Forever Lost… Again

 

iven the many failures I experienced in trying to explain my ideas and insights, I had often wondered about the intelligence of the masses. It seemed to me that many people were extremely slow at putting things together and I had to painstakingly piece every little bit into a nice and tidy little picture for anyone to understand—which I always failed miserably to do, of course. Rather than everyone else being dumb, I thought perhaps it is possible that I had an above-average intellect. It occurred to me that maybe I only needed to find more intelligent people to discuss the Bible with. Anyone intelligent enough would be willing to look at all angles and reason-out what the Bible really means. Perhaps the intelligent people simply needed a prophet to guide them. I had actually been curious for a while about my intellect, and now I had a reason to find out apart from pure vanity. I decided to apply to American Mensa in order to seek out intelligent individuals that could fully grasp God’s message.

             American Mensa is an organization comprised of individuals who score in the top two percentile of an IQ Test which they administer. There are also various other tests which they would accept if someone happened upon taking one, but I took theirs since I had not taken any others previously. I found the test to be quite boring and somewhat inapplicable to intelligence from my personal grasp of intelligence, but this did not stop me from passing in the top percentile. It focused a lot on math which I do not personally believe has much to do with IQ as it does with basic knowledge, education, and practice. It also had a lot of pattern recognition and memory tests which made a bit more sense to me from an IQ perspective.

             The results of my passing overjoyed me to finally know that indeed my intellect surpassed that of the general masses. It made things click for me as to why I had such difficulty communicating my ideas—of course they would struggle if they found it difficult to even pass the simplicity of the Mensa test. People must not have been intelligent enough to grasp my arguments. I thought that perhaps I could find a way to spread the word of God if only I could get some more intelligent people to back me up. I immediately took to the forum. My first post on the Mensa forum was an exuberant and outspoken pile of emotional blindness. I titled my post “Help a Bible-Half-Believing, Cross-Hating, Blood-Free Christian” and I exclaimed that I knew the true message of God, what went wrong, and that I needed people to help me spread the word.

             I figured most people would be a Christian within Mensa since all sufficiently intelligent people should see the obvious facts of God’s existence. Or, at the very least, I thought everyone would be willing to give a fellow smart-person the time of day to explain a belief and give it some thought. I am sure everyone can guess where it went from there, however. Few people are open to a random crack-pot on the internet spewing their superior knowledge and direct connection to God’s will. Most people were not at all interested in knowing what I had to say. They had already made up their minds about different subjects and were not very interested in a new perspective. Then again, I had no interest in their point of view either. After all, we were all so intelligent as to come to our own conclusions that we did not need the conclusions of others.

             I tried for a while to communicate with the members of Mensa, but it eventually dawned on me that most people were not there to make a difference with their intellect. I felt as if the members saw Mensa as a token of their superiority over others. They felt they had a badge of honor and they wore it around proudly. I had no interest in vanity so I gave up on trying to associate with them and obtaining their advice. In the end, there are just as many people with just as many opinions in Mensa as there are in the real world and it is probably even more difficult to convince Mensans of new ideas since so many of them are not looking to others for guidance. It seems humans are human whether their intellect gives them greater capacity or not—either that, or the test simply does not measure anything worthwhile which is entirely possible in my opinion. Still, not to discredit Mensa all together, I did not give it enough time and effort with a more rational and less religious mind. Perhaps it is not as bad as I perceived.

             It makes sense to me, however, that intelligent people should learn to agree somehow if indeed they are intelligent. Truths are true and can thus be determined true and agreed upon. Anything undetermined can be agreed upon that it is impossible to know as of now but yet may have underlying probabilities. A gut feeling can be appreciated, but intelligent people should be capable of indicating that it is only a gut feeling rather than a fact. Intelligence should breed much more agreement and especially humility in what we lack for understanding. I also thought intelligence would develop a desire to be kind and compassionate since that always seems to be the wise course of action. It turns out that neither intelligence nor religion provides a good indicator of altruism or wisdom.

             Throughout the following year, I continued studying and hoping to come up with a grand scheme of how to change the world. Most ideas revolved around a book, of course, but I could never write anything that I truly valued. I took to studying again, but this time I decided to focus more on philosophy and psychology to better understand how the human brain works and how to reach people. I read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell which started opening my eyes to the nature of different types of people and how they interact in larger groups. Seeing how large groups of people tend to devolve into evil or lack of accountability, I began to sense that local efforts would be more effective than global ones.

