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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schmelzer endorses this conclusion himself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Sarah Braasch

I'm scared to expose myself like this. But, I'm tired of the shame and the guilt and the fear. I have something important to say. And, I want to comfort other victims of religious abuse who feel alone and afraid.

I grew up in an abusive Jehovah's Witness home. When people ask me what my childhood was like, I usually describe it, in all seriousness, as something like growing up in a war zone. I don't mean to belittle or demean the experiences of children who actually grow up in literal war zones, but I struggle to find a more apt description.

The sky was always falling. We were constantly under threat of demonic attack. We expected Armageddon to befall us at any moment. As children, these threats of annihilation all around us were all too real. Demons could murder you, rape you and torture you, psychologically or physically or sexually. The desire for the death and destruction of mankind permeated the doctrine. Of course, this theater of horrors was exacerbated and intensified by my father's abuse and my mother's deranged denial.

I cried through my entire high school graduation ceremony. It became a joke amongst my classmates. It was the strangest thing. I just couldn't stop crying. I think I just couldn't believe that I had made it, that I was free. I was just so overwhelmed with emotion.

My father's parting words to me were to tell me that I would amount to nothing without him. He told me that I would come crawling back to him on hands and knees, begging him to take me in. I told him to wait for me. And to hold his breath.

It was a battle to finish my undergraduate education. If I hadn't gone to family court at sixteen to get a restraining order against my father, I wouldn't have been able to secure the financial aid necessary to continue my studies. I had to present a copy of the order to the university to establish myself as financially independent from my parents.

Also, I was in a tremendously fragile emotional and psychological condition. I had severed all ties with my family. I was socially retarded. I was completely alone. I felt totally disconnected from the university community. Interpersonal interactions were difficult and uncomfortable for me. I had trouble making eye contact. And, I thought demons were stalking me.

Being alone in the university dormitory during school breaks was the hardest. I would sit up all night in the lobby watching TV and chatting with the overnight security guards, and I would sleep all day. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone what was happening to me, and my childhood had been nothing if not a study in secrecy. But, I willed myself to keep it together, to go to class, to work, to do research. I presented as normal a face as possible to the outside world. I gravitated towards other outsiders and social pariahs. The goth transvestite with pet snakes. The bisexual Jamaican dancer.

So, at 22 years old, I had spent five years at the University of Minnesota. I had two summa cum laude engineering degrees, in aerospace and mechanical engineering. I had a French minor. Somehow, some way, I made it through. The world was, seemingly, my oyster.

I decided to continue my education. It just seemed like a good idea. If education was good, then more education was even better. I was racking up prizes and awards and scholarships and fellowships and internships and whatever other honors I could get my hands on. I wanted medals and certificates and esteem. Mostly esteem.

I was fueled by rage and hatred. Hatred and rage. It was driving me forward, relentlessly. But no amount of accomplishments or successes could sate me. I was on a mission for revenge and retribution and justice. But, it was not to be found. I was playing a chess game against my parents, except that I was playing a chess game against no one, because my parents weren't playing, because they didn't care.

That was the cruelest lesson of my twenties. I realized that my parents were not sitting up nights worrying about my wellbeing or lack thereof. My parents were not racked with guilt over their mistreatment of me. My mother and my father were continuing their lives as if they didn't have a care in the world, as if they'd never had a little girl named Sarah.

I couldn't even hurt them. They didn't care. My success was not the best revenge or any revenge at all. My success was meaningless to them. They didn't care. I had to let it go. Their gas-lit alternate reality didn't include me, or even a notion of me or even the idea of me. My anger and bitterness was going to destroy me and no one would care.

I headed off to grad school at UC Berkeley. The moment I landed, everything came crashing down. Something inside of me snapped. It surprised me. I wouldn't have thought it would have occurred then. I was further removed from all of my torments, both geographically and temporally. But, all of my demons were still with me — in my head.

I couldn't sleep. I was terrified of the dark. I spent my nights sitting in the bathtub, searching out the corners of the well-lit bathroom for demons. I would pray to Jehovah throughout the night, in an almost chant-like fashion. I did this to ward off the demons, to call upon Jehovah for protection, and to stop the bad thoughts. If I cursed Jehovah God in my head or asked for Satan, I would scream and cry out to Jehovah to save me. Then, I would begin chanting again. Sometimes, a part of my brain knew that what I was doing was crazy, but I couldn't stop. And, sometimes, I didn't know. Sometimes, I knew that there was a demon there, torturing me, trying to hurt me, trying to get me to kill myself.

I stopped going to class. I stopped going to the lab. I stopped bathing. I spent my days either sleeping or writing out rambling tales of demons and demonic possession. I had a complete nervous breakdown.

In a rare moment of lucidity, I realized that I was either going to drive myself totally and irrevocably insane, or that I was going to drive myself to suicide. I knew it. I had to choose.

There was something alluring about letting the insane parts of my mind just take me, just pull me out to sea and drown me in darkness. I wanted to completely disassociate from reality. Insanity would obviate the need for suicide. Suicide was scary. I had no fear of hell. (Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in hell.) But, I had grown weary of violence. I didn't really want to inflict more violence upon my poor, tired body. But, I decided that my insanity wouldn't be a happy or peaceful place. My insanity would be hell, full of pain and anguish. If I had thought that my insane mind would have taken me to a dreamy heaven, full of cotton candy and angels and down-filled cushions, I would have gone.

