 
### Heading for the Light

### Dispelling the Shadows of Religion

by Brian Horn

Copyright 2013 Brian Horn

Smashwords Edition

17 Sep 2013

Corrections and Minor Updates

15 Oct 2014

* * * * *

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Although free, this e-book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com or from their favorite e-book retailer, where the latest version is available. Thank you for your support.

### Heading for the Light

### Dispelling the Shadows of Religion

### Table of Contents

Preface

Almighty and compassionate

Room for improvement

Rationalization

When all else fails

Everyday beliefs

Afterlife

Heaven

The one true religion

He watches over us

The nature of reality, and vice versa

Trickster

Science

Wrong again

Moral compass

Birth control

Abortion

Homosexuality

Sexism

Slavery

Genocide

Guidance

The Word

Keep them in their place

Questionable messages

Family values

The cause of the problem

Whose word

Leading or lagging

Not all bad

Faith

Early start

Too much effort

Change is painful

Filling the void

Explanation

Behavior

Comfort

Fellowship

Society's troublemaker

Intolerance

Church and state

Education

Looking forward

Afterword

Version

Nation builder

Free will

About the author

### Preface

This book grew from a desire to understand why my views about religion differ from views held by many others. Why do people hold different religious beliefs? How can we choose wisely between conflicting beliefs? How do your religious beliefs affect me and how do mine affect you? As we shall see, these questions open the door to an honest look at the affect of religion on our society and therefore on all of us.

My religious background is ordinary. My parents didn't make a point of religion in their daily lives, but they were conscientious church members and enforced my attendance at Sunday school and church services. When I was young I accepted uncritically what was taught, to the extent of getting into a righteous discussion (at the ripe old age of eight) with a Jewish friend about the fact that he couldn't go to heaven because he didn't believe in Jesus. (His viewpoint was considerably different, along the lines that it was I who didn't stand a chance because I was not of God's chosen race.)

Something changed during my pre-teen years; I have no idea why. I remember sitting through parentally mandated church services occupying my time by thinking about what struck me as the absurd arguments and illogic of the sermon. Similar skeptical opinions surfaced occasionally as the years passed when I happened to encounter religious ideas. But religious views didn't seem to impact my daily life. I had my ideas, others had theirs, and that was fine.

Now I've come to be more concerned about why many of my thoughts about the big questions – why the world is the way it is, how we got here, why we act the way we do, why we should care about the consequences of our actions, what path can be trusted to lead to the truth – differ considerably from the thoughts of many other people. At the heart of our different ways of thinking are religious beliefs. This book explores those beliefs and their consequences.

### Almighty and compassionate

God, the centerpiece of the world's big-three religions, is an impressive deity. He is almighty and omnipotent; he created the entire universe and made it subject to his authority. Equally important, he is compassionate, wise, and just. That is what religions teach. Which is curious, because it doesn't take much observation to see the discrepancy between the world such a god would create and the world we actually experience.

Somehow religious believers manage to gloss over this obvious disparity. But the question – why does an omnipotent and just god allow evil and suffering – is worth some thought if we're trying to comprehend religious beliefs. We need to understand why humanity is saddled with all the problems that an all-powerful god could certainly have left out of his creation.

Room for improvement

_If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to, then he is not omnipotent. If he is able, but not willing, then he is malevolent. If he is both able and willing, then whence cometh evil? If he is neither able nor willing, then why call him God?_

– Epicurus (341-270 BC)

Not only are the woes of the world numerous, they come in an impressive variety. A few problems might be explained away, but their diversity casts serious doubts on God's abilities.

For example, we could well do without diseases, which apparently exist solely to cause indiscriminate suffering and death. Why did God create diseases? Or if he didn't create them, who or what did, in a world created by God and under his control? If not created by God, why does he allow them to continue to exist?

Another problem area is the makeup of our own bodies, with their built-in susceptibilities for malfunctions like cancer, diabetes, strokes, and heart attacks, to name a very few. Why would an all-knowing and omnipotent god create us with so many potential defects lying in wait to cause suffering?

Then there are tribulations we inflict on each other, such as wars, rape, vendettas, hatred of those who are different, and driving drunk. Why would God create humans to be so prone to such harmful tendencies?

And there are afflictions that are just a result of how the world works: many starve because we must have constant nutrition that is not always available, we are subject to numerous kinds of natural disasters that kill and maim, and we eventually die after some period of decline that is often long, degrading and painful. You would think an all-wise, compassionate god could have come up with a better system.

Granted, the wonders of the world far outweigh its woes, and many of us are fortunate enough to get through life relatively unscathed. Nevertheless, it is unreasonable to claim that an omnipotent and compassionate entity would create a world with so many ways of unpredictably and indiscriminately striking the innocent along with the guilty. If God created the world, and he is omnipotent and therefore had ultimate power to do so in any manner, than he is certainly not kind, benevolent, or just. In fact, he would seem to be something of a sadist.

But maybe it's the other way around. Maybe God is, in fact, kind and benevolent, but not really omnipotent. Perhaps he's quite powerful – after all, the universe he is said to have created is an awesome place – but possibly God has some limitations, and he gave it his best shot and hoped things would turn out well. That might explain why evil and affliction were able to mar his creation. But the problem with resorting to a not-completely-omnipotent deity is drawing the line between what he could and could not do. If a religion allows the concept of a deity with somewhat limited powers, then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it may have no powers at all.

Rationalization

How do religions explain a world with woes that was created by a good God? The story of Job in the Old Testament is one attempt. In essence, Job is a good and just man who is wholly loyal to God, but God allows Satan to inflict Job with all manner of torments simply to test his loyalty. God is willing to see how far Job can be pushed before Job denounces him, so as Job continues to praise God after each new tribulation, God allows Satan to make the next one even worse.

This story does indeed explain why bad things happen to good people – God is having us tested. But no matter how we might try to side step it, the story is really about inflicting steadily increasing anguish on a good and righteous person just to find that person's breaking point. It's hard to understand how people listen to the story of Job and accept it as some kind of worthwhile lesson even though it paints God as an abuser. Religions tell us that God created us in his image. Combine that with a religious story about God sanctioning torture to satisfy an insecure ego and you have a fine excuse for any of us to beat our spouse.

The story of Adam and Eve is another attempt to explain why we are subject to life's misfortunes. Initially everything was fine in the Garden of Eden – presumably there were no diseases, no crippling accidents, and the food chain didn't exist (or at least humans were not part of it). Then Eve ate the fruit and God got angry and evicted Adam and Eve from the Garden. Evidently at that time he created diseases, bones that break, mean people, natural disasters, and the concept of killing in order to get food to survive. Oh yes, he also instituted painful childbirth, often resulting in the death of the mother and/or child, because, of course, it was all Eve's fault, so why not punish every woman who will ever exist.

The expulsion of humanity from the Garden of Eden into a cruel world does provide a reason for our troubles, but it demonstrates beyond a doubt that God is not in the least compassionate or just. Taking vengeance on all future generations is about as opposite to those qualities as you can get.

God's habit of taking vengeance on future generations of innocents also crops up in a number of other places in the Bible. Humans have this same unfortunate propensity for vengeance, which has caused much misery over history and still does today. It's disheartening to see such a destructive character trait promoted in the Bible.

* * * * *

Religious commentators have made numerous attempts to resolve the good-God/bad-world contradiction. For example, there is a school of thought something along these lines: although God is all-wise and therefore could know everything we would do in advance and could even intervene when necessary, he chooses not to interfere and instead is content to have started things off and then observe how everything comes out. This picture of humanity and all its trials as a sort of diversion for a possibly bored God, with the universe as a spectacular but mostly irrelevant backdrop, is not particularly satisfying.

Another approach to resolving the contradiction is the use of rhetoric that on the surface explains away the contradiction but in fact says nothing useful about it. Religious communicators use this technique often to explain a variety of questionable aspects of religion, so it's worth looking at a simple example.

This example is from a sermon titled Our Omnipotent God, on the Berean Bible Church web site. In it, the preacher acknowledges the problem we've been talking about: "Some object to God's omnipotence saying that God cannot be all-powerful because of all the suffering in the world." He summarizes Rabbi Harold Kushner's book _Why Bad Things Happen to Good People_ , in which Kushner concludes that God is not all-powerful; there are forces in the universe that are beyond even his control. The preacher then refutes Kushner as follows:

Well, Kushner is wrong. The Bible from beginning to end teaches the absolute goodness and sovereignty of God. If Rabbi Kushner is correct, then there is no hope. For if God is not truly omnipotent, then evil is more powerful than God, and it really doesn't matter how good God is if he is impotent.

Note that none of this explains or even addresses the problem at hand. "The Bible from beginning to end teaches the absolute goodness and sovereignty of God." Fine, but that's not an answer, that's in fact part of the problem – those teachings don't agree with what we find in the real world.

The last sentence sounds like it is proving something – "For if ... then ...". However, this sentence says nothing to explain the contradiction or to illuminate why Kushner is wrong. It only says what the result would be _if_ God were not truly omnipotent; it doesn't even touch on whether God _is_ not truly omnipotent. Presumably the preacher is trying to imply that the consequences of God being not truly omnipotent are too terrible to face; therefore it must not be true. That's not an explanation.

When all else fails

Finally, there is the ultimate answer that religion hauls out when confronted with questions to which it is unable to provide reasonable explanations:

\- We are too lowly to understand the workings of God's wisdom.

\- Mere humans cannot hope to understand the mind of God.

\- Who are we to question the motives of the Supreme Being?

\- God works in mysterious ways.

Those are cop-outs. The real message behind them is: don't question me any further; I don't really have an answer; stop thinking and mindlessly accept this. Which doesn't seem to be the type of answer we should want from a philosophy that purports to explain our world and the good and evil in it.

### Everyday beliefs

Religious beliefs can become so ingrained in our nature that we don't give them a thought. We say "Thank God!" after narrowly escaping a disaster, but this is more of an involuntary reflex than an actual acknowledgement of God's possible involvement. We have only a fuzzy notion of heaven, but we're sure we want to go there when we die. And we assume we will, without thinking much about whether or not that's a reasonable expectation. These and other common beliefs may hold a few surprises if given some thought.

Afterlife

_We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we want another which will be eternal._

– Anatole France

Religion tells us we have a soul, which is independent of our body but somehow associated with it, and when our body dies, its soul lives on. We all know the basic idea: a soul goes to heaven for an eternity of something positive (details vary) if the owner had done the right things in life, or goes to hell for an eternity of great unpleasantness (typically involving fire) if the owner had disobeyed the rules.

Our beliefs about heaven and hell have a curious aspect. On the one hand, most people who are even slightly religious believe they do have a soul and it will wind up in one of those places. On the other hand, they tend to be quite casual about how their day-to-day lives affect their soul's final destination. People joke about it, along the lines of "well, now I'm going to hell for sure" after doing something felt to be against the rules. Also, it seems obvious from their actions that most people don't give the heaven/hell consequence any thought at all when they make many of their moral choices. And yet, when not specifically thinking about any particular action of theirs, they assume they will go to heaven when they die.

Heaven

_Learn to dance. Otherwise the angels in heaven won't know what to do with you._

– St. Augustine

Dear Abby: I am a middle-aged woman who is Baptist by faith. I believe that when I die I will go to heaven. My problem is, if going to heaven means being reunited with my parents and other family members, then I don't want to go! The idea of spending eternity with them is more than I can stand, but I don't want to go to hell, either. Any thoughts?  – Eternally Confused

Dear Eternally Confused: Yes. When you reach the pearly gates, talk this over with St. Peter. Perhaps he would be willing to place you in a different wing than the one your parents and other family members are staying in.

– Dear Abby (Jeanne Phillips)

What might heaven be like? Ideas vary widely, from belief that we would experience things (but only the good parts) more or less as we do now, to belief in some sort of nebulous concept of communion with the mind of God.

Most people instinctively assume they will retain some aspects of their physical selves in heaven. To take one expectation, the enjoyment of a prescribed number of virgins as a reward for martyrdom in the cause of Islam certainly seems to require some representation of a physical body. And many even moderately religious Christians expect to reunite with a spouse, Mom, Dad, Aunt Ida, and other loved ones after death, which implies some way of recognizing and interacting with people. (The village in Ray Bradbury's _Mars is Heaven!_ comes to mind.) Any notion of being able to experience anything that has some continuity with your life involves some representation of physicality.

But what would that representation be? If you die of old age or a wasting disease, then you probably wouldn't want to be stuck with your body, or even an abstraction of it, as it was just before you died. Maybe you envision emerging in heaven as your healthy twenty-five-year-old self. But then what if your mom meets you as her eighteen-year-old self? That would be weird. Parents might look forward to being reunited in heaven with their fondly remembered youngsters, but their children might very well want to spend eternity as the adults they became. Could there be multiple copies of the parents' offspring in heaven?

We're stuck with the practical problem that, one way or another, our enjoyments and pleasures – really all our experiences, even aesthetic and intellectual pursuits – are tied to our physical bodies. Maybe heaven provides the requisite physical environments or some kind of virtual equivalents, but then heaven starts to seem like Westworld or a Disneyland for grown-ups.

Given the difficulties of a heaven with any physical representation, some people believe that only their mind or consciousness will remain after death, which does fit better with the idea of soul. Presumably one's consciousness would have unfettered access to the truths that were hidden in life, and possibly could interact with the consciousnesses of others in heaven. A physicist would be able to finally see the unified theory of everything (although keeping it all in one's mind with no blackboard at hand would be quite a feat). A sociologist would finally understand completely the interplay between people's innate make-up and their environment. An author could visualize the perfect composition on any subject.

That might be fine, for those of an intellectual bent, at least for a while. But it doesn't seem a great way to spend eternity. Even an avid astronomer might get jaded after learning every detail of every one of the billions of stars in the galaxy. Even after spending a year absorbing all there was to know about each star, the billions of years it would take to learn everything about the galaxy would be no time at all on the road to eternity. She would then have the opportunity to do the same for every one of the billions of galaxies in the universe, and still not have used up any appreciable amount of eternity. At some point, this has got to become boring. She might then move to an entirely different intellectual pursuit, but after going through an untold number of pursuits in whatever desired detail, what then? An eternity of disembodied thinking is bound to get tedious.

Finally, some people, probably mostly among the religious professionals, seem to view the afterlife as a kind of merging of one's soul with the mind of God, with an eternity available to experience his wondrous presence. I guess there could be something to that if you're inclined to an abstract way of thinking, and if, in fact, you do think God is wondrous. But given what the Bible reveals about God's thinking (as we shall see in later sections), you might actually be appalled to get a close look at how his mind works. In any case, even if God is wondrous, experiencing the wonders of his presence for eternity appears to be just a more intellectualized version of listening to angels playing beautiful harp music for eternity. Not a great reward for following all the rules during your life.

The one true religion

Most religious believers claim they practice the one and only true religion. It's odd that few people see anything peculiar about this claim. After all, no matter which religion you practice, millions of people who are members of a different religion believe just as fervently that theirs is the one and only true religion. Obviously everybody can't be right.

If we try to understand why everybody thinks that theirs is the one true religion, an obvious question is: how do people become attached to a particular religion in the first place? The answer, in the majority of cases, is simply that they are born into the religion. Their religion is an accident of birth.

Of course, a person's religion sometimes differs from his or her family's – the first Christians came from Jewish or pagan families; the first Protestants came from Catholic families; and so on. There have been times in history when the force of an emperor or king (or Muhammad or the inquisition) caused large numbers of people to change from the religion of their upbringing, many of them against their will. And there are always some people at any time who decide on their own to change their religion for one reason or another. But most people adopt the religion of their parents; they absorb that religion's teachings, traditions and rituals at a young age; and they never question whether another religion might be better. In fact, most people never learn anything much about any other religion except that it's bad compared to theirs.

Many people do switch between denominations separated by low fences, such as within the Protestant family, or even between Catholics and Protestants. But what are the chances of someone born into a Jewish family ever converting to a Christian religion or Islam, or someone born a Muslim to convert to Judaism or Christianity, or a Christian to convert to Islam or Judaism? It happens, but the chances are small compared to the number of people who remain in the religion of their upbringing.

So evidently in most cases, there is little or no thought involved in determining one's religion, no examination of the religion's good and bad points compared to another religion's, no critical thought given to what the religion practices – it's simply a matter of what family raises you. It doesn't make sense for people to claim they belong to the one true religion when they didn't choose to belong to it and know little of the alternatives.

He watches over us

People find it surprisingly easy to hold conflicting views of God's role in tragic events and not even notice the contradiction. They ignore the fact that an omnipotent God must surely have caused (or at least allowed) some particular tragedy, but they give credit to God for any bit of good that accompanies it. A typical example: a boat sinks and the survivors give profuse thanks to God for saving them – but they don't blame God for letting the boat sink in the first place, or for allowing all the other passengers to drown.

An article in the paper recently told about a couple and their granddaughter whose drift boat overturned when it struck a partially submerged tree, where they were left stranded. When they didn't return, the couple's daughter and son-in-law joined the search for the missing trio. The stranded grandmother saw headlights approaching the river and let out a whistle that her daughter in the car heard, and a rescue boat arrived shortly after and got the stranded trio to safety. This is a heart-warming story about people caring for and helping each other, and it has a happy ending.

But what I don't understand is the thought process of the rescued man, who said his daughter and son-in-law were "directed by the Lord" to drive down the road to the spot where the three were stuck. Since his daughter knew the trio's plans – her own daughter was one of the boaters – it doesn't seem like supernatural help would have been required to eventually get to the vicinity of the accident. But that is a minor quibble. My big question is why God didn't just prevent the accident in the first place. If he could get into the daughter's head enough to direct her to the accident, he surely could have got into the boaters' heads enough to guide them around the submerged tree. Or he could have caused a little current that would have taken them safely by, or done any of a number of other things to avert the accident and the stress that resulted. How is it possible to thank God for the rescue and give no thought to his culpability for the accident?

I was struck by this odd mix of thinking a few years ago at a memorial service for a friend who had died from a ruptured aneurism. The priest told the congregation that those who were with my friend just after his death saw a sudden ray of sunlight break through the clouds, which was a sign that God thought favorably of the deceased and was showing his love for him. That's a nice sentiment, but I couldn't help thinking – isn't this the same God who let the aneurism rupture and kill the man in the first place? The same God who created the whole concept of aneurisms?

Here's a quote by a survivor of disastrous mudslides in Brazil: "I have friends still lost in all of this mud. It's all gone. It's all over now. We're putting ourselves in the hands of God." But those are the same hands that caused (or at least allowed) the mudslides, aren't they _?_ An omnipotent God is clearly responsible for the occurrence of the mudslide, either directly or by allowing it. But for some reason the survivors assume God will take care of them now. It seems odd to seek comfort from an entity who, according to your own beliefs, is responsible for your suffering.

### The nature of reality, and vice versa

_Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away._

– Philip K. Dick

It's no secret that the biblical account of creation is completely at odds with what science has discovered to be the case. There are two religious reactions to this conflict.

Moderate denominations tend to view the biblical account as allegorical, or as an attempt to provide explanations at a time when factual knowledge was limited. They sometimes suggest an arbitrary mangling of the meaning when necessary, such as assuming "day" really means "billions of years" in appropriate contexts. Such flexibility allows people to consider themselves members of the religion and at the same time accept the scientific view of reality.

Conservative denominations take the Bible literally. They believe God created the earth, sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and people in six days about 6000 years ago. Unfortunately, such an interpretation doesn't allow the acceptance of scientific findings.

Trickster

Bible literalists go to great lengths to explain away contradictions with the literal biblical accounts. My introduction to this interesting way of thinking came during a lunchtime conversation with several co-workers a number of years ago. The lunch group included a fellow engineer, I'll call him John, who happened to be Mormon. _Jurassic Park_ had just come out and some of us were skeptically speculating about the movie's premise that multi-million-year-old DNA could be sufficiently intact to be cloned into a dinosaur. John said our speculation about the DNA was beside the point – the main issue, he informed us, was the impossibility of dinosaurs living millions of years ago because the earth itself was less than 6000 years old.

