Prison, Hell, and Child Abuse

(Photo credit: Chris.Gray)

Today's Podcast

Prison is a scary place and no parent wants their child to end up there. As part of teaching your children about the world, it is a good idea to tell them about prison and the kinds of things that people can do to end up there. If you think your children are particularly at risk for going to prison, you might spend a fair amount of time warning your kids about the kinds of activities that land them there. If you see them engaging in dangerous behavior, a prudent course of action would be to warn them against those behaviors.

However, suppose you obsess about the possibility of your kids going to prison and talk about it all the time. Perhaps even with the intention of scaring them to keep them safe. Your children could easily suffer some psychological issues from this and we might want to call this child abuse.

Now, suppose we hear about a parent who is teaching their child about prison, do we assume that the action is child abuse? I would argue that such an assumption would be irresponsible of us. Sure, it is possible that the parent could be obsessing about prison and causing their child to live in a world of fear. But it is also possible that they are teaching their children about prison in a reasonable way.

For my purposes, prison is just an analogy for hell. The point here is that I "recently" (damn, more than a month ago) wrote about my dislike of the common atheist meme that indoctrination is child abuse. A very brief summary of my argument was that since the Christians truly believe that hell is real we shouldn't call it abuse when they tell their children about it. In the comments, Cephus pointed out that some NAMBLA members really believe that having sex with young boys is good for the boys, by my logic we couldn't call this abuse either*. Clearly with this example at hand it is clear my logic was flawed. The beliefs of a person committing an act does not affect whether or not their action is abuse.

So I thought back about what had been annoying me in the first place that motivated me to write that post. What I don't like is the wholesale statement that indoctrination is child abuse. Teaching your children your religion does not necessarily constitute child abuse, it depends on how you do it. Replace "prison" with "hell" in my first 3 paragraphs and we can see an example of this. Teaching your children about hell can be very damaging psychologically, but it doesn't have to be. If it is mentioned briefly and never emphasized it probably won't cause any issues (my wife grew up in this type of environment).

In my first post I focused on the wrong detail. Whether the parents believe in hell or not is irrelevant. If they teach their kids about hell in an abusive way then it is abuse. If they teach their kids about hell in a responsible way it is not. Whether or not hell is a real place is irrelevant to the discussion (although it does add a dimension of disgust for atheists to think the kids are being subjected to psychological torture for nothing).

So is indoctrination child abuse? I think the only reasonable answer is "sometimes". Certainly some denominations are worse than others. I would say that fundamentalists fit this category more often than other churches. But even that is not universal. If you want to talk about religion as child abuse, I think the only reasonable thing to do is focus on a particular behavior and identify why you see it as abusive. This could spark an interesting discussion, who knows, you might even convince someone of your point of view. But making the broad statement that all religion is child abuse will just turn off any religious people who are listening.

(*note: I am in no way saying that the actions of NAMBLA members are equivalent to teaching your child about hell. In fact, the whole point is that they are significantly different, and yet my logic applied to both indicating that the logic is flawed)

Indoctrination and Child Abuse

Today's Podcast

It is not terribly uncommon to see atheists make the claim that raising someone with religion is tantamount to child abuse. Recently (say, over the past year or so) this has really irked me when I hear it. I wish atheists would stop using the argument as it seems quite hyperbolic to me. Statements like this have huge potential to alienate exactly the types of Christians that I would like to engage with. On the other hand, I have to admit that when I was going through the early stages of my atheism this type of statement resonated with me big time. In this post I am going to explore these two conflicting thoughts on this common statement.

Why does this stuff resonate so well with many atheists?

I first heard the "religion is child abuse" meme when I was new to atheism. At the time I was very angry at religion, I see it as responsible for a lot of the pain I experienced as a child. The fear of hell and thought-crimes were the biggest offenders, but there were a great many things about the religion that affected my childhood in a negative way. I was terrified of hell a lot during my childhood, there were plenty of nights where I was unable to sleep as I had these fears running through my head. I was afraid to try new things unless I was certain it was acceptable from the church's perspective. I was afraid to ask questions as the answers might lead me to losing my faith. Being mired in fear is a really shitty way to grow up.

