In the early chapters of Genesis, Yahweh makes a sweeping promise to Abraham, forefather of the Jewish people:

"In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates."

—Genesis 15:18

As I've mentioned in the past, this was no small matter: the land that God promised to Abraham would encompass most or all of the modern nations of Israel, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. If the Jewish people had ever controlled this much territory, they would have had an empire to rival the mightiest powers of the Ancient Near East. But now I have an inconvenient question: Did the Jewish people ever control this much territory? Did they ever get what God promised they would have?

The archaeological evidence shows clearly that the answer is no. Although the monarchy of David - described by the Bible as the most glorious era of ancient Israel - apparently did exist, it was a relatively small and insignificant kingdom even by the standards of the day. It never controlled all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates. We have abundant evidence of the great empires that did exist in this region, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian or Roman: the cities they built, the monuments they erected, the inscriptions they left behind. An Israelite empire would be equally easy to find in the archaeological record if it had ever existed, and the total lack of historical evidence can only imply that it never did.

And after David and Solomon's reign, even the Bible says that things went rapidly downhill. Solomon's son was an incompetent ruler who caused the kingdom to split apart, and the divided Israelite tribes were conquered by larger powers and scattered across the face of the earth. The modern state of Israel wasn't established until the 20th century, and it still comes nowhere close to controlling all the land that God promised to Abraham.

For almost four thousand years, then, God's land promise has been unfulfilled. Considering that the land he promised is now occupied by millions of other people with a decidedly hostile outlook toward the Jews, it seems unlikely that Israel will be able to control it any time soon. (The biblical solution - military invasion and genocide - doesn't seem to be a prospect today, due to several millennia of progress in humanity's moral sentiments.) And if you believe the evangelical Christians who insist that the Rapture is due to occur very soon and the end of the world shortly thereafter, the time when this prophecy could be fulfilled is rapidly dwindling. And even if Israel did come to own all this land through some bizarre chain of circumstances, would it really count as "fulfilling" a promise if that which was promised is withheld for hundreds of generations and thousands of years? Wouldn't it, in fact, be more accurate to say that this is a failed biblical promise?

The most common Christian apologist explanation for this prophetic failure is that God's covenant with Abraham was conditional, and when the Israelites disobeyed his laws, he took away the land he had promised them as punishment. Unfortunately for them, the Bible itself forecloses this explanation. It states clearly that even though the Israelites were wicked, God still intended to give them the land, in order to keep the promise he made to Abraham:

"Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, dost thou go to possess their land: but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee, and that he may perform the word which the Lord sware unto thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

—Deuteronomy 9:5

The only rational conclusion is that God has not "performed the word which he swore", because there is no God who shows special favor to the Israelites. This land claim, allegedly a divinely given promise, was in reality just a piece of pious self-congratulation by ancient Israelite scribes who sought to write a self-fulfilling prophecy. They thought that if they could convince their countrymen that victory was guaranteed, that would give them the determination to turn that belief into reality. But their gambit didn't succeed, and millennia later, the Bible's failed land promise stands as proof of the very human and fallible origins of that book.

I just finished reading The Happiness Hypothesis, a book by Jonathan Haidt, who's a professor in the new science of "positive psychology" at the University of Virginia. Most of the book is a straightforward distillation of scientific research on what truly brings happiness and contentment in life, illustrated with quotes and references to famous philosophers and sages of the past who taught similar lessons. There's nothing to object to about this - I think it's a laudable thing for science to study what makes people happy and helps them flourish, rather than focusing solely on disease and dysfunction. And I even learned a few interesting tidbits - the chapter on moral hypocrisy, and why we have a much easier time noticing it in others than in ourselves, was particularly good, as was the chapter on ways that advertisers and proselytizers influence us and trick us into doing what they want, rather than what genuinely makes us happy. That's the kind of information that should be much more widely disseminated.

However, near the end of the book, the argument took a surprising turn. Haidt himself states that he's an atheist, and is careful to note that secular people as well as religious people can experience feelings of transcendent awe and wonder (he calls it "elevation"). But in the last few chapters, he has some unexpected praise for the importance of religion and the allegedly vital role it plays in human community:

...my research on the moral emotions has led me to conclude that the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists. In reaching this conclusion, I lost the smug contempt for religion that I felt in my twenties.

This chapter is about the ancient truth that devoutly religious people grasp, and that secular thinkers often do not: that by our actions and our thoughts, we move up and down on a vertical dimension... An implication of this truth is that we are impoverished as human beings when we lose sight of this dimension and let our world collapse into two dimensions. [p.184]

If the third dimension and perceptions of sacredness are an important part of human nature, then the scientific community should accept religiosity as a normal and healthy aspect of human nature... If religious people are right in believing that religion is the source of their greatest happiness, then maybe the rest of us who are looking for happiness and meaning can learn something from them, whether or not we believe in God. [p.211]

I wasn't sure what to make of this, until I read past the end to the acknowledgements:

I am deeply grateful to Sir John Templeton, the John Templeton Foundation, and its executive vice president, Arthur Schwartz, for supporting my research on moral elevation and for giving me a semester of sabbatical leave to begin the research for this book.

That explained a lot. (If you didn't know, the Templeton Foundation is a group founded by a billionaire evangelical Christian whose major purpose is to pay scientists to say nice things about religion. See Jerry Coyne or Sean Carroll for more.)

In these chapters, Haidt speaks of the "ethic of divinity", which he says is tied to human concepts of sacredness and holiness and which runs along a continuum from purity to disgust. As an example, he discusses his research in the Indian city of Bhubaneswar, where Hindu priests from the Brahmin caste have an elaborate system of rules, similar to orthodox Jewish laws, to maintain the purity of their temples: when to pray, what to eat, what to wear, how to touch others, who is allowed to enter which rooms, and so on. He contrasts this with the Western "ethic of autonomy", that people should be free to do whatever they want as long as it harms no one.

