. Intrigued by Jefferson and his intellectual world, I also studied the great philosophical movement in which Jefferson and his fellow leaders in the American Revolution were a part: the Enlightenment – which in its essence rejected religious dogma and instead embraced reason as the source of human knowledge. As I learned more about the Enlightenment during my graduate studies, both in law and in history, I came to appreciate the importance of this great philosophical movement not only in helping shape the ideas of Jefferson and the Founders but also in giving the entire human race hope – hope to transcend the mysticism and paternalism that have kept humans ignorant and in chains for millennia. And like many Enlightenment thinkers (including Jefferson himself), I came to see Christianity as a major impediment to hope and progress. (That’s ironic, considering that liberal reforms in Christianity – through the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance – helped usher in Enlightenment thinking. But by the 19th century, the revival of Christianity through various evangelical sects encouraged a counter-Enlightenment movement that sought to reject reason and return to blind faith and mysticism.) For many years, until I read George Smith’s Atheism book (discussed more fully below), I was reluctant to apply the label atheist to myself, in part because I believed (erroneously) that the term agnostic more accurately described my skepticism about religion and also in part because I was turned off by many outspoken atheists (particularly Madalyn Murray O’Hair and other leaders in the “humanist” movement), whose philosophy (especially their socialist politics) I abhorred. I rejected Christianity (and all other religions) not just because I lacked belief in God, or in other essential tenets of faith; but primarily because I did believe – or, more precisely, because I held convictions – in a philosophy based on reason and objective reality, which was anathema to Christianity and other faiths. That outlook, which was called “natural philosophy” during the 18th-century Enlightenment, can be found in the modern philosophy called Objectivism, originally expounded by Ayn Rand, the Russian-born novelist and philosopher who came to America in the 1920s and who became, in my opinion, the most important philosopher of the 20th century because she also was the most important expounder of Enlightenment ideas in the modern era. (For more on Rand and Objectivism, see my entry “The Centenary of Ayn Rand,” Jan. 31, 2005.) It has been Rand, through all her writings, as well as other Objectivist philosophers (and many non-Objectivist philosophers who nevertheless were inspired by Rand and/or Objectivism), who have helped shape my positive convictions – the essentials I hold as my personal philosophy. Athough I do call myself an “Objectivist (more or less),” perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I hold a personal philosophy that has been informed by Objectivism. I hold the basic concepts Rand identified as the bases of my convictions, and like her I aspire to hold them with consistency. But, also like Rand, I believe that the purpose of philosophy is to guide the course of one’s life – and because each person’s life provides a unique context of meaning, I have adapted Objectivist principles to the relevance of my own life. (And in the area of philosophy that most interests me, political philosophy – and more precisely, philosophy of law – I have disagreed with Rand and other “orthodox” Objectivists, because I think she’s wrong about some key ideas. I suspect that in other areas of philosophy – especially in ethics, where Rand and other Objectivists expound an ethics of rational self-interest – there’s also much room for development.) What makes Objectivism important today, to me and to others (potentially, for all mankind), is that it keeps alive the Enlightenment and its emphasis on reason as man’s basic tool of knowledge. That also makes the philosophy anathema to religious belief systems, including Christianity.
“Question with boldness even the existence of God”
Thomas Jefferson nicely expressed the essence of the Enlightenment philosophy in a letter he wrote in August 1787 to his nephew and ward, Peter Carr, advising him on his studies. With regard to religion, Jefferson advised him to “shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched” and instead to study religion with an open, rational mind. “Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” He specifically urged young Carr to read the Bible as he would other ancient histories, “as you would read Livy or Tacitus,” critically examining those claims that contradict the laws of nature. He also urged him to critically examine the claims of Jesus’ divinity. (Jefferson himself concluded that those claims were not a legitimate part of Jesus’ teachings but were added by later “Platonist” Christian theorists; and during his retirement years, he compiled his own edited version of the New Testament – what some modern scholars call the “Jefferson Bible” – which he regarded as a truer account of the life and moral teachings of the historic “personage called Jesus.”) He concluded by again advising Carr to “lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything because any other person, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it.” He repeated, “Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable not for the rightness but the uprightness of the decision.” Like many of America’s founders, Jefferson was a deist: that is, he believed in “a god who created the universe and then left it to its own devices” (as George Smith aptly summarizes deism in his book Atheism); unlike the traditional concept of God held by Christians, deists envisioned god as an impersonal force that acted not supernaturally but through nature itself (as Jefferson’s reference to “nature and nature’s god” in the Declaration of Independence suggests). As a deist, Jefferson adhered to one form of theism, or belief in a god; thus, he was not (as some of his critics alleged) an “atheist” because, by definition, atheism denotes the absence of a belief in god. (At the beginning of his book, Smith has a nice discussion of the definitions of theist and atheist, emphasizing that because the latter term simply identifies those who lack theistic belief, it says nothing about the positive content of one’s beliefs or values systems: “Just as one theist may disagree with another theist on important issues, so one atheist may disagree with another on important issues. An atheist may be a capitalist or a communist, an ethical objectivist or a subjectivist, a producer or a parasite, an honest man or a thief, psychologically healthy or neurotic. The only thing incompatible with atheism is theism,” because the definitions of the two terms are mutually exclusive. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Prometheus Books, 1979), pp. 8, 22-23.) Another leader of the American Revolution who was a deist – and whose views on religion closely approximated those of Jefferson – was the great polemicist (and author of Common Sense), Thomas Paine. Paine too has been unfairly vilified, both in his own time and later throughout American history (Teddy Roosevelt once famously denounced Paine as “that filthy little atheist”) because Paine was so hard-hitting in his criticisms of Christianity. Paine’s great book on religion, The Age of Reason, was published in the mid-1790s; it was, as George Smith characterizes it, “one of the most trenchant critiques of the Bible and Christianity ever published” and remains a classic of free-thought literature. Smith notes, “Paine was suspicious of organized religion in any form,” then quotes the passage in Age of Reason that most succinctly stated this suspicion as well as Paine’s own free-thinking mind: “I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
“All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
Paine was especially hostile to revealed religion, emphasizing all the evils that it has caused throughout human history: “The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. It has been the most dishonorable belief against the character of the Divinity, the most destructive to morality and the peace and happiness of man that ever was propagated since man began to exist. . . .
“Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled, and the bloody prosecutions and tortures unto death, and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes – whence arose they but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man? The lies of the Bible have been the cause of one, and the lies of the [New] Testament of the other.”
And with regard to Christianity, Paine was particularly critical because he regarded this religion as defamatory of the concept of god that he held as a deist: “Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd in belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or producers only atheists and fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purposes of despotism; and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.”
(Smith, Atheism, pp. 200-201; Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason (introduced by Philip S. Foner, Citadel Press, 1974), pp. 50, 182, 186.) Paine’s criticism are warranted: the fundamentals of Christianity – including both its concept of God (God with a capital “G”) and its theology concerning both God and Jesus Christ – are indeed human inventions, created by the various writers of both the Old and New Testaments and officials in the early Christian church who determined the official creed of the religion. It was, as Paine argued, based on fables, lies, and logical contradictions that defy reason. As George H. Smith notes, “The conflict between Christian theism and atheism is fundamentally a conflict between faith and reason,” which are mutually exclusive terms, for faith is belief without, or in spite of, reason. To believe in Christianity requires one to have faith – that is, to suspend reason: “Faith is the common thread running throughout the divergent approaches to Christian theism. The Catholic and the Protestant, the liberal and the fundamentalist, the existentialist and the Thomist – all must rely on the validity of faith as a means of acquiring knowledge. Faith is the epistemological underpinning of Christianity. If faith collapses, so does Christianity.” (Atheism, pp. 98-99.) Reason, in contrast, is not just an alternative way that humans acquire knowledge – as some Christians would argue, in their attempt to reconcile faith with reason – but rather is the faculty by which man acquires knowledge. As Smith aptly characterizes it, “Reason is not just one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox”: “Reason is the faculty by which man acquires knowledge; rational demonstration is the process by which man verified his knowledge claims. A belief based on reason is a belief that has been examined for evidence, internal coherence, and consistency with previously established knowledge. There can be no propositions beyond ‘the limits of reason.’ To advocate that a belief be accepted without reason is to advocate that a belief be accepted without thought and without verification.”
But to move “beyond reason” is precisely what Christianity requires of people who would have faith, or belief, in the Christian conception of God – to believe, in the absence of rational demonstration, which is to say to be irrational. (Smith, Atheism, pp. 110-111 [italics omitted].) And as Smith discusses in Chapters 2 and 3 of his book (“The Concept of God” and “The God of Christianity”), the Christian conception of God is truly incompatible with reason. The Christian God is complex – Smith quotes from the National Catholic Almanac, which describes God as “almighty, eternal, holy, immortal, immense, immutable, incomprehensible, ineffable, infinite, invisible, just, loving, merciful, most high, most wise, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, patient, perfect, provident, supreme, true” – but his essence is his incomprehensibility. Notwithstanding this long list of attributes, Christianity maintains that the true nature of God – his essence – lies beyond the reach of man’s reason; God is essentially unknowable and mysterious. That’s apt, considering that the attributes by which God typically is described are themselves contradictory and incompatible. Consider, for example, the claim that God is “just, loving, merciful,” an all-good being. That’s utterly irreconcilable with the biblical portrayal of God, who, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, is a “being of terrific character – cruel, vindictive, capricious, and unjust.” As Smith observes, “The Old Testament God garnered an impressive list of atrocities”: “He demanded and sanctioned human sacrifices. He killed the first-born of every Egyptian family. He sanctioned slavery and the selling of one’s daughter. He commanded the killing of witches, death for heresy, death for violating the Sabbath, death for cursing one’s parents, death for adultery, death for blasphemy, and death by stoning for unchastity at the time of marriage – a penalty imposed only upon women.
“The Old Testament credits the Israelites, acting under the auspices of Jehovah, with massacring an incredible number of men, women and children through conquest. . . . Jehovah himself was fond of directly exterminating large numbers of people, usually through pestilence or famine, and often for rather unusual offenses. In one instance, he is reported to have killed 70,000 men because David took a census of Israel. In another strange case, he sent two bears to rip apart 42 children for mocking the prophet Elisha.”
(Smith, Atheism, pp. 47-48, 76-77 [Biblical citations omitted].) It was the portrayal of God particularly in the Old Testament that prompted Thomas Paine to be so critical of the Bible: “When we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.”
(Age of Reason, p. 60.) My good friend Rod L. Evans, in Chapter 6 of the book he co-authored with Irwin M. Berent, Fundamentalism: Hazard and Heartbreaks (Open Court, 1988), documents many instances of injustice in the Bible – examples of punishments meted out by the Old Testament God that are incompatible with two central principles of justice, that only the guilty should be punished and that punishment should fit the crime: frequent imposition of death as a penalty, including death for prohibited worship or ceremonial irregularities (the Old Testament God was indeed a “jealous” god); the slaughtering of disobedient Hebrews; the slaughtering of children; the slaughtering of gentiles – men, women, and children. (Fundamentalism, pp. 46-55.) As Isaac Asimov observes in his Guide to the Bible (Avenel Books, 1981), the Bible in both its Old and New Testaments consists of many parts written by many people, some as early as the 8th century B.C. and others as late as the 1st century A.D. Evans and Berent note that “no original manuscript of any book of the Bible is known to exist”; the manuscripts that have survived are copies of copies of copies (and so on) made not by original authors but by scribes and thus, not surprisingly, are full of irregularities and contradictions. Indeed, many Biblical verses were not written by the people with whose names they have come to be associated. Moreover, the Bible as most Christians know it is incomplete: the Old Testament canon of today’s Protestant churches omits many works (generally known as the Apocrypha) that are considered part of the Old Testament canon among Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, and Ethiopian churches, as well as among the Ethiopian Jews. Other books referred to in the Old Testament as having apparently equal authority as Scripture (including The Book of the Wars of Jehovah, The Book of Jashar, and “the annals of King David”), are simply lost; they’re found in no modern version of the Bible. “People did not recognize as sacred the books of the Bible at the time they were originally written. There is no reason to assume that even the writers of these books had any notion that what they were writing would one day be included in a collection chosen by the Christian churches, and given the name `Bible.’ The books of the Bible acquired their sacred status only over a period of time.” Great controversy also surrounds New Testament books. Evans and Berent emphasize that “the Christian church lasted for its first 300 years without the Bible as we know it,” for the New Testament in its present form did not exist. For the first century or so after Jesus’ death, its books were still being written. It was not until the year 367, in a letter by Athanasius, that the first reference to a “complete” New Testament canon appears; a council at Rome in 382 formally accepted the canon, which was still not regarded as divinely inspired – a view that arose much later in Christianity. Christian church leaders in the 4th century saw the New Testament canon as simply what it was, a collection of various writings by various authors, some of which were accepted as authoritative expositions of church doctrine by most Christians. (Fundamentalism, pp. 84-85, 94-98.) Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, wrote of the New Testament: “Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or anything else; not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his own writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.”
