The Most Popular Stories of All Time: Religion

Why I think we can do better

You will notice, by the title of this post, that I wasn’t kidding in my last one when I said I wanted to get into the issues. I promise I do this with a heart full of respect, but I know no matter how I say some of these things, these thoughts will be disliked by a great many. If I didn’t think this was important, I wouldn’t bother. I hope you will continue to read.

As a storyteller, and someone who is generally interested in the stories told by the human race, I am endlessly intrigued by religion. If you are religious, think for a moment about all the various other religions you do not believe in. I assume you view those other religions’ stories as human-created myth, right? Or something similarly untrue? Well, instead of choosing any one religion to apply an exception to, I choose to believe that statement is true of them all. It makes the most sense to me. As I wrote in my essay on creative inspiration:

“On the issue of spirituality at large, I have become decidedly agnostic. I think it is likely impossible for us to ever really know what, if anything, is out there. In fact, I would say the only way to be entirely certain that someone’s theory regarding the spiritual is false is if they offer it to you while claiming to be entirely certain that it is the truth.”

With that assumption though, I am in awe of religious scripture. From my perspective, these are fictional stories that have managed to drastically affect the course of history and continue to do so today. Anything that powerful is certainly worth a great deal of attention and study.

I had already been intending to write an essay on this topic for weeks now, but what you now read is going to be so much more interesting than I first intended because recently I have had the privilege to engage in a civil debate on the topic with

Von

, a fellow fiction writer here on Substack. Before going further, I want to share that conversation with you. It began because he published this essay (linked) on the invalidity of gay marriage and he encouraged well-reasoned critical comments, so I obliged.

We went on to have a written debate which I have copied in full at the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GF-kgDep-ihKMnP3ho0tRyXc3VI-GMgXj1zE_-oWw44/edit?usp=sharing. Alternately, you may read it in its original form within the comments of the Note below, it’s just a little difficult to navigate all the different comment threads. I’ve done my best to consolidate it in the document and reorganize it slightly so that all the threads are comprehensible. In it, all comments are copied exactly as originally written, and all comments are accounted for. I hope you will read it. I think our thought process is just as interesting and worthy of attention as is our ultimate findings.

For the rest of this essay, I will be addressing Von directly, but I mean my words to be relevant to people beyond.

So, Von, here it is. The essay I promised you with a deeper explanation of my wishes for a new society. Allow me to work my way from the end of our conversation slowly into that new societal proposal.

In the end, we were able to agree on one thing: For a well-functioning society to continue on successfully, governing power over that society should not be concentrated into a single source.

That very statement is the crux of my personal issue with the Judeo-Christian religion. I am not going to address religions outside of that for now, as Judaism and Christianity are the ones most pertinent to our personal conversation and, I presume, the ones with which we are both most familiar.

I want to be very clear that when I talk about my issues with Judaism and Christianity, I am not saying that I have any issues with Jews and Christians themselves. First of all, I come from an entirely Jewish family. Due to current violent circumstances, that comes with a variety of conflicting feelings, but ultimately, I’m really quite proud of my heritage and I love the idiosyncrasies of my culture very dearly. That doesn’t mean I can’t critique our ancestors. Similarly, as the United States is primarily populated by people of some type of Christian faith, it should come as no surprise that several of my dearest friends are practicing Christians. There is a great deal of beauty and goodness that has come from people who believe in a Judeo-Christian god. Nothing I say here is meant to cause anybody any pain; still, I feel it is important to be compassionately honest - a term I first heard from Dr. Danielle Drake in a CIIS Public Programs Podcast - meaning I will say what is true, because it needs to be heard, but I will do so while offering kindness and understanding. If my words veer into an angry or less-compassionate tone, please forgive my less-than-perfect attempt at a difficult thing. I simply want to engage in a critical analysis of our larger society.