I wasn't sure if I could still extract joy from life. I wasn't sure if I could find meaning in life. I wasn't sure if I could determine a purpose for my life. But, I decided to try. I decided I needed drugs.

I headed to the student health center on campus. I told the staff psychiatrist how I was feeling about my tenuous grasp on reality, my views on demons and my thoughts of suicide, and he gave me drugs. Lots of drugs.

The drugs worked. I was walking through life in a hazy fog, but I liked it. I could sleep at night. I didn't think about demons all of the time, but they never left me completely. I went to class. I went to the lab. My productivity left something to be desired. I had been drained of any semblance of a personality. I even spoke really slowly. I gained a lot of weight. I was kind of like the walking dead. But, I was alive. Sort of. And, I could function. Kind of.

I got it in my head that I needed to leave Berkeley. I grew tired of living like a zombie. As often happens, I decided that I didn't need the drugs anymore. I decided that I just needed a new environment, a change of pace. So, I left. I took the first job offer I could find, and I moved to Los Angeles. Things were going ok for a while. Then, I decided to save my siblings. With tragic consequences.

I basically strong-armed my older sister and my younger brother into moving out to Los Angeles and into moving in with me. I had grandiose visions of bestowing new lives upon them, of blessing them with new horizons, of freeing them from the shackles of our hellish family and childhoods. I would be their savior. (And, I hoped it would irk my parents to no end.)

This ill-formed plan, of course, quickly turned catastrophic. Three emotionally damaged and traumatized adult siblings living in close quarters and grappling with reconstructing their lives and identities is a recipe for disaster. Trust me on this one. Things quickly spiraled out of control.

My sister was the first to abandon ship. She saw the light before I did. When my sister left so did any hope we had of building a functional family out of the shards of our broken lives and psyches. She was the sane one. My brother and I descended into a co-dependent psychodrama hell of childhood trauma revisited.

I became cruel to him. He embodied all of my worst fears. He couldn't get out of bed. He imploded in on himself. I couldn't allow that to happen. I forced him to get a job. I forced him to pay rent. I forced him to clean. I was all about the tough love.

He became more and more detached from reality. He would stay out all night, wandering the streets of LA. He would tell me that he had broken into people's homes. He brought home swords, which I quickly re-gifted. He would tell me that he saw a girl, whom he knew from back home, at the restaurant where he worked. He thought he might have raped her during a drug binge. He told me that she sat at the bar and stared at him without saying a word. He told me that she had come to LA to tell him that she was pregnant. He told me that he could hear the thoughts of the customers at work. He could hear them thinking about him, laughing at him. He told me that the patrons in the restaurant were always talking about him, making fun of him. He told me that he often met and saw demons as he wandered LA in the middle of the night. He told me that he challenged Satan to a fight.

I knew he was schizophrenic, but I thought I could talk him out of it. I know it sounds ridiculous. He would have moments of lucidity. I would try to reason with him, to get him to see the distinction between reality and psychosis, to teach him how to recognize the difference.

Then, one night, my brother snapped. He was asking me pointed questions about whether or not my sister and I had been sexually abused by our father. And, I was giving him pointed answers. He responded violently. I had to call the police. I was never afraid of him until that point. I probably should have been, but I wasn't. Even when he told me he was hearing voices and seeing demons, even when he brought home swords.

The next day, I kicked him out. I gathered up all of his belongings after he left for work, and I dropped them off at the restaurant. And, I've never forgiven myself. But, I was scared. I panicked. I was afraid that he would kill or rape or hurt me if I let him stay. Eventually, he made his way back to the Midwest.

My brother is currently being heavily medicated, so that he does not pose a danger either to himself or to anyone else. I tried to save him, but I drowned him instead.

When I think about my brother, I think about how he held me as I cried out my testimony against my father in family court, about how my words became sobs, about how he put his arm around me. And, I hate myself for abandoning him.

Religious abuse exists. Religious abuse is real. Who knows how many unacknowledged walking wounded limp through early adult life, struggling to put themselves back together again. Of course, there are varying degrees and types of religious abuse, just as there are varying degrees and types of sexual and physical abuse. Religious abuse is a form of psychological abuse. As a society, we are loath to acknowledge this fact. We are loath to acknowledge that raising children in religion is abusive.

We are sending millions of young persons out into the world handicapped by religious childhood traumas and indoctrination and social retardation, including religious idiocy, delusion and hatred. For the greater part, these psychological and emotional pains remain unaddressed by our mental health profession. Religion is not addressed as the prime mover.

I am not an aberration. I am your high school friend. I am your co-worker. I am your law school classmate.

I am not unintelligent. I am not crazy. I have two engineering degrees and a law degree. I have traveled the world. I am well educated and well read. I am a human rights activist. I am a writer.

I am an adult survivor of childhood religious abuse. And, so are you.

Evangelical pastor Ray Stedman knows the root cause of everything that's wrong with the world:

It is not nationalism, it is not racism... it is the human heart. It is the pride of man that fancies he can get along without God.

But not to worry, because he advises us how we can conquer this obstacle. To achieve that, we must

...take captive every thought to the obedience of Christ. This is extremely important.

