As nearly everyone on this planet knows, Christians are about the most ubiquitous group of people (that's the nicest way I can put it). They're always in the area, making their presence and views known. They work tirelessly at the task of recruiting outsiders into their religion. They believe that their God, Jesus, ordered them to do this recruiting. They often are found in public, going door-to-door, shouting on street corners, producing all sorts of recruiting materials in all sorts of media. From TV shows to radio programs and movies, from newspaper articles and whole magazines to books, they present their message of enticement to a world they consider lost and on its way to eternal torment. While many of them seem to be aware that this unsociable and often obnoxious behavior is not welcome, they continue their work. What many of them appear not to be aware of is how those of us on the "outside" view the actual ploys they use in these efforts.
In an effort to educate the occasional Christian who wanders into my little patch of the web, I intend to give a short run-down of my experiences in talking with Christians, and what I think of their efforts. I present the main headings in no particular order. After all, they are presented to me in no particular order, either!
Often, I hear the statement that God is really Great! As in "bigger than big" and "as far above humans as we are above the amoeba." This usually comes in conjunction with fun comments about the granduer of the universe, and how great God must be to have created such an unimaginable, vast, majestic thing as the universe. I must say that this only makes me laugh, sometimes in the face of the person who tries this with me.
I expect that this particular ploy originates from the idea of "natural theology." This is the idea that the universe, the whole realm of nature, is obviously the creation of an immensely powerful supernatural being. The main writer of the Christian New Testament, Paul, started the ball rolling on this one with a few lines from his letter to the Romans:
Rom 1:18-21 - For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.
What amuses me about this idea is that it is far from obvious that the universe is an artifact created by a supreme intelligence. In fact, in looking dispassionately at the issues and evidence, the opposite is more easy to accept.
In the past, God and the rest of the supernatural realm, was credited with all sorts of things that humans were unable to understand. Everything from the rising of the sun to sicknesses were atrributed to the actions of gods of varying types. As humanity's understanding of the unexplained grew, the roles of gods were lessened, making many gods obsolete, and driving others into deep, inaccessible holes to hide. Thus, we were introduced to the idea of a "God of the gaps." As our knowledge of nature increases, God's role on a day-to-day basis decreases. Nowadays, Christians are forced to consider God as just a creator, and having little or no role in daily events. Some still look at God as a miracle-worker, and I'll address that concept under a separate heading.
In the end, though, trying to point to the universe as the handiwork of God glaringly begs the question of whether the universe really needs a creator. This gets back to the idea of Occam's Razor, which says (in part) that explanations of things should not be multiplied without necessity. There are many theological arguments stating the God is necessary to the existence of the universe, but that idea is far from settled. This is the center of the reasoning I have for rejecting many of the recruiting ploys that come my way in this manner. The "Majesty of God" can't impress me, at least not until his very existence is made belivable and unavoidable.
All Christians I've ever known have a special place in their hearts for the Bible. They look to it for all sorts of things - answers to life's problems, inspiration and instruction in how to get along with people, both inside and out of their particular sect, and, more to the point, information about God that they can use in their efforts to convert us non-believers. They call it "the Good Book," "the Word of God," and other rather impressive nicknames. I personally refer to it as the "book-o-blood," for some pretty good reasons. In any event, I hear much in recruiting pitches about how the Bible is an obviously superior store of information coming to us from God. The following are detail of some of the claims I hear about the Bible, and my reactions.
The Bible, I'm often told, is a storehouse of lessons on morality like no other in the world. Jesus is held up as a paragon of virtue, while many other characters are revered as being people "after God's own heart." While it is true that the Christian sects are nearly all very concerned about teaching their members how to act in a moral (ie socially acceptable) manner, the fact of the matter is that any lessons on morality taken from the Bible are necessarily picked from a pool of many different lessons. There is no possible way to find a single, unified code of moral behavior in the Bible as a whole, as the sensibilities of the writers changed so radically over the centuries. Also, many of the instances where ideas of morality were presented (particularly in the Old Testament) are barbaric and could not be acceptable to any person who considers himself "civilized" in the modern world. This includes the ideas of punishing the descendants of a person for the crimes of the ancestor, the punishment of entire nations for the crimes of individual criminals, the extermination of all enhabitants of enemy cities (including babies, old people and livestock), and support for (and indeed codification of) the institution and practice of slavery.
If there is one overriding message of the Christian New Testament in regard to morality, it is that of the scapegoat. Jesus is presented as the ultimate scapegoat, tortured and killed in lieu of all those who deserve death, absolving only his followers of all responsibility for their actions. Much is written and said both in the rest of the Bible and in Christian thinking through the centuries after its completion attempting to mitigate the harm of this message. Much is made of the idea that Christians should follow a code of morality because they have intimate direction from their God. In the final analysis, however, there is no mechanism put forth for enforcement.