That spawned much discussion. I was fascinated by John's only recourse to defend his belief, which was to portray God as being incredibly dedicated to tricking humanity. The lunch group contended that the millions of layers of sedimentary rock sliced through by the Grand Canyon show that the canyon was formed over the course of millions of years. John responded that God could have created all those millions of layers at once on the third day of creation, to make it look like each layer had been laid down yearly. After all, God is all-powerful, so nothing is too difficult for him. And, he could have made up skeletal remains of various now-extinct species and embedded the bones in appropriate layers to make it look like the animals lived a long time ago.

The lunch group was amazed. We asked about radiometric dating, which is based on well-established physics and shows earth to be some four billion years old. John said God could have made some rocks with isotope ratios that indicated the rocks had been undergoing radioactive decay for billions of years but were really just freshly created during the week of creation. Apparently, God had been willing to go to great lengths just to fool the physicists and geologists.

Based on this admittedly small sample of one, Mormons get around the gaping mismatch between literal biblical accounts and scientific understanding by portraying God as the ultimate trickster. Evidently God thought it would be fun to fool everybody by setting up the physical world such that it appears to be well described by scientific knowledge but actually was just made to look that way. I imagine that all Bible literalists must resort to something like this same reasoning – there doesn't seem to be any other way to reconcile the literal Bible with unimpeachable scientific evidence. And it is impossible to disprove the literalist arguments because no matter how difficult or improbable or convoluted God's actions might need to have been to square observed facts with biblical accounts, in the end it is possible because (and only because) God can do anything. But at some point, the necessary trickery becomes so elaborate and absurd that I would think no reasonable person could accept it.

Science

As mentioned, some religions have learned to live with science, even at the cost of having to water down much of their former dogma. But there are still a number of denominations that vehemently disagree with science in many areas. Why do conservative religious believers resist the overwhelming evidence of science when it contradicts their beliefs?

One reason for this resistance may be lack of knowledge of the science. That's understandable. Gaining a comprehension of scientific discoveries does require some effort. Also, many people don't seem to have much of an interest in science (although I think that would change somewhat if science were taught differently).

Fortunately, it's not necessary to understand in any detail what science has discovered in order to appreciate why its discoveries are the best explanations for reality that humanity has been able to come up with. It's only necessary to understand how the workings of science and religion differ in order to decide which one to believe when they are in conflict. Here are some of the main differences:

\- Religions' doctrines are typically dictated by a central authority.  
\- Science's doctrines may be changed or augmented by anyone, a Nobel Prize winner or a starving graduate student, who presents sufficient evidence and reasoning to allow others to verify his or her findings.

\- Religious beliefs are based on accumulated traditions and on interpretations of a book written several thousand years ago.  
\- Scientific beliefs are based on observations that can be repeated and verified, and on rigorous logical analysis.

\- Arguments that arise within a religion about its doctrine are settled by edict from its upper hierarchy.  
\- Arguments within the scientific community are settled by peer review.

\- Those who question a religious doctrine are treated as enemies. Depending on the vigor of their questioning and the importance of the doctrinal issue, they may be criticized, ostracized, excommunicated, accused of blasphemy, labeled as heretics, or even killed.  
\- Those who question a scientific doctrine are treated as valuable critics whose questions may lead to better understanding. (This is not to say there is no conflict in science – there often is. Scientists, particularly if they have invested a lot of intellectual effort and prestige in a particular school of thought, sometimes don't agree with new findings, and spirited arguments and formation of alliances can result. But sooner or later enough evidence accumulates to make the right answer clear to at least most of the interested parties, and past differences are forgotten.)

\- When a religion is successfully challenged, the result is a cleaving of the religious body. The original system remains basically unchanged, and a new system is created. The now-separate religions, although typically having a great deal in common, become enemies who accentuate their differences and engage in on-going conflict – perhaps just intellectual conflict, but often physical and destructive.  
\- When a scientific area is successfully challenged, the result is a general adoption of the new beliefs, with concerted effort to see how the new differs from the old, resulting in a better understanding all around.

\- Religion tends to be exclusive. Each religion tries to convince its followers that it is better than the others; otherwise it risks being abandoned or absorbed.  
\- Science is inclusive. Scientific endeavors are noteworthy for involving collaboration among men and women from all over the world; from all political systems, religious backgrounds and ethnic groups; and from humble to privileged lives. Use of an outside group's doctrine to support one's work is accepted and encouraged (as long as the contribution is acknowledged).

If you are looking for an explanation of something, do you think you'll get the best answer – an answer that best describes reality – from a system that doesn't use facts and repeatable observations as a basis for conclusions, that doesn't utilize a verifiable logic structure, that is based on dogma that is not to be questioned, and that considers any disagreements with its teachings to be heresy? Or do you think you'll get a better answer from a system that accurately predicts the behavior of everything from stars at the farthest reaches of the universe to the electrons in your smart-phone chip?

Wrong again

Some people distrust science because of an impression that science's theories are frequently found to be wrong and have to be replaced. They worry about relying on something that seems too malleable.

Actually, the readiness to adopt new findings that correct or extend previous understandings is one of the greatest strengths of science. If new observations or new assessments reveal a shortcoming in an existing theory, and this new work is independently verified, it seems obvious that the relevant science gets more reliable and describes reality better by adopting the new findings.

Contrast this with the approach taken by philosophers and religious thinkers prior to the first stirrings of the scientific revolution, an approach that was based on intuitive arguments untested against facts and observations. The doctrines of that time were indeed stable – in fact, questioning them was suppressed, often severely. Such stability may have seemed comfortable, and the uncertainty caused by questioning and probing for better answers was avoided. But the result was a society saddled with flawed ideas that held sway for many centuries, a society that could make little progress to improve humanity's condition.

* * * * *

The impression that science is unstable because it frequently has to replace faulty findings comes from a misunderstanding of what really happens when science advances in a particular area. It is rarely the case that an established scientific theory is found to be no good and has to be replaced by something that yields different results. Rather, the old theory is typically realized to have been an accurate description of reality within the range of conditions under which it had been possible to test it, and within the theoretical framework known up to that point. The old theory and its descriptions and predictions remain just as valid as they ever had been; the new theory comes into use in previously unexplored or poorly understood areas into which the earlier theory did not adequately extend. So it's not a matter of tossing out the old; instead, the new theory extends or refines, and often provides a different perspective that opens the door to further understanding.

Newton's laws of gravity and motion are good examples of theories that were proven to be "wrong". Newton derived these laws in the late 1600's, and nothing better was known until Einstein's theories of relativity in the early 1900's. Newton's laws explained and allowed the prediction of everything from how an apple falls from a tree to the motions of stars, planets, and billiard balls.

But there were hints of some problems. Newton himself was bothered by the need to assume in his arguments some privileged inertial frame of reference. And more accurate measurements of Mercury's orbit made in the 1800's showed an anomaly that Newton's laws couldn't explain. Then came Einstein's theories of relativity, which described a whole new way of looking at reality that showed time to be a fourth dimension of the structure of the universe and explained gravity to be a result of a warping of this structure by objects that possess mass. These new theories did away with the need for a frame of reference for velocity and acceleration, they explained the anomalies that had been observed with Newton's laws, and they opened the door to a much deeper understanding of the universe.

That is quite an accomplishment. But let's look at the practical ramifications. The only discrepancies ever found in Newton's laws show up under extreme conditions, such as near the large gravitational fields of very massive objects such as a star, or when traveling close to the speed of light. After Einstein's discoveries, Newton's laws remained as valid as they ever had been; they are, and always will be, extremely close approximations to reality under most conditions. So close that scientists and engineers still use Newton's laws for their calculations when they must predict complex trajectories of space probes that are affected by interactions with the gravity of multiple planets balanced against the force of their engines. (But the refinements provided by Einstein are essential, to pick one example, to obtain accurate information from the Global Positioning System. The GPS requires extreme accuracy in the timing of the signals between its satellites and a ground device. The higher speeds and lower gravitational field experienced by the satellites relative to the ground device make time pass slightly differently on the satellites, something that Newton's laws completely miss.)

The continuity and stability of science is also evidenced by the way we learn it. Students' first exposure to the laws of physical mechanics and gravity is to Newton's laws, essentially as he understood them more than 300 years ago. Einstein's theories are only needed and only encountered in more advanced studies, and are best appreciated by understanding the path that led to them.

So when a science commentator says Einstein proved Newton's theories to be wrong, I think "wrong" is the wrong word to use. A better phrasing would be that Einstein's theories extended Newton's theories, or that Einstein showed a more general and comprehensive way of looking at the phenomena that Newton described. But of course that's a bit long-winded and not nearly as catchy as "wrong".

A word of warning – we may live to hear that Einstein was also wrong. Even Einstein's theories fail under the most extreme conditions, such as those associated with black holes or with the universe just after it came into being. The other big amalgam of current physical understanding, quantum theory, does deal with things at the conditions needed to understand these extreme phenomena, but doesn't include gravity. Physicists have long understood that quantum theory and Einstein's theory of general relativity do not provide a complete description of the universe. Those theories must somehow be combined (or superseded) in order to answer questions concerning reality at very extreme conditions, and physicists are hard at work to do just that. So if sometime in the future you read that Einstein was wrong, don't worry that the edifice of science is crashing down; it will only mean that the description of reality has just got a bit better.

There are many other examples of scientific progress made by refining and re-interpreting rather than in some sense destroying what came before, for example in the field of evolution where ever-accumulating fossil evidence and breakthroughs in genetics have led to steadily better understanding. Science is ever diligent to correct and improve itself, which can hardly be considered a fault.

### Moral compass

Science is great for describing physical reality and how things got the way they are, but it has nothing to say in other areas, areas that are critically important because they determine how well human beings can live together. Science does not tell us how to behave; it does not address morals and ethics. Religion, however, has a lot to say about those things. How can we decide if the messages we get from religion are good?

Unfortunately I don't think there is an adequate answer to that question. In order to sort things out when we get into areas not addressed by science, we have to rely on our inherent morals, consciences, and common sense. But the collective morals and conscience of societies have varied widely over time, and vary widely between individuals at any one time. And one person's common sense may seem to another person to be nonsense. We seem to be stuck with a type of subject in which opinions and arguments don't yield to objective resolution.

But perhaps we can make some progress by looking at specific examples of important questions that religions address. Then we can use these examples to attempt to understand how to find our moral compass.

Birth control

The Catholic opposition to birth control is a moral teaching that deserves close scrutiny because of its profound influence on the lives of millions of people. Basically, the Catholic ban on the use of contraceptives evolved from the early Christian church's unease with sex in general, and in particular from the views that sex was not for enjoyment, must not be practiced outside of marriage, and even within marriage was only allowed for the purpose of procreation. Those views moderated over the centuries, to the extent that today most Protestant denominations support the use of contraceptive methods of birth control.

However, the Catholic Church still maintains that contraception is a sin. Their justification for this doctrine is based on a passage from the Bible that is misrepresented and is often quoted out of context.

The passage concerns Judah's son, Onan, and Onan's duty to impregnate the widow of his deceased brother, Er. That duty may sound strange to modern ears, but at the time and place of the biblical account it was a common practice, intended to allow a childless widow to have a descendant to provide for her and carry on her family line. The practice is sufficiently important to be included in the many laws that God gave to Moses. We're familiar with Moses' ten commandments, but he imposed many other laws as well, including the requirement for a man to father a child with the wife of his dead brother if she had no children yet – see Deuteronomy 25:5-6.

With that background, let's look at the complete story of Onan, starting at Genesis 38:7:

But Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the Lord's sight, so the Lord killed him. Then Judah said to Onan, "Have sexual relations with your brother's wife and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her so that you may raise up a descendant for your brother." But Onan knew that the child would not be considered his [in a legal sense, since under the system in effect at that time and place the child would be considered the child of his dead brother]. So whenever he had sexual relations with his brother's wife, he withdrew prematurely so as not to give his brother a descendant. What he did was evil in the Lord's sight, so the Lord killed him too.

Onan disobeyed God's law by refusing to give his sister-in-law a descendant, which is what God saw as evil. According to the thinking of the time, he was indeed evil, or at least unpardonably selfish. He knew that any child he might father with his sister-in-law would spread an eventual inheritance from Judah thinner; the result would be a lesser share for any sons or daughters he had with his wife, the only offspring legally recognized as his. The story is clear about what aroused God's wrath – Onan's selfish disobedience of one of God's sacred laws. The chain of events started when Onan's father told him to obey the law; Onan then reflected on the unfavorable consequences to his true offspring if he were to obey the law; then when he disobeyed the law his reason for doing so is explicitly stated; and finally that disobedience was what God saw as evil.

Catholic commentators ignore or obfuscate Onan's purposeful disobedience of God's law. They conclude that God killed Onan solely because he withdrew prematurely. This is a remarkable conclusion, as there is no basis to suppose that the act of premature withdrawal in itself was what God found to be evil; it is that "he withdrew prematurely _so as not to give his brother a descendant_ ". Onan's action violated a law God had imposed that was intended to provide childless widows with an heir.

Just in case there is any question about the intellectual dishonesty of the Catholic interpretation, let's look at a parallel example cast in today's milieu. In this story, Onan decided to supplement his income by transporting meth across state lines. An alert FBI agent discovered Onan's trips and their purpose. A newspaper report of Onan's court hearing concluded with: "Whenever Onan drove, he went across state lines so as to deliver meth to a dealer in the other state. What Onan did was evil in the judge's sight, so the judge sentenced him to ten years." The next day, an anti-interstate-driving society announced that the judge had vindicated their views: Onan was sentenced because he drove across state lines. This caused quite a stir. Clear thinkers interpreted the newspaper article to mean that the judge saw evil in the reason for driving across state lines, "so as to deliver meth to a dealer in the other state", not in the action of driving across state lines itself. But the anti-interstate-driving society produced reams of rhetoric claiming that the judge thought driving across state lines was evil, and their views caused considerable consternation for a long time.

* * * * *

I find it interesting that religious authorities have used the same passage from Genesis that is quoted above to argue that masturbation is a sin in God's eyes. (This interpretation is more obvious in other Bible versions that substitute "spilled his seed on the ground" for "withdrew prematurely".) In fact, the word "onanism" is a churchy bowdlerism for "masturbation". While I admire the economy of getting two sins on the record from one passage, I think this shows the ease of claiming arbitrary interpretations that were never intended.

But no matter how you interpret this passage, there is another overwhelming consideration that makes the birth control interpretation ludicrous, which is simply that the Bible could have easily condemned birth control as sinful if, in fact, that was the intended message. The Bible does contain long and comprehensive lists of unambiguous rules, clearly stated, that cover every aspect of behavior you can think of, from major issues such as murder down to minutia such as what to do about nocturnal emissions of a soldier in camp (Deuteronomy 23:9-11) – and nowhere in all these multitudinous rules is there anything related to birth control. God was certainly able to get into the Bible a comprehensive list of clear rules for everything his people might conceivably encounter. Given that, God would have to be awfully bumbling to have omitted a stricture against birth control if he had really considered it to be a problem.

The arbitrary nature of the Church's stance on birth control is also revealed by a simple truth – although the Church enforces a made-up law concerning contraception, it does not enforce numerous actual laws from God. Consider a small sampling of God's laws:

\- God: "If anyone curses his father and mother he must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:9) Jesus: "Whoever insults his father or mother must be put to death." (Mark 7:10) Although the commandment to honor ones father and mother is worthy, the Catholic Church ignores the clear requirement of the death penalty for disobedience.

\- God: "If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, both the adulterer and adulteress must be put to death" (Leviticus 20:10). Jesus was even sterner: "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away!" (Matthew 5:27-29) If that were obeyed, there would be a lot of one-eyed guys walking around.

\- God: "If a man has sexual intercourse with a male ... they must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:13) The Catholic Church does not enforce that.

\- God: "If any man curses his God he will bear responsibility for his sin, and one who misuses the name of the Lord must surely be put to death." (Leviticus 24:15-16) Catholics don't follow this command to impose the death penalty.

\- "When the Israelites were in the wilderness they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses. ... Then the Lord said to Moses, 'The man must surely be put to death; the whole community must stone him...'" (Numbers 15:32-35) I don't think the Catholic Church even cares whether its followers work on the Sabbath, certainly not to the extent of putting them to death for it.

\- If a man discovers and can prove that his wife was not a virgin prior to marrying him, "the men of her city must bring the young woman to the door of her father's house and stone her to death." (Deuteronomy 22:13-21) Yet another dictate ignored by the Catholic Church.

Those are clear commands given by God that are _not_ imposed by the Catholic Church on its followers. By contrast, the Church fabricates a prohibition against birth control and _does_ impose that. The Church shows a disturbing lack of integrity by condemning birth control based on a bogus interpretation of a passage in the Bible while ignoring any number of actual laws that the Bible says must be obeyed.

Of course, many of God's laws given in the Bible are unacceptable in today's society. Nobody thinks stoning someone to death for working on the Sabbath or for not being a virgin when married are good ideas anymore (if they ever were). Even though God imposes those laws, the Church has no choice but to ignore them. So the Church winds up arbitrarily enforcing some things while ignoring others. Which is particularly relevant to the story of Onan. The whole point of the story is to show God's displeasure about someone disobeying one of his commands, a command to impregnate one's brother's wife if the brother dies childless. Unlike God, the Church does not consider it a sin to disobey that command – and, in fact, would no doubt consider it a sin to _obey_ God on that score – and instead makes up a sin from an unsupportable interpretation of the same story. That is the height of hypocrisy.

Another indication of the arbitrary nature of the Catholic stance on birth control is the Church's approval of abstinence and the (unreliable) rhythm method to prevent conception. The result of abstinence is, sooner or later, a wet dream with sperm not fulfilling their reproductive potential because they're in the pajamas. The result of the rhythm method, theoretically, is the sperm being in the right place but at the wrong time to find an egg and have any reproductive success. In either case, a conscious decision is made to ensure that sperm doesn't meet egg. How are these different, in any meaningful moral sense, from the use of a condom or contraceptive pill? Clearly there is no moral difference – abstinence, the rhythm method, condoms, and the pill all work on the same principle – they keep sperm away from egg.

In any of these methods, a choice is made to prevent a potential life from getting started by ensuring that an egg is either not produced or leaves the womb without meeting sperm. The sole outcome is that an egg doesn't get fertilized. The Church does not say that outcome is wrong. But it does arbitrarily accept some methods of achieving it and condemns other methods, which is nonsensical.

* * * * *

I've gone on at length about the Catholic Church's stance on birth control because of its considerable harm. It is particularly unjust because it affects primarily the poor and the poorly educated. In developed countries, surveys consistently show that over 95% of Catholics use contraceptives, with little difference in the rate of use between Catholics and non-Catholics. However, in many developing countries the Church still has the power to block distribution of family planning information and curtail access to contraceptives. The most disadvantaged of the world's people, the ones with families already too big to feed, are the ones the Catholic Church really hurts. Here's an AP article I saw in the paper recently:

New Delhi – Worried about its dwindling numbers, the Roman Catholic Church in southern India is exhorting its flock to have more children... The strategy comes as India's population tops 1.2 billion...

It speaks for itself.

The insane thing about a policy against contraception is that sooner or later it is guaranteed to lead to disaster. As we all well know, the human reproductive urge is geared to a time when people died much younger, many of them during childbirth and many more before reaching puberty. With relatively recent medical advances and improved standards of living, the world's population has exploded. Here are some simple, unarguable facts:

\- The earth has a finite size and a finite supply of resources. A finite earth cannot sustain an unlimited number of people.

\- Without contraception, the earth's population will continue to grow indefinitely. Any strategies that attempt to limit fertility without employing contraceptives, such as abstinence or the rhythm method, are no match for healthy human instincts. Clerics who are able to get through life without succumbing to sexual desire may find it difficult to understand the strength of the sex drive, but they need to realize they are in a small minority. Just look at any segment of today's society that is denied birth control – invariably, the birth rate is well above replacement level, even in the midst of grinding poverty, and even though a majority of people in those circumstances desperately want to avoid enlarging their already suffering families.