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie further opened my eyes to the foolishness of mankind in how we can cause people to react differently even to the point of opposing facts solely by how such facts are presented. For example, telling someone that they got ripped off on a purchase will often cause them to justify the cost, yet saying that they received a good deal might encourage them to admit the truth that they were indeed ripped off. It seemed crazy that we could have such power over people in our presentation to cause them to speak truthfully or to lie.

             Watching the news also helped me to understand people a little better although the information I obtained did not encourage me much. The quickness to judge things based upon emotional response is astounding, and the media plays on it like mosquitos prey on the exposed skin of camping children. If they can get an audience emotionally riled up, the viewers are guaranteed to share the filth and come back looking for more blood-boiling action and reassurance of their false opinions. Most people appear more interested in their own ideas being reiterated or reinforced than they are about critically reviewing data and facts. Advertisers know this, producers know this, and corporations know this. Facts rarely do any good when it comes to fighting against emotion.

             Via the books Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, Subliminal by Leonard Mlodinov, The Invisible Gorilla by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, and Willful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan, a very strong case can be made for the futility of humanity. Humans see things that do not exist, they do not see things that do exist, they lie not only to others but to themselves, they remember things vividly that are entirely made up, they associate things incorrectly, jump to false conclusions, and behave differently based upon extremely subtle cues that they may not even know are present. Humans are so fallible in so many ways that they can be entirely convinced by a lie and propagate it to the extent of 900 people willingly drinking poisoned Kool-Aid as in the Jonestown Massacre of 1978. Another cult from 1997 known as Heaven’s Gate suffocated themselves for the purpose of hitching a ride on a UFO trailing a comet as it flew by Earth.

             Despite all these depressing facts about our minds and how they can play tricks on us, the human race does appear to be advancing significantly. Christianity prevented me from seeing it due to confirmation bias and my expectation for the world to succumb to evil and burn in hell. Steven Pinker, in The Better Angels of Our Nature, puts together an extremely well-devised argument that violence has been decreasing over time. Learning these things and compiling them with the knowledge I had gleaned regarding multiple religions and cults made it all the more convincing that religion is a natural construction which arises from humanity as people try to understand things around them. Oddly enough, the full realization came more subtly from reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. This book had little to do with human nature and psychology, but it had the same net effect on both me and Emily. She ultimately lost her faith when reading this book and, without telling me, recommended that I read it as well. Half-way through it, I lost my faith once and for all.

             As I recall, Bill Bryson did not talk too much about religion or religious ideas. He walked the reader through the history of inventions and science and somehow this all simply clicked for me: we are on our own. We figure things out through trial and error. We often think we know things that we do not. We make mistakes. We make false assumptions. People reject what is new and cling to superstition in the deadliest of fashions. Science has continually revealed things throughout history that used to be mystical and explained it in logical and predictable terms. For whatever reason, this book put everything into perspective and everything I had ever known glided into place to make a congruent picture.

Humans are not scientific by nature and they utterly fail at statistics and understanding the world around them. This led to all kinds of crazy ritualistic ideas and religious dogmas throughout time as a common part of human nature. No religions were right and all were a product of mankind trying to make sense of things they did not understand when they were first becoming cognizant—a repeated grand delusion of the human species proven to exist in all instances of humanity in every nook and cranny of the world.

             I did not have the same depressed feeling after losing my faith the second time. I had fully convinced myself that God did not exist and I no longer felt as if anything could take this new realization away from me. There would be no day that God would look at me in dismay that I turned my back and stopped believing. And even if God did exist, from my research into Christianity, I believed he would care more for my actions than for my beliefs and thus he would judge me no differently than if I had continued to believe. It also made more sense to me that, if God did exist, he clearly did not want us to even know about it. Perhaps in this way we could truly choose to be kind and generous rather than being compelled by the thought of reward or punishment. If God is testing our mettle here on Earth, surely he needs to know if we are good at heart rather than if we are capable of following orders out of fear or for personal gain. If God exists, he would be happier about my secular humanism than about my religious humanism. A secular humanist is by far a better person since they do good of their own free will and fully knowing there will be no greater reward than personal satisfaction. This is truly the greater sacrifice of love.

