In my essay "Those Old Pearly Gates" on Ebon Musings, I raised what is, to my mind, one of the strongest moral arguments against the traditional monotheist conception of the afterlife:

The point is this. How can anyone enjoy Heaven, knowing that while you have eternal bliss there are people experiencing eternal suffering? Unless you belong to an insular religious community or a cult, it's almost certain that you know someone - a friend, a relative, a loved one, an idol who inspires you - whose religion of choice is different than yours, or who has no religion at all. How will you be able to enjoy Heaven in the certain knowledge that that person is, at the same moment, suffering the torments of the damned? What if it's a spouse, a parent, a best friend, a child? ...How can Heaven be any sort of reward at all if it means eternal separation from the people you care about, all the more so if those people must suffer without release while you are powerless to help them? And will you, a saved soul in Paradise, be content to kneel and worship the same god who, elsewhere at that same moment, is pouring out the flames of his wrath upon your lost loved ones?

Some religious people handle this problem by saying that Hell is not a fiery pit of torture, but a state of darkness and emptiness caused by separation from God - although I don't see how that would make things any better. Others simply dodge the question altogether.

However, the good folks at Rapture Ready have a different solution:

God's Word foretells that the Lord will wipe away all tears and sorrow for Believers --that all the things of the past, sinful world will be removed in some way. We infer from this that all memories that are painful --such as knowledge that we have family and friends who are suffering eternal damnation because of their rejection of Salvation through God's son, Jesus Christ, will be totally erased in the Heavenly dimension.

Apparently, they felt that this apologetic would soothe their worried readers. I can't speak for Rapture Ready's clientele, but it had exactly the opposite effect on me. This is horrifying. In a twisted sense, I have to give these people credit - they've managed to come up with what is possibly the only thing that could have made the idea of Hell any worse than it already is.

I'm not against the idea of Heaven. I accept the fact of death - mine and others' - but that doesn't make me enthusiastic about it. If there was another life where I could be reunited with my departed loved ones, I'd gladly welcome it. But if there was a Heaven, the existence of a Hell would be an unacceptably high price to pay for it. Even if I knew I was one of the saved, I'd rather choose nonexistence than be forced to know that people I care about were suffering eternal torment. That knowledge would be a kind of torture in itself, more than enough to turn Heaven into just another hell.

But the idea of forgetting that my loved ones were condemned? That would be even worse! What kind of happiness is it that must be purchased at the price of being ignorant of the suffering of others?

The authors of Rapture Ready never seem to think through the implications of this idea. What if it's my mother or father that's damned - will I have no knowledge of who raised me on Earth? Would a heavenly soul in that situation wonder why all his friends had their parents with them and they didn't have any? Wouldn't they be driven to investigate, to find out the great secret that's being hidden from them?

It would undeniably be a horrible thought that you were saved while your loved ones were forever damned. That grim knowledge would be enough to overwhelm whatever bliss there was to be had in the afterlife. But as in other areas, the way to fix the problem of suffering is to end suffering - not by making everyone else ignorant of it by some kind of miracle-induced amnesia. The idea that the saved should be induced to forget about the torture of their damned loved ones, so that they can enjoy their heavenly bliss in a state of dumb naivete, is intuitively revolting, and confirms what I said on an earlier occasion about how any attempt to actually explain what Heaven is like invariably reduces its inhabitants to a kind of bright machines.

I have to admit, I cringe when I read quotes like this:

Max may be a long way from his old home, but he plans on going a lot further than America. Extropianism is a "rational transhumanism", he explains. There may not be any supernatural force in the universe, but pretty soon, suggests More, once we get our brain implants and robot bodies working, we will be as gods.

The linked article is about Max More, a philosopher who advocates transhumanism - the idea that we can use technology to transcend the present limits of human biology. Like most transhumanists, More advocates a potpourri of wildly optimistic ideas: freeze ourselves through cryogenics, make our bodies immortal, digitize and upload our minds to live in virtual worlds or robot bodies.

As far as I'm concerned, most of these speculations so far outstrip the limits of what is currently possible that there's little point even thinking about them. In the very distant future, perhaps, these will be issues to seriously consider. For now, I think we should be concentrating on the many more pressing problems that can be alleviated by current technology. Once people are no longer dying from malnutrition or malaria, maybe then we can start considering how to make them immortal. In the meantime, most of this is just unconstrained fantasizing that distracts us from the things that are truly important.

However, it was something else about this article that bothered me more - the throwaway line about how "we will be as gods". Nothing could appeal to me less. Frankly, I don't want to be like the gods.

Consult just about any piece of mythology you wish, and you'll find that gods are generally not very nice creatures. They're jealous, sadistic, manipulative, capricious, petty, possessing overdeveloped egos and hair-trigger tempers, and hateful toward those who are different. They're swift to anger, slow to forgive, and perpetually obsessed with whether people are groveling enough or paying them sufficient tribute. When it comes to dealing with those who disobey, violence is typically their first, last, and only resort. In short, they exemplify all the worst traits of the humans that created them, and few if any of our best traits. Why on earth would we want to be like them?

We are human beings. No matter how much knowledge we gain, no matter how much power we gain, we will always be human beings. We should not aspire to be gods, or anything else that we are not. We should aspire, instead, to be the best human beings we possibly can be - to cultivate what is best in our nature and encourage it to flourish. For all the evil that we have done, human beings are also capable of astonishing acts of mercy and benevolence. These are traits that are conspicuously absent in most of the stories of gods we read. We do not need to be forever aping our old mythologies; we have the ability to transcend their narrow perspective, and in many ways, we already have.