...It is absolutely necessary to do this if you want to have permanent victory. Allow these unChristian thoughts to remain unconquered, and you will soon have to take the fortress all over again. They will creep out of their hiding places and take over and you will find that that which God has delivered you from has taken control once again.

Granted, the job of "taking every thought captive" can be difficult, even for a believing Christian. Stedman observes that:

...the intellectual life is often the last part of a Christian to be yielded to the right of Jesus Christ to rule. Somehow we love to retain some area of our intellect, of our thought-life, reserved from the control of Jesus Christ. For instance, we reserve the right to judge Scripture, as to what we will or will not agree with, what we will or will not accept. I find many Christians struggling in this area.

One of our women told us, a few years ago, of a struggle in this respect in her life. She said she would read through the New Testament and sometimes write in the margin opposite a verse, "I don't agree!" Well, she was honest enough to put it down in writing. There are many of us who do not agree but we do not write it down, or even admit it to ourselves. It was honest of her to do that, but it represents a struggle with the Lordship of Christ; his right to rule over every area of life, his right to control the thought-life, every thought taken captive to obey him.

...Dr. Francis Schaeffer has put it very accurately beautifully in these words:

I am false or confused if I sing about Christ's Lordship and contrive to retain areas of my own life that are autonomous. This is true if it is my sexual life that is autonomous, but it is at least equally true if it is my intellectual life that is autonomous, or even my intellectual life in a highly selective area. Any autonomy is wrong.

Similar to C.S. Lewis saying that obedience is an "intrinsically good" habit to get into, or the Pope saying that a Catholic's only role is to obey the Vatican with sheeplike docility, both Stedman and Schaeffer agree that "any autonomy is wrong" and that we must never question, disagree with, or doubt the teachings of the Bible, lest we lose faith and be overcome by atheism. We atheists often say that religion "hardens hearts and enslaves minds", but it's interesting to see theists who openly agree with us and admit that this is exactly what they are trying to achieve.

What I find most revealing about all this is the sentiment that if you allow un-Christian thoughts to "remain unconquered", they will soon gain strength and overcome you; that the only way to maintain your faith is to crush all doubts and skepticism and force "every thought" into the Christian mold. It's bizarre that so many preachers say this is necessary. In what other areas of life do people do this? Do scientists tell each other that they must take captive every thought to the reigning theory, that even a seed of doubt may grow out of control? Do doctors constantly struggle to persuade themselves that they can heal sick people? Do chemists grapple with belief in the periodic table?

A New Yorker book review, Prisoner of Narnia, makes a similar point about C.S. Lewis' writing:

A startling thing in Lewis's letters to other believers is how much energy and practical advice is dispensed about how to keep your belief going: they are constantly writing to each other about the state of their beliefs, as chronic sinus sufferers might write to each other about the state of their noses. Keep your belief going, no matter what it takes — the thought not occurring that a belief that needs this much work to believe in isn't really a belief but a very strong desire to believe.

It seems that many believers wrestle with doubt; and since they haven't been able to get rid of it, they've elevated it into a virtue, saying that by its nature faith is hard to hold onto. In fact, this sentiment is so common that they don't realize how strange it is, or what it implies: that their reason is not entirely dormant, that it rejects the absurdities of faith, creating mental tension and doubt when it comes into contact with the will to believe. I've noted a similar phenomenon in those theists who feel flickers of conscience that cause them to agonize over their faith's cruel teachings of punishment and damnation. Neither the moral nor the rational sense, it seems, are easily quieted, and that is a heartening thought.

I'm aware this is anecdotal, but what strikes me is that I've never seen a comparable phenomenon among atheists. What atheist books or websites speak of atheism as something that's a constant struggle to keep up, or warn that if we read the Bible or consider arguments for the existence of God, religious thoughts may "creep out" and overpower us? I grant that many theists who claim to be ex-atheists assert that this can happen, but evidence for the phenomenon among actual atheists, in the same way Stedman discusses seeing among Christians, is conspicuously lacking.

And this leads to a simple, stunning realization: our apologist opponents are afraid of us. They boast of how their church is founded on the solid bedrock of the word of God, how their faith is strong and impregnable to contrary argument. But look past the surface, and in many cases, you'll find them constantly advising each other how best to stifle doubts, warning each other that our arguments must not be considered, our case not given heed. You'll find sermons sternly warning about the dangers of autonomy, of independent thought, and of using one's own best judgment. Why would they write so extensively about the necessity of taking your own mind captive - unless they fear what it would uncover if it was free?

In last year's post "The Default", I quoted this astonishing concession from theist Andrew Sullivan:

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.

This is the kind of honesty one doesn't often see in discussions of religious faith. Sullivan admits, as atheists have long said, that people's religious faith is shaped and molded by the culture they grow up in. To quote myself, "Whenever and wherever [religious experiences] occur, they are almost invariably believed to be manifestations of the local god, whichever one that is."

From the memetic perspective, it's understandable reasons why this happens. Religious beliefs thrive in large part because they're taught to children, who in turn have sound evolutionary reasons for being susceptible to believe whatever their parents and authority figures tell them. Children make willing converts to almost anything, and few people shake off the beliefs they're taught early in life. If, for some reason, there arose a fair-minded religion that only sought converts in mature and rational adults, it would rapidly be outcompeted and driven to extinction by the faiths that seek to get a foot in the door before the powers of reasoning are fully developed.