Though Haidt recognizes the value of autonomy in a modern, melting-pot society, he has some praise for this ritualistic ethic of purity and contamination as well:

When people use the ethic of divinity, their goal is to protect from degradation the divinity that exists within each person, and they value living in a pure and holy way, free from moral pollutants such as lust, greed, and hatred. [p.188]

Haidt further explains that the goal of this system is not just to follow arbitrary rules, but that these practices have "a deeper relationship to virtue and morality... If you know that you have divinity in you, you will act accordingly: You will treat people well, and you will treat your body as a temple. In so doing, you will accumulate good karma" [p.190].

It all sounds very noble and elevating. But there's another, darker side to the ethic of divinity, one which Haidt mentions only in passing. Lost in all the pious rhetoric about maintaining the purity of one's body and accumulating good karma is this: In every society which has that vertical dimension of divinity, it's possible to move down as well as up. When an entire society is structured around the distinction between clean and unclean, holy and unholy, these ritualistic rules inevitably end up labeling not just actions as unclean, but people.

India, after all, still has its Untouchables. It still has its widows who, by tradition and custom, are confined to a lifetime of silence and isolation - even child widows who never met their arranged husband before his death. In medieval Europe, the ethic of divinity and Christian concerns about blood purity led to vicious anti-Jewish persecution - the inquisitors called it limpieza de sangre - and Hitler's racial-purity-obsessed Final Solution was the last and most bitter fruit of that evil tree. In America, it led to slavery and segregation, and still fuels opposition to marriage equality, still motivates Catholic priests who wield the Eucharist as a political weapon. In the Torah, the uncleanness of the Canaanites is invoked as a motivation for genocide by the conquering Israelite army. Ultra-Orthodox Jews assault outsiders who enter their neighborhoods and women whom they believe aren't dressed properly in public. Islam, of course, has its own purity concerns which perpetuate the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, which suffocate women under veils and burqas, and which imprison them at home and prevent them from getting an education or visiting a doctor.

At the beginning of the chapter, Haidt quotes this line, allegedly spoken by Mohammed:

God created the angels from intellect without sensuality, the beasts from sensuality without intellect, and humanity from both intellect and sensuality. So when a person's intellect overcomes his sensuality, he is better than the angels, but when his sensuality overcomes his intellect, he is worse than the beasts.

But he fails to notice the implication - that people who follow the dictates of "sensuality" are worse than animals - and, presumably, can be treated accordingly. And the long and bloody history of religion offers all too many examples of exactly that.

Haidt may wax rhapsodic about purity laws, but if the choice is between the ethic of autonomy and the ethic of divinity, it should be more than obvious to any thinking person which one to keep and which one to jettison. No one was ever murdered, enslaved, or tyrannized in the name of autonomy. We can get by without superstitious concerns about divinity, but a society that lost its concern for autonomy would soon be plunged into a new Dark Age - as, indeed, many modern theocracies are. And he may claim that us smug, contemptuous secular thinkers have a lot to learn from the religious about purity and sacredness, but I'd turn that formula around: Before they deserve to be listened to, religious fundamentalists ought to come to us and learn from our teachings about why they need to respect the autonomy and human rights of others. Only once they've absorbed that lesson and put it into action in their own cultures do they deserve to be granted any consideration about what they might have to say to the rest of us.

Summary: A compelling atheist thought experiment, wrapped inside a cleverly plotted and fast-paced tale of transhumanist fiction.

This isn't the first time I've reviewed a book written by a fellow blogger, but it's always a pleasure for me to do, and this one was particularly pleasurable to read. The Quantum Mechanic is a novel written by the blogger D - you may know her as the author of She Who Chatters - for 2009's National Novel Writing Month.

The hero of TQM is Douglas Orange, a mild-mannered Midwest physics professor who discovers one day that he has an extraordinary power: the ability to influence the workings of reality on a quantum level through pure will. He can't change the past or foresee the future, but other than that, Douglas' powers seem to be bounded only by the limits of his imagination. As he grows more skilled in controlling them, he becomes able to do almost anything, from reading minds to teleporting objects through space to creating matter and energy out of nothing.

At first, Douglas uses his power for nothing more than some remarkably convincing stage magic. But after a visit from a certain famous magician offering a million-dollar prize, Douglas is persuaded (and wouldn't you be persuaded?) to become a vigilante superhero. Under the moniker of the Quantum Mechanic, he launches into a career of fighting crime and rescuing people from disaster, much to the consternation of politicians, police departments, and the moralist commentators of Fawkes News.

This is ground well-traveled by novels and comic books, of course. But most of those creative works fail to follow through on the logical implications of their premise, and assume that people in possession of awesome powers would use them for nothing more inventive than foiling petty crime. I'm happy to say that TQM transcends this hoary cliche, and the second part of the novel breaks into new territory. Having cured violence and war, Douglas turns his vision to grander goals, and his power launches humanity into a technological Singularity. Under the all-seeing eye of the Quantum Mechanic, disease, poverty and death become things of the past, and humanity begins to step into its birthright as explorers and settlers of the universe.

But not all is well. Just when the human race seems poised to take the final step into this-worldly paradise, ominous signs and portents begin to arise: the faithful start disappearing from the earth; the seas boil and the skies turn red as blood; and a strange new star appears in the heavens. And on the heels of these omens, humanity receives a visit from a sinister messenger straight out of the Old Testament, a menacing angel of light known only as the Entropic Engineer. Douglas' powers don't seem to work against him, and after delivering a prophecy of doom for all sinners, he promises to return soon at the head of Heaven's vast army to usher in Judgment Day. It's the Singularity versus the Second Coming, as the Quantum Mechanic faces off against the Entropic Engineer in a cosmic war for humanity's eternal destiny... but is this destroying angel all that he seems?

Aside from the audaciously high-concept premise, there were three aspects of this novel that I enjoyed greatly. First of these, as you might have guessed, is its unapologetic advocacy of the atheist perspective. One of my favorite lines is early on: when Douglas denies God's existence and a heckler demands to know if he's searched the entire universe to be sure, he deadpans, "Why, yes." And there are several great dialogues between Doug and his interlocutors on faith, on meaning and purpose, on morality and harm, and on other philosophical topics where the author lays out and defends an atheist and humanist viewpoint with clarity and compelling reason.