The main problems with this concept are, first, that getting directions from God can mean anything, including causing harm to fellow human beings. How often do we hear of people who commit murder, claiming that they were directed to do so by God? How can such people be gainsaid, when the Bible is full of records of people doing just that? The second problem with this message is that there is no concept of personal responsibility. Heaven awaits people simply for their faith. Actions are related neither to reward nor punishment.
Often, I've been told that the Bible proves itself through the mechanism of prophecy. The claim goes that only an omniscient God could cause his messengers to make predictions and then cause those predictions to come true. Speaking in the abstract, I'd have to agree that if a prediction of an event was made, and that event took place, it would give me pause. However, let's look at this concept in more detail. After all, we need to be as precise as we can be in this matter.
First off, what sort of predictions would be useful in this question of getting information about the future from God? I would think, first off, that we'd need a prediction of an unusual event. Jesus often predicted that in the future there would be wars, disease, impiety and natural disasters. Frankly, I'm not impressed by those. Any member of the Psychic Friends' Network could predict such things. They will happen as long as humans live in a natural world.
Second, I'd think a prediction would be most impressive if it were quite specific. The more specific, the more easily it can be verified when the predicted event comes along. This points to a big problem with Biblical prophecies - nearly all of them are so vague that preachers have been pointing to them from the day they first appeared in writing and saying that they have been fulfilled. Human languages are ambiguous enough when attempting to convey information, but when it is necessary to be accurate, an effort should be made to be as clear and distinct as possible. What we find in the Bible, however, is flowery language, often written in a manner so as to confuse the reader as much as possible. As a predictive tool, the Bible fails miserably on this point.
A third, most interesting requirement for a prediction would be to have been uttered before the event being predicted. You might think that this would necessarily go without saying. The problem is, however, that this actually is an issue for concern when taking about the prophecies of the Bible. For instance, in the book of John, Jesus is quoted as predicting the destruction of Jerusalem. Since most scholars agree that the book was written near the end of the first century of the common era, well after the actual seige and sacking of Jerusalem in 66 CE, this was an easy "prediction" to write about. There's no real way to tell if Jesus actually made the prediction, or if the writer of the book of John just made up the story of a prediction to make it look like Jesus had spoken a prophecy with the predictive power of God.
Another interesting aspect of the prophecy/fulfillment problem is the question of whether any who fulfill any of the predictions in the Bible are aware of those predictions. It is hardly surprising that there are people who want others to believe they are a god or messiah or whatever. It should not be much of a surprise to anyone, when such people find that predictions were made telling what such a person will do, that they set out to make sure those predictions are fulfilled. The same can be said often of Christians, who have been known to act in certain ways simply because they knew it would fulfill some prediction they thought was vital to "bringing God's plan to fruition."
This one is the part that makes me come close to giggling when I hear it. To any reasonable person, the Bible is obviously a book of myths and legends. Its significance as a record of history is about the same as other books of that place and time, rather like the Iliad. It weaves real history in with the mythos of the Jewish people, and there's no way to ascertain, just by using it alone, what is reliable history, as opposed to the wishful legends of the Jews. Let's look at only a couple of items under the heading of historical accuracy.
In the book of Exodus, we see that Moses, the great grandson of Levi (according to 1 Chronicles 3:1-3, by the way), became a high official of Egypt, then nearly destroyed the economy of Egypt at about the time of the reign of Ramses II. According to this "historical record," during the time Moses was demanding exit from Egypt of a nation of slaves (over half the total population of the land) all Egyptian livestock were killed, all vegetation was stripped from the land, and all humans and other animals that were "firstborn" were killed. After this, the half of the population of the land that had been slaves left, bearing a large portion of the gold and other riches of the land with them. If this were to happen to any nation in reality, the economic devastation would be more crippling than World War II was in Europe, and Egypt would quite likely have been carved apart by neighboring nations. Instead, we see no evidence of any such disturbance in this part of the history of Egypt, and the reign of the Pharaohs continued with no break during the time the Bible says Egypt was brought to its knees by God.
Later, there was the story, in the book of Matthew, of the slaughter of the innocents. According to the story, Herod, the ruler of Palestine under the Roman authorities, got wind of the birth of a "true king of the Jews." Eager to maintain his position of power, he wanted to make sure that this threatening baby was killed, and so ordered all babies and other children inder 2 years old in Bethlehem killed. The "gospel truth" presented by the writer is that Jesus was wisked away by miraculously-warned parents into Egypt (though walking to Jerusalem would have been sufficient, one would have thought), while the other parents in Bethlehem were left to fend for themselves against the soldiers who had their orders.