The religious practice of child indoctrination has stacked the deck against us atheists. If we're to win the culture wars, we need to put a stop to it. For both moral and practical reasons, it's not feasible to outlaw the religious indoctrination of children. The next best thing is to do what several of the new atheists have set out to do, as Richard Dawkins aims to do with The God Delusion: we need to engage in consciousness-raising. We should enlighten people to the evils of this practice: exposing children to one perspective and no others, keeping them ignorant of alternatives, teaching them not to question, teaching them to act as if they were faithful members of a religion when they cannot possibly be old enough to give informed consent.

Religious groups can be expected to fight fiercely against this, for the simple reason that if children were taught objectively about all the various religious beliefs, it's inconceivable that they'd find one far more compelling than the others. What would make Yahweh or Allah stand out from Zeus or Poseidon? What would differentiate Jesus from the many other dying and rising gods of the corn? Why hail Mohammed as the supreme prophet rather than Zoroaster or Apollonius of Tyana? These questions are unanswerable unless parents, teachers and religious leaders make a conscious effort to maintain the mystery - to teach children that their particular religious belief is unique and supreme and beyond questioning.

What religions fear - what they must fear - is a fair and unbiased comparison of the options. After all, how could they ever stand out from the crowd? The idea of a "leap of faith" seems a lot less compelling once you realize that there are thousands of religions each urging you to take a leap in a different direction.

When you investigate and compare different religions critically, it's inevitable that their pretense of mystery and authority will soon be pierced. There really is nothing substantial setting any one of them apart from all the rest. This truth is atheists' greatest asset, and making it clear to everyone should be our mission.

The other week, I received an excellent suggestion from a Daylight Atheism commenter via e-mail. He suggested I write a post on the following topic: How can a former believer overcome the vestigial fear of Hell?

I suspect this is a common problem. Many religions go to great effort to inculcate in their followers an instinctive terror of breaking the rules, and this irrational fear can often linger and continue to traumatize a person even after they have consciously and rationally decided that those religious beliefs are false. No blame attaches for this; it's just an intrinsic part of human psychology. Cold fear, unfortunately, is often a more powerful force than dispassionate reasoning.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins quotes one victim of this psychological abuse who wrote to him seeking help:

I went to a Catholic school from the age of five, and was indoctrinated by nuns who wielded straps, sticks and canes. During my teens I read Darwin, and what he said about evolution made such a lot of sense to the logical part of my mind. However, I've gone through life suffering much conflict and a deep down fear of hell fire which gets triggered quite frequently. I've had some psychotherapy which has enabled me to work through some of my earlier problems but can't seem to overcome this deep fear.

Dr. Dawkins suggested a therapist, Jill Mytton, who herself escaped a cult called the Exclusive Brethren and now counsels people in similar situations. Yet even she still bears the traces of her former indoctrination:

"If I think back to my childhood, it's one dominated by fear. And it was the fear of disapproval while in the present, but also of eternal damnation. And for a child, images of hell-fire and gnashing of teeth are actually very real. They are not metaphorical at all." I then asked her to spell out what she had actually been told about hell, as a child, and her eventual reply was as moving as her expressive face during the long hesitation before she answered: "It's strange, isn't it? After all this time it still has the power to... affect me... when you... when you ask me that question. Hell is a fearful place. It's complete rejection by God. It's complete judgement, there is real fire, there is real torment, real torture, and it goes on for ever so there is no respite from it."

Reading about the horrible suffering that so many believers experience, anyone with a conscience would want to help. I'm well aware that there's no quick fix for a psychological trauma like this, and not having had a cult upbringing to break away from, I don't claim to be an expert on this. But I do have two suggestions, so I'll give them out in the hopes that they may do some good. Anyone who has more experience than me and can improve on them is invited to do so.

First: Most religious groups, for understandable reasons, try to instill into their followers the belief that their particular teachings are the only ones that are real or worth caring about. To counteract this, I suggest it may help to put those teachings into their proper context in the pantheon of world mythology. What I'd recommend for a struggling ex-believer is to read about all the afterlives that have been proposed - Greek, Egyptian, Buddhist, Hindu, and everything else that's out there. Once you can compare them side by side and are used to seeing them just as stories, it will be easier to do the same with the religion you were brought up in.

Second: The best way to conquer the phobia of Hell, as with any other phobia, is to induce extinction. Expose yourself to whatever idea or image triggers the fear - in small doses at first - and prove to yourself that no harmful consequences follow. Repeat this often enough, and the mental link between the stimulus and the fear is eventually broken. Of course, rationally speaking, this wouldn't disprove a punishment that's claimed to only arrive after death - but because we're dealing with an irrational fear and not a reasoned belief, I think it may be effective.

So, readers, what do you say? Can anyone improve on these suggestions?

The Evangelical Outpost, a major Christian blog, last week published a positive review of Nancy Pearcey's book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity. In it, Pearcey argues that true Christians must purge their thinking of evolution and all other secular ideas and philosophies:

Most Christians are more secular then they realize, and this must change if the Church is to have any sort of significant cultural impact... Christians must counter the affects [sic] of secularism by developing a comprehensive biblical worldview.