\- As resources become spread over more and more people, the quality of life will inevitably degrade. Those with power will maintain what they can, with resource conflicts being the inevitable result. But ultimately, all will suffer.

Presently, almost one billion people are malnourished, and the number is growing. Most of these are in areas where the availability of contraceptives is limited. How is it possible for the Catholic Church to turn a blind eye on the suffering that it is causing?

I got a first-hand look at how dysfunctional the Catholic Church is on the issue of contraception when I attended a mass with Catholic friends a number of years ago. During the service the priest had survey sheets passed around and asked the members of the congregation to sign them to acknowledge they believed the use of contraceptives to be sinful and to attest they did not use contraceptives. As a sheet went down our aisle I noticed that everyone was signing it, which aroused my curiosity. After the mass I asked my friends about the survey. They confirmed my suspicion that they did, in fact, use contraceptives. But they said they signed anyway because "it doesn't really matter", or "I didn't think much about it", or "it's not important and it makes the priest happy".

That's how it works in our society – Catholics pay lip service to the Church's dictates but follow their own consciences. But in the slums of the third world this kind of sophisticated (for want of a better word) thinking is in short supply, as is the supply of affordable contraceptives, thanks in large part to the Catholic Church.

To spread the blame a little, it's not just the Catholic Church – there are other denominations that also fight birth control. But the Catholic Church does seem to be the standard bearer in this fight, a fight that perpetuates misery and suffering in much of the world, and, long term, ensures that the finite resources of our world can no longer sustain humanity.

Abortion

Abortion opponents seem to feel they are in a war with everyone who thinks differently about abortion rights than they do. They miss an important point: at bottom, everybody feels the same way about abortion – everybody would like to see lower abortion rates, ideally zero. Everybody agrees on the goal. The question is how to achieve it.

Making abortion illegal is not the answer. A recent study published in one of the world's leading medical journals, _The_ _Lancet_ , concluded that abortion rates are actually higher in countries where the procedure is illegal. That may seem counterintuitive, but a significant contributing factor is that women in those countries also tend to have poor access to contraceptives. The fact remains that the major effect of outlawing abortions is to change them from safe to dangerous procedures (often self-induced and unreported).

The right answer is based on a blindingly obvious fact: if every pregnancy was intended – if every woman knew before she got pregnant that she wanted to have a baby and had the means to raise it – the abortion rate would crater. Just as obvious is what is needed to give women the best chance of avoiding an unintended pregnancy – ready access to family planning information and affordable contraceptives.

These common sense ideas are backed up by a recent study reported by Dr. Jeffrey Peipert of Washington University in St. Louis. The study compared the abortion rates of 9000 women who were given free contraceptives to the abortion rates of women of similar age, economic status, and race who lived in the same area. The group that received free contraceptives had over 50% fewer abortions. The teenaged sub-group showed an even larger reduction in the abortion rate, and also showed a birth rate more than 80% lower than the national birth rate for teens.

Catholics and evangelicals voice strident demands to make abortion illegal, knowing full well that the result would be a large increase in illegal abortions, which in turn would result in the deaths of many mothers (as well as their fetuses). At the same time, these religious groups make every effort to restrict access to contraceptives and family planning information, knowing full well that such efforts guarantee many more unwanted pregnancies and therefore higher abortion rates. Clinging to unfounded religious dogma about contraception and muddled thinking about abortion causes suffering for millions of women worldwide – there are over 400,000 abortions a year in the Philippines alone, where the influence of the Catholic Church has severely limited access to contraceptives and has kept abortion completely illegal.

Homosexuality

Unlike the situation with birth control, the Bible really does come down hard on homosexuality. God destroyed Sodom because its inhabitants were sinful, and the biblical account makes clear that the main sin of concern was male homosexuality. Just to make sure the point is understood, one of God's laws states that men who have sexual intercourse with each other must be put to death (see the Leviticus passage quoted above). And the apostle Paul says that homosexuals are among those who will not inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

So, should we seek out and kill all the homosexuals, as the Bible commands? Or, since this is a more enlightened age, should we at least stigmatize them by declaring them to be sinful, as the Catholic Church, Islam, and many conservative Protestant and Jewish denominations do? Hopefully common sense dictates otherwise.

Common sense says that since many parts of the Bible are clearly wrong there is no reason to single out the parts that condemn homosexuality and consider them to be right. Of course, such reasoning doesn't work for a Bible literalist who considers everything in the Bible to be right. But if you ever do any work on the Sabbath or you at least don't stone to death people you see working on the Sabbath, then you are not really an obedient Bible literalist, and hopefully you can give homosexuals as much slack as you give the Sabbath desecrators.

Common sense also says that religions (or states or other authorities) have no business telling individuals what to do in their private lives, as long as their behavior causes no harm. Of course, no one should be allowed to force another person to do anything against their will, and individuals must attain a certain age and maturity to have sufficiently solid self-knowledge to make good choices about certain behaviors. But consenting adults should be free to determine how they want to live their lives.

I've always found the keen religious interest in sexual behavior to be odd. Why do religions fret so much about masturbation, virginity, sex between unmarried partners, same-sex sex, and, in back of it all, the enjoyment of sex in any context? Religions seem to think our interest in the many fun aspects of sex is wrong. I think the religious interest in our sexual practices is wrong – it verges on voyeurism.

Sexism

The story about Sodom has a small part that reveals a great deal about the Bible's attitude toward women. In the story, the two (male) angels sent by God to check out Sodom are spending the night at Lot's house, prior to entering the city to determine if it is actually sufficiently sinful to warrant its destruction. The men of Sodom had seen the angels enter Lot's house, and they surround it and demand that Lot bring out the angels so they can have sex with them. Lot is horrified that such a thing might happen to his distinguished guests, so he tells the crowd that if they leave the angels alone he will bring out his two virgin daughters and the men "can do to them whatever you please." (Genesis 19:8)

Although the men of Sodom don't accept Lot's offer, there is every indication he would have gone through with it if they had. There is no condemnation in the Bible, indeed no elaboration of any kind, related to Lot's offer. Evidently the biblical author didn't feel it was unreasonable enough to warrant comment.

A similar story concerns a Levite man who is a guest in the house of a Benjamin resident. Some men of the city surround the house and demand that the owner send out the guest so they can have sex with him. The owner begs them not to do such a thing to a guest of his, and says, "Here are my virgin daughter and my guest's concubine. I will send them out and you can abuse them and do to them whatever you like. But don't do such a disgraceful thing to the man!" (Judges 19:24) That last sentence nicely contrasts the value attached to a man compared to the lack of value of the women that is evident in the previous sentence.

In the finale to this story the guest throws his concubine out to the crowd, who rape and abuse her all night. The next morning the guest finds her dead, which makes him quite angry, but he's not at all repentant about the fact that he caused her death by considering her of such little value that he gave her to a crowd he knew would rape and abuse her.

Those stories are bad enough, but one of God's laws given to Moses goes even further by lowering women to the level of plunder for victorious soldiers:

When you go out to do battle with your enemies and the Lord your God allows you to prevail and you take prisoners, if you should see among them an attractive woman whom you wish to take as a wife, you may bring her back to your house. ... After that you may have sexual relations with her and become her husband and she your wife. If you are not pleased with her, then you must let her go where she pleases. (Deuteronomy 21:10-14)

The Bible's attitude toward women: to the victors go the spoils.

In a less dramatic vein, here's an insight from Numbers 30: God relates through Moses that if a man makes a vow or takes an oath, he is responsible for his action and must do whatever he has promised. However, a woman is not considered competent enough to have the final responsibility for a vow she might make or oath she might take; rather, her father or husband can overrule her as he sees fit. There are also several other laws related by Moses that treat women as second-class citizens.

Another indication of women's second-class status is the common practice of polygamy that is condoned by the Bible. Men have multiple wives, and often concubines as well. For example, Jacob marries two sisters, Leah and Rachel (who happen to be his uncle's daughters). They each give Jacob their servant to have sex with. Jacob has children with all four of them, and his twelve sons become the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel. God smiled on Jacob. But what about a woman who would try having multiple husbands, or who is not a virgin when she unites with a husband? She is to be stoned to death.

The apostle Paul says this about a wife's rights: "Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, because the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church – he himself being the savior of the body. But as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything." (Ephesians 5:22-24) Paul further says: "A woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. She must remain quiet." (1 Timothy 2:11-12)

And finally, because Eve got humanity kicked out of Eden, a strong undercurrent of religious tradition has considered all women ever since to be tainted. Women are barred by the Catholic Church from being priests, by Orthodox Jews from being rabbis, by much of the Muslim world from being imams, and by Mormons from being church leaders. Mormon men speak directly to God; a Mormon wife's channel to God is through her husband.

Slavery

The Bible condones and legitimizes the practice of slavery. That may come as a surprise to many people since most religious leaders these days are careful to avoid mentioning the Bible's approval of slavery, and I doubt the passages that legitimize slavery are the focus of many Bible discussion groups. Nevertheless, the support of slavery is there, embarrassing though it may be. Here are some instructions about slavery that God gave to Moses:

As for your male and female slaves who may belong to you – you may buy male and female slaves from the nations all around you. Also you may buy slaves from the children of the foreigners who reside with you and from their families that are with you, whom they have fathered in your land, they may become your property. You may give them as inheritance to your children after you to possess as property. (Leviticus 25:44-46)

If a man strikes his male servant or his female servant with a staff so that he or she dies as a result of the blow, he will surely be punished. However, if the injured servant survives one or two days, the owner will not be punished, for he has suffered the loss. (Exodus 21:20-21)

Here is what the apostle Paul said on the subject:

Slaves, obey your human masters with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ, not like those who do their work only when someone is watching – as people-pleasers – but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. Obey with enthusiasm, as though serving the Lord and not people, because you know that each person, whether slave or free, if he does something good, this will be rewarded by the Lord. (Ephesians 6:5-8)

and a contribution from Jesus:

Blessed is that slave whom his master finds at work when he returns. I tell you the truth, the master will put him in charge of all his possessions. ... That servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or do what his master asked will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know his master's will and did things worthy of punishment will receive a light beating. (Luke 12:43-48)

There are many other places in the Bible where slavery is treated as an accepted practice; nowhere in the Bible is it condemned.

An excuse employed by some biblical commentators for the Bible's pro-slavery attitude is that the Bible merely reflects prevailing practices from the time it was written, practices the people of the time viewed as completely acceptable. That's not a credible excuse – the biblical accounts do not merely report on the practice of slavery, they _codify_ it. God gave Moses detailed rules about slaves, even down to the fine points. It's one thing to comment on a practice; it's quite another thing to set up rules and regulations to govern and legitimize it.

Today, religions condemn slavery. But it does not appear that religions led the way in the reversal of attitudes. Although some religious leaders were in tune with the evolving opinions of secular society that denounced slavery, others steadfastly defended slavery right up to (and in a few cases, beyond) the Civil War. Whether you look to the teachings of the Bible or the teachings of religious authorities, religion has been a deficient guide to the moral questions posed by slavery. In fact, given the explicit support of slavery throughout the Bible, it is fair to assume that religion delayed its eventual rejection.

Genocide

God doesn't just tolerate conquest of the nations that are in the way of his chosen people's expansion into the lands he has promised them; he demands these nations be completely wiped out. Here is a look at some of God's demands:

They fought against the Midianites, as the Lord commanded Moses, and they killed every male. ... The Israelites took the women of Midian captives along with their little ones, and took all their herds, all their flocks, and all their goods as plunder. They burned all their towns where they lived and all their encampments. They took all the plunder and all the spoils, both people and animals. They brought the captives and the spoils and the plunder to Moses... But Moses was furious with the officers of the army... Moses said to them, "Have you allowed all the women to live? Look, these people through the counsel of Balaam caused the Israelites to act treacherously against the Lord in the matter of Peor – which resulted in the plague among the community of the Lord! Now therefore kill every boy, and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man. But all the young women who have not had sexual intercourse with a man will be yours." (Numbers 31:7-18)

In obedience to God's directives to Moses, the Israelites killed every man, woman (except for the virgins), and child. They plundered all the towns and burned them. They completely destroyed an entire people.

And note the reason given for killing all the boys and non-virgin women – "the matter of Peor" – which was simply this: Some Israelite men had had sex with Moab women (Moab and Midian refer to the same nation), who invited the men to ceremonies for their pagan gods (Numbers 25). Naturally God didn't like his people getting cozy with pagans, but the Israelite men were at least as much at fault as the pagan women. Nevertheless, on this slim pretext, God ordered the slaughter to be complete.

In other examples, Moses warms up the Israelites for their coming battle to acquire the promised land:

When the Lord your God brings you to the land that you are going to occupy and forces out many nations before you – Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and powerful than you – and he delivers them over to you and you attack them, you must utterly annihilate them. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy! (Deuteronomy 7:1-2)

As for the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is going to give you as an inheritance, you must not allow a single living thing to survive. Instead you must utterly annihilate them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites – just as the Lord your God has commanded you ... (Deuteronomy 20:16-17)

You must destroy all the people whom the Lord your God is about to deliver over to you; you must not pity them or worship their gods, for that will be a snare to you. (Deuteronomy 7:16)

Listen, Israel: Today you are about to cross the Jordan so you can dispossess the nations there... Understand today that the Lord your God who goes before you is a devouring fire; he will defeat and subdue them before you. You will dispossess and destroy them quickly just as he has told you. ... It is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out ahead of you. (Deuteronomy 9:1-4)

God justifies Israel's destruction of these nations by declaring them to be wicked. Tyrants bent on conquest have used this same kind of justification over the ages – the branding of an entire people as evil in some sense so the vanquishing armies will feel justified and motivated to destroy them. Civilization has only recently, and only just barely, gotten to the point where most of us understand that the vast majority of people in any place at any time are not evil, at least not any more than you or I. It is disturbing to see how the Bible counters this trend toward objective tolerance.

We should also consider that when the Bible describes a nation as wicked or evil, it typically means they are pagan. The Bible makes it clear that if a people are pagan it is good to wipe them out. Bringing this view to the present day, Christians, Jews, or Muslims would be perfectly justified in exterminating the Hindus. Presumably God would look with favor on such an endeavor.

Following the tradition set by Moses, Joshua carries on with extensive conquests. After Joshua defeats Jericho, "They annihilated with the sword everything that breathed in the city, including men and women, young and old, as well as cattle, sheep, and donkeys." (Joshua 6:21) Joshua then defeats Ai, and, as before, all the inhabitants are killed, the cattle and goods are plundered "in accordance with the Lord's orders to Joshua" (Joshua 8:27), and the city is burned. The same fate is inflicted on numerous other cities. Finally, "Joshua defeated the whole land... He left no survivors. He annihilated everything that breathed, just as the Lord God of Israel had commanded." (Joshua 10:40) "The Israelites plundered all the goods of these cities and the cattle, but they totally destroyed all the people and allowed no one who breathed to live." (Joshua 11:14)

It's difficult to keep track of how many nations are eradicated by the will of God. After Joshua makes further conquests, we get a look at God's thinking: "No city made peace with the Israelites (except the Hivites living in Gibeon); they had to conquer all of them, _for the Lord determined to make them obstinate so they would attack Israel. He wanted Israel to annihilate them without mercy_ [my emphasis], as he had instructed Moses." (Joshua 11:19-20) Those slaughters didn't have to happen; they happened because God wanted them to happen – God purposely engineered things to ensure that genocide would be the result.

Then we get a bit of insight into God's views about war. After Joshua's reign, some nations remained unconquered. Why? "[God] left those nations simply because he wanted to teach the subsequent generations of Israelites, who had not experienced the earlier battles, how to conduct holy war." (Judges 3:2) Holy war, crusades, jihad, whatever you want to call it, God approves it. He not only approves it, he wants to make it perpetual.

Joshua wasn't the only other nation destroyer. Here is Samuel's charge to Saul: "Here is what the Lord of hosts says: 'I carefully observed how the Amalekites opposed Israel along the way when Israel came up from Egypt. So go now and strike down the Amalekites. Destroy everything that they have. Don't spare them. Put them to death – man, woman, child, infant, ox, sheep, camel, and donkey alike.'" (Samuel 15:2:3)

The opposition of the Amalekites referred to in the above passage occurred during the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. No reason is given for this opposition, and it doesn't seem that much harm resulted. In any event, Israel prevailed in this earlier encounter: "So Joshua destroyed Amalek and his army with the sword." (Exodus 17:13) But note that God does not forgive or forget – even though the Israelites defeated the Amalekites in the earlier encounter, he later holds enough of a grudge to order Saul to completely annihilate them.

* * * * *

Even religious apologists agree that the ruthless slaughter promoted by God throughout much of the Bible is not a good thing, but they still manage to excuse it and hold God blameless.

One excuse, similar to the excuse for the biblical support of slavery, is that total annihilation of the enemy was common practice in the biblical era and was not considered to be the monstrous evil we consider it today. True, there are many other historical accounts of armies completely destroying conquered states, similar to the accounts in the Bible. But that is no excuse. Are we to think that God agreed with the prevailing opinion and didn't consider genocide to be evil in biblical times? When did he change his mind? Or did he? Keep in mind that God wasn't just accepting an existing practice; he was actively promoting it. He wanted the destruction so badly that he messed with the minds of Israel's enemies to ensure that they would attack the Israelites. God did not want peaceful coexistence. He wanted annihilation.

Another excuse given by religious commentators for God's penchant for genocide is that his worldview is completely different from ours. He has seen every death of every human since the beginning of time, so the occasional genocide is just a drop in the bucket. With our limited lifetimes we don't see the big picture.

My bald statement of that excuse doesn't do much for its persuasiveness, but even dressed up with rhetoric as it usually is, it remains pretty hollow. Although it's true that deaths from genocide are fewer than deaths of all people over all time from all other causes, I still think we are correct to view with horror the slaughter of an entire people. Saying that God is so numbed by the vast numbers of deaths of all sorts that he can't be concerned about the relatively few who are slaughtered in genocides (at least if it's a genocide he instigates) takes away from God any moral goodness whatsoever.

As we've seen, God engineers genocide over and over, and even religious apologists acknowledge that there is no other way to interpret the biblical accounts. In spite of the attempts by the apologists to gloss over those slaughters, I can't see any excuse for a god who considers genocide to be acceptable policy.

Guidance

As we've just seen, the Bible condones persecution of homosexuals, domination of women by men, slavery, genocide, and perpetual warfare. In light of this, can we consider the Bible, or a religion whose basis is the Bible, to be a reliable guide for our moral choices? It doesn't seem so.

Of course, the Bible does teach much that is good: treat others as you would want them to treat you, honor your father and mother, follow the example of the good Samaritan, and many others. Messages like those feel right; they are obviously good. But the morality of other messages is not so obvious. Many messages considered to be unacceptable by some are considered correct and are practiced by others. How should we decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong in such cases?

Aside from the Bible, religious institutions themselves are an unreliable guide. Catholics view homosexuality as a sin, and some fundamentalist Christian denominations heap enough villainy on homosexuals to encourage their physical abuse. As already mentioned, slavery was condoned by Christian religions into the 1800's. Women in much of the world have gradually won their rights in the face of consistent resistance from religions – but in Islamic states this struggle is barely beginning, many Christian evangelical denominations are keen to scale back the rights that women have won, and Israel requires women to sit in the back of buses that pass through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Each religious denomination typically teaches that it is better than other denominations, which generates intolerance that often escalates to hatred and killing. It's foolish to expect answers to be found _within_ religion for problems that are caused or at least exacerbated _by_ religion.

In the end, I can't discern a good general tactic for guidance in the complicated arena of morals, ethics and behavior. Perhaps the best we can do is think carefully about our beliefs in these areas – where did we get our beliefs, what are their justifications, what are the effects of practicing our beliefs on others and on society in general, what might alternative beliefs be, and what are the arguments for one alternative versus another? The world would be a better place if we'd all put some effort into this kind of introspection, at least occasionally (or even once!).

