The Wisdom of the Prophet

A few months ago, I encountered a page of quotations at AllSpirit.co.uk when I did a Google search for song lyrics. Some of the quotations were by a man named Khalil Gibran, and I found them to be very insightful. I found others at Wikiquote. I enjoyed reading his thoughts very much, and found a book that he had written called The Prophet. I thought I would share some of my favorite thoughts of his.

From AllSpirit & Wikiquote:

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry,
the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness
which does not bow before children.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.

From The Prophet:

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; for love is sufficient unto love. When you love you should not say 'God is in my heart', but rather, 'I am in the heart of God." And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no desire but to fulfill itself.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again into your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgement wage war against your passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers all of your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas. For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing. And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily ressurection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I hope you enjoyed those. They are only a small selection of the beauty found in The Prophet. On a similar note, I found original recordings from another "prophet", albeit a secular one. The Council for Secular Humanism has available for download several recordings of Robert G. Ingersoll. These are original Edison recordings. As you can imagine, the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. "Creed" is the only one that I've been able to understand completely.

"For while I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself. And my creed is this. Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so. This creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life; long enough for this world. If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed. But this creed certainly will do for this life."

I believe Ingersoll is an older man at this point and is speaking slowly and deliberately into Edison's primitive recording machine, so this isn't a performance where "lightening glared around the words" as Mark Twain wrote about Ingersoll's speeches. Even still, I believe these recordings are worth listening to solely for the historical and sentimental value.

Reason and Emotion

"I will follow my logic, no matter where it goes, after it has consulted with my heart. If you ever come to a conclusion without calling the heart in, you will come to a bad conclusion."- Robert Ingersoll

Tonight, I watched a Star Trek episode titled “The Conscience of the King” from the original series, with text commentary by a man very much involved in the shape the Star Trek franchise took, Michael Okuda. I have been wanting for some time to write on a subject that keeps popping up in other writing that I do, and tonight I witnessed a scene that I thought might serve as an apt if somewhat geeky introduction. In this scene, Captain Kirk is faced with a difficult decision. He is in his quarters with his two best friends -- the dispassionate Mr. Spock and the passionate Dr. McCoy. In the running commentary, Okuda remarks that the scene is a classic example of the connection that exists between the three men. For Kirk, Spock is the dispassionate voice of reason -- and McCoy is voice of humanistic emotion. What made Kirk great, Okuda said, is that he relied on both, taking a balanced approach to things He used both logic and emotion to find the best solution to the problem.

In another episode, "The Galileo Seven", where the logical Mr. Spock is commanding six Starfleet officers who have crash-landed on a hostile planet. Spock’s decisions throughout the episode-- based solely on logic -- result in partial disaster for the people under his command, and he almost has something of a crisis of confidence. While a creature resembling Bigfoot bangs on the roof of their shelter, he remarks that “no one can be more than the sum of their parts”, somewhat in disbelief. Spock was wrong on this count; we are more than the sum of our parts. However, we are more than this because of the sum of our parts. Think of a car; if you assemble it the way it ought to be assembled and give it fuel and oil and so on, you have more than an admirable arrangement of metal; you have potential. You can go places -- more places than you could have gone without the car. I believe that we humans are wholly natural creatures; we are biochemical machines. But because of the sum of our parts, we have achieved a larger degree of sentience than have the rest of the animals. We have the potential to explore who we are; to define purpose for ourselves.

Defining purpose was the theme of the first Star Trek movie. It was about a sentient machine that comes to Earth, wanting to commune with its creator. As the plot of the movie unfolds, we find that the machine used to be one of the Voyager probes that was improved upon and made sentient. Having accomplished its mission of science, it sought more. Spock observes that the machine's mind functions on pure logic. V'Ger, as the machine cam to be called, sought deeper meaning to its life, but had no one to give it that meaning -- its creator was a team of long-dead NASA engineers. V’Ger was enabled to determine its own purpose by Kirk’s crew. The message of the movie is now obvious; reason and logic are not enough in giving our lives purpose. Our brains use emotion -- and so dependant on emotion are we that we need emotional fulfillment to feel satisfied.

Emotion and reason have even more use than establishing purpose; the two work to protect us. Both are necessary. Animals do not operate solely on instincts; some use reasoned strategies. I don’t know that much about defensive personal combat, but I have been told that even in fighting you must have both passion and discipline -- because your passion is most useful when it is disciplined. Emotion and reason also serve as guides. Emotions are like the wind to the sailor. A light breeze across the deck feels good, but no captain would allow strong winds to determine where his ship is to go. Reason gave us science to fashion sails to harness the wind, to somewhat subject it to working for us. Reason turned the winds of emotion into our ally. Later on, science gave us engines to progress despite the wind; to push through the wind when it would have caused them to lose their way.

Emotion and reason work hand in hand; each tempers the other. Neither should be neglected or promoted over the other. When one is neglected, the result is disaster. Fundamentalist, emotion-driven religions foster violence and suffering, and the calculated commitment to profit by corporations causes massive layoffs and distress. Horror movies and books feature both scenarios -- religion and science both running amok. The solution is balance. It’s a simple solution in theory but requires commitment to work in practice. I myself sometimes have trouble keeping emotion reined in, but take hope in the fact that I am getting better at it. I don’t think anyone can go wrong when they make their decisions on this balanced approach.

