By Sarah Braasch

[Editor's Note: Please welcome Sarah Braasch back to Daylight Atheism for her second guest post! You can read Sarah's bio from a post last month.]

A few months ago, through some fault of my own, I found myself on a driving tour of Naples, Italy, assiduously avoiding the unwanted sexual advances of some US Navy boys. I was not enjoying myself much at all when one of the sailors suggested we go hooker hunting, as he so charmingly phrased it. I was suddenly rapt with attention and very keen to experience the famed seedy underbelly of Naples. I was also more than a little concerned that my companions intended to do more than window shop, but that was not about to dissuade me from witnessing the Neapolitan sex industry first hand.

I will never forget their eyes. They were either vacant and dead or hostile and menacing. Some were Eastern European. Some were from the Maghreb. Some were sub-Saharan African. Almost all of them wore either mini skirts or hot pants with fishnet stockings and bustiers. All of them wore heavy makeup. Most of them were at least decently attractive, with long, thin legs. They were congregated in small groups of twos and threes, seemingly along racial or ethnic lines. The Eastern Europeans were leaning against street signs outside of the train station in the middle of the night. The Africans relieved themselves next to their shaded deck chairs along the side of the highway.

I could tell when I made eye contact with them that they knew I was a curious but casual sexual tourist, not an active participant. I wondered if it made them angry or embarrassed. I wondered if they felt shame. I wondered if people ever took pictures of them. Suddenly, it felt very shameful to be viewing these women, as if I were conducting a laboratory experiment. It reminded me of a very painful memory from my distant past.

When I was an undergrad, a classmate and I were interns at Boeing in Seattle. I had accompanied her to Los Gatos, in the Silicon Valley, just outside of San Francisco, to visit an elderly couple, distant family members of hers. They must have been in their late eighties or early nineties. They were charming and kind and hospitable. They took us on a driving tour of all of San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Then, they drove us through East Palo Alto, an economically depressed, crime-ridden area with a high minority population. They called it East Palo Africa. They rolled up the windows and locked the doors. They pointed at the black men, women, and children and laughed. I was in a state of shock, and I was paralyzed. I knew that they were very old, but I couldn't believe that people still behaved like this. I knew that I should have done something. I should have said something. I should have asked them to stop. I should have jumped from the car. I should have yelled or screamed. But, I didn't. I didn't do or say anything. And, I've never forgotten it, and I've never stopped regretting my inaction.

"This is different," I tried to tell myself. "I'm doing this so that I can write about this experience, so that I can expose this atrocity, these human rights violations." But, as much as I tried to convince myself otherwise, I felt sick and vile, like a monster, and I wanted to go home. The sailors continued to point and laugh and make prurient and lewd jokes.

The nonchalance of the entire enterprise baffled me. Cars pull up to negotiate their sexual purchases while the vendors hawk and flaunt their wares. No one bats an eye. Twenty feet away, families greet one another with loving embraces after long journeys. Police cars roll by. On Sunday, we watched desperate trollops chase after wary buyers on the freeway. Apparently, there is no Sabbath for streetwalkers. How can human beings be so inured to the suffering of their fellow creatures? As a human rights activist, I am sometimes awestruck by the absence of humanity in humans. And, how to account for the insensitivity? It is in our nature? Or, can we rise above? What is holding us back?

I think religion is holding us back. It is all too easy to view human beings as unworthy of your sympathy and care if you think of them as the damned and filthy heathen hordes shunned by your Almighty. I should know. This is how I used to think as an inculcated Jehovah's Witness child. It's amazing how easily the prevalence of religious law lends itself to lawlessness. I was flabbergasted by the lawlessness. The irony was not lost on us. Here we were, in the ancestral home of the Catholic Church, in one of the most religious countries on earth, where 85% of the population considers themselves Catholic, and the market for cheap sex was apparently insatiable.

I have visited some of the most religious and some of the most irreligious places on earth. I have yet to experience this so called disparity in morality, in favor of religion, which the advocates for religion seem to assume exists. In fact, as far as women are concerned, my experience has revealed an inversely proportional relationship. The more religious the society, the worse the human rights violations perpetrated against women, the less "moral" men behave towards women. I find the claims to some sort of moral superiority on the part of religious societies and pundits to be specious at best, if not down right disingenuous, not to mention sexist, patriarchal, and misogynistic.

I guess it all depends on your definition of morality. If it includes, as it does in so many religious societies, the reproductive and sexual enslavement of women by men, then, yes, of course, religion does impart morality.

In April, I wrote a piece chastising Madeline Bunting for her willful invocation of the Courtier's Reply, in which she attacks atheists for criticizing the beliefs actually held and practiced by billions of people, rather than the beliefs of a tiny minority of theologians and pundits like herself.

But let it not be said that we shy from a challenge. In this post, I'll take up the issue of religion as it is held by Bunting and others of like mind.

Here's how she defines her own beliefs:

Apophatic is a word no longer even in my dictionary, but it's a major tradition of Christian thought, and central to the thinking of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas: it is the idea that God is ineffable and beyond powers of description. S/he can be experienced by religious practice, but as Armstrong puts it: "In the past, people knew we could say nothing about God. Certain forms of knowledge only come with practice." It makes the boundary between belief in God and agnosticism much more porous than commonly assumed.

...But the modern distortion was to make God into a proposition in which you either did or did not believe. He was turned into an old man in the sky with a long white beard or promoted as a cuddly friend named Jesus. Arguing about the existence of such human creations is akin to the medieval pastime of calculating how many angels could fit on the head of a pin.

