About 4,000 years ago, a man named Abraham heard a voice in his head instructing him to take his son, Isaac, to the top of a mountain and kill him as a sacrifice. During the three-day journey, Abraham never thought to question whether anyone else had heard the voice. Abraham misled Isaac, telling his son that a “lamb” would be waiting at the sacrifice point—all the while knowing that Isaac himself was the intended sacrifice. It wasn’t until Abraham had tied his son down and was about to kill him that an angel intervened ordering Abraham to stop. “Just kidding!”
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If it became known today that a man was
intending to murder his son because a voice in his head told him to, that man
would quite properly be subjected to an emergency psychiatric evaluation, and
family services would take steps to protect his son. But because monotheists equate that voice with
a deity, Abraham is looked upon as a hero by their flock.
Let’s fast-forward to the 18th
Century.
“I believe in the equality of
man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving
mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
“But, lest it should be
supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the
progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for
not believing them.
“I do not believe in the
creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church,
by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know
of. My own mind is my own church.
“All national institutions of
churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than
human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power
and profit.
“I do not mean by this
declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to
their belief as I have to mine. But it
is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or
in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not
believe.”
—Thomas Paine, The
Age of Reason, Part I (1794)
For such apostasy, Theodore Roosevelt
condemned the Founding Father as a “filthy little atheist.” It was doubly unfair. Paine wasn’t an atheist; he was quite
explicitly a deist. Deism is the belief
that a creator or higher power exists but does not intervene supernaturally in
the universe or reveal itself through organized religion or sacred texts. The Age of Reason begins with Paine affirming
his belief in one God and his hope for happiness beyond this life. What he rejected was revealed religion,
institutional religious authority, and the divine origin claimed for scripture.
So Roosevelt managed to pack quite a lot of
disdain—and theological inaccuracy—into three words.
I would not describe myself as an atheist. My own religious beliefs hover somewhere
between deism and agnosticism. Why do
they hover instead of remaining static? In
my 59 years I’ve learned that absolutism usually amounts to a dead end. But I do accept the science that estimates the
observable universe’s age at 13.8
billion years and its size at roughly 93
billion light-years across. Any entity that could create something so
massive and complex could not be adequately explained by sheep herders
thousands of years ago.
Further, biblical scholars will tell you that
many of the stories that constitute the Holy Bible were passed down orally from
generation to generation before being written down. The notion that the Bible was, in the words of
Carl Sagan, “dictated by the creator of the universe to an unerring
stenographer, and so therefore it’s not metaphor or allegory,” as espoused by
biblical literalists, is sheer folly that has been rejected by Roman
Catholicism, Reform Judaism, and most mainstream Protestant denominations.
Whatever one thinks of the Catholic Church—and
of the many scandals that have rocked the Church over the centuries, from the
controversy surrounding Pope
Pius XII’s questionable non-stance during the Holocaust to
the more recent child
sexual-abuse scandals—at least the Church has
standardized requirements for its clergy.
(One must point out that other religious sects have their own issues with
child sexual abuse, including child marriage.) Before a Catholic priest can take charge of
even the smallest parish, he must undergo years of education and formation,
including extensive study of philosophy and theology. In other words, he is expected to understand
the historical, theological, and literary context behind what he reads in the
Bible.
Let me be clear that I profoundly disagree
with many aspects of Catholic doctrine, particularly when it comes to
homosexuality and the right of women to control their bodies and become fully
participating members of society. But
Pope Leo XIV—the first U.S.-born pope, who began life in Chicago as Robert
Francis Prevost—should be lauded for standing
up to the toxicity of the Trump administration’s policies,
particularly with regard to immigration, criminal justice, access to health
care, climate change, and war and peace.
It is a bitter irony that some American
Catholics are now posting anti-Leo memes and declaring “not my Pope.” For the Holy Father’s statements on
immigrants, the poor, and the marginalized closely reflect the teachings
attributed to Jesus of Nazareth himself. WWJD indeed.
Compare this with many Pentecostal sects. I
personally know of a man who was a policeman, retired due to medical issues,
then decided to start his own church. His
qualification? He “felt a calling.” No theological degree. No seminary training. He simply believed God wanted him to preach. What did he do as he led his little
congregation? He bullied the congregants
and ranted on social media, particularly on the subject of homosexuality. Not that he, or his son, who is similarly
homophobic, had spotless sexual histories themselves. But his toxicity was enough to harm other
people, including his own grandson, who was struggling with his sexual
orientation.
While I am not an atheist, neither could I be
considered a Christian in the traditional sense. I do believe there is ample
historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth (or someone very much like him)
existed around 2,000 years ago; that he was a Jew who preached a gospel
emphasizing tolerance, forgiveness, and reconciliation; and that he was
crucified by the Roman authorities. I
don’t believe, however, that he was the product of a virgin birth, that he was
a child of God any more than any of us are, that he was resurrected after his
death, or that wine and bread magically become his blood and body once blessed.
That’s mystical nonsense to me. Sorry, not sorry.
Thus, my ideas about Jesus of Nazareth and
Christianity in general have much in common with those of Thomas Jefferson, a
deist like Paine, who had little patience for the supernatural elements of the
Gospels and famously
took a razor blade to them, creating his own version
that preserved the teachings of Jesus he considered valuable.
I favor freedom of religion as espoused by the
Founders of this country, particularly Paine and Jefferson. You are free to
worship as you want, but you have no right to impose your religious beliefs
upon others, either through civil law or through private coercion. That goes
equally for all faiths, from Judaism to Christianity to Islam to Hinduism.
