Short Story Blog On Fire

By Anthony D Jacques

So I’ve averaged 20-30 [EDIT: as of the third week of January, it's now averaging 50+] hits per day on this new short story blog of mine, and I had to come over here and pimp it out one more time. I mean, that’s way more than I had here in the first couple months, and this one’s only  a couple weeks old.

For those of you who were readers here and have jumped on over there, thank you so much! And for any of you who have yet to check it out, do so.

The address is :

http://anthonydavidjacques.wordpress.com

It’s my New Year’s Resolution to post a new short story a week for a year. And having readers is what makes it all worth while. Especially so many right off the bat.

Thanks!

ADJ

Changing Directions

By Anthony D Jacques

It’s not that I don’t care about this morality and ethics stuff anymore, it’s just that my interest in it has run its course for the moment. I need to focus on something productive, something that doesn’t just end in arguments with people I’ll never meet.

I like writing, and I like blogging, so one of my resolutions this year was to start a new blog where I post at least one short story a week.

And I suppose I might do a random, what’s-going-on sort of post once in a while too. Cause why not?

It’s over at : http://anthonydavidjacques.wordpress.com

No need to make up a creative name since it’s just me writing fiction.

If I ever get inspired, maybe this place will come back to life, but given the attention it’s attracted for me, I doubt it.

ADJ

I Just Don’t Care Like I Used To

By Anthony D Jacques

That line is the chorus to an old King’s X song, aptly named Don’t Care. Not exactly poetic or original, but that’s not the point. I bring it up because, the other day when I was obsessing over the possibility of losing my blog, that song popped into my head. Since then I’ve gotten about 95% of the content back, except for the second and third part of the Evidence and Experience series I was writing; but I’m not sure I care at the moment.

Allow me to ramble for a bit…

I mean, first of all I don’t think we’ve come across exactly right. We never set out to prove or disprove any religion, only to critique moral and ethical stances in society. And let’s be honest, there are plenty of blogs and websites out there dedicated to proving religion is good or bad. That’s a much broader discussion and I’ve been on both sides of the debate enough to know that you’re not going to convince anyone of anything, especially not by arguing on the internet.

But what, then, did I really set out to do in this project? I suppose a lot of it comes down to the fact that years ago I’d started reading my bible for myself and kept coming across things that didn’t jive with how I saw the world, not to mention with science. I had spent my life saying religion and the bible made me who I am, but did I really know what I was saying?

I’m fairly confident now that most people who draw morality and ethics from the bible haven’t read it cover to cover, or if they have, they’ve just assumed no matter how awful or strange a narrative is, it must be okay because it’s in the bible. That’s just awful reasoning from a logic standpoint, like it or not.

But if I was offended by those things, then what was it that actually informed my idea of ethics? Where had my idea of morality come from? I was living as a Christian, but only in the cultural sense, and my Christianity, like so many people today in the developed world, had very little to do with the bible.

I decided it was Reason that undergirds our ability to decide to stop stoning rebellious children, or to end slavery, or to give women rights. It’s reason that tells me that ripping open the bellies of pregnant women is always wrong, and no scripture that contains this behavior is defensible. And it’s this very sense of reason and rationality that makes modern Christianity in the developed world look so different than Islam in the Middle East. Our traditions are not all that different, and the bible and the koran really aren’t any more or less ethical in their doctrines and ideals. The difference is that Islam is a few hundred years behind Christianity in learning to ignore the ‘bad’ ideas and emphasize the ‘good’ ones.

So that’s where I am today. Reason is what allows us, as a society, to move past ideas that would otherwise still require constant bloodshed and breed unfounded supernatural fears.

A Way Forward…

As far as continuing down this rabbit hole and cleaning the slate, as it were, I fully intend to keep up once in a while, post an opinion article here or there. But I also think that the constant harassment from religious folk that this project has brought just isn’t worth it. I have my family to think of, after all.