Second, TQM accomplishes something that I haven't often seen done well: it tells an enthralling story even as society changes dramatically around its protagonists. Most of the transhumanist fiction I've read lacks the human perspective necessary for readers to identify and empathize with the characters. One could argue that this is unavoidable, since this kind of fiction by definition describes a world radically different from our own; but however necessary it is by the logic of the plot, it doesn't usually make for good storytelling. This book neatly dispenses with that problem by anchoring its plot in Douglas, who retains his fundamental humanity despite his powers, and letting us see through his eyes.

Third, even aside from its explicit advocacy of our perspective through dialogue, this entire novel advances the atheist viewpoint in a more subtle way. The basic story implicitly takes the form of a thought experiment: If you had the power to end evil and suffering, would you do it?

Of course, we have always answered yes, reasoning that an allegedly good God's failure to intervene in the same circumstances casts strong doubt on his existence. If there was a person with the power to stop evil, they wouldn't stand idly by or hide themselves away, but would take action when they saw it was needed. Philosophically, we all know this to be true. But this book vividly illustrates that argument by clothing it in story, and - at least for me - thereby made it far more persuasive and convincing to me than it's ever been before.

Douglas has the power to do almost anything, but he doesn't hide away from the world. He uses his power for good: he stops violence, he cures disease, he answers people's requests in obvious fashion, he shows up to respond to critics, and he acts based on a clear set of principles and not in an arbitrary or capricious manner. He acts, in short, exactly as atheists have always said a rational and benevolent god would act. And as the author shows us how the human race flourishes under his guidance, it drives home the point that evil is not - as advocates of theodicy often claim - an inherent part of the universe that can't be eliminated. Nor does doing so compromise our free will, except in the sense that people are no longer free to inflict harm and suffering on others.

This is by far the most persuasive answer to theodicy I've ever seen: not a philosophical argument pointing out its flaws in a neutral and logical manner, but simply sketching another possible world where such excuses are not needed, and showing how they inevitably suffer from the comparison. And it doesn't hurt that this compelling moral is wrapped inside a slam-bang, fast-paced tale of Earth's ascent into a posthuman future, with a thoroughgoing humanist as its main character and a plot that an atheist can't help but love.

(You can buy a copy of the book from CreateSpace.)

You get all kinds of weird and amusing religious literature on the New York subways, and here's the latest proof:

Click to enlarge. Also see interior and back cover.

If you've attended a college with a significant Jewish population, you're probably familiar with Chabad House, an organization that runs community centers and programs for observant Jews. What you may not know is who runs these centers - or one of this group's stranger and more curious offshoots, the subject of today's post.

The Chabad Lubavitch movement was founded in the 18th century by Shneur Zalman, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, in Russia. Zalman was an adherent of Hasidism, the offshoot of Judaism that emphasizes ecstatic and mystical worship (i.e., Kabbalah), and is known for its followers' distinctive dress and use of the Yiddish language. Hasidic Jews are organized into dynastic communities each under the leadership of a single sage, a Rebbe, who's believed to enjoy God's special favor and, often, to possess miraculous powers and semi-divine insight into the workings of the world.

Including its founder, Shneur Zalman, the Chabad Lubavitch sect has had seven Rebbes. The seventh and most recent, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, took office in 1950. The Chabad Houses on college campuses and elsewhere were mainly his creation, the result of an outreach program intended to educate Americans about Hasidic Judaism and - more importantly - to urge all Jews to obey Orthodox religious law. (He also ran a secondary campaign to encourage non-Jews to obey the seven "Noahide Laws" for gentiles - probably the closest thing Judaism has ever had to explicit evangelism.)

Schneerson died in 1994 without naming a successor, and the Chabad movement has been without a Rebbe ever since. As you might have expected, this has led to fragmentation and power struggles, though the movement as a whole appears to be thriving - it has over 200,000 adherents, making it one of the single largest Hasidic groups. But it may be that the lack of clear earthly leadership has inspired some of its followers to start thinking in new directions. As you can see from my subway pamphlet, there's a small but vocal and growing faction of Lubavitchers who believe their last, deceased Rebbe was the Moshiach - i.e., the Messiah, the prophesied hero of the Bible who will unite and rule over the Jews and usher in God's kingdom on Earth.

As this article explains, when Schneerson was alive, Lubavitcher belief in his messianic status was fairly strong. Schneerson never explicitly proclaimed himself the messiah, but he never denied it either; he repeatedly made wink-and-nudge references to the imminence of the messianic age and did little to quell the growing messianic enthusiasm of his followers. In one video from later in his life, he accepts a petition signed by thousands of Lubavitchers declaring him the messiah; in another, he smiles as a group of his followers sing a song called the Yechi - the Yiddish lyrics of which translate to, "May our master, teacher and rabbi, the king messiah, live forever."

Being deceased would seem to be an obvious disqualifier for messianic status - and indeed, there are non-messianic Lubavitchers who consider their messianic brethren an embarrassment and try to squelch them. Yet Schneerson's devotees, commonly referred to as "mesichists", don't see this as an obstacle. Exactly how they deal with the fact of his death varies: some insist that he's not actually dead but is merely hidden, biding his time to return. Others claim that his messiahship persists in some spiritual realm beyond the physical world. Still others believe that he'll be resurrected when the time is right. All, however, share the belief that the Rebbe will return and the messianic age will arrive when a sufficient fraction of the world's population learns about him and is convinced of his messiahhood - hence, my pamphlet from the subway.

I looked on Chabad World, the website set up by Schneerson's followers, for an explanation of how they reconcile the fact of his death with their belief in him as Moshiach. I didn't find one - it's a subject the website tends to skate around, for example by repeatedly referring to Schneerson in the present tense ("the Rebbe teaches..."), such that someone who didn't already know he was dead probably wouldn't realize it. However, I did find lots of entertaining supplementary material, such as these miracle claims attributed to Schneerson, or this highly amusing page which argues not just for creationism, but apparently for geocentrism. Also not to be missed from that page is the comical explanation of how the Rebbe knew there is no intelligent life in the universe other than humans, which I can't possibly do justice to by trying to summarize it here.

