Tag Archives: Skeptic

Sometimes People Believe What They Want to Believe

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Even skeptics.

Skeptics like to think of themselves as people of reason, people who value evidence and facts above all else.

I agree, that’s the way we should think.

Why is it then that so many skeptics think people who go to Christian colleges receive an inferior education?

Everyone has seen the Bill Maher clip now…….the one where he denigrates Liberty University………basically saying their degrees are a joke, worthless. (BTW, Liberty is an accredited institution)

Now……..I am a Bill Maher fan. I watch his show religiously.

But, on this matter……Bill Maher is full of shit.

Skeptics like to focus on the fact that Christian colleges teach creationism. Let’s assume all Christian colleges teach creationism. Does this one fact mean that every other class or course of study is deficient?

Where are the studies, oh we skeptics love studies, that show that a Christian college education is inferior to a secular college education? Come on skeptics…….just one study.

I thought so…..this isn’t about evidence or facts. This is about our disposition towards hating all things religious.

Outside of the science issue, what proof is there that a secular college education is superior to the Christian college education?  Three of my children and my wife have taken classes and graduated from secular colleges. I have watched closely as they take their classes.  I have read their syllabuses, looked at their textbooks. I have reviewed what was required of them to graduate from their respective college. I found nothing that would suggest that their secular education was superior to a Christian college education.

The truth is, education standards have declined everywhere, Christian and secular. Personally, I think a lot of what is taught at the college level is a colossal waste of time. The whole system is in need of a radical overhaul. Yet, skeptics tend to ignore the deficiencies in their own places of higher learning. Christian colleges, because of their religious beliefs, become easy targets for skeptics. After all, only uneducated hillbillies attend a Christian college. Many of them, curl lip, and with a slight snarl…….many of them were HOME SCHOOLED.

Ah yes, another dog skeptics love to beat. Skeptics hate stereotypes, yet they seem to have no problem using a stereotype when judging home schoolers. Skeptics have their anecdotal evidence of a Christian family that home schooled their children. The kids lacked social skills and were educationally deficient. Never mind that their anecdote is the exception to the rule.  Skeptics WANT to believe that home schooled children are wallflowers and have the education of a third grader. This makes it much easier to dismiss Christians and their backwater religion.

Skeptics might want to take a long, hard look at the public school system before they start chucking rocks at families who home school. A couple of years ago I read a number of Comp 1 and and Comp 2 essays written by recent high school graduates for their college English class. The vast majority of the writing was atrocious. Terrible grammar and spelling. Many of them showed a complete lack of ability to construct a coherent paragraph. So much for the superiority of the public school system.

Home schooling has its faults. All six of our children were home schooled. I am well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of our home school program.  My wife and I determined that we would focus on core competency, so we made sure our children could read and write well. We adhered to this philosophy: a child who can proficiently read and write can do most anything.

We knew that we could never provide the science education that a public school with a lab could provide. Instead, we taught them to be observers of the natural world. Yes, at the time, we believed they should be careful observers of the natural world God created, but good observation skills are valuable for theist and skeptic alike.

When our children entered college and took Biology they were at a slight disadvantage. I say slight, because they didn’t have the lab skills their public school counterparts did. However, their reading and writing skills were far above their classmates so this offset their lab skill deficiency. Again…..read well and you can learn most anything.

Skeptics need to judge Christian colleges and homeschooling according to facts. We live in an educational world where everything is judged by a number. How do home schoolers test out compared to their high school counterparts? In most instances they test higher, often significantly higher.

Now, I am not saying that every home schooled child is receiving a good education. I have met a few of the anecdotal stories that skeptics like to tell. Parents who have no business home schooling their children. Children who are illiterate. These are rare occasions and the whole home schooling movement should not be judged by the reprehensible actions of a few.

When one of my sons was in elementary school he had a teacher that had no business being a teacher. How she got a college diploma and a teaching certificate is beyond me. After three years, local school administrators found out she was not teaching her students to read and they  fired her. Terrible story. Now, using the standard some skeptics do, I could conclude that the public school system is a failure. Of course, a good skeptic wouldn’t do that. The skeptic realizes that all this is one bad teacher, an anecdotal story that proves nothing.