"What if she doesn't flip? How long do you give it?"
"If you can't get to 'em somehow in the first forty-eight hours, more of the same isn't going to be any more effective."
"Starvation isn't a motivator?"
"Would be for me, but I guess they've proved it with prisoners of war. The ones who can survive that first round of psychological and physical torture aren't likely to ever break, no matter how long you keep it up."

—from Armageddon, book 11 of the Left Behind series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins

One of the tenets of faith of Christian end-times believers is that, in the tribulation period after the rapture, the world will be taken over by a planetary government ultimately run by the Antichrist. True Christians will be a tiny, hounded minority in this totalitarian vision, forced to live underground and always on the run from the forces of evil, and those who are captured can expect torture and execution.

If you happen to be reading this site in an apocalyptic, post-rapture world, there's one piece of advice you should probably keep in mind, as given in this list of 14 things to do for those who miss the rapture:

Endure to the end, Saint. Don't give up no matter what happens to you. Do not denounce Jesus. Give your life if you have to, but do not denounce Jesus in any way!

No doubt, this warning stems from Jesus' words in Matthew 10:33:

But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.

Given that rapture-believing Christians tend to interpret every verse of the Bible with blunt literalism, this warning must be terrifying. If believers give in, even under torture, and deny Jesus, they will lose their eternal salvation. To protect themselves against this disturbing possibility, many of them imagine that people who truly wish to can withstand torture no matter how bad it is. The excerpt quoted above from the Left Behind series makes this claim.

But this statement, like much else in the LB series, displays a total ignorance of human psychology. In reality, no person can withstand torture indefinitely, and it is quite possible to use it to force people to say or do anything.

Consider the torture technique called waterboarding. In this technique, the prisoner is strapped to an inclined board, head downwards. Plastic or cloth is wrapped over his face, and buckets of water are then poured over his nose and mouth. This treatment triggers choking and the gag reflex and gives the victim the terrifying sensation of drowning. This technique was used by the Spanish Inquisition against suspected heretics and by Japanese soldiers against prisoners of war in World War II. It is also now being used by the American government against known or suspected members of Al Qaeda.

Waterboarding is a far more terrifying and effective method of torture than it might at first appear. Consider what happened when CIA agents, to rehearse the tactic for use on detainees, first tried it on each other to see how it felt. Keep in mind that these were the CIA agents chosen for field interrogation, the toughest of the tough. They knew they were in no danger and that they could stop what was happening at any time. Bearing all this in mind, how long did they last?

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in.

Fourteen seconds. And when the technique was tried on the actual detainees, similar results were obtained:

They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

(If you have any remaining doubts about the effectiveness of waterboarding as a torture technique, consider this post from the Straight Dope Message Board, where a poster tried it on himself to see what it felt like. Not recommended for the faint of heart.)

As an interrogation technique, waterboarding and other forms of torture are worse than useless; they will soon produce a prisoner eager to say anything he thinks his questioners want to hear. But in the end-times scenario, this is precisely the outcome desired. A Satanic one-world government, with no compunction about using these or other torture methods on prisoners, could easily coerce any Christians it captured to deny Jesus in public and seal their eternal fate.

The only other explanation rapture-believing Christians could give is that their faith will give believers some magical, supernatural power to withstand torture. This belief, like rapture belief in general, is an example of how many end-times believers fantasize that their faith makes them special and exempts them from the rules and principles that apply to everyone else.

Back in March, I commented on a Beliefnet debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan. In part 4 of that debate, Andrew Sullivan made what I thought was an astonishing concession:

But I can say that [this experience] represented for me a revelation of God's love and forgiveness, the improbable notion that the force behind all of this actually loved us, and even loved me. The calm I felt then; and the voice with no words I heard: this was truer than any proof I have ever conceded, any substance I have ever felt with my hands, any object I have seen with my eyes.

You will ask: how do I know this was Jesus? Could it not be that it was a force beyond one, specific Jewish rabbi who lived two millennia ago and was executed by the Roman authorities? Yes, and no. I have lived with the voice of Jesus read to me, read by me, and spoken all around me my entire life - and I heard it that day. If I had been born before Jesus' birth, would I have realized this? Of course not. If I had been born in Thailand and raised a Buddhist, would I have interpreted this experience as a function of my Buddhist faith rather than Jesus? If I were a pilgrim right now in Iraq, would I attribute this epiphany to Allah? An honest answer has to be: almost certainly.

I couldn't agree more, and we should remember this lesson when faced with stories of religious experiences told by other believers. Take this post, which I found through a comment in the thread "Instruction Manual or Chronicle?"

What happened instead was that I slowly became aware that someone else was in my room. I couldn't see anyone, but I could sense a presence. The intensity of the presence began to grow, until it was so overwhelming that I was aware of nothing else, not even myself. I knew I was in the presence of God.

...Tonight is the 20th anniversary of that experience, and the memory is still as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday.

There's no doubt that experiences like this are real, and that they often have a profound and lasting effect on the lives of people who have them. But at the same time, there are some important features of religious experience which the passage above exemplifies, and to which I'd like to call attention.

First: These experiences, while rich in emotional color and texture, are typically light on actual content. (Sullivan revealingly refers to "the voice with no words"). In the many accounts like this that I've read, there's hardly ever an audible voice or a clear message. Instead, the believer experiences a variety of sensations: an oceanic feeling of transcendent bliss, a vivid sense of heightened significance and interconnection, a perception of being swept away from oneself or unified with the infinite.