My problem with the Judeo-Christian religion is that inherent within it is the assumption that it is not only good but actually necessary to allow a singular entity the privilege of governing our actions, and even our thoughts. You said yourself, Von, despite our ultimate place of agreement, that you would be perfectly fine with a dictatorship if God himself was the king. I imagine you will take issue with my comparison of God to a human dictator, being that - if he exists - he is a being unlike any we can comprehend but given that it is not actually possible for God to be a dictator on Earth, I think that point is rather unhelpful. My concern is how the idea of God has made you so comfortable with the idea of a dictator, even if he was to be a supernatural one. My concern is that this large societal comfortability with this particular spiritual dictatorship has a greater effect on our society.

Initially, my queasiness about this comes from the fact that it is impossible to know whether or not God exists. He could make it very clear that he exists if he wanted to, but instead he wants you to believe in him based on faith alone. So, all you have of him is the Bible. This makes me wonder, though, about how the Bible actually came to be held and read by humans? A human had to write it down at some point, right? How do you know they were telling the truth when they said they were writing the word of God? Even if God does exist, you have no possible way of proving whether anything that is written about him in the Bible is true.

I don’t really want to debate the existence of God or the accuracy of the Bible, though. I don’t care how the universe began, or how exactly our planet became the perfect habitat for life. I’m glad some people care about those things. It’s neat information to be aware of if we can, but the answers to those questions aren’t going to change how it feels to live life day-to-day. You can’t prove there’s a god, and I can’t prove there isn’t one. As the Solipsists showed, none of us can really prove the existence of anything outside of ourselves. Therefore, I’m not interested in debating what’s real and what’s not. We don’t know. I’m comfortable leaving it at that.

What is interesting to me, is what things are helpful for us to believe in and what things are not. For example, in spite of the Solipsists, I find it unhelpful to believe that nothing exists except for myself. Whether or not I want to believe in the things and people around me, I am going to have to interact with them. I treat them more kindly if I assume that they truly do exist, and that’s a good thing, both for myself and the world at large. Thanks to the Solipsists, however, I do in fact place a special importance on my own sense of reason, for that is the only thing I can be certain truly does exist in some way.

When I think of whether or not it is helpful to believe in God, I immediately run into the fact that, whether or not I believe, I will never interact with him throughout the course of my life on Earth. It’s helpful to believe in the people and things around us simply because, on a day-to-day basis, it feels as though they are real. The same cannot be said of God. On a day-to-day basis, it feels as though he’s not there. Furthermore, assuming God doesn’t exist incredibly simplifies the issue of why a good and all-powerful god would allow evil to exist in the world. It also provides me with a sense of peace and privacy to believe there is no one looking into my head and judging my every thought.

All that said, I know you have reasons why you would believe in God despite all of that. I’ve listened to lots of professional debates about his existence. I know all the arguments, and I’m not going to try and change your mind.

For the purpose of this essay, I am willing to assume that God exists, and not only that but that he is exactly as written in the Bible and everything the Bible says is his word did in fact come from him.

Even with this assumption, I would still believe in the moral righteousness of gay love. I believe gay love is a good thing in this world, and this becomes especially important if we assume a true existence of God.

To explain my thinking, let us address the Ten Commandments. I am quoting here the King James Version as recorded on biblegateway.com.

In it, God says:

#1: “I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Ok, assuming that’s all true, I guess that’s fair.

#2: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”

Now, this starts to concern me. First of all, he admits here to being prone to jealousy and that already makes me question the purity of his character, but then he goes on to say that he does not only deal with the people who have brought up his jealousy, but he visits iniquities upon the later generations of the people who disobey him. This isn’t just jealous, this is vengeful. Going on, he says he only shows mercy - not health, not goodness, simply ‘mercy,’ the absence of his violence - onto people who follow his rule. This is sounding like a problematic dictator to me.

#3: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”

And there goes our freedom of speech. We can’t even criticize him without being held “guilty”? That’s right out of the dictator’s handbook. Although which came first, this or that handbook, I suppose it’s hard to say.

#4: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. […]”

Sure, we all want a weekend.

#5: Honour thy father and thy mother […]”

Yeah, that’s nice.

#6: “Thou shalt not kill.”

This is obviously good, but it does reveal some of his hypocrisy (and the hypocrisy of many who have claimed to follow these commandments). God has people killed all the time in the Old Testament. All the first-borns of the Egyptians. All the people who happened to be in the way of the Israelites when they were making their way across the land. He actively encourages them to kill whenever it suited his goals, and many of his later followers have noticed that and taken a similar route. Shouldn’t a just ruler follow his own laws, and encourage all his people to do the same in all circumstances?