Each individual needs to find his or her own moral compass, because this is the only guard against indoctrination of beliefs by authority figures for their own purposes. But distrust of a central authority does not in the least mean that, because different individuals may arrive at different conclusions, there are no moral absolutes. It simply means that more harm than good can come from ceding a religious (or state) institution the authority to determine moral behavior; laws that enforce moral behavior receive their legitimacy through agreement by the governed, not by authoritarian fiat.

I am certain there is a definite foundation of best moral principles. The progress of civilization, albeit with many detours down the wrong paths, comes from the gradual realization and accumulation of those principles in the collective consciousness of all of us.

### The Word

Like many of us, I had heard and read passages from the Bible over the years and was casually familiar with many of the stories in it. It was only recently that I took the time to read it through without skipping around or omitting anything. A straight-through reading of the Bible with everything in context was an eye-opening experience. The following sections discuss some of the questions and concerns I came away with.

Keep them in their place

Some of the characteristics of humanity in which we justifiably take pride include our indomitable spirit, thirst for knowledge, and inspirational endeavors. We desire to improve our lot and accomplish great things. But evidently God does not share our esteem for these qualities, as we see in the accounts of the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel.

Let's look at the account of the Tower of Babel first. After the great flood, the survivors multiplied and settled in the region of Babylon. They all spoke the same language since they were all descendants of Noah and his family. At some point they decided to build a city and a great tower "with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth." (Genesis 11:4) To me, this impulse to build an inspiring edifice seems an integral part of the human spirit, akin to the creative drive that spurred the building of the pyramids, the Colossus of Rhodes, or the great cathedrals of Europe.

But God didn't see it that way. After inspecting the city and the tower, he said, "If as one people sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them. Come, let's go down and confuse their language so they won't be able to understand each other." (Genesis 11:6-7) God was so displeased that "...the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth." (Genesis 11:9)

That makes an interesting story to explain humanity's multiplicity of languages and political institutions, but it doesn't paint God in a very good light. God put a stop to a great positive endeavor for humanity – a project that promoted the cooperation of the entire human race, a project intended to provide a common goal and source of pride to keep the people together in harmony. And in the process he ensured misunderstandings and distrust for all time by splintering the common language. What were the people doing that justified messing up humanity so badly?

The only reason given for God's actions is that with the cooperation made possible by one common language "nothing they plan to do will be beyond them". God evidently will do whatever it takes to handicap humans so they cannot rise above some limited level of accomplishment. He does not want them aspiring to greatness. While it's true the people were hoping to reach heaven, which might be construed as competition with God in his own realm, God doesn't mention that as a problem. And you wouldn't think an all-powerful deity would be afraid of his creation if they managed to come knocking at his door.

Some religious commentators interpret the story of the Tower of Babel to be a warning not to have pride – the people were proud of their tower and God crippled their capabilities for any further construction because pride is bad. But is pride necessarily bad? Although pride that veers into arrogance can be quite harmful, pride is often a positive emotion; it's the inner warmth we feel when something at which we work hard or something about which we care deeply has a good outcome. It's not bad for a child to be proud of learning to read or hitting a home run, or for a master builder to be proud of a cathedral to which he gave a good portion of his life. I don't see that the tower builders were exhibiting a harmful pride.

Another justification by religious commentators for God's hobbling of humans is that God saw a need to limit their capability to do great harm. (Apparently the attendant limitation on their capability for heroic good works is viewed as an unfortunate side effect.) That is a strange way of thinking, considering all the occasions when humans have done great harm and God did nothing to stop them. If he could mess up people's minds to the extent they could no longer understand each other, you'd think he could have come up with something to confuse the Third Reich.

But a more fundamental reason for questioning this justification is that there is absolutely nothing to support it. In the story of the tower of Babel, the Bible doesn't even hint that God wants to limit humanity's potential for harmful actions. Actually, quite the opposite is true elsewhere in the Bible – there are many accounts of God commanding his chosen people to destroy entire nations, including rape, pillaging, slaughter of all the inhabitants, and burning everything to the ground. Evidently God is fine with massive harm done by humanity, but he will cruelly suppress constructive behavior, at least if it is overly ambitious.

So there doesn't seem to be a sensible justification for God's inordinately negative reaction to the building of the tower. But there may have been a reason for the author of the biblical account to depict the building of the tower in a negative light. Babylon was one of the largest and most advanced city-states in the ancient world, at a time when the Israelites were nomadic tribesmen living in tents. There is archaeological evidence of several towers, or ziggurats, in Babylon, one of which could have been the tower in the biblical account. It's easy to imagine that a nomadic wanderer who came upon an impressive city and its wondrous achievements might feel a little awed and maybe a bit jealous. Those would be natural human reactions. And it would be natural for such feelings to shape a story told about the city. Of course, that's all pure speculation on my part – but it's a lot more reasonable than speculations based on the completely groundless assumptions that God's purpose for limiting humanity's capabilities was to prevent humans from doing harm, or to teach them a little humility.

The story of the Garden of Eden also shows God's insecurity about humanity's potential. In the case of the Tower of Babel, God limits the potential for people to cooperate and to work together for a common goal. In the case of the Garden of Eden, God wants to limit the status of humankind to that of chief species. Adam and Eve are given dominion over all the animals and plants of earth but are forbidden to have knowledge (Genesis 2:16) or wisdom (Genesis 3:6). Without our wisdom and knowledge of good and evil we wouldn't be human; we'd be God's special pets.

Along with his other almighty attributes, God evidently has an almighty ego and was keen to have his human creations remain inferior to him in two important ways – knowledge and immortality. In God's words, "Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever." (Genesis 3:22) We didn't manage to get immortality, but God is quite troubled that we even got the ability to think.

Religious apologists are aware of the PR problem poised by God's fervent desire to keep knowledge and wisdom from his human creations. In an attempt to excuse God's punishment of humans for the sin of gaining that which, in fact, makes them human, some religious commentators hypothesize that Adam and Eve were simply not yet ready for knowledge of good and evil – presumably, after humans had been around a bit longer they would have been better prepared for this knowledge, if only Eve had had a little patience.

That is an amazingly hollow proposition. There is no evidence for it in the Bible; it's pulled out of thin air. And it doesn't make sense. What was humanity going to experience in the paradise of Eden that would have made them ready for wisdom and knowledge of good and evil? What experiences would have meant anything to them in this regard if they were in a state of innocence? I don't see how somebody can put forward this kind of fabricated proposition without suffering terminal embarrassment.

* * * * *

Although religious authorities attempt to evade the issue, the god revealed by the Bible is a creator who is jealous of his creation, a sort of father figure who does not want to be surpassed by his offspring. There are many human fathers who also have that sort of attitude and thereby significantly handicap their children. It's a shame the Bible teaches such bad parenting skills.

Questionable messages

The story about Jephthah and his daughter makes me wonder what its message might be or what lesson it might be trying to teach. Briefly, the story is an account of the Israelites in Gilead, who have been oppressed by the Ammonites and turn to Jephthah, a brave warrior, to be their leader. As his forces approach the Ammonites, Jephthah makes a vow to God that if he is victorious "then whoever is the first to come through the doors of my house to meet me when I return safely from fighting the Ammonites – he will belong to the Lord and I will offer him up as a burnt sacrifice." (Judges 11:31)

God hands over the Ammonites to the Israelite forces, who wipe out the Ammonite cities. When Jephthah returns home victorious, his daughter, his only child, is the first to come hurrying out to greet him. Jephthah is horrified at this turn of events, but nevertheless fulfills his vow to God and sacrifices her as a burnt offering.

That's quite a tragic story and you would think it should have some message worthy of its dramatic impact. But all I can come up with is: a vow to God is so important that it must be kept no matter how bad the consequences. It certainly appears that Jephthah did the right thing in God's eyes – there is no censure of Jephthah for killing his daughter, and he goes on to lead Israel for six years until his death.

Another account that leaves me curious about its intended message is the story of Lot and his daughters. After the destruction of Sodom, Lot was afraid to remain in its vicinity, so he and his two daughters settled in a cave in the mountains. Lot's oldest daughter complained to her sister about the lack of men with whom they could have sex, and suggested they should get their father drunk and have sex with him. That night, they got Lot drunk and the eldest daughter had sex with him, and the next night the younger daughter took her turn. Both daughters got pregnant, each had a son, and each son went on to found a major tribe.

The Bible presents this episode neutrally. There is no condemnation or negativity attached to the daughters' actions. The Bible seems to condone father-daughter incest, at least if initiated by the daughter. The two sons were successful, although the tribes they founded were subsequently disliked by the Israelites. This account may therefore have been an attempt to cast those tribes in a negative light by portraying their founders to be the products of incest, but that would be a very indirect and weak condemnation of the daughters' actions.

What is the purpose of this story? Is it to convey the message that sex with your father is fine if there are no other men available? Or that you should be wary if your daughter seems to be trying to get you drunk? I'm being facetious here, but I can't come up with anything substantial. Maybe the story is just filler material, thrown in for its slightly titillating subject matter. If these are God's words, I don't understand what he wants me to learn from them.

Family values

We hear a lot from religious fundamentalists about family values. I don't know of an official definition of that phrase, but it is evidently connected to a belief that the traditional family headed by a father and mother is the only morally correct form of family. Fundamentalists who hold this view generally also believe that the Bible is literally true. I'm uncertain how they reconcile these beliefs, considering what is actually in the Bible.

For example, Jesus said: "For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be the members of his household." (Matthew 10:34-36, and similar in Luke 12:51-53) Jesus also said: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:25-26) In other words, if you want to be a good Christian and follow Jesus then you need to hate and abandon your family and lifestyle so nothing remains in the way of complete devotion to him. This does not seem to me to be a good endorsement of family values.

In a slightly different vein, the disciple Paul evidently regards marriage purely as a mechanism to allow men and women to satisfy their sexual needs without being immoral. In Corinthians 7:1-9 Paul says that ideally people would be celibate, as he is. However, he recognizes that many people lack the necessary self-control, and in that case they should get married rather than sin by having sex outside of marriage. Corinthians 7:25-40 reinforces Paul's feeling that it is better not to marry "so that without distraction you may give notable and constant service to the Lord." Someone who does decide to marry "does well, but the one who does not, does better."

The cause of the problem

Most of us are familiar with the story of the ten plagues Moses inflicted on Egypt to force Pharaoh to free the Israelites. Religious teachers stress Pharaoh's unwillingness to free the Israelites from their servitude and the consequent necessity for Moses to continue to force the issue. But a reading of the whole story, including the usually downplayed parts, reveals the real problem to be God's dark scheming.

God did not want Pharaoh to free the Israelites without a struggle. God's goal was to inflict the plagues on Egypt as a way to show off his power, so he ensured that the plagues would be necessary. "The Lord said to Moses, 'When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders I have put under your control. But I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go.'" (Exodus 4:21) And just before the first plague: "But I [God] will harden Pharaoh's heart, and although I will multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you." (Exodus 7:3-4)

God states repeatedly that he wants an excuse to inflict the plagues; his whole intent is to promote a memorably fearsome and wrathful image of himself. "Go to Pharaoh, for I [God] have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, in order to display these signs of mine before him, and in order that in the hearing of your son and your grandson you may tell how I made fools of the Egyptians and about my signs that I displayed among them, so that you may know that I am the Lord." (Exodus 10:1-2) The final plague consists of God himself killing all the firstborn in Egypt, except those of the Israelites, "from the firstborn son of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl who is at her hand mill". (Exodus 11:5) God slaughters innocent children just to impress future generations with his cruelty.

* * * * *

Another story about God's troublemaking involves Samson, who decides to marry a Philistine girl, even though his parents object because of their concern that the Philistines are pagans and are ruling over Israel. Is this a case of true love being blind to cultural and political differences? No, it turns out that God is using Samson as a pawn. When Samson insists that the Philistine girl is the only one for him, "his father and mother did not realize this was the Lord's doing, because he was looking for an opportunity to stir up trouble with the Philistines". (Judges 14:4)

God's strategy works. Just before his wedding, Samson's groomsmen guess a riddle he had put to them; therefore he has to pay them the prize on which they had agreed, which was a set of linen robes and clothes for each of the thirty groomsmen. In order to pay them the prize, Samson goes out and murders thirty men and takes their clothes. And he does this because "the Lord's spirit empowered him" to do it. (Judges 14:19) No, I am not making this up – according to the Bible, God encourages the murder of thirty innocent men to facilitate payment of a debt, with the objective of stirring up trouble between the Philistines and Israelites.

Samson is so angry about the riddle outcome that he leaves his fiancé with her father. Sometime later he returns to her father and says he now wants to have sex with his intended bride. The father, meanwhile, had given her to another man, but offers to substitute her attractive sister. This annoys Samson, so he burns down the Philistines' grain, vineyards, and olive groves. That gets a good fracas going between the Israelites and the Philistines, which is just what God had intended.

* * * * *

Those examples are bad enough, but God's crowning achievement as troublemaker was to ensure that genocide would be the result of Joshua's many conquests. As detailed in an earlier section, God got into the heads of Joshua's adversaries and made them "obstinate" so they would attack Israel. God wanted Israel to annihilate them without mercy.

In all these examples, God manipulated men's minds to make them act in ways that would result in tragic outcomes, ranging from massive slaughter to outright genocide. Why didn't he instead do a little manipulating that would result in positive outcomes? For example, rather than harden Pharaoh's heart, why not soften it (or even just do nothing) so the Israelites could leave Egypt peacefully? The only reason for God's choice of action was to give him a chance to show to the entire world and to future generations how cruelly powerful he is.

Similarly, when the Israelites came into the promised land, rather than make the existing populations obstinate, why not plant the seeds for peaceful coexistence (or again, just do nothing)? Wouldn't it have been better to give the pagans a chance to convert to worshipping God rather than totally obliterate them because of fear that paganism would win out? What does it say about God if he is so insecure about his charisma that he feels it necessary to annihilate whole populations who haven't even been given a chance to learn about him, rather than risk the possibility that they would reject him?

Whose word

Religious believers refer to the Bible as the word of God. But opinions differ about what that actually means. Some think the Bible's words were transcribed exactly as they came from God. Others think the biblical authors were inspired by God's spirit but wrote his messages in their own words. There's no objective way to settle such shades of interpretation, but fortunately that's not the issue I think is important.

The important consideration is how much authority we should cede to material in the Bible. In particular, can we as lay people sit down, read the Bible through, absorb its teachings, and directly apply its mandates to our lives for the good of society and ourselves? If we can, we're using the Bible and its words, however they got written, as a good authority.

But we can't. Or at least we shouldn't. I've mentioned in previous sections numerous passages that, if taken at face value, would lead a person to engage in completely unacceptable behavior. To briefly repeat some of these: the Bible commands that adulterers, homosexuals, and disobedient sons be put to death; a woman who is discovered not to have been a virgin when she married is to be stoned to death, as is a person caught working on the Sabbath; a soldier is allowed to take a captive woman as a sex slave; nations of unbelievers must be totally destroyed; you may buy and own slaves, as long as you don't beat them so badly that they die immediately; and women should submit to their husbands in everything. Besides these direct commands to behave badly, I've mentioned many stories that set bad examples for behavior. It seems obvious to me, and I hope I'm in the majority here, that messages of this sort are bad guides for our actions.

Of course, religious authorities and commentators are well aware of the difficulties poised by these biblical prescriptions for bad behavior. They therefore go to great lengths to interpret the meaning of these and other biblical embarrassments to be something other than the obvious meaning that is actually in the Bible. Or they excuse the material as being irrelevant in today's world. In essence, they are substituting their words for God's words. We are not really supposed to follow God's words; we are supposed to follow the words of selected people who interpret God's words for us.

Even if we wished to accept the authority of such interpreters, that would be problematic in most cases because the interpretations are at odds with each other. A familiar example is the biblical injunction to do no work on the Sabbath. There are about ten passages in the Bible that command observance of the Sabbath, including three that specify the death penalty for disobedience. But obviously there are numerous differences concerning the interpretation of that command. Orthodox Jews have a complicated list of activities defining work not to be done on the Sabbath. Most Christians have found arguments to wiggle out of the command. Muslims maintain that Muhammad's views supersede the biblical injunction. And nobody invokes the death penalty for Sabbath desecrators. The point here is that everybody is following interpretations and traditions that come from outside the Bible.

Another obstacle to accept the Bible as an authority for our conduct is its own inconsistency. On many issues, the Bible takes one position in one place and a different position in another.

One example is the biblical attitude toward incest. The founding line of the Israelite tribes was full of incestuous relationships. Abraham married his half sister Sarah (they had the same father, Terah). Evidently God considered this to be a good union, as he repeatedly blessed Abraham, and Abraham became the patriarch of all of Israel; Jesus was a direct descendant. So if you're contemplating sex with your half-sister, the Bible supports that. But wait a minute – the Bible also says, "Cursed is the one who has sexual relations with his sister, the daughter of either his father or mother." (Deuteronomy 27:22) And, "If a man has sexual intercourse with his sister, whether the daughter of his father or his mother, so that he sees her nakedness and she sees his nakedness, it is a disgrace. ...he will bear his punishment for iniquity." (Leviticus 20:17) So if you consider sex with your half-sister to be sinful, the Bible also supports that view. Take your pick.

In a similar vein, God has no problem with Jacob marrying two sisters, Leah and Rachel, daughters of Jacob's uncle Laban. As he did with Abraham, God blessed Jacob at great length. However, the Bible also says: "You must not take a woman in marriage and then marry her sister as a rival wife while she is still alive, to have sexual intercourse with her." (Leviticus 18:18)

One more: Amram married his father's sister Jochebed. Their children were Moses and Aaron, who played major roles in God's plans for the Israelites. You probably get the pattern by now – in another place in the Bible marriage to one's aunt is forbidden: "You must not have sexual intercourse with your father's sister; she is your father's flesh." (Leviticus 18:12)

The Bible contains many other inconsistencies concerning conduct and morals. As with the biblical mandates that are obviously wrong, it falls to religious authorities to try to paper over these inconsistencies and promote the right course of behavior. Again, we are not following the words of the Bible; we must instead listen to the words of some person who is represented as an authority.

Leading or lagging

We might acknowledge the flaws in the Bible and yet view it as a nucleus of good moral instruction if we include the (rather thick) layer of interpretations that have been formulated over the years. We might admit that it would be exceedingly difficult to write down a comprehensive guide that would apply over the many millennia of the Bible's existence, and we might therefore think of the Bible as a kernel of inspiration that needs to be interpreted somewhat differently over time. This would lead us to view the interpretations of religious authorities as a good and necessary adjunct to the Bible, rather than as attempts to cover up a lot of warts and incongruities.

The problem with that nice view of the Bible is that generally the bad messages are first recognized as such and are dealt with, not by religious authorities, but by secular society. Religious teachings tend to be an anchor that holds back progress. Eventually, after a significant fraction of society realizes there is a better way to view some area of human affairs, religious institutions then manage to redo their biblical interpretations and their teachings in order to remain relevant.

A good example is the change in attitudes about women's rights. In most modern societies the status of women is quite different from what the Bible prescribes. Did religions lead this change of attitude? It doesn't seem so. Even today, in areas of the world where Islamic law is influential, Muslim treatment of women remains biblical, with even a number of additional strictures. Some Christian evangelical denominations seem to want to reinstate more "traditional" roles for women. In Mormon families only the male speaks with God. Roman Catholics famously deny women the right to participate in the most important areas of their religion; other religions also limit the participation of women. Some traditionalist Jewish men thank God every morning for not having made them a woman (or a slave or a Gentile). Pressure to rescind the Israeli requirement, mentioned earlier, for women to ride in the back of the bus in certain Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods is coming from laity, not from religious authorities. Religions have clearly lagged secular societies in according women and men an equal status.

