Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion

In the U.S. there is this balance between religion and free speech. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other religious bodies are allowed a greater freedom than perhaps anywhere else in the world, even though they do tend to insert themselves into the political process and try to make their religious views into laws that the rest of us non-religious (or non-whatever-they-are) have to follow. The worst offender in the U.S. is, of course, Christianity (of which there are an annoyingly large number of varieties) due to the fact that they are the largest body of religious folk in the country. The Christians here even make a point of trying on occasion to harass other religions into silence and often present themselves as having a special right to dominate all other views.

Now I think our Founding Fathers were insightful about this process re: religion, and by making it clear that we didn’t have a national religion, and that there would be no involvement between the government and the “church”, they made it possible for a big bright shiny light to enlighten the occasional entanglement of the two. We are now, and always have been, a secular state. And I am just as much a defender of freedom of religion as most Americans (often more so, because I don’t think Christianity is any more special than any of the others). If religions want to sell their goods to the public, good on them, but there is a wrinkle in the ointment.

Freedom of speech.

I’m only one of millions of Americans that openly criticize religions, and point out how ridiculous they are. I have no problem saying that if Jesus existed, he was in no way like the several versions of him in Matthew’s, Mark’s, Luke’s, or John’s propaganda efforts of near 2000 years ago. The Jewish stories present a violent and extremely unlikeable god that, if it were real, and interacted with us in today’s world, would scare the crap out of people and likely incite a revolt. And Islam, currently the most violent and hateful religion would have fared better if it hadn’t had a war mongering pedophile as its founder.

Lately, Islamic thugs have been using threats of violence and lies to shut down anyone who would say anything about their founder or religion, and the moderates are not standing up to them. We don’t hear from the moderates because the fundamentalists are more violent and willing to intimidate to shut them up. They are walking out of medical school classes because the schools teach evolution and it offends their poor religious feelings. They shut down a meeting at a London event by pushing and bullying their way in and using cameras to record those present, then threating to kill or harm anyone who said anything they didn’t like. This is what real fundamentalists look like.

In the U.S., extremist Christian groups use pressure to keep law makers in line, and to secure a spot at the table where they can try to force their agenda. It’s true that they do not, for the most part, partake in the level of violence exhibited by the Islamic nut cases. They prefer to shut the opposition up, and make heroic stands against 16 year old girls. When billboards go up that make simple and reasonable statements like, “Millions are good without God”, they ratchet up the rhetoric and lament the evil atheists and the collapse of American society. But the results of success by these Christian warriors would not do anything to strengthen this nation, and is constantly at odds with the Constitution.

And still, I think we would be worse off if we were to turn our back on the Constitution as well, and shut them up. We are better off knowing who these people really are, and holding up their actions for the moderate Christians to see and ask, why aren’t you saying more against these nut bags. Why aren’t you standing up and demanding that they stop claiming to represent all Christians? Why the bloody hell do you let them highjack Jesus?

It is pretty clear that I don’t think much of religion. The idea of gods was one of the single worst ideas man has come up with, and the foundation of organized religion has done more harm than good. And still, I think freedom of religion is the best way of going about things. Why? Because I also have the right of free speech, and can point out just how incredibly ridiculous gods, angles, demons, cherubs, heavens and hells are, while pointing  to the actions of the religious thugs (and the lack of actions by the liberal/moderate religious) . I can trumpet the fact that however slowly, the American public is losing its religious beliefs just like the majority of western European first world nations. Because of freedom of speech, I can point out (as can all the other atheists, freethinkers, agnostics, non-religious, and nones) the egregious efforts to put religious myths into the science class rooms of public schools by anti-science know nothings that also can’t wrap their heads around the dangers we face from manmade global climate change.

Now I also have quite a few relatives and friends that are believers of one type or another. Mostly Christian. Mostly conservative Christian. And for the most part, they are good people. I don’t think for a second that their beliefs in gods or Jesus, or whatever have anything to do with that. Take away the fairy tales that make up their peculiar religion and they wouldn’t suddenly run out and start raping and pillaging. They wouldn’t cease to love their children, and lose respect for those who have earned it. The vast majority of them wouldn’t suddenly lament a lack of an afterlife and lose all hope. They would go on living their lives and making sure that there was a future for their children.