Christianity deserves the criticism it gets but let’s be sure of our facts before we open our mouth or post the latest Bill Maher attack on religion to our blog, Facebook, or Twitter. Christian colleges and home schooling deserves careful scrutiny but let’s not forget our own sacred secular cows.

Dear Skeptic Community

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Repost from April 30, 2012

(note: in this post I use gross generalities and paint with a wide brush. I realize there are exceptions and that not everything I say here applies to all skeptics everywhere. I use the word skeptic to encompass atheists, agnostics, humanists, and none of the above)

In recent weeks I surveyed the various enclaves within the skeptic community and have come to some sobering conclusions. I am a blue-collar kind of person, having grown up in poverty and lived in areas dominated by manufacturing. “My people” are what is commonly called the working class. Most of “my people” do not have a college education. They are white and poor or middle class people. They are overwhelmingly Christian.

In my survey of the various groups that make up the skeptic community this is what I found. The skeptic community is overwhelmingly:

  • White
  • Male
  • College educated
  • Dominated by scholars, professors, scientists and people with white-collar jobs
  • Middle and upper middle class
  • Regionally centered on the East and West coast or in major cities.

The Skeptic community is dominated by the educated, scholarly class. The books they write reflect their education and place in life. The conferences they hold reflect their upper middle class lifestyle, complete with expensive conference fees, hotels, and meals.

Now, this is not a criticism of skeptic community demographic. Skepticism naturally demands that people be educated and informed about matters of importance. Who better to turn to than the scholars,professors, and scientists?

I am thinking about “my people”, the high school educated, Christian, blue-collar worker. Why does the skeptic community find it so difficult to reach “my people?” Why are so many of my fellow working class people turned off by the skeptic community? Why are there few working class people found among the skeptic community?

Let me try to answer these questions….I answer these questions as a skeptic but also as a life-long member of the blue-collar working class. The skeptic community has failed miserably at making inroads with working class people. Why is that?

Working class people generally have a mistrust of educated people. Sometimes, their mistrust is quite irrational but, at times, their mistrust is quite justified. Working class people, especially poor working class people, generally feel they are without a voice. Politics are dominated by the educated élite, the rich. Working class people go to work just to make ends meet. They likely will never amass large sums of money. Owning a home and driving a late-model car is a sign of success. Life is one of simplicity and struggle.

Their distrust of educated people comes from the fact that educated people often talk down to them and treat them like an unwashed mass. Every four years the political class asks for their vote and then spend the next 4 or 6 years trying to demolish the working class and their attempt to hold their head above water.

Educated people tell them to “trust us.” They are the experts. They speak of double dip recessions and anthropogenic global warming, while all the working class person wants to do is get to tomorrow. They want to go to work, pay their bills, and enjoy the weekend.  All this talk of this or that, in complex terms, falls on deaf ears. Why can’t the experts present their facts in the language of the commoner?

They go to their doctor and he speaks to them in Latin and with words having lots of syllables. They leave the doctor’s office confused and uncertain about what is really wrong with them.  Why can’t the doctor speak to patient in way that can be understood?

The working class person has, or most likely had, friends who went off to college and got an education. They don’t interact with each other like they used to. Education has brought a distance between them. The blue-collar worker laughs when he hears the educated, white-collar person complain about how hard they have to work. The blue-collar worker knows what so many educated, white-collar workers have forgotten…that the hardest jobs, the jobs that require the most effort and labor, pay the least. They find a perverse satisfaction when one of the white-collar workers are demoted to the floor or when they find out that so and so they work with on the line has a college degree. See, what did all that education get them?

They laugh at Mitt Romney and his wife’s talk of doing hard work, yet they will likely vote for him in the upcoming presidential election. Inconsistency exists in the working class world just like it does everywhere else. Most working class people routinely vote against their economic interests and religion is the reason they do so.