If it were just me who became a target, I could probably justify keeping this up with the intensity I have thus far. But for some reason I’ve attracted a disproportionately large number of weirdos given the minimal exposure this blog has enjoyed (less than 100 hits per day on average), and a handful of them have been rather tenacious. And frankly, I just don’t want to keep that kind of company. Finding one smart religious devotee who thinks on their own within a crowd of sheep (oh how the term fits) is simply far too tedious to bother anymore anyway. I have better things to do with my time.

And don’t think the irony escapes me. Consider this: Someone literally tried to clean my slate, as it were, and delete this blog because it threatens what they dogmatically believe, and that is actually what is prompting me to realize that this just isn’t my fight anymore.

So I’d like to close by saying thank you to all the angry, unthinking, deluded religionists out there who have helped me realize that I just don’t care like I used to.

ADJ

Just Another Reason

By Anthony D Jacques

First of all, I’d like to say a big Thank You to the folks at Word Press for helping me restore my blog. You gotta love modern technology!

And you know it’s sort of funny, I started this project with the same basic question many people have asked:

Can we be good without God?

Having been raised in an often negative Christian environment, I went so far as to attend an Assemblies of God college and pursue a career as a music pastor for a number of years in order to try and discover how it’s supposed to be done and prove that I could do it.

Try as I may, however, I ran into roadblock after roadblock in my search for the right way to serve God and his people. What’s more, those roadblocks were virtually never atheists or pagans or agnostics; they were bible professors, church leaders and pastors. Of all the people who have hurt me deeply throughout the course of my life, 9 out of 10 were fellow Christians.

My purpose here was to discuss morality and ethics, and to bring to light what I saw as glaring contradictions within the tradition in which I was raised. I hoped that by scraping away the crud of dogma and fundamentalism I could arrive at some ‘moment of truth’ where a life centered around God would be worth pursuing.

It’s interesting that this search for truth became fodder for an ongoing dispute between myself and a tenured Assemblies of God pastor. The last time this bitter old man became a menace, harassing my wife and I for just over three weeks on this site, another site and via personal email; his superiors within the Assemblies of God on the district (state) and national level responded by explicitly stating they would do nothing.

As it turned out, his district superintendent is actually a lifelong friend, and the pastor in question did not hesitate to point this out.

“I understand that you recently sent another email to my district office.  I will warn you that you are going to be disappointed when you attempt to bring my friends into this matter.”

He went on to recount how close they were, how they’d gone camping together and how he was confident that we should expect no resolution. He acted proud that he was getting away with admittedly starting a fight for no other reason than to see if he could get another people to be hateful.

What does all this say?

Well, first of all it reminds me of why I left the Assemblies of God in the first place. There is simply no room for free inquiry, let alone doubt, and people like me are often chased out of churches. I’ve watched it happen to people, and I’ve been through it myself, numerous times.

Second, it reminds me why I am not so sure religion is a good force in the world. I keep hearing that things like this are the exception rather than the rule, but how many exceptions must one encounter before the so-called rule comes into question?

* * * * *

And yes, I know you’re reading this. But I will not name you here and give you the satisfaction of being able to publicly take credit for this. What I want you to think about is, how could anyone like me possibly come away from this sort of exchange wanting to know more about your version of God and your brand of Christianity? Isn’t that your stated purpose as a pastor?

This is just another reason that I believe there are good people bad people, and that the dividing line between these two camps has very little to do with God, religion or faith in any way, shape or form. The difference is no more than free will.

Interestingly enough, this whole debacle may have settled the matter for me. You apparently do not need God to be good.

Evidence and Experience Part I

By Anthony D Jacques

The other day I was talking with some folks about my personal experiences growing up within Evangelical Christianity. I must have offended a couple of the believers present because they instantly demanded empirical data to back up my “so-called truth claims.” It quickly became clear that there was nothing I could say to convince them that I was not speaking about religion in general, nor was I quoting statistics or research. I was merely talking about my own experience.

A little more recently, I was on a blog discussing Christianity with some internet folks, and the moment I mentioned personal experiences that were negative (though not when I mentioned the good times I’d had, mind you) one of the Christians present said my opinion was obviously jaded and I was clearly not in the position to speak about Christianity at large.