It's no surprise that Pearcey, a young-earth creationist, believes it is vital for Christians to reject evolution. But her goals, and the goals of the movement to which she belongs, are broader than this. The modern religious right's plan is not to defend their various beliefs in piecemeal fashion. Instead, they seek to create a self-contained world within the real world, one where all the channels of information present only the views they approve, and believers are never exposed to dissenting opinions.

Slacktivist, a far better kind of Christian, has an insightful article on this phenomenon, discussing the many "Christian worldview" groups. This phrase, as he explains, is code for the fundamentalist enclaves like Bob Jones University that seek to instill a rigid and all-encompassing dogma into their followers' minds. The intent is to create believers who automatically distrust any information that does not come from "safe", approved sources of religious indoctrination, but who will unquestioningly obey the leaders of the fundamentalist movement.

If we freethinkers believe in the marketplace of ideas, a thriving realm of debate where different viewpoints can freely clash and mingle, the dominionist right has a different vision. They do not want to be just another participant in the marketplace; they want to withdraw from that broader sphere and create their own marketplace, one where only their voices are heard. Like a memetic analogue of "bubble boy" syndrome, they want to enclose their followers in a protective bubble of sterilized information, allowing nothing that might disturb their preconceptions to pass through. (A commenter on the Evangelical Outpost clearly conveys this when he expresses desire for "a return to filtering our thoughts and conclusions about reality through God's word").

When fundamentalists wave the banner of "liberating Christianity from its cultural captivity", what they really mean is that they want to "liberate" Christianity from the burdensome constraints of objective reality. They want to limit and restrict their followers' thoughts, to the point where they create a legion of faithful believers who are perfectly immune to contrary evidence and argument. And once that is achieved, then the final stage of their plan:

Evangelicals, explains Pearcey, have traditionally thought of salvation only in terms of individual souls. The idea that we are to have a redeeming influence in every area of culture is new to many... People need to learn how to move beyond a merely privatized faith and apply biblical principles to areas like work, business, and politics.

Like most of the religious right today, Pearcey and her ideological comrades are not satisfied to see Christians having the freedom to practice their own faith. They want to dominate society and impose that faith on others who do not share it. The wish for Christians to have "a redeeming influence on every area of culture" is just a thinly disguised wish to eliminate all ideas that do not conform to their narrow and dogma-blinded vision.

How, then, can freethinkers overcome this strategy? How can we pierce the bubble of dogma and persuade believers to give us a fair hearing? An upcoming post will address that question.

In the first chapter of her autobiography Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali recounts some of the Somali folktales her grandmother taught her when she was a child. One was a story of a nomad, searching for a home for his wife and child, who mysteriously finds an oasis with a fine grass hut already built in the middle of the desert, and a smiling, friendly stranger who invites them to live there. Alas for the trusting nomad, the stranger was really "He Who Rubs Himself with a Stick," a monstrous werewolf-like being who stalks the desert in the shape of a hyena, and who returns that night while they lie sleeping and devours their infant son. Another example:

There were stories about an ugly old witch woman whose name was People Slayer or People Butcher, who had the power to transform herself, to adopt the face of someone you liked and respected, and who at the last minute lunged at you, laughing in your face, HAHAHAHAHA, before she slaughtered you with a long sharp knife that she had been hiding under the folds of her robe all along and then ate you up.

Every culture has stories like this, of course, stories of the monsters that lurk at the fringes of civilization and fall upon those who stray from the prescribed rules of conduct. There's almost always a moral lesson to be drawn from these bloody folktales: whether to be chaste, or pious, or suspicious of strangers, or obedient to one's parents, the main character almost always transgresses in some way that leads to disaster.

In all likelihood, these cautionary tales are as old as humanity itself. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in a world full of very real dangers, and it's no surprise that they gave some of them a supernatural gloss. Natural disasters like drought and flood became the handiwork of angry nature spirits. Members of other, possibly hostile, rival tribes became shape-changing demons, utterly other, utterly alien, ready to drop their guise and strike at any moment. And our fellow predators, those who hunted the night beyond the light of our huddled fires, became monsters of every description. Fanciful though they were, these imaginings served a real purpose - giving our predecessors a way to deal with their fear, by constructing elaborate rituals intended to ward off misfortune. Like all religions, they imparted a sense of security and control in a hostile and uncaring cosmos.

With the passage of time, as our societies became more complex and the borders of our knowledge advanced, our myths and our monsters became more abstract. Nevertheless, their basic purpose stayed very much the same. Take a more recent example from human cultural history, William Blake's poem "Auguries of Innocence":

He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall ne'er get out.
He who respects the Infant's Faith
Triumphs over Hell and Death.

This clumsy, unsubtle threat delivers the same fundamental message as Ayaan Hirsi Ali's childhood folktales: stay within the bounds of your culture, believe your elders, or suffer a terrible fate. With the Somali folktales, it's more obvious where they originate - the childhood fears we felt on moonless nights, when we heard monsters roaring beyond the light of our fires. But both they and Blake's poem are descendants of that same ancient, superstitious terror. Both paint pictures of unseen evils waiting to strike down those who stray from the straight and narrow path.