Bunting quotes Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God, who holds similar views:

The reality that we call God, Brahman, Nirvana or the sacred is transcendent. That is, it goes beyond our mundane experience.... The Greek Orthodox believed that every statement about the divine should have two qualities. It should be paradoxical, reminding us that the idea of God cannot fit neatly into a human system of thought; and it should be apophatic - it should reduce us to silence, in the same way as a great poem or piece of music.

As I wrote in "One More Burning Bush", the record shows that, throughout recorded history, the gods have been shrinking. They started out as very tangible beings, present in the world, continually performing miracles. But with time and the advance of knowledge, every substantive, testable claim about them has been gradually chipped away, until we arrive at a god whose existence is indistinguishable from his nonexistence. The logical conclusion of this process is this, what's called apophatic theology: a god whose believers make no positive claims about him at all.

I have to admit, I've never had much affection for incoherentist arguments for atheism. The notion of "God" as believed in by most Western religions is perfectly comprehensible to me. I may differ with theists about whether there is anything in the real world that matches their description, but I can understand what it would mean for such a being to exist. But with believers in apophatic theology, this criticism has more merit. Their belief does not seem to have any content, indeed does not seem to be a belief about anything at all. It's the philosophical equivalent of the empty set. Can these people even explain what it would mean for their belief to be true, versus for it to be false?

This is a god of shadow and vapor. Advance towards it, and like a shadow, it disappears; try to grasp it, and all you grasp is insubstantial mist. While all gods share the distinction of not existing in the real world, this god seems to have the unique quality of not existing even in its own believers' minds. If they don't hold any positive beliefs about God, then what exactly is it that they believe?

Armstrong again:

....In the modern West, we have lost sight of this apophatic vision, and imagine that our statements about God and the ultimate are accurate expressions of this transcendence, whereas in reality, they must point beyond the limitations of our human minds.

The problem I've always had with statements like this is that our human minds, limited though they may be, are the only tools we have. If there is something that truly cannot be comprehended by the human mind, then it is pointless to talk about it or believe in it. The phrase "statements that point beyond the limitations of the mind" is just a string of words without meaning. By definition, any such statement would be indistinguishable from nonsense and gibberish. (Bunting's claim that "certain forms of knowledge only come with practice" sounds clever, but anyone who thinks about it for a few seconds will see that it's nonsensical: If we know nothing about God, how can we know what practices are appropriate?)

The only real difference between Bunting, Armstrong and other apophatic theists on one hand, and atheists on the other, is that they feel compelled to slap the label "God" on something, even if that something is a philosophical abstraction with no content. And that's fine if that's what they want, I really couldn't care less - until they start insisting, inexplicably, that belief in this nullity is a prerequisite for virtue; or worse, that this is what all theists really believe. Both of these claims are transparently false, and when they try to defend them, the apophatic apologists look just as disconnected from reality as the deity they claim to believe in.

I recently finished reading two books by the Anglican bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism and Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Spong is infamous for his near-total rejection of the tenets of Christianity, despite being a member of the clergy, and these books witness to that: he doesn't believe in miracles or an afterlife, denies the Trinity, denies the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, and in fact, doesn't believe in God as an external supernatural being at all. In place of all these things he proposes a nontheist form of Christianity, similar to some forms of Quakerism or Buddhism, in which God is understood as the ground of all being or the impulse calling us to love one another, and Jesus as a person who uniquely manifested that attitude of universal love.

There are other aspects of this theology I want to discuss later, but for today I want to focus on just one point: Spong's insistence that Christianity's evolution into a nontheistic form is inevitable. This is necessary, he says, because traditional theistic religion is losing its power to command educated human beings' allegiance, and if Christianity does not adapt, it will die out. In fact, he says, the demise of fundamentalism and literalist religion is coming very soon:

"Organized religion as we have known it in the Western world is considered by many a friend and foe alike to be sick unto death. The periodic revivals of fundamentalism are momentary blips on the EKG charts of religious history."

—Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p.107

On this point, Spong couldn't be more wrong. He envisions fundamentalism as a dying movement, one that's losing its strength and vitality. In fact, fundamentalism is still a powerful force, and there are signs that it is gaining strength at the expense of more traditional, liberal denominations such as his.

Although Spong alludes to the appeal of fundamentalism, he seems not to grasp its full force. Fundamentalism's great strength is that it offers easy answers, a reassuring sense of certainty in an uncertain world, and a promise of wish-fulfillment for the believer. Spong writes that these advantages are counterbalanced by the fact that the fundamentalist view of God is "naive at best and unbelievable at worst" (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, p.140). But what he really seems to mean is that he, himself, can no longer take these stories seriously, and he assumes that his skepticism is widely shared.

In reality, there are hundreds of millions of people worldwide who see no difficulty in believing that creation happened six thousand years ago, that God does miracles on behalf of the faithful, or that Jesus rose into the sky because that's where Heaven is. Some of these people have never been exposed to rational thinking; others have consciously chosen to reject it in favor of a simpler, older, and more reassuring vision of the world.

For all its virtues, Spong's theology is weak and colorless. His faith of homogenous, universal love is well and good, but the fact remains that there are other, powerful motivating factors in human psychology that he never attempts to tap. The desire to obey one's superiors, and the sense of righteous judgment at those who break the rules; the sense of privilege and exclusiveness, belonging to a community that is united against the world; and its opposite, the xenophobic sense of hate and rage directed against the outsider - these are extraordinarily strong psychological impulses which his theology does not speak to or address. Fundamentalism does, which is why it's no surprise that it finds willing converts in the millions who are driven by their baser instincts.