And once again, nothing I could say could convince the other party that I wasn’t speaking about Christianity at large. They got mad, and I just left. (I am learning, slow as it may be.)

I’ve been thinking about all this, trying to come up with a parallel. I suppose if a Christian were to say they had felt the presence of God and I demanded numbers or data to back up their “so-called truth claim” they would be offended. After all, that’s the difference between evidence and experience.

Or is that difference an illusion?

1957 Bel Air

If I said I like the ‘57 Bel Air better than the ‘56 or ‘58, I certainly shouldn’t need statistics to support that. If I said it was the best car ever designed, I’d still need no evidence to support this claim. But that’s only an opinion.

If I claimed the ‘57 Bel Air would save your soul and you should believe in it and hail it as the ultimate automobile, you might want a few more reasons why. If I said this “fact” simply must be accepted on faith alone, you’d likely stop stifling the laughter you’d been holding back and, if you’re nice, simply walk away, leaving what’s left of my dignity intact.

The difference is that most people don’t just laugh in the face of Christians who say they must blindly believe certain propositions on faith alone. We are tolerant, but because of that tolerance, I think a good many silly ideas remain intact within religion to this day.

And the moment you find a facet of someone’s belief that cannot be supported with evidence or data in any real sense, they back into the “highly nuanced” corner of “mystery” and “theology” and other such nonsense. Thus, all manner of silliness continues outside the realm of rational critique. This is the problem with separating evidence and experience and pretending they shouldn’t depend on each other.

Case in point: Magicians and illusionists rely on convincing you that something which is, by definition, impossible, is actually happening. You certainly experiencethat woman getting cut in half, or the Statue of Liberty disappearing, but you never fully allow yourself to believe it because you know it’s a magic show. After the trick, the woman walks back on stage fully restored, and the Statue of Liberty is “back where it belongs,” as it were. Of course, if you’ve watched any TV during the last five years, you know how both these illusions are achieved.

If the magician is good, then your eyes and brain are both taken in by the experience.That’s what makes it fun. But there would be trouble brewing if you took a magic show as evidence. Ifyou started believing people can really catch bullets in their teeth and walk on water, or worse, if you thought maybe you could as well, then you might find yourself in a world of pain.

Alright, next time we’ll dig a little deeper into the realm of evidence, but for now, enjoy this video of Criss Angel walking on water.

Fear Factor

By Anthony D Jacques

For all the fuss that Christians make about Halloween and its evils, I find it a little ironic that a lot of their own tactics are essentially motivated by fear. Contrast the fact that Halloween only happens once a year (and boy does this one day get a lot of church-goers uppity); whereas the fear of Satan, Hell or eternal damnation is employed virtually daily to keep the faithful in line and bring even more into the fold. I know this because I lived it.

Sure, growing up I wanted to be a good person and get into heaven. But let’s be honest, as good as heaven sounded, keeping out of Hell was the primary motivator for most of my life, and having spoken with many who were raised in similar traditions, I know I’m not alone.

Satan Comes to the Gates of Hell by William Blake

Talk about peace, love and goodwill here on earth till you’re blue in the face, but without the threat of eternal torment in the mix as well, religion would be just another marginally charitable social club. For that matter, there are plenty of charities I’d rather give my money to whose primary purpose is actually helping those in need without making them jump through epistemological hoops, not to mention all the other tactics that religious “outreaches” usually employ. This is not to say churches are unable to simply help people without requiring them to make a decision about Christ, but that would be the exception to the rule.

* * *

So, about Halloween. I suppose I have to admit up front that we took our one-year-old trick or treating the other day mainly to score some free candy for the wife and I. What kind of parents would we be if we were giving her all those sweets? She’s twelve months old, for crying out loud.

But someone actually gave my infant daughter a Christian tract instead of candy. It didn’t make a ton of sense, but do they ever? This one mentioned the scripture about plucking your eye out if it causes you to stumble, which is not exactly something you should tell a child to do, lest they take you seriously. Can you say lawsuit?

The kicker, however, was this line:

“Be honest. You know you will be guilty on Judgement Day, and therefore end up in Hell.”