There are several problems with this supposed history. First, it is flatly contradicted by the only other "gospel truth" story of Jesus' birth in the Bible, Luke. There, we read that Jesus was circumcised on his 8th day, and his parents then went to their home in Nazareth. Looking farther afield, in histories written in the first and second centuries, we come across other silences concerning the massacre. Of particular note is the history of Josephus, a Jewish writer of the late first century, who wrote a huge work called "The Antiquities of the Jews." The reason this work is of interest here is that Josephus had a deep-seated hatred of Herod, and was most careful to document every evil deed ever done in his reign. Despite his ability to sniff out the smallest scandal concerning Herod, Josephus appeared to have no inkling that such an event as the slaughter of hundreds of babies and toddlers had taken place. Looking even further afield, we find that the stories surrounding the births of other religions' messiahs are strangely similar to the story in Matthew. In particular, we find the story of the birth of Krishna, the Hindu messiah, very striking. Born to a virgin, Krishna was immediately perceived to be a danger by the local king, who ordered the killing of all the children in the nation to be sure to kill the newborn god. This story was already hundreds of years old by the time of the first century, and it's pretty obvious that the writer of Matthew, instead of writing an actual historical account instead copied the story from the east and inserted Jewish characters in place of the Indian ones.
In talking with Christian recruiters, I often hear all about how wonderful their life is. They have to acknowledge that life isn't a bed of roses, and often claim (in their ignorance) that the Bible doesn't promise a perfect life. However, they do offer their own experience of reigious ecstacy as evidence for the truth of their beliefs. They do this apparently with little thought to logic. The problem with this claim is that every religion has exactly the same claim to "supernatural" feelings of well-being and ecstacy. What am I, as a religious outsider, to make of these claims of personal asurances from Christians that they alone have access to God when the only evidence available is that of "I feel him inside me"? The Buddhists experience exactly the same feeling (from what I can tell) when they enter their state of Zen. Voodoo practitioners, witch doctors of various descriptions, Native Americans and so on - all of these have "personal experiences" of being in contact with their own versions of the "supernatural." From where I stand (trying to evaluate the evidence objectively), it appears that the most likely explanation is that all of these experiences are purely natural, self-induced states of ecstacy. I often think it is probably something akin to orgasms, which might explain why some people are so addicted to the feeling.
Miracle stories, like personal experiences, are common to all religions. I prefer to think of miracles using the definition in my Oxford Dictionary: "(An) extraordinary event attributed to some supernatural agency." They can't really be useful in validating one religion over another. This might sound odd, because a miracle, by definition, would be incontrovertable proof for claims of the existence (at least) of something supernatural. Using this definition, however, I believe it can be shown that there is no evidence for any sort of miracles. So let's take a look at a couple of the rough classifications I like to use when thinking of the issue of miracles.
The Bible (among other ancient books) is full of stories involving miracles. There's the parting of the Red Sea (or, more literally, the Reed Sea), the feeding of the crowd with fishes and loaves by Elisha, the stopping of the sun at Joshua's request, and so on. While believers like to point to their Bible and say "Look at those miracles!" they never seem to realize that they are begging a rather large question. One must establish first that the Bible can be accepted as being literally true at all points before we can even begin to look into the question of whether the miracles contained therein constitute proof of God. Simply looking above at the section on the Bible's historical accuracy is enough to show that we are amply justified in discounting the veracity of any claim of a miracle in the Bible. One would need outside verification to even begin to find an acceptable miracle story. In my brief time of paying attention to this issue, I have only heard Christians referring to verification only by other Christian sources (hardly reliable or compelling, in my opinion) and through that peculiar agency known as "urban legend." This is particularly true of the "lost day" miracle of Joshua, where NASA is said to have discovered a missing day in its computations of orbital data for the planets - which is obvious rubbish to anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the astronomical issues involved. Beyond that, all miracle stories have only the Bible as evidence.
Similar difficulties arise when talking about modern-day miracles. Catholics appear to be just as fond of these stories as evangelicals, but the two groups go about presenting these to their believers in very different manners. Catholics are well aware that skepticism presents a valid barrier to acceptance for their claims of miracles. In order to allay these concerns, they make efforts to document these miracles. In my opinion, they make a pretty decent show of being objective, however it is only a show. Their evidence is always sequestered in the possession of the Catholic authorities, and external examination of their documentation is rarely granted. In one notable case where external examination was allowed, with the Shroud of Turin, the evidence was shown to be false.