That such a person as Jesus existed, and that he was crucified for sedition or treason, are “historical relations strictly within the limits of probability”; but the rest of the story in its key parts, including his claimed resurrection and ascension, “has every mark of fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it,” Paine concluded. The story does fit wholly within the tradition of “heathen mythology,” the polytheism of ancient Greece and Rome, he also noted: “It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born at a time when the heathen mythology has still some fashion and repute in the world, and that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. [Julius Caesar, for example, claimed descent from the goddess Venus.] . . .
“It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian Church sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality . . .; the statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of heroes changed into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the Church became as crowded with the one as the Pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both. The Christian theology is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue . . . .”
Significantly, Paine added, “The Jews, who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story.” (Paine, Age of Reason, pp. 53-55. In accord, Evans and Berent also note the many Biblical or Christian teachings – rituals, traditions, and beliefs -- that can be found in various ancient religious, primitive cults, mythologies and superstitions of pagan culture. These include baptism, fasting, sacrifices, union of a god and a virgin, trinities, the mother Mary, an apocalypse, the Garden of Eden, an ark surviving catastrophic floods, prodigiously-aged patriarchs, priests as law-givers, miracles, natural disasters as signs of divine displeasure, covenants between people and their gods, sacred objects or symbols, words or names that are taboo, and special holy days. See Fundamentalism, pp. 98-100.) (In light of all this, the recent controversy over the publication of an allegedly lost book of the New Testament – the so-called “Gospel of Judas” – is rather interesting and revealing. Those Biblical scholars who call the text “heresy” or “fiction” are ignoring the uncomfortable truth that it’s no more heretical or fictional than are the gospels accepted as official parts of the canon.) To a rational thinker, the conclusion is inescapable: the Bible is not “the word of God”; it is merely a collection of stories – some historical, others based in legend and myth – devised by its various human authors to suit the particular religious needs of the ancient (and relatively primitive) Mediterranean/Near Eastern society for which its stories were invented. To posit the existence of God as conceptualized by Christians – and to regard the stories of the Bible as unerring teachings of truth, relevant to modern life – truly does require an irrational leap of faith. It is the height (or perhaps I should say, the depth) of absurdity for people in the modern era to believe in the Christian concept of God or to consider that book of fables known as the Bible to have any relevance at all to our lives today. Why, then, do so many seemingly intelligent people so believe? The answer lies in human psychology. Bertrand Russell was right: Christianity, like all other religions, is based upon fear – “the terror of the unknown,” “fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.” The Christian concept of God provides a convenient metaphor, a convenient coping mechanism, for those aspects of reality that cause individuals profound unease in their minds: the sudden death of a loved one, an imminent threat to one’s life, profound doubts about one’s career or relationships, and so on. Rather than simply accept the stark reality that there are many “mysteries” in life that are beyond any individual’s finite understanding, many people prefer to stop relying on their rational faculty for understanding beyond certain points and instead make that irrational leap of faith, to avoid the responsibility of facing the unknown. And how easy it is for most Christians, who find in their families or their communities a conveniently pre-packaged belief system that their ancestors similarly had relied on for tens of centuries – a belief system that their parents, their neighbors, their teachers and mentors all regard as “true.” It takes an exceptionally clear mind to see through all the bullshit!
The “Original Sin” Con Game
Perhaps the most invidious aspect of Christianity is its notion of sin, and especially the idea of “original sin.” Christianity holds as one of its basic tenets that human beings, by their essential nature, are “sinful,” or depraved, and therefore are doomed to suffer everlasting torment after death – in the dark side of the after-life they call “hell” – unless they are “saved,” by God’s grace and/or by faith in Jesus Christ as their “savior.” (I say “and/or” because one of the oldest ambiguities, or contradictions, in Christian theology is the question whether humans, by their own choices – their faith or their actions, or “good works” – can save themselves or whether each person’s fate is wholly determined – “predestined” – by God. Most Christian sects have attempted to resolve this question by straddling the fence, teaching believers that they ought both to have the right faith and to do “good,” according to the Christian moral code, just in case all is not determined by predestination. That way, they are taught, they’ll be ready for God’s “judgment” after their death.) Note how much Christianity stresses death and the supposed “after life” – that is, the supposed continued existence of the “soul” after bodily death – rather than life here on earth. Quite literally, Christianity is a philosophy of death – not a philosophy of life. (That’s why, as I discuss in the next section, the Christian moral code is fundamentally deficient, for the whole purpose of a moral code is to give one guidance for living.) The idea of “original sin” holds that human beings are inherently sinful because they are all “the sons (or daughters) of Adam” and that they inherit from that first man (and his mate, Eve) his “sin” of disobedience of God when, in the Garden of Eden, he chose to eat the forbidden fruit of a certain tree. Various versions of the Eden myth appear in ancient Near East religions, but the version adopted by early Christian theologians associates the forbidden fruit with knowledge of good and evil. Thus, in essence, Christianity holds that Adam did wrong by failing to blindly obey God and instead relied on his own capacity as a rational, volitional being – and thus became, fully, the human being that God (according to the religion) had created “in his own image.” Presumably, God in his infinite yet mysterious wisdom had intended man not to use the brain he gave him – and when Adam thwarted that contradictory intent, God maliciously punished Adam and Eve by banishing them from the Garden of Eden – which is to say, by forcing them to live in the real world. Moreover, God decided that he would punish all of Adam’s and Eve’s descendants – that he would regard all human beings as inheriting the “sin” of Adam from birth – unless they somehow “atoned” for that original sin. That atonement, furthermore, consists in faith in the Christian theology, the precise content of which varies with each competing Christian sect but which generally calls for belief in Jesus Christ as “Son of God,” who took human form not only to teach God’s truth but also, through his suffering and his death by crucifixion, to “save” those who believed in him (and in his teachings, as expounded by various New Testament authors and the early fathers of the Christian church). (Another sign that Christianity is a philosophy of death rather than a philosophy for living is, appropriately, its chief symbol – the Cross on which Jesus was crucified – making it, to my knowledge, the only religion that has an instrument of torture and death as its symbol.) What makes this idea so invidious is that it identifies “sin” with the essential defining attributes of human beings. In “Galt’s Speech” in her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand explained in blunt terms the real meaning of original sin: “Your code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice. It demands, as his first proof of virtue, that he accept his own depravity without proof. It demands that he start, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. . . .