Ironically, these primitive fears still guide our steps, even though we have long since acquired enough knowledge to tell that they are substanceless. Our ancestors cowered from noises in the night, but we no longer need to. We have a better option: just go and look. More than enough brave thinkers have gone before us to make it abundantly clear that there are no supernatural dangers lurking in the dark, no monsters hiding in the bushes. We do have dangers to confront, but we can respond to them more proportionately and effectively if we cease embellishing them with fanciful mythology.

In one of his "My Answer" columns, Billy Graham replies to a correspondent who doesn't see the need for organized religion:

Don't make up your own ideas about God, but understand from the Bible who He really is, and commit your life to Christ.

"Don't make up your own ideas" - this is Billy Graham's advice to the seeker. Instead, presumably, we should read the Bible and believe exactly what it says, without bringing any of our own imagination or independent thought to the subject.

My friend Erich Vieth at Dangerous Intersection had a similar experience visiting an evangelical megachurch:

"A good way to get into heresy is to read books about religion other than the Bible. Don't do this! Any book beyond the Bible is false. Everything in the Bible is true."

The Roman Catholic church, of course, has been one of the most reliable users of this tactic - with the added wrinkle that the church authorities are the only ones competent to interpret the Bible and tell lay believers what it really means. A Catholic commenter on this site put the point quite explicitly:

The Magisterium is also necessary. It is needed as a living and infallible authority to determine the authentic meaning of both Scripture and Tradition. Such a living authority is necessary to settle disputes concerning both Scripture and Tradition. Tradition and Scripture alone would be insufficient to guarantee the unity of the faith and of the Church, for violent disagreements could arise over the content of Tradition as well as of Scripture. There can be no private judgment either of Scripture or of Tradition.

My essay "Thoughts in Captivity" lists many more examples of this type, including apologists who proclaim that their holy scriptures should be believed over all contrary evidence and that believers do not need to know what outsiders are saying about their faith to know that it is not true.

All these warnings given by religious leaders to their followers, like the ones quoted above, center around the danger of independent thought. Making up your own mind, they proclaim, is a recipe for disaster (and the Bible agrees, in Proverbs 14:12). Instead, believers are repeatedly told that the only way to safety is to believe what has been handed down exactly as it has been handed down, and trust the religious authorities and texts to keep them on the safe path of orthodoxy. They must shut their minds and their eyes to all contrary evidence, all outside viewpoints, and believe regardless of what the facts or their own reason may tell them. The authorities, by definition, are infallible, and if you disagree with them the problem is with you.

This dictum occurs not just in religion, but also in dogmatic non-religious ideologies, such as can be found among communists or the devotees of Ayn Rand. However, its fullest flowering and most sophisticated defenders are unquestionably to be found among the ranks of religious believers.

As an atheist, I'm not surprised by this. This attitude, after all, is one of the surest signs of a false belief. The truth can endure limitless scrutiny; only false beliefs will crumble if looked at too closely. Thus, only the leaders of an incorrect belief system have reason to fear their followers investigating their beliefs and examining the alternatives. This is not to say that high-powered religious authorities know their faiths are false, but rather, there's a Darwinian competition among memes: false beliefs which encourage their holders to question and debate them are unlikely to survive. False beliefs which try to discourage critical scrutiny by any means possible are much more likely to endure.

As atheists, by contrast, our mission should be to get people to make up their own minds, not tell them what to think. We are not the ones who have to warn people about the dangers of making up their own minds and coming to their own conclusions. Instead, we have a far better message: you can and should think for yourself. We all live in the same universe, and sufficiently diligent investigation will lead to the realization of its true nature - and that, unlike religious myths and wishful thinking, is a conclusion we can all agree on.

One of the first posts on Daylight Atheism, over two years ago, was "The Fallacy of Free Speech", about a private Christian high school which sued the University of California because the UC had refused to give college credit in biology for courses which taught young-earth creationism. Well, the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow, but they do eventually turn. Last week, a federal judge issued a preliminary ruling which, while it does not completely prevent the case from going forward, makes it clear that Calvary Chapel Christian School's odds of winning are exceedingly low. (See also.)

Calvary Chapel filed two different challenges to the UC's admissions policy. One was a facial challenge, i.e., an assertion that the UC's admissions policy is intrinsically unconstitutional, no matter how it was applied. The other is an as-applied challenge, meaning that the policy itself may be constitutional but was applied unfairly or in a discriminatory way.

Both sides had asked for summary judgment on the facial challenge, a term that applies when the legal issues are unambiguous and the matter can be decided without any need for further examination. The judge denied Calvary Chapel's request for summary judgment and granted the UC's request for summary judgment, finding that the facial challenge is meritless as a matter of law; that challenge is now dead in the water. The UC did not ask for summary judgment on the as-applied challenge, saying that that issue is best settled at trial. So, unless Calvary Chapel withdraws its lawsuit, trial will be the next step. However, the judge's flat-out rejection of nearly all of Calvary Chapel's claims indicates that the odds are strongly against them. They'd be very unwise to proceed to a trial they're almost certain to lose, although so far their effort has shown all the mad tenacity of a group undeterred by reality. As Ed Brayton notes, most of their arguments "are so transparently ridiculous that you can almost hear the judge's frustration in having to address them over and over again".