The fear was instilled so deeply that there was even a couple of years when I didn't believe in any of it anymore and yet I was still afraid of hell. I definitely wasn't a Christian and I was pretty sure I didn't believe in God anymore, and yet I just assumed this meant I was going to hell. I had some pretty serious struggles with depression during this time. I have heard similar things from quite a few atheists, it really shows how strong indoctrination can be. Many atheists say that the reason this kind of fear is instilled in people is so the church can keep members, although I would guess that the causation is the other way around, the church still exists because it instills this kind of fear but they don't subject people to fear for that reason.

Source

But details aside, the point is that I look back at my childhood and I see that the indoctrination I experienced as a child definitely caused me years of unnecessary anguish. In this state I heard people say that religion is child abuse and it really resonated. Furthermore, pictures like this will pop up from time to time and I find them creepy as hell. I feel really sorry for those kids, it seems to me that they will either be Christians for life or they will experience the kind of pain I did when they leave the church. I really wish there was something I could do to make that not happen.

But is it appropriate to call this child abuse?

What makes something abuse? Is it simply that it causes someone distress? Imagine my son is playing in our front yard and I scream at him, which makes him stop what he's doing, sit down, and cry. If I'm doing this just to fuck with him I'm a horrible father and we might want to call it abuse (especially if it is a regular occurrence). If I just stopped him from running in front of a car then perhaps I just saved his life.

So where does indoctrination fall? Let's focus on the doctrine of hell for a moment, is it abuse or not? I think many atheists see it as causing pain for no good reason. Hell doesn't exist and yet they were tormented for years because of the thought of going there after they die. Being tortured for eternity is terrifying, and the made up threat is designed to keep them in line. From this perspective it definitely feels like abuse.

But what if hell were real? Whether or not it scares them is beside the point, you must warn your children about hell and in so doing help them avoid it. If hell were real it would be your duty to tell your children about it, a little fear is a small price to pay compared to an eternity of torture. If my son was running in front of a moving car and I sat back and did nothing I would be a negligent father, if hell were real and I said nothing the same logic would apply.

So what is the real situation? Does hell exist and the Christian parents are doing their due diligence by telling their children about it, or is hell made up nonsense and they are causing their children undue pain? This is the disconnect, Christians think we are in the first situation and atheists think we are in the second. Many atheists see the unnecessary pain and call it child abuse, but the Christian parents think they are saving their children's souls. Even if we are right, I think child abuse is an unfair charge.

Return to my analogy with my son running out in front of a car. Suppose that after I scare him I realize that the car was parked. He was never in any danger, it turns out I scared him for no good reason. Does this make me a bad father? Does it make my actions child abuse? Hell no! I should probably pay more attention to my surroundings and those of my son, but an abuser I am not.

The Christians see a car aimed at their children and they are trying to keep them from getting run over. It is up to us to convince them that the car is parked. We need to work to convince them that hell is not real. We should tell them that we think they are wrong and more importantly tell them why. But we should not call them monsters for doing what logically makes sense based on the beliefs that they hold. All that does is make us look like dicks and gives them a reason to dismiss us.

**edit 27 April 2014** I have been reconsidering my thoughts on this topic. I am still working through some of and I am planning on writing another post on the topic soon (probably in a couple weeks, this week and next weekend will be very busy for me). If you have anything to add please throw a comment in. I'd love to hear more perspectives on this.

2nd edit: I finally wrote a follow up post

You Are Being Dishonest

photo credit

I was recently browsing twitter and stumbled across a conversation between an atheist and a Christian. At some point the Christian made the claim that Bible had been scientifically tested for accuracy. I jumped into the conversation (yeah twitter) and asked her for a reference. The atheist then replied to me and said that the Christian of course can't point me toward anything, she's just being dishonest and making stuff up. While I agree that her claim about the bible is wrong, I think he's jumping the gun by assuming that she has just made it up.