Second: These experiences virtually never cause a person to convert to a completely different religion, one which they were unfamiliar with prior to the experience. Instead, the religious experience is almost always interpreted as confirmation of a belief set which the person either already belonged to or was seriously considering converting to. Look for a lifelong Christian who had such an experience and felt it as the presence of Vishnu (or a lifelong Hindu who felt the presence of Jesus) - I can all but guarantee your search will be in vain. As Sullivan says, these experiences are shaped and interpreted in light of the believer's upbringing and culture. Whenever and wherever they occur, they are almost invariably believed to be manifestations of the local god, whichever one that is.

These facts add up to an important conclusion for atheists. In many cases I've encountered, the life-altering power of religious experience is put forth as the first reason for belief in God. The people who have these experiences rationalize that no other power could have moved them so deeply. Yet this is an argument that assumes its own conclusion: people consider it as proof of their particular god because that is the only thing they have been taught to interpret it as. That is the conventional wisdom, the default interpretation, in our society. And since it's widely claimed that these epiphanies are experiences of God, people who have them naturally fall into believing and proclaiming that this is what they were, thus setting up the next generation of self-supporting circular interpretation.

In reality, the sense of rapture is like many other things: not a religious phenomenon, but simply a human phenomenon common to all people. If it were more widely known that believers of all sects have equally persuasive experiences of this kind - and if it were more widely known that atheists have them as well (yes, atheists also have moments of transcendent joy) - then we might develop a more realistic view of their cause.

Rather than leaping to interpret them as divine visitations, we should recognize them for what they are: natural products of human neural wiring. They emerge from the structure of the brain; they are precipitated by the right kinds of events, either internal or external; and when they occur simultaneously with the making of a decision that had been coalescing in the believer's mind, they're viewed as powerful confirmation of that decision and can inspire people to restructure their life around it. These experiences are real, yes, and they can certainly be meaningful, but they do not point to anything outside the self.

A few days ago, I had an epiphany that I think sheds considerable light on the difference between liberal and fundamentalist believers. This principle seems to me to be underappreciated, and if it was more widely understood, I think it might head off some of the misunderstandings which I've seen atheists commit. Here it is:

Fundamentalist believers view their sacred text as an instruction manual; liberal believers view it as a chronicle of events.

This difference is important in shaping the religious groups' respective worldviews. In the eyes of the fundamentalists, the Bible (or Qur'an or Book of Mormon or whatever other text) is God's word, dictated with infallible perfection to the minds of his followers. It's meant to be the deity's instruction manual, telling human beings everything we need to know about how to live. Therefore, every verse in it - whether explicitly directed at future readers or not - contains some lesson, some moral, whether implicit or explicit, that we should try to figure out and then apply to our own lives.

For liberal believers, by contrast, the Bible is not a direct pipeline to God, but a chronicle of events put together by human beings doing their best to interpret history in the light of their beliefs. God did not speak directly to his followers and tell them what to write down - or, at best, he only did so rarely. Instead, God's followers tried to discern his will in the flow of events and infer what messages he meant to convey. Sometimes they guessed correctly, and therefore these books can provide valuable glimpses of insight into God's character and desires; but other times they guessed incorrectly or let popular prejudices color their writing, and therefore these books, for all their beauty and complexity, inherit all the fallibility that human beings are prey to. To this group, scripture is a way to learn about human nature at least as much as it is a way to learn about God's nature.

It's the former group that atheists most often criticize, and with good reason. A person who reads about, for example, Joshua's war of extermination against the Canaanites, and concludes that modern-day Christians have a similar mandate from God to subdue all nonbelievers, will likely pose a serious threat to the life and liberty of the rest of us. By reading the violent verses of scripture (and there are many such verses) as instructions to go and do likewise, believers become dangerously militant and dogmatic. Atheists are absolutely right to point out the evil and cruel nature of such a moral system and condemn the readings that inspire it. Granted, the fundamentalists are an easier target, but they're also far more likely to be the ones trying to force their beliefs on others.

On the other hand, the liberal view is not subject to criticism in the same way, and we weaken our own case if we treat it as though it was. Pointing out how evil it would be to obey these violent verses is a meaningless criticism, because liberal believers do not believe these verses should be obeyed. They consider them just as flawed as we do.

However, that doesn't mean the liberal position can't be criticized. We just have to go about it in a different way, bearing in mind that the direct attack effective against literalists is not going to be effective.

First: Unless they believe that God spoke to one people exclusively - and most liberal believers don't - then they should acknowledge that their own view of scripture as a chronicle implies that other cultures will also have had contact with God, and other religious texts will reflect the same interpretive process. Why, then, would a believer define themselves exclusively in the symbols and language of one particular religion? Why call yourself a Christian if just as much genuine understanding of God can be found in the Qur'an or the Bhagavad Gita as in the Bible? Why not rely equally on those texts in your weekly services? (Indeed, doesn't any book, whether written in a religious context or not, convey something of humanity's understanding of God?) Of course, most believers, whatever their views, rely mostly or exclusively on one text, which makes little sense given their own assumptions.

Second: What are the liberal believer's criteria for deciding whether a given verse reflects God's message or human error? Since they don't credit all parts of scripture with equal truth, they must have some way to decide which verses to follow and which ones to disregard. In most cases this process is guided by the believer's own moral intuitions and by the moral progress society has subsequently made. Now that we know slavery, racism and sexism to be evils, modern liberal theists disregard the parts of their text that teach these things. Other verses which have better stood the test of time are assumed to be true lessons from God.

