We're all the same species.

Newsflash, people: we're all people. We're all the same species, here. Men and women? Same species. Rich and poor? Same species. Any two random samples of the astounding variety of human skin tones available? Same species. Nerds and Pretentious Social Climbers? Yep, same species.

Which is why this particular post is such a spectacular pile of fail.

This story sounds mean. It’s about a girl judging a boy because he’s a nerd (like so many of us!) that she met on OkCupid.

Now, let's be clear from the outset: this story sounds mean because it is mean. It's a classic case of a writer setting out to show someone's flaws, and highlighting their own instead.

He was thin and tall, dressed in a hedge fund uniform with pale skin and pierced ears. ... And then he casually mentioned that he played Magic: The Gathering when he was younger.

“Actually,” he paused. “I’m the world champion.”
...
Just like you’re obligated to mention you’re divorced or have a kid in your online profile, shouldn’t someone also be required to disclose any indisputably geeky world championship titles?

So, his crime... if I'm reading this right... was coming across as a fairly ordinary guy, even though he had this particularly geeky hobby that he happened to be amazingly good at? What, nerds can't be normal people? Normal people can't have nerdy interests?

Yep, pretty much:

I was lured on a date thinking I’d met a normal finance guy, only to realise he was a champion dweeb in hedge funder’s clothing.

I later found out that he infiltrated his way into OKCupid dates with at least two other people I sort of know, including one of my co-workers.

"Infiltrated". That's right, "infiltrated". Apparently this guy is some sort of Manchurian Ninja Stealth Nerd, I guess. It's all part of the Vast Geek Conspiracy to trick the Popular Blonde Hotties into going out with us.

Or, you know, maybe he's just a nice guy looking for a date. Maybe he didn't realize that having a hobby like M:TG was such a disfiguring social disease that he must warn people in advance about his condition.

That said, it's clear that Ms. Bereznak is absolutely the victim here. I mean, she actually had dinner and drinks with a guy who is obviously, utterly, and irredeemably below her caste - a man who didn't even have the decency to wear a pocket protector, or pull his waistband up too high, or show up in a bright orange blazer, or... well... anything that would signaled his inherent nerdy unworthiness to her. I can only imagine the horror and shame she experienced, and the unrelenting courage and honesty that drove her to write about her experience. She's only lucky it wasn't worse. Imagine if she had found herself talking to someone who plays Dungeons and Dragons... Or worse, a LARPer!

Her date sounds like a very pleasant guy. (Not to everyone's romantic taste, perhaps, but who is?) I can only hope that one day Ms. Bereznak will grow up enough to get over herself. Until then, there's a whole wide world of interesting people that she'll be missing out on.

Bertrand Russell Redux, or Why I am not a Christian

So... The interminable conversation with the misguided Christian is (at the time of this writing) still ongoing. I have now used that conversation as the basis for two complete posts, each describing an argument that would-be evangelists really ought to avoid. One of the problems with both of these arguments is that they deal with nonbelievers not on the basis of their actual beliefs and experiences, but on the basis of what the would-be evangelist believes those beliefs and experiences must be, which is generally based on a reading of the scriptures.

So, since I've just spent several pages insisting that would-be evangelists would get better results if they'd talk with real unbelievers about why they don't agree (rather than arguing as if we were the embodiment of the Straw Men they've been taught to expect), it occurs to me that this might be a good time to explain why I'm not a Christian. Also, it may make for a handy reference if I find myself in this sort of conversation again.

Naturally, if you're one of my Christian friends, you're welcome to skip over this. In fact, I'd prefer if you did. I don't have anything against Christianity per se, and I'll do my best not to condescend or insult, but still... reading a detailed description of why I don't share your beliefs could be kind of awkward. So if you do decide to read on, just bear in mind that this is not meant as a blanket condemnation of religious belief, and you weren't the intended audience anyway.

I was going to talk about my religious background, but to be honest that's just a distraction. So we'll skip that, and move on to why I'm not currently a Christian. My reasons can be divided into two basic categories: intellectual and spiritual.

Intellectual Reasons:
On a fundamental level, Christianity doesn't make sense to me. This isn't any one element, unfortunately, but a whole combination of things. As a result, I'm not really sure where to start, so I guess I'll just pick an example and go...

The Doctrine of the Trinity was one of the first things that I tripped over when I first started putting things together: the belief that God the Father, Jesus (the Son), and the Holy Spirit are simultaneously three separate entities, and different manifestations of a single entity. While an all-powerful deity should be able to do things that would be impossible for lesser entities, this seems to me to pass beyond miraculous and into the realm of absurdity - something akin to creating a square circle. Also, there are several sections of the Bible ("My God, why have you forsaken me?") that only seems to make sense if Jesus is not part of God. However, accepting this doctrine isn't strictly necessary in order to be a Christian, so let's move on to more fundamental things.