Aside from the clear documentation of Schneerson's life, it's hard not to notice the similarities between Chabad-Lubavitch messianism and early Christianity. As time passes and the Rebbe fails to return, it's inevitable that historical memory of him will grow vaguer, the stories of his life and miracles will become further exaggerated, and his absence will almost certainly be worked into apologetic arguments which claim it was the plan all along for him to bide his time. Like Christianity, this new faith may flourish and grow; or like the teachings of Sabbatai Zevi, another would-be Jewish messiah, it may lose its ardor and fade away. There seems to be a perennial tendency in Judaism to latch onto some earthly figure as the messiah, which may be because the lack of a clearly defined afterlife has led them to continually look for this-worldly deliverance.

Other posts in this series:

• Strange and Curious Sects

The world has seen and heard enough about the misery and destruction in Haiti this past week that I don't think I need to dwell on it. But I do want to take some time to address the perennial question of theodicy, which comes up in the aftermath of every disaster like this.

To an atheist, for whom the Haiti quake was nothing more than the result of tectonic plates slipping - a disaster caused by impersonal natural forces and random chance - there is nothing to explain. The laws of the cosmos are not conscious of human beings and don't take our needs into account. No human action caused this disaster to occur, and no one bears responsibility for it. If we want to live comfortably and safely in this world, it's up to us to learn its rules so that we can mitigate their worst consequences through science and technology, and when disaster does strike, it's up to us to care for each other.

Such is the atheist's view, and it is comforting, in a sense. But to people who believe in a personal deity who set these laws in motion and foresaw their consequences, there's a much more glaring problem. In a post titled Why Did God Allow Haiti's Earthquake?, Christian pastor Dave Schmelzer reflects on the topic.

Schmelzer does have a dead-on and even, dare I say it, scriptural response to Pat Robertson's vile mouth:

The heart of the great biblical book on suffering—Job—critiques Job's false friends who are determined to figure out why Job is suffering. It's as if they can't live in the tension of seeing someone else suffer without establishing that somehow the sufferer deserved their suffering, so we, the onlookers, are safe.

I have no argument with that. But there's another section of Schmelzer's post that caught my attention:

The best thing I've read on this subject is Gregory Boyd's God at War. Boyd says that it's our Greek influence that makes us need answers to suffering and evil. The issue, he says, isn't intellectually figuring out evil. That will lead to two bad outcomes: torment (as Bart Ehrmann discovered) and complacency. To Boyd, the world is a thick spiritual battle. When we confront suffering and evil, our task is not to analyze the suffering and evil, it's to fight it.

What I find most interesting about this is Boyd's claim that we shouldn't try to find an explanation for evil that's compatible with Christianity. Attempting this, he says, can have only two outcomes, both of them bad: either we become convinced that God is malevolent or indifferent, which plunges one into despair (or leads to deconversion, as happened with Bart Ehrman), or we become convinced that God is justified in causing it, which leads to the Robertson-like callousness which believes that only evil people suffer.

Now, I'm not denying the logic of this argument. Those do seem to be the most common outcomes when Christians contemplate the problem of evil. But what I want to point out is his conclusion: therefore, Christians should stop trying to find an explanation for evil. They should just stop thinking about the topic, because it does damage to their faith if they dwell on it too closely.

Schmelzer endorses this conclusion himself:

"Why" never offered anyone any comfort, any power or any answers... So let's not over-analyze "why God allowed" Haiti's earthquake.

This is a rather surprising view, inasmuch as it categorically dismisses the possibility that apologists' attempts to justify evil and suffering could ever assist faith. It seems he agrees with us atheists that conventional Christian explanations for evil are insufficient.

But it's not just evangelical Christians who take this view. A Mormon blog calls the project of theodicy a "poisoned cup", and says:

I find myself increasingly ambivalent about the whole project of theodicy. On one hand, I want to reject a fideism that insists on belief in the irrational as a mark of true faith. Hence, I want a religion that at least holds out the possibility of increasing my understanding of the ways of God and the nature of the universe through the use of reason. We shouldn't have to crucify our brains in order to believe. And yet there is also a part of me that wants to maintain the mystery of evil... Ultimately... the most important reaction to suffering is its alleviation rather than its explanation.

This blogger, obviously an intelligent person, doesn't want to have to shut off his mind in order to believe. And to his credit, he rejects the Robertsonian argument that black people were justly excluded from the Mormon priesthood as punishment for sins they committed in a previous life:

I would much rather ascribe the priesthood ban to the tragic failings and racism of good and great men like Brigham Young rather than warp the cosmic narrative of the plan of salvation to make an injustice just.

This is an eloquent and laudable honesty, far superior to the usual apologists' approach of enshrining contingent historical prejudices as eternal truths. And yet he, too, counsels fellow believers to cease trying to explain evil and "simply let the mystery be" - as though the project of theodicy was a blister, or an unhealed wound: something that we only make worse by picking at it.

What's remarkable is that both these writers, in their own ways, implicitly acknowledge that the argument from evil is irrefutable. There is simply no moral way to reconcile belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving deity with the fact of evil and suffering in our world. This is just what atheists have been saying since the time of Epicurus. But rather than take the obvious next step - that the argument from evil is unanswerable because the atheists are correct - they instead advise their fellow believers to stop thinking about it.

Is this not remarkable? It's as though, for people in these religious traditions, an entire continent of their inner mental world has to be cordoned off and declared a forbidden zone. Their mental landscape is littered with locked doors, fences of barbed wire, and sternly worded "Keep Out" signs - all delimiting the sphere of dangerous ideas which they're advised never to examine.

Can anyone dispute that atheists have nothing like this? Is there any idea we place off-limits for examination, any question we deem too dangerous to ask? Is there any place where we say the free mind must never travel? And if your answer is "no", as it inevitably must be, then I have a followup question: Which kind of belief would need to be protected from scrutiny: a true belief, or a false one?

Summary: An outstanding book, broad in its sweep and compelling in its use of fascinating detail, that paints a clear picture of the international forces opposing women's rights - and what's at stake in the fight against them.

I've said in the past that I believe all feminists should be atheists, the better to deny power and legitimacy to the religious belief systems that have treated women unjustly throughout history. But after reading Michelle Goldberg's outstanding new book The Means of Reproduction, I'm convinced that the converse is also true: all atheists should be feminists, in recognition of how many of the goals of religious fundamentalists entail the subjugation of women, and how effectively we can defeat them at home and around the world by working to uphold gender equality.