With religion, the working class person finds certainty, comfort, and support. They want to hear of a life that matters. They want to know that there is a better life that awaits them beyond the grave.

In the church house they feel they are as good as anyone else, that social status doesn’t matter. (even though churches are often governed and controlled by educated, moneyed, white-collar people) With Jesus they find someone who is their friend, a friend who promised to never leave them or forsake them. The Bible, regardless of how inconsistently they interpret it, is their source of strength, comfort, and hope. In the Bible, the poor, the working class are exalted and often are portrayed as those closest to God and this message resonates with working class people.

Along comes the educated, middle/upper middle class, white-collar skeptic ever ready to rob the commoner of those things they hold dear. With big words, lengthy books, and the like, the skeptic pronounces Christianity a great evil and suggest only stupid, poorly educated people still believe in superstitions like God, Jesus, Satan, and a divine Bible.

On cable news, in the newspapers, and at gatherings like the Reason Rally, the uneducated, working class person hears their beliefs and lifestyle routinely denounced by the luminaries of the skeptic community. In their mind they think skeptics view them as stupid, ignorant, hillbillies. (and more than a few skeptics do)

If the skeptic community hopes this approach will increase their ranks they are sadly mistaken. Yes, more white, educated, white-collar people, people less likely to be religious, will be drawn to them. But, what about blue-collar working class people? What about people who have only a high school education? The group of people, by the way, that make up the majority in the United States. (and most everywhere else in the world) Is the skeptic community effectively making inroads with them?

If the goal is for skeptics to move the United States towards becoming a true secular society where science, reason, and rationality are the norms, then they MUST change their approach.

Let me say at this juncture that I am not suggesting that educated, economically flush, white collar people deny who they are. To suggest they be anything other than what they are is bigotry. However, I would like to suggest that a change of approach is in order.

First, the skeptic community must change how it is perceived. As long as they are perceived as arrogant, argumentative, educated god-haters, the people who make up the majority in the United States will turn a deaf ear and blind eye to them. They must come down out of the ivory towers and walk among the uneducated. They must be seen as normal, every day folk, as people who understand the plight of the uneducated, working class community.

Second, the skeptic community must simplify their language. Again, if the goal is the greater good of the United States then the skeptic community must learn to talk in the language of the commoner. They must develop relational skills that help them understand the people they are trying to reach. Their books, blogs, and the like must be written in a way that a high school educated person can understand their arguments. Regardless of what one may think of Bart Ehrman, he has mastered the ability to take complex arguments and make them accessible and understandable to the uneducated. Neil Degrasse Tyson is another person who has a unique ability to make complex matters of science accessible to those lacking a science education.

Third, the skeptic community must stop its bombastic, over the top, rhetoric about Christianity. Deny it all we might, we are far too often viewed as angry, argumentative, mean-spirited assholes. The very kind of people that many of us left behind when we deconverted. I don’t intend to get into the whole accommodation vs. confrontational debate. I know that accommodating religion is rarely the answer BUT I also know that the confrontational approach rarely works. Oh it might stir the faithful and make them think what people of power we are but back in the hinterlands of America such an approach is viewed as offensive and does little to change anyone’s mind.

Fourth, the skeptic community must make their events more accessible to working class people. In my survey of the skeptic community and their annual events and conferences I found that the conference fees and associated costs were quite expensive. Lowering these costs would allow more people to attend and result in more people being reached with the gospel of skepticism. The skeptic community could learn a few lessons from Evangelicals on how to effectively have conferences and events that are priced right and reach a lot of people. As long as conference costs are high, working class people will not be able to attend.

Fifth, the skeptic community must realize that there is a part of the Unites States called the Midwest. Rarely are conferences and events held in the Midwest. The skeptic community seems to love the coasts, and while I understand this, I must point out that a vast number of people are being ignored by  continually holding conferences and events only on the East and West coast.

Sixth, the skeptic community must become more diverse. Where are the Hispanic, Asian, and African-American skeptics? Yes, I know the few that are……and that’s the problem…they are so few every skeptic knows of them.