Calvary Chapel's main argument is that any rejection of any of their courses occurred solely because the UC has a secret policy of discriminating against Christians. (Yes, they actually make this claim, and in very nearly those words.) This argument was annihilated by the judge, who pointed out that UC has "approved many high school courses that include religious material and viewpoints" (including other courses taught by Calvary Chapel), "reviewed and approved some Christian textbooks for use", and "provide[d] declarations from religious school administrators who have not perceived the discrimination about which Plaintiffs complain".

Most entertaining of all is the fact that Calvary Chapel brought in Michael Behe as an expert witness. Behe used to be a legitimate scientist, and even at the beginning of his entanglement with ID, stated that he accepted the facts of an old Earth and common descent (see my review of Darwin's Black Box). He's fallen far indeed if he's now reduced to peddling young-earth pseudoscience. Still, as the judge pointed out, his testimony actually supported the claims of the opposite side:

Plaintiffs' own biology expert, Professor Michael Behe testified that "it is personally abusive and pedagogically damaging to de facto require students to subscribe to an idea . . . . Requiring a student to, effectively, consent to an idea violates [her] personal integrity. Such a wrenching violation [may cause] a terrible educational outcome."

Yet, the two Christian biology texts at issue commit this "wrenching violation." For example, Biology for Christian Schools declares on the very first page that:

(1) "'Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may not be so,' is the only [position] a Christian can take . . . ."

(2) "If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

(3) "Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible."

I know one ID advocate who's not going to be commanding nearly as high an expert-witness retainer fee next time.

As this excerpt shows, the courses and books used by Calvary Chapel contained a blatant attitude of religious supremacy and demanded subordination of reason, evidence and critical thinking to Christian dogma wherever the two are in conflict. UC was completely in the right to reject them - to do anything less would have been to surrender their academic integrity - and if Calvary Chapel had any common sense rather than mere delusions of persecution, they would not have pursued this case. If they take it to trial, they cannot expect any outcome other than resounding defeat.

Religious beliefs, as a general rule, aren't based on evidence.

I have little doubt that my fellow nonbelievers will agree without reservation, and equally little doubt that religious believers will call me arrogant and uninformed for so sweepingly dismissing the basis of their beliefs. But that's not what I'm trying to say. By this statement, I'm not referring to the question of whether solid evidence underlies the tenets of religion (although I trust I've made my views on that issue known). I'm referring to something different: the question of how people become theists in the first place.

It may be that there are people who became believers after dispassionately examining a variety of world religions, deciding which one was best supported by the evidence, and choosing to join that one. It may be that there are such people; I've never met them. Instead, the vast majority of believers of my acquaintance had their beliefs chosen for them at a very early age, and were taught to follow those beliefs without skepticism or doubt. (My college friend John, whom I wrote about in 2006 in "A Seriously Warped Moral Compass", told me with pride that he became a Christian at the age of five.) A relatively smaller number converted later in life, but again, I find that in the overwhelming majority of cases that decision was made for reasons other than a critical comparison of the options.

I bring this up because I recently came across an astonishing debate, one that clearly outlines what I think are the two major strands of thought competing in modern theism. This debate took place on a now-defunct evangelical Christian blog, Evangelutionist, in a thread titled "The YEC-Christianity Conflation" [link fixed --Ebonmuse]. "YEC" is an acronym for "young-earth creationism", and the debate was over the issue of whether belief in a literal six-day creation and a 6,000-year-old cosmos is theologically necessary to be a Christian. The author, Touchstone, took the negative, but mattpowell, a commenter holding an opposite view, soon showed up.

I really recommend reading the whole comment thread, but to get a flavor of it, here are some highlights:

I don't hold YEC doctrine in high esteem at all. I was raised in a YEC home, taught in a YEC church, and pushed to the limits of my faith when I finally reached the real world and discovered how misleading and dishonest the PR campaign for young earth creationism is.

It's not YEC per se that's being conflated with orthodox Christianity. It is obedience to Scripture that is.

...when you take theories of the age of things, interpretations of physical data that you have never seen, and use that to interpret Genesis 1, now you're letting the ideas of men interpret Scripture instead of letting Scripture interpret Scripture. There isn't a shred of evidence anywhere in Scripture that Genesis 1 ought to be regarded as anything other than a straightforward historical account, and rather a lot to the contrary.

Exegetically, I understand Genesis 1 to be a theological treatise, the written account of an oral tradition, an inspired co-opting of ancient cosmological myths. God is asserting his sovereignty over all of creation as the Creator, and relating the moral history of man as a context for His relationship with mankind. The length of a solar day versus billions of years has *zero* bearing on the message — the moral of the story, the theology attached to the history.

Most of what we know we accept on authority, like the phases of Venus and the rings of Saturn. I accept those things on authority. None of these things affect my worldview at all. None of these things contradict anything in Scripture.

...Genesis 1 is something entirely different. Genesis 1 is presented as a historical account, an account of how God created the universe. It's not intended to answer every detail, but it is presented as historical truth, how God actually did it.

...If it is not historical truth, what else can safely be dispensed with? Adam and Eve? Modern science denies them. The flood? Modern science says it's impossible. Tower of Babel? The exodus? ...Where does it stop?