I can see a couple of possibilities, one is that the atheist is right and she has just made this up. While this is possible I doubt it is really what is going on. My guess is that she either heard it in church or read it in a book and only has a vague memory of it. The other thing is, what does "scientifically test for accuracy" mean? It sounds like she was trying to say that the bible is 100% true and that has been tested. While this is clearly false, perhaps there are aspects that have been looked into that have been shown to be accurate. What are these things specifically? If that is the case, simply asking these questions could lead to her taking a second look at the source and realize she is overplaying her hand.

In my opinion, the whole purpose of these types of conversations is to change minds. We want to show people that they have made a mistake in logic or that they have relied on incorrect information or whatever. Asserting that they are lying will just make them disengage, it will make them think you are an asshole and stop listening to anything you have to say. I think it is much better to ask them to expand on their claim, give sources or explain themselves further. Don't get me wrong, I'm not delusional, I know this has a pretty low chance of getting them to change their mind as well, but at least you are getting them to think and justify their claims. It could be a small piece of the puzzle for her or possibly for someone else watching for a change of opinion down the line. Calling her a liar just cuts things short.

[Note: after I wrote this but before it went live she tweeted back and provided a source. I haven't had the chance to take a look yet, but I'm hoping to look at it soon. Perhaps that will be what I write about for Thursday]

Do Atheists Overuse Silly Examples?

When arguing with Theists we often have to argue about burden of proof. We will ask for them to prove that God exists and they will respond that we should prove that he doesn't. Of course, proving a negative is impossible but explaining the difference between "prove he exists" and "prove he doesn't exists" can be difficult. One way to demonstrate this is to ask the theist to prove that another God (say Thor) doesn't exist. It's impossible, but they might say that there is no good reason to think he exists, at which point you can say the same thing about Yahweh.

Instead of using Thor, some atheists prefer to use an example that is obviously made up and no one has ever actually believed in it. The universe was created by a flying spaghetti monster. There's nobody who does or ever has actually believed in it, but it demonstrates the same point, there is no way to prove its wrong. It can also be kind of fun, people can edit famous art and such to include the FSM. It can become somewhat of an atheist rallying cry I guess, a bit goofy perhaps, but it's all in good fun.

wikipedia

There are also several other concepts used to show that proving that some things don't exist is impossible, Russel's teapot, the invisible pink unicorn, and the dragon in my garage. I like all of these things and think they provide a good example for the burden of proof. You shouldn't believe there is an incorporeal dragon in my garage who breaths fire that won't burn you unless I give you an actual reason to believe it exists. Given the properties I have claimed it has, there is no way to prove it doesn't exist, but of course I have also given no reason to think it is real. Additionally, the invisible pink unicorn is claimed to have contradictory properties, how can it be invisible and pink?

pic source

As far as I can see it, there are two uses for these things, the first I mentioned above, somewhat of an atheist rallying cry. It's kind of fun to have a flying spaghetti monster on your car, or your binder at school or whatever. Second, it could be useful in a discussion with a theist, if you can get them to try to explain how they know the teapot doesn't exist, perhaps you can show them that the same logic could apply to their God.  Not that it would be quite that simple, but it could be one point among many that could work it's way into someone's brain.

The other thing that can be nice about these types of concepts is they provide a bit of shorthand. If I say "Russel's teapot" a lot of extra information comes along, you know I am talking about the difficulty of proving that something doesn't exist. If I say "invisible pink unicorn" you know I am also probably talking about contradictory attributes in defining something. But is this a good thing or a bad thing? I'm honestly not so sure.