The skeptic community has fallen into a trap that I often saw in my days as a pastor. There are those speakers that seem to speak at every event. They become the royalty of the community and far too often their words are treated as god-like. In E.F. Hutton like fashion, when Richard Dawkins speaks everyone listens. Again, this reinforces the notion that the skeptic community is for a certain class of people.

How about mixing it up and inviting speakers that don’t fit the typical skeptic profile? How about inviting speakers that no one knows? Some of the best preachers I ever heard were men who pastored 50 people at a church on the backside of some hill in West Virginia. One preacher’s conference I attended made sure it balanced the program with big-name and no-name speakers.  This sends an important message to the public……everyone has a voice that matters. Right now, in the skeptic community, it seems the voice of a handful of people matter. The rest of us? Sit down, listen, buy our books, see ya at the next gig, or so it seems.

Seventh, one the most effective means of outreach is the printed page, be it magazine or books. Every author or publisher wants their material read by as many people as possible. As a blogger, I want my writing to be read everywhere by as many people as possible.  If the skeptic community really wants to reach out beyond the faithful then they are going to have to make their materials more affordable, even if this means less profit. Again, what is our objective as skeptics? Magazine subscriptions that cost 30-50 dollars a years are beyond the reach of working class people. I know it is expensive to publish a magazine, but somehow, some way, the subscription cost must become affordable for people who do not have the means to pay 35 dollars for a magazine published 5 or 6 times a year. Again, religious publishers have this figured out and they make their subscription costs quite affordable for everyone.  The skeptic community must find a way to do the same.

Books must also be priced in a way that everyone can afford them. I went to Amazon today to order a book I read a review on in a skeptic magazine. The book, 300 or so pages long, was almost 40 dollars. Only the devoted skeptic will shell out this kind of money. If the objective is to have a book read by as many people as possible then the book must be priced accordingly.

In recent months, I have read several articles written by skeptics that suggest that religion is dying or becoming irrelevant, and that skepticism is rapidly gaining ground. While this kind of thinking reinforces what skeptics really, really, really want, reality, something we skeptics supposedly consider important, is far different.

Yes, the Reason Rally was a wonderful event. Yes, the census says more people are nontheists. Yes, books are flying off the shelf. All these things are good, great in fact, but let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking we have reached critical mass and the grand principles of skepticism will be embraced by all. The majority of Americans remain unreached by the good news of skepticism. We are still a Christian nation dominated by the Christian Bible. Recent polls suggest that the creationists and climate-change deniers are holding or gaining ground. For all our blustering against the Christian God, most Christians remain unconvinced. Maybe it is time to rethink our approach.

I am not suggesting we lie down and let Christians walk all over us. There is a time and place for standing up and fighting back. However, if we hope to reach our long-term goal of the Unites States becoming a true secular state where science, reason, and rationality are the norm, we must carefully consider our image, approach, and methodology. Above all, we must find ways to accommodate both the educated and uneducated. If we are unwilling to do this we will remain outliers, cranks, and critics, who have little voice in the affairs of our country.

How to Talk To A Fundamentalist (If You Must)

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Guest post by No Longer Quivering blogger Vyckie Garrison

“The exchange of ideas, delving into the meaning and purpose of life … all of this is excellent and I look forward to the particulars of whatever we may unfold. But … you must know that for my part, the bottom line will always be Jesus. And not some ambiguous Jesus-as-I-perceive-him – but the Word become Flesh as He has revealed Himself in history through the Holy Scriptures.”

That’s how I began a year-long email correspondence between my uncle, Ron – a self-professed skeptic, secular humanist, and iconoclast – and me; a fully-convinced fundamentalist “Quiverfull” Christian.

I met Uncle Ron in 2006 on a family vacation to Arkansas. I had been warned beforehand that though my uncle is a good man and very intelligent, he is an unbeliever and highly persuasive. It’d be best, I was told, to keep my distance.

But when we met, there was an instant connection – we hit it off immediately and when I returned home there was a note from Ron in my inbox saying he’d been very impressed by my family and he wondered if I’d be interested in the two of us getting to know each other better.