...None of you have direct knowledge at all of the origins, age, or nature of the universe. What you have, on the one hand, are the speculations of people who hate God and His Son. Is it surprising that their arguments seem very compelling? Jesus said they would be, doing signs and wonders that would deceive, if possible, even the elect. And on the other hand, you have the testimony of the One who made the heavens and the earth. It's by faith that you know that God made all things (Hebrews 11). And it's also by faith (belief in authority) that you accept the speculations of modern scientists. Presented that way, I think it should be obvious which faith is superior. Let God be true, and every man a liar. I will stick to the plain teaching of Scripture.

And finally, the money quote. Here's Matt's closing argument:

If someone came to me with actual evidence, went back in a time machine and videotaped the disciples stealing the body, gave me DNA evidence from a crucified man in a tomb outside Jerusalem with the inscription, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, and matched that DNA evidence to the ossuary of James proving it was his brother, I would still believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I'll tell you why- because when I read the book of John, when I read the book of James, when I read the book of Philippians or Matthew or Revelation, I hear the voice of my savior, my God. It is spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2). No evidence of man can ever change that. I hear, and I believe. I would reject the testimony of every man on earth, including my own understanding, rather than reject the testimony of God. I believe it because Scripture says it, and Scripture is the word of God.

This is a jaw-dropping quote, but there's a crucial point buried in there. Did you catch it?

Matt Powell proclaims that he believes in the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, including a 6,000-year-old universe, because to do anything less is to submit the Bible to tests of verification by non-Christian scientists, who are fallen and sinful, who hate God and are motivated by Satan. To allow this, he says, would be the first step in a process that would steadily chip away at the doctrines of Christianity until its central doctrine, the resurrection of Jesus, went up in smoke. To prevent this, we must trust in God and believe that every word of the Bible, from start to finish, is literally true. Only this firm stand can give rise to a solid rock of faith, rather than one that will steadily be eroded by every new wave of secular thought until it's eroded away altogether.

Matt isn't the only one who holds this viewpoint. Some very prominent Christian intellectuals say exactly the same; some of them are quoted in my essay "Thoughts in Captivity". Among them is one of the most prolific and highly-regarded apologists for modern Christianity, William Lane Craig - who, if this account is true, asserted that he, too, would continue to believe in Christianity even in the time machine scenario discussed above. Craig has stated that he knows Christianity to be true via the "self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit".

So what is the crucial point in Matt's argument? What is the flaw in the foundation upon which his entire theology rests? It's this:

...when I read the book of John, when I read the book of James, when I read the book of Philippians or Matthew or Revelation, I hear the voice of my savior, my God. It is spiritually discerned (1 Cor 2). No evidence of man can ever change that. I hear, and I believe.

I hear - the key pronoun being "I". Matt says that he believes the Bible is infallible, but in fact, what he really believes is that he himself is infallible. He has decided that his interpretations, his opinions, his beliefs are the ones that are perfect and immune to error. The same can be said of William Lane Craig and of every other theist who uses this argument.

Let's say for the sake of argument that the Bible was the infallible word of God. Even if that were the case, how could we recognize it as such? There is no way to answer this question that does not also assume the speaker's own infallibility. Even if we believe a book to be infallible, rationally we must always recognize the possibility that we are not infallible, and that we could be mistaken about that belief. You may believe a text is infallible and be mistaken; you may believe you hear the word of God and be wrong. We are inextricably enmeshed in the fact of our own fallibility, and we cannot rise above that. We have no way to view the world that is immune to making mistakes.

That is why all knowledge is, and must be, provisional. That isn't to say that we can never know anything, or that we cannot have a great deal of confidence in our beliefs. But we must always grant the possibility, no matter how small it is, that we might be mistaken about what we believe. Theists who refuse to grant this assume that the strength of their conviction is a completely reliable guide to the true nature of objective reality. This is a self-pleasing delusion - it always has been and always will be. What's more, it's monstrously arrogant. Who are you, a human being, to claim that your feelings define reality? Who are you to claim you understand the true nature of the universe so completely that you will not countenance even the possibility of error?

Touchstone's original post quotes a believer who worries, once we start questioning, where the slippery slope will end:

Yet, how can one know anything for sure about Jesus if the Bible that reveals him is wrong often or even from time to time. Is the Virgin Birth wrong? Is Jesus both God and man, or is that wrong? What about the Trinity? All such doctrines are attacked by secularists and non-believers as much as the Young Earth doctrine, why not jettison those as well? And if not, why not? How can you know what is right and what is wrong in the Bible?

Doubtless that is a serious problem for Christians. But deciding to abandon those doubts and trust in inerrancy is not a solution to the problem: it is a refusal to face the problem. Proclaiming yourself and your beliefs to be perfectly free of error is a doomed and desperate rear-guard action against a pattern of critical inquiry that has toppled one ancient superstition after another. The theologians of past ages, too, sought to proclaim themselves infallible, as Carl Sagan reminds us in The Demon-Haunted World:

"The giving up of witchcraft," said John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, "is in effect the giving up of the Bible." (p.119)

But Wesley's pretensions of infallibility did not stop the world from marching on and revealing his beliefs, with the passage of time, to be ridiculous and pernicious superstition. We have no reason to believe that our own future has any kinder a fate in store for those who follow the latest iteration of this strategy.