Spong's mistake is a common one: he assumes that everyone views the world the same way he does. (Ironically, religious fundamentalists often do the same thing, which leads them to conclude that every nonbeliever must be a stubborn sinner who willfully denies their own knowledge of the Truth of God.) Since he personally finds supernaturalism unbelievable, he thinks everyone else believes the same thing, which is why he predicts the imminent demise of theistic religion. But the truth is that, although the world's religions have been forced to adapt in various ways to modernity, they are alive and vital all the same. Fundamentalism is a highly adaptable creed, able to accommodate itself to almost any era. The rumors of its demise are greatly exaggerated.

In the long run - and here we're talking several hundred years or more - I do believe that religion will die out. As we become more and more able to understand and control our world through reason, its inadequacy will become more obvious, and the secularization of humankind will accelerate. But that doesn't say anything about which kind of religion will survive the longest. I strongly suspect that some form of fundamentalism will be among the diehards. A watered-down, contentless theology like Spong's, on the other hand, offers nothing to compete with a robust philosophy of humanistic atheism, and as the atheist movement grows more influential, such faiths will probably be the first to go.

By Sarah Braasch

When I was about seven years old I almost died. It wasn't the only time I almost died, but it was one of my most colorful near death experiences. I had acquired some sort of flu bug or food poisoning or I don't know what, but my mother, in her either infinite ignorance or indifference, failed to procure anything in the way of medical attention for her ailing child. In all fairness, at first, I attempted to minimize my illness in order to be able to participate in a planned trip to a local amusement park.

I know it sounds silly to say that I almost died from a flu bug in the US during the later part of the 20th century, and, yet, my story is true. I hadn't eaten anything solid for about two weeks, and I couldn't remember the last time I'd been able to hold down water. It seemed like I was either vomiting or dry heaving non-stop. I was parched and too weak to lift my head off of my pillow. I hadn't realized it at the time, but my mother later told me that I looked like a little concentration camp survivor, I had lost so much weight.

I remember that there was an old black and white movie on the tiny television on the dresser at the foot of the bed. I remember that the movie took place in a faux harem in a faux Middle Eastern palace in a faux Arabia. I think Gregory Peck may have been involved.

I wasn't scared. I just remember how I wanted nothing more than for the overwhelming waves of pain and nausea rolling through my body to stop. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I couldn't drink. I couldn't move. All I could think about was the pain. I didn't have the strength to dry heave anymore, but I kept dry heaving while lying on my back. I didn't even have the strength to turn onto my side or even turn my head. My body was convulsing involuntarily. Then, the convulsions started to fade. My body no longer possessed the ability to exercise its involuntary impulses. The ripples in my stomach waned. Everything slowed down. My heartbeat. My breathing. I felt nothing so much as relief. I just didn't want to feel anything anymore. I lost the will to live.

It was so strange how everything came into such clear focus at that moment. I remember the bizarre brown and gold patterned wallpaper. I remember these tiny clip on cabbage patch dolls I had purchased at the local five and dime. I remember the huge yellow plastic bowl I had been throwing up in, when I still had something inside of me to vomit. I remember the bedroom furniture and the way the bedspread draped over my legs and feet. I remember the light in the room.

I was completely still. My little legs began to rise. Actually, my entire body began to rise, but flat as a board, as if someone was lifting me by the feet, but my head was secured to my pillow. I watched this with great curiosity. I realized that my legs remained swathed in my nightgown, even as my legs were lifted higher and higher, until my feet were directly overhead. Then I watched as my body swung back down, in the same manner, towards the bed. As I watched my legs and feet return to the bed, I discovered that my body was also still on the bed, covered in the bedspread, completely still. This occurred multiple times. My head never left my pillow. I didn't feel fear, only intrigue, and, even, amusement.

At that time, death was not particularly terrifying. I had no fear of hell, not because I thought I was without sin, but because I didn't think hell existed. I was a little Jehovah's Witness girl, and Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in hell. But, I was confused. It seemed to me as if a version of me, a spirit, a soul had left or was trying to leave my physical body. But, I had been taught that I was a living human soul, but that I didn't have a soul, which survived the death of my physical self.

My feet were directly overhead again. It felt final. It felt like I was being asked to make a choice, like I was on the edge of a precipice, about to jump. It felt like my feet were being tugged on, but something inside of me was resisting. My head remained securely on my pillow, as if it were attached. Not exactly terror, because I wasn't afraid, but determination, and, maybe, panic washed over me, almost instantaneously. Then, I chose. I wasn't ready. But, I wasn't sure how to get back inside myself. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't sure I had the strength to do anything.

With everything and anything I had left inside of myself to give, I screamed for my mother. It came out as a barely audible, raspy plea. I tried again. Louder. Again. Then, she was beside me, looking down at me.

"What is it?" she asked, seemingly unable to see that which I could see.

"Mommy, why are my feet up there?" I asked.

"What are you talking about?"

"My feet are up there, in the sky."

"No they aren't. They're right here." My mother sat on the bed, placing her hands on my lifeless limbs under the bed covers. It was the strangest sensation. It was like I fell back into myself. My mother looked terrified. She called the doctor.