Another example concerns attitudes towards homosexuality. As mentioned in a preceding section, the Bible condemns homosexuality in no uncertain terms. This attitude carries through to the present in many religious denominations. Catholics are still taught that homosexuality is a sin. Most evangelical denominations also teach that homosexuality is a sin, which often is sufficient to incite violence against homosexuals. Many Islamic states have laws against homosexuality, and there have been many reported executions of homosexuals by Muslims. Secular society has come a long way toward acceptance of homosexuality as part of the spectrum of natural human sexuality, while much of the religious community still holds tightly to long-standing discriminatory attitudes rooted in the Bible.

In those and other issues, secular society has gradually adopted considerably more enlightened ideas than those expressed in the Bible. Unfortunately, biblical ideas hold back progress because the Bible is considered sacrosanct. One result is uneven progress, with biblical ideas tending to have influence where people hold more conservative religious beliefs, or where people are simply more religious. An evangelical Christian who beats up a homosexual, even so badly that he dies, is practicing his faith far better than you or I, because that is exactly what the Bible tells us God wants us to do. Muslim men in an Afghanistan village who stone an adulteress to death are doing exactly what God in the Bible commands, and have every reason to think they are practicing their religion well.

Here's the problem: if we are devoutly religious people we should be doing many bad things – the Bible commands us to do them, and the Bible is the word of God, and God's word must be obeyed. If we are not stoning homosexuals and adulterers and Sabbath violators, or we are not exterminating non-believers, then we are not good Christians or Jews or Muslims, because our God tells us to do those things in no uncertain terms in our Bible. Those conclusions are inescapable, as long as people believe the Bible to be an inerrant and authoritative guide to behavior. Religions are long overdue in admitting that the Bible is far from inerrant and that many of its messages are just plain wrong.

* * * * *

I've noticed many Web sites that express great moral outrage against Islam for condoning the practice of stoning adulterers. One example: "Stoning to death is a cruel insane Islamic punishment given to people who are married but still voluntarily have sex outside marriage." Well, it is cruel and insane, but all Muhammad did was copy it from the same Bible that Christians and Jews also use. The Bible gives us these words of God: "If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, both the adulterer and adulteress must be put to death." (Leviticus 20:10) Stoning is not specifically mentioned as the preferred method of execution, but death by stoning is prescribed in the Bible in many places for violation of similar edicts. The Islamic code is quite in tune with the Bible.

Along the same lines, there was a good deal of publicity recently about an Afghan woman who was imprisoned for adultery after she reported she had been raped. The New York Times carried an article revealing that the Afghan government announced it would pardon the woman, but with the expectation that she would agree to marry the man who raped her. I'm sure most people who read that article came away thinking it was one more example of the barbaric nature of Islam. It certainly is barbaric – it basically allows a man to get any woman he wants for a wife by raping her, which demotes women to the category of sex slaves.

Where would Islam get the idea for such a bad statute? Well, the following surely looks like a good candidate for the source: "Suppose a man comes across a virgin who is not engaged and overpowers and rapes her and they are discovered. The man who has raped her must pay her father fifty shekels of silver and she must become his wife because he has violated her..." Other than the minor issue of the payment to the father, that is exactly what the Afghan Muslims are practicing. Where do those words come from? They are from the commandments that God gave to Moses to impart to the Israelites, Deuteronomy 22:28-29.

Christians should not try to weasel out by imagining that the Old Testament, or at least selected parts of it, does not apply to them. Jesus said, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law ["law" in the Hebraic sense that Jesus would have used refers to the first five books of the Bible, which contain most of the commands that I have been quoting above] or the prophets. I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth pass away not the smallest letter or stroke of a letter will pass from the law until everything takes place. So anyone who breaks one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever obeys them and teaches others to do so will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5:17-20) So if you're a devout Christian you should obey the Old as well as the New Testaments, which means you should be stoning to death homosexuals and Sabbath violators as well as killing adulterers.

The point here is that Christians and Jews have no room to criticize the Islamic code for including practices that were, in essence, lifted intact from their Bible. If, sometime in the future, Christians (and Jews, although they don't take the Bible quite as authoritatively) admit publicly and clearly that numerous commands in the Bible are bad and should not be practiced, then they can preach to the Muslims. Until then, they need to realize that their insistence on claiming the Bible to be an inerrant guide to behavior is a considerable part of the problem.

Not all bad

The sections above have emphasized bewildering, questionable, and downright bad messages from the Bible. Of course, there is certainly much in the Bible that is morally good, and even more that at least is not bad. I've concentrated on the less-than-wholesome messages because most people seem to be unaware of their existence. We need to be aware of all aspects of the Bible in order to make reasoned decisions about religions that are based on it.

### Faith

Faith is a tricky word. In one context, faith represents assets such as hope and trust that help us face challenges and make difficult decisions. Rational faith, based on a realistic assessment of the object of the faith, often serves us well. We need faith in our abilities, faith that our plans will work out, faith in people around us if they have shown they deserve it, and faith in our institutions if their actions make sense. We need faith that the sun will come up tomorrow.

But blind faith, faith with no critical thought behind it, can be an enslaving force leading to bad decisions and manipulation. Faith held by the followers of Jim Jones and Charles Manson resulted in mass tragedies. Faith in the healing power of God causes parents to withhold medical treatment for their child, resulting in suffering and death rather than a cure. Faith that his or her child will have a better life in heaven provides sufficient excuse for a destitute parent to kill the child. Faith in the righteousness of their cause and the reward waiting for them in heaven motivates suicide bombers to kill themselves and as many others as possible in the process. Faith is not always a good thing.

Religions promote faith as a great good, a necessity for a truly religious person. Unfortunately, the faith demanded by religion is a blind faith, a faith in beliefs we are asked to accept when no good reasons or evidence for them can be given, a faith whose only backing is the authority we attach to someone who tells us what to believe. As we have seen in earlier sections, religions have many beliefs that don't make sense and can't be explained in a reasonable way. When such beliefs are questioned, the ultimate answer is to have faith. Without the availability of that answer and the willingness of people to accept it with no justification, religion would be unable to defend itself. Blind faith is clearly important to religion.

But why do so many people keep faith in their religions in the face of abundant evidence against the truth and wisdom of much that religions teach? The next sections put forward three reasons that I think are a significant part of the answer. They are based on these observations: most people pick up their religious faith at a young age, most people don't take the time and effort to evaluate their religious beliefs, and most people find it unsettling to consider they may have been wrong about a basic belief.

Early start

_Give me the child, and I will mould the man._

– variously ascribed to St. Ignatius of Loyola or St. Francis Xavier

One reason for the tenacity of religious faith is that we absorb it at a young age before we have the capability to think critically about it. The faith we learn when young rarely receives the scrutiny we give to other important ideas we come upon later in life.

As an example, I remember learning about Noah and the ark in Sunday school when I was a little kid. We had booklets with attractive illustrations, big print, and small words, which told about many of the stories in the Bible. The story about Noah was a favorite. The booklet had a picture showing a long line of pairs of animals boarding the ark, with Noah and his family standing by. It was fun to see all the exotic animals lined up, and it made sense that they could get on the ark and ride out the flood – there were actual pictures showing it happening.

It wasn't too many years later that I began to understand how impossible the story was. But it still seemed pleasant enough (the Sunday school booklet had had no illustrations of millions of anguished people drowning). And I came to realize that the church was at least hinting that the story wasn't supposed to be taken literarily – it was some kind of parable, although I couldn't see what the message was.

It wasn't until later that it dawned on me: the story really paints God in a bad light. The Bible makes it clear that God had become disenchanted with humans, supposedly the pinnacle of his creation. He had done such a poor job of creating them that their inherent natures caused all of them to become evil (except Noah and family, of course). That completely flies in the face of God being omnipotent and wise. And then, God's solution to the problem was to wipe out all life from the face of the earth, except, nice guy that he is, he spared Noah and family and the animals that made it onto the ark. I don't see how a deity could be less compassionate than drowning the entire earth's population.

First unquestioning belief, then realization that a literal interpretation can't be true, and finally awareness that the message is not a good one – these are the stages of understanding for many aspects of the Bible and religion in general. Different people stop at different stages along the way. Bible literalists and religious conservatives never get beyond the first stage – they never question the beliefs they absorbed early on; they hang on to a blind faith in a literal interpretation of the Bible and their religion's dogma. Moderate believers realize that much of the Bible cannot be taken literally, but still maintain faith in the goodness of the Bible and the dogma of their religion. It seems that most people stop at that stage – they never get to the final stage of considering how immoral the Bible actually is; they don't question blind faith in their religion.

It's hard to go beyond a faith formed in childhood.

Too much effort

_The day was dawning, and the shepherd urged his sheep in the direction of the sun. They never have to make any decisions, he thought. Maybe that's why they always stay close to me. ... They trust me, and they've forgotten how to rely on their own instincts, because I lead them to nourishment._

– Paulo Coelho, _The Alchemist_

Faith can be easy, particularly when the alternative involves sorting out for oneself all the tricky issues about beliefs and behaviors. Our religions and religious leaders tell us how to behave and what to believe, which saves a great deal of mental effort. And if we ever have a moment of doubt, we can take comfort in the fact that there are many fellow worshippers who are following the same advice – they couldn't all be wrong – so there's no need for the hard work of thinking about difficult issues.

The downside of relying on an outside authority to make your decisions is becoming used to not having to think for yourself. If the authority is morally good and has your and society's best interests in mind, then no harm is done. But history is full of situations where people have abrogated so much of their thinking to a religion that they followed its dictates even when the harmful consequences should have been obvious.

Christian denominations frequently use the imagery of a shepherd and his flock as a simile for a pastor and his congregation, or for Jesus and his followers. Jesus spoke of himself as the good shepherd who protects his sheep (John 10:1-16). But the sheep analogy brings to mind an animal that has given up the effort to think for itself and is dependent on the shepherd; the shepherd protects his flock (if the flock is lucky) but also controls it and decides its destiny. I'm surprised how many people accept this sheep role and do not value the ability to think for themselves enough to make the effort to do so.

Change is painful

_If you fear change, leave it here._

– sign on a tip jar

Once we have latched onto a belief, we find it hard to change our minds about it even when we encounter evidence that it's flawed. Our beliefs become part of our identity. We don't just support or concur with the beliefs of a particular political party; we _are_ Republicans or Democrats. We don't just worship with a particular religious group; we _are_ Methodists or Sunnis. Questioning one of our beliefs means questioning a part of our identity, which is often sufficiently distressing to make us deny facts and ideas that conflict with an existing belief, before we even allow ourselves to think about them.

Another reason for the persistence of flawed beliefs is the difficulty of admitting, even to ourselves, that we were mistaken. We shouldn't be that hard on ourselves. We necessarily form many beliefs based on incomplete evidence, and therefore need to be comfortable with changing a belief when new information comes along. We like to think we're always right – that's a natural human trait – but we need to nurture enough humility and fortitude to change a belief when there is good reason to do so.

* * * * *

We need vetted faith for support as we make our way through life. Its importance to us is shown by our reluctance to even think about questioning it, as evidenced by the negative connotation of the expression "losing faith". But there is nothing wrong with revising faith and beliefs to make them better guides for our lives. It is blind faith and sacrosanct beliefs that sooner or later cause trouble.

### Filling the void

_Imagine there's no Heaven_

_It's easy if you try _

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today ...

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace ...

– John Lennon

Religions fill a deeply felt need. Throughout history, practically all societies, whether isolated tribes or complex civilizations, have had some sort of belief system in the form of a religion. If something as ubiquitous and seemingly necessary as religion is actually a false concept, significant consideration ought to be given to what might replace it.

Why has religion, in one form or another, proved to be so needed by humanity? All religions, past and present, tend to supply the same key elements: an explanation of the world around us and how it works, a means to instill and ensure constructive behavior, and a source of comfort in the face of life's afflictions. In addition, there is a social value in providing an opportunity for people to get to know each other and work together. These benefits of religion, and thoughts on what might provide them in its absence, are explored in the following.

Explanation

_The Universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper._

– Eden Philpotts

One of humankind's noteworthy characteristics is our avid curiosity. We have a deep-seated need to understand our universe. We want to know how the world was formed; why there is land, sky, and seas; what the sun, moon, and stars are; what causes lightning, thunder, rainbows, floods, and earthquakes; what controls the seasons; and where plants, animals, and ourselves came from. And we want to know why things happen the way they do.

To satisfy our need for answers, almost all religions include an explanation of how the universe came into being and how it operates. Such explanations are often known as creation myths (at least, when the religion in question is not your own). Creation myths are diverse, but they have one thing in common: none of them is based on verifiable facts or observations. Apparently, curiosity about the universe can be well satisfied by an arbitrary and imaginative story if it comes from a revered authority (and from ancient origins, notable exceptions being Scientology and Mormonism). Requirements for logic, predictive power, or common sense in the story seem to be entirely absent.

The lack of factual backing in creation myths is understandable considering the depth and breadth of knowledge that had to accumulate in order for humanity to finally figure out how the universe actually came into being and what laws govern its workings. Even now, pieces of the story are not understood, and it's an open question as to whether we can ever completely know the laws of the universe. But the big picture is now well known. It is this picture, provided by the scientific discoveries of the last several centuries, that is destined to replace the various religious accounts of creation.

The scientific explanation of the universe is sometimes criticized as being too sterile, too reductionist, or too uninteresting, compared to religious accounts. But to me, it is the other way around – the account of creation based on scientific knowledge is far more compelling than any creation myth. To take the account in Genesis as an example, God's creation of the world in a few days makes the process trivial, simplistic, and arbitrary – there's no substance to the story, no drama, no sense of authenticity. Compare that to the way it actually happened...

All the matter and energy in the universe – in fact, the universe itself – began smaller than a pinpoint and unimaginably hot and dense. In the first instants of time this speck began to rapidly expand and cool. When the universe was just one-millionth of a second old, protons, neutrons, electrons, and their antimatter counterparts began to form. The matter and anti-matter particles immediately began to annihilate each other, releasing huge amounts of energy in the form of photons in the process, but the matter particles eventually won this battle due to their slight excess. A small asymmetry in the laws that govern the universe had resulted in the formation of a bit more matter than anti-matter, which is the bit that everything today is made of.

By the time the universe was one second old the protons and neutrons that still are the heart of all matter in the universe today had stabilized, and by ten seconds the electrons had followed suit. In the first minutes of its life, the incredibly high temperature of the universe forced some protons and neutrons to fuse to form helium nuclei (and a small amount of a few other heavier types of nuclei), but most of the protons continued to zip around as hydrogen nuclei, and by twenty minutes of age the temperature had dropped to the point where fusion reactions shut down.

However, the temperature was still so high that electrons had too much energy to be captured by the nuclei to form atoms, so the universe was filled with a dense cloud of free electrons and nuclei. Photons, the carriers of light and other radiant energy, could not penetrate this ionized gas, so the universe at that time was opaque.

Nothing much then happened until the universe was about 380,000 years old, when it had cooled enough for electrons to be captured by the protons and helium nuclei to form hydrogen and helium atoms, the first atoms to exist. Now that the electrons were confined in atoms, photons were no longer blocked, and the universe became transparent. The photons, scattered throughout the universe, continued in whatever direction they had last been trying to go. They continue their journeys to this day, although their radiation has become much less energetic as the universe has expanded and cooled. This remnant of the radiation that was freed when the universe became transparent is detected today as a diffuse microwave radiation emanating from everywhere in the universe.

The universe was at this time bland and featureless, consisting of a thin sprinkling of hydrogen atoms with a little helium mixed in. These atoms were spread out almost but not quite uniformly; tiny irregularities in the distribution of matter in the first instants of the universe had by this time expanded along with the universe into areas of varying densities.

These slight irregularities in the rarified gas that formed the universe eventually transformed the universe from bland to spectacular. Patches that were a bit denser than their surroundings had a bit more gravity, since the gravitational attraction of anything is proportional to its mass. Slowly at first, the slightly denser patches pulled in atoms from their surroundings, which made these patches still more massive, which increased their gravitational pull even more, and so on until they grew into vast clouds and tendrils of hydrogen and a bit of helium. The gravity of these clouds continued to compress some regions into enormous dense spheres. Finally, when the universe was about 500 million years old (a very approximate age, still not well known), the pressure in some of those spheres and their heat of compression had built up enough to ignite nuclear fusion in their interiors, and the first starlight beamed into space. The birth of stars brought splendor to the universe.

After millions or billions of years, depending on a star's size, lighter elements up to iron were formed by nuclear fusion in the stars' cores. Iron, the most stable element, is the dividing line. Fusing together nuclei smaller than iron releases energy, in the form of the radiation that makes stars shine. But fusing larger nuclei actually absorbs energy. So when a star got to the stage of fusing iron, it suddenly developed a critical energy shortage. With no net energy remaining to generate the outward radiation pressure that had been balancing the pull of gravity, the star suddenly imploded. Many imploding stars rebounded violently in gargantuan explosions with enough energy to produce the elements heavier than iron, as well as some additional lighter elements, and blasted all these materials as dust back out into space. (Such explosions are called supernovas, and for a few weeks can outshine an entire galaxy consisting of billions of stars. The most recent one in our galaxy, Kepler's Supernova, exploded in 1604. At its peak it was brighter than any star, and was even visible during the day for over three weeks.)

Stars continued to form from clumps of primal hydrogen and helium, but the dust that had been blasted into space by the first generations of stars now enriched these gases; this dust contained all the elements that would be needed for life.

About nine billion years after the universe began, almost five billion years ago, a particular cloud of gas and dust coalesced under the pull of gravity, and a particular star, our sun, began to form. As the cloud's gravitation pulled it together, its angular momentum caused the cloud to flatten into a slowly spinning disc with a big bulge at the center. The gravity of the bulge began to pull most of the matter in the disc into a ball whose pressure and temperature would soon rise high enough to ignite the nuclear fusion that makes our sun shine.

Farther out in the disc, random disturbances caused eddies whose gravity began to locally pull together much smaller packets of matter, which eventually coalesced into planets, moons, and asteroids. One of the planets was our earth, whose gravity pulled its bits and pieces together about 4.5 billion years ago. At that time the earth was hot and molten from the heat of impact of the colliding masses that had formed it, but eventually it cooled enough for water vapor to condense, and rain fell and filled lakes, rivers, and oceans.

That account inspires wonder and awe. And it has the considerable advantage of being real. To think about how the world actually came into existence is to feel part of something deeply important, a feeling not got by imagining the world was somewhat casually formed with a few days' effort involving some unspecified magic. Continuing...

The young earth consisted of barren rocks and sterile waters. Its atmosphere, quite unlike the air we breathe today, contained no free oxygen. Oxygen combines eagerly with other elements, and had tied itself up in carbon dioxide and other compounds. Billions of years would pass before life itself would finally manage to pry loose significant amounts of oxygen.

The early oceans were lifeless, but they were steadfastly dissolving many compounds from rocks and minerals, along with quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases that were being belched from volcanoes. From these simple molecules more and more chemical compounds of greater and greater complexity were forming.

This buildup of complexity is an amazing result of the laws of thermodynamics, which are a fundamental part of the physical laws that govern the universe. These laws show that in an isolated system, things tend to degrade to simpler states, which is not particularly interesting. However, in an open system such as the earth, where the sun during the day provides an input of high-level energy, and radiation to space at night provides an outlet for degraded energy to escape, greater and greater complexity and organization can spontaneously develop.

Eventually, after uncountable random combinations, a large molecule, possibly with some characteristics of the RNA molecules that play a major role in life today, was formed that could replicate itself – that is, it could catalyze (chemically promote) the reactions that formed it – from the bits and pieces that surrounded it in the ocean. Life had begun, although in this early stage it was little more than a fancy self-catalyzed chemical reaction.

As time passed, this molecule replicated numerous copies of itself. Occasionally a chance jostling of some molecular connection, perhaps by a cosmic ray or other radiation, caused a slight difference in a copy. Eventually, one of these differences improved the ability of that molecule to form copies of itself – the beginning of the evolution of all living things.