Now I can guarantee every parent out there would be far beyond upset if I honestly attempted to convince their kids that they were going to be eaten alive by cannibals, zombies or things that go bump in the night. So how is this okay? If I can’t tell your kids awful, scary things (for which I have no proof whatsoever), why can you can tell mine that she’s going to Hell?

I only wish I knew whose house to egg, but alas, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to who was handing out what.

* * *

Interestingly, statistics show that if a child doesn’t grow up in church, they are much less likely to convert later in life. This is especially true after the age of eighteen or so. Christians use those numbers to show the importance of children’s ministry. The rest of the world should take note, however, because this reveals how difficult it is for superstition to take hold in a person’s life once they’ve developed their critical thinking and reasoning skills. You simply have to get the fear of eternal damnation into kids early, or they are more and more likely to reject it as the absurdity that it is.

The larger problem is that negative reinforcement can only take a person so far. And negative reinforcement in some unknowable hereafter is even weaker footing. Positive reinforcement works a little better in the real world, but even that has limits. Put that reward in the afterlife, and I’m sorry, but rational society shrugs and gets on with life.

If someone told you that good actions are their own reward, you might not believe them. It’s certainly hard to prove. What’s more, if you live in the West then you were trained by society to avoid certain behaviors or face certain negative legal consequences. And how are you most often motivated to turn in criminals or help find missing persons? Cash rewards for information that leads to results.

But those things only show the state our society is in, not necessarily the best we are capable of as individuals and as a race. The only thing standing in our way is the constant reinforcement that we need rewards or punishment for good or bad actions. Religion is not the lone perpetrator here, but they are a large factor and, in my opinion, hold the lion’s share of blame for perpetuating this way of thought.

That Christians have been ignoring a large part of their cannon in the developed world is certainly a good sign that they tacitly, if not explicitly, recognize that their holy books don’t hold the keys to morality. (Sadly, the third world does not enjoy this freedom from religion’s darker side, as attested by the Biblically mandated torture and murder of “witches” to this day.) But religion in general still remains centuries behind the present discourse because they are so distracted with the quality of life after death. With Heaven or Hell as distractions, how can they possibly be as concerned with the real world to the extent necessary to effect real change in real time? One can only wonder.

It all boils down to this: Doing what is right not out of fear, not in anticipation of a reward, but simply because you know it is right, is quantifiably more moral than being motivated by external incentives, regardless of whether those incentives are grounded in the real world or in some fantastic, supernatural fiction.

The Holy Spigot

: The Holy Spigot :

By special guest writer, Christian Christianson

When my friend, Anthony, had to leave his apartment a few months ago because of ongoing plumbing problems and leaky pipes, I wondered what I could do to help.

I commented on his Facebook page when he posted that video of water soaking up through the carpet. I visited him and his family when they were stuck at a hotel. I consoled them more than once, but somehow I still felt unsettled. The next day, when they had to up and move, I even prayed for God to send people to help them, but only one person showed up. (And she wasn’t even a Christian!)

Then it hit me. They never would have needed to move in the first place if they’d found a Christian plumber who ran a good, family-friendly business. Well, I saw the need, so I decided to address it. That’s why my wife and I founded:

The Holy Spigot: Christian & Kristen Christianson’s Christian Plumbing Company

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization devoted to remaining faithful even through the toughest plumbing problems.

Nonprofit, you ask? Of course. What kind of Christian business owners would we be if we were in it for the money? And it also keeps the greedy old government from taxing the financial blessing that God pours out upon us as we serve our neighbors.

The only thing we ask in exchange for our services is a small, monetary donation, just to help us keep the doors open. There are four basic levels of donation, depending on your specific needs.