Original Sin is another concept that I don't really accept. I've tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to lay out my objections to the idea, but let's focus on my two main problems. First, if you read this literally, it means that all of humanity is being punished for a mistake made by a very distant ancestor. Second, the notion that we are subject to Earthly death, a sinful nature, and eternity in Hell as a "natural consequence" of sin seems completely incompatible with the idea of an all-powerful God. While it has a certain poetic appeal, the concept of original sin does not (in my opinion) provide a particularly accurate description of the human condition.

Penal Substitutionary Theory is the idea that Jesus' death on the cross paid the price for our sins. I learned the name decades after I came to reject the doctrine; my objection was that I could not - and cannot - see how the death of one man, two thousand years ago, could possibly make any difference to my sins. (This was something that confounded Dr. Pulliam also; a very great deal of his blog was devoted to examining various views of the issue.) This question is further complicated if you accept the Doctrine of the Trinity; at that point, you have God sacrificing Himself to Himself in order to satisfy His need for justice, which is just bizarre.

There's an additional problem which only occurred to me much later. The price of sin is an eternity of torment in Hell, right? But Jesus was somehow able to pay this - for everybody - in a couple of days of Earthly suffering? How does that work, again?

And, of course, my inability to accept the idea of Original Sin means that I don't really see any need for this sort of sacrifice to redeem people. That's not to say that we don't need forgiveness, just that we ourselves can repent, apologize, and try to make amends to the best of our ability. To me, that sort of personal attempt is a lot more meaningful.

There are some other issues floating around - for example, the Bible looks to me far more like a record of mankind attempting to communicate with the divine than the other way around - but that ought to be sufficient to illustrate what I mean when I say that Christianity as whole simply doesn't make much sense to me. Those aren't minor doctrinal quibbles that could be fixed with better discernment of the Scriptures; Original Sin and Penal Substitution are the core of Christian belief.

Spiritual (Revelatory / Emotional) Reasons:
I have felt the touch of the Divine. It came to me as a sense of transcendant calm, and peace, and renewal. It was also a sense of Presence, of something unseen but powerfully alive. It didn't seem to want anything from me, or have any particular message; it was just this unexpected and unasked-for gift of grace.

Considered in retrospect[1], I have no particular reason to believe that this was something done to/for me by an outside entity. Intense and unexpected as it was, it might have been nothing more than an aesthetic, emotional reaction. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it really was the touch of the Divine. I have no particular reason to believe that it wasn't.

I've experienced this twice. In both cases, I was fairly isolated: once alone, once with one other person. In both cases I was out in the woods of eastern Tennessee - the Cumberland Plateau area, which is overflowing with natural beauty. Both experiences came from being close to nature, without anything in the way of civilization to offer distractions. And both were... "meaningless" isn't quite the right world, but if there was some deeper meaning or higher purpose or life-altering message that I was supposed to take away from the experience, I missed it.[2]

I've never felt anything like it in a church. Oh, the great cathedrals at Chartres and Notre Dame stirred a somewhat atavistic sense of awe, with their strange combination of deep forest and cavernous stone; but it was nothing like that sense of presence and peace that came to me in real solitude, with real trees around me.

I've never felt anything like it while reading the Bible - or any other book, holy or otherwise, for that matter. Not even close.

I've never felt anything like it among any group of people, no matter how kind or friendly or moral they were. Nothing.

So, putting it all together:
I'm not a Christian because Christianity doesn't work for me. It doesn't provide me with a particularly accurate or even useful way to examine the human condition; it doesn't offer any unique insights into the nature of the physical world. And insofar as I have any experience of divine or spiritual matters, it doesn't accurately describe those, either.

Again, if Christianity accomplishes any or all of that for you, that's fine. I'm not trying to argue that it's worthless for everyone. But please accept that what I've said here is... well, that these are my reasons. They aren't just excuses to cover my rebellion against God; if God exists, I genuinely don't perceive Him. (And even if He does, I don't see any reason to assume that Christianity accurately describes His nature.) Believe it or not, I really don't have a "Jesus-shaped hole" in my heart - or if I do, I can't find it, which amounts to the same thing.

So when I say that I can't be a Christian, this - all of this - is what I mean.

---

[1] I didn't give it much actual thought at the time. There didn't seem to be any need, and I was enjoying the experience too much to interrupt it.

[2] No, not rejected it. Missed it.