"Why should we desire the destruction of human passions? Take passions from human beings and what is left? The great object should be not to destroy passions, but to make them obedient to the intellect. To indulge passion to the utmost is one form of intemperance - to destroy passion is another. The reasonable gratification of passion under the domination of the intellect is true wisdom and perfect virtue." - Robert Ingersoll

Mr. Madison's Wall

I live in Alabama, the land of the “Ten Commandments” judge, so I’m familiar with the arguments posed by Christians who want the Ten Commandments in our courtrooms and schoolhouses. One of the arguments used is that the founders of this country were Christian men and that we should return to the Christian republic which they founded for us. Anyone who has looked into the issue cannot in good conscience hold to that argument, because it is obvious that the most significant of our founding fathers were not Christians -- and those that were certainly weren’t the type we see today. George Washington’s Christianity, for instance, was a far cry from George W. Bush’s. Some of the fathers were Deists, some Christians. Which ones can we say were significant in the formation of this nation? Well, I’d say the man called the Father of the Constitution would be counted as “significant”. That man is none other than James Madison, our fourth president. The reason I want to pay attention to him is because of a quotation I encountered years ago while listening to a song about bringing America “back” to God. Madison is alleged to have said “We have staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all of our hearts.” If this was true, then it would seem to support the argument of the Christian Dominionists. When I began looking for the source of this quotation, it became obvious that there was no source; no proof that he ever said it. In fact, the person first responsible for putting those words in Mr. Madison’s mouth has admitted that the quotation is fabricated, along with several other similar quotations. But could it be possible that Madison was the kind of man who would say such a thing? I decided to find out. First I wanted to see if Madison was at all a Christian, for obvious reasons -- a Christian would have said those things, but not a Deist. Then I would look into Madison’s stance on church/state separation. Did he think it was there to protect Christianity from the government, or was it there to protect the government from Christianity?

To begin, let’s tackle the notion that Madison was a Christian. Early in his life, he studied theology, thinking to become a minister, but left. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to American Presidents attributes this to his voice: apparently he wouldn’t have made much of a speaker. He attended an Episcopalian church -- St. John’s of Washington, starting a tradition that continues to the present day and gives that particular church the name of “The Church of the Presidents”. It should be noted that church attendance doesn’t indicate church adherence: many do so out of cultural obligation or to support family members who are believers. References to God in his public addresses are few in number. If Madison had thought of the United States as a Christian nation, you would think this would show in his State of the Union addresses -- but it doesn’t. The only mention of a god is in his closing remarks, where he thanks Providence for the continuing welfare of the young nation. Some of the State of the Union addresses are bereft of even this token acknowledgement. As pointed out by another blogger, these references are perfectly in line with Deism -- and that if Madison were a practicing Christian, references to the Christian god would be higher and more emphatic. What does this leave us with? The author of the Constitution may have been a Christian, but not one nearly as devoted to his faith as the Katherine Harrises and Ann Coulters would want him to be.

Now to addresses the issue of church/state separation. When I first began to read Madison’s’ writings (through Wikimedia), I was amazed: how could anyone mistake this man for someone in support of a government-endorsed version of Christianity? Some (like the one I will list below) are originally from Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, so allow me to explain the context. This was a document written in response to Patrick Henry (he of “Give me liberty or give me death” fame) wanting financial support from the State for people who were teaching Christianity. In it, Madison argues that religion is a personal matter, and the government should stay out of it for the good of everyone. He continued by asking who was to say what sect of Christianity would be taught above the others -- since some of the Christian faiths are radically opposed to one another. For a modern-day example of what this could lead to, you need only look at the conflict between Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Iraq and its neighbor, Shiite Iran. Both countries had Islam as the state religion, but each with a different sect, and the differences between the two led to war and still contribute to the proliferation of terrorism in the region. With that said, one of my favorite quotations from the article:


“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

You would be hard-pressed to find a sounder condemnation upon Christianity as a state religion. Madison’s attitude in writing this would not prove to be unusual for him. The Memorial was written in 1785. In 1811, Madison (now President), stayed in character by vetoing a bill that would have allowed Congress to give money to a church to help the poor. It seems he had the impression that if the churches got their foot in the door, they wouldn’t stop there. Madison as president vetoed three bills that he felt violated the Establishment clause. These instances show a consistent pattern of behavior, one that we can trust enough to draw conclusions from -- and the obvious conclusion is that Madison in no way supported Christianity as a state religion in the United States. He was firmly committed to his friend Jefferson’s “wall of separation”.

So to end: would Madison have said those words? There is little if any support for the idea that he would have. The quote itself is an admitted fraud. But even if the quote was not known to be a lie -- if we were still wondering about its validity -- I think that those questions would be laid to rest through the knowledge of his character. In the end, Madison’s religion was his own. Whatever his creed, he did not make it part of his political platform. Whatever his religious notions, he stayed true to the idea of fairness through secularism -- and set an example that contemporary politicians would do well by following.

“Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered." (James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments)

The Not-Quite-So Emancipating Proclamation

Or in the words of its author..."Nego Equality? Fudge!"


