From Chapter 1: Daisies Tell About Jesus

I remember the smell of the songbook paper, and pushing my little fingers through the tiny communion cup holders on the backs of the burnt orange itchy fabric-covered pews.

I remember selling ‘Bible Times’ pita bread by the pulpit on the church stage during my first church play and whispering the words to ‘Away in a Manger’ into a big colourful mic there one Christmas. I remember folding my hands every night on my knees by my bed and saying sorry for my sins, and the hardcover Bible story collection with the colourful illustrations we kept in the hall linen closet.

I remember how much I loved Jesus.

To me Jesus was a version of my dad. Maybe it’s the same for most Christian girls with kind and present fathers. God was a little scary, but I tried to dismiss that thought fast because he could read my mind.

At first my indoctrination was mostly harmless: Bedtime prayers, brown beard painting of Jesus surrounded by the kiddos, Children’s Church.

I don’t remember the first time I heard the Pastor shout about the love and wrath of God in one breath.

Understanding and accepting God’s anger was as critical as accepting his love. We were shameful and sinful people destined for an afterlife of torture. I was told that my belief and dedication to my relationship with Jesus saved me from this eternal damnation, and in turn, my mission was to urge others to have that faith too.

Being a Christian was normal for me, but not everyone believed in Jesus. That’s why Christians had to spread the Good News. You didn’t want anyone else to end up in the fiery pits of Hell either.

Some Christians might hand out Bibles or witness to their neighbors, but I wanted to go big or go to Hell I guess, because by eight I was preaching to my classmates on the playground and saying I was going to be a missionary in foreign countries.

I imagined myself in these African jungle scenarios, makeshift kitchens with big leaves on the floor, those little kids with bellies bloated from hunger pulling at my skirt while I cooked soup and talked about Jesus. Yes, really.

This to me would be a soul-saving sacrifice as well as the ultimate adventure.

I was born in 1983 into an average White evangelical family that made up a quarter of the country in the nineties, a Protestant family in a small rural community where we mixed with Catholics but had little exposure to religions outside of Christianity.

Protestants are the biggest Christian bloc in the U.S. They split with the Roman Catholic Church and follow the principles of the Reformation, led by German monk and university professor Martin Luther (1483–1546).

The Reformation held that one’s eternal soul could be saved only by personal faith in Jesus Christ and the grace of God, rather than via prayers to saints and confessions to priests. 

Consider terms like ‘born again’ (John 3:3) and narratives involving the prayer of salvation (Romans 10:9).

Some Protestants even came to rough it in colonial America, rather than feel like they were under the thumb of the Catholic Church. I’d gotten the notion that the nation was founded on my religion from the way that narrative had been spun for me.

I wasn’t just a mainstream Protestant but a fundamentalist and an evangelical.

A fundamentalist will insist that every word of the Bible is without error, while a mainline Protestant will concede that historical documents are susceptible to fallibility. Fundamentalists interpret scripture literally, complete with its outdated dogmas and Israelite ideology.

Evangelists busy themselves with the relentless recruitment of souls practised by salvation-based brands of Christian faith. Evangelize means ‘convert’.

From Chapter 4: The Evangelical Agenda

Regardless of any neurological factors fortifying my faith, once I grew old enough to reason, doubt, the most dangerous of all sins, crept in. Doubt could land you in Hell before you even opened your mouth or lifted a finger to sin against God or another person.

To a Pentecostal, nothing is to be respected and valued more than unwavering faith. Certainly not education or intelligence or even critical thinking.

You were supposed to ‘trust in God with all of your heart and lean not on your own understanding’ (Proverbs 3:5).

Knowledge was dangerous. Look what happened when the first humans dared seek it.

The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on.

Musician Frank Zappa

I struggled painfully with my faith in youth, but I didn’t let my doubt show, other than scribbling it over and over in my journals.

God, please take away my doubt; please open my eyes! I doubted three times today Jesus; please forgive me! I’m so sorry for doubting!!!

Without faith, Hebrews 11:6 assured me, it was impossible to please God.

Faith was my biggest struggle, the incredible challenge of my life. My lack of it was my gravest, deepest, most mortal sin.

I sought to solidify my salvation with the solidarity of other believers, tried to redeem and revive my soul by striking sin from my life. But I needed a louder voice in my mind, clarifying I wasn’t making it all up. As time went on I needed a more intense, more pronounced reprieve from guilt and a more ecstatic euphoria to wash over me in prayer and worship.