Goldberg's book examines the state of women's rights throughout the world and explores how the inevitable clashes with fundamentalist religion and traditionalist culture play out in the lives of millions of women. It's not, as I had assumed, primarily about the culture wars in the U.S. over abortion - although both abortion and American culture war politics do play a central role. But the legal and cultural equilibrium in this country hasn't changed much in the past several decades, and as Goldberg brilliantly shows, by far the most consequential impact of America's shifting political winds isn't felt at home, but abroad.

The opening chapters of the book offer a historical perspective on this fight by showing how, ironically, the U.S. was once the biggest provider of contraception and abortion services to developing countries worldwide. This happened during the Cold War era, when Malthusian fears of overpopulation were intertwined with concerns over the spread of communism in impoverished countries. The ways that American politicians lined up to combat this seem bizarre to anyone used to today's ideological battle lines. (One of many great tidbits is that former president George H.W. Bush, when he served in Congress, was so zealous an advocate of contraception that he was nicknamed "Rubbers".) By fighting overpopulation, politicians hoped to check the spread of Marxism - and so the U.S. in its heyday spent millions of dollars to launch family-planning clinics and distribute birth control pills around the world.

But these programs, in many cases, were victims of their own success. Most of them focused only on preventing births, while doing little or nothing else to help or empower the poor and disenfranchised women who most needed them. As a result, the growing international conservative movement, which took off during the Reagan administration, was able to frame them as Western racism and cultural imperialism - a charge that was not always without merit. Today, the worldwide feminist movement is opposed by a bizarre, but equally transnational, coalition of Christian and Islamic conservatives who join together in defense of patriarchy - often working hand-in-hand at the U.N. even as they denounce each other at home.

Goldberg next traces the origins of the international conservative movement. At the root of this bitter tree stands the Roman Catholic church, which was and is the staunchest opponent of women's rights in the world - as she points out, even Islamic theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Iran have a more permissive view of abortion than the Vatican. There are some truly amazing details here: I was startled to learn that a papal commission in the 1960s actually recommended that the Catholic ban on birth control be lifted - but Pope Paul VI overruled his own commission's advice and issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, reiterating the church's absolute ban on contraception. Several prominent bishops explained at the time that the pope had to do this, because anything else would have been a tacit admission that the church's prior beliefs were wrong and that can never be permitted, regardless of the consequences.

But the Catholic church alone was largely ineffective in stemming the tide of women's rights, until it was joined by conservative Christians from other denominations. Goldberg argues that, contrary to popular belief, it wasn't Roe v. Wade that galvanized Protestant evangelicals into entering politics, but the rise of the feminist movement that threatened traditional notions of the patriarchal family and the subservient wife. This reactionary movement, which began mostly in America, has been exported abroad in recent decades. The effects can be seen in Latin American countries like El Salvador, where pro-life groups have triumphed. In these countries, women who come to the hospital hemorrhaging from a miscarriage are handcuffed to their hospital beds until they can be examined by forensic vagina inspectors, to ensure they didn't obtain an illegal abortion; other women die horribly from ruptured Fallopian tubes because their country's laws don't permit abortion even in the case of an ectopic pregnancy.

However, not all anti-woman practices come from religion. In Africa, we learn of a few incredibly brave activists fighting the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, a tribal custom which predates Islam but has been perpetuated by many Islamic societies. In even the mildest versions of FGM, the woman's clitoris is sliced off with crude instruments like scissors or razors, without anesthetic. (This is the practice that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was subjected to as a child.) But there are even more extreme versions, such as infibulation, in which the woman's clitoris is cut off and her vagina is sewn shut, leaving only a tiny hole to urinate - on her wedding night, her husband must literally rip her open. Bizarrely, this practice is still defended by some women - even well-educated, cosmopolitan women - who argue that it's an ineradicable part of their culture and a necessary step of womanhood.

As the FGM controversy shows, feminist issues don't always play out along familiar ideological lines. In India, Goldberg discusses the rampant practice of sex-selective abortion, which has led to dramatically skewed sex ratios - in some areas, as imbalanced as 700 women to every 1000 men. The resulting demand for wives not only encourages human trafficking and sexual slavery, but poses a threat to societal stability from the millions of angry, frustrated, unmarriageable young men.

Yet India is a clear example of the principle Goldberg repeatedly returns to: the root problem isn't the availability of birth control, but the need for female emancipation. She describes how India's growing wealth has encouraged an explosion of ever-more exorbitant demands for dowry, making daughters more and more of a financial drain on their families and increasing the pressure to have sons. Shockingly, in some places, dowry has become not just a one-time payment but a steady stream of demands from the groom's family - and if the woman's parents refuse to pay, their daughter may be beaten or murdered by her own husband and in-laws. The depth of the problem is summed up in a local saying she quotes: "Having a daughter is like watering your neighbor's garden."

But despite all the horrible sexism that Goldberg chronicles, all the discrimination and oppression she details, her conclusions are not wholly pessimistic. The cause of women's rights is advancing, albeit frustratingly slowly and haltingly, but advancing nevertheless.

One of her arguments that came as a revelation to me is that the United Nations does a lot more good than most people are aware of. Its treaties and resolutions on the rights of women, so often disparaged as powerless symbolism, have had major, concrete effects in reforming the legal systems of many countries and establishing reproductive choice as a human right before national and international judicial bodies.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, Goldberg argues convincingly that the greatest effects of American politics are felt abroad rather than at home. Abortion politics in the U.S. have settled into an uneasy but stable equilibrium, one that changes little regardless of which party is in power. But in the developing world, it makes a huge difference whether and to whom the U.S. provides aid. The most infamous example is the "global gag rule", which forbids family planning groups that receive any federal aid from providing, or even acknowledging the existence of, abortion. This rule, which has been repeatedly canceled by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican presidents, makes all the difference in developing countries whose only source of family planning aid is the U.S. When in effect, it's forced the closure of countless clinics that provide not just contraception or abortion, but also prenatal care, checkups, vaccinations, and other help for new mothers and families.