Shorthand can be good if everyone is on the same page, but without going in to the details it is hard to know how true this really is. This can be bad enough when talking with other atheists, but when talking with theists it really could convey no information at all. There's no reason to think that a random theist will have heard of the invisible pink unicorn, and yet I've seen plenty of atheists throw it out like it's some kind of trump card. Furthermore, they often don't seem ready to explain what IPU is and how it applies to the conversation. They just kinda do a "invisible pink unicorn" then drop the mic and walk away. Sometimes if pressed they will just say to go look it up on wikipedia or something. That's crap! At best this suggests that they are just too lazy to explain things, and at worst they don't really understand the point of it in the first place.

While there are times when these ideas fit perfectly into a discussion, I think it would be to our benefit to instead create examples from the ground up to fit whatever argument we are having. Trying to fit one of these examples into an argument where it doesn't quite fit can be counterproductive. Alternatively, we should assume that whoever we are talking to has never heard of it and explain it completely.

I believe that God does not exist

There is this idea I see from atheists a lot that my post title is a statement I should not make. I should instead say "I do not accept any God claims" or something more along those lines. The purpose is related to the burden of proof, if I reject the claim of the theist, then the burden of proof is clearly on them, and I am claiming that they have failed to meet this burden, whereas if I try to claim that God does not exist, I am taking on the burden of proof. While there is a time and place for this kind of care, in general I do not like it. It feels a little disingenuous and I don't think it helps in a discussion with a rank and file Christian. I don't think pussyfooting around advances our cause.

While it is true that I reject every God claim that I have heard, I can also honestly say that I believe that nothing like a God exists. Do I have proof? Do I claim that I know for sure that God doesn't exist? No, of course not, because that is impossible. But until I have evidence to the contrary I will continue to believe that God does not exist. By the same token, I can't prove that we aren't in the matrix. It is possible that we live inside a simulation and we will never know it, we can't prove that it is not the case. This is an interesting conversation to have, which I actually think is a quite fun exercise, but if you were to ask me if I believe we are living in a giant holodeck, my answer would be an unequivocal no.

I think this really started to bug me a few weeks ago, when I saw another atheist going completely out of his way to avoid saying he believes God does not exist. Q: "Do you believe God exists?" A: "I reject any God hypothesis that I have ever seen" Me: "for fucks sake, just say no!" I don't really understand what the fear is here, the next thing they will probably fire back with is "a ha! can you prove it" in which case you can just say "no, because it is proving a negative. I can't prove he doesn't exist any more than you can prove Allah, Zeus, Xenu, or santa doesn't exist" Then you can follow up with "but my reasons for not believing in God are as follows..." It leads to an interesting conversation and your reasons for being an atheist will come up quickly enough, why not just let it go there?

Another aspect of this that sometimes gets on my nerves, is the question of which God we are talking about. Sometimes, atheists will refuse to say outright that they don't believe in God because it is an ambiguous term that can mean many things. While this is true, I don't think anyone arguing for the existence of God is talking about a deistic God, everyone seems to be arguing for a God that is very powerful, who cares about us in some way or another, and interferes in the natural world. I feel comfortable stating in no uncertain terms that I think all such Gods are made up. If those Gods were real there would be some evidence of them that would hold up to the light of day. Suppose I proclaimed that Santa does not exist, then someone came back that he saw santa yesterday in front of macys collecting money for the salvation army. Would I be embarrassed that I made too strong of a claim and I should have qualified that what I meant was the santa that flies around the world giving presents to kids? Of course not, when I say santa doesn't exist, it is understood that I am talking about the magic fat man. In the same way, when I say God doesn't exist, I'm talking about the genie God who looks after us and answers prayers, not the neutered one who set the universe in motion and then spent the next few billion years picking his nose.

It Takes Religion to Make a Good Man Do Bad Things

This is something that I have seen thrown around a lot on atheist blogs, I think the original was from Dawkins, and my best guess is it was out of The God Delusion. I don't have the exact quote, but the idea is that good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things, but for good people to do bad things it takes religion.

When I first heard this idea, I was totally on board. Religion inspires people to do some terrible things, and worse, it gives them this righteousness that is hard to combat. How do you convince someone they are wrong when they think they have God on their side?