Now it was no longer just chance meetings of chemical compounds – the replicating molecules formed large numbers of copies of themselves, with the occasional random alteration. Most alterations didn't help and those lines died out, but some changes inevitably were for the better and enabled their lineages to survive longer or copy themselves better and therefore become more numerous.

After a lengthy accumulation of small changes, some improved versions included secondary molecular assemblies forming a microscopic environment that greatly improved their success rate, and the first cells were the eventual result. For several billion years these bacteria were the only life on earth. They were primitive – they obtained the energy needed for their development from simpler molecules that had been forced into energetic combinations by the sun's radiation – but these food molecules were abundant and the bacteria thrived.

In time, the first of four further momentous developments in the progress of life occurred: a final bit of molecular reorganization in a bacterium gave it the ability to use energy directly from sunlight – the first photosynthesis. In this bacterium, a photon from the sun initiated a chain reaction that produced organic (in the biological sense, meaning carbon-based) building-block molecules from water and carbon dioxide molecules. Oxygen from the split-apart molecules was released back into the oceans as a waste by-product, the first accumulation of free oxygen on earth. The ability to make themselves from ever-present water and its dissolved carbon dioxide was a great advantage, and from humble beginnings similar to present-day blue-green algae, these bacteria became the basis of photosynthesis in all plant life that would evolve on earth.

Over the millennia, the oxygen that was released by photosynthesis accumulated in the oceans, setting the stage for the second momentous development: a bacterium still living the pre-photosynthetic way of life sustained an alteration that allowed it to combine the newly available oxygen with carbon in its food to release energy. This new energy source vastly improved its prowess in the game of life, making it better able to build itself, move about, and replicate. The ability to release and use stored energy ensured the success of this new strain of bacteria.

Then came a third momentous development. About two billion years ago, a primitive cell without the capability for photosynthesis or oxygen use, a cell that was possibly a very early form of life, was infected by (or ate) an oxygen-using bacterium. By chance, the result was a symbiotic relationship – both parties benefited. The invader continued its talent for releasing energy, much of which the host cell could now use, and the host cell provided an environment rich in compounds the invader could use. The invader, which biologists call a mitochondrion, reproduced inside the host cell, and when the host cell itself divided, some of the mitochondria populated the copy. Thus began the lineage of cells, which biologists call eukaryotes, that would eventually evolve into all plants and animals above the level of bacteria. Our cells today still get their energy from the mitochondria swimming around inside them, descendants of that first invader.

Similarly to the ingestion of an oxygen-using bacterium, a eukaryotic cell eventually ingested a photosynthetic bacterium, and another symbiotic relationship was formed. The ingested bacterium continued to use sunlight to make organic building blocks from carbon dioxide and water, and released oxygen in the process, just as it had been doing on its own, but now its host could use the materials synthesized by the bacterium. And the bacterium, which biologists call a chloroplast, thrived in the environment provided by the host. As with the mitochondria, the chloroplasts reproduced in the host cell and populated the copy when the host cell divided. From this beginning evolved all plant life above the level of bacteria, all the trees, flowers, grain, and other plants that use sunlight to power them.

The fourth momentous development got underway a little less than a billion years ago when two cells divided but, due to some small change in their makeup, stuck together rather than going their separate ways. At some point these cells formed a ball, which gave them an internal space under their control. When daughter cells broke off and began dividing, mutations arose that altered successive generations of cell groups, with some cells specialized to perform certain functions more efficiently than when all functions necessary for survival had to be performed within a single isolated cell. The advantages of specialized components, along with the large size that a multicellular organism could attain, were overwhelming. Myriad multicelled organisms in an astounding array of shapes and sizes proliferated and filled the oceans.

Life in the oceans depended on the ability of layers of seawater to block most of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, which is sufficiently energetic to disrupt the relatively delicate organic molecules necessary for life. The land, however, was exposed to lethal doses of ultraviolet radiation, which thwarted any attempts by life forms to migrate out of the oceans. Then, by a little over 500 million years ago, enough oxygen from photosynthesis in the oceans had escaped into the air to form a layer of ozone in the upper atmosphere. (An ozone molecule consists of three oxygen atoms, and forms in the upper atmosphere when ultraviolet light from the sun bombards ordinary two-atom oxygen molecules.) Ozone blocks ultraviolet radiation, so life could now begin adapting to an existence on land.

The explosion and diversity of life that followed in the sea and on land is too extensive to include here. Fortunately we're on more familiar ground now, so the rest of this story can be painted with the broadest of brushstrokes. Briefly, the first dinosaurs arose about 230 million years ago and became extinct about 66 million years ago – a long reign, probably ended by drastic climate change caused by the collision of a large asteroid with earth. The first mammals had appeared shortly after the first dinosaurs but remained relatively insignificant while the dinosaurs ruled. The event that wiped out the dinosaurs also resulted in the extinction of many other species, but some mammals survived and rapidly evolved to fill the voids left by the mass extinctions.

The slow start of life followed by its ever-increasing proliferation and diversity is a fascinating story, but we have a special interest in the final chapter...

Primates, our distant ancestors, began diverging from other mammals about 85 million years ago. By about 15 million years ago, one line of primates had evolved into the great apes. They were at home in the African rain forests, but around 6 million years ago their familiar environment began to change. The climate became drier, and large areas of rain forest gradually became grassland. The survival advantage shifted from being able to swing through treetops to being able to efficiently walk and run long distances in the grassy plains. The result, for one branch of the great apes, was a gradual evolution to a true two-legged stride and upright stance.

A side effect of this transition turned out to be quite important: it freed up the protohumans' hands, which were now no longer needed for getting around, to become uniquely effective instruments for coping with life's challenges. The ability to make tools, containers, shelter, and clothing conferred tremendous survival advantage, as did the ability to throw stones and spears to get dinner or avoid becoming dinner. Bigger brains evolved to take advantage of everything hands could do, and more dexterous hands evolved to make use of that brainpower.

The advantages of walking upright were great enough to more than compensate for some unfortunate side effects that evolution has still not had time to fix. Our spines have not completely caught up with the different demands of an upright posture, thus making backaches a common ailment. Efficient walking on two legs required a narrower pelvis, and this combined with larger heads needed to hold larger brains has meant a much more difficult childbirth for humans than for other primates. Humans have many amazing advantages over their distant ancestors, but unfortunately a few disadvantages as well.

A clue to another remarkable human ability has come from listening to chimpanzees, whose ancestors also split from the line of great apes. Chimps make some 15 to 30 unique sounds, each conveying its own fixed meaning, such as food availability, impending danger, anger, and so on. It is a useful but limited vocabulary. Intriguingly, human languages use a small set of unique sounds (called phonemes), some languages a few more and some a few less, but generally around the same number of sounds that chimps make. This leads to a conjecture: a small change occurred in the organization of some proto-human brain such that a few consecutive sounds could be perceived as a unit, a unique combination of sounds that could be remembered and reproduced. That little change provided a revolutionary capability – it gave our ancestors the ability to form an essentially unlimited supply of words, simply by putting together different combinations of a few sounds taken from a small set that was already inborn. Language blossomed as our ancestors associated meanings with newly invented words and taught them to others.

Language greatly enhanced the ability of a tribe to survive and prosper. Plans could be made, tasks could be shared, and knowledge acquired with difficulty could be given to others and passed to the next generation. It is not surprising that evolution selected tweaks in our ancestors' brain circuitry to enhance such a valuable commodity. There is evidence that our natural facility with language is to a considerable extent hardwired in our brains – damage to a certain area of the brain results in a person losing only the ability to understand nouns, for example, while another area is necessary to understand verbs, and so on; all our languages seem to have common underlying characteristics; and, last but not least, two-year-olds perform the amazing feat of learning complex rules of grammar simply by listening to those around them.

These and other changes accumulated, and by a mere 200,000 years ago our ancestors had evolved into recognizably modern humans. Humans, as we know, became an exceptionally successful species. Their clever brains and useful hands allowed them to adapt to a wide variety of situations. They spread in several waves of migration out of Africa and eventually throughout the world. Their unique ability to use symbolic language allowed them to pass on and accumulate knowledge, and to live together in larger and larger interdependent groupings. The result is the remarkable civilization in which we live.

That is the real story of creation. Not the entire or final story, since our knowledge is continually improving, and some areas are sure to become better understood and more fully fleshed out as we continue to learn. But at the broad-brush level that is indeed the real story.

The real story of creation shows us how special life is. Life resulted from enormous forces working on vast amounts of matter over eons of time, from delicate reactions randomly probing for order in minute niches, from small successes paving the way for future larger successes – much had to happen to set the stage for life and for life to come into existence and flourish.

There are two important messages in this story. The first is that all life is interrelated at a very fundamental level. Every cell in our bodies and in every other living thing is a direct descendant of that first cell that was able to reproduce itself. All life on earth relies on the same basic mechanisms – the same amino acids, chemical signals, and genetic code. We were not created to have dominion over nature; we evolved as part of nature and are interdependent with it.

The second message is that if we destroy ourselves, if we make our planet uninhabitable, there is no creator who can heave a deep sigh and then spend a week to get it all going again, perhaps with some improvements. If we mess things up badly enough, it is questionable whether there is enough time left before the universe comes to an end for the wonders we now take for granted to recreate themselves.

The authors of the biblical story of creation, or of any of the many other creation myths, did not intend to mislead. They were doing what they could to satisfy the human need to have the blanks filled in, but they had almost no applicable knowledge with which to work. Thousands of years ago humankind had not yet accumulated enough information to even begin to understand the true nature of the universe. Now we have this information, and we can finally appreciate the wonders it reveals.

* * * * *

Without a god who is personally involved with creating and running things, some people perceive the workings of the universe to be cold, impersonal, and without meaning. And the struggle for survival that is inherent in evolution can be perceived as a heartless competition. But overriding these aspects, there is a spirit of cooperation threaded through the universe from the beginning of time to the present, cooperation that has made the universe meaningful.

The universe started off simple and uninteresting – a few types of subatomic particles (although huge quantities of each), zipping around randomly in a dense cloud. Then the strong force (as physicists call it) compelled quarks to form protons and neutrons. Later, these protons and neutrons were induced to cooperate in various combinations to form nuclei, which, with the additional cooperation of electrons, produced the atoms of the 100 or so elements – a big increase in the diversity of the universe. At the next level of cooperation, atoms joined with each other to form essentially limitless different kinds of molecules – a set of building blocks with an immense diversity of properties.

Then, under the right conditions and given enough time, molecules cooperated with each other to grow more complex until they were able to reproduce. The self-replicating molecules cooperated with each other to aggregate into cells. And in a major feat of cooperation, cells joined together to form plants and animals.

Humans eventually evolved, and cooperation became a key to their success. Initially, their cooperation was mostly confined to small tribes. As agriculture and other technologies were developed, people found they could benefit by cooperating on a larger scale and began to live in cities. Further cooperation led to larger political organizations, and eventually nations.

And now, cooperation has reached a global scale. Humanity is becoming increasingly dependent on worldwide cooperation for trade, commercial enterprises, scientific endeavors, and manufacturing. We may finally reach the day when cooperation brings us to the point where dependence on each other throughout the world outweighs any thought of fighting each other, and humankind can reach its full potential. Cooperation has brought us to this point. Cooperation, not cold indifference, is the hallmark of the universe.

Are we reaching the largest possible extent of cooperation? Perhaps. But what if one day we detect a signal from a civilization on another world...

* * * * *

In the above account of creation, I made no attempt to show how we know this account is, in fact, the way things really are. That would be well beyond the scope of this book. What I will say here is that an enormous body of knowledge based on observable facts and rigorous logic supports this account. Astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry, biology, genetics, paleontology, anthropology – findings from all these fields agree with each other and provide multiple lines of verifiable evidence and crosschecks to support the real story of creation.

Many good books have been written that explain, in interesting accounts meant for nonexperts, how science has arrived at its conclusions. If you have doubts about the account of creation sketched out above, read some of these and decide for yourself what is real.

Behavior

If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."

Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts", _Saturday Night Live_

In addition to satisfying our need for an explanation of the world around us, another function of religions is to provide rules of behavior and the means to enforce them. Communities need rules and regulations to provide a framework within which people can work together productively and live together peacefully. Today in most of the world we rely on secular governments for legal systems and enforcement arms to ensure fair behavior and to keep order. But prior to the existence of such institutions, religions provided the rules and enforcement intended to keep society functional.

Consistent with this role of religions, a great deal of the Bible is devoted to laws that govern behavior. Everyone is familiar with the ten commandments, but they are just a drop in the bucket – the Bible contains detailed rules and regulations for everything from major concerns such as homicide and theft down to practical matters such as property rights, honest weight and volume measures, legal testimony, divorce, security for loans, usury, building codes, and so on.

To ensure obedience, these laws are presented as the word of God. Here's what is in store for a society that disobeys God's laws:

But if you ignore the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all his commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force. (Deuteronomy 28:15)

Many punishments follow, culminating with:

The Lord will raise up a distant nation against you... They will besiege all of your villages... You will then eat your own offspring, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege by which your enemies will constrict you. The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. He will withhold from all of them his children's flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. Likewise, the most tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, and will secretly eat her afterbirth and her newborn children (since she has nothing else), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages. (Deuteronomy 28:49-57)

You don't want to disobey God.

Our secular criminal and civil laws cover much of the same territory as the laws given in the Bible. An interesting question is which authority has the most influence over our decisions about our own behavior. My daughter heard a surprising opinion about this in the course of a conversation with a friend about their religious beliefs. After hearing that my daughter did not believe in the biblical God, her friend was horrified and couldn't understand why she wasn't going around stealing things and killing people. My daughter's reaction was that society is in sad shape if fear of God is our only reason for practicing moral behavior. Hopefully there is something more substantial to people's morals than the specter of a God watching our every act and meting out rewards and punishments accordingly.

Do we behave ourselves because we're afraid of God? I don't think so. But I am certain that we do need to learn how we should behave. Although we have some built-in standards for behavior – we have a sense of fairness, we know it is wrong to harm others, we want to help those close to us – our instincts are insufficient. We need a civilizing influence to teach us the consequences of our social behavior, in particular:

\- How we treat others tends to create an atmosphere that influences how others treat us (do unto others as you would have them do unto you).

\- Our individual actions collectively add up to determine the quality of the social environment in which we all live (what goes around, comes around).

Where do we learn these things?

We learn them, of course, from our environment, most strongly when we are young. Parents, other family, peers, teachers, media, and religion all contribute, with the amount of influence of each depending on how an individual is raised. From what I've seen, individuals learn good behavior if they are raised in a family that practices good social conduct and community responsibility, regardless of their exposure to religion.

For those whose upbringing includes it, religion does indeed leave lasting impressions, but those impressions tend to center around things such as belief in the religion's dogma, rituals, traditions, and reasons for its superiority. To be sure, we learn the ten commandments (while the many atrocious commandments in the Bible are carefully avoided), to do to others as we would have them do to us (while not dwelling on what God did to Job, or, for that matter, to the whole world with the flood), and to follow the good Samaritan's example to help strangers in need (while ignoring the biblical dictate to annihilate strangers who don't worship your god). But I think family and peers are usually stronger influences for good behavior. My impression is that families and even entire societies who practice little or no religion have, on average, as much respect for individuals and their community as those who are strongly religious. I'll go even a bit further and say, as a generalization that applies broadly but certainly not to every individual, that those who are zealous about their religion tend to be more intolerant, bigoted, and harmful than those who are less religious. I don't see religion as a necessary guardian of our moral behavior.

But regardless of the importance we might place on religion to teach and enforce socially beneficial behavior, we need to acknowledge a major flaw of biblical law – it can't adapt. True, many biblical laws do remain valid today, and have been incorporated in our secular laws or in generally accepted rules for good behavior. But unfortunately, as we have seen in previous sections, many other biblical laws are completely unacceptable in today's society. Religion has no way to eliminate or modify bad laws because they are presented as God's word in a sacred document, and are therefore beyond question or modification by mere humans. As we have seen, this is a great difficulty for religious authorities, who have had to spin out numerous arbitrary and conflicting interpretations that attempt to convince us that many of the words don't really mean what the words say.

The degree of mutability of the law is a key concern in any legal system, not just biblical law. Either extreme can be bad – an overly rigid system can block the way to a more enlightened and progressive society, while a system that is too open to modification can sink under the weight of poorly considered ideas. Common or case law is one mechanism that attempts a happy medium between those extremes by allowing legal decisions themselves to gradually change the law to accommodate new ways of thinking about society's problems. Another mechanism that allows careful change is the provision for amendments typically included in national constitutions – change is possible, but not without careful consideration and general consensus.

The happy medium is important – if it is too easy to change the law, ill-conceived ideas and selfish interests can accumulate to the point where the system becomes dysfunctional. California's proposition mechanism is an example of this problem – voters have been easily able to enact legislation to get things they want, and enact other legislation to keep their taxes low, with the result that the state has teetered on bankruptcy. Changing laws on a whim is not the answer, but neither is never changing them. The answer lies somewhere between California and the Bible.

Comfort

Religion provides a source of comfort for many. Prayer is a significant component of that comfort, so we need to consider what prayer might be if it didn't involve a supernatural conversation.

Key aspects of prayer for many people are the sense of exploring thoughts and feelings with a sympathetic listener, mulling over concerns in the hope of finding solutions, and, for some, communing with something larger than oneself. How would that work if we believe there is no one listening? Perhaps the answer is simply to move from prayer to meditation. The two have many similarities, and meditation has been an important part of religious practices from pagan times to the present. It is a well-regarded means of achieving inner comfort.

Meditation may even be an improvement for many people. A prayer to God (or a saint go-between) often contains an element of asking for something – to win the game, pass the test, make the sale, or attain some other advantage. By eliminating this element, which often is selfish and asks for a benefit to the supplicant at the expense of someone else, meditation may be a considerable improvement over prayer.

Of course, prayers often contain unselfish or even noble requests. But rather than praying for God to cure a child's life-threatening illness, perhaps one's energy could better be directed to learning about the illness, finding the best medical help, and conveying a positive attitude to the child. Extreme belief in the power of prayer to the extent of excluding medical attention is clearly harmful, yet the media has frequent accounts of parents who kill their children in this manner. And while there's certainly nothing wrong with praying for noble ends, the cause of world peace, to take an example, would be far advanced if everyone who prayed for it instead did something concrete to further it.

A questionable aspect of prayer is its use to justify one's actions. When people in authority (political figures are particularly galling in this regard) say they reached a difficult decision only after much prayer for God's guidance, what they are really doing is making it difficult for anyone to oppose their wishes. Religious believers will tend to support the decision without thinking further about it, since the decision came from God. Opponents can be painted as unbelievers who pose a threat to carrying out God's will. Getting God's approval through prayer can be an effective smoke screen.

Don't fear doing without beneficial prayer. Substitute meditation to help sort things out and find your place in the grand scheme of things; take responsibility for your decisions rather than using God's whispered messages to validate what you wanted to do anyway; and make an honest effort to do what you can for yourself and others rather than asking God to take care of it for you.

* * * * *

I talked about two other religious comforts in earlier sections. One of those is the belief of an eternal life in heaven after death. I think there is more to be gained than lost by giving up this belief. Savoring this world's wonders, taking advantage of its opportunities, and attempting to fix some of its problems take on special importance when we know that time is limited. A life well lived precludes the need to look forward to something better.

The other religious comfort I talked about is the belief that God is watching over us, protecting us, and taking care of our needs. That belief is clearly not supported by what goes on in the real world. In a way, I would think letting go of such a belief might actually be a great relief to anyone attempting to reconcile a just and loving god with a god who stands by and does nothing to prevent a grievous tragedy. One's anguish may not be lessened by ascribing a tragedy to the impersonal workings of the world, but at least it is not aggravated by the feelings of anger and confusion that we cannot help directing at a god who badly fails us but whom we are supposed to love anyway.