There's even more in this book that I haven't mentioned, but I've written enough to support the conclusions from my opening words. Goldberg makes a clear and compelling case that all the evils she mentions, all the battles that feminist groups are fighting, all of this stems from the same source: the refusal to recognize women as full human beings with equal rights, including autonomy over their own bodies and the right to decide for themselves when and whether to have children. This pervasive sexism is still entrenched throughout the world, and although religion isn't solely to blame for this, it has always been the strongest and most enduring friend to patriarchy. Only when its malignant influence is defeated will women truly be free. And conversely, by freeing women, we take one of the most effective steps to roll back religion's power and influence.

In question #86 of his Reasonable Faith column, William Lane Craig addresses a question from a Christian who's troubled by one of the most wicked doctrines of that theology, the dogma of Hell. Craig's correspondent wonders whether the saved will feel compassion for the damned, but also worries that it would be a violation of free will for God to erase their memories of their lost loved ones.

I would never forget that I had a child and wish to be with them in the afterlife unless God specifically altered my mind... I am just having trouble imagining myself so happy that I just don't think about my child who is burning in eternal damnation.

Craig's response begins:

You object... that God would violate the free will of redeemed persons were He to take such action. I don't see that this implication follows. God's respecting human free will has to do with moral decision-making. God will not cause you to take one morally significant choice rather than another. He leaves it up to you. But obviously God limits our freedom in many morally neutral ways... if God removes from the redeemed knowledge of the damned, including knowledge of loved ones that are damned, He does not violate the moral integrity or free will of the persons involved, any more than if He had removed their knowledge of calculus.

This is just obviously wrong. Stealing people's memories of the suffering of others is a morally neutral limitation on their freedom? By what bizarre reasoning could anyone possibly arrive at that conclusion? Taking away that knowledge stops us from acting in ways that we would otherwise want to, which is the essence of making a moral choice.

It would be as if I had a relative who was dying from cancer, and I went to see a therapist who could hypnotize me into forgetting their existence, so I wouldn't have any desire to visit them in the hospital and comfort them. By Craig's reckoning, this is a "morally neutral" choice. By any rational system of morality, however, this would be an act of supreme callousness and depraved indifference to the suffering of others.

But not to worry, Craig has a fallback answer:

This alternative suggests that the experience of being in Christ's immediate presence will be so overwhelming for the redeemed that they will not think of the damned in hell.

Craig compares this to a wounded soldier having a limb amputated without anesthetic, suffering from pain so intense it drives all other thoughts out of his mind - except, he says, we should substitute happiness for pain to get some idea of what it feels like to be in Heaven. (Great analogy!)

What this comes down to is saying that the saved will be like drug addicts on a permanent high, so wrapped up in their own euphoria that they care nothing for the world outside their own head. Heaven will be like the Land of the Lotus-Eaters from Greek mythology, its inhabitants forever smothered in a blissful haze that leaves them unable to think of or contemplate anything else, for all eternity. Am I the only one who finds this image disturbing rather than appealing?

Craig isn't the first one to suggest this; other Christians have said very similar things. But whenever they try to describe in any detail what people in this state would look or act like, they always wind up painting a picture of Kafkaesque automatons that I call bright machines. Far from being the fullest and most perfect realization of human potential, the imaginary inhabitants of Heaven are less than human. They're lacking in all the emotional depth, all the richness and color that makes our lives real and meaningful.

We do have a glimpse of this vision here on Earth. Certain kinds of brain damage can rob a person of all emotional affect, so that all they ever feel is a constant, all-enveloping bliss - very like Craig's vision of Christians overwhelmed by the beatific vision. But the result isn't an appealing picture:

"He looks like our son and has the same voice as our son, but he is not the same person we knew and loved.... He's not the same person he was before he had this stroke. Our son was a warm, caring, and sensitive person. All that is gone. He now sounds like a robot."

This, then, is the Christian conception of the afterlife - blissed-out robots in Heaven, billions of the damned eternally suffering in Hell. If that's what William Lane Craig and others want to believe, that's their right. But I would hardly call this reassuring or comforting to the worried questioner - much less a "reasonable faith".

Other posts in this series:

• Rebutting Reasonable Faith

According to the vast majority of religious believers (though perhaps not to the tiny minority of elite theologians), God is basically in nature like a larger and more powerful human being. He has plans and desires which he takes actions to fulfill; he likes some people and things and dislikes others; he experiences emotions like anger, jealousy, love, and forgiveness; he can be persuaded to act on another's behalf; and so on.

The most peculiar aspect of this anthropomorphic theology is its claim that God has preferences: he likes and desires certain states of affairs, while he dislikes others and desires that they not come to pass. For example, in the Old Testament, we are told that God desires animal sacrifice; the text repeatedly says that the smell of burning animal flesh is a "sweet savor" to him. Conversely, the worship of idols or gods other than himself is something he strongly dislikes, to the extent of visiting dreadful punishments on people who do it.

Christianity, too, says that God desires to forgive humanity for its sins, but also desires a blood sacrifice before he will consent to do so, thus necessitating the death of Jesus. The Christian god strongly dislikes the vice of pride, and harshly punishes those who seek to attain equality with him. In Islam, God desires that human beings worship him alone, rejecting belief in any partners; and in the nastier strains of Islam, we're told that God desires glorious martyrdom in battle and will reward anyone who does so with eternal glory.

The belief that God wants and desires certain things is a common thread in monotheism. But when you think about it, this is a profoundly strange belief. Most theists don't recognize this, but that's because the analogy between God and human beings masks the strangeness of it.

After all, we all understand how, and why, human beings come to hold certain desires. We have instinctual physiological drives, installed in us by evolution, for basic things like food, sex and companionship. We have more complex desires as a result of culture, upbringing and past experience for things that we think will add to our happiness or help fulfill the more basic desires. Every one of us has gone through a long, complex and contingent process of development that shaped our likes and dislikes.

But God, so we're told, is eternal and unchanging. He is pure reason, pure mind, pure spirit - no physical needs to fulfill, no past history, none of the contingent events that make human nature what it is. So how is it that he has, just like us, a complex nature with specific likes and dislikes? He did not undergo the process by which human beings acquire their preferences, so where does he get them from? Why does he prefer things one way and not another?