“The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.
“A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.
“Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a `tendency’ to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his free choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.
“What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge – he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil – he became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his labor – he became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desire – he acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joy – all the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he was – that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love – he was not man.
“Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.”
(Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, New York: Random House, 1957, pp. 1025-26.) How could so perverse a belief last a generation, yet alone two millennia? The answer is found in human psychology. Just as belief in God is rooted in negative emotions (particularly fear of the unknown), the Christian faith has a hold over millions of persons because of its success in appealing to a whole range of emotions, not only negative but also positive (not just fear, in various forms, but also many of the very things Christianity denounces as “cardinal sins” – such as greed, envy, and pride – as well as guilt and its near-opposites, love and hope). The idea of original sin reveals that Christianity, in essence, is an elaborate psychological con game – arguably, the greatest con in human history. The myth of man’s fall is designed to make humans feel guilty for being human; the myth of Christ’s redemption cashes in on that guilt by offering hope to escape the everlasting torments of hell, the horrible punishment that Christianity posits as the ultimate fate of all humans who do not buy into the belief system. Put another way, the Christian con game works like this: If you really want to control people (which ultimately is what all Christian clergy, from the Pope in Rome all the way down to the itinerant evangelical preacher, really want to do), you define as “sin” those attributes that are essential aspects of human nature. You not only make people feel guilty for those “sins,” but you also fill them with “fear of God” – that is, fear of the unknown, fear of death, and the mythical prospect of everlasting torments in hell, after death – and then you cash in on those feelings of guilt and fear by offering hope, “redemption” through unquestioning faith in the very theology that invented the sources of those feelings of guilt and fear. For countless millions of human beings, who for whatever reason have chosen not to be fully human – who have chosen not to exercise their rational faculty but instead not to think at all, to “blank out” reality (in Rand’s apt phrase) – sadly, the game works – and Christianity gives them a rationale for living, according to the Christian moral code. (Not surprising, the Roman Catholic Church, which has been engaged in this con game longer than any Christian sect other than the Eastern Orthodox Church, has in many ways refined and perfected the con, by creating a special class of persons who are asked to renounce key aspects of their humanity – priests, who are men who take a vow of celibacy and thus are asked to renounce the male sex drive, redirecting their energies to obedience to the Church and its dogma – and who in turn are given the power to hear, in complete confidence, individuals’ confessions of their sins and moreover to grant absolution. Thus are Roman Catholics taught, in essence, that they may go on sinning – in other words, go on being human – provided they continue to be active members of the Church, going to confession, doing penance, and also marrying and having children – as many children as they can, provided they are raised as Catholics, that is, as future marks for the Church’s elaborate swindle.) As I noted, it’s the greatest con game in human history. But it hasn’t tricked me because I do not buy into its premises. I do not believe in any sort of “after-life”; life on earth, in the here and now, is all we have; and each of us should make the most of it. And I reject the idea of original sin; I refuse to feel guilty for being human.
“The Sins of Christianity”
Like many deists in the 18th century, both Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine rejected Christian theology while still accepting Christian morality. For all the criticism that Paine has for “the glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods” found in the New Testament, “the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,” he nevertheless has nothing but praise for Jesus himself, his moral character and his moral teachings. As I’ve noted above, Jefferson even created his own edited version of the New Testament, deleting all the absurd theological claims but retaining what he believed to be Jesus’s genuine teachings, which he regarded as “the most sublime morality that has ever fallen from the lips of man” – as distinguishable from Christian teachings as “the diamond from the dunghill.” (Paine, Age of Reason, pp. 168-69; Jefferson to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819.) Jefferson and Paine were both far too charitable to Jesus and the moral code that he preached. The absurdity of Christianity is not limited to its theology; its moral philosophy is equally deplorable. The proper purpose of a moral code is to guide human beings in their choices and their actions – to give persons the values that are proper for human beings to live well. What is “good” for human beings, of course, depends on their nature; for humans to live well means that they should not only survive, biologically, but also to flourish (a concept for which Aristotle had a splendid classical Greek word, eudaimonia, meaning “an activity of the soul in accordance with excellence”). Put another way, morality ought to help human beings not only live, but live excellently – in peace, in happiness, as human beings ought to live, properly using those traits that uniquely identify them as humans, their rational minds and their ability to make choices. A “sublime” morality, to use Jefferson’s term, ought to give persons the proper guidance necessary for them not simply to live but to live well, to flourish. Unfortunately, the Christian moral code fails to meet this standard. Not only does it stand in the way of human flourishing; it also stands in the way of mere biological survival. That’s because, as we shall see, Christian ethics is essentially not a code for life but rather a code for death. Although Christianity presents Jesus Christ, “Son of God and son of man,” as essentially the paragon of human perfection, the ideal to which all human beings ought to aspire, the man described by the New Testament writers was riddled with imperfections; indeed, by no rational standard can Jesus be regarded as even a good man. Evans and Berent observe that “[a]lthough Jesus, as depicted in the Bible, obviously possessed a number of admirable traits, including compassion, fairness, generosity, sensitivity, and loving kindness,” he also is portrayed as having less positive attributes and some moral defects: he is also “narrow-minded, vindictive, discourteous, ethnocentric, and even hypocritical.” His teaching style was authoritarian; he called for “categorical, unquestioning acceptance with no toleration for disagreement.” He also threatened his disciples with extreme suffering if they doubted what he said. Indeed, perhaps the most deplorable of Jesus’ teachings was a belief in eternal punishment – an everlasting Hell, which he described in horrific terms, as “eternal fire,” “ever-lasting fire,” a”furnace,” with “weeping and gnashing of teeth” – for those who commit the unpardonable sin of disbelief. (Fundamentalism: Hazards and Heartbreaks, pp. 60-70.) In the splendid Chapter 12 of his Atheism book, George H. Smith discusses “The Sins of Christianity,” explaining the profound problems associated with the Christian moral code. Smith begins by noting that, unlike rational morality (which offers standards to guide human conduct), religious morality offers rules, for it is steeped in authoritarianism. “The oldest and crudest form of a rule sanction is the use or threat of physical force,” which is manifested in Christianity by the doctrine of hell. It is not surprising, then, that Jesus had so authoritarian a teaching style and that one of his key teachings was belief in eternal punishment: Fear of everlasting torment in hell is the basic sanction Christianity offers its believers for disobedience to its rules. Smith notes: “The belief in eternal torment, still subscribed to by fundamentalist Christian denominations, undoubtedly ranks as the most vicious and reprehensible doctrine of classical Christianity.” Adding that it has resulted in “an incalculable amount of psychological torture, especially among young children where it is employed as a terror tactic to prompt obedience,” he cites as an example some passages from a series of “Books for Children” written by an English priest named Father Furniss in the 19th century and which enjoyed a wide circulation among English Catholics well into this century. Called “the children’s apostle,” Furniss specialized in describing for children the tortures of hell: “His eyes are burning like two burning coals. Two long flames come out of his ears. . . . Sometimes he opens his mouth, and a breath of blazing fire rolls out. But listen! There is a sound just like that of a kettle boiling. Is it really a kettle boiling? No. Then what is it? Hear what it is. The blood is boiling in the scalding veins of that boy. The brain is boiling and bubbling in his head. The marrow is boiling in his bones. Ask him why he is thus tormented. His answer is that when he was alive, his blood boiled to do very wicked things.”
(“Wicked things,” according to Christian morality, include some of the most basic things that bring pleasure and psychological well-being to human beings, as discussed below.) Smith concludes, “Hell stands as a constant reminded of the essence of Christianity: God is to be obeyed because, in the final analysis, he is bigger and stronger than we are; and in addition, he is incomparably more vicious. With the warning, `Obey God or burn in hell,’ we have a straightforward illustration of a physical sanction, as well as a revealing glimpse into the core of Christianity.” (Atheism, pp. 299-300.) But Christianity morality does not stop there. Its physical sanction employs the emotion of fear; but it also utilizes a psychological sanction, which employs the emotion of guilt. That sanction derives from the Christian concept of “sin.” Smith explains: “A man motivated by fear may still retain an element of rebelliousness, of determination to strike back given the opportunity. A man motivated by guilt, however, is a man with a broken spirit; he will obey the rules without question.” Psychological sanctions are extremely effective; “a guilt-ridden man is the perfect subject for religious morality.” And Christianity, with its notion of sin, has “perhaps the most effective sanction ever invented”: “For a Christian, to sin is the worst thing imaginable, and the thought of committing a sin can cause intense guilt. Anyone who comes from a religious background can appreciate the tremendous psychological force of this concept. Sin represents something metaphysically monstrous, something that directly undercuts a man’s sense of self-esteem, and this adds to its effectiveness as a manipulative device. Friedrich Nietzsche, in his vitriolic but penetrating attack on Christianity, clearly recognized the function of sin in this context. `Sin,’ he writes, ` . . . that form par excellence of the self-violation of man, was invented to make science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man impossible; the priest rules through the invention of sin.”
(Atheism, p. 301, quoting Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ.) The “sin” con game complements the original sin con game and completes the perversity of the Christian moral code. A Christian, who is to feel guilt for the “sin” of simply being born human, is continually loaded with guilt for the “sins” of simply continuing to live as a human being ought to live – and then the church (whatever type of Christian church it may be – Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, mainline Protestant or evangelical/Pentecostal Protestant, Mormon, or any other type of Christian sect, for they all play the same psychological game) cashes in on that guilt. In her novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand coined a phrase that aptly describes the con game played by Christianity: “white blackmail.” Governments practice it when they declare so many things to be crimes that it becomes impossible for citizens not to live without breaking laws; then (as one of the villains in the novel explains it), after you’ve “created a nation of law-breakers, you cash in on guilt.” Religions like Christianity play the game by declaring all the things humans want (or ought) to do as “sins” – and similarly cashing in on the guilt. Making people feel guilty for “crimes” or “sins” that really aren’t either – that’s the game. Smith continues, “The effectiveness of sin as a psychological sanction rests precisely on the fact that for many theists, disobeying god functions as a criterion of immoral action,” noting that the Christian concept of sin is based on circular thinking: “One should not disobey god, because to do so is a sin. And what is a sin? A sin is disobeying god.” For Christianity, the concept of sin “serves as a guilt-inducer to motivate obedience.” After quoting a passage from C.S. Lewis’s writings which eloquently – and bluntly – acknowledges this vital link between sin and guilt, Smith observes: “Christianity thrives on guilt. Guilt, not love, is the fundamental emotion that Christianity seeks to induce – and this is symptomatic of a viciousness in Christianity that few people care to acknowledge. For all its alleged concern for the `poor in spirit,’ Christianity does its best to perpetuate spiritual impoverishment. . . .
“With its emphasis on obedience, enforced through the inculcation of fear and guilt, Christianity has transformed morality into something that is generally considered ominous and distasteful. With its emphasis on punishment and reward in an afterlife, Christianity is largely responsible for the notion that morality is impractical, and has little or nothing to do with man’s life and happiness on earth.”