How NOT to talk to unbelievers, part II

As an atheist, I know perfectly well that nobody really believes in God. It's all a giant game of make-believe, where the self-described "believers" spend a lot of time reinforcing each other so that nobody accidentally drops out of character. The goal is to get as many people as possible into each like-minded club, and use those numbers to gain special advantages for the group. The thing is, though, even if they won't admit it, even the most outwardly devout "believers" secretly know that it's all pretense. That's why they get so mad at Atheists - pointing out that it's just a game "breaks the frame" and makes it that much harder to stay in character.

Now, if you're a believer and you just read that, you're probably a bit boggled. I mean, I suppose you might feel insulted, but I'd bet that a lot of you are still stuck on, "He thinks what?" And possibly you're giggling just at bit at how comically wrong I am about religious folks.

That's pretty much the way nonbelievers feel when we hear (or read) things like this:

"As a Christian, its my position that God has revealed Himself to all mankind so that we can know for certain who He is. Those who deny His existence are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness to avoid accountability to God. It is the ultimate act of rebellion against Him and reveals the professing atheist's contempt toward God."

This is the same person I quoted last time, and in an odd way that's actually a compliment. Yes, I take issue - rather seriously - with his views, but he is at least reasonably friendly and quite well spoken. In addition, he is willing to put into words some attitudes that I frequently encounter as unspoken assumptions.

Like the last example, this is something that you should probably never say if you're a Christian talking to unbelievers, former Christians, or even believers of other faiths/religions. It displays the same fundamental arrogance as the last assertion I examined, but (for me, at least) it's so laughably misguided that I can't even bring myself to be offended by it. Still, as a favor to everyone[1], I'm going to break this one down, too.

So here goes. Why is this view a problem?

I know more about you than you do. This is another situation where someone has told you something about their life and/or their experience, and your response is to tell them that you know better. It's an arrogant assertion that you have the right and/or the knowledge to tell someone else what they really believe. As you might imagine, this is not an especially winsome or effective approach to sharing your testimony.

It's ridiculous. Look at that middle sentence again: "Those who deny His existence are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness to avoid accountability to God." Um, what? Seriously, have you thought about this? There's an all-knowing, all-powerful God. The fact of His existence is unmistakable. His judgement is inescapable. (That's what all-powerful means.) And yet, there is a significant portion of the human population who claims that He does not exist because they think this will... accomplish what, exactly? Allow them to avoid His judgement, even though He is all-knowing and all-powerful? That makes no sense.

No, if the nature and existence of God are as truly unmistakable as this sort of Christianity would have me believe, and if the consequence of unforgiven sin is an eternity of torment, then the only sensible response would be to do whatever it takes to obtain that forgiveness. Contrariwise, if people claim not to believe, then the obvious conclusion is that[2] the nature and existence of God is not so obvious to some people as it is to others.

It denies any possibility of disagreement. If you insist that people only refuse to recognize God out of selfishness, anger, or rebellion, then you completely deny the possibility that people might have honest doubts or disagreements. This has (at least) two ill effects on your argument - first, for those of us who do have honest doubts or disagreements, it makes Christianity looks silly[3]. Rather than providing witness for the Good News, it offers further evidence that Christianity doesn't know what it's talking about. And second...

It effectively ends the conversation. I might point out that the nature of God, and even the existence of God, is not at all apparent to me. This is true, but what's the point in trying to tell you that? You've just stated that anyone who says that is, by your definition, either lying or delusional.

At this point, you've lost any further opportunity to share the Good News. You can't address my doubts, because you don't believe that I actually have any. There's no point in telling me about how wonderful God is, or how insanely cool it is that Jesus died for my sins, because you already "know" that I'm in willful rebellion against Him. There's no reason for you to continue talking to me. And for my part, you've demonstrated that you're either unwilling or unable to deal with me as I actually am, so there's no reason for me to continue to talk to you.[4]

My advice to evangelically-minded Christians? Take it easy. More to the point, take nonbelievers - or those who believe differently - at their word. I don't look at the world and immediately think, Wow, that's so incredibly wonderful, there must be a God, but I do look at the world and think, You know, if there is a God, he sure loves variety. And beetles. But definitely variety. And that variety extends to people, too.

So please, do us the courtesy of assuming that our beliefs - or lack of beliefs - are based on the best of our understanding. Trust us that we are being honest when we say that we do not believe, or that we believe something different. Deal with us as we are, instead of how you think we must be.

And when people disagree with you, don't assume that doing so is clear evidence of their moral failings.