However, once you've come this far, what do you need scripture for at all? Clearly, once a theist has reached this point, their own conscience is a superior and perfectly sufficient guide. And note that this approach works equally well if we assume that scripture has no divine revelation, but is wholly the product of fallible, conflicting humans. A reader can still employ their own conscience to decide which parts are good to follow and which should be rejected. Why, then, continue using the text which they have already admitted to be flawed? Why not discard it entirely and instead use reason to determine what ethical behavior consists of? At the very least, why not edit it, as Thomas Jefferson did, to keep only the good parts and get rid of the rest?

The final useful line of argument is one that works equally well against believers of all stripes. Namely, by what evidence do those believers conclude that their particular text reflects the will of God, in whole or in part? What makes them so certain that the text reflects any divine influence at all, rather than simply being the product of men, some of whom were benevolent and kind and some of whom were vindictive and cruel? Liberal believers acknowledge that the authors of scripture were wrong about many things. How do they know that those authors weren't also wrong about the existence of God?

Via Elliptica, I came across a post titled Imprecations, exegesis, and hermeneutics on the blog Higgaion, written by a liberal Christian theologian. The post blasts Wiley Drake and his call for "imprecatory prayers", and argues that Drake has seriously misunderstood the verses he quotes in support of his beliefs.

Leaving that issue aside for now, Higgaion goes on to make a larger point about whether we should always imitate the behavior described in the Bible. He asserts that even if the God of the Bible commands acts of violence or hate, that is not necessarily a warrant for Christians to do likewise.

Suppose that the genocidal commands in the book of Joshua, the rules for "holy war" in Deuteronomy, and even the texts of Psalm 109 and 137 perfectly represent commands given to the Israelites by God, or at least models offered by God for the Israelites or Judeans to follow. Would that then mean that... the only truly "faithful" response is to endorse and imitate such violent and hateful language?

I argue that it does not.

...There is a deep and powerful stream of resistance—even to divine initiatives—within scripture, and in many cases such resistance is precisely where faithfulness dwells.

Higgaion offers several scriptural examples of this, but I think most of them don't support the point he's trying to make.

Consider Job. He argued that God was treating him unfairly, that he could win against God in an impartial lawsuit … and at the end of the book, God agreed with Job, over against Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar who sought to justify God against Job!

This interpretation puts a convenient spin on the truth. Yes, it's true that in the Book of Job, God agrees that he treated Job unjustly (2:3: "thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause"). But when he finally shows up, it's not to apologize for this wrong. Instead, when God appears to Job, he belligerently declares that he is the creator of heaven and earth and can do whatever he wants because he's the strongest, so there! God isn't satisfied until Job abases himself and confesses that he should have acknowledged God's sovereign right to destroy Job's life and slaughter his family for no reason at all.

Consider Abraham, who objected to God's plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

Again, it's true that Abraham bargains with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if even ten righteous people lived there. It's also true that God then goes on to obliterate the cities anyway. Shouldn't an omniscient deity have known in advance that he was just playing with Abraham's hopes for mercy? And what about the incident on Mount Moriah, where Abraham meekly obeyed God's command to murder his son?

Consider Habakkuk, who argued against God's use of the Chaldeans as an instrument to punish Judah.

I'm not sure what verses in the Book of Habakkuk this is referring to, but again, as with Abraham, the Bible says that God ultimately does send the Babylonians to destroy Judah and carry its people off into slavery - regardless of the prophet's protests. And in the end, Habbakuk praises God regardless (3:18).

Although most of Higgaion's examples of "resisting" God don't show what he claims, I think he does make one telling point.

In fact, if one believes that God exercises sovereign control over the cosmos, then every act of "intercessory" prayer is in fact an objection, mild or strong, to something that God has set in motion.

It's undeniably true that intercessory prayer amounts to asking God to change his mind, something which makes no sense in standard Judeo-Christian theology of an "omnimax" deity. (This has been noted before.) But then again, religion is hardly based on a rational, logical view of the world and our relationship to it. One of its primary purposes is to provide comfort and a sense of control to human beings living in a random and unpredictable universe. Illogical as the notion is, intercessory prayer exists because it serves this purpose, of giving believers a sense that they've done something to influence the course of events.

That said, I do think Higgaion's post makes an important point, though not exactly the one he thinks.

When the psalmists ask God to curse their enemies, we may rightly and faithfully say, "No." When Ezra tries to break up marriages because of the ethnicities (or merely citizenship) of the husband and wife, we may rightly and faithfully say, "No." And were we to think that God had said to us, "Go kill all your neighbors and live in their houses," we might rightly and faithfully say, "No."

I agree absolutely with this. These deeds and many more which are recorded in the Bible are evil, and would remain evil even if they were the word of God. Even if God himself was commanding us to do these terrible things, the only morally acceptable response would be to refuse. (To Higgaion's list, I would add the idea that people's sins require forgiveness through the shedding of someone else's blood.) But this does not mean that a god who issued such commands would be a good being worthy of our worship. How could it? Instead, the conclusion Higgaion is groping toward is the very one that atheists have been saying for some time: the god described in the Bible is a profoundly evil being. If such a being existed, it would not deserve to be worshipped or obeyed by any person. Fortunately, the evidence suggests that this cosmic tyrant does not exist, and that the Bible is merely the creation of fallible, primitive humans.