Fellowship

Churches (and, I'm sure, other religious venues with which I'm much less familiar) provide a reason for like-minded people to get together regularly and become acquainted, which often fosters a rewarding and worthwhile social life. A fond memory of mine from childhood is the strawberry festival, as it was called, that was orchestrated by our church's members every summer. It featured trestle tables loaded with strawberry shortcake and grilled hot dogs and hamburgers set out on a lawn next to the church, with kids running around moderately amok. It was a great afternoon for the whole family, and the proceeds went to charity. In a similar spirit, in the community where I live now, church groups provide hot lunches for the needy, run charity fundraisers, and serve as a focal point for social interaction.

Those are fine things that communities should not want to lose. Some worthy substitutes do exist – many charitable organizations overlap the good works done by church groups, and may, in some areas, provide more services from the nongovernment sector than do churches. But I don't know what would fill the social fellowship and mutual support holes that would exist in the absence of churches. Perhaps churches (and synagogues and mosques) can eventually evolve into organizations that support the good social and charitable aspects of these institutions while gradually deemphasizing things such as the inerrancy and sacredness of the Bible/Koran/Talmud, an omnipotent and all-seeing God, and the ritualistic and dogmatic differences between denominations. That would be good for everyone. And it may not be an overly optimistic hope – there is at least one denomination in existence, Unitarian Universalism, that embodies many of those characteristics.

### Society's troublemaker

In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.

– Thomas Jefferson

In my experience, most people who practice moderate religions are good people, many of them among the best there are. However, religion itself, by its very nature, can hardly help but have a negative impact on society. The next sections look at current threats to society that stem from religion.

Intolerance

Unfortunately, religions are inherently intolerant. They have to be, because intolerance is about the only means they have to keep their members from straying.

Why intolerance? Why can't a religion just use good objective arguments to convince its members they are better off with this religion rather than that religion? One answer is the difficulty of making rational, provable arguments about the value of one religion versus another, because religious doctrines are not based on objective reality in the first place. Another answer is that it's not obvious whether or not members of a particular religion are enjoying a better life than members of another religion, at least in a secular society. True, if you live in a theist state, you are likely to have a considerably less troubled life if you belong to the state religion. But in a secular state, the members of one religion on average seem to experience about the same mix of good and bad as the members of another, all other things being equal. So if a religion restricted itself to objective standards to show its superiority, there would not be much except inertia to keep a member from drifting to a different religion.

Religions don't like members leaking through such a porous fence. Because of the lack of objective arguments to convince members to stay on their side, religious authorities are forced to strengthen the fence by making their members intolerant of what is on the other side. This they do by convincing them that their religion is better in some ways then the alternatives, or that the alternatives are a threat or are evil. Having established their religion to be the best, it is then logical that the greatest good for all can be achieved by going to whatever lengths are necessary to make people accept the true religion and tear down the others.

Religions have a strong tradition of promoting that kind of intolerance:

Suppose your own full brother, your son, your daughter, your beloved wife, or your closest friend should seduce you secretly and encourage you to go and serve gods that neither you nor your ancestors have previously known, the gods of the surrounding people... You must not give in to him or even listen to him; do not feel sympathy for him or spare him or cover up for him. Instead, you must kill him without fail! Your own hand must be the first to strike him, and then the hands of the whole community. You must stone him to death because he tried to entice you away from the Lord your God... (Deuteronomy 13:6-10)

Suppose you should hear in one of your cities, which the Lord your God is giving you as a place to live, that some evil people have departed from among you to entice the inhabitants of their cities, saying, "Let's go and serve other gods"... If it is indeed true that such a disgraceful thing is being done among you, you must by all means slaughter the inhabitants of that city with the sword; annihilate with the sword everyone in it, as well as the livestock. You must gather all of its plunder into the middle of the plaza and burn the city and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. It will be an abandoned ruin forever – it must never be rebuilt again. (Deuteronomy 13:12-16)

Those kinds of dictates might indeed make members think twice before straying to another religion, but clearly the well-being of a society must suffer from the indoctrination of that kind of intolerance. Unless, of course, the intolerance is so effective that it leads to the extermination of everyone who holds any different religious beliefs; then, I suppose, everything would be fine for those who were left.

We may be so used to certain religious beliefs that we don't realize how intolerant they may seem to others. For example, the Jewish claim to be God's chosen people, as recorded by the Hebrew authors of the Bible, may seem a bit irritating to a non-Jew, with its implication that one's status in God's eyes depends on one's race. True, people can and do convert to Judaism, but it does have a uniquely strong coupling between religion and race. Some Jewish commentators, understandably sensitive to notions of racial superiority, attempt to downplay the idea that being chosen by God means the Jewish race is special, but rather means it has the responsibility for making a better world. Like the white man's burden to help the disadvantaged races, this is evidently the Jewish man's burden to help the races not favored by God. There is some support for this notion in the Bible, such as Isaiah 42:6, but it is weak compared to the many passages where God exhorts his chosen people to eradicate other peoples who happen to be in their way.

Then there is the Protestant claim that only by accepting Jesus as the true son of God (and, confusingly, one-third of God) can a person be saved from hell, even if it were impossible for the person to have ever heard anything about Jesus. Such a haughty attitude can raise the hackles of a non-Christian.

Those beliefs and others like them have become muted over the years, to the point where they don't provoke a great deal of intolerance anymore; they're now mostly just an annoyance. Today, the intolerance award goes to fundamentalist Muslims, who promote holy war with the West, and whose hatred for non-Muslim societies or even just a rival Muslim sect boils over into terrorist attacks on innocent people. Many Muslims harbor a fanatical intolerance for any perceived slight against Islam. Muslim fundamentalists put a million-dollar price on Salman Rushdie's head for writing _The Satanic Verses_ , they incited protests resulting in scores of deaths because a Danish newspaper published editorial cartoons lampooning Muhammad, they rioted and caused a number of deaths in reaction to the burning of a Koran by an idiotic Florida preacher, and they jailed (and threatened to lash or even kill) a schoolteacher whose first-grade class innocently picked the name Muhammad for a teddy bear brought in by a pupil to help illustrate a lesson.

Perhaps because of an underlying sense of insecurity, Muslims are extremely touchy about one of their own leaving the fold. The statutes of eight Islamic states, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, stipulate the death penalty for renouncing the Muslim faith. Fortunately that penalty is rarely imposed, but prosecutions for blasphemy or for inciting hatred are often substituted. Even in states with less harsh statutes, religious authorities may step in and inflict beatings or even beheadings. It takes some courage to leave the Muslim faith.

One of the Hadith (parts of Islamic law) provides a basis for the Muslim treatment of anyone who does decide to leave the religion: "The Prophet said: whoever discards his religion, kill him." That strikes us as barbaric, but the Old Testament is as bad or worse – refer back to the passages from Deuteronomy quoted above. The holy writings of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are equally barbaric in this matter (and in many others). The difference is that Christians and Jews have tacitly decided to ignore this part of their doctrines, whereas Muslims still openly acknowledge and practice it.

Why is Islam such a repressive and intolerant religion? It wasn't always so. During Europe's Middle Ages, at a time when Christianity was far more cruel and intolerant than anything we experience in the world today, Muslim rulers stressed knowledge and scholarship, and the Islamic world was an intellectual center for science, philosophy, medicine, and education. Muslims studied with non-Muslims; they valued knowledge no matter the culture of its source, and significantly advanced the knowledge of the time. There is no general agreement on the reasons for the decline of this Islamic golden age. But one thing is clear: there will not be another flowering of culture in the Islamic world while fundamentalist Muslims maintain political power.

* * * * *

A look at history or a look around the world today shows the cost of intolerance. Violence and harsh treatment predominate where intolerance makes itself felt; opportunity and fair treatment prevail in open, tolerant societies. Society gains when we take advantage of the synergy of different ideas and ways of thinking, rather than distrusting the differences.

Church and state

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

– Thomas Jefferson

Christian conservatives have recently been claiming that the United States is supposed to be a Christian nation, and they are attempting to influence politicians to support this claim. As Pat Robertson told a crowd of conservative Christians before the 2012 elections: "I don't care what the ACLU says or any atheists say. This nation belongs to Jesus, and we're here today to reclaim his sovereignty." In other words, those with other (or no) religious beliefs are misguided and should have the correct conservative Christian beliefs imposed on them. That way of thinking – my religion is the only true religion so I have the right and duty to force it on everybody – is a recipe for conflict.

Indeed, whenever religious leaders have held political power, the results have generally been lengthy and bloody conflicts. If the history revealed by the Old Testament is even partially correct, early Judaism was dominated by the practice of conquest and genocide in order to obtain territory. Hebrew leaders justified massive brutality by claiming that God himself demanded extermination of pagan peoples.

Christians, in turn, inflicted widespread cruelty and violence when they wielded political power. Destructive religious wars raged for over a millennium, bracketed on one end by the one-God controversy that pitted the early Christian centers of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome against each other, and on the other end by the infamously devastating Thirty Years' War. The Christian Crusades brought death and destruction to Muslims and Jews in the Middle East. Christians tortured and killed tens of thousands of their own, claiming they were witches. Catholic inquisitors inflicted horrific tortures on thousands of innocent people.

The Muslim religion has also been responsible for much bloodshed. Islam got its start on the battlefield, and fought numerous wars over the centuries to expand its influence. Today, unlike other religions that have ceded political power to secular governments, Islam still maintains political control in many areas. Freedoms and rights taken for granted in much of the world are sharply curtailed by Islamic governments. Muslim sects continue to slaughter innocent people, most infamously via suicide bombers, in their quest for political power.

In the face of all the evidence showing that getting religion out of governments has been one of the best things that has happened to civilization, why would anybody want to try to bring any traces of religion back into government? I suspect there may be a bit of paranoia at work here. The media occasionally carries an item about a dispute concerning the display of a Christian icon such as a cross or a crèche in a publicly supported place; the dispute takes the form of an aggrieved member of some Christian denomination complaining that the government is outlawing Christianity or Christmas or some other religious aspect. Of course, that is nonsense. The government never has prevented (and never will prevent, if the Constitution continues to be honored) religious displays or other forms of religious expression on private properties; the government is not going to complain about a crèche that's in a churchyard or in a private school or on somebody's front lawn.

But we all need to realize that the separation of church and state must mean that religious displays and icons may not be located in places like post offices, court houses, public schools, public parks, and the like. These are places that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists all use on an equal footing. I'm sure that an evangelical Christian would have a fit if a Muslim set up a loudspeaker on the courthouse lawn and issued the Islamic call to prayer five times a day. If the government allowed anyone to set up their religious icons or posters or whatever on government property, it wouldn't be long before the displays would escalate to better compete for attention – sooner or later somebody would bump over somebody else's display, a fight would result, and eventually the area would become a battleground. That's the kind of thing that happens when religious zeal competes in the public arena, and that's exactly why religion and government should never mix.

On the other hand, no good comes from being overly sensitive in the other direction either. Separation of religion from state is the type of issue where Political Correctness can mushroom and, by going too far, make a mockery out of reasonable measures. There's no need to be a Grinch. For example, I don't think anyone views decorated trees in town squares, or lighted stars and garlands along town streets, as an intrusion of religion. Everyone realizes that these are symbols from pagan celebrations of the winter solstice, in spite of the Christian attempt to appropriate them. And I don't think anyone need worry that these festive trappings are an attempt by pagans to influence state participation in a rite to ensure the return of longer days. Similarly, dyed eggs and bunnies were part of pagan fertility celebrations, and Easter egg hunts are now fun events for kids, events that are essentially devoid of religion. (The word Easter does not have a Christian origin; it comes from Eostre or Ostara, the name of a Germanic pagan goddess who was associated with spring.) We can enjoy such festive traditions just as we enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July.

* * * * *

Fortunately, although there are those who seem to want to, we're unlikely to abandon the basic principle of separation of religion from state. However, Christian conservatives are managing to get elected to positions where they have some power, which is bad enough. I become uncomfortable when a politician tells us he makes decisions by praying to God to tell him what to do. Political decisions should be based on reality, reason, and an honest historical perspective, not on messages from God.

Another problem with religious conservatives in power is their belief in Armageddon. They view it in a positive light, a heroic battle to destroy the world as we know it and usher in a utopian age for the true believers. Obviously, someone with such a belief should not be in a position with even a little power to nudge things in a direction that might eventually lead to an all-out destructive conflict. After all, if the end-times will be the glorious culmination of God's plan, why not help things along a little? Couple a fondness for the end-times with the belief that life on earth is just a brief test before the main event, and you have the mindset of someone who is likely to promote policies detrimental to us and our planet.

My concern about religious extremism in government is not hypothetical. James Watt, president Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, had this to say to the U. S. Congress about his philosophy of environmental protection: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations." Reagan himself, a born again Christian, told the Executive Director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Thomas Dine: "I turn back to your prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if we are the generation that is going to see that come about." Even scarier, Casper Weinberger, while in office as Reagan's Secretary of Defense (and second in command of the nuclear armament), told students at Harvard University: "I have read the Book of Revelation, and, yes, I believe the world is going to end – by an act of God, I hope – and every day I think that time is running out." In 2003, then-president George W. Bush, in an attempt to gain support for the war against Iraq, told French president Jacques Chirac: "This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins".

I've singled out Christian conservatives in government as a concern, but only because they are the faction currently making a lot of noise in American politics. In another part of the world a different faction would likely be the concern. Any religious extremists who get political power can (and will, if they manage to get sufficiently entrenched) impose a dysfunctional government. Just look at nations today that are under Muslim rule. And Jewish conservatives in Israel are not helping that nation make the best political decisions. But in the United States, it happens to be the Christian conservatives who would like to get back to the good old pre-Enlightenment days.

Education

_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._

– Martin Luther, founder of the Protestant branch of Christianity

A good education instills an appreciation for logic, reason, and verifiable facts. And it encourages students to question whatever seems dubious until they either understand the evidence for it, or they determine it's invalid or at least needs further thought. An education with those qualities makes trouble for religions because religious dogma rarely jibes with the reality revealed by logic, reason, and facts. The 2012 Texas Republican Party platform reflects this fear of clear thinking: "We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills, critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education which focus on behavior modification [i.e., learning to think independently] and have the purpose of challenging the student's fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority."

The natural result of the conflict between religion and education is for religions to suppress the teaching of anything that disagrees with their dogma, and to suppress any ways of thinking that might lead an energetic and inquiring mind to probe for truth. For example, Islam insists that any teaching must be subservient to knowledge as revealed by the Koran. Many Muslim schools teach only the Koran, and Muslim fundamentalists deny the right of females to any education. The Taliban, a fundamentalist Muslim offshoot, have such a fear of educated women that they planned and executed an assassination attempt on a 14-year old schoolgirl on her way home from school because of her public support of education for females. Many Muslims did condemn this amazingly immoral and cowardly attack, but the Taliban responded that if the girl were to survive they would again try to kill her.

In the battle between truth and religious doctrine, truth may eventually win out, but it may take awhile. The Catholic Church burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in 1600 and put Galileo Galilei under house arrest in 1633, partly because their realization that the earth circled the sun contradicted Catholic beliefs. It was not until 1835, a mere two centuries later, that the Church dropped all official opposition to teaching how the solar system actually works, well after irrefutable proof of it had been widely accepted. (And it was not until 1992 that the Church finally pardoned Galileo himself. Religion is nothing if not conservative.)

The Catholic Church seems to have learned a lesson. Today, it accepts the Darwinian theory of evolution, including the evolution of man from earlier primates, and it accepts the scientific understanding of the creation of the universe. Now the battle between education and religion is being waged by Christian conservatives. They wish to teach a doctrine called creationism, which is based on the literal biblical account that says God created the stars, the earth, plants, animals, and humans in their present form in six days 6000 years ago.

Creationism has a cousin called intelligent design, which attempts to make its propositions more acceptable by dressing them up with scientific-sounding arguments. But the arguments of intelligent design are as much at odds with science as are those of creationism. Both breathtakingly ignore or misrepresent the many independent lines of overwhelming evidence, from all branches of science, that consistently support the scientific explanation of creation. Creationism and intelligent design have no more validity than any other creation myths. And yet, a lot of people believe these doctrines rather than science. They must, in order to believe that the Bible is literally correct. (Why they feel the need to do that is a total mystery to me.)

Unfortunately, Christian conservatives who hold creationist beliefs have been making progress in their efforts to destroy the teaching of science to American students. There have been battles in school boards concerning the teaching of creationism rather than evolution and cosmology, which in my opinion is like battling over teaching that the earth is flat rather than round. A recent news article reported one such battle: "A suburban school district north of Chicago will not fire a teacher who taught creationist beliefs about the origin of life in science classes, the superintendent said at a public meeting..."

A number of state ordinances allow or require creationism to be taught alongside evolution and cosmology as a viable alternative. The current governor of Texas and contender in the last Republican primary, Rick Perry, gave this answer to a child who asked him if he believed in evolution: "It's a theory that's out there. It's got some gaps in it. In Texas we teach both Creationism and evolution." That is consistent with an earlier remark of Perry's: "I am a firm believer in intelligent design as a matter of faith and intellect, and I believe it should be presented in schools alongside the theories of evolution."

And then we have Paul Broun, Republican U. S. senate representative from Georgia, who said in a speech in 2012: "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell." Broun believes that creation took place in six days, and that the earth is about 9000 years old. Given such an intellectual stance, the following is hard to believe, but it is nonetheless true: Broun is a member of the U. S. House Science Committee. The denigration of science in the United States is a reality.

Todd Aiken, Republican U. S. senate representative from Missouri, was another unusual choice for member of the House Science Committee until his defeat in the 2012 elections. Aiken is a conservative Christian. He opposes stem cell research, and is an outspoken opponent of abortion even to save the mother's life. He stated that it is "common practice" for abortion providers to perform abortions on women who are not actually pregnant. He is infamous for his opinion that women who are "legitimately" raped do not get pregnant because their bodies have a way to "shut that whole thing down". It's hard to understand how someone so ignorant of biology got on the nation's science committee.

In today's world, our well-being depends heavily on advances in science, and on its cousin, engineering, which in turn is dependent on good scientific knowledge. Schools that blur the distinctions between superstition and science, and that fail to promote a confident exercise of creative and independent thinking, contribute to an ignorant and backward society – one that will be surpassed by societies without such shackles. At present, the only parts of the world where the teaching of science has been degraded in order to satisfy religious conservatives are fundamentalist Islamic nations and areas of the United States. The rest of the world is moving on while we are being dragged backward by a religious crusade against science and rationality.

* * * * *

There is another problem caused by the conflict between religion and education: the growth of home schooling. Parents most often cite religious concerns as the main reason for home schooling their children. No doubt the teaching of evolution and cosmology in public schools (to the extent that it survives) worries many of them. Also, many parents with a strong religious orientation are probably uncomfortable with any tendencies toward independent thought that a public school education might stir up. Home schooling, in many instances, produces children who grow up ignorant of much of civilization's accumulated knowledge, and who have limited skills for rational, critical thinking.

But a worse problem with home schooling is the passing on of intolerance to the next generation. Humans have an unfortunate built-in instinct to dislike and distrust people they deem to be different from the circle of people with whom they identify. Widening the circle of ethnicities, backgrounds, and viewpoints with which we are familiar and comfortable is one of the most effective means of creating a better (safer, more interesting, more productive) society. In public schools (and in many private schools as well) children have on-going social contact with a large number of other children from varied backgrounds. That is just the thing to give them a large circle of social comfort, and a tolerant and understanding outlook as they mature.

Unfortunately, the limited social contact of home-schooled children means a limited circle of social identity and tolerance. This is compounded in many cases by the example set by parents whose very reason for home-schooling their children is to shield them from ideas and influences that the parents distrust. Home schooling, in most instances, lacks the socially broadening environment inherent in traditional schools, and thus leads to a more fragmented and distrustful society.

I don't want to leave the impression that parents' involvement with their children is any less important than a school's influence. On the contrary, I think nothing is more important for children than the examples parents set for them and the interest taken by parents in their education. Any education that parents take the time and effort to provide to their children is all to the good. The problems with home schooling are its intent to be the only source of knowledge, ideas, and ways of thinking, and its limited ability to provide regular, diverse social contact.