Now a new kind of joy and a whole ecosystem of knowledge has grown from the seed of doubt that was planted in my heart where I could never quite get that mustard seed to grow.

I have ceased to scream at myself in my mind, desperately trying to silence the voice of reason. I have silenced instead the voice of God.

From Chapter 7: Books Besides Bibles

For as far back as I can remember, I have loved books: reading them, writing them, collecting them, quoting them, smelling their sweet paper, smearing their ink with my tears.

I carried books to the playground at recess in elementary [school] and I took my textbooks home to devour poetry, history, and social studies in high school.

From a young age I could appreciate a well-crafted sentence, and I rarely grew bored of a story or a subject if the content was written well.

A vast wealth of literature had been off limits while I wasted countless hours perusing an old religious book instead!

There was time to make up for.

There was no Google to do research about religion when I was living that lie. Aside from, of course, books about other religions maybe, and academic papers perhaps, there wasn’t a lot of accessible literature published that challenged mainstream evangelical ideology. Prominent atheist figures weren’t podcasting yet.

When I began my quest for truth I spent endless hours in books besides Bibles, astonished and appalled at the sheer volume of information about the world I’d been so willing to remain oblivious to.

I kept my mind open, giving the theology I’d been fed and its apologists ample time to refute the new information I was swimming in. Their once compelling, convincing voices couldn’t hold up to the facts and perspectives presented by these historians and biologists.

Definitely one of the greatest perks of breaking free from an oppressive and controlling religion is that no information is off limits.

No books are banned.

Suddenly no fiction was off limits either: Dante, Nabokov, vampires, horror, trashy romance reads with women bursting out of corsets on the covers.

I could read academic material that had been forbidden, finally reading Darwin’s On The Origin of Species and exploring evolutionary science at last at age 23.

Suddenly I could eagerly accept scientific truths about the nature and workings of reality.

I was late to that table, much as humankind had been, attributing everything to the supernatural before scientific knowledge offered real answers—like we attributed sickness or healing to a god but now origins of ailments are evident because germ theory exists now.

I was born long after science filled in the gaps where gods stood in as placeholders, but like millions of other believers I’d been coerced to cling to them when they should have been discarded.

Like Douglas Adams said, ‘God used to be the best explanation we’d got, and we’ve now got vastly better ones.’ Embracing intellectual honesty at last was exciting!

From Chapter 10: Mind Rape

My child never shed a tear about Hell. She never shut herself in a closet and begged not to be hurt. She never had to feel shame for her own desires or unworthy of love because she had doubts about things that just didn’t make sense. She never had to reconcile in her mind the atrocities committed by someone she was supposed to love even more than she loved me.

At bedtime I tucked her in and told her to have dreams about candy castles and puppies and she never heard the words ‘brimstone’ or ‘gnashing of teeth’.

I love the moments when I speak of my Pentecostal past and she doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about.

‘Wait, what’s a pew, Mom?’

My heart soars in those moments. She will never be a sinner seeking sanctification. I feel she’s a more rounded individual than I am, more emotionally stable.

I had a lot of anger and anxiety to work through, character traits developed after a youth of servitude under an imaginary authoritarian entity.

I taught my daughter early, about multiple religions. When she was five and six we talked about what animals we would like to come back as, if the reincarnation religions were right.

Let children learn about different faiths, let them notice their incompatibility, and let them draw their own conclusions about the consequences of that incompatibility. As for whether they are “valid,” let them make up their own minds when they are old enough to do so.

Richard Dawkins

Watching my daughter choose for herself, selecting biocentrism as her philosophy long before either of us had a name for it, and rejecting all religion, provided a boost of comfort and confidence that was very healing for me.

Society tends to assume religion is either benign or good for people. It’s a Sunday morning cultural tradition most Christians don’t think too hard about so they don’t have to reconcile their cognitive dissonance.

But while my peers were in Catechism reciting rosaries I was being brainwashed with brimstone by the Assembly of God.

Certain brands of fundamentalist faith that pound the original sin/eternal damnation ideology boast the gravest grievance against religious indoctrination.

A parent or preacher doesn’t even necessarily have to pound Hell into a child’s mind repeatedly to get the intended reaction. One horrifying threat involving a lake of fire can have a profound effect on a developing mind.