Higgaion is obviously an intelligent, ethical person, and I wish he wouldn't spend so much time defending a book that doesn't deserve defending. More puzzling to me than the fundamentalists are the liberal and moderate believers who admit the numerous flaws of the Bible, and then go on believing and using it. Why bother? If the Bible is so flawed, then why do we need the Bible? Why not just set it aside and use our own conscience and reason to figure out what's right? The amount of effort and time that has been spent through history on making excuses for the Bible, a book that should have long since been relegated to the status of historical curiosity, could have been far better spent on useful and productive endeavors. We know the book is manifestly imperfect: why not take the next step and admit we don't need it to live our lives?

(Author's Note: "The Desert" is a work of short fiction in several parts. If you haven't already done so, now would be a good time to go back and read the previous chapters so that you know what's going on.)

V: Epilogue

It seemed like ages ago that I had set out from my home, and the beautiful Garden that surrounded it, on a journey that brought me deep into the harsh wilds of the desert. In that barren, desolate land, I had encountered several of the lost souls who dwelt there. Most had refused to hear me, but I had successfully persuaded one of them to listen to reason and leave. Soon after, I had come to the end of the desert, believing my task was done. But on my way home, my head heavy with sleep, I had strayed from the path. Now I was lost in a dark and gloomy wood, and home seemed further than ever.

It was a wet, storm-wracked night. The forest closed around me, dark conifers whose branches dripped with rain and thickets of thorn vines that grew between their trunks. Overhead, thunder and lightning lashed at the black sky, and the rain fell like stinging needles. The twisting, narrow hollow of a path wound perilously between the trees.

My legs burned with weariness, and the desire for sleep was almost a physical pain. I longed to find my home, or at least to rest for a time, but there was no place to stop in this dark wood.

From somewhere in the darkness behind me, there was an eerie, desolate howl. I shivered and quickened my pace.

Then, up ahead, a light glowed through the night and driving rain. I hurried eagerly toward it, and the light resolved into a tiny cottage of plaster and thatch, surrounded by a dense thicket of trees. Gold light glowed from its windows, tantalizingly inviting.

I rapped hard on the heavy wooden door. "Hello! Traveler seeking sanctuary!"

Almost before I had finished saying it, the door opened silently. A man stood in the doorway, silhouetted in the glow streaming from within. "Welcome, traveler," he said with a smile.

I squinted at him. "You seem familiar. Do I know you?"

"I don't believe so," he said smoothly. "Come in. It is cold and wet, and I have a fire going within."

That was all I needed to hear, and soon I was inside, sitting before the brick hearth and holding out my hands to the heat of the flames dancing within. The interior of the cottage was a small, cozy place, plaster walls and wood beams tinted golden by the firelight. The rain lashed impotently at the windows.

"Better?" my host asked, once I had dried off.

"Much," I said gratefully. "Thank you. What do you do out in this forest? Is this your home?"

My host didn't seem to hear me. Instead he looked at my coat, hung near the fireplace to dry. "You've been to the desert lately, I see. Did any come back with you?"

Somehow, I didn't think to question how he knew where I had been or what I had been doing. "Yes, one. Why do you ask?"

"And yet," he said with a strange, sad smile, "there are millions more who remain."

"I realize that," I said, feeling a flicker of suspicion. "But I can't reach all of them, and most wouldn't listen even if I could. I do what I can; that's all anyone can ask of me."

"That is more than anyone could ask of you," said my host. "No one could accuse you of wasted effort if you were making a difference. But you're not making a difference. At best, you're dislodging a few grains of sand from a mountain. I applaud your trying to help those poor people, but that effort won't be complete - if it's ever complete - until long after your lifetime, whether you work at it or not. There will be others after you. Why not rest and leave it up to them?"

"If freethinkers of past generations had reasoned the same way," I said, annoyed, "my cause would be far behind where it is right now. They did what they could to lay the groundwork for me. Now I'll do the same to build a yet larger foundation for the future. Every generation has a part to play in this effort, and I intend on playing mine."

"Noble sentiments, but in reality it's little but masochism. You're pouring yourself into an effort for which it's not likely you'll ever get respect or thanks. Don't let others take advantage of you like that. You have a beautiful home and a Garden you love. Why not go there, close the gates behind you, and let the rest of the world see to itself? What happens out there is none of your concern."

"Deserts spread," I said ominously. "Part of the reason I do this is to protect my home. And besides, there are countless people in the desert who are unhappy, miserable - people like the one I spoke to earlier tonight. Many of them will never find their way out if there's no one to speak to them and show them the path. Should I withdraw into my home and leave them to their suffering?"

"They can find their way out by themselves if they really want to," said my host. He had moved back, standing near the fire, and his face was half in shadow; his eyes glittered black.

"But much more easily if they have a guide," I countered.

"Your concern is admirable, but in the end it's worth little. And besides, aren't you introducing them to a path that has its own traps and dangers?"

"The destination is worthwhile in the end."

"So you say." He grinned. "Many who live in the desert would not agree. They think it's their home and they couldn't imagine being happier. It's what they want. Why not leave them to it?"

"Many of them only think it's what they want because they don't know all the available options. I met someone like that today."

He shook his head sadly, but still there was that ominous glitter in his eye. "But look at the toll it's taken on you. Look how exhausted you were when I found you. Compassion is one thing, but not when it costs this much. The desert siphons away life, we both know that; if you stay there too long, you'll end up like them. No rational theory of morality would ask you to expend your own well-being in pursuit of this mad goal. You've done enough. You should return to your home and rest. You don't ever have to go back."