I guess it would be pretty easy to chalk up the entire experience to an illness induced hallucination, but I've never forgotten it, and I've never stopped feeling as if there was something more to it than just dehydration or religious fervor induced psychosis. It was hardly my only mystical experience as a child, or even as an adult.

I've had tons of mystical and spiritual (i.e. allegedly nonmaterial, supernatural) experiences. I was able to conjure up transcendental experiences at will as a child, which could probably best be described as astral projection, although I wouldn't have understood that term at the time, of course. But, somehow, I knew that I had separated from my ostensible physical self. All I had to do was contemplate the unfathomable idea that nothing would have ever existed if Jehovah God hadn't chosen to create everything, including existence itself. I would float around in outer space, amongst the planets and stars. It was the strangest feeling. It made me feel high, even after I'd returned to my body. I became addicted to it, and it became more and more difficult for me as I got older. I would spend hours alone in my room trying to recreate the sensation. As I grew older, it also got scarier. I had been raised to believe that anything even remotely attributable to spiritism and the occult was the product of demonic influence. I became obsessed with the notion that I was inviting demons into my life.

I've seen what would commonly be referred to as ghosts, demons, and angels, not to mention the future. I practically have a mystical experience once a day. None of these experiences, past or present, compel me to believe in God, certainly not the God as typically conceived by any of the major mainstream religions. There are lots of things in the world, which I neither understand nor can explain, starting with my personal existence. This doesn't presume a divine source. This doesn't even presume a supernatural or metaphysical cause.

The very act of employing the term supernatural is rather arrogant when we understand so little of our natural world. How do we know that these mystical experiences aren't the result of interacting with alternate dimensions or alternate universes or alternate versions of ourselves? As our perception of reality approaches our wildest science fiction fantasies, we realize just how disappointing, prosaic, and mundane the world's religions' gods are, seemingly endlessly fascinated and preoccupied by the quotidian sexual exploits of my next door neighbor.

With the ever exponentially telescoping expansion of knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, I believe that we are moving closer and closer to answering those most difficult ontological and teleological existential questions. We will know the nature of God, and we will discover that God is nature. General relativity, special relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, M theory, supersymmetry, the multiverse. We just keep getting closer and closer.

I am not troubled at the thought of losing life's zest and purpose once the mystery is gone. First of all, that point is far, far away, still, despite our amazing progress. Second, just imagine the possibilities. The infinite universes to explore, the infinite selves with whom to acquaint oneself. Ultimately, we will harness our ability to shape our myriad existences and universes. Time and materiality will be of little consequence. We will become gods with the ability to determine our own destinies, our own realities. And I, for one, unlike Jehovah, Yahweh, Jesus, and Allah, will not be much bothered with the sexual goings-on of my neighbors.

It's not only professional philosophers and theologians who have an opinion on matters touching the sacred. Sometimes, gold-jewelry-wearing, mohawk-having, former '80s television and movie action stars have words of wisdom to express on these weighty matters. Like, for instance, Mr. T, who recently gave an interview to Bizarre magazine in which he made a very interesting, and unintentionally revealing, comment.

The interviewer asked T if he'd ever seen a UFO, to which he responded:

I'm a Christian – I really don't believe in UFOs.

What one has to do with the other is not clear to me, but leave that aside. Mr. T is in fact an evangelical Christian, as he confirms in this Beliefnet interview:

I am a sinner who has been saved by grace. It's by the grace of God that I'm here. We all have sinned and fallen short on God's glory. I come home and I ask God to forgive me for my sins. Everyday I ask for a new cleansing. I say, "God, let me show kindness to someone, let me give someone hope. Let me be a light at the end of a tunnel for somebody." I tell people, they say I'm a farmer, I plant the seed of hope, plant the seed of inspiration, plant the seed so they can start praying and believing again.

He credits his surviving a bout with cancer (he had, yes, T-cell lymphoma - no, I'm not making that up) to his faith:

The story of Job gave me strength when I had cancer. I said, "T, if you just hang in there, God will give you double for your troubles." That's what I was taught in church and that's what happened to Job. What he lost, he gained more in the end. Job said, "Though you slay me, yet will I trust you." God giveth and God taketh away. Blessed be his holy name." And that's how I live.

So far, this is the standard evangelical Christian platter of beliefs. But in the Bizarre interview, the interviewer asks Mr. T a different question, and his answer gives the game away:

If you could have a magical power, what would it be?
Easy question! That's too, too easy Alix! Wow. I appreciate your sweetness giving me such an easy question! I'd have the power to heal little children. I'd want to make sure they all got an education and weren't scrabbling around in garbage and eating scraps of junk, like the kids in India shown in that movie, Slumdog Millionaire. I hope the people that made that film are investing some of the profits into cleaning up the area where they filmed, and doing something to improve those kids' lives. Yeah, I'd want to help the tiny ones who are blind, who have diseases like AIDS and problems like muscular dystrophy... I'd heal the children and save the babies.

If he had any magical power, Mr. T says, he'd end poverty and cure disease among the world's children. In fact, he doesn't even have to think hard about this: he considers it an "easy question".

But he seems to have forgotten something important. Mr. T is an evangelical Christian and therefore, presumably, he believes in a god who has the power to do all those things at this very moment. So why doesn't God do that? Does Mr. T even realize that he's just inadvertently outlined one of the strongest pieces of evidence against his own religious beliefs?

Theologians have tied themselves in logical knots for millennia trying to explain what reasons God could have for allowing evil and suffering. But Mr. T, in his own inimitable style, brushes those convoluted theodicies aside by saying that the choice to end evil, if he had the power to do it, would be an easy one. Either he is a more compassionate and loving person than the god he claims to serve, or else that god does not exist.

