How I became an atheist: Part 3 - Angelic choir

After high school I enrolled at Southern Illinois University. My favorite class was concert choir, mainly because I didn't have any homework. I spent 2 1/2 years in the SIU choir. It didn't dawn on me until just now as I'm writing this that our choir director, Dr. Mochnick, was always talking about our music being either sacred or secular. And he always made sure that our repertoire was mainly sacred music. We were only ever allowed 2 or 3 secular songs per semester. I didn't think much of it then, but now I'm curious as to why. Was it because Dr. Mochnick was a religious guy? Was it a school requirement? Did he feel there was more educational value to sacred choral music?

The words God and Jesus and Heaven and whatnot never really rolled off my tongue. I remember not really being able to connect to the music we were singing and it giving me a weird feeling inside sometimes.

Our choir spent a lot of time in churches. Every semester we would go on tour, covering practically the entire state of Illinois. We would sing at a church in the morning, a school in the afternoon, and a church at night. The church patrons would volunteer to house us for the night. We probably sang at a church from every Christian denomination over the course of 2 1/2 years. Our songs were often woven into the church service, so I had to sit through many different kinds of sermons and services.

Never once have I felt comfortable in church. Even later in life when I attended a few non-denominational and gay-oriented services, I still felt a disconnect and a sense that I didn't really belong. Back in college, I would sit there in the choir stall and watch the people in the pews as they listened to the pastor preach. I never bought it, the devotion. It never seemed sincere. More often than not, the people would be completely disinterested. They were there simply because they know they're supposed to be there. But even the ones who were devout, it always seemed put on, or forced. They wanted, and needed, to believe.

The one time I actually sorta enjoyed myself was when my friend Paul and I went to a Jewish synagogue as part of a class project. They were doing a special service about the holocaust. No one bombarded us with questions about why we were there and what we believed. One lady who was next to us kindly helped us navigate the Hewbrew scriptures that were being read aloud (it's written from right to left). It's the one time I felt like the people there were sincere in their beliefs and what they were doing.

How I became an atheist: Part 2 - Atheist boy!

My parents and I moved to Southern Illinois in the summer before my 8th grade year. So.Il. is where my dad's side of the family lives (including my preacher uncle). So.Il. is also part of the Bible belt. I was excited to move there. I had grown up in big cities and couldn't wait to live in a small rural town surrounded by nature and kind people.

I was a very shy kid. Especially when I came to Illinois because I didn't know anyone. Luckily several of my classmates initiated contact and became acquaintances and friends during my first year. I also adopted a few nicknames. One girl called me "Pretty Ears." I guess she thought I had pretty ears. Another girl called me "Atheist Boy." In our 8th grade science class, the big bang was being introduced. She asked me if I believed in the big bang. When I said yes, she started calling me Atheist Boy. It was in jest, for the most part... But it did bother me slightly to be called an atheist. Although I couldn't put my finger on why. Maybe it was just the way she said it.

It wasn't until high school that I started to really think about the existence of God and discover what my beliefs were. Freshmen and Sophomore year I believed in fairies and goblins and all sorts of other supernatural things. Ghosts, bigfoot, demons, you name it. I told a friend that I believe in the Greek gods as well. "So, do you pray to them? Do you sit by your bed at night and say, 'Dear Zeus...'?" Around Junior year was when I started to wear a crucifix on a chain around my neck. At that point I believed in God, but I didn't belong to any church or attach to any particular denomination. It was the kind of God that you only turn to when you need something or you're feeling guilty.

I would pray. I would talk to God. I would ask for guidance or wisdom. But to be honest, I never really felt at one with God. It never really clicked for me. It felt like I was pretending, fooling myself. Like something that I was supposed to be, but it went against my true nature. Kinda like when I tried to be straight for about a week.

How I became an atheist: Part 1 - Circus peanuts

God was never mentioned while I was growing up. Except maybe a few times in conjunction with the word "dammit." But never once did my parents tell me what they believed, if anything, or even that there were other beliefs out there in regard to a higher power. Religion and spirituality were just not discussed. It wasn't necessarily taboo in our household. I think my parents really were agnostic, or just didn't give it much thought. Other members of my family are religious. My uncle is a preacher. But I wasn't around them enough to be influenced by them.

I was raised pretty much an only child. I have two half-brothers and a half-sister, all older. My brothers lived with us when I was very young, but they moved out before I could form too many solid memories of them. One sticks out--my brother telling me to "Go to hell." I remember being bothered or hurt by the comment. Hurt by the attack itself, not because I feared hell. I don't think I knew what hell was.