(Atheism, pp. 303-304.) Thus, religious morality as embodied in Christianity not only undermines the purpose of morality itself – which, again, is to provide guidance for humans to live – but, in fact, causes great harm and suffering. Unfortunately, as Smith adds, “[t]he religious view of morality is still widely accepted; children are raised by it, and men attempt to live by it – with the result that millions of people practice, in the name of morality, what amounts to emotional and intellectual suicide.” “Emotional and intellectual suicide” – those are strong words, but they aptly describe the devastating impact that Christian morality has on those who attempt to live by it. As I discussed in the previous section, Christianity perversely identifies as “sins” the traits and values essential to human beings’ proper survival and flourishing; it also perversely teaches, as its moral “virtues,” the opposites of those very traits and values. First and foremost, by stressing obedience (the primary virtue of religious morality), Christianity attempts to negate the genuine virtue of rationality and its corollary virtues, independence and responsibility. As Smith explains, “Reason is the faculty that enables man to identify and integrate the facts of reality. But man’s reason does not function automatically; it requires the choice to exert mental effort, to actively focus one’s mind. This is the virtue of rationality. Rationality is the commitment to reason, to mental awareness, to the sustained use of one’s mind. A rational man’s foremost concern is with facts, with what is true, and he is unwilling to sacrifice the judgment of his mind to the demands or desires of other people.
“Intellectually, every man is an island unto himself; no man can assume the responsibility of thinking for another. The virtue of rationality thus entails intellectual independence and the willingness to assume responsibility for one’s beliefs, choices, and actions.”
Christianity demands that its adherents have faith in God and in the teachings of Jesus, and to passively obey Christian moral rules. “When a politician asks people to have faith in their government, it is clear that he is calling for obedience and the suspension of criticism. And it should be equally clear that when a theologian speaks of faith in God, he means that divine rules are to be obeyed without question,” Smith notes. “The man who seeks truth calls on reason; the man who seeks conformity calls on faith. A morality of independence relies on reason; a morality of obedience relies on faith.” (Atheism, pp. 305-307.) The Christian virtue of obedience thus leads to conformity; from conformity comes irresponsibility and its devastating results in human history. As Smith notes, “A morality of conformity, a morality divorced from consequences – this idea has sanctioned more bloodshed and devastation than any comparable notion in ethical theory. Millions of people have been slaughtered, mutilated and tortured in the name of religious morality, in the name of obedience to a `higher,’ `nobler’ realm.” He adds that “obedience is a convenient escape from individual responsibility,” for if a man is merely the agent of God’s will, then it is God, not man, who bears responsibility. A Christian – whether one who refuses credit for a courageous or benevolent action because he claims to have been merely obeying God’s will, or one who refuses to accept responsibility for a moral outrage because he too was obeying God’s will – thus seeks “to disown personal responsibility for [one’s] actions by shifting responsibility onto God.” And so, observes Smith, “Christian humility, which is commonly viewed as a harmless trait, is actually the manifestation of a wider principle which . . . has taken a considerable toll in human lives.” (Atheism, p. 307.) From obedience are derived other key Christian virtues, which are equally pernicious to human well-being. “Only if one understands the central role of conformity in religious morality, can one appreciate fully the ruthless consistency of primary Christian virtues – such as humility, self-sacrifice, and a sense of sin – which, without exception, are geared to the destruction of man’s inner sense of dignity, efficacy and personal worth.” (Atheism, p. 308.) Consider the “sin” of pride. “It is not accidental that Christianity regards pride as a major sin,” notes Smith, explaining: “A man of self-esteem is an unlikely candidate for the master-slave relationship that Christianity offers him. A man lacking in self-esteem, however, a man ridden with guilt and self-doubt, will frequently prefer the apparent security of Christianity over independence and find comfort in the thought that, for the price of total submissiveness, God will love and protect him” (p. 308). Consider too the “sin” of pleasure, particularly sexual pleasure – one of the most intense forms of pleasure human beings can experience. As Smith also notes, “It is not accidental that Christianity is profoundly anti-pleasure, especially in the area of sex.” “To deny oneself pleasure, or to convince oneself that pleasure is evil, is to produce frustration and anxiety and thereby become potential material for salvation.” That is key to the psychological hold that Christianity has over its believers, Smith explains: “In exchange for obedience, Christianity promises salvation in an afterlife; but in order to elicit obedience through this promise, Christianity must convince men that they need salvation, that there is something to be `saved’ from. Christianity has nothing to offer a happy man living in a natural, intelligible universe. If Christianity is to gain a motivational foothold, it must declare war on earthly pleasure and happiness, and this, historically, has been its precise course of action. In the eyes of Christianity, man is sinful and helpless in the face of God, and is potential fuel for the flames of hell. Just as Christianity must destroy reason before it can introduce faith, so it must destroy happiness before it can introduce salvation.”