Mr. T isn't the first Christian to contradict his own beliefs like this. C.S. Lewis did the same thing, as I pointed out in "The Theodicy of Narnia". They, like many other Christians, insist on believing in a god who has deep and mysterious reasons for allowing persistent and terrible evils. But both of them, when apologetic considerations are not uppermost in their minds, inadvertently contradict their own belief by stating that of course they would create a world without evil if they could.

And of course they would - as would any of us, I hope. Of course we would abolish evil if we could. Basic decency and simple compassion mandate no other conclusion. It's only the necessity of accounting for the evil that does exist, in a world claimed to be ruled by a benevolent deity, that forces religious apologists to bend over backwards trying to excuse the inexcusable. But when religious concerns are not at the forefront, when simple human conscience is allowed to express itself, most believers prove by their words and actions that they themselves are better and more rational than the faith they claim to represent.

Last month, in "Dreams of a Better World", I considered some of the immediate problems humanity could solve if we had the collective will to do so. I want to continue that theme in this post, but from a longer perspective.

Historically, humanity's knowledge has exceeded its wisdom. As soon as we invent a new technology, we begin adopting it on a wide scale, without asking whether we should or what the consequences might be. Many of our most pressing problems - multidrug-resistant diseases, global climate change, air and water pollution, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the ongoing extinctions of species and destruction of habitat - trace back to this impulse.

Our powers of reason have brought us amazing advances in understanding and controlling the world; but those rational faculties have not, as of yet, mastered the baser instincts of greed, xenophobia, violence and tribalism that underlie them. Instead, our reason is too often enslaved to that darker side of our nature, becoming the servant of our destructive passions rather than their master. Hence, we see absurdities such as Islamist fanatics, who reject every other scientific advance of the last several hundred years, struggling to create nuclear weapons. The only scientific knowledge they accept is that which they can use to destroy. Doubtless, if evolutionary theory offered the key to creating deadlier biological weapons, all the universities in Islamic theocracies would have top-notch biology departments as well, next door to the theology departments still repeating the narrow dogmas of a medieval desert nomad.

But it's not just on those easy targets that I want to pin the blame. Too often, we in the allegedly enlightened West have been guilty of similar deeds, selectively using the fruits of science that offer us the most immediate benefit rather than asking what is moral or sustainable in the long run.

We invent ever-more efficient fishing technologies to scour the ocean of the increasingly few remaining fish, refusing to recognize the downward spiral our actions have created. We fuel our economy with dirty, polluting, high-carbon coal and oil because it's cheap - at least by the usual accounting - and to get it, we think nothing of drilling oil wells in delicate habitat, or bulldozing whole mountains and dumping the rubble into nearby streams and watersheds. We drain rivers dry to build ever more lavish cities and communities in the middle of the desert. We run industrial agriculture on vast quantities of fertilizers and antibiotics, and let someone else pay the cost for poisoned groundwater, dead zones in the oceans, and multidrug-resistant staph and tuberculosis.

To build a human society that can survive over the long term, we need to turn away from this. What we need, and what I hope, is that we'll begin asking ourselves not just whether we can do something, but whether we should - and if the answer is that we should not, that we will then collectively agree to forbear.

I don't mean to imply that there will be a single global authority dictating which technological avenues will or will not be pursued. That would be an abhorrent tyranny. I have in mind a different future: a world where people have as much as or more liberty than they do now, yet where the human race can come, freely and without coercion, to a universal consensus on which courses of action should be taken and which left alone.

This may strike you as an impossible dream. I admit that the evidence so far is against me: historically, if one person or group has been unwilling to cross a boundary, there's always another that will. But that's precisely the attitude that needs to change if humanity is to survive and prosper. As technology grows more and more powerful, smaller and smaller groups of people wield destructive potential that the entire human species didn't have even a hundred years ago. We need to make the transition to a world where this kind of power is used wisely by all who have access to it, and I believe we will.

How can the human race reach this level of unanimity? I answer that the things that hold us apart are mainly irrational impulses - racism, sexism, nationalism, religion - which encourage their followers to value one group, one land or one belief more than a rational accounting of its value would suggest. Thus, the answer is simple: Humanity will come together when we learn to overrule those superstitions and fully acknowledge - and live out - the supremacy of reason as a guiding principle. When that happens, we will be able to reach agreement on all the things that matter.

This isn't going to be a single event, nor will the world be transformed overnight. It may take centuries to complete. But I believe we're on the cusp of the transition, and we may even witness the beginning of it in our lifetimes. We'll begin to see consensus breaking out, unanimity gradually developing. By the time agreement finally arrives, it will doubtless seem so easy and natural, we'll wonder why it took us so long in the first place.

The literal meaning of the word "apotheosis" is "elevation to divine status" - and as I've previously said, I reject the idea that this should be our goal. The gods are petty, jealous, easily provoked creatures; they embody our worst traits, not our best, and we shouldn't be seeking to emulate them. But "apotheosis" has another, more fitting meaning: "the supreme or the best example", and that's a goal I can support without hesitation. We should all seek to become the best example of humanity, to unleash the potential for goodness inherent in every person. This state may seem to be impossibly far off, but if each of us does what we can to bring it into being, we may find it isn't as far as we think.