I can say this because every day, men, woman and children become aware of just how silly it is to believe in this nonsense and stop being religious, and they don’t fall apart and go to the “dark side”, whatever that would be.  They may come to realize how important a good grounding in science is, or decide that religious objections to civil rights is wrong. But they would for the most part, continue their lives without a dramatic scene. It happens all the time. And that is the reason that free speech is important and why freedom of religion is too. If you force people to give up religion, they will resent it. If they see for themselves that it is hogwash, they will give it up and get on with life, and that is much more likely to stick.

From Christian to Atheist: Part 3

In 1966, I graduated from elementary school and moved on to Sinaloa Jr. High. One of the things that happened at Sinaloa was that my reading level was evaluated as being very poor. Lucky for me, though most people would have suggested that I was just lazy or “slow”, others considered the possibility that some students just needed honest help in learning to read. The Science Research Associates (SRA) reading program created by Dr. Don H. Parker in the 1950s was available in my new school and I was enrolled in the class.

I am dyslexic and that has affected my ability to read my whole life, the effect of which was, I was a slow learner when reading was involved. I am sure that before Sinaloa, I read, but I suspect it was mostly school assigned works and comics or cartoons. SRA changed all that, and I am sure that my new found interest in books helped me along my way to questioning the world around me, including my religious beliefs.

Somewhere about this time I discovered a book called “How to Make ESP Work for You” by Harold Sherman. I would guess that it was mom’s book, but I don’t remember. It was all about how to use and develop your ability to do ESP, and I bought it hook, line and sinker. This was the beginning of my years as a believer in ESP and all things supernatural, including UFOs and other non-sense. I wasn’t alone, of course. Millions of Americans would admit to thinking there was something to this UFO explosion, or that ESP was something they might have experienced themselves. I was just another member of the junior league of paranormal wackos.

Oddly, this didn’t seem to change my core belief in a god, and Jesus was still the central character in my religious story. But now, I had developed a strong interest in reading. I ordered books every month from the Scholastic Book Service and this period was also the beginning of my interest in science fiction. Add to that my continuing interest in space and science, and things were bound to get really convoluted.

My parents, my brother Paul and I had also started going to another church around this time, and that was also a game changer. The Shepherd of the Valley United Church of Christ was a more liberal church than the Southern Baptist ones I had attended earlier. Bruce Talbert was the minister, and I enjoyed his sermons which were laced with humor and seemed worth listening to. The result was that I was in a place and time when I could explore other ideas, and explore I did.

Though I wasn’t aware of it then, I can look back and see that I really was a believer. I believed in belief.  I just hadn’t nailed down the rules that I was going to live by yet, but they were there in the rough. Somewhere along the way, I had developed a science based rule that insisted that all my beliefs needed to be plausible at the very least, and probable at best. This is one of the things that caused me to work so hard at proving ESP, finding legit reports of UFOs, and exploring the supernatural for life after death proofs. The biggest problem was that my source material was too often lacking in scientific rigor. Popular books by authors who would sell their mother as Bigfoot if they could get a book deal out of it, writers who were true believers impervious to reason or proof, or publishers who would print the most outrageous lies to sell magazines and books were too often where I got my material, and that always makes for poor conclusions. I still had a way to go before I was willing to even think about giving up on religion, and now, I had mixed in so much more.  

Things That Can Happen In School

So before I continue with the story about my deconversion process, let’s make one stop at 6^th grade and the perils of being a kid 45 years ago in a system that was not prepared to deal with issues like the one that follows.

I was not the most self-assured child in the Simi Valley school system, and was susceptible to any attention given by adults and teachers. There were, of course, many children like me in grade school, and even higher grades. When the teacher from next door (to the class I was in) decided to give me that much wanted attention I was ready to take it. I was invited to come into his class after school and clean the chalk board, as well as help with other small tasks. This made me feel great. Here was someone who knew I could help out and gave me a chance to do so. But the motive for this request for my help was  not as innocent as I would have hoped it would be.

During one of those sessions where I had finished the board cleaning, the teacher invited me over and had me sit on his lap. There was no reason not to do so, so I climbed onto his lap and we talked. He was thanking me for my help and had his arm around my shoulder so I wouldn’t slip off his lap, and while we talked, his free hand took a restful position on my right thigh. As he talked he gave it a fatherly pat. Then a somewhat less fatherly squeeze, and then the hand drifted to my crotch where there was even less fatherly attention. (And here, I am using the term “fatherly” as in a child/parent relationship and not as in a Catholic “father” priest. That’s a whole ‘nother can-o-worms).