Richard Dawkins:

Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

I am persuaded that “child abuse” is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like eternal hell.

It’s not moral to lie to children. It’s not moral to lie to ignorant, uneducated people and tell them that if they only would believe nonsense, they can be saved. It’s immoral.

I wish I could explain to all those kids in Sunday School that the sensational, scary stories they’re being taught are not real.

There’s no scary God up there, intent on punishing sinners.

No eternal suffering awaits anyone for anything they say or do.

And no, their ‘sins’ did not contribute to the suffering of a nice, loving man.

Related reading

Surviving Ramadan: An ex-Muslim’s journey in Pakistan’s religious landscape, by Azad

How I lost my religious belief: A personal story from Nigeria, by Suyum Audu

From religious orthodoxy to free thought, by Tehreem Azeem

‘The best way to combat bad speech is with good speech’ – interview with Maryam Namazie, by Emma Park

Breaking the silence: Pakistani ex-Muslims find a voice on social media, by Tehreem Azeem

White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. By Rachel Laser

The post Silencing the voice of God: the journey of an evangelical apostate appeared first on The Freethinker.

Like the typical visitor to Japan, I initially regarded Shinto as the quaint if not simplistic faith of the Japanese people. However, when placed in its historical context, I realised that Shinto was one of the last remaining major expressions of a much older faith, namely animism (typically described in Western countries as ‘paganism’).¹ Further study led me to the realisation that animism, with its panoply of mostly nature-affiliated deities like a sun or a rain god(dess), was in fact the oldest form of religion about which, today, we have any trace. That is to say, animism is now widely acknowledged among scholars as the oldest form of religion, practised universally by our ancestors for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years.

Inasmuch as survival plus reproduction is generally recognised as the fundamental purpose of all life forms, the creation of sun god(s), rain god(s), fire god(s), etc. is unsurprising. For just as the creation of stone tools enhanced the evolutionary fitness of hunter-gatherers, the presence of nature-affiliated deities offered the possibility of controlling (and benefitting from) natural phenomena that were beyond any other method of control. In short, what we today identify as religion resulted from the fundamental human need to survive, though it should be noted that religion at this stage was centred on the needs of the entire tribe—to ensure plentiful water and animals to hunt and so on—rather than the spiritual needs of the individual tribal member. Today, we now have examples of tribal religious practices involving nature-affiliated deities dating back as far as 70,000 years ago.   

Yet, if tribal-oriented, animistic religions can be traced back tens of thousands of years, if not longer, how does one account for the personal faiths we have today? For this, we are indebted to the insight of a German-Swiss philosopher by the name of Karl Jaspers (1883–1969). Jaspers noticed the broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred throughout the entire world from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE, now known as the Axial Age. He noted that the present-day spiritual foundations of humanity were laid nearly simultaneously and independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. Among the key thinkers of this period, he identified Confucius and Lao-Tse in China, the historical Buddha and Mahavira in India, Deutero-Isaiah in ancient Israel², and Socrates and Plato in Greece.

Though their teachings varied, all these thinkers shared three basic elements in common. First, ‘truth’ was universally valid, and its existence was no longer confined to one’s tribe. Second, morality/ethical conduct, too, was universal. While it had long been wrong, or taboo, to steal from or injure a fellow tribal member, the rule for members of other tribes was ‘anything goes’, especially when the latter posed a threat or possessed something coveted by one’s own tribe.  At least in principle, those outside one’s tribe were now recognised as fellow human beings. Finally, the myths that had explained natural events like the eclipse of the sun, or the creation of the world, were no longer accepted uncritically. Slowly, haltingly, the search for rational answers to natural phenomena and life’s questions took root, eventually leading to the birth of science.

One good example of this change in mentality is provided by the historical Buddha in regard to the doctrine of karma. In Sanskrit, the word ‘karma’ originally meant no more or less than an ‘action’ of some kind. Later, in the Vedas, which initially presented an Indian form of animism, ‘karma’ came to mean action associated with properly conducted ritual sacrifices to the gods. It was only later still, with the advent of the Buddha, that karma acquired an ethical connotation. The Buddha ethicised the meaning of karma by identifying it with intentional actions on the part of the actor. Thus, when actions were undertaken with wholesome intent, this was good and proper, reaping positive rewards. However, when actions were conducted with harmful intent, this was wrong, and those who did so would suffer the negative consequences of their actions.