While some freethinkers have made contributions to science, the arts or the humanities, others are best known for exemplifying a sea change in human history - showing, by their lives, that one age was passing and another would soon dawn. Just so is today's post on the life of an American freethinker who has the unique distinction of being the last man imprisoned in America for blasphemy: a courageous reformer and patriot by the name of Abner Kneeland.

Kneeland was born in Massachusetts in 1774, the sixth of ten children and the son of a carpenter. In 1801, he became a convert to the Baptist church, underwent immersion baptism and began to preach. But he soon got embroiled in doctrinal clashes with fellow believers, and his flirtation with Baptism didn't last long. By 1803, he had decided he was no longer a Baptist, but a Universalist - an early liberal Christian denomination that didn't believe in Hell. He continued his work as a lay preacher, but now in the service of Universalism.

Kneeland continued as a traveling preacher for several years, but eventually settled down at a Universalist church in New Hampshire. He served as an officer of the New England Universalist General Convention and helped to compile a new hymnal, though some of his verses, like this one, met with a lukewarm reception:

As ancient bigots disagree,
The Stoic and the Pharisee,
So is the modern Christian world
In superstitious error hurl'd.

He moved around over the next several years, from Massachusetts to Philadelphia to New York, and though he continued his work as a Universalist minister, his skeptical side was beginning to assert itself. He read the writings of some of the era's most prominent religious skeptics, including the famous chemist Joseph Priestley and the Scottish utopian Robert Owen, and preached from the pulpit that he reserved the right to interpret the principles of Universalism in his own way. Slowly but surely, he began drifting away from Christianity entirely.

The last straw came in 1829 when Kneeland willingly loaned out his church as a platform for a controversial guest speaker, someone we've met before - the trailblazing freethinker and feminist Frances Wright. No one else in New York City would give Wright a place to speak, and the appearance of the "Red Harlot of Infidelity" in a church was too much even for the liberal Universalists. Kneeland was disfellowshipped by them and soon renounced Christianity altogether. He published a book that same year, A Review of the Evidences of Christianity, which made it clear just how far his theological position had shifted:

Like many others, I once thought that a belief in future existence was absolutely necessary to present happiness. I have discovered my mistake. Time, a thousand years hence, is no more to me now, than time a thousand years past. As no event could have harmed me, when I existed not, so no event can possibly harm me when I am no more. By anticipating and calculating too much on future felicity, and dreading, or at least fearing, future misery, man often loses sight of present enjoyments, and neglects present duties. When men shall discover that nothing can be known beyond this life, and that there is no rational ground for any such belief, they will begin to think more of improving the condition of the human species. Their whole thoughts will then be turned upon what man has done, and what he can still do, for the benefit of man.

In 1831 Kneeland moved to Boston, where he became a lecturer at the newly formed First Society of Free Enquirers and started his own newspaper, the Boston Investigator, whose motto was: "Truth, perseverence, union, justice - the means; happiness - the end. Hear all sides - then decide." His weekly lectures, which drew as many as two thousand people, denounced the influence of religion on society and advocated the full equality of women, arguing that they should be permitted to use birth control, obtain a divorce, be paid equally for equal work, and be allowed to vote. He also argued for the equality of the races and, most shockingly, in favor of interracial marriage.

He also made the acquaintance of some influential people, most notably the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison had just arrived in Boston and was searching for a church or hall to rent to deliver lectures against slavery, but as with Frances Wright, seemingly no one was willing to give him the space. Kneeland again came to the rescue, offering Garrison the use of Julien Hall, where he delivered his own lectures. Garrison would later write, "It was left for a society of avowed infidels to save the city from the shame of sealing all its doors against the slave's advocate."

But despite its political and philosophical ferment, Massachusetts in this era was no friend to freethinkers. A still-enforced anti-blasphemy law from 1782 outlawed "denying, cursing, or contumeliously reproaching God", and it was under this law that Abner Kneeland was arrested and charged for making statements like this:

1. Universalists believe in a god which I do not: but believe that their god, with all his moral attributes is nothing more than a chimera of their own imagination.
2. Universalists believe in Christ, which I do not: but believe that the whole story concerning him is as much a fable and fiction, as that of the god Prometheus...
3. Universalists believe in miracles, which I do not; but believe that every pretension to them can either be accounted for on natural principles or else is to be attributed to mere trick and imposture.
4. Universalists believe in the resurrection of the dead, in immortality and eternal life, which I do not; but believe that all life is mortal, that death is an eternal extinction of life to the individual who possesses it, and that no individual life is, ever was, or ever will be eternal.

Kneeland argued, unsuccessfully, in court that he was not an atheist but a pantheist. The prosecuting attorney, meanwhile, argued that if he were not punished for his opinions, "marriages [will be] dissolved, prostitution made easy and safe, moral and religious restraints removed, property invaded, and the foundations of society broken up". (See any parallels?) In 1838, he was found guilty and sentenced to sixty days in jail.

After serving his prison term, Kneeland moved to Iowa with the intent of forming a utopian community similar to Owen's and Wright's, but it did not survive after his own death in 1844. Nevertheless, his life had left its mark. The uproar in Boston over his conviction, including numerous newspaper editorials defending the First Amendment and a petition to the governor signed by over a hundred prominent citizens, made such an impact that never again, in Massachusetts or anywhere else in America, was a freethinker imprisoned for violating blasphemy laws. Although there were a few more sporadic trials (most notably the 1886 Reynolds trial defended by Robert Ingersoll), Abner Kneeland's greatest accomplishment was to show clearly that laws protecting religious feelings were archaic and incompatible with an increasingly modern and enlightened society.