#7: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Yes, for a group of people in monogamous relationships, that’s obviously good. Although why it was important for people to be monogamous…I’m not sure he makes that especially clear.

#8: “Thou shalt not steal.”

Again, good but hypocritical. He encouraged the Israelites to steal the land (and I think the women actually too…) of the tribes around them.

#9: “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”

Sure.

#10: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.”

Again, good, but only applies to the “neighbours” he happens to care about; or, when the enforcement of this commandment happens to be helpful to him.

It goes on:

“And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.”

An alternate translation (which I found clearer) on radical.net reads, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you that you may not sin.”

This is a god that uses fear and the threat of death and suffering to bend people to his will. Nothing else in the Bible matters to me after that. To be clear, I’ve read a lot of it. I tried to read it all, but it gets dreadfully dull, so I gave up somewhere in the middle of “Numbers.” I did skip forward and read the Gospels, though. That didn’t improve my opinion of God in the slightest.

This is not a god I want to follow. This is not a god I trust to be moral. I define my sense of morality by the advice of ancient philosophers combined with what I perceive - through experience and study - makes the world a better place for all the creatures who live upon it. God doesn’t do that. By his own admission, he is jealous and does what is best for himself.

So, I don’t care whether God is real or not. God could set a bush next to me aflame and speak to me of his power and his will, and I still wouldn’t obey his commands. I’d be scared shitless, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t change the way I live. I couldn’t. I have been met with plenty of situations in my life where I could bring myself some kind of peaceful quiet by playing along with someone else’s idea of what would be the best thing to do, but if they can’t offer a good reason, then I just can’t bring myself to do it. It kills me inside, because even if it’s easier I still know it’s wrong. I can’t live like that.

I would struggle against God the same way I would struggle against anyone who strives to be a dictator - something we both agreed is bad for the world. As I said in my last essay, I don’t do well with authority. If God wants me to behave in a certain way, he better give me a damn good reason. For the record, “‘Cause I said so,” was never a good reason for anything, no matter who it’s coming from. I don’t think we should respect someone’s authority unless they respect us in return. God clearly doesn’t respect us. Maybe he created us. Maybe we’re his children. But he doesn’t respect us. He wants to control us, and he doesn’t care what harm that does to us in the meantime. So, if he’s real, and he’s unwilling to hear reason, I’m against him.

Luckily for me, even with all his powers, God isn’t putting up much of a fight. Therefore, the best way I can imagine to struggle against him would be by simply living my life happily and peacefully while blatantly defying his law. Since he hasn’t been doing anything to stop me, maybe he’s actually changed his mind. In fairness, those books of his are super-duper old. Maybe they’re not relevant anymore. If, on the other hand, he is the type who refuses to ever change his mind about anything, never cares about any contradictory evidence, and only cares about making sure everyone worships him all the time and does everything he says regardless of its modern-day relevance, then I am even more sure he is nothing more than a wicked dictator.

If the human race is really up against this immensely powerful being who thinks he’s a king and who thinks gay love is an evil thing, then it is the people who openly feel and then participate in gay love who become an important segment of our freedom fighters.

I feel love for people of all genders. I don’t identify with the gender God assigned me. I’m not interested in having sex or making children, although I would certainly love to raise at least one. I’m not interested in a monogamous romance. Von, I know you think that is common among politically progressive folks, but it’s really not. It just happens to be true of me. I find that I experience love for multiple people simultaneously and as long as those relationships are communicative and honest and consensual I have seen no evidence that that leads to anything other than a greater amount of love and peace and happiness. I can’t turn my back on any of that and continue to live an authentic and fulfilled life.

I spend of great deal of time working out how to act morally and in the best interest of the most possible beings on this Earth and beyond. I am devoted to building peaceful communities that focus on art and world improvement (Something that you, Von, have already enjoyed and taken advantage of). I do my best to listen compassionately to everyone I come across, and endeavor to find common ground with everyone I can so that we might find a way to peacefully work together and bring about a better day. I don’t participate in the killing, consumption, or any other use of animals to the best of my ability, and I try to not even kill bugs when I can help it.