However, when I hear this idea thrown around now, I always think "there are other things that can make good people do bad things also". This became clear to me after the riot following the Sandusky child molestation scandal going public. Tons of students were supporting their coaches even though one of them molested countless children and the other knew about it and did nothing. I remember thinking those protesters were horrible people, but then I quickly decided that most of them were probably good people, they just happened to be doing a terrible thing. I thought to myself "what could motivate them to do that?" There is no religion involved here, yet these good people are doing bad things, so what is going on?

After having this sit on the back of my mind for a few months, I have come to the conclusion that there are a lot of things that can make good people do bad things: sports, politics, poverty, religion, any ideology really. I would argue though, that religion is the worst offender. It really comes back to having God on your side. If we return to those students rioting after the Sandusky thing, I would bet that with a little reflection, most of them have decided that they were out of line. At the very least, this idea could potentially get argued and many of them could be convinced. On the other hand, consider matters that involve God. God can't be reasoned with, there is no room for compromise. By definition, God can't even be wrong, no matter what he does. Add to that the fact that many religious people value faith and have a persecution complex, changing anyone's mind is going to be nearly impossible.

So back to the quote that started this post, do I disagree with it? Yes, but really only in a technical sort of way. Religion is not the only thing that makes good people do bad things, but it is the worst offender. It still seems like a valuable enough meme to spread around, but I have to admit, every time I see it I am irked just a little bit.

Everybody Is Stupid Except Me

When we are engaged in debate with someone, it is easy to think that the other side is stupid. Especially when you have thought about something a lot, possibly over the course of years. When you have so many reasons to think you are correct, so many corroborating pieces of evidence, how could anyone look at all of that stuff and not agree with you? They must be stupid!

Remember, the other side has likely done the same thing as you, they haven't come to their opinions in a snap decision, they have analyzed a bunch of stuff too (I guess not always, but let's consider a debate where both sides are knowledgeable). In fact, a lot of the time we have looked at the same evidence and come to opposite conclusions. This, to me, is where it gets really interesting. If we disagree on what a piece of evidence means, I like to really dig into it and figure out why. Where do we disagree, what are we interpreting differently, what assumptions are each of us making? What better way to change someone's mind than to really make them understand where you are coming from? Also, you should always be prepared to be the person whose mind gets changed. If someone has a really good reason that you never considered you should reevaluate. We should all be looking for the truth, no matter where it leads us.

One final thing I will end with, if you used to think one thing and now you think the opposite and call your opponents idiots, you are calling your former self an idiot. This should be enough to make you reconsider the insult. I'm looking at you /r/atheism

Unicorns in the Bible

Recently I was pointed to the following video in the comments on another blog. I recommend checking out the video, it is pretty interesting and only about 8 minutes long. A quick summary of the video is that unicorns are mentioned in the bible a few times. This might seem crazy as when we hear the word unicorn we think of the mythical creature which is a horse with a horn. But, what is being talked about in the bible is really a rhinoceros. There are multiple kinds of rhinoceros, some with 2 horns and some with 1. The ones with 1 are called unicorns. The video itself went in to the linguistics of it all and it seemed pretty convincing to me.

One thing that stuck me about the video was a string of atheists mocking the bible for having unicorns in it. Those guys now look like idiots. My first thought was that they shouldn't have been such dicks about it. They were making fun of the bible but since they were wrong, in the end they just look bad. So generally, I like the 'don't be a dick' message, but as many have pointed out, there are places where mockery and even dickery are useful and effective tools. I have been thinking about this for a few days trying to decide where my opinion lands, and I think I settled on the following: If you are going to be a dick, you better make sure your argument is bulletproof.

Will Heaven Eventually Get Boring?

During a recent discussion on the comments of one of my posts the idea was brought up that heaven would eventually get boring. (I think I first heard this idea from Hitchens, I'm not sure though) The argument basically says that everything will eventually get boring and ultimately heaven will become hell. I think the real point of this argument is supposed to be how absurd the concept of forever really is. I'm not really sure how serious of an argument it is supposed to be, but it's kind of a funny idea and I figured "sure, that makes sense".