Other posts in this series:

• The Contributions of Freethinkers

After writing "Life Goes On", I had some extra material that had been left on the cutting room floor. Since it was too good to pass up, I just had to write another post. How could I pass up the opportunity to share a belly laugh like this?

Because the tribulation will be hell on earth, there is hope that even the most stubborn of sinners will be forced to admit he or she needs a savior. In the following section, I’ve selected a group of celebrities who are known to be atheists, or who are hostile toward the Christian faith.

This article, from the reliably hilarious Rapture Ready website - which has been faithfully charting the signs of the end for almost twenty years, and has steadfastly refused to draw any conclusions from this - is titled "Future Employees of Rapture Ready" and lists some prominent nonbelievers whom the author fantasizes will become converted evangelical Christians in the days after the Rapture (which, as always, is due to happen any day now). A few examples:

Richard Dawkins - A biologist by trade, he has written several books that promote evolution and debunk the idea that there is a God. I've read Mr. Dawkins' book, "The God Delusion," and I was surprised to find him mention Rapture Ready. On page 254 of his book, he focused on a comment I made about the site, which is a perfect fit for this article. At the bottom of RR's main page is an announcement that reads, "If the rapture should take place, resulting in my absence, it will be necessary for tribulation saints to mirror or financially support this site." I don't understand why Dawkins found offense in an obligation that he believes will never come his way. Well, Dick, that obligation may soon be upon you, and I think it would be a very fitting end to have the money you earned debunking the idea of a God to someday be used to magnify His glory.

Penn Jillette & Teller - The team of Penn & Teller are most widely known as professional magicians. They also host a program on the premium cable channel Showtime that debunks pseudoscientific ideas, supernatural beliefs, popular fads and misconceptions. There will be plenty of falsehood in the days that follow the rapture, so Penn & Teller's skills would be very helpful in combating error.

I ought to write the author of this site and ask to be listed on that page. Granted, it would be a great honor to me, as I'd be among most illustrious company! Regardless, I find it greatly amusing that the author finds solace in daydreaming about famous atheists converting to Christianity - the outward sign, perhaps, of a tacit recognition that his arguments are unlikely to convince anyone without supernatural aid.

Another amusing commentary on the Rapture warns believers not to try setting dates, but seems to overlook an obvious implication of its own words:

The Word of God is clear on this subject of Date-setting. To set dates on the return of Christ is to err.

Does that mean Jesus will not return on any date when he is expected to return? Ironically, the perpetual date-setting by Christian believers may be what's keeping him from coming back!

And lastly, another excerpt from Rapture Ready, this time from their feedback. I'm surprised they chose to post this, without even a response, but it gives important insight into how the ceaseless frenzy of end-times anticipation does real harm to human beings:

I grew up in a rapture believing church. I was a premillenial dispensationalist for many years. I was sincere in this belief and found your site during that time of my life.

To make a rather long story much shorter, it was very spiritually damaging for me. I was so caught up in thinking the world was ending tomorrow or in the next moment that I was in a constant state of fear. The here and now became pointless. Would my unsaved loved ones make it in time? Was this or that particular political figure the next anti-Christ? Which poor deluded souls deceived by Satan would find themselves part of a group that thought they were Christian but were really part of the 'one world religion of the beast'? It was an awful and extraordinarily stressful way to live.

It's a tragedy that so many millions still lead lives full of stress and fear brought on by their belief in an imminent end. Contrary to the often-heard claim that religion brings peace and comfort, many variants of religion are intended to inspire terror and paranoia in their followers, the better to secure their unquestioning allegiance against the external world.

As I've written in the past, I'm an optimist when it comes to human progress: I'm confident that we can overcome the problems that beset us. This isn't to say that I think our triumph is inevitable, or even that optimism is the only possible position for a rational person to take. There are plenty of reasons to despair, for those who seek them out. Nevertheless, I think there's one major, counterbalancing reason for hope, and that reason is this.

Simply stated, our greatest dangers are not external hazards, things over which we have no control, but rather arise from the immorality or inaction of human beings. Just think of all the cases where our only enemy is each other: racism and sexism, secular tyranny and religious theocracy, pollution, war, terrorism, overpopulation, climate change, and environmental degradation. Evils like this are not natural forces that arise of their own accord; they persist because of the inertia of human society, our stubborn self-interest, and our valuing of dogma and superstition over the lives and well-being of our fellow people. Even many epidemic diseases, like AIDS, thrive only because of our actions. If people did not act - whether out of irresponsibility, malice, or simple ignorance - in ways that made their propagation possible, they would swiftly die out.

I won't deny that changing these harmful attitudes is tremendously difficult - moral progress always is - but it can be done. If our primary enemies were natural forces that could never be persuaded to relent, we would face a much grimmer and more difficult path. But as it stands, natural disasters like floods, hurricanes and earthquakes can destroy individuals and communities, but not humanity as a whole. The only global dangers, the only threats that truly menace the entire human community, are the ones that we have created for ourselves and perpetuate through our actions.

The truth of this statement can be discerned through a thought experiment. Imagine that all of humanity was united in purpose, that all people were willing to do whatever was necessary to put an end to these evils. Take this as a given, and then ask yourself: if this were so, what could we accomplish in just a single generation? The possibilities are almost limitless. We could eradicate AIDS and all the other diseases that depend on us for their propagation, as well as all the ones we have vaccines against. We could decarbonize our economy, end our dependence on fossil fuels, and create a green civilization powered by sun, wind and tides. We could end war and tyranny and establish peace, democracy and justice for every society on earth. We could redirect all the resources and energy that are currently wasted in superstition and sectarianism, instead using them for the common good of humanity. Ending poverty would take significant investments in infrastructure and education and would probably be a multi-generational process, but even that could be done relatively quickly if we had the will.

