To Rev. Gordon Tubbs and all other Christians who express similar concerns,
I
apologize for the late response; I only noticed your article today. Your open letter interested me for several reasons, some I agree
with and others I don’t. Your arguments might appear unanswered, but this platform’s design makes searching every Christian Pollution article for
specific answers an effort. These same inquiries I receive in email also make them pertinent, but I see little need
to address every point since discussing the broad focus on all Christians and answering the hate speech accusation
should address everyone’s concerns.
Had I read Christian Pollution just four years prior, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with the ad hominem accusation many make. Some years further back, I might have even agreed with the hate speech claim. Even further back, I would have been the one defending Christianity. I once wrote with the same harshness against Islam and other religions, which I don’t hold much regard for either, but today, I confine my arguments to Christianity for being the primary cause of so many problems in the United States. This stance occurred after transforming my philosophy to reject Christian philosophical arguments, having deemed them implausible and dishonest. For instance, you say,
I understand that once you have abandoned the belief that anything exists “up there” (like gods, angels, demons, spirits, magic, mystical forces, sin, souls, etc.) then the only reality that truly means anything is the one “down here” with all of its pursuits (economic, political, ideological, etc.)
Your statement is correct to some extent, but more often than not, claims of this nature bolster Christian belief by allowing believers to invert what you said to mean “atheism is bad because it only takes into account the reality ‘down here’ because clearly, ‘what’s up there’ is important.” This inversion of meaning, often by accident, often on purpose, occurs because Christianity perverts believer philosophy and critical thought into bias.
Philosophy
There are many purposes in philosophy, with one found in the role of the field, which answers questions or finds solutions to problems. If philosophy does not serve this purpose, it becomes an academic or critical thought exercise. One of the clearest descriptions of philosophy’s problem-solving intent comes from Isaiah Berlin’s Concepts and Categories discussion, “The Purpose of Philosophy,” in which he states, “it seems clear that subjects or fields of study are determined by the kind of questions to which they have been invented to provide the answers.”* Berlin describes inquiry in this manner as coherent for knowing “where” to seek answers. One would not learn to build an airplane by looking at a rock or, as Berlin states, “In other words, we know where to look for the answer: we know what makes some answers plausible and others not.”* Based on this rationale, Christianity cannot answer real-world issues because it is founded on possibility, not plausibility.
Ontological and cosmological arguments cannot plausibly prove the Christian God’s existence, much less prove biblical wisdom’s effectiveness in answering social issues such as abortion, civil rights, capital punishment, etc. These issues aside for a moment, Christianity always cements itself in possibility, not plausibility, and believers lack realistic and practical thought about anything they base upon their Christian values. There are Christians who accept faith from philosophical possibilities, those who believe in bible inerrancy, and those who developed personal interpretation: showing just how wildly different and unrealistic the conclusions Christians reach regarding their own religion.
All Christian values hold some form of belief in Christ and biblical interpretation, all founded on the implausible notion that this religion is in some way factual or highly probable. The problem arises because no person born into Christianity, or offered conversion, is presented with the religion’s plausibility. They instead received a possibility masked as a plausible idea, forming a false bedrock of thought. Ultimately, if a Christian uses intelligent design or cosmological arguments as proof, they are either dishonest or naïve for presenting these as plausible evidence. In many instances, they succumb to dishonesty because committing to these arguments requires understanding, to some degree, opposing viewpoints and the implausibility of deriving a Christian God from this proof.
Because of the religion’s implausibility and often dishonest presentation as plausible rather than possible, I reject Christianity.
When you reject the possibility of Christianity, dishonesty reveals in the anti-science arguments against evolution, sex education, and almost all situations where Christian values form the conceptual foundations. For example, here is how Catholics preface their discussion about homosexuality.
Appearing directly below the preface, Catholics state the “known causes of same-sex attraction.” Men turn gay because of a lack of sports participation or being rejected from sports, as discussed by the Catholic Education Resource Center,
In a culture dominated by sports heroes, it’s easy to understand how a young boy who can’t play ball or run fast may not feel very good about himself — especially when this is accompanied by ridicule from his peers and perhaps even exclusion and isolation. He may escape the resulting loneliness with academics or by cultivating comfortable relationships with girls.
“The sports wound will negatively affect the image of himself, his relationships with peers, his gender identity, and his body image,” Fitzgibbons writes. “His negative view of his masculinity and his loneliness can lead him to crave the masculinity of his male peers.”
Girls are lesbians because of daddy issues,
In females, the mistrust of men’s love is one of the major conflicts a woman may choose to “resolve” in a homosexual relationship. She may have had a distant, emotionally insensitive or even abusive father and grows up with a fear of being vulnerable to men.
In light of homosexuality’s evidence-based acceptance as a sexual orientation, lack of unhealthy or negative repercussions, and the damaging effect of conversion therapy, the only way Christians can uphold their sexual values that deem homosexuality bad is to knowingly or unknowingly misstate the science, which constitutes a deception.
Homosexuality is just one of countless examples revealing how Catholics and other Christians lie, “We don’t promote hate of homosexuals, but they are abnormal, and yes, our bible does reference them as an abomination.” No Catholic reading the bible and this literature would conclude, “I have compassion and sympathy for homosexuals.” Even if they do come away with that thinking, so what? The mere fact the preface states “compassion and sympathy” implies they are diseased or abnormal in some way. Why else would you need compassion for them? Because they are ‘wrong’ according to Catholics, and this belief clearly embeds itself in their literature and thinking process, as already evidenced.
Had Christians not based their entire thought process on an implausible belief system, they would not be prone to the deception required to prove their values.
This example of Christian dishonesty from a mainstream religion that comprises a significant portion of the US population softens the argument that everything bad is evangelicals or “not the real Christians!” Still, Christians persist in arguing it is not our majority or blame evangelicals for the dishonesty or theocracy threat, yet the numbers don’t add up.
To be fair, the statistics can be confusing because of how researchers enumerate sects, but this does not excuse Christian dishonesty since they are the subject of the statistics and should be aware of their group voting.
If you look at Pews numbers, you’ll notice mainstream religions like Catholicism and Protestantism vote between 47% and 55% Republican, but the percentage jumps with white evangelicals to somewhere between 76% and 85% depending on the survey in question. The figures approximate the last two elections and show even if all the white evangelicals voted Republican, this alone would not be enough to win the Presidency since they only comprise one-quarter of all the voters. More than just showing that approximately half of the mainstream Christians voted for a party that increasingly aims at evangelical Christian nationalist voters, these figures show evangelicals tipped the numbers in favor of the majority of Christians voting Republican. So much for the idea of evangelicals not being true Christians or some bogeyman infiltration of Christianity. Again, Christians would not be prone to this deceptive thinking had they not constructed their thought on an implausible foundation.
Christians are naive or dishonest to continue making the imposter Christian or evangelical Christian arguments.
Adding to the religion’s implausibility and dishonesty is Christianity’s malleability. Hundreds, if not thousands, of sects and personal interpretations defy believability. All interpretations simply cannot be true, especially those in contradiction with the bible, yet, this implausibility does not hinder Christians from believing, spreading the good news, and trying to make their beliefs law for everyone, Christian or not.
Somewhere along the way, a Christian decides their faith is worth the possibility of the Christian God and the religion being true, which is their choice, hopefully, but it is not everyone’s choice. More to the point, I cannot knowingly entertain their deceptive arguments to bolster a belief in an implausible religion because it is an abuse of critical thought: it is propaganda.
No one would entertain someone saying they should visit a bank, take out all their money, and gamble it on one roll of a roulette wheel. We would believe them insane. Yet every day, Christians ask us or try to trick us into risking our lives with law, policy, economics, and morality based on a high improbability of their religion’s truth. Any real-world argument or action based on their implausible beliefs breaks down. Take for instance contraception, abortion, and sex education:
- Christians argue against contraception because it is a sin, despite lowering unwanted teen pregnancy and fighting poverty.
- Christians don’t want teens having sex because of unwanted pregnancy, yet rail against contraception, wanting abstinence-only sex education.
- Christians want abortion outlawed even though it diminishes unwanted teen pregnancy and fights poverty.
- Outcome: Christian values promote ignorance of sex other than abstinence, which has failed miserably, and when a teen gets pregnant, she should be forced to have the baby, increasing her and society’s risk of poverty.
Christians must either be naive or lie to promote their position on contraception, abortion, and sex education, believing the opposite outcome would occur. Why on earth would they believe and demand we believe this thinking? They ask or attempt to defraud us because they hold an implausible belief guiding their actions to this end.
The Harsh Approach
To be honest, the harsh approach with Christians came about as a means to test social journalism but evolved into a need to break through indoctrination. Christians hold fast to their implausible idea so vehemently that they believe it should apply to everyone, evidenced by the majority of them voting this way. If not for the term’s ambiguity, I would deem them “cultists” for being so entrenched in this ideology. Everyone knows the difficulty of removing people from cults but is that so different than getting a Christian to stop using their religion as life’s bedrock for themselves and others? The way Christians currently impose their values clarifies the difficulty of getting them to realize the problems they create.
How should I respond to the implausible religion dishonestly presented by adherents? How should I respond to the Christian hiding behind an ad hominem accusation even when politely called out for fallacies and deceptive arguments? With reason and logic alone?
Clearly, that method moved us in reverse, with Christians threatening to overturn more equality laws after their Roe v. Wade victory and the rise of more leaders like Trump.
Let’s be clear; I am not operating under the guise of a philosopher and have no intention of holding a friendly exchange of ontological possibilities. With the clear threat of turning on the news to find the Supreme Court struck down another decision or law that guaranteed someone a right, Christians made their will known and negated “rational” debates as solutions. Frankly, I don’t believe anything they say. Furthermore, if you believe calling someone stupid is a personal attack because they believe and want everyone else to abide by their purity culture that makes a man the master of his family and wife (because he has a penis), well, I say it’s high time someone called them stupid!
Isaiah Berlin Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays - Second Edition 2nd Edition, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition November 10, 2013 Kindle Edition.!
Photo by Samuel McGarrigle on Unsplash