For your generous donation of:

• $25.00:
  • We have set up a prayer-chain phone-tree who will be promptly notified of your plumbing needs, no matter what time, day or night.
  • Hundreds of volunteers will fight the powers and principalities of darkness and clogged drains through intercessory prayer on your behalf.
• $50.00:
  • You get all the previous benefits, plus:
  • We will send you a prayer towel that has been prayed over by our prayer team and anointed with oil. If you’ve got water coming up through the floorboards, this is a must have!
• $75.00:
  • You get all the previous benefits, plus:
  • We will send you a bottle of Holy Water that has been prayed over by our prayer team to work with the power of the Holy Spirit to unclog even the nastiest drains and fix the most stubborn plumbing issues.
• $100.00 + $25.00/hr labor (This is the option for those who want to work with a Christian company, but lack the faith necessary to leave their plumbing needs fully in God’s hands.)
  • You get all the previous benefits, plus:
  • We’ll send a tech out to your house to personally pray over your plumbing needs.
  • If necessary, he’ll even break out the old tool box.

Now we’ve already gotten some flack over our last option there. But our company motto is, “Fix leaky pipes always, and if necessary, use a tool set!”*

So if you’re tired of dealing with those crooks who charge you an arm and a leg for their services without ever checking in with the Big Guy upstairs, give us a call!

* * * * *

1. Why would it seem totally unreasonable to trust your plumbing needs entirely to faith, but not, for instance, your medical needs?
2. Don’t we have plumbers for the same reason we have doctors, attorneys, police officers and computer technicians? We don’t just pray for our legal needs to go away, or out speeding tickets. We have to dal with them in reality.
3. Or do you think a business like this would have enough appeal to a certain crowd to actually work?

*Sir Francis of Assisi; “Preach the gospel always, and if necessary, use words.”

Is Religion Bio-Chemical?

by Anthony D Jacques

The speaker is Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University and winner of an Emperor Has No Clothes Award for his plain speaking approach to subjects like this.(Yes, I would like to win one of those myself someday.)

In this lecture, Sapolsky addresses three main themes encompassing the striking bio-chemical and neurological similarities between:

• Schizophrenia & hearing the voice of a god
• Obsessive compulsive disorder & religious ritual
• Temporal lobe epilepsy & mystical experiences

His thesis is that, while the full blown version of these disorders can be devastating, a more subdued case can prove beneficial for the development of religious practices or even the cultivation of religious community.

I know what you’re probably thinking and you’re right, at face value those statements and comparisons probably seem offensive. Even as a de-converting Evangelical I was taken aback when I first encountered his ideas. However, I was willing to give him a shot and the lecture did not disappoint.

I highly recommend finding time to watch this (it is 82 minutes) because he builds a fantastic case.

And for those of you not up to sitting and watching a glowing screen with moving pictures and sound for any length of time (I know, it’ll never catch on), here’s a transcript of a speech he gave that is very similar in nature to the video, and will take a lot less time to digest.

I especially like the section on OCD and the way it applies to Martin Luther’s development as a man of faith.

Suffice it to say, it’s an undeniably interesting topic no matter what category your belief system, or lack thereof, falls under. I do intend to try and boil down some of his main points in the future, but at present I think there’s plenty here to get discussion going.

Thoughts?

How I Met My Wife: A Satire

By special guest writer, Christian Christianson

Stock Photo

When I met my wife, I was a freshman in college.

Now at first, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what I was looking for. Of course I had some ideas floating around my head about what the perfect wife would be like, but those were just pie-in-the-sky ideas. I mean, what do I know?

It’s like when you are trying to pick a college. Sure you think you know what you want to major in and where you’d like to attend, but then you have to pray about it and God will tell you how it’s going to be. Or in my case, God told my parents, and they told me. Turns out, it worked the same way with my wife.

When I got to college, I remember the day my parents called and told me about her. Her name is Kristin, they said, and God had picked her out for me. They told me all about her and she sounded fantastic, so one day I decided I’d put it off long enough. I decided to get to know her myself.

“Just close your eyes and talk to her,” my mother told me. So I did, and it turns out, it was just like talking to Jesus.

Of course, the folks cautioned me right away not to let my new relationship get in between me and Jesus, so I knew I had to be careful. I mean, you wouldn’t want to risk losing your closeness to your personal savior, your eternal security, over a woman! It wasn’t easy, but eventually I learned how to balance my time between Kristin and Jesus.