And now I could no longer contain my suspicion. "Who are you?"

For a second, I thought I saw a grin on his lips. Then, all of a sudden, the fire and the light went out together. I was alone in the empty, darkened cottage, the rain thundering on the windows much louder than it had a moment ago. Spiderwebs clotted with dust filled the corners. The hearth was cold and black and looked as if it had not been lit for ages.

Suddenly seized by a nameless fear, I threw open the door and staggered out into the rain. The night and the storm slashed at me as I plunged into the dark wood, whirling me around until I scarcely knew which direction was which. But I pressed on, and after what seemed like an endless time, lights beckoned me through the trees. The lights of my own home, this time. With a vast sense of relief, I threw open the gates and collapsed onto the grassy lawn.

It was not until later that I thought back on my strange meeting that night. The whole experience had the distorted, unreal quality of a dream. Who was that man who sought to lull me into complacency, or persuade me to give in to despair? He had not seemed like one of the denizens of the desert. And though I had held him off, I sensed that he had not been vanquished. Though I did not encounter him again, as the days turned to weeks, the memory of that night stayed with me; and as I looked ahead to the coming new year, I wondered what it might portend...

In the comments of my recent post "On Atheist Janitors", I was accused of being naive for my belief in the possibility of a truly just and prosperous state:

I wasn't even going to address Ebon's utopian comments on how we should ensure a minimum income for everyone on a full time job sufficient to travel for leisure and all. Clearly Ebon's not an economist, but a dreamer. I guess that's his own variety of opium. Heaven not in heaven, but here on Earth... I ask you, is that any less of a pipe-dream than a celestial heaven?

In this post, I'd like to offer an extended defense of why I believe this is possible. But first, I must address an all-too-common fallacy: the school of thought which holds that economics is a zero-sum game and that some must lose for others to win. According to this way of thinking, if the poor are badly off, then the only way to help them is to take money away from the rich and give it to them.

This way of thinking is not unique to one side of the political spectrum. Wealth redistribution leading to enforced equality is the sine qua non of communism, but ironically, this belief is also held by many right-wing, libertarian-conservative schools of thought, who likewise believe that the only way to aid the poor is to punish the rich. Of course, unlike communists, they see this as a bad thing.

Both the communists and the libertarians are in error about this. As I wrote in the third part of my series "Why I Am Not a Libertarian", the great insight of capitalism is that wealth is not a constant but can be created. When it comes to basic questions of social justice, there is no reason why some must lose for others to win. On the contrary, by harnessing market forces to create greater overall wealth, we can all succeed.

That said, all proposed means of attaining this end are not created equal. We should be suspicious of economic theories which claim that we can best promote societal prosperity by lavishly rewarding the rich and trusting that their gains will eventually trickle down to the lower socioeconomic classes. If nothing else, we should be skeptical of such theories because they so obviously align with the short-term interests of the wealthy people who propose them.

Nevertheless, it is true that a rising tide lifts all boats. Even if vast disparities in income persist, it is undeniable that the overall level of prosperity of our society has substantially increased over the past hundred years, and it is similarly undeniable that many of these benefits have been enjoyed by average people and not just by the elite. In terms of life expectancy, of productivity, of innovation, our capitalist society is far richer in real terms than many past societies - including communist states, where poverty, deprivation, waste, misallocation, and hoarding seem to be the rule and not the exception. Marx and other communists thought that history would vindicate them, but instead, the opposite has happened.

So, how do we bring about prosperity for all? One important step, as I mentioned previously, is to commit to creating a social safety net that ensures universal access to basic goods like health care and education. That way, natural differences in talent and ability have the best chance to manifest and are less likely to be stifled by accidents of circumstance, and people are encouraged to take risks and become entrepreneurs since they know failure will not mean total disaster. Another is to require that all full-time jobs pay a living wage. People mired in poverty, working but unable to advance, are a net drain on society and are far more likely to turn to crime and other societal ills. By contrast, people able to support themselves have incentive to cooperate and to pay back into society, creating further opportunities for economic growth. (Fears that this policy will harm the economy usually turn out to be overblown.)

In this respect, I'm in agreement with organizations like the Hope Street Group (H/T Peter Levine). Markets are not a panacea to solve all problems, but when properly guided, they can be a potent force for good. We are so familiar with poverty and inequity that they sometimes seem to be intrinsic parts of the natural order. But human civilization has already reshaped the world in countless ways, changing or eradicating things that once seemed universal and inescapable. Why can we not use our ingenuity to solve this one as well?

(Author's Note: "The Desert" is a work of short fiction in several parts. If you haven't already done so, now would be a good time to go back and read the previous chapters so that you know what's going on.)

IV: The Visionary

The faint path I had been following through the desert had long since petered out, and for several hours I had been making my own way across the sands. The fallen stone blocks of the ruined city lay well behind me, no longer in sight.

The sun had now sunk almost entirely below the horizon, and the sky had grown dark. But there were no stars to guide my way with their friendly twinkling - only a hollow void, as black and vast as infinity's maw. A near-absolute darkness had descended on the wasteland, making each labored step dangerous.

With the setting of the sun, the searing heat of the day had gone. In its place, with shocking swiftness, had come the cold. The sands underfoot, now powdery fine and black as midnight, had an icy, desolate chill. The cold air cut into my exposed skin like a knife, and silver frost sparkled in the air with each breath I took. A bone-deep weariness had settled in me after two failed encounters, and I was beginning to long for the light and warmth of my home. But I was determined to reach at least one person, and there was no way out but through. I pressed onward.