I’m a good person.

I assume you will disagree with that, though, because, to my understanding, your definition of a good person is someone who follows the word of your god no matter what that word is. If that’s true, I find it really disturbing that you do not possess a method of rationally coming to moral conclusions on your own but that you rely on a single, mysterious, unknowable source to tell you what’s right and wrong, then, no matter what, you believe it. Anyone who claims to speak for that source has potential power over you, and it is never possible to know whether or not they are telling the truth about their connection with it.

Worse, though, is that you don’t even have any reason at all to believe your religion is truer than any other on Earth. By the arguments you were making, it seems that you are convinced by majority thought, so here's something that might be relevant to you: The majority of the world does not believe in Christianity. The majority of the world either believes in Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or one of around 10,000 distinct religions. It is true that Christianity is the largest of them with 31% of the world population, but that can be directly attributed to the fact that they colonized the world and forced people to convert to their religion under the threat of death and enslavement. That’s no evidence towards their correctness, and it certainly doesn’t even imply their righteousness. Most of the world does not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. I’m guessing though, that doesn’t change your opinion. It seems you only take the majority view into account when you already agreed with what it had to say. That’s not rationality. That’s it’s opposite.

Part of the reason I’m able to be the good person I am is because I refuse to blindly follow the word of people who claim to speak - or write - for some dictator god, no matter when they were doing so. I act in ways that I perceive cause goodness to spread, such as making someone smile, helping someone feel safe, or protecting the natural resources of the Earth. Furthermore, I’m perfectly willing to adjust my behavior in accordance with new evidence. If God sends me to hell for that, that doesn’t prove he’s right. That proves he’s evil.

Moreover, despite your assertion, it would be a terrible thing to have our country be blatantly ruled by his law. You wanted to talk about history, right? Let’s do that.

Most of the Native American population was wiped out in the name of Christianity.

When Hitler took over as dictator, he used the Christian god to justify the murder of millions of people - human beings, children.

The Spanish Inquisition was a group of people who wanted to enforce god’s law and they killed people in order to do it. A lot of people. Innocent people.

These are three easy-to-think-of examples in a much longer historical list.

You wanna talk about what history shows? History shows that when God gets involved in government, power gets concentrated into a singular source, and innocent people get killed.

None of this should come as a surprise. To my knowledge, pretty much every culture that has used a monarchy, has used religion to justify concentrating power within that monarch. Just analyzing the texts, religion appears designed to justify concentrated sources of power, and, regardless of the intention, that is certainly how it’s been used.

You and I both agreed that we were against power being concentrated in any one area. My issue with the Judeo-Christian faith is that it trains people not to agree with that. It uses fear and threats and ever-present shame to terrify people into being perfectly willing to obey the law of someone who says they have power, and it makes people incredibly vulnerable to participating in heinous acts simply because they think they’re doing it for some “God.”

Now, none of that is to say the current functioning of our country is particularly good. In fact, it is immensely flawed. There, again, we agree. The question then becomes what we do to fix it. Going back to the past, as you say you would prefer, doesn’t make any sense to me. The past created the present. If we simply returned to the way things were some century ago - supposing that were even possible - it stands to reason that we would just start a cycle which would eventually bring us back to the present. No one would be any better off and we will have wasted all the years it took to get back to exactly where we are now.

So, what should the future look like? That’s a difficult and important question. I won’t say this is anything definite, but I offered one possible option for a new form of government which would shake things up and might make things better in an essay that I’ll link to at the end of this.

But our initial debate had more to do with the structure of families. The beautiful part of this is that I have no idea exactly what every family would look like. What I do know, is they would not all be the same. The composition of each family would be a statement on that family’s identity. It would be another way in which people are unique and interesting. Some may have a mother, father, and a kid or two. Others might have two dads, or two moms. Others still might have five parental figures of all different genders who look after ten kids together, the whole family caring for and supporting one another as a unit.