             I should emphasize that my conversion did not occur by reading a single book. The many failures of my experiences from trying to understand the Bible compiled with my learning from a great many books before it, is ultimately what convinced me over a significant amount of time and after much pondering. I first had to lose my fear of questioning by realizing it would lead me closer to God if indeed he existed. I thus fully expected my seeking to draw me closer to him. In the end, it pulled me away as I learned more. Not more about Christianity, but more about humanity. The history of humankind took away all doubt in my mind: God does not exist. I no longer saw Christians as revolting against God—instead, I could now see them as revolting in general. The entire concept of the faith had destroyed a significant portion of my life and now I would have to start anew with a fresh set of eyes.

Looking back at my progression of faith, I am both ashamed and proud. I am ashamed that I could have been fooled for so long and yet I am proud that I found my way out through diligent study, thought, and consideration. It has been an interesting experience to say the least and it has provided some intimate insight into the workings of a religious mind. Even though my religious mind generally differed from the religious minds of others, I can still fully relate with the mindset that many of them have. I understand what it is like to see homosexuality as a threat—not because it is icky or unnatural, but because I believed God himself so despised it that he destroyed entire cities because of it. I understand the mindset that using birth control is not trusting in God and that tithing is a good means toward reaping a greater income. These things are absurd to an atheist but I understand being fully content with that absurdity.

             I find that many atheists cannot see beyond their own point of view when considering the character of a Christian and likewise the Christian of an atheist. An atheist sees abortion as a potentially wise choice and sees Christians as evil for trying to control a woman’s reproductive rights. Christians, of course, have no desire to control reproductive rights—they simply wish for babies not to be murdered by the crazy blood-thirsty atheists. Atheists see abortion as being no different than the state of preconception. There are an infinite number of children not being conceived right now and not being conceived is no different than being conceived and aborted within a few days. The fertilized egg feels nothing, knows nothing, and nobody is attached to it as would be the case with the murder of a grown child or adult. There is no psychological trauma with the day-after pill which prevents a newly fertilized egg from attaching to the uterine wall. It is no worse than the millions of sperm that die during each ejaculation or the egg that dies every month of a non-pregnant woman.

Atheists are not out to murder—they simply see things differently. Christians are not out for reproductive control over women—they simply see things differently. And yet, both sides will lob insults toward one another instead of recognizing the difference in worldview of which neither is particularly intentionally evil. That is not to say, of course, that evil does not come from one or the other even without intention.

             When you consider the three main doctrines of Christianity that so many groups believe and yet disagree about nearly everything else, it should be fairly clear that these three ideas are not the foundation to be building one’s house upon. The house is divided and it cannot stand in light of scrutiny. Proclaiming Jesus died for your sins, that Jesus was God, and that the Bible is the Word of God has provoked more hatred, intolerance, scams and schemes than anything else. People are taken advantage of and lives are destroyed because of these three beliefs. While it is easy enough to consider my struggle in the church a fault of my own due to my extreme arrogance of not blindly trusting any one particular church, those three doctrines and the widespread belief in them enabled me to become such a fanatic. The three doctrines themselves could not stop the destruction that I wreaked on my own life and instead actually caused many troubles. And yet for others, those three pillars do just the opposite.

             As many pastors recommend, and as the admonition Jesus gave in Luke, I cared more for my religion than I did for my family. If my family did not support me, that had zero bearing on my following and serving God. It is easy to condemn my belief as an incorrect interpretation, but again the Bible can be interpreted in a multitude of ways in which few people can agree. I could not determine the correct interpretation apart from my own understanding or else randomly picking from a multitude of other people’s opinions which is by no means honorable. The only other means would be a voice from heaven which never came despite my many days and nights crying out to God. I had to use my own understanding as I pursued truth, and this is where it led me. I took my faith extremely seriously as is hopefully obvious throughout my story. My extreme sincerity led me away from believing in the perfection of the Bible. My extreme sincerity led me away from believing in blood sacrifice. If extreme sincerity in pursuing God has any value whatsoever, then clearly this is where it leads.