I was elated and we immediately dived into what for Ron must have been an incredibly frustrating year of attempting to communicate with one of the most narrow-minded know-it-alls on the planet – his newfound “radically pro-life, pro-family” activist niece.

For 16 years, I had published a civic-oriented Christian family newspaper which, in retrospect, was an extreme far-right “biblical family values” publication. The editorial perspective of the paper was anti-birth control, anti-choice, anti-social welfare, patriarchal, and Dominionist. I honestly believed that the Bible provided all the answers to the world’s problems and ought to be America’s law book for government and society.

Ann Coulter’s book, “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” caught my eye – perhaps she had some ideas that would help in my correspondence with Uncle Ron. But, no – I told myself that I had nothing to worry about. I had studied Christian apologetics, I had a sure testimony – plus, I had Jesus in my heart and the Holy Spirit to guide me. The Lord was on my side, and He would be the One to convince my atheist uncle of the Truth with which I was already intimately familiar.

Fast-forward a year and I was reeling from the total upset of everything I had believed about God, the universe and the purpose & meaning of life. Impossible as it seems for a dogmatic fundamentalist to change their mind about everything, it does happen. Often those who are steadfastly convinced and seemingly immovable are the very ones who experience the most spectacular collapse of their entire “biblical worldview” almost in an instant.

It happened to me and at least two dozen ex-Quiverfull friends I’ve met through No Longer Quivering … not to mention a few more notorious fundamentalists who changed: Frank Schaeffer (author of “Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back”), Nate Phelps (son of WBC “God Hates Fags” fanatic, Fred Phelps), Bishop John Shelby Spong, Sue Kidd Monk (Dance of the Dissident Daughter) … One of my favorite blogs is written by a former Independent Fundamental Baptist pastor-turned-skeptic.

It is true that when challenged on their narrow-minded views, fundamentalists will interpret such “persecution” as evidence that they truly know the mind of God and are righteously doing His work. But it is also true that some will listen and a few will change.

For those who have an opportunity to engage with a fundamentalist and want to make an honest attempt to break through the dogma and prejudice which channel their every thought to the narrow confines of “biblical literalism” – try these strategies:

1) Ask lots of questions.

Don’t assume that you know what fundamentalists believe and why.

There are two categories of fundy believers: those who’ve jumped on the “bible-believing” bandwagon as part of their salvation experience without really thinking through the whole fundamentalist paradigm, and those who have carefully thought through every minute detail of their belief system.

By asking questions such as, “Please explain to me what you mean when you say that the bible is the Word of God?” or “Can you tell me the process by which you understand God’s will?” – you give the fundamentalists in the first category a chance to start thinking about what they believe, and those in the second category will (as an automatic response of their thoughtful nature) quickly anticipate what objections you might have to their reasoning – and in the process, find the holes in their logic themselves. They may not admit it right away, but they’ll keep thinking about the problems until they either figure a way to justify and rationalize it, or (and this does happen!) they have to admit to themselves that their argument does not hold up under careful scrutiny.

2) Translate their thought-stopping language.

It’s not necessary to be judgmental, snarky or condescending here. When a fundamentalist speaks in “Christianese” – simply ask them what that means and then restate their response using ordinary language.

For example: When a fundy says, “We love the sinner but hate the sin” – ask for specific examples: What does loving the sinner but hating his sin look like in a real-life situation? After listening to the fundamentalist’s response, restate it this way: You are talking about making a distinction between what a person does and who/what that person is.

Similarly, when a fundamentalist says, “It’s a child, not a choice” – give him a puzzled look and ask, “What do you mean by that?” Listen carefully to his reply and you’ll find it easy to restate in this manner: What I hear you saying is that the government should make these life and death decisions rather than the pregnant woman herself.

No need to be malicious or argumentative in your translation – this is just another simple way to get a fundamentalist’s thought processes going again.

3) Use real-life examples to demonstrate that people and situations are often complicated and cannot always be addressed in black & white terms.

It is only necessary to make a single connection to the humanity of those outside the fundamentalists’ extremely limited point of reference to plