The following is a letter I sent to my father, to explain why there was no chance of my kids going to "Vacation Bible School" (A triple oxymoron if ever there was one). This nearly led to a shouting match- but this email managed to clear the air quite well, hence I am reproducing it here, for future reference.
To preserve some privacy for the people mentioned, I have changed names to animals.
Hi Dad,
I wrote this out thinking I'd send it to
you and mom first, but I figure it's a safer bet to send it to you
first, to avoid any conflicts.
So, we had a good talk the other day, but one thing that's very clear is you guys have no idea what I think. I don't want to inflict most of it on anybody, because everybody needs to sleep at night, but I figure I can give you guys the broad strokes in 5 bullet points, with a brief description of how and why I came to these conclusions or reached these decisions, so that you guys can actually address my concerns.
- I don't have beliefs, because I've philosophically rejected the validity of 'belief' as a concept.
Simply put, belief does not make a thing true, and disbelief does not
make a thing false. At best, you believe something true- in which case
the belief is spurious. At worst, you believe something false- and so
the belief, itself, is the barrier to understanding. So instead of this,
I try to have data and knowledge (the 'who', 'what', 'where', 'how much/many', and 'when') and understanding (the 'how' and 'why'). I don't believe
in the 'big bang', or in evolution, or even that I'm sitting at the
kitchen table typing this out for you guys. It is enough for me to
accept that the evidince is that these things seem to be the case, no
matter what I think of them, and that it is my duty- if I care- to know
or understand them, rather than to simply tell myself- or anyone else-
they are true or false.
This has a corollary- I also reject the validity of any faith, which I define as "the assertion of the truth without or in spite of reason or evidence". But "Faith" in the English language has many uses beyond this meaning- most frequently things like "loyalty", "trust", etc- and I don't reject these things, but I try to use these more specific words instead. - I stopped being Christian because it's no longer possible, knowing what I know, to accept that it might be true.
There are mountains of evidence and lots of reasons against what you
believe. These are the things I've been "strident" about- Biblical
contradictions, inaccuracies, forgeries, and apparent lies told for
political gain by the factions of the authors, archaeological evidence,
Historical records, etc. Going through all of this was a very painful
but eye-opening process. So my position could be stated as saying
"Whether there is a god or not, it isn't that one". But I don't hate
Christianity, in the same way that you don't hate any other religion. I
just think it's factually incorrect. I don't hate Christians; you've
got good reasons to think and act the way you do, like all of the social
factors- for example, being able to still talk to your parents
<mom> without them thinking you must be 'evil' or 'spiritually
deficient'. But I don't think these reasons contribute meaningfully to
the truth of the claims of Christianity.
Also important: Nothing bad happened to cause this. I still actively pursue the study of biblical topics - hence mentioning {reading} Josh McDowell's books, and CS Lewis, among others. But I think the best available lesson from any of these is how to think, not what to think. Believing in God gave me an additional coping mechanism for things like Dog's diagnosis- "God doesn't give you what you can't handle" - and was a source of hope in some very dark situations. Nobody's 'misbehavior' caused me to doubt. I have a lot of respect for how you handle your beliefs, and for the rigor that Bear has, and the dedication that Dr. Pigeon in Thailand has, and as much for many other people you don't know about. But none of these have any effect on whether or not the beliefs are true, and in the end, that simply mattered more to me. And so I eventually had to confront the growing case against Christianity that I had been becoming more aware of and knowledgable about for years. By now you should have noticed the result of that, but I'm deliberately cutting out the data here because I know you guys don't want to hear it.
Last sub-point about this: I'm not committed to the idea that Christianity is false, but if there is a case to be made for it, this case must also account for the evidence and reasons I've found against it; calling it all a "trick of Satan" simply doesn't cut it. Maybe there are evidence and reasons I don't know about, and if I find them, and they do account for what I've found, I've got nothing against reconverting- but at this point, I'm not holding my breath. - I'm a materialist, in the sense that I think things that don't exist don't exist.
Maybe there is something beyond this natural universe; but there hasn't
been any convincing evidence I've been able to discover that can't be
better understood some other way. But I also think that what we are is
not all we can be, and that it's all about how you use the substance of
yourself and your environment before you die that allows for the best
set of possibilities. Even if we were just computers, computers are
still amazing machines that can do awesome things, and the first step
towards upgrading is knowing how to upgrade.
As a sub-heading, I think the materialistic explanations for religious experience are more sensible than the supernatural explanations. It makes more sense to me that religious experience happens because human brains are amazing but imperfect machines, than to think that there are armies of demons running around putting on skits to dupe people into hell. - I'm an atheist, not a nihilist. I think that everybody has to find or make their own purpose, even Christians. Chipmunk is way
more nihilistic than me; hence, he sees no problem with taking the kids
to church, since everybody will die anyway. I think what little time
we've got here shouldn't be wasted on it, because none of us will get
more time here, and the consequences simply don't justify it; At the
very least, this means we agree that church is more than just free
babysitting.
- I'm neither amoral nor immoral. Morality, even yours, is determined by consequences, as these affect happiness, well-being, and free self-determination of conscious entities capable of meaningfully experiencing these things.
This is why it's more important to not step on an ant than to not step
on a rock; because the ant can actally feel it. All we disagree on is when
the consequences occur: you think that the only ones that matter - the
'ultimate' consequences- happen after we die, in Heaven or Hell, and I
think that death is the end of that for you, because by definition,
there's no 'you' left to experience anything more.
This one chafes, by the way. I've raped and murdered all I want. The amount I want is zero. If the only thing stopping you from doing that is fear of hell, you're just not a good person. Christianity doesn't give you 'moral superpowers', and it's insulting when you act like you're somehow the only ones capable of realizing if something is right or wrong. There's no action I've found that a believer could do that an unbeliever couldn't; but religion, yours and everyone else's, can make morally normal people say and do disgisting and wicked things that nobody would otherwise consider. I was circumcised to 'prevent yeast infections' hundreds of years after the invention of soap, because that was the treatment in the tribe you are loyal to- but that's like 'treating' sprained ankles by amputating legs. Being offended by this isn't 'vehemence', and speaking against things like it isn't 'stridence'. I just want us to all be reasonable, and I think these ideas aren't, that you guys (usually) are, and that we can work through this rationally.
An equivalent that might help you understand would be if you were visiting a Muslim's house and they had you kneel on the floor to pray before dinner; it's not your faith, it's theirs, and you can respect them and kneel, but they shouldn't take that to mean they can drag you to the mosque afterwards, or that they'll be doing you a favor by taking your kids there when you've told them you're not comfortable with it. I think I remember Mom turning down similar 'invitations' when I was Vince's age, for the same reasons.
Last, I want to reiterate that I love you guys. I don't think you're deficient parents in any way, I just disagree with you about your religion, and that's it.
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