So I had this in the back of my mind and later that day I was relaxing playing pikmin. This is a game I played about 3 years ago and recently decided to break it out and play it again. I had a bunch of fun even though I have played it before, then I was thinking, I wonder how many times I could play this game before I could never play it again because it is too boring. Perhaps if another 3 years goes by I could play it again, but maybe not, what if I waited 10 or 100? Certainly if I waited long enough my memories of it will be so faded it will be like new and I will enjoy it. But then I thought, will my memory be as terrible as it is now if I was in heaven or would it be much better? How much am I going to be me in heaven?

Then my mind went in a different direction. Let's suppose I have every video game ever created at my fingertips. Let's further suppose that given infinite time, I will eventually get bored of all of them. I don't really see that as a problem either, because I don't see why there can't be new stuff being created all the time. There is the easy (somewhat cheating) answer that God could create new content for us whenever we want it, but you don't even have to do that. People love to create, people create stuff for free all the time (just look at little big planet). This doesn't just go for video games of course, how many times have you heard someone wish they had time to write a book? You can't get bored of everything, because there is always new stuff being made that you haven't seen yet. In a strange way this reminds me a little bit of arms races in evolution.

If you read this far, thanks for indulging me in this silly little trip through my thoughts as to why heaven would not get boring.

Things Atheists Say: Christians Don't Really Believe Deep Down

I've heard this sentiment quite a number of times over the years (and several times in the past week). Sometimes it is the claim that Christians don't really believe they are going to heaven, sometimes it is that they don't believe in the afterlife at all, and sometimes it is that they don't believe in anything about God they claim to. Sure, they have convinced themselves at some surface level, they believe it enough to put on a good show, but deep down, they really know there is no God, no heaven, nothing supernatural going on. These kind of statements have always bothered me.

The arguments usually examine the way the religious handle certain situations and point out that if they "really believe" they would act differently. Often it is when discussing death. They will claim Christians should not fear death, because it just means they are going to heaven. They should not be sad when their friends and family die, because they should know they are now in heaven and much better off. The argument goes that since Christians are typically very sad in such situations, they must not really believe that their friends are going to heaven. Since they are afraid of death they must not really believe in heaven (or at least that they are going there). I hate it whenever I hear this kind of argumentation.

Life is complicated, human nature is complicated, and emotions are complicated. It is possible to be simultaneously looking forward to something new while clinging to something old. Anyone who has ever gotten a better job or has moved to a new exciting place knows this. The unknown is big and scary, even exciting unknowns. You are comfortable where you are, your friends are there, who knows what it will be like when you get there? You are optimistic but still part of you doesn't want to go. If your friend is moving to a new job you are happy for them but still sad they are leaving. Why would heaven be any different? Granted, moving across the country to a new job is much different than going to a perfect existence in heaven, but I imagine the emotions could be analogous. If your best friend is going to heaven, you can be happy for them but also sad that you will never see them again. To jump to the conclusion that they are sad because they don't believe in heaven is asinine to me.

But that is just one possible explanation why the behavior of the Christian in this discussion is understandable, I am sure there are others. What really bothers me about seeing this argument from atheists is they are projecting their worldview onto others. They look at the way others act and project their worldview onto them to explain the action. They fail to really try to understand how that action could be explained with an alternate world view. It doesn't make sense to them that you could believe in heaven and be scared of death so they proclaim that the person doesn't believe in heaven.

This is the same thing that Christians do to atheists when they insist that we are simply rebelling against God. "Why do you hate God?" or "Why are you angry at God?" These are questions I have heard from Christians and they bother me as well. They believe in God and can't understand that I don't believe in God so they assume that I do. This is just Atheists doing the same thing in the opposite direction. I don't like it either way, we should try to understand each other rather than put words in each other's mouths.