For a short time, while we lived in Vegas, I went to Sunday school. I somehow heard that one of our neighbors was hosting a small gathering in her home and decided that I wanted to check it out. Maybe a friend told me about it. The only thing I recall is the circus peanuts. The lady would hand out circus peanuts to the kids who could recite that week's scripture by memory. She would hand them out on little strips of paper every Sunday. I couldn't recite a single scripture for you now. And I'm not sure I even really knew what Sunday school was all about. I think it was just something to do. And I got candy.

Theist? Deist? Potato? PoTAHto?

Let's remind ourselves of the terminology. A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who, in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. In many theistic belief systems, the deity is intimately involved in human affairs. He answers prayers; forgives or punishes sins; intervenes in the world by performing miracles; frets about good and bad deeds, and knows when we do them (or even think of doing them). A deist, too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws that govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don't believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God as a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness that governs its workings. Deists differ from theists in that their God does not answer prayers, is not interested in sins or confessions, does not read our thoughts and does not intervene with capricious miracles. Deists differ from pantheists in that the deist God is some kind of cosmic intelligence, rather than the pantheist's metaphoric or poetic synonym for the laws of the universe. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism. Deism is watered-down theism.

From The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

Creationist Claim CA040: Fairness demands that evolution and creation be given equal time.

Creationist Claim CA040: Fairness demands that evolution and creation be given equal time.
In fairness, creation and evolution deserve equal time in science classes. (H.J. Morris 1985, 197-198)

1. The teaching of creationism does not belong in science classes because creationism has no science to teach. It is based on personal religious belief, not on evidence. For the most part, creationism can fit with anything we find, making it unscientific. Where creation models do make specific predictions that can be tested against evidence, they fail the tests. Asking for equal time is asking for nonscience to be taught in science classes.
A 1999 United States poll found that most people favor teaching evolution--and that when creationism is taught, most prefer that it be taught either in nonscience classes or as a religious belief.

2. Equal time would open creationism, and by extension Christianity in general, to ridicule and attack. Saint Augustine recognized this in the fifth century:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions,...and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. (1982, 42-43)

3. Equal time would mean teaching

• other versions of creationism from other denominations of Christianity (including young-earth, old-earth, day-age, gap theory, geocentrism, and flat earth). All have equal basis for being taught, since they are all based on exactly the same Bible. All are mutually incompatible (DYG 2000; H.M. Morris 1985, 215-247; Watchtower 1985, 186).
  
• other versions of scientific creationism from other religions. Claims have been made for Muslim, Hindu, and Native American versions of creationism.
  The only legal precedent favoring creationism in the United States in the last fifty years was an Interior Department decision finding, on the basis of native creation and flood myths, that 9,400-year-old Kennewick Man was associated with present-day Native American tribes (Chatters 2001, 266; see CJ311).
  
• creation traditions from more than 300 other religions and cultures, from Abenaki to Zulu.
  
• other ideas for the origin of life and the universe, such as
  
  • solipsism
    
  • Last Thursdayism, the unfalsifiable view that the universe and everything in it was created last Thursday with only the appearance of earlier history
    
  • multiple designers (Hoppe 2004)
    
  • Raelianism or other extraterrestrial involvement
    
  • creation by time travelers.
    
  Creationists do not want all of these taught in science class any more than science educators do. Clearly, creationism in school is an attempt to get greater time than all the opposing views, not equal time. That is not fair.
• Creationists do not advocate equal time for evolutionary theory in church services. Why?
  

Further Reading: Edwords, F. 1981. Why creationism should not be taught as science; Part 2; Isaak, M. 2000. What is creationism? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wic.html; Leeming, D., and M. Leeming. 1994. A Dictionary of Creation Myths; Sproul, B. 1991. Primal Myths.

From The Counter-Creationism Handbook by Mark Isaak

Creationist Claim CA041: Teach the controversy

CREATIONIST CLAIM CA041: Teach the controversy.
Students should be taught all sides of a controversial issue. Evolution should not be taught without teaching the controversy that surrounds it.

1. On the fundamental issues of the theory of evolution, such as the facts of common descent and natural selection, there is no scientific controversy. The "teach the controversy" campaign is an attempt to get pseudoscience taught in classrooms. Lessons about the sociological issues of the evolution-creation controversy may be appropriate in history or other nonscience classes.
If the object is to keep bad science from the classroom, the same standards should be applied to the counterarguments from creationists, which are all bad science.

2. There are controversies over details of evolutionary theory, such as the relative contributions of sympatric versus allopatric speciation. These controversies require a great deal of background in biology even to understand what they are about. They should not be taught to beginning students. They should be taught to graduate-level students in biology, and they are.

Further Reading: Scott, E.C., and G. Branch. 2003. Evolution: What's wrong with 'teaching the controversy.'

From The Counter-Creationism Handbook by Mark Isaak