---

[1] For unbelievers, it's a great relief if we don't have to listen to people insist that their understanding must be correct because it's based in scripture, even though it's laughably inaccurate when compared to observable reality - i.e. our own experience. For believers, it's a chance to avoid doing something that actively works against you when you're evangelizing, proselytizing, or otherwise sharing the Gospel. That bit in the Sermon on the Mount about how you're blessed when men revile you? Yeah, that only works if they're reviling you for the sake of Christ. If men revile you because you come across as a self-righteous twat, I'm pretty sure it doesn't count.

[2] ...for whatever reason...

[3] At best, it looks silly. At worst, depending on the interpersonal balance of power, it's directly threatening: you will be judged according to what I say about you, and what you say about yourself does not count. You are at my mercy.

[4] The usual next step in this exchange is for the would-be proselytizer to say something like, "I pray that God will soften your heart." I'm sure this is meant well, at least for the most part, but it seems to contain some rather disturbing implications. If I can't perceive God because my heart has been hardened, who exactly is responsible?

I can say with some certainty that if my consciousness continues after death, and if there are things I can do to ensure that it continues into paradise rather than torture, then I'd very much like to know about it. So I don't think I'd be the one hardening my heart. The alternative, of course, is that God Himself must be hardening my heart. While this is somewhat flattering - after all, Pharaoh got the same treatment - it also seriously calls into question the idea that God is just, let alone merciful.

How NOT to talk to former Christians

A couple of days ago I dropped by the blog of the late Dr. Ken Pulliam. Dr. Pulliam passed away from a heart attack, but he had apparently written a number of articles in advance, and set them to post automatically on his blog. So, in a sense, he was still publishing new material for several months after his death - which was both confusing and more than a little creepy, but that was why I was dropping by: I wanted to see if anything new had shown up since my last visit, and (on a more melancholy note) I wanted to see what had become of the blog since his passing.

By his own account, Dr. Pulliam was "born again" in 1978. He earned a Ph.D. in Theology, and took a position at an evangelical Bible college, teaching and preaching. Around 1994 (sixteen years or so later), he started having doubts. In an attempt to bolster his wavering his faith, he began a thorough study of the issues that were causing him doubts. Despite this, by 1996 he was forced to admit that he no longer believed. He was an ex-Christian; he had fallen away; he was apostate.

Now, there is a certain variety of Christian for whom that sort of story is simply unacceptable. They read it and immediately think, That can't be right. So they go to the comments section, and post something along the lines of this:

Your post name caught my attention and I just wanted to help you understand better. Keep in mind, there is no such thing as an Ex-Christian because Christians don't Fall Away. People are not "De-Converted from Evangelical Christianity", they were simply never Christians. Its hard news at first but there is a promising outcome.

This is not the true Scotsman fallacy either. There are fundamental criteria set by Christ Himself to determine who is, or who is not, a Christian. You have just not met that criteria. Essentially, you have never been saved. But actually, that is great news! Its not that it was a hit and miss, but that you never have yet been at bat yet. There is still time while you're alive.

I'm using this particular example because, to be honest, it's one of the more polite phrasings of something that is, at heart, an extremely condescending thing to say. Most of them are more along the lines of "You shouldn't call yourself an ex-Christian. It's obvious you were never a Christian at all."

This is not, to be sure, a typical Christian response - insofar as a "typical" Christian response is possible at all. It seems to be a fairly small minority of Christians who react this way. However, it is common enough to be recognizable pattern: I can think of at least three occasions where people showed up on Dr. Pulliam's blog to make this assertion, and at least two which happened elsewhere. Also, the folks who do espouse this view tend to be very insistent about it. Interestingly, I don't see this very much on atheist and agnostic blogs; it's something about defining oneself as an ex-Christian or Former Christian that seems to trigger it.

...All of which brings me, finally, to the point of this essay: if you're a Christian, and you feel that evangelism is a moral obligation for you, telling self-described ex-Christians that they were never Christian to begin with is not how you should do it.

But why not? You may be asking. I'm just trying to share the Gospel. What's wrong with that?

The problem isn't with you trying to share the Gospel. The problem is that this particular approach is arrogant, disrespectful, and fundamentally misguided. Those are not qualities that make for especially winsome or effective evangelism. I don't want to be approached this way because it's obnoxious, and you don't want to approach people this way for exactly the same reason.

Now, I realize that some of you may be scratching your heads and wondering, What's so bad about it? Well, let me unpack it for you a bit.