In the fall of 1862, Robert E. Lee would do something he would regret; he moved his army into Maryland, hoping to find recruits and supplies. Unfortunately for Lee, a copy of his plans for troop deployments had been discovered by Union soldiers. General McClellan, then over the Union Army, moved to intercept, and the result was the Battle of Antietam. The date of that conflict, September 17th of that year, became the bloodiest day of the war. Despite all of the bloodshed, the battle did not result in a military defeat or victory for either side. Lee was able to cope with the Union Army’s attacks, and when he decided it was time to leave the border state of Maryland, the Union Army let the rebel army go. But because the “incursion” into Union territory had been “repulsed”, Antietam could be seen as something of a Union victory. And this was what Abraham Lincoln was waiting for.

He had written up a document called the “Emancipation Proclamation”, and he wanted to issue it once the Union had won a victory. He had been waiting a while, but now was the time. On January 1st, 1863, the main part of the Proclamation was issued. Some people today say Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves with this document, and that was some warrior in God’s army, righting the wrongs of his day. The purpose of this writing is to dispel that myth. First, let’s begin with the notion that the Christian God cared about slaves enough to move on Abraham Lincoln to start a war over them.

The founding fathers of this country, for the most part, were products of the Enlightenment. They lived before the time of Darwin, and so had to believe in something in the way of a creator to explain the origins of life. But despite all of the Christian hubbub and rhetoric, the most significant of our founding fathers were Deists. They believed in sort of a divine engineer, who made the world and then took a step back to watch what happened. Look at the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” For the purpose of this writing, I only need to focus on the “liberty” section of Jefferson’s words. The biblical God has no issues with slavery. God authorized the taking of slaves (especially virgins) and the purchasing of slaves. (Leviticus 25:44-46, Judges 21:10-24) There were also laws regulating slavery. For example, he recommended that the Hebrews not beat slaves so hard that they die right off; just beat them enough so that they know who’s boss. (Exodus 21:20-21) Kind of like Hell -- no death, just an endless (fiery) beating. Now, these were supposed to be God’s chosen people, his holy people -- exemplars of righteousness on the earth. Shouldn’t they be above slavery? The Aztecs had slavery, but they went about it in a much more just way. People became slaves through war or debt, but it was never permanent -- and this is from a society who sacrificed over 20,000 humans a year. The Bible verse that says slaves should be set free after six years specifies Hebrew slaves. "Liberty" isn't treated much better in the New Testament. After Jesus says everything in the Old Testament is permanent (Luke 16:17), Paul tells slaves to obey their masters just like they were obeying Jesus (Ephesians 6:5). The only liberty mentioned is freedom from sin; hardly relevant to physical slavery.

Clearly, the Biblical God doesn’t mind slavery. Throw that concept out of the window. Thomas Jefferson did not have Jehovah in mind when he was penning the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson and his peers had been influenced by people like John Locke, who said that no one had the right to infringe on another’s life, health, liberty, or possessions. These are not Biblical values -- they are human values, fostered by the humanism of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Were those values present in Abraham Lincoln? Was he the champion of human rights as we suppose, and did he write and issue this document to make America a more Christian nation? Since the man is dead, we can only look at his words and his recorded actions. Let’s ask him.

“You enquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think [...] that I am an abolitionist. When I was at Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times [...]. I now do more than oppose the extension of slavery. Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.'"

Clearly, Lincoln was uneasy with slavery. He opposed the expansion of the slave trade, and he may have possibly wanted to do something about it. His views were not uncommon. Many people during that time, especially in the north, saw slavery as evil, albeit necessary. It was in the Bible, after all, and one could hardly picture the cotton industry in the south without slaves. Lincoln said those words in 1855. In 1858, he is a politician, debating with Stephen Douglas. What are Lincoln's thoughts about slavery now, three years later?

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

Lincoln repeated this sentiment in his fourth debate, and in his presidential inaugural address. Here is the sentiment present in his fourth debate with Douglas.

“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. ... And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.“

It sounds as if his feelings on the subject aren't so clear. But let’s not condemn the man. He was, after all, the product of his times. The John Browns of that time were scarce. But if Lincoln stated he had no intention of helping the plight of the slaves, why did he? Again, we go to the man’s words.

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

He wrote those words in a letter a month before the first part of the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in late September. President Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union. It is fortunate for the slaves that the nations of Europe were a bit hesitant to step in and help the C.S.A. While they weren’t fond of the fledgling United States (we had been in wars with both Britain and France by this time), the whole slavery thing was…well, messy. England had banned it. It would seem rather preposterous of them to defend American men’s right to have slaves when English men couldn’t. But until January 1st, 1863, a case could be made that this war was about the states’ rights. For the English, that reason would work as an excuse to make sure the United States didn’t grow excessively powerful. But when Lincoln declared “All persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…” he made the war a moral issue. It wasn’t “kind of about” slavery, it became Christian Lincoln’s crusade against injustice. The hope of Richmond, that Europe would come to the South’s aid, became futile at this point. This is why I feel the South began its slide toward defeat on the muddy banks of Antietam Creek.

So far I have made a case against two points -- the first being that God would move anyone to fight against slavery, the second being that Lincoln even fighting against slavery in the first place. My third point is that the Emancipation Proclamation did not magically free the slaves. Look at the quoted text above. Lincoln specified that slaves in the rebelling states were free. The ones in the north or in the border states -- were still slaves. And now look at the second part.

“…and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”

What does this mean? It means that only the slaves in rebelling areas where the Union Army had established a prescence were free. The slaves in the Confederate states that the Union troops didn’t get to until the tail end of the war still had two and a half more years of involuntary servitude -- their former masters certainly weren't going to volunteer the information. What freed the slaves forever in America was the 13th Amendment. The Emancipation Proclamation was a proclamation of politics, not emancipation.