The fear was growing in me that I would not find anyone else, and with that to occupy my mind, I almost stumbled over the man before I saw him. Frail and stick-thin, clad only in shredded rags, he knelt on the sands and stretched out his hands toward the empty sky. He had to be freezing, but he gave no sign that he felt the cold.

"Hail, friend!" I called out to him. "What are you doing out here in this cold?"

The man glanced at me in startlement, as if he hadn't noticed me before. When I had first seen him, kneeling with hands outstretched, I thought he had been pleading with someone. Now I saw that his face was stretched into a blissful, vacant smile. Half-frozen tears of joy trickled down into his grimy beard.

"Cold?" he said. "I don't feel any cold. The weather is perfect. I couldn't have asked for more."

"Friend, it's freezing out here. You must be cold and miserable dressed in that. Come with me - I know a place indoors where you can warm yourself. I have a fire going."

"Thank you for your offer, but I'm fine where I am," he said dreamily. "I have all I need right here."

"Don't tell me you're happy here?" I said in shock.

"Why, of course! How could I not be? This is the best place on earth. No one could be happier anywhere else."

"How many other places have you tried?" I asked.

He looked at me in surprise, his gaze seeming to regain a bit of clarity. "None. Does that matter?"

"Yes, it does! How can you possibly know that this is the best place on earth if you haven't even looked at the alternatives? How do you know you wouldn't be even happier somewhere else? And besides," I went on, sweeping a hand around, "look at this place. Look and see it for what it is. It's a cold, barren wasteland. There's no life here, no growth, no joy. It denies you everything you truly need to be happy. You may think it's a paradise because that's what you've always been taught, but when you fairly compare what this place offers with all the others that are out there, you'll see that there are whole worlds you've been missing out on. Tell me honestly: are you really happy here, deep down inside?"

The man's look of surprise deepened. He looked around slowly, then shivered, as if noticing the cold for the first time.

"Well, to be absolutely honest," he said in a fearful whisper, "sometimes I'm not completely happy here. It gets chilly here some nights, and I feel so alone. Sometimes it doesn't seem like anyone's listening to me. I won't say this place doesn't have its faults... but isn't everywhere else even worse?"

"Nothing could be further from the truth," I assured him. "There are places outside this desert where there are gardens of water and light, overflowing with life, with plenty of friends and companionship. I can describe them to you, and I can even tell you about other people who went there and are happier now. But the only way for you to really experience what it's like is to come with me and see them with your own eyes. If you don't like what you see, you can always come back here. But truth be told, I don't think you'll want to."

The man crouched down on the black sands, wrapping his arms around his knees and shivering. "I don't know. I just don't know. At least here I know where I stand. To move to a new place, where I don't know anyone or anything, where I don't know what would be waiting for me..."

"It's natural to be afraid of such a major change. And I can't deny that it may seem to get even darker for a while if you come with me. But you have to trust me that there's light and warmth on the other side. The journey back with me may not be easy, but it's only a passing thing, and in the end you'll know it was all worthwhile."

"But, but..." He seemed to be fumbling for an excuse, searching for a way to talk himself out of it. "But everything I care about is here. If I leave this place I'll lose it all. I'd have no foundation, no hope."

"Not so," I urged him. "That's what you've been told by other people of this desert, people who want to keep you here - I think for their own pride as much as for any other reason. They've never been to the gardens; they don't know what they're talking about, and most of what they say about them isn't true. I'm telling you that everything you care about, everything that truly makes your life meaningful, is there waiting for you. There's clear air, happiness and peace, surpassing anything you could imagine. If you lose anything by coming with me, it will be something you never needed in the first place. You're not happy here. What do you have to lose? Just trust me." I held out a hand.

A strange light came into the other man's eyes. Slowly, hesitantly, he stood up. Pulling his rags around himself, he reached out for my hand. Then, silently and smoothly, his form began to unravel - uncoiling and dissipating like smoke on the wind. The last thing I saw was his face, and this time it wore not a look of dazed bliss, but a real smile, deep and warm. Then that was gone as well, and I stood alone on the black sands.

With a sense of relief, I surveyed my surroundings. In truth, I didn't know exactly where he had gone - that was up to him. But now he had a chance, and that was more than this place could ever offer. And in any case, I felt confident. There would be others to guide his way, and the path he had set out on, though little-known, was well-traveled. It would take time for him to come to the end of it, but I hoped to meet him again one day in the light of a garden of his own.

But as for me, I had to set out. The night was growing deeper, and I was weary beyond description. I was near the end of the desert, and home had never sounded so inviting.

I walked on through cold and darkness. The desert was as empty and black as if I was the only person left in it. But after a time, a glimmer of pale light impinged on my vision. A solitary twinkle appeared in the gloomy sky, then another and another. With a faint smile, I walked onward, beneath a sky filled with glorious, bright stars.

Then, from up ahead, the still, dead air of the desert stirred. A fresh breeze brushed against my face. I quickened my steps.

I crested a rise, and the end of the desert stretched out before me. Ahead was a low, sandy coast where the stark chill faded into a spray of fresh, salty air. Seagulls circled in the air overhead, their squawks and cries echoing. The surf rolled and boomed on the shore. To the southeast, the desert gave way to clusters of scraggly dunegrass and then a dark scrub forest.

