Scepticism and Christianity

Contents:

1) Disclaimer

2) Why do people need religion?

3) Personal history and the stimulus of the Sabah retreat

4) First principles - Is there a God? Brief meta-physical discussion, since I've no training in philosophy/meta-physics.

5) Rebutting the untenable claims and ludicrous beliefs of literalists.

6) Circular arguments and inescapable flowcharts in finding God etc

7) Some fundamental precepts of Christianity - e.g. sin, sex as a sin. This is not a book, merely an essay so a short discussion will suffice.

8) Questioning applied religion - assumptions and interpretation.

9) Goings-on of the retreat, personal reflections, odds and ends

10) Conclusion and further reading

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NB: The Sabah retreat was conducted by one priest, mostly. He will, hereon, be referred to as "the priest"


1) Disclaimer

Beware, all ye who tread here. Be forewarned that the author of this rambling treatise is no stranger to controversy, that no Sacred Cow is too hallowed for him to eviscerate (or so he'd like to imagine). If you are a staunch, fanatical or fundamentalist Christian (or indeed are strong in any other religion), you may want to give this essay a miss. But if you'd like to explore some issues and follow me in my quest for truth, in the process gaining a better understanding of your religion, even, perhaps you'd like to read on and hope you don't get lost in the interminable passages. The author believes in the Socratic method of finding truth, so questions galore will you find. But then Socrates was sentenced to death by hemlock...

Due to the wide nature of this essay, I may not have the time or ability to deal with all subjects as best as I'd like, and I totally avoided others - Creation *cough* 'Science' *ahem*, say and the Immaculate Conception. Readers are encouraged to try some of the suggested sites which I found very helpful in writing this essay. I tried to exercise some form of essay discipline but the sheer wealth of material I jotted down � and the amount of research I did for this was just too overwhelming (and no one wanted to help me edit it too � humph).

If you want to try to bog me down with circular and intricate arguments, you are welcome to try. I'll entertain you, if I have the time. If you want me to quote scripture to support some of my statements - well, I could have laced this essay with them more extensively, but then this essay would be twice its already unwieldy length, so. Some parts may leave points unsaid, or be easily rebutted, but when the essay is read as a whole, everything should (I hope!) come together.

And for those who want to cry blasphemy, well, here�s a thought for you:

"Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if he is as little as that, he is beneath it." - Mark Twain


2) "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him. " - Voltaire

Why do most societies and cultures, at least those that haven't advanced to a certain level of sophistication, have a form of religion? Religion fulfills a certain visceral need in all of us. Our mystical, spiritual side; the side that just wants to surrender and release all our burdens to a greater being; the side that believes, and wants to believe, in superstitions. There is something seductive and comforting about the idea of not being alone in this world, of Life and Creation having some mysterious significance.

What's in it for the individual? Besides filling unsaid needs, religions usually promise a host of other benefits. Ultimately, most people practice a religion because of the benefits that will accrue to them - eternal life, worldly success, salvation from the fires of hell and the like, though the appeal may be unconscious. Doing good isn't recommended only for its own sake - to sweeten the pot, boons are promised to those who follow certain rules and laws; people are urged to engage in ritual deprivation so that they will be rewarded many times over in the afterlife (a kind of hypocrisy, really). See: 2 Corinthians 9, verse 6: "But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully" Without such inducements, the number of adherents would probably be substantially lower.

So, do people do good things and believe in God because they truly do, or only because if they don�t they will burn in Hell forever? And do those who believe because they were brought up to, and never did question or truly understand their faith still get the perks and fringe benefits of believing in the Right God?


"Religion is the opiate of the masses." - Karl Marx

I was outfield one day when I suddenly realised how true Marx�s observation was. Religion is addictive, it may lead you to dumb things, it creates a vicious circle of dependence, the more you consume of it the harder it is to wean yourself it, the more you use it the more you need it to function, and the consumer�s happiness is dependent on an external good (as in product, not beneficial agency). It is soothing, but it controls you even if deep down inside you know that it is bad for you.

So why are drugs illegal in most places, but not religion?


3) Me and Religion


"The church hates a thinker precisely for the same reason a robber dislikes a sheriff, or a thief despises the prosecuting witness. " - Robert Ingersoll


It could be said that I was brought up Christian. My family never went to Church, and my father is a free thinker, but my mother did buy some books and give me some form of instruction. However, after I emerged from the unthinking acceptance of childhood, I began to have doubts, and so I suppose I was a semi-believer. The influences of Humanism resulted in me enquiring even in areas where normal people ceased to enquire, and accepted what they were told unthinkingly. Areas like religion.