Of course, “Christianity cannot erase man’s need for pleasure” – for pleasure is “the fuel of life.” Nor can Christianity eradicate the sources of pleasure, including sexual pleasure. “What it can do, however, and what it has been extremely effective in accomplishing, is to inculcate guilt in connection with pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure, when accompanied by guilt, becomes a means of perpetuating chronic guilt, and this serves to reinforce one’s dependence on God” (p. 308, emphasis in original). Sex is not just a biological need for human beings – and the purpose of sex, contrary to Christianity’s anti-sex propaganda, is not simply to procreate. Sex serves a real psychological need that all human beings have – aptly described by Nathaniel Branden as “the visibility principle.” As a kind of celebration of one’s self, sex is also profoundly individualistic; people differ, not only in their sexual orientation but also in the sexual acts that give them pleasure. (For more on this, see my previous entry, “In Defense of Sex,” May 16, 2005.) Not surprisingly, Christianity historically has been hostile to sexual freedom, not only for homosexuals and bisexuals but even for heterosexuals outside the bands of marriage. Christianity not only regards an essential human need, sexuality, as a “sin,” but it also condemns all things associated with sexuality as “dirty,” as pleasures of the body, divorced from the mind – when it is the brain, in fact, that is the most important sexual organ. Finally, consider another “sin,” according to Christianity – selfishness – and its opposite, which Christianity holds as one of its cardinal virtues (and which is in many ways the hallmark of Christian ethics), self-sacrifice, or altruism. As philosopher George Walsh explains in his book The Role of Religion in History (1998), the ethic of self-sacrifice is basic to both Judaism and Christianity – and thus, one can properly speak of it as central to “the Judeo-Christian tradition” – but Christianity took it much further than did Judaism. The original concept of sacrifice, found among primitive tribes, was that “a man takes a certain small portion of what he owns and he offers it to the god,” while the god protects him in possession of the larger portion that he keeps. “This is more like a baseball sacrifice,” notes Walsh, “the giving up of a lesser good for a greater.” The more radical form of sacrifice, however, involves complete altruism – sacrificing oneself for the sake of others, giving up one’s own good altogether for the sake of some supposed “higher” good – and Christianity exults this latter kind of sacrifice as the prototype of all sacrifice. “In order to do God’s will, that which is most precious in value is to be given up; as when Abraham was prepared to sacrifice Isaac; or when the whole nation of Israel is compared to the lamb which is led to slaughter, as in Second Isaiah; or when Jesus is conceived of offering his life for the sins of the world. Christianity is primarily a sacrificial religion with its supreme symbol of the cross” (Walsh, pp. 136, 183). By preaching sacrifice as a virtue, Christianity demands of its believers an altruistic moral code, one in which they are taught to immolate themselves for the sake of others. In religious terms, one offers oneself to God; and in the secular version of the Christian altruistic ethic, one offers oneself to society, or to the tribe. Either way, Walsh notes, it results in “the giving up of oneself as an absolute end.” Christian rituals, such as the observance of Lent, may call for relatively small sacrifices; but Christian morality, by denouncing selfishness as a sin and by extolling altruism as a virtue, “insists on the surrender of personal independence in every area of life,” such as “friendships, relationships with one’s parents, marriage, sex, the books one reads, the arts, commercial relations,” and so on (Walsh, pp. 183-84). As preached for the past two millennia, the Christian ethic of altruism has caused untold suffering and misery in human society. It is no exaggeration to say that it is the chief obstacle to human happiness in most of the world, today. “The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing,” declares Howard Roark, the hero of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, in the novel’s climactic courtroom scene. Roark is right. What has been the sum-total, in terms of its results, of the Christian moral code? “Through inculcating the notion that sacrifice is a virtue, Christianity has succeeded in convincing many people that misery incurred through sacrifice is a mark of virtue,” observes George Smith. “Pain becomes the insignia of morality – and, conversely, pleasure becomes the insignia of immorality.” Of course, as he concedes, Christianity does not say, “Go forth and be miserable,” but by saying what it does – “Go forth and practice the virtue of self-sacrifice” – it achieves the identical result. “It cannot be emphasized too strongly that Christianity has a vested interest in human misery,” Smith convincingly argues. “Christianity, perhaps more than any religion before or since, [has] capitalized on human suffering; and it [has been] enormously successful in insuring its own existence through the perpetuation of human suffering.” Moreover, Christianity’s obsession with conformity leads to its various doctrines – “doctrines that can only be described as profoundly anti-life.” To preserve itself, Christianity must oppose the virtues of rational morality – “reason, pride, self-assertiveness, self-esteem” – for “these are the enemies of conformity and, therefore, of Christian faith.” As a result, Christianity causes severe psychological problems for its adherents: “Since the foremost aim of Christian ethics, psychologically speaking, is to cultivate a mentality of obedience, Christian ethics, to the extent that one adopts it, will cause and contribute to a variety of psychological problems. It encourages intellectual passivity, fear that one’s thoughts and emotions may be sinful, guilt at the thought of sexual assertiveness, and the pervading feeling that one is basically helpless, unimportant, and evil.”
(Smith, Atheism, pp. 309-310). “These are serious charges which, if true, constitute an overwhelming moral case against Christianity,” Smith maintains. Conceding that Christian scholars and theologians have numerous disagreements about ethics – and that “liberal” Christian denominations in various ways have sought to downplay some of Christianity’s traditional teachings – Smith then substantiates his charges against Christian ethics by examining the one source that all Christians must accept as basic to their religion, the teachings of Jesus himself (as reported by the New Testament authors). With great understatement, Smith observes that “the teachings of Jesus are not as benevolent as commonly supposed,” for he shows, among other things, that: n Jesus’ basic mission was “to preach the coming of God’s kingdom, and his basic precept was that men must devote themselves totally to God if they wish to enter the heavenly kingdom.” Otherworldliness, “total devotion (i.e., obedience),” and “mandatory love” thus emerge as Jesus’ key themes. n Jesus’ moral precepts were not very original; he took his basic themes from Judaism, from the Old Testament and from rabbinical teachings. For example, the famous Golden Rule – which was also advocated by Confucius 500 years before Jesus – was promulgated by Hillel, a Pharisee and older contemporary of Jesus; Jesus’ famous teaching from Matthew 22.39 – “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” – is found in identical words in Leviticus 19.18; and Jesus’ famous warning against “lustful” thoughts can be found in near-identical words in the Talmud (Berachot 24.1). n Perhaps the most fundamental teaching of Jesus is the demand for conformity, by making faith the hallmark of virtue. Indeed, Jesus said, “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18.3). At the center of Jesus’ teaching is the notion, as Smith puts it, that “some beliefs lie beyond the scope of criticism and that to question them is sinful, or morally wrong.” n Another significant teaching of Jesus, again one that was not original with him but which Christianity has given an unusually heavy emphasis, is that certain feelings and desires are in themselves sinful. For example, again, Jesus’ warning that “every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5.27-28). n And yet another important teaching of teaching of Jesus is passive non-resistance to evil. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6.27-28); “[I]f anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also . . . .” (Matthew 5.39-41). Smith then summarizes these observations about Jesus’ teachings. First, they do not reflect very well on Jesus himself: “Strip Jesus of his divinity – as many liberals wish to do – and, at best, he becomes a mediocre preacher who held mistaken beliefs about practically everything, including himself; and, at worst, he becomes a pretentious fraud.” (I’d add, “and a madman.”) Second, considered in themselves, “the moral precepts of Jesus are sometimes interesting, sometimes poetic, sometimes benevolent, sometimes confusing, sometimes pernicious, and sometimes devastatingly harmful psychologically. None, however, are especially profound. If not for their tremendous historical impact, most would deserve little more than a philosopher’s passing glance” (Atheism, pp. 319, 320). Among the most “pernicious” and “devastating harmful psychologically” teachings of Jesus, according to Smith, are the three identified above: first, the emphasis on conformity, or blind faith and obedience; second, the notion that certain feelings and desires are sinful in themselves; and third, passive non-resistance to evil. The first makes Christianity “an enemy of truth and of the faculty by which man arrives at truth – reason,” he concludes. “Whatever minor points may be offered in defense of Christianity, they cannot compensate for the monstrous doctrine that one is morally obligated to accept as true religious beliefs that cannot be comprehended or demonstrated”; it was this belief, which lies at the heart of Jesus’ teaching and which has played a significant role throughout Christianity’s history that “`justified’ the slaughter of dissenters and heretics in the name of morality.” And its philosophical consequence “may be described as the inversion – or, more precisely, the perversion – of morality.” Psychologically, the doctrine is “devastating,” for it turns man’s reason against himself: “To the extent that a man believes that his mind is a potential enemy, that it may lead to the `evils’ of question-asking and criticism, he will feel the need for intellectual passivity – to deliberately sabotage his mind in the name of virtue. Reason becomes a vice, something to be feared, and man finds that his own worst enemy is his own capacity to think and question. One can scarcely imagine a more effective way to introduce a perpetual conflict into man’s consciousness and therefore produce a host of neurotic symptoms” (Atheism, pp. 322-23). The second doctrine (that certain feelings or desires –“lusting” in one’s heart, for example – can be sinful in themselves) is, morally, “reprehensible, because it erases the crucial distinction between intent and action.” Psychologically, writes Smith, “it is nothing less than murder”: “It is a prescription, a demand, for emotional repression, for deliberately obstructing awareness of one’s inner emotional state” – the opposite of what is required for psychological health (being in touch with one’s feelings). Yet, Smith adds, “[t]his general attitude toward emotions runs throughout the teaching of Jesus”: we should “love” our neighbor as ourselves, which perverts the very meaning of love; we should be meek and humble, even though such passive qualities are the antithesis of self-assertiveness and self-esteem, the traits of a psychologically healthy person. “The best thing that can be said about Jesus’ approach to human emotions is that it is psychologically naïve. The worst thing that can be said is that when men attempt to practice what he preaches, they invariably inflict a great deal of psychological misery upon themselves,” he concludes, quoting from Nathaniel Branden: “Desires and emotions as such are involuntary; they are not subject to direct and immediate volitional control; they are the automatic result of subconscious integrations. . . . It is impossible to compute the magnitude of the disaster, the wreckage of human lives, produced by the belief that desires and emotions can be commanded in and out of existence by an act of will.
“To those who accept the validity of Jesus’ pronouncements, and their wider implications for undesired or `immoral’ emotions in general, his teachings are clearly an injunction to practice repression. Whether or not by intention, that is their effect.”
(Atheism, pp. 323-24, quoting from Branden’s The Disowned Self (1971).) With regard to the third doctrine (passive non-resistance to evil), Smith notes that it amounts to a command not to judge others – “which is really another facet of suspending one’s critical faculties” and thus reinforces the ultimate command of blind obedience: “We are to tolerate injustice, we are to refrain from passing value judgments of other people – such precepts require the obliteration of one’s capacity to distinguish the good from the evil; they require the kind of intellectual and moral passiveness that generates a mentality of obedience. The man who is incapable of passing independent value judgments will be the least critical when given orders. And he will be unlikely to evaluate the moral worth of the man, or the supposed god, from whence those orders come.”
(Atheism, p. 325.) To “love your enemies” or to “turn the other cheek” means to disregard justice, for justice demands contempt for evil (and for those who do wrong) as much as it demands admiration for good (and those who do right). A moral code like Jesus’, which regards toleration for injustice as a basic moral precept, is not just a “slave morality,” as Nietzsche famously characterized it; it is not worthy of being considered a moral code at all. As noted above, the purpose of a moral code is to guide human beings in their choices and their actions – to give persons the values that are proper for human beings to live well. Jesus’ ethics do not even give persons the values that are necessary for living, period. Smith concludes – and I fully agree with him on all these points – “In short, there is nothing virtuous in the virtues recommended by Jesus”: “The only thing close to an ethical precept with merit is the Golden Rule, which is a rough approximation of a fairness ethic, but even this is issued in the form of a command. Generally, Jesus commands us to have faith in God and in himself as a messenger from God – which means the sacrifice of reason – and we are reminded that God will reward those who obey and punish those who disobey. Also, we are told that God is monitoring us at every moment, and that he has complete knowledge of our innermost thoughts and feelings. If the notion of an omnipresent voyeurist does not create a high level of nervous tension and anxiety, not to mention guilt, nothing will.”
What does Christianity have to offer “a confident, efficacious and happy man”? The answer is, “nothing – absolutely nothing. . . . In order to fit within the framework of Jesus’ mission, one must view oneself fundamentally as a `sinner’ – as evil and worthless in the sight of God.” To do this, one must surrender the qualities of confidence, efficacy, and happiness. “What remains after the qualities essential to a rewarding life are surrendered? Nothing – except a man without reason, without passion, without self-esteem. A man, in other words, [who] will find anything preferable to life on earth. Such a man may claim that Christianity has given him hope of happiness in an afterlife, but all that Christianity has really given him is an elaborate excuse, draped in a banner of morality, to continue his blind stumbling through life on earth” (Ibid., pp. 325-26). Why am I not a Christian? To summarize, as succinctly as possible: I am not a Christian because I choose to think – which is another way of saying, because I choose to live as a human being.
| Link to this Entry | Posted Thursday, April 20, 2006 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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