Evangelical preachers, however, are far less interested in bothering with such niceties as presenting evidence. I recall in particular seeing a talk show where a former missionary was talking about his experiences in Eastern Europe. He told of a woman he met who had lost all the fingers of one hand. He said that he prayed over the hand, and in the morning, the woman return to him with 5 new fingers. Was he asked for evidence? No. Did he have a photo of the woman? No. Did he have even a thank-you note? No. All the audience got was the story from a minister, who they consdered to be unquestionably trustworthy. If anyone else had told such a preposterous story, those same people would have felt offended at the insult to their intelligence. Another such story leaps to my mind - that of another miracle in a place far from easy contact by Americans - Central America. According to this story, at a preaching meeting in a rather remote location, a woman brought to the preacher a baby. Accordering to the preacher, the poor unfortunate was badly deformed, almost a travesty of nature. The preacher claimed that he prayed over the baby, and while in his arms, the baby was miraculously transformed to a normal appearance. This man actually lamented that this took place after his film crew had shut down their operations for the day, and they weren't able to get the miracle on film! Once again, there were no photos, no evidence at all, except for this man's word, which was by far good enough for the other people on the show and in the audience. However it may be for believers, this sort of thing is not of interest to me or any other person interested in real evidence.
Pascal's Wager and Hell
Finally, we come to an oldie but a goldie, as they say. In the 17th century, the famous mathematician Blaise Pascal apparently did some dabbling in philosophy. In particular, he tried to approach the issue of religious faith with logic. The result was Pascal's Wager. His idea was to look at the two main issues - God's existence and human belief - as a matrix with four possible outcomes. God exists and humans believe, God exists and humans don't believe, God doesn't exist and humans believe, and finally, God doesn't exist and humans don't believe. Pascal concluded that based on this reasoning, the two outcomes in the case that God doesn't exist are the same, but in the case the God does exist, the outcomes - eternity in heaven or hell - are so drastically different that the most reasonable path to take is to believe in God and gamble that you'll end up in heaven.
To Pascal and those who are keen to believe, this sounds perfectly reasonable. However, it is a very poor example of logical thinking, and must be classified rather as wishful nonsense, despite the fame of the person who originated it. The problems with it fall under two main categories, both having to do with the underlying assumptions.
First, there is the assumption that if God exists, it must necessarily be the god of Christianity. This is logically not so, as every religion tells of a god or gods that created the world. Instantly, the 4-cell matrix expands to quite a few thousands of possibilities at the very least. Looked at logically, the wager has suddenly become a sucker's bet.
Second, Pascal, and all who push this tripe, make the assumption that following a religion is a harmless activity. This is far from the truth, in my opinion. Religions cause a drain on a person's money, time and emotions. While it is true that there are good points to the religious experience, I think they are outweighed by the harm it causes, particularly in the Christian religion, where people are taught to consider themselves unworthy, dirty, hopeless creatures while at the same time believing that they are the recipients of purely conditional love based only on their willingness to be submissive to the will of God (as explained by their priests).
As you can see, I have ample reason to treat any mention of Pascal's Wager with disdain. If it were more rare, it'd be rather amusing, but religious people use it far too often and take it far too seriously to be just a joke.
Moving on to one last subject, we come to Cristian recruiting through fear and self-loathing. Just like myself, every person I've ever met has done things they aren't proud of. These things range from stupid mistakes to crimes of varying degrees. In the Christian view, all of these actions are morally repugnant and make each person worthy of the eternal and therefore infinite punishment of hell. Of all the ridiculous, stupid and illogical things with which Christians try to convince people to believe, my opinion is that the concepts of sin and hell are the lowest and most despicable ploys ever dreamed up. The problem is exascerbated by the fact that most Christians think of perfectly harmless activities as being "sinful." These range not believing every point of the Apostles' Creed to the majority of possible thoughts concerning sex.
I realize that one reason Christians consider it good to think of everyone as being a sinner is because it brings everyone to a more even level. However, there's no reason to use universal loathing as a means to bring equality. I personally am able to see everyone as equally worthy of my respect and courtesy without having to resort to thinking they're all nasty, horrible creatures that would offend the very eyes of a mythical perfectionist being in the sky. It's about time, I think, that people grew up out of that horrible mindset.
So there you have it. I have endeavored to cover, in a little detail at least, the various ploys I have seen in the apparently never-ending work of Christians to recruit people for their religion. I have also done my best to show why I think each one is completely without merit from a logical, reasonable point of view.
Now, I must admit that there are plenty of people who join the various Christian sects out there. My opinion is that they join these things for purely emotional reasons, and that their decisions have no logic or reasoning behind them. Many Christians that I know would most likely disagree with this, but those who do are not aware of the nature of logic and reason. The more introspective and clear-minded believers I know are well aware of the unreasonable nature of their faith. They keep with their faith for their own emotional reasons, but at least they don't try to make pretensions about doing so for logical reasons.