1. I know what you were and what happened to you better than you do. The simple act of telling someone that they were never really a Christian to begin with puts you in the position of asserting that you know more about that person's life than they do. See a problem, here? No matter how politely you phrase your accusation, the underlying assumption makes you look like an asshole. This is probably not the impression you want to make when you're trying to share the Good News of Salvation through Christ.[1]
2. It's an irreducible argument. For a Christian who holds as an article of faith that true Christians cannot fall away, it's perfectly obvious that the former believer must not have been a true Christian. For someone who no longer believes in the truth of Christianity, the idea that "true Christians never fall away" just looks like something else that Christianity was wrong about. As a result, arguments on the topic tend to be nit-picky, repetitive, and unconvincing - to both sides.
3. Even if you're right, you're still missing the point. Look, if someone is having doubts about their beliefs, then suggesting an alternate approach or a new viewpoint might be helpful. But, by the time someone starts defining himself as an ex-Christian, he's reached a point where Christianity as a whole no longer makes sense to him.[2] Even if you somehow manage to convince him that he never was a Christian, so what? Christianity still doesn't make sense to him. Your efforts would be better spent trying to address the actual issues that make Christianity seem nonsensical to him, than quibbling over whether he was a Christian in the first place.
   
   If your goal is to bring someone (back) into the flock, debating whether or not they were Christian previously is a pointless distraction.
4. What kind of God would do that? If you insist that the former believer was never really a Christian, then you're also acknowledging that God was willing to let him go on believing - for at least sixteen years, in Dr. Pulliam's case - that he was saved; when in truth he was bound for Hell. This makes God look like a bit of a bastard, frankly. It doesn't seem at all compatible with the idea of God as either merciful or just. Again, probably not the impression that you really want to make - especially on behalf of the Almighty.

So here's my advice, for anyone interested in effective evangelism: don't go there. It doesn't help, and it makes you look bad. If you want to share the Gospel, do it by your actions; if you feel compelled to tell people about it, use a soft sell. Be humble and be ready to back off the moment the person you're talking to indicates disinterest. We will know you are Christians by your love, after all.

Melissa, over at Permission to Live, has a very good response to this question.

[1] Most Christians would be understandably wary of going up to a Christian of another denomination and telling them that they aren't really Christian. Why would you think that former believers would react any differently from current believers?

[2] Otherwise, they just switch churches or find a more compatible denomination. When that happens, they don't define themselves as ex-Christians, though they may think of themselves as "ex-Catholics" or "ex-Fundamentalists" or something along those lines.

Placing Criticism Off-Limits

There is a natural human urge to defend the things you care about. I'm not just talking about people: people will defend relationships, organizations, religious beliefs, hobbies... pretty much anything that's important to them. Nor am I talking about defending these things from physical danger; as a matter of fact, I'm talking about defending them from criticism - even constructive criticism, even deserved criticism, even criticism that is desperately needed.

True story: at various points in my brilliantly misspent youth, I was involved with the S.C.A. The first time, I was a member for about a year and a half; after that, I tended to find a group, meet some people that I liked, and hang out with the people while staying away from the organization. At one point, someone asked me why that was. I said, basically, that while I liked S.C.A. people, I had some issues with the organization itself. She said, "Really? Like what?" So I started to explain a couple of the things that bothered me. I wasn’t three sentences in before she said, "Oh, but it isn’t like that at all." ...I think I just stopped and looked at her. I don’t know if I even answered. Maybe I just gave her an Eloquent Look. Because whatever she thought, it was that way for me. If she didn’t want to hear about it, she shouldn’t have asked.

It's a perfectly understandable urge, but it's also horribly misguided. It's one thing to listen to criticism, weigh it, and then decide that it's incorrect, or misguided, or otherwise unreasonable. It's quite another to reject criticism out of hand, without even taking the time to consider it.

The really frustrating ones, though, are the people who don't want others to criticise the object of their affection at all - and they're especially irritating when they refuse to admit that that's what they're doing. The message is usually disguised as some sort of concern for the critic ("that much anger really isn't healthy", "isn't it time you moved on", "we miss the old you", "you shouldn't be so negative", and like that). If you don't want to hear it, say so... but be honest about it.

Oh, and one more thing: anger is perfectly natural. Sure, it can be destructive - but it can also be healthy. And if somebody, or some group or organization, did something to hurt you, you have the right to be angry, and the right to talk about being angry, and the right to talk about why you're angry. Saying that something hurt you is not whining; exploring the nature and extent of the damage is part of the process of healing.

So when someone tells you that you’re being too negative, or you need to move on, or whatever... consider the source before you take it to heart.

Arrogance in Action

See, here's the thing: the moment you start explaining to someone that their experience can't possibly be what they say it is, it must be what you say it is, you're being an asshole. If you have any sense at all, you'll take that as your cue to shut up.