The purpose of this writing was to dispel the myth that the Civil War was a Christian crusade against the evil slaveholders of the south, not to defame the legacy of President Lincoln. Humans are fallible creatures; all of us fail, and this includes our leaders. Every one of America’s presidents has made his own separate mistakes, and every one of them in the future will make his or her own. The founding fathers, who we almost revere, were flawed in many ways. My own favorite presidents -- men like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gerald R. Ford -- had their flaws. Our contemporary presidents certainly have their flaws. The Americans of 1861 to 1865 had a president with flaws, but one who left a legacy. Lincoln may not have started the war with the intention of freeing the men, women, and children in bondage, but when the war had ended and Reconstruction began, they were free. For this we must thank President Lincoln, the soldiers, and the men who composed the Congress at that time. We must thank them, but never put them on a pedestal.

Gerald R. Ford: In Memorial

"I was America's first instant Vice President, and now America's first instant President. The Marine Corps band is so confused, they don't know whether to play 'Hail to the Chief' or 'You've Come a Long Way, Baby'." - Gerald R. Ford

In early December, I started working on a biographical article on Ford, to be posted here when he passed away, but never finished it, thinking that I wouldn't be needing it so soon. Now it's too late for that. If you want to read a biographical article on President Ford, plenty abound now. I wanted to post something, though, to express my sadness at his passing and my gratitude for his leadership during a troubled time in our history.

“The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every president under the Constitution. But I assume the presidency under extraordinary circumstances, never before experienced by Americans.” So began President Gerald R. Ford’s presidency, with a “little straight talk among friends”. I have been a fan of President Ford for a number of years, ever since I downloaded his inaugral address from American Rhetoric. I was struck by the sincerity of his emotions, and the candor of his words. Soon thereafter I read his autobiography, A Time to Heal, and came away feeling personally connected to him. He became my favorite president other than FDR. To me, Ford wasn't representative of most politicians; he was a cut above them. He never aspired to be President -- his highest ambition was Speaker of the House. Before Spiro Agnew resigned, Ford was almost unknown to the American populace. I have read that Nixon, ever the politician, sought to take advantage of Ford's lack of celebrity -- that Nixon felt that the Congress would not risk a political unknown becoming president, and thus would be dissuaded from impeaching Nixon. Fortunately for America, Nixon was in error on that point. Ford took office and restored the White House, putting us on the road to recovery.

Reason and Purpose

A few days ago I suddenly realized something: there is a distinction between reason and purpose. Earlier in the day, I had been browsing the forums of the Richard Dawkins foundation, and in one of the threads there, people were sharing their favorite atheistic one-liners. This was a humorous thread, not intended to start any real discussion. But one user’s one-liner -- “Everything has a reason” -- did stir up some discussion. People wanted to know why he thought this was an atheistic statement, and the moment, I too was wondering. I realized the distinction, many hours later.

The distinction can be seen in the example of the Christian bestseller, The Purpose-Driven Life, and the nonbeliever’s answer to it, The Reason-Driven Life. Of course, “reason” in the latter example refers to logic, rational thinking, but the two meanings are similar. Let me use two examples to show the distinction between reason and purpose and how they can be blurred. In our first example, a young engaged couple is picnicking on a hilly area, and near them is a cliff. The cliff is a sheer drop into a dry creek bed, and it is obvious that a fall from such a height would be deadly. After the lunch is concluded, the young woman goes to the edge of the cliff to admire the view. She is standing too close to the edge, but excited by the danger, and perhaps teases her fiancé when he asks her to step back. Suddenly a gust of wind arises, catches her off-guard and makes her lose her balance. So close is she to the edge of the precipice that it throws her off, and she plummets downward.

She dies. The young man, stricken, quickly rushes to where his beloved once stood. He kneels down on the ground and crawls to the edge of the cliff, and looks down to see her dead. He is overwhelmed by sorrow and a sense of loss. He sits up, collects his thoughts, and dwells on what has just happened. He comes to a decision. He stands up, goes to the edge of the cliff, closes his eyes, whispers something, and then jumps off. He dies. This is the first example. The young man fell on purpose; he intended to jump off, which he did, and he intended to die, which he did. The young woman fell by accident, with no purpose to it. There was a reason to her fall -- she was too close to the edge, was out of touch with the dangers inherent in her environment, and when the wind blew she fell victim to her own carelessness and the forces of nature. Here we see reason, but no purpose. As you can see, there is a distinctive line between the two concepts -- but it is one that can be blurred.

Second example: A middle-aged man who is severly overweight is stopped by two Christian fundamentalists passing out tracts. He isn't interested, but they won't leave him alone. They begin to argue, their voices rising. The man, as if to prove a point to the fundamentalist, starts screaming profanities at the sky, mocking God. He screams and waves his arms wildly before suffering a heart attack and dying.The two fundamentalists see it as an Act of God. There was divine Purpose to this man’s death, to punish the mortal who dared to rise up against his creator. But was there, really? Could it not be that this man’s heart, aged and dealing with an unhealthy amount of weight and emotional stress, could not bear the strain the man was forcing on it, and malfunctioned? Of course. But to the believer, there could be both Purpose and Reason in this set of events -- and that God accomplished his Purpose through a reason. This is why “There is a reason to everything” can be seen as an atheistic statement.