Not only did the Axial period mark the beginning of religion for individuals, but it also prepared the way for the emergence of all the major, universal religions we have today, whether Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. That is to say, while there are major doctrinal differences between these faiths, they all share the same three basic characteristics born during the Axial Age. Thus, if there is hope for mutual religious understanding, if not religious tolerance, it is to be found in the fundamental tenets underlying them all.

However, given the copious amounts of blood that have been shed in conflicts between post-Axial faiths, it is readily understandable that readers may think I have a Pollyannaish view of religion. However, such is not the case, for I have long realised that the Axial Age did not bring an end to a tribal religious mentality. Instead, the Axial Age functioned to add something like an additional universal layer on top of limited tribal religion, the latter concerned first and foremost with the wellbeing of one’s ‘in-group’, whether defined by a common religious faith, ethnic and racial grouping, or simply membership in the new tribal grouping we call ‘nations’.

The ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza are classic examples of this religious ‘layer cake’. Prior to the war, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), while it enjoyed a degree of autonomy, was part of the Russian Orthodox Church. After the invasion in February 2022, the UOC declared its independence from Russia. (The Orthodox Church of Ukraine—a separate church—had already gained independence in 2018.) Since then, the independent UOC has attempted to cut all ties with Moscow, dismissing pro-Russian bishops and having its head, Metropolitan Onufriy, publicly condemn Russia. For its part, in April 2024, the Russian Orthodox Church proclaimed that Russia was engaged in a ‘holy war’ with Ukraine. Although they shared the same God, the same faith, the split between them clearly came about due to their allegiance to the contending warring tribal entities we today call ‘nations’.

As for the current war in Gaza, it is, if anything, an even clearer example of the conflict between universal and tribal religion. For example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not hesitate to invoke the Biblical image of the Jewish tribal battle against the Amalekites.³ Last year, he said that Israelis ‘are committed to completely eliminating this evil [Hamas] from the world… You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.’

Netanyahu’s reference was to the first Book of Samuel in which God commands King Saul to kill all the Amalekites. God, says the prophet Samuel, has told the Israelites to ‘go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.’ (1 Samuel 15:3).

Likewise, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant claimed that ‘We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.’ While Gallant may have initially been referring to Hamas fighters, he went on to call for the collective punishment of all Palestinians in Gaza, stating, ‘We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed.’ The tribal nature of Netanyahu and Gallant’s comments, and their complete dismissal of the shared humanity of Israelis and Palestinians, could not be clearer.

That said, it is important to acknowledge that there are Jews, including in Israel, who do recognise their shared humanity with Palestinians. Organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow share post-Axial universal values of caring for the poor and oppressed, pursuing justice, and treating others with compassion based on their shared humanity.  

If this analysis is correct, readers may be thinking that this tribal way of thinking is not unique to some adherents of Judaism, and they would be correct. One Christian example particularly relevant to the current situation in Israel/Palestine is the role played by ‘Manifest Destiny’ in American history. First coined in 1845, this term represented a collective mindset that viewed the expansion of the US as both necessary and ordained by God. As the US gained more territory, proponents of Manifest Destiny used it to justify the forced removal, enslavement, dehumanisation, and even elimination of Native American tribes, as well as the expansion of slavery into newly acquired territories.

Compare these actions with the words from Leviticus 19:33-34 that both Christians and Jews claim to believe in:

And if a stranger sojourn with thee in your land, ye shall not vex him. But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

These examples point to an unresolved split in all religions, i.e. between their tribal nature, based on tens of thousands of years of history, versus their post-Axial awakening occurring less than three thousand years ago. This awakening was of profound importance in that it led, at least in principle, to a recognition of the universal nature of their religious teachings based on their shared humanity. This in turn led, at least some of the time, to a feeling of mutual compassion in which people recognised others as extensions of themselves, extensions who had the same human needs and fears as they themselves had.

The struggle between a narrow tribal mentality versus a truly universal mentality accepting of others is one that transcends all ethnic, racial, national, and even religious boundaries. Nevertheless, in the US, for example, the slogan ‘America First’ is embraced by millions, demonstrating that for many the tribal mentality remains firmly in place.      