Some believers may find this question difficult to comprehend, so as an imagination-stretching exercise, allow me to propose a variety of different preference sets which it seems, a priori, that God could have had. I invite theists to consider these possibilities, and to ask themselves: why is it that God is this way and not one of those ways?

• Self-Sufficient God. This deity knows himself to possess all perfections and sees no reason to create any inferior sentient beings. Therefore, he sits alone in the void for all eternity, contemplating his own perfection, and never creates a world separate from himself.

• Sadistic God. His greatest desire is to see maximal human pain and suffering. He desires no worship, offers no opportunity for salvation, and answers no prayer, but deliberately creates a world as hellish as possible and peoples it with sentient beings just so that he can watch them suffer for all eternity.

• Moral Relativist God. He creates a world and peoples it with sentient beings, but has no motivation to care about what they do to each other, any more than a person who owns an ant farm would care about the morality of the ants. He gives no commandments and sets no rules, but watches us for his own entertainment, regarding both great acts of good and terrible acts of evil with the same bemused detachment.

• Recluse God. His greatest desire is to be left alone. Prayers, acts of devotion and other worship just annoy him, and he has an afterlife of punishment set aside for those devout people who constantly bother him. The people whom he'll reward are the atheists, because at least they let him get some peace and quiet.

• Prankster God. His greatest desire is to do the opposite of what we expect (he finds it hilarious). Whenever people pray for something, he does the opposite. When people seek him, he hides from them; when people ignore him, he reveals himself to them. The people who are most certain they're saved, he'll doom to an afterlife of punishment, and people who don't believe in an afterlife will be admitted to a blissful heavenly realm. He's constantly leaving misleading clues and sending incompatible revelations to the world, just to keep us further confused.

Granted, some of these hypothetical gods sound bizarre. But how are they any more bizarre than a god who prefers one particular race of people above all others, or a god who demands the shedding of innocent blood to forgive sins, or a god who demands five prayers at specific times each day, or a god who desires that we ritually consume his flesh and blood each week? It's only familiarity that makes these seem natural while the ones I've proposed seem strange.

There's an interesting parallel here with the "fine-tuning" argument sometimes used by religious apologists. They ask how likely it is that a universe with physical laws conducive to life could just happen to exist with no prior explanation. But atheists can ask an analogous question in return: Out of all the billions of possible gods, each one with a different highly specific and arbitrary set of desires and preferences, how likely is it that there just happens to be one who's benevolent and kindly disposed toward humans? What prior cause can explain that favorable coincidence?

By JulietEcho

Editor's Note: This piece emerged from the discussion of my recent post on the legality of polyamory. Please welcome Daylight Atheism's newest guest contributor, JulietEcho, who has her B.A. in both Philosophy and Religious Studies and is also the administrator of the Friendly Atheist forum. You can e-mail her at ejsunflowers@gmail.com.

I've been in a polyamorous relationship with my two partners for over three years now, and it's been great. The only downside: the secrecy. Many people in the US don't even know that plural relationships exist outside of Islamic countries and fundamentalist Mormon compounds. Polyamorous families tend to be very secretive - and with good reason. The religious majority in America considers any romantic relationship that's not between a straight woman and a straight man (usually in the context of marriage) to be sinful and immoral – and people in polyamorous relationships mostly consider silence the safest option, given the risks of losing jobs, reputations and even custody of children. However, bad reactions to polyamory aren't limited to reactions rooted in religion. I'm going to outline what I've found to be the three most common bad reactions to polyamory from non-religious people, and I plan to demonstrate why they're bad reactions.

1. "Polyamory? That's okay, as long as <insert horrible things here> isn't going on."

Underage marriages. Forced marriages. Abusive marriages. Polyamory is just swell, as long as it's not underage, forced, and/or abusive polyamory! While the reaction based on historical connections is understandable, it's a non-sequitur. When you find out that someone is marrying the woman of their dreams, you don't say, "That's great, as long as you don't plan on beating your new wife!" There's a long, horrible history of socially-acceptable violence against women, not to mention the centuries during which they were treated as property. This doesn't, however, mean that we're obliged to point out that it's unacceptable every time we find out about a man and a woman in a romantic relationship. No one should have to clarify that their polyamorous relationship is abuse-free, any more than someone in a relationship with a woman should have to clarify that they don't plan on treating her like property.

Some even argue that we should criminalize polyamory, or never acknowledge poly relationships as a normal part of society, because it would benefit abusers who force underage girls to marry them. This is beyond ridiculous – the fact that pedophiles are out there hasn't led us to outlaw sex, and the fact that thieves are out there hasn't led us to outlaw property ownership. There are still abusive relationships, pedophiles, and forced arranged monogamous marriages all over the world – are these things okay as long as they only involve two people? Should we outlaw one-on-one marriages so that we aren't providing a framework for abusive husbands, forced arranged marriages, marital rape, etc? The solution isn't to penalize polyamorous relationships – it's to crack down on the abuse of women, whether they're being abused singly or in groups.

2. "Those relationships are always about drama/don't last/are dysfunctional."

You don't tend to hear about the relationships that do last, because polyamorous families don't stand to gain anything from going public. You hear about the failed attempts from people who are upset and bitter about bad relationships (monogamous people don't have a monopoly on those), and from cases where there was serious fall-out between groups of friends, etc. You don't hear about the ones that last, because the people involved are generally terrified that they'll lose their kids and their jobs if people find out.

With more factors involved, poly relationships have a higher probability of failing – just like single people are much less likely to get divorced than married people. There's one more person who needs to "click" and more personal dynamics involved. It's hard to find (and sustain) a happy, healthy polyamorous relationship – but once you've got one, the people involved tend to be strong communicators, prioritize honesty and not take the relationship for granted. That's what it takes to make polyamory work.

In the end, to paraphrase Dan Savage, every relationship you have is going to fail – until one doesn't. That's true no matter how many people you date at once.

3. "Telling people that you're polyamorous is over-sharing – it's like telling them about your sex life."