The person who posted that saw the world through a naturalist’s eyes, a world where everything had a reason, but not a divine purpose. A believer who says the man in the second example caused his own demise is actually right -- he did, by neglecting his health and getting overly worked up about religion being pushed on him. The believer, however, says that reason isn’t the end of the story -- the man caused God to strike him down. But the line is too blurred to convince a nonbeliever. Even being struck by lightening wouldn’t convince most people. The man would’ve had to have broken out with leprosy or vanish into a hole in the ground that suddenly appeared -- things that God has done in the past, and since God never changes he should be willing to do again -- to convince someone who thinks there is no divine purpose behind anything that there is.

This is why I have always held that religion and science are two horns on the same bull, the bull of curiosity. As the stone age humans observed their world, they wanted to know -- why? This is most easily seen in Greek and Egyptian mythology. In Ancient Greece, every aspect of nature -- the rising sun, the tumultuous seas, the ferocity of lightening -- has a god to explain it. Helios causes the sun to rise and set, Poseidon controls the seas, and Zeus uses lightening to cause the mortals to respect him and to punish them if they don’t. My personal favorite is the tale of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades, which explains the seasons. It’s a fun read. Egyptian mythology is the same -- it centers around the life-giving artery of Egypt, the Nile River. To the religious mind, things happen on earth because the gods purposed for them to do so. But as humanity grew in knowledge, and we learned that weather is caused by the Sun heating parts of the earth unequally because of the earth’s tilt, and we learned that the tide is caused by gravity, and we learned that we have seasons again because of the earth’s tilt, the gods were needed to explain less and less. Everything had a logical cause, a reason. This is why Fredrick Nietzsche declared that God was dead -- not out of arrogance, but as someone commenting on the knowledge of society at that time. But everyone has some bias, and this is why the distinction is blurred. Different people draw the line in different places. Theistic people may admit that events, actions, and so forth have a natural reason, but they say the reason is wrapped up in divine purpose. Nontheists say there is always a reason, but not always a purpose. Where a particular raindrop falls has a reason -- physics and probability determine it. But there is no God to will a raindrop to fall in a particular spot on the beach.

Another example is the idea of luck, which stems from probability. I grew up in a church where you were frowned on for saying “Good luck” or “That was lucky”. You instead were supposed to say “God bless you!” or “Wow, you are so blessed.” I was never taken with this concept, and didn’t practice it. But when anyone says “Lady Luck smiled on you!”, they don’t actually think there’s some supernatural woman out there who purposely manipulates probability so that one man walks away a winner and the other loses everything. They just mean “You benefited from probability today!”.

That simple statement -- “everything has a reason” -- also is the basis of the free will/predestination argument. When I was a fundamentalist, I had the viewpoint that we determine what we do, although God knows the end result. Some people think things are predestined -- pre-purposed - and God has decided in advance who will join him in Heaven and who will be thrown into Hell, although everyone who believes in predestination happens to believe they’re predestined for Heaven. I’m also unsure as to how they justify God sending people off to Hell arbitrarily, although I can’t justify God sending people to hell, period. Personally, the argument behind free will has never really interested me; I fail to see the relevance. But I do know now what the underlying cause of this argument is -- this blurring of the line between reason and purpose.

In the end, all of these arguments boil down to reason and purpose, even the most basic question of all, that of origins. Some people believe there is some divine purpose to life -- they want to think they were personally fashioned for a purpose. Not only do they liked to think they were made for a purpose, they like to think everything happens for them for a purpose. It makes “bad’ things more tolerable. Stopped at a red-light? God arranged things so that it would stop you, so that you wouldn’t get in a wreck a little on down the road. Family member dies in their youth? God killed them off so you could remember the hope you have in Him, the hope of resurrection.. Religious extremism threatening World War III? Armageddon. But their faith in purpose is undermined when things happen, the purpose of which escapes them, like the immutable suffering in underdeveloped parts of the world that is not eased by death, because those people happen to believe in their tribal faiths, or because Catholic missionaries got there before the Protestant ones did. They wonder “Why?” and if they ask the question long enough, their belief in a purpose-filled life may be thrown into doubt. But for those of us who do not believe in divine purpose because there is no divine being to give purpose, the world is seen only through reason. The stop-light turned red because it’s on a timer. The family member died because someone was driving too fast and not paying attention. If there was a wreck on down the road, or if you do feel you have hope, this is coincidental and/or irrelevant.

And here the purpose-believing theist will say that nontheists should all be morose and disheartened because there is no purpose we’re here, other than a particular sperm found its way to a particular egg . But I am not morose, and I am not disheartened. I have established purpose in my life, as do most people, whether they believe in a god or gods or not. Some people pin their life’s orbit around devotion to family, some to religion, some to material gain. Personally, I can conceive of no purpose greater than to devote my life toward building up humanity, working for a better tomorrow.

Here I reach this writing’s conclusion, and to end I will repeat my points. I agree with the user who said everything has a reason, and I add to it by saying “…if not a purpose.”. I believe the line between reason and purpose is blurred, and different people make the distinction differently. I believe the distinction between reason and purpose is the base of a lot of philosophical and theological arguments -- from ideas on origin to the idea of free will. And finally, I believe everyone makes their own purpose, inside or outside belief in gods.