             Jesus never once mentioned that a Bible would come to exist and be a required pillar of faith, and he spoke so very little of the other two core doctrines and in such roundabout ways that I am convinced, even as an atheist, that they were not his original message. Having no practical value in guiding life, these three doctrines only support destruction even if believed by well-meaning and loving individuals. Seeking peace, love, and tolerance of different views has great value and it matters much more than belief in a book, a sacrifice, or divinity of a man. The Christianity we have today is indeed the puffed up ball of dough and the empty bottle of grain that Jesus predicted. The salt has lost its savor and it is good for nothing but to be trampled.

Christianity would do good to get back to the original teachings of Jesus which boiled down to loving your neighbor as yourself and which sums up all the law and the prophets. If it sums up the entire law and the prophets, then clearly sacrifice does not fit within. Love others and you need nothing more since anything else worthwhile is a subset of loving others. I hope more than anything that my book promotes that love. Even if not convincing a single Christian of the non-existence of God, I hope to at least guide them back to the original faith of love instead of faith in religion, ritual, and sacrifice.

             I believed very strongly in my faith which led me to that one and only requirement: love. I did not use faith to further my own agenda as is the case with many political leaders and pastors. In fact, I believed so strongly that I often hindered my own progression in life for the sake of my faith. Whether or not I succumbed to foolishness and vain thinking, I never once intended harm and I remained diligent in trying to seek God. This, in theory, should certainly lead to God, but it most certainly led me only toward loving others and away from religion after a very long struggle. I did not make my decision irrationally or emotionally from some random event in my life. I am not mad at God and I do not hate God; I very truly do not believe he exists. I would not have accepted this statement from an atheist as a Christian, of course, but I now know that it is entirely possible to be atheist without rejecting or hating God and instead to truly believe he does not exist.

             I hope that my personal story and progression of faith has helped to form an understanding of where I come from and to familiarize the reader with my position and experience in life. I am not a monster bent on the destruction of the world and filled with malicious intent and desire for sexual promiscuity trying to live each day from one sin to the next. I care quite deeply for the welfare of mankind and I take no joy in suffering. I do not even take joy in the suffering of evil people who commit great atrocities. I would sooner blot them out of existence than to have them suffer since suffering brings no benefit and we are all a victim of our circumstances. Being godless does not mean being immoral and in many ways it has made me more moral than I ever could have been before.

I cannot see myself as better than anyone else for any choices or beliefs that I hold due to some unseen force of what makes me who I am. I can concede that if I had the exact same genetic material and upbringing as someone else, I would quite literally be that person and thus make all the same bad choices. There is nothing unique about me that could be inserted into another person and allow me to make better choices. This keeps me on a level playing field with all of humanity such that I never feel a need to presume myself superior over anyone else. All that I am is a product of my genes and experiences and it is nothing of some other concept of self. This, of course, does not excuse actions and make actions meaningless, but they can then be dealt with in a more humane and less self-righteous manner.

             My atheism has enabled me compassion and humility that Christianity never afforded me no matter how I tried. I can no longer consider myself better for believing something while others foolish not to believe. I can no longer consider myself right and everyone else blind and foolish for not agreeing since they are merely a product of their environment and genes. Further, and most importantly, I can hope for the world. As a Christian, I could not hope for the world to improve. The Bible foretold and guaranteed the Earth’s destruction over time due to the evil atheists oppressing the Christians until God comes and destroys and torments them all. This future act of God had me believing it is good, right, holy, and just for atheists to die and suffer the most extreme level of torment even if I hoped to alleviate such repercussions myself. Many Christians look forward to it and plan to mock and scoff at the infidel. This is by no means a moral position.

Such hatred for the heathen by Christians is no greater a moral position than ISIS lobbing off the heads of reporters, or Al Qaeda crashing planes into towers filled with human beings. My atheism has afforded me the ability to care for all people and to expect that I might make a positive difference in a world that actual can improve. My atheism has removed any remaining hate for people and has given me an appreciation for the amazingness of life which is now far more miraculous. Not all atheists are kind, of course, but I am not merely an atheist; I am a humanist. I care for the progression and kindness of humanity. I care enough to try even an eighth time at writing a book in hopes to spur the world on towards a more loving disposition. It seems this time I have succeeded in writing the book, but only time will tell whether or not the world will succeed in becoming more loving.