I looked, then knelt down. At my feet a small flower bloomed, improbably alive in this desolate place, its red petals and leafy green stem a startling splash of color against the drab sand.

Getting my bearings, I straightened up. I had a long path to walk before I could return to my garden and my home.

(Author's Note: "The Desert" is a work of short fiction in several parts. If you haven't already done so, now would be a good time to go back and read the previous chapters so that you know what's going on.)

III: The Traditionalist

I plodded on through the desert. The heat was mind-blasting in its intensity, and I walked in a shimmering haze. My world had narrowed to placing one foot in front of the other, following the faint, almost invisible path that led onward.

But the white blast of noon was fading, and in the west, the sun was beginning to set. As it sank lower, it seemed swollen and heavy, like a dying star, and its lurid, deep red light darkened the sky and cast an eerie pall over the land. Dunes and stone outcroppings cast shadows the color of dried blood.

After a time, I noticed something that had escaped my attention. The stone outcroppings that had become increasingly frequent were not natural formations. Despite the windblown sand that had etched and half-buried them, they were still recognizably regular - the work of human hands. There were tumbled pillars, worn-down blocks, fallen walls. In growing amazement, I realized these were the ruins of a city, though clearly one that had been abandoned countless ages ago and since reclaimed by the sand. Had this desert once been a more hospitable place? Or had some group of people tried to settle in this harsh land, until its unrelenting heat and dryness had caused them to dwindle and die out?

Then, up ahead, I heard sounds - a voice. Stepping out from behind a crumbled pillar, I surveyed the scene.

The speaker stood in a sheltered lee in the corner of two ruined stone walls, both of which had sand piled behind them to the top of the walls. It was a woman, wispy and bony, her hair sparse gray and her skin wrinkled. Along one of the walls ran a long line of graves, easily dozens, each one marked with driftwood crosses or crude cairns. She stood just beyond the last grave in line, as if awaiting her turn to take her place in the earth.

I waved to her. "Greetings, friend!"

The woman glanced up and gave me a frail smile. She lifted a hand in greeting.

"I'm a visitor," I called, approaching her. "What are you doing here?"

"Here? Why, this is my home."

"This is your home?" I said in some disbelief.

She nodded. "I was born and raised here. My family has always lived here. My ancestors lived here for many generations."

"I can see that," I replied, glancing at the line of graves. "And you're sure you want to stay here?"

"Of course!" she said in shock. "This place is part of my culture and my history. It's what I've always known. Why should I leave now?"

"It seems to me," I said carefully, "that what matters is whether you're happy. Just because this place has been part of your history doesn't mean it has to be part of your future as well. You're not defined by your past. There are new vistas to seek out. Why not start a new strand of history of your own making?"

She looked horrified. "I made a commitment to live here. When I was a child, I took part in a ceremony where I pledged to all the world that this place would be my home for life. It would be a betrayal of that promise and of my family's trust for me to live anywhere else."

"Promises like that aren't binding," I said. "In the first place, you were probably coerced into making that promise at an age where you were far too young to give meaningful consent. Especially given the pressure that was put on you by your family to follow in their footsteps. You can hardly believe there's any kind of meaningful possibility for a child to go against her parents' wishes.

"But even if you had given free consent, it wouldn't matter. There are some kinds of promises a human simply can't make. To pledge that you'll stay right where you are forever and never change - that's essentially to pledge that you'll never grow or change as a person. You can't promise that even if you wanted to, and no belief system has any right to ask otherwise. The most anyone can or should pledge is to remain with a group as long as their aims and interests align. If they no longer do, we have an absolute right to seek out and associate with new groups that we can better identify with."

A scowl passed across her face. "My forefathers knew the best place. They settled here because it was right for them. Are you asking me to say I'm smarter than them, know better than them? That would be arrogant. I'd have to know everything to know what the best place is. Virtue means being humble, and humility means I stay right where I am."

"You don't need unlimited knowledge to know that where you are isn't working out and isn't the best place for you. Beyond this desert, there are gardens such as you've never dreamed of. At the very least, you can come and see them for yourself and decide if you want to stay. And besides, your ancestors were only human. They made mistakes and had limited knowledge too. It's not arrogant to assume you know at least as much as they did, and probably more, considering how long ago they lived."

Her scowl had been growing darker at my words, but now a grim, triumphant smile lit her face. "That's where you're wrong. It's not my ancestors who put me here. It's God himself who put me here. Clearly, I'm here because this is where he meant for me to be born. He knows better than you where I'm supposed to live, and that's where I'm staying."

"And what's your evidence for that?" I asked sharply. "You know God wants you to be here because that's where you are? By that logic, everyone owes their particular place in life to God's foreordained will. What about people in faiths which you consider false? Did God want them to be born there, grow up believing the wrong things, and ultimately be consigned to Hell? What about war refugees or children who grow up in abusive households? Did God want them to be there and to suffer? Your position would take free will out of the equation altogether. It would lead us to a gloomy fatalism where every person accepts all the evils in their life as God's will which they shouldn't seek to escape or change. Is that the position you want to end up at?"

The woman's expression grew cold and unfriendly. "God blessed me by putting me here because this is the right place. Those people in other places weren't so lucky. They'll just have to find their way here themselves." She crossed her arms and turned away from me, clearly indicating that our conversation was over.

"You have no idea how many other people in different places I've heard say the same thing," I answered. She didn't respond, but I had not been expecting her to. I reseated my shoulder bag and set out on my way again, leaving her alone in the ruins as the red shadows grew deeper.