If This Be Treason...(II)

...make the most of it. This essay deals with my departure from Oneness Pentecostalism.

Why I Left and Whither I Went

So how did I come to reject Pentecostalism? One of my favorite pastimes is reading deconversion stories. I find that most people leave religion for one of two reasons: either their faith leaves them wanting emotionally, or it leaves them wanting intellectually. My case was emotional unfulfillment. When I began posting on the Ex-Pentecostal forums in January of 2006, I still believed Pentecostalism was truth. By that point, however, my faith was dead. I knew God was impotent in my life. I was calloused to the threat of Hell -- I didn’t give a damn about being damned. I was utterly discouraged and bone-weary. But what brought me to that, and why didn’t I just adopt a more liberal form of Christianity rather than rejecting it altogether?

I was raised in the Pentecostal church from the time I was a baby. I was named after Biblical characters, and I was “dedicated” to God as a baby by my parents. The church was life. All of my friends were there. People cared about me there. It was home. As a child, I wanted to follow Acts 2:38; I wanted to be saved. I wanted God to make me into a better person. It took me a while to get around to doing it, as I was shy and didn’t want to go down front and be surrounded by yelling people, but eventually I did get saved. I did so in an upstairs room, with my father. I was exuberant; so happy that I had done the right thing, followed the rules, and no longer had to worry about going to Hell or missing the Rapture.

Being a child, though, I didn’t know how to maintain my newfound “relationship”. As I went from being a preteen to a teenager, I knew I had to “get right with God” and “pray through”. I did so at a revival with a man named Steve Grimsley -- the white male version of Miss Cleo. He dressed like an undertaker, looked like a corpse, and had a deep, booming voice. His "gift" was prophecy. His parlor tricks are laughable to me now, but being a superstitious kid, they terrified me. When he approached me, I was clutching the backs of the pews and weeping profusely, scared to death and knowing that this was it: God was going to get me. It was scary, but when Grimsley motioned for me to come out, I did. He prayed for me twice, both times telling me I had received God’s spirit. I told him I didn’t hear myself the first time, so anxious was I to be sure. That night, I became a Christian.

Unlike my preteen experience, this go-around was “real”. I started stepping outside of my comfort zone and raising my hands. I sang loudly and did “victory marches” around the church during hyperemotional worship services. I prayed all of the time and read my Bible; I went to the rallies and the conferences. I became a Young-Earth-Creationist by watching Kent Hovind’s tapes. I was at my fundamentalist peak in tenth and eleventh grade…but all was not well. September 11th happened when I was in eleventh grade. My first instinct was to pray, and I did: this was the Beginning of the End, I knew. But I was terrified, as I closed my eyes in English class. What if the Rapture had preceded this and I missed it? I was never quite sure that I was going; I had been worried about that all of my life and old habits died hard. That wasn’t the only problem: I couldn’t get excited about Heaven. The general idea, yes -- meeting Jesus and my namesakes would be fun. But my idea of heaven was a park with grass and lush trees and a sparkling lake -- not streets of gold and gates of pearls. Those things didn’t appeal to me. The Rapture, even though I wanted to go, didn’t excite me either. I didn’t want to leave Earth: I liked it here. I wanted to graduate high school, marry, and raise a family. Even at the height of my fundamentalism, I longed for heaven on Earth -- I wanted to see the earth peaceful, healthy, and united in love.

There was another problem: a huge one, one so insurmountable that my only way to deal with it was to ignore it. The problem was that I had never had an intense emotional encounter with God -- not the life-altering kind people spoke of. What was so basic that even the lowliest sinner could do it -- feeling God -- was alien to me. I’ve never felt a supernatural presence the way other people claim to. I recognize why now, but back then it scared me. I thought I had somehow blasphemed the Holy Ghost. Evangelists coming directly to me encouraged me into thinking that God hadn’t forgotten about me, but those emotional experiences always evaporated. I didn’t want to be like Esau or Saul: I was scared of the possibility that I had somehow pushed God so far that he had shut me off from his grace forever.

This was not a momentary crisis of faith; these feelings were in me for years. I hid from them, covered them up with wishful thinking, pretended that they were not there. They started getting to me, though. I stopped wanting to go to rallies and conferences because they reminded me of what I wasn’t: God was directing the lives of those people, working on their behalf and allowing them to serve him. I felt estranged from God, even abandoned sometimes. In late 2004, I could no longer hide from my doubts. I realized that I couldn’t be saved; not without that emotional encounter.

2005 was a rough year for me. My hope in God waned slowly, painfully. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was going to Hell. I realized I deceived myself back during that revival with Grimsley and THAT was why God would have nothing to do with me now. I sympathized with Isaiah, who cried “Woe is me! For I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and […] mine eyes have seen the King.” I felt cursed: cursed because I had been raised in this, and had somehow failed despite the advantages “God” had given me. I felt my life was futile and worthless -- that I was going to be forever lost. I felt like spiritual jetsam. It didn’t help that I was utterly alone in this: I had told no one what I was going through.

By the time November of 2005 rolled around, I was done with religion. God had failed me and I him. He was ignoring me, and I was ignoring him. I left services (I wasn’t going out of choice) depressed and angry. I was angry at myself for the failure I was unaware of. I was angry at God for allowing me to be born into this hellbound life; angry at him for ignoring me. I felt like the character of Luke in Cool Hand Luke, speaking to God: “Ol' timer, let me know You're up there. Come on. Love me, hate me, kill me, anything. Just let me know it…” Eventually, like Luke, I concluded: “...I'm just standin' in the rain talkin' to myself." In January, I signed up at the Ex-Pentecostal forums to see what they were like. I told my story and started on a journey that has had a profoundly positive impact on my life.