On the one hand, as brutal and destructive as religion-endorsed tribal warfare has been in the past, humanity as a whole was not endangered. Today, however, things are different. For the first time in the approximately 300,000-year history of Homo sapiens, we have the capacity to destroy each other not only in the tens of thousands, or even the millions, but totally, without exception. This is because of the very real possibility of ‘mutual assured destruction’ in the form of a nuclear-induced winter, not to mention the ever-increasing dangers resulting from phenomena like global warming. None of the deadly serious problems facing humankind as a whole can be solved by one or even a group of nations. They require the concerted efforts, and necessary sacrifices, of all the world’s nations and peoples.

Thus, adherents of all the world’s religions, and even those who identify with no faith, share a common challenge. Can we Homo sapiens collectively awake to, and transcend, the tribal religious mentality of our past or are we bound to continue to fool ourselves into oblivion, believing that we are pursuing universal truths even as we betray such truths in practice? In Ukraine, Gaza, and beyond, we live in a world characterised by the ongoing threat of thermonuclear warfare, global warming, and many other deadly challenges.

Can religion save the human race?

As an adherent of religion, I sincerely wish I could answer this question in the affirmative. However, in light of the above examples, and many others like them, I cannot. What I can say with confidence is that postaxial religion has the largely unrealised potential to prevent humanity from destroying itself. Yet, all too regrettably, this potential is far, far from being realised even though pockets of universal good will do exist.  A positive outcome for humanity, let alone all life forms, requires that we undertake concrete actions based on the realisation that the continued existence of our species is, in fact, dependent on the success of a truly universal struggle, by the religious and nonreligious alike, for human equality, dignity, and justice.

Will we be successful? Among many others, the answer lies with each reader of this article.

1. As a foundational aspect of various ancient and indigenous religions, animism is based on the belief that all things, animate and inanimate, possess a spiritual or animating force. ‘Paganism’ describes the same phenomena but the word as used to describe this belief system has pejorative overtones and is therefore no longer widely used. ︎
2. Deutero-Isaiah is the name given to the anonymous author of chapters 40–55 of the Book of Isaiah. He (it was most likely a ‘he’) is believed to have lived with the Jewish exiles during their Babylonian captivity (c. 597 BCE – c. 538). Because this prophet’s real name is unknown and his work has been preserved in the collection of writings that include the prophecies of the earlier, or first, Isaiah, he is usually designated as Deutero-Isaiah—the second Isaiah. Deutero-Isaiah was a pure monotheist who rejected the idea of Yahweh as the exclusive god of the Jews. Instead, he proclaimed that Yahweh was the universal, true God of the entire universe. ︎
3. The Amalekites were a people of the Negev and adjoining desert who were regarded as a hereditary enemy of Israel from wilderness times to the early monarchy. Amalek, a son of Esau’s son Eliphaz, was presumably the eponymous ancestor of the Amalekites. ︎

Read Part Two here.

Related reading

The rise and fall of god(s) in Indian politics: Modi’s setback, Indic philosophy, and the freethought paradox, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Religion and the decline of freethought in South Asia, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Can sentientism save the world? Interview with Jamie Woodhouse, by Emma Park

The Highbrow Caveman: Why ‘high’ culture is atavistic, by Charles Foster

‘The Greek mind was something special’: interview with Charles Freeman, by Daniel James Sharp

Image of the week: Anaxagoras, by Emma Park

‘The real beauty comes from contemplating the universe’: humanism with Sarah Bakewell, by Emma Park

Reading list against nuclear war, by Emma Park

Atheism, secularism, humanism, by Anthony Grayling

Morality without religion: the story of humanism, by Madeleine Goodall

The need for a new Enlightenment, by Christopher Hitchens

Can the ‘New Theists’ save the West? by Matt Johnson

Against the ‘New Theism’, by Daniel James Sharp

What has Christianity to do with Western values? by Nick Cohen

Religion and the Arab-Israeli conflict, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Israel’s war on Gaza is a war on the Palestinian people, by Zwan Mahmod

Is the Israel-Palestine conflict fundamentally a nationalist, not a religious, war? by Ralph Leonard

Young, radical and morally confused, by Gerfried Ambrosch

Britain’s liberal imam: Interview with Taj Hargey, by Emma Park

White Christian Nationalism is rising in America. Separation of church and state is the antidote. By Rachel Laser

The post Can Religion Save Humanity? Part One appeared first on The Freethinker.