Telling someone that you're dating a man is essentially telling them that you're interested in sex with men. Telling someone that you're dating a woman is essentially telling them that you're interested in sex with women. Telling someone that you're in a polyamorous relationship is essentially telling them that you don't see sexual monogamy as a necessary part of a healthy relationship. That's all. It doesn't imply (and no one should infer) that poly people have group sex, orgies, or have open relationships. It doesn't imply that every person in the relationship has sex with every other person in the relationship – in a way, it gives you less information about someone's sex life than finding out that only two people are dating each other.

It might feel like too much information to hear that someone is in a poly relationship – but that's about your personal comfort zone, not about the objective amount (or type) of information being shared. Many people are uncomfortable around gay couples or would rather not know that someone is gay – and that's tough cookies. People in love shouldn't have to (and aren't going to) go through a constant, public charade so that other people won't be grossed out or offended. No one is going to have sex in front of you. No one is going to ask you to join their poly relationship, like it's a club or something. Admitting the existence of a romantic relationship isn't inappropriate or over-sharing – it's normal.

When it comes right down to it, perhaps the biggest unspoken reason people have for objecting to (or being offended by) polyamory is fear. It's common for monogamous people to fear that a partner might leave them for a polyamorous relationship (or might demand opening up the existing relationship) if polyamory becomes normalized. But if your partner would actually leave you, or demand that you open up your relationship against your wishes, then you obviously aren't on the same page. There are tons of people out there (I'd wager a large majority of people) who want mostly or completely monogamous relationships – and they should find, date and marry other people who want the same thing.

Being honest about whether or not you're truly willing to commit to one other person sexually and romantically for life is ethical and healthy. Pretending to want monogamy (or genuinely wanting it, and then changing your mind and keeping it a secret), and then cheating is very, very common. Perhaps divorce and infidelity would become less common if more people were aware that poly relationships are an option, and if people made a greater effort to communicate their needs and desires. In short: polyamorous people aren't a threat to people who truly want monogamy – any more than relationships with men are a threat to people who are only interested in relationships with women.

Whether polyamorous marriage is ever legalized or not, I'll be more than happy if it's someday considered socially acceptable. There's nothing inherently unethical or offensive about it, and I've been surprised to find out how many polyamorous people I know, once they feel safe enough to talk about it. "Coming out" as polyamorous is currently a frightening, risky thing to do. If a friend discloses a polyamorous relationship to you, I hope you won't react in any of the ways I've discussed above, but rather give them the support and friendship that they need.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments if you're curious about polyamory, and thanks for reading.

(Author's Note: The following review was solicited and is written in accordance with this site's policy for such reviews.)

Summary: Sparkling writing; marvelous characters; could have benefited from a tighter narrative.

This is the first time I've ever reviewed a work of fiction for Daylight Atheism, but this one was well in tune with my site's mission and merited the exception: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's 36 Arguments for the Existence of God. Despite the title, it's a novel, not an academic textbook or a work of theology; and despite the title, it's not an apologia for theism. If anything, the opposite is true. (Potential conflict of interest alert: Ms. Goldstein is the wife of Professor Steven Pinker, who served as the judge in a writing contest that I won, and who asked me if I'd be interested in reading the book.)

The main character of 36 Arguments is Cass Seltzer, an atheist psychology professor who's found unexpected success and fame in a book debunking religion. Supporting characters include Lucinda Mandelbaum, his current significant other and a renowned mathematician; his old girlfriend, Roz Margolis, an anthropologist who's researching life extension; Jonas Elijah Klapper, a windbag literary scholar who is Seltzer's former mentor; and Azarya Sheiner, a young mathematical prodigy from an ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community.

Cass is a professor at the fictional Frankfurter University in Massachusetts, but has just received a job offer from Harvard and is mulling whether to accept it, while at the same time he prepares for a debate with a religious apologist that centers around the arguments in his best-selling book. But this story, though it takes place in the present (from the novel's perspective), is arguably not the main one. In fact, there are several plot threads, and the story skips back and forth between them - each one chronicling a different time in Cass' life, explaining how he met the other characters and how he came to be where he is at the novel's beginning.

First things first: I loved Goldstein's writing style. It's sparkling, exuberant, erudite, leaping into paragraph-long sentences as if the author is breathlessly trying to narrate everything as fast as it happens. In its best moments, it achieves the sublime. She's obviously thoroughly informed about the history and development of the atheist movement, and the way its defenders respond to criticism (some of the quotes will likely be familiar to you). And I loved the characters she crafts - so much so that I'd gladly read a sequel that follows up on some of them.

Azarya's inner battle between his dreams of nurturing his mathematical gifts, and his desire to stay faithful to his community and its traditions, is compellingly depicted and evoked an unexpected pang of sympathy from me, even for a sect as insular and narrow-minded as Hasidic Judaism. Cass is a glowingly sympathetic protagonist - for once, a novel that treats atheism as a normal and even sympathetic viewpoint, and not as a disease that a character has to be cured of! - and when he celebrates his good fortune, the reader is drawn in to celebrate with him, to make his triumphs our own and to share his fear that they may all be snatched away. And when, at the end, he steps up to the podium to do battle with his adversary, we're cheering him on (well, I was). And Roz, especially, was a magnificent creation, a tigerish free spirit who makes an already bright book even brighter whenever she appears in it.

There was only one character I didn't like, and that leads me to my one major complaint. Cass' mentor, Jonas Elijah Klapper, was pompous, egotistical, and insufferably self-absorbed - and I have no doubt that Goldstein intended us to find him so - but then, why does he have so much face time in the book? The plot noticeably drags whenever he appears, and in fact, the plot thread that involves him is never really brought to a satisfying resolution.

To tell the truth, for all that I liked about it, the book in general could have used a tighter narrative focus. There's not really a single, overarching plot that drives the story as much as there is a series of extended episodes from the life of its major character, and the "main" story - the one that occurs in the novel's present, rather than being backstory - has a fairly anticlimactic ending. There were several intriguing plot threads, especially Roz's involvement with a group studying life extension, that offer tantalizing possibilities but never really develop. Some of these have enough potential to be books in and of themselves, and if they ever do, I'd be glad to read them.