I am not one to accept what I am told tamely. For example, Tim asked me once why I like to rail against the proscription of homosexuals, and if I was one. I am not � not all of the suffragettes were female, and did the anti-apartheid movement consist only of blacks? I do not see why people whose only crime has been to be born a certain way should be discriminated against and labelled unnatural, while others who deliberately pervert the normal course of nature are let go scot-free. Put another way: Would anyone worship a God who advocated the murder of unbelievers and apostates, cheating other people, heedless fornication, the pillaging of the earth, hating everyone, larceny, perjury, fratricide, parricide and more? I think most people, Satanists notwithstanding, would rather go to hell than worship such a god. Granted, conservative Christianity is not intolerant on this scale, but I trust you, gentle reader, see my point.

I�d heard about this Sabah retreat for a while - since 1999, when Tim went. He told me it was very good, and though I had my doubts, I finally decided to go this time, in March 2003, and indeed, the retreat was beneficial to me, but not in the way most participants believed. It really opened my eyes to a lot of issues and forced me to examine many beliefs that I�d been holding for a while, and in the aftermath of the retreat, I feel cleansed and free. People went to renew their faith; I lost mine, pretty much, and feel all the better for it. The fuzzy undergrowth in my head has been cleared, mostly. Timothy�s father was saying I�d be buying a lot of books after I came down from the Mountain to learn more about my faith, and that I�d experience a lot of changes. Indeed I will buy some - if books on agnosticism and atheism were easier to find in the shops, and I have become a great deal more sceptical!


4) Some Basic Questions

Does God exist?

Meta-physics is really not my area of interest or expertise, but to those who say that nothing can come from nothing � where did this God come from then? You cannot apply the �nothing can come from nothing� rule but conveniently not hold your God to this same criterion, that would be disingenuous. If God can be eternal, why can the Universe not be so?

Blaise Pascal's Wager

A proposition sometimes offered to atheists and agnostics, it goes:

(1) If you believe in God and God exists, you have a chance to gain everlasting life and happiness after death.
(2) If you believe in God and there is no God, you have lost nothing.
(3) If you don't believe in God and God does exist, you have lost everything and you will suffer infinite torture in Hell after death.
(4) If you do not believe in God, and there is no God, you have gained nothing. Therefore, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by believing in God and everything to lose by not believing.

And so this is often quoted as a compelling argument for believing in a God. However, there are several flaws here:

- Which God do we choose? If we choose the wrong God, we will "have lost everything and suffer infinite torture in Hell after death" Since there are so many Gods, choosing no God is almost as good as choosing a God at random
- If you believe it is safer to believe in a God and do so solely because of that, do you really think you'll get all the benefits?
- You lose a lot if you believe in a God and there is none. Consider the amount of energy people fritter away on religion. How about those who orientate their whole lives towards "God"? Then they have lost their whole life

Science and Religion

The advent of Science in recent times has inevitably led to a corresponding decline in the fortunes of Religion. When Science can explain how we were created, we no longer need to attribute (or blame) it on a God. Indeed, some claim that Science is now our new Religion. Theists love to bash science, and claim that it cannot explain a lot of things - they dispute the Theory of Evolution, for example, and ask what could have come before the Big Bang - surely something cannot have come out of nothing?

However, Science is most assuredly not a Religion, and was never meant to explain everything. Science gives us a way of looking at the world, but it does not purport to explain every single mystery - it only endeavours to. So what if there are flaws in the Theory of Evolution? Its name alone gives you a clue - it is but a Theory. Darwin never claimed that it was perfect, or could explain everything, but today most have come to a conclusion that Evolution was generally responsible for our existence.

With regards to what came before the Big Bang - just because you cannot explain something does not mean that you have to attribute it to God. In Ancient Times, lightning was thought to be from the Gods, as no one knew how it came about, but now we know better. A few years ago, some Hindus in Singapore got very excited because the statuettes of one of their Indian elephant-headed Gods miraculously started �drinking� milk, and believed that the God was drinking the milk even though everyone knew that what was actually happening was that the stone the statuettes were made out of was absorbing the liquid.

Just because we do not know something now does not mean that we will never know it. Therein lies the promise of Science. Religion, on the other hand, claims to explain everything, or at least most religions do. There lies its folly, for the flaws and contradictions inherent in any religion are its doom. If something promised by a Religion is patently false, but is claimed to be patently true, then how can the Religion be true? Of course, apologists and fundamentalists try to temporise, to dissemble, evade, ignore the question, offer fallacious, disingenuous and misleading arguments, change the question, bash straw men, poison the well or employ their last recourse - say that faith is needed and that non-believers will never see or understand (or imagine or hallucinate, rather) - when in fact their faith creates the god, but those with unclouded vision can see the truth.