Looking forward

I haven't been especially complimentary about religion. I've emphasized its many strange and obviously wrong teachings, and the resulting harm. So if religion is detrimental to society, should we take some action against it – fight it somehow, perhaps ban it? Absolutely not. Forcing people to accept or reject beliefs has caused enough suffering over the course of history – it's part of the problem poised by religion, not a solution.

What can be done, and all that should be done, is simply to maintain a pluralistic society where everyone is entitled to one's own beliefs about religion. To that end, government must be kept out of religion, and vice versa. We must maintain the principles that no authority may force a religion on anyone, and that government may not take any stance for or against any religion. With these safeguards, there is every reason to believe that over time comprehension based on reality will replace superstition, and knowledge based on facts and reason will be seen to be more beneficial to society and more personally rewarding than dictated dogma.

Although I've emphasized the harmful effects of religion, its practice in religiously moderate societies today does do much good. As I mentioned earlier, it's common for members of churches and other religious organizations to run soup kitchens for those in need, put together relief packages that are sent to help victims of far-flung disasters, raise money for charities through many kinds of activities that are often also fun for the community, and do many other good works. And religious organizations provide other benefits, such as an environment in which to find friends and enjoy their fellowship. Society would be the worse if it lost those things.

The problem is not the churches, synagogues, and mosques themselves, nor of course the members who do good works and enjoy each other's company. The problem is the religious dogma to which those organizations pay homage. Moderate groups have over the years de-emphasized questionable parts of their dogma to the point where it no longer causes much trouble. But essentially that same dogma, with different emphasis, supports jihad and suicide-bombers in extremist groups. And even in moderate societies, religious doctrine is always lying in wait ready to cause mischief, as evidenced by the resurgence of conservative Christianity.

Whatever answers develop to this problem, they will have to evolve from within the religious organizations themselves. Evolution from within is unlikely to be in the direction of phasing out the existence of churches, synagogues, and mosques, and I would not want it to be. Instead, what I hope will take place is a continuing moderation of religious dogma, eventually to the point where the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud and other doctrines are taught as what they really are – documents created by fallible human beings – and where myths are admitted to be such, good lessons are highlighted and promoted, and bad ideas are delineated and shown to have become harmful in today's society.

Religions served a purpose when people were groping in the dark, anxious about the mysteries of the world around them, and in need of a civilizing influence. But religions' progenitors themselves were equally in the dark, and their answers, while once better than nothing, have now become sacred doors closed against the light. We are left with the legacy of a time when the light of reason and knowledge was barely a faint flicker. But now this light is shining brightly. If religions can find a way to throw open their doors and allow the light of rationality and reason to chase away the shadows of superstition and ignorance, they will have made the world a better place.

Such wishes for the future may seem overly optimistic, but perhaps they are not too much to hope for. Much progress has been made over the millennia. If we all show enough goodwill, it should continue.

### Afterword

**Version**

The Bible was originally written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, so a Bible anyone other than a biblical scholar reads is, of course, a translation.

I chose the NET (New English Translation) Bible to read, and for the quotations in this book, for several reasons. The NET Bible is authoritative: over twenty Evangelical biblical scholars, under the auspices of the Biblical Studies Foundation, worked directly from the best Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts currently available to produce the translation. The translators strove to keep the meaning as close as possible to the original while rendering it in modern readable English. To answer concerns about meaning, questionable choices of wording or phrasing have translation footnotes that explain the translator's decisions, often in great detail. To provide necessary background, obscure references have story footnotes that fill in information from the times and cultures of the biblical authors and provide cross-references where needed.

The NET Bible is available on-line, or can be downloaded along with a reading environment (called Logos) that includes facilities for easy navigation, search, mark-up, and access to footnotes. And it's free!

If you prefer a different version, you might want to compare the quotations in that version with the quotations in this book. I think you'll find the same meaning.

Some people become convinced that the only legitimate biblical version is the one with which they have become familiar. That is an odd conviction considering that no version has the wording put down by the original authors (unless you're reading the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek texts, and even those went through numerous copies and edits from older copies that no longer exist). An example of becoming too attached to a particular version is found in a news article that discusses the 2011 translation of the NIV (New International Version) Bible, used by many of the largest Protestant faiths. The Committee on Bible Translation, responsible for this version, attempted to use gender-neutral language rather than words like "him", "he", or "man" in references to an unspecified person. From the article:

Randy Stinson, president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and dean of the School of Church Ministries at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the changes are especially important to evangelicals. "Evangelicals believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of scripture. We believe every word is inspired by God, not just the broad thought," he said. So if the original text [i.e., in the earlier translation] reads "brothers" – even if that word in the original language is known to mean "brothers and sisters" (such as the Hebrew "achim" or Spanish word "hermanos") – many evangelicals believe the English translation should read "brothers".

Evidently these evangelicals had established certain beliefs based on an incorrect translation, and now would rather hang on to those beliefs than accept a more accurate translation.

Amazingly enough, some religious factions hold that only the translation of the King James Version of the Bible was inspired by God and is therefore the only acceptable English version. They hold this belief even though there are many instances where earlier manuscripts, not available to the translators of the King James Version, clearly show the King James Version to be incorrect. Their belief seems to represent an extreme case of not wanting to be swayed by facts.

Nation builder

This section expands on some of the thoughts in the earlier section _Behavior_. The emphasis here is on the motivation behind the development of the Bible.

As mentioned earlier, a large part of the Bible is taken up with law and its enforcement. Many of the biblical laws deal with the kinds of problems that are covered in our society by common and statutory laws. But the biblical laws are broader: they also cover hygiene, diet, respect, aid, rituals, and so on. Besides the laws themselves, much of the Old Testament is taken up with the evils that befall the Israelites when they ignore God's laws and the blessings they receive when the laws are obeyed. The Israelites' fortunes after God gives the laws to Moses are explained (after the fact) by the regard the people show for the laws – when the Israelites are conquered and subjugated, it is because they have turned away from God's laws in some manner; when the Israelites are victorious and prosper, it is because God is pleased with their behavior. The biblical authors considered the laws and their consequences important enough to devote a great deal of the Bible to them.

Why this emphasis on such a broad range of laws? It most likely resulted from an early realization that something more than inborn instincts was necessary to guide behavior in the larger and more complex societies that people were starting to create. People had learned to domesticate and breed animals to provide food and labor, which provided the wherewithal to live together in larger tribes and lead a semi-nomadic life. The invention of agriculture allowed people to settle down in one place, and still larger populations could be supported.

Our instincts for living together harmoniously and beneficially are not enough in the complex societies that humans have formed as civilization has progressed. Our instincts evolved to serve us when we (and our primate predecessors) lived in small social units whose members were related to each other to some degree and recognized their tribe as an extended family that they should assist and that they expected would assist them.

The human intellect changed the way people lived faster than behavioral instincts could evolve. In large communities, not everyone was intimately familiar with and directly dependent on everyone else. This made it less obvious that hurting another to help oneself (say by stealing from a stranger) was detrimental to the community as a whole. Also, it was easier to get away with bad behavior because a person was not always under the scrutiny of a closely-knit group who knew the person and his habits well and were concerned about the effects of his behavior.

Faced with the problems of maintaining order and productivity in a burgeoning society, the ancient Hebrews did what had to be done: they established a legal system. The Hebrews weren't alone. Other emerging civilizations had the same problems and adopted the same solution. A notable example is the Code of Hammurabi, a comprehensive legal system established in Babylon around 1780 BC, considerably before the Bible was written.

A unique aspect of the biblical legal system was the use of God as the enforcement mechanism. Although other early legal codes also appealed to religious fears by imploring the gods to bring down their wrath on transgressors, the biblical approach was unique in claiming that the laws came directly from God himself and he therefore had a strong personal interest in seeing that they were obeyed. It was the ultimate means of ensuring obedience: an all-seeing and vengeful god who is strongly motivated to see the laws carried out because they are his idea.

Of course, that was insufficient to intimidate everybody. People still occasionally broke a law and God didn't deal out swift justice to them, which meant that punishments were needed to keep disobedience from spreading. Here again, the Bible uses a religious mechanism. Rather than a system of judges and courts under the control of a secular ruler, the Israelites set up a priesthood to judge infractions and mete out punishment. The Bible lavishes considerable detail on the elaborate rituals and trappings associated with the priesthood, and with their special status in society. This mysticism provided the priests with the authority and power necessary for law enforcement.

* * * * *

Besides provision of a legal system, another mechanism to help build a nation was the development of a set of beliefs and traditions that knit people together into a cohesive society, a society to which they feel a loyalty and which they feel benefits them. The biblical authors accomplished this in several ways.

The foremost means of bonding the Israelites was to establish the tribes of Israel (the descendants of Jacob) as God's chosen people. Moses tells the Israelites: "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. He has chosen you to be his people, prized above all others on the face of the earth." (Deuteronomy 14:2) The Bible reinforces this theme of a chosen race many times, for example: "The Lord will certainly have compassion on Jacob; he will again choose Israel as his special people and restore them to their land." (Isaiah 14:1) By instilling the belief that their race was chosen by God to receive his favors, the biblical authors created a powerful glue to hold together a nation of the twelve tribes founded by Jacob's sons. Still today, this biblical background gives Judaism a uniquely strong identification of a religion with a race, a race that God prizes above all others.

Another means of creating support for a nation of the Israelites was to establish that no less a power than God himself had promised them a land of their own. "The Lord, the God of heaven, ... promised me with a solemn oath, 'To your descendants I will give this land'". (Genesis 24:7) "The Lord said to Moses, 'Go up from here, you and the people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land I promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, "I will give it to your descendants."'" (Exodus 33:1) The Bible has dozens of similar passages granting the Israelites a sacred right to a promised land. The many passages where God orders the Israelites to completely exterminate the peoples who inconveniently are already settled there emphasize the exclusive right of the Israelites to this land. Such a land grant from God provided a strong incentive to build a nation.

And finally, the biblical authors included an extensive history of the chosen people, including a family tree all the way back to the first man to exist, and a rich set of their traditions. These shared elements provided another means to foster a sense of community and reinforce a national identity.

* * * * *

Considering the emphasis it receives, nation building was evidently an important motivation of the Old Testament authors, maybe even their main motivation. The passages that are concerned with nation building – establishment of a legal system, enforcement of the laws, the results of disobedience, the status of the Israelites as a special race in the eyes of God, the sacred right of the Israelites to a land of their own, accounts of the battles and genocides undertaken to secure that land, a history of the Israelites, and descriptions of rituals and traditions – these passages take up a major portion of the Old Testament.

Weaving those elements together in one narrative was an effective style. Other writings tend to segregate categories like legal codes, histories, and religious doctrine into separate documents. The Bible, however, makes one long story from these diverse elements. This style has advantages – intertwining the categories makes them mutually reinforcing, and provides context to make everything easier to read and remember. The biblical authors did a good job of producing a document to build a nation.

Free will

Religious thinkers have long grappled with a paradox: our behavior during our lifetimes determines our fate after we die, but our behavior is predestined because an all-wise God already knows what the future holds. God knows before we're even born whether we will find salvation. This paradox has spawned many different beliefs concerning predestination.

Some believe that although the future is indeed of necessity predestined because God already knows it, we still, in some hard-to-define sense, have responsibility for our actions. The difficulty here is to explain how it is possible to hold someone responsible for an action that had already been determined. Religious commentators have tried to reconcile this problem by applying a lot of tortuous reasoning that, in the end, doesn't really explain anything.

Others believe that although God _could_ control and know everything that will ever happen, he chooses not to do so and allows us the freedom to determine our own destinies. And there are many other interpretations of what predestination means and what it implies.

Closely related to religious beliefs about predestination is the question of whether or not we have free will, or the freedom to choose our own actions. If the universe is set up such that the results of every action can be predicted before the action happens, then the future is already determined, even if we don't actually work out the predictions. If the universe operates in such a strictly deterministic way, the next action we take has already been decided by the impact of our previous actions and the environment that impinges on us, like a sophisticated Rube Goldberg machine. In such a deterministic universe, we might feel like we have free will, but the feeling would be illusory.

Therefore the question of free will hinges on the question of a deterministic universe. But it doesn't really matter _why_ the universe might be deterministic. It might be because God already has knowledge of the future, which is what predestination supposes. Or alternatively, the universe might be deterministic simply because that's how nature works, not necessarily because of anything to do with God. Therefore the question of free will can be considered both as a religious issue and as an issue outside the context of religion. As you might expect from this wide a scope, free will and its relation to determinism or predestination have been the subjects of a wide range of considerations over many years.

The idea that the universe might very well be deterministic got a big boost in the late 1600's from the then-fledgling enterprise now known as science. The physical laws discovered by Newton showed that it was possible to determine the momentum and position of objects arbitrarily far into the future if we know those attributes at the present, even if things collide, spin around, or interact in complicated ways. This implied that the universe might be like a big, extraordinarily complex, clockwork mechanism. In principle, if all the positions and momentums of everything could be determined at one instant, the future behavior of everything could then be calculated. Of course, in practice the required multitude of determinations and calculations would be far too great to be actually undertaken, but that doesn't matter – if theory says it is possible to determine the future, even if only in principle, then the future is in fact already determined even if no one actually carries out the calculations.

Newton's laws certainly did accurately predict the future motions and paths of the celestial objects, so on a large scale the universe did appear deterministic. Closer to home, Newton's laws predicted what would happen to things like an apple that fell from a tree or billiard balls that were put in motion by the thrust of a cue, but only if some simplifications were made – for example, air resistance had to be ignored, billiard balls and cushions had to be considered to be perfectly elastic, and so on. But perhaps these simplifications were needed only because our knowledge was incomplete, and as we learned more we would find that everything could be predicted into the future.

Then, toward the end of the nineteenth century, science gave a second big boost to determinism. Atoms and their constituent parts were discovered and analyzed, and it turned out that at this small scale things did appear to exactly follow known physical laws. So, for example, it was not really necessary to neglect air resistance in order to determine exactly how an object would continue moving, you could in principle figure out the effect of all the individual air molecules bouncing off the object. Or, if you knew the molecular details of the felt on the billiard table and the surfaces of the balls and cushions, you could take their effects into account. Again, you couldn't begin to do this in practice, but if laws exist that take everything into account and could be used to predict future behavior, then that behavior will occur whether or not anyone actually does the math.

So at the start of the twentieth century it seemed that free will might really be an illusion, albeit a very convincing one. But then along came quantum mechanics, which was born of the necessity to explain some unusual behaviors of subatomic particles. Quantum mechanics puts forward some very non-intuitive rules, but these have been verified by extensive experimentation and observation. One such well-proven rule is that it is impossible, _even in principle_ , to determine both the position and momentum of a particle with arbitrary accuracy. The more accurately you attempt to determine position, the less accurately you can determine momentum, and vice versa. The same holds true for other pairs of quantities, such as time and energy. This is not a limitation of the tools or techniques used to make measurements; it is a fundamental limitation that says that uncertainty is unavoidable in principle.

Another surprising finding of quantum mechanics is that the prediction of the state of a system does not provide definite values for the state, but only probability distributions for its values. In other words, although the most probable position of an electron, for example, can be predicted, the electron might actually be anywhere, although with decreasing probability from the most probable position.

To summarize, quantum mechanics shows that it is impossible even in principle to know exactly the position and momentum of a particle, which makes it impossible to definitely predict its future trajectory. Also, predictions inherently provide probabilities of what will happen; anything, in fact, might happen, with decreasing probability the further you go from the most probable state.

Thus we now know the universe is definitely not deterministic, at least not at the small scales where quantum effects predominate. What about at the scales of people and the things with which we interact? There's no hard dividing line between the two scales; quantum effects dominate at atomic sizes and below, and rapidly become insignificant as size increases. The exact interplay between quantum phenomenon and larger objects is still not well understood.

But I think there are good reasons to believe that quantum non-determinism implies that the large-scale world is also non-deterministic. What is needed is a mechanism to amplify uncertainties at small scales into noticeable effects in the world at large. That mechanism is readily provided by the non-linear processes constantly at work in the world around us. The outcomes of such processes can be extraordinarily sensitive to their driving forces. Chaos theory, a recent popularization of aspects of non-linear theory, emphasizes the ability of a non-linear process to produce vastly different outcomes from miniscule differences in the inputs.

One possible example of quantum effects at large scales involves the ability of our visual systems to respond to extremely little light, as few as nine photons if they arrive almost simultaneously. Suppose you are walking in the woods on a dark night, and the movement of a nearby predator deflects a feeble beam of light in your direction. The difference between you noticing nothing and doing nothing, or instead noticing a tiny flash that orients your vision such that you now see danger and flee, might depend on just one photon. Your reaction might depend on whether or not that ninth photon manages to enter your eye and jostle a molecule on a retinal rod. Quantum theory shows that it is impossible, even in principle, to measure or in any way learn enough information ahead of time about those photons to predict whether or not they will resolve from a wave to a particle on the right sort of molecule in your eye. Your body amplifies the quantum uncertainty inherent in the photons' behavior into an overt physical reaction that could not have been predicted.

A more involved example considers the mechanism that fires neurons in our brains, which is what leads to our thoughts and actions. Briefly, each neuron has input connections from many other neurons and makes output connections to many other neurons. A neuron accumulates signals from its inputs, and if and when the accumulation rises above a certain threshold value, the neuron fires off its own signal to all of the neurons with which it makes output connections.

A neuron fires in an all or nothing manner. Until the input signals accumulate to the threshold value, nothing happens (and the accumulation slowly decays away, so infrequent inputs may never trigger a firing). When the threshold is reached, the neuron fires full strength to all its outputs.

The transfer of an output signal from one neuron to the input of another depends on a delicate mechanism. At the connection (synapse), the branch of the neuron's output fiber (axon) does not quite physically contact the destination neuron. Instead, the fiber ends in a bulge with a flat surface a small gap away from the destination neuron. When the output signal reaches this surface, tiny vesicles in the bulge release neurotransmitter molecules into the gap. These molecules drift across the gap and are detected by the destination neuron, which registers them as a contribution to its input accumulation.

With that under our belt, we can get to the crux of the matter: the opportunity for quantum uncertainty to enter the picture. In the previous example, I was on firmer ground because the initiating event depended on a photon, which is small enough for its behavior to be heavily subject to quantum effects. In this example, we are dealing with molecules, which are large enough that quantum effects are much less evident.

However, I think that even tiny quantum effects can be amplified sufficiently by the delicate signal transmission mechanism that influences neuron firing. Emptying of neurotransmitter vesicles into the gap depends on flows of small ions. Even if the quantum uncertainty in the movements of these ions is minute, it seems inevitable that this uncertainty will occasionally result in the release of one more or one fewer vesicle than would have been predicted by the most probable behavior. Neuron firing is all or nothing, thus even a few more or fewer neurotransmitter molecules contributing to the input accumulation might determine whether or not the neuron does fire, or might slightly delay or advance the time when it fires. The final result is a non-deterministic mechanism for changing thoughts and actions, which are essentially the result of patterns of firing of neurons.

* * * * *

I've indulged in quite a bit of conjecture about determinism. Nothing has been proved, but I think there is good reason to believe that the universe is not deterministic even at large scales. I got into this discussion by noting that free will does not seem possible in a strictly deterministic universe. I'm not sure the converse is true, that free will is an automatic result of a non-deterministic universe. A non-deterministic universe seems to be a necessary condition for free will, but perhaps not a sufficient condition. Be that as it may, there certainly appears to be good reason to believe that we live in a universe that at least allows free will.

###
About the author

Brian Horn graduated with an engineering degree from the University of Michigan many years ago, after which he enjoyed life with a wonderful family and played with computers to make a living. Retirement has given Brian time to try to figure out how to write, and his long-term interest in the religious thought process provided the subject matter for his first book. Brian can be contacted at brianhorn444@gmail.com.