I was uncomfortable, but I know that this happened at least one or two more times, because it was easy enough to suggest to myself that what happened was not intentional. Back in those days, no one, and I mean NO ONE, talked about child molestation in polite company. Hell, they didn’t even talk about it in impolite company. I was probably 12 or 13 when this happened, and I didn’t know what was going on. Needless to say, I did stop going to his class, and the memory would only occasionally crop up, though it did so often enough over the years to stay well planted in my mind.

Many years later, while visiting my parents place, I was reading the local paper, and there was the story of a teacher who had been arrested and was on trial for following a 10 year old girl into the bathroom and fondling her. My exclamation of “Ha, They caught the son-of-a-bitch” surprised the people in the room (family all) as did the story that follow with my explanation of why I was glad they had done so. Now to the best of my recollection, this incident didn’t ruin my life. There may have been some things going on that I was unaware of, and maybe still am, but I really didn’t focus on this. Still, it was there in my memory, and is one of the events in my life that I have clear and visceral reactions too.

This kind of thing happened all the time, to a lot more people than we ever let on, and it still does. First, please get it out of your head if it is in there that this was a gay teacher. He wasn’t. He was a pedophile, and this child molester liked little boys and little girls; an equal opportunity bloke. Second, don’t think that this is no longer a problem. This happens all the time, and though we are better at prepping our children for this kind of thing, we must still keep our eyes and ears open for this kind of off kilter behavior. We are all too willing to give the benefit of the doubt to a trusted adult, and I get that, but less so where our children are involved, please. Just something to think about. This PSA is now over.

From Christian to Atheist (Part Two)

A Transitional Period.

In my last year in elementary school (6^th grade) we were given the assignment of doing a book report presentation. At this point in my life, I was not much of a reader yet. I had struggled with reading (and spelling) from day one, and was unaware of what dyslexia was. Still, I had been given an assignment, and so looked for a book that interested me. What I found was a book on hypnosis. I’ve no clue where I found this book, though it is possible that my mother had it, or that it came from the library.

What a concept; the control of another’s actions and thoughts, in the hands of a twelve year old boy. I’ll bet the author hadn’t thought that one through. I read the book and wrote out my report, but this was a book on hypnosis, and screamed to be performed before the class, not merely talked about. I got a friend (I think her name was Jackie) to be my subject and practiced a few times on her before the day of the book report presentation. She was a natural subject and by the time I presented my report could be put under very fast .

She was subjected to the usual “tricks” of the hypnotic art (at least as performed by a 6^th grader) including lack of feelings from pinching, and arms that couldn’t be lowered or raised except on command. Thanks to her being perfect for the job, and my having learned the rules for putting someone under, I aced the book report and the presentation.

This was also the start of another part of my journey from Christian to atheist. This book report was my first real step into the area of the workings of the mind, and the fringe studies of ESP, ghosts, magic (as in “real” magic), UFOs , and in general, “things that go bump in the night.” I started to discover that all these things were being talked about and, from what I could tell, they were the subject of real investigations. And I had, after all, experienced the “power” of mind control over another person, so there may just be something to these many claims. Thus began my foray into the world of the paranormal.

This also coincided with a shift on the religion front. I don’t know why or what caused this, but my dad had decided to leave the Southern Baptist Church. This didn’t bother me much, and we spent many a Sunday visiting churches all over the valley, until we came upon The Shepherd of the Valley (United Church of Christ). This was big in my development because this was not a highly dogmatic congregation. That’s not to say there weren’t a few folk who were more or less literalist, or perhaps conservative in their beliefs, but not anything like the Baptists. It was very freeing, and without the dogma to demand my acceptance of much of the Bible claims, they were going to suffer. One of the reasons why was that I was starting to question the Bible stories, and this would not have been easy in a more conservative environment.

So along with moving to a more liberal church, hypnosis was one of the catalysts to my questioning ways, and if I had known what atheism was back then, this might have been a shorter story, but that word was still not in my vocabulary. Nope, I still had a ways to go before I got there. I had, after all, discovered the paranormal. I suspect even atheism wouldn’t have stood a ghost of a chance, until I got that out of my system.