We spent hours and hours together, walking downtown, reading books, or just sipping coffee. She was even right there beside me sitting quietly, well, practically invisible, during those tough times like finals week.

Yeah, we’ve been through a lot together.

Turns out I really love her, and I know she loves me, too. So after our freshman year we decided to take it a step further and get married. Sure, all the wedding pictures show just me and the groomsmen, but what does that matter? It’s our relationship that really counts. I know a lot of people out there doubted the depth of our love, they said that it wouldn’t last, but heck, it’s been two years and we’re still going strong. She knows me so well, it’s like we were meant for each other.

Some of my family (the ones who don’t go to church, mind you), insist it’s all in my head. They say what we have isn’t a real relationship, but they just don’t understand because they haven’t experienced something like this for themselves. I only hope they find the same thing that we have.

As for me, I have no doubt this was a match made in heaven. She’s one of a kind!

(Stay tuned next week, I’ll be unveiling our new business venture, a non-profit, family-friendly, faith-based company!)

* * * * *

1. How would it look if some people had relationships with invisible people other than Jesus?
2. What’s the difference? Is it simply that enough people believe in Jesus that it doesn’t seem odd for them, whereas virtually no sane person believes in invisible spouses?
3. What if that changed over the next decade and millions of people began believing in invisible spouses? Would you or I, not believing in them, be suddenly intolerant or close-minded?

Thoughts?

Blind Faith and the Holocaust

By Anthony D Jacques

As I’m reading through Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, he brings up the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust as two despicable products of blind faith without room for free-inquiry or reason.

The Inquisition, a dark period of torture and public execution that spanned roughly from the 12th to 19th centuries, was sponsored by various Popes and carried out by any God-fearing priest or Bishop who didn’t want to also become a victim of torture. Any men of the cloth who used their critical thinking powers and questioned this practice quickly found themselves at their own tortuous trial.

The Holocaust, which needs little introduction, was sponsored by a milieu of Anti-Semitic ideas which brewed within the Christian and Catholic traditions for centuries before coming to fruition via Hitler and his regime.

Today, I focus on the latter, since one of its founding fathers may surprise you. The game is, I’ll give you some quotes, and you try and guess which church father wrote this nonsense.

To get things started, since free-inquiry and reason seems to go against the calculated murder of an entire people group, what did our man of the hour think of people thinking for themselves?

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.”

“Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and … know nothing but the word of God.”

Now on the first one, I agree, but for the exact opposite reasons that he is implying. Reason will work for anyone who employs it, and if that makes reason a whore, then so be it. And I also agree that reason is the greatest enemy that faith has.

That second quote, however, is a little scary. Even today we must put up with anti-intellectual endeavors like Answers in Genesis or the Creation Museum for trampling reason and sense underfoot in the name of faith.

Moving right along, what did this church father think of the Jews? (For brevity’s sake, I’ve given you only the first line of each of the steps proposed.)

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? …

• First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. …
• Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. …
• Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. …
• Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. …
• Fifth, I advise that safe conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. …
• Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. …
• Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]}. …

Oh, he’s just getting fired up. Read on:

“Perhaps the Jews sent their servants with plates of silver and pots of gold to gather up Judas’ piss with the other treasures, and then they ate and drank his offal…”

The Jews “… should be knocked to pieces, strangled and stabbed, secretly and openly, by everybody who can do it.”

Well, the suspense has gone on long enough. The fabulous work of Christianity we have here is written by none other than Martin Luther. That’s right, Martin Luther. The guy who split off from the Catholic Church and paved the way Protestantism in all it’s many iterations we enjoy (and I use that word loosely) even today.

That his teaching also happened to inspire much of the doctrine of the Third Reich Church and lead up to Hitler’s Germany and the Holocaust should give us pause.

You see, Martin Luther has tapped into the perfect combination through which anything is possible, that of Blind Faith and absolutely no Reason. This is why people can take a completely un-scientific Creation Museum seriously, because it reinforces only what they want to believe and requires no thinking to reconcile it with the way the world actually is.

This is why a church, in the name of the very same God, can support the extermination of an entire people group through an atrocity like the Holocaust.