At the Ex-Pentecostal forum, I discovered freethought. I learned to rely on reason and empathy to live life -- not an old book. I went back to my roots -- a love of education and a love for humanity -- and flourished as I never had before. I no longer believe in the god of my parents, nor do I believe in anything supernatural. Neither of them pass the test of reason. I worship at only one altar; the altar of love. Love for truth and humanity drive me these days. No religion, belief system, or god can compete with the power of a free mind and an open heart.

If This Be Treason....

...make the most of it.

From Whence I Came: Pentecostalism



The subject line is how I began my deconversion process from fundamentalist Christianity -- it was the title of my introduction post at the Ex-Pentecostal.org forums, As my starting point for this blog, I would like to tell the story of my departure from Christianity. I was raised in a different Christianity than are most people, and to better explain my deconversion, an explanation of what I deconverted from is in order. My parents converted to Pentecostalism when they started their family. The church they began attending was started by the Home Missions department of the United Pentecostal Church International. While its theological differences with mainline Christianity and even Pentecostalism are numerous, the defining difference between the UPCI and other Christian organizations is its denial of the Trinity.

The UPCI is a fundamentalist organization, holding to the idea that the Christian Bible is The Word of God and is automatically inerrant. Anything that disagrees with the Bible is automatically wrong -- including philosophies and ideas arrived at through the use of reason. Humanity literally fell from grace through Adam’s sin, and throughout our history God has attempted to reach us through various dispensations. For whatever reason, after God flooded the entire world, he chose Abraham and his kin to be his Chosen People. To protect the Hebrews from their sinful nature, God made a covenant with Moses and established the Law. The Hebrews’ history is a history of transgression and repentance. After hundreds of years, God gives up on the Hebrews temporarily. After a few blank pages in the Bible are turned, we come to the New Testament. This is where Pentecostalism begins to depart from mainstream Christianity. God overcomes Mary, wraps part of himself in flesh, and dwells among men for 33.5 years. His name is Jesus, of course, and after healing people and annoying the hell out of the Pharisees, he is executed by the Romans, only to come back to life a couple of days later. (Where people get “three” days I don’t know: Jesus wasn’t killed until Friday afternoon, and he was resurrected Sunday morning. That’s barely two days, put together: Friday afternoon & evening, Saturday, and Sunday morning.)

Jesus hangs around earth for 40 days, then catches a celestial tow to Heaven from the Mount of Olives. Here is where mainstream Christianity stops: people “accept Jesus into their hearts”, pray the sinner’s prayer, and do their best to live like good people from then on. Pentecostalism is just getting started. Before zipping off to Heaven, Jesus tells his followers to tarry in Jerusalem until they’re endued with power from on high. “About” 120 of them do, and they meet in the Upper Room. There they await the promise and seek God. God fills all of them with the Holy Ghost, and they speak in tongues. Peter goes outside and establishes the Pentecostal Plan of Salvation:

“Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” If you, the reader, have not done this then you are damned to Hell. Pentecostalism is rather exclusive. Repentance is pretty obvious: the convert recognizes that they are a sinner, says they are sorry, asks for forgiveness, and promises to live godly with God’s help. I should add that God has to CALL you to repentance: you can’t just repent on your own accord. After this comes baptism. The convert is dunked into a tub of water in Jesus’ name (titles do not suffice), putting their sins “under the blood”. When they come up out of the water, ideally they should be speaking in tongues. This means that God has filled them with his spirit, which they call the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is the coup de grace in killing the flesh. Without it, no one can enter Heaven. This process is supposed to mirror Jesus’ own experiences. As he died in the flesh, the convert dies to his fleshly nature by repenting. As Jesus was buried (well, stuck in a cave), the convert is “buried” under water. As Jesus rose from the dead, the convert is “born again” . This is salvation -- but it doesn’t end there. I’ve never met a “once-saved, always-saved” Pentecostal. Now that the convert is a saint, he or she must maintain their salvation -- lest they lose it.

Maintaining salvation means following all of the rules. Go to church as often as you can, give tithes and offering, and witness to people. Pray nightly. Pentecostals don’t just witness to the atheists and the Buddhists: they witness to the Methodists and Calvinists, too. Unless a Christian has “spoken in tongues” to prove they have God living inside of them, they are not saved. If “Hell is other people”, Heaven will be Heaven by virtue of the lack of people. Time and time again, I’m told that the Holy Ghost is a gentleman. God “doesn’t force himself” on you. Like a gentleman, God is very selective about whom he associates with, holding those who are in his good graces to a certain standard. So it is with Pentecostals.

Pentecostals are commanded to “be ye separate”. Having the Holy Ghost inside of someone means that they should embody holiness. They are to live holy and dress holy. Dressing holy means adhering to a dress code, or “standard”. Much of this is codified, but some is left to the local pastor’s discretion. Some examples of each: all women are expected to wear dresses and leave their hair uncut. However, wearing jewelry or having facial hair is up to the pastor’s discretion. “Standards” don’t apply to the convert’s body: they apply to the convert’s life, as they are to be holy. Apostolics (as they call themselves, and so I will call them so not to confuse them with other Pentecostals/charismatics) are to be careful about who they associate with and where they go. Some of these prohibitive standards (like banning movie-going) are Apostolic traditions, respected in nearly every church. Other standards are again left up to the pastor’s discretion and “personal convictions” (like going to bowling allies and ball games). The major prohibitive standard in my life was a ban on television sets.

Pentecostals (Apostolic or otherwise) have two practices that may be unfamiliar to the mainstream Christian. The first is their very active praise and worship services. First to explain what praise and worship mean to the Apostolic. They are expected of the saint. Praise is essentially thanking God for his blessings: Apostolics thank God for healing their headache, waking them up in the morning, and giving them a safe trip to church. This is like burning incense in the old testament: it gets God’s attention. Worship is revering God for who he is: telling him how wonderful he is, how mighty he is, how holy he is. This is where the saint “entertains the spirit of God” once he’s come down and “moves”. To the objective mind, it seems humorously absurd that the all-that-is would need or want worship. I think that the reason these practices are required is because they serve to remind the Apostolic about how much they depend on the God, and by extension the church. These practices remind the active saint that they are not mighty or holy; that they are worthless, deserving of nothing better than eternal hellfire if not for God’s grace. These practices are not passive practices; as I’ve said they’re very active. Praise and worship involve at the very least singing/speaking aloud and lifting the hands. Pentecostals are known as the “Holy-Rollers”. This is not an exaggeration: they really do roll on the floors. They scream, buck, dance, and jump. They stagger into walls, potted plants, and slow people. Overwhelmed by emotion, people often collapse onto the floor. At the end of a “good” service, the pews are out of line from people backing into them. There may be scattered hair accessories (from the ladies) on the floor. There are often people sitting by themselves, weeping. Don't be suprised if the preacher removes his coat, tie, and shirt in the process of a sermon. I have witnessed preachers throwing potted plants at the audience. An Apostolic/Pentecostal service is not a place for someone who is offended by excessive emotionalism. There is no part of an Pentecostal service free from noise.

The second practice is that of faith healing. Apostolics believe they are filled with God’s spirit, and have the power to raise the dead, heal the sick, and so on. Corporate prayer for needs always features in the Apostolic worship service, and is usually one of the lengthier portions. Saints come to the front and the pastor, his hands wet with olive oil, touches their forehead and prays for them. There is nothing too trivial to pray over. Another practice is that of “prayer cloths”; small bits of clothing are anointed with the oil and then taken to whoever needs a blessing. Another belief is that sometimes God speaks directly to the congregation through tongues. First someone speaks loudly in tongues, then God gives the tongues.

Considering the inherent difficulties in obtaining and maintaining Apostolic salvation; get the feeling that there aren’t going to be too terribly many people in Heaven? Hell, on the other hand, will be filled to the brim with people who cured polio, fought the Nazis, and made life on Earth better for those who came after them. The Left Behind books would have played out quite differently using the Apostolic method of salvation. Can you imagine someone standing in an execution line realizing that they were wrong and asking the Antichrist for a large tub of water and a preacher? I have always liked comparing Apostolic salvation to the idea of having a coat-and-tie rule at a homeless shelter.

For a number of reasons, the Pentecostal church is very intrusive. The isolation from general society forces Apostolics to depend on their local church for everything. The power given the pastor over the affairs of saints’ lives and the absolute obedience they are commanded to give him makes the pastor a very powerful figure, sometimes resulting in a cult of personality. His opinionated commandments, supposedly given to him by God, override personal opinion and reason. If he is wrong, the pastor says, then God will judge him. The saints are rewarded for obedience -- not questioning. (This lends itself well to corruption and abuse of power, as you can imagine.) Church dominates life: it IS life for the Apostolic, saved or otherwise. Everything is fixed around the idea of church. Every gift you have is god-given, and God expects you to use it for his purpose. The preachers say that we are slaves to either Satan or Jesus, and choosing between the two of them is our purpose in this mortal life. We were told that our bodies and lives were not our own -- that they had been bought with a price, despite having never been up for sale by us.

I don’t know if it’s possible to express how intrusive religion was. Oneness Pentecostalism is a very demanding faith, so taxing on time and energy that if it were pursued you would hardly have time for any other endeavors. But because they salvation is so fragile a gift, they don’t mind the sacrifices. They truly don’t want to go to movies; why risk losing salvation considering the consequences? God may not call you back to repent, and if you can’t repent of your sin you’ll burn in Hell forever. If, however, you obeyed all of the rules and believed in God with everything you had, you could make it. You could enjoy spending hours at church dancing and listening to a preacher scream at you, followed by supper at Shoney’s. It is possible to find hope and purpose in this system -- and for the rare few that do, they know it’s the Only Way.

What, though, of the people who cannot find hope and purpose? What if they never feel drawn to repentance? What happens when they are forced to obey all of the rules and receive no rewards? What happens if the Only Way doesn’t work? Then religion became nothing but a burden, and the God of heaven an ever-present, nagging bully. The threats of Hell and the Rapture haunt everything, taxing the unsaved person’s ability to enjoy anything. How was it that I, raised in this system from the time I was a baby, walked away from it? How was I able to overcome the brainwashing (to be frank) and question boldly even the existence of a God, as Thomas Jefferson recommended? Read on.