The best case I’ve heard against homosexuality is that, somehow, it will lead to the end of the human race because if we’re not having babies, we’ll all just die out at some point, or some other catastrophe will occur. I assume that’s what you were trying to get at in our discussion. This is an example of the slippery slope logical fallacy. It’s not gonna happen. I am quite certain there are enough heterosexual people in the world who are interested in having sex and making babies that we’ll be just fine. But, even if I’m wrong, so what? Isn’t it more important that we are able to live fulfilled and meaningful lives while we’re here rather than torturing ourselves with the self-centered pressures of making sure our seed continues on? We’re overpopulated enough as it is. Let’s care for the people who are here instead of focusing on bringing more into a world that we all agree is pretty messed up anyway.

You don’t need marriage or a “traditional family” in order to raise healthy and mature children. I grew up in what you would probably call a “broken home,” with parents who got divorced when I was very young, and I’m really quite grateful for that. Together, my parents made each other miserable, and the home was an unhappy one. Separated, I got the best version of both my parents that they each had to offer. I know that has positively contributed to the person I’ve become.

Also, one does not need to participate in marriage or child rearing to contribute to the progress and growth of society. We have more than enough current evidence in the world to know this is true.

Furthermore, it is far from the case that “the traditional family” is inherently the best thing for a child. In order to raise emotionally healthy and mature children, the most important things are to teach them to feel compassion and respect for themselves and their fellow beings in the world around them. Many “traditional families” actually do quite a poor job of this, especially ones that strictly adhere to the word of a god. People raised in that type of environment are more likely to grow up riddled with shame and self-denial, or otherwise guided by bigotry and hate, and the latter never stop to question their assumptions because they think they’re justified by the existence of some god. They’re not. They use God as their shield to hide from the fact that they don’t actually have a good reason for their hateful opinions. They use God to hide from the truth.

I’d rather live in a world where the truth is front and center. One where reason is valued over obedience. One where people can harmlessly love each other in peace without having to fear for their lives.

I want to live in a world where power - be it legal, moral, or otherwise - is not concentrated into any one area.

If you want me to change my mind about any of that, you’d have to give me a damn good reason. And I’ll remind you that “‘Cause God says so” ain’t gonna cut it.

You seemed appalled at the idea that we could just design a new society that’s never been seen before in history and expect it to succeed, but you had to admit that the founding fathers of the United States did exactly that and, in many ways, succeeded magnificently, not only in creating a thriving society for themselves but also in inspiring some kind of meaningful change throughout nearly the entire world. I honestly don’t know exactly what my hopeful future society looks like. But I’m very excited to work towards it and see what’s possible.

So, to clarify, Von, no, I don’t have one singular version of society that I’m willing to state with any certainty is the right one. I have some ideas, and - more importantly - I have ideals to strive for, but I’m interested in what the world community can create together when we have the freedom and encouragement to aim for something rationally wonderful. You, on the other hand, have a very clear, very singular, very unmovable sense of how you think the world should operate, and yet you are not able to provide any rational justification for it that does not simply appeal to the authority of your god (which in itself is a fallacy and thus not really an argument at all).

I’m genuinely willing to listen to you. I hope I have demonstrated that I am primarily interested in finding common ground. Admittedly, I’m not very optimistic that you feel the same way. It saddens me to think of how many beautiful things there are in this world that must inspire disgust within you. I can only imagine I am privileged to more often experience a love-feeling then you are, and I don’t mean in any romantic or sexual way that you would object to. I mean that I am constantly aware of living in a magnificently beautiful and lovable world filled to the brim with beautiful and well-meaning people who are all just trying to do their best in the world. That’s how I view you. How do you view me?

Real love is not violent or threatening. Real love causes no harm, and if it ever does by accident, it apologizes. Real love exists between all kinds of people, and it is always a beautiful thing. I’m sorry that you don’t agree with that.

I want to build a world that we both find to be beautiful. I wish you would join me in that goal. Maybe together we could create something that’s genuinely better for everybody.

Thanks for listening, my friend.

Sincerely yours,

Addam

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My rough draft proposal of a new governing system:

A System of Government Based on Plato’s Head, Chest, and Abdomen Theory