Of course, this is a limiting case. All of humanity will never be united in this way, at least not any time in the foreseeable future. There are too many squabbling political parties, too many stubborn religions and nationalisms, and too many rigid ideologies battling each other across the memetic landscape. We are too diverse and too opinionated for one cause to ever win everyone's allegiance. But, knowing what is possible if everyone were to cooperate, the next step should be to ask what is possible with less than that. Knowing that some percentage of humanity will always react with indifference or outright hostility, is it still possible to make moral progress? And any fair consideration of the historical record would have to answer this question with a resounding Yes!

In spite of everything - all the dogmatism, the stubbornness, the selfishness, the ignorance and hate - humanity's star has been rising, these past few centuries and more. So long as there's freedom to speak our views and to lobby for change, good causes have been able to win out time and again. As slow and difficult as it is to shift the monolithic block of human opinion, it can be done. That's why I'm an optimist, and that's why I dream of a better world. My reason for hope follows the lines of the famous saying attributed to the anthropologist Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

In last August's post "Spread the Wealth", I talked about the justifications for redistributive taxation. I felt that some of the issues raised in the comments deserved to be revisited - and since it's tax time here in the U.S., it's worth a reminder of why we pay them and what we get out of it.

The centerpiece of the libertarian rhetorical strategy is to refer to taxation as theft, robbery, slavery. I've heard these epithets and others like them many times. It's easy to see what purpose this serves: to make your concerns seem more important, it helps to refer to them not as bloodless policy differences, but as raw issues of justice. "The government is stealing from innocent people!" is a lot punchier and packs more emotional heft than any proposal, no matter how passionately worded, to simplify unnecessary regulations and cut down on bureaucratic red tape.

But this overheated claim is being asked to bear far more weight than it can possibly support. Of all the libertarian policy proposals out there (many others of which I agree with), the equation of taxation with theft is the least defensible. The fallacies in this should be obvious to a moment's thought, but some people seem unwilling to take that moment, so I'll go over them again in this post.

Libertarians say that taxation is like theft because it takes property from the unwilling. What they ignore, time and time again, is the crucial role of democratic consent. Taxes are not arbitrary impositions decreed by a faceless government. Rather, taxes are the dues we pay in exchange for membership in a society and access to all the services it offers.

The situation can be compared to a private club that charges a membership fee in exchange for providing benefits and amenities to its members. Obviously, the club is within its rights to charge whatever price it believes fair in exchange for this. If you believe the price is too high, you're free to renounce your membership and leave the club. What you're not free to do is to refuse to pay, but demand that you still be allowed to sit in the club and use its facilities. Nor are you free, if the club doesn't offer this option, to decide that you only use some of its services - only the swimming pool, say, but not the sauna or the tennis courts - and should therefore have the right to pay a prorated membership fee. But these options, clearly absurd in this thought experiment, are the same ones libertarians claim they have a right to exercise in the real world.

The analogy of the club can be transferred in a precise way to society as a whole. Society is the club, and taxes are the membership dues we pay in exchange for the services it provides. If you don't want to pay, if you dislike its terms, you can leave that society and seek another one. But you are not free to unilaterally demand that society rewrite its terms to favor your particular preferences.

Going hand-in-hand with the fallacious equation of taxation to theft is another libertarian fallacy: the belief that a free market is the natural state of affairs and will spontaneously arise if only the economy is left to itself. This is wrong. A free market is a kind of infrastructure, and like all other infrastructure, it requires investment to create and effort to maintain.

As centuries of history show, the natural state of an unregulated economy is not free competition, but stifled and constrained competition. Large, established powers, if given the chance, will do everything they can to suppress competition - whether through means fair or foul. From medieval guilds to industrial robber barons, the tactics are always the same: seizing the distribution channels, the infrastructure, the intellectual property, or the sources of raw material. Governments want to control vital resources in the name of national security; industry groups may take a hand in designing regulations that make it all but impossible for new players to enter the field. Outright intimidation, fraud and violence are often used against those who refuse to play along. Even the staunchly libertarian Cato Institute admits this:

It is no surprise, then, that throughout U.S. history corporations have been overwhelmingly hostile to the free market.

To maintain the preferable state of a free market, we need structure and regulation from the government. Taxation provides, among other things, the resources that are necessary to keep the free market running.

In my experience, most libertarians concede that some regulation is needed, but argue that they should only be taxed for services that benefit them directly. This is like demanding that businesses sell their goods to you for exactly what it cost to make them and no more. Just like any business, the government is entitled to "turn a profit" on the services it provides. Just as with a business, these proceeds can be reinvested, resulting in greater productivity and efficiency that ultimately benefit all members of society.

Of course, elected governments can spend tax money unwisely, on pork or boondoggles, and we as citizens have every right to complain about this and to oust officeholders who abuse the public trust. But the solution is not to abolish taxation, just as the solution to corporate fraud and malfeasance is not to ban all corporations. Any power can be abused, but that is not a reason to get rid of all power, which is impossible in any case. If taxes are spent unwisely or wasted, the answer is to elect better politicians or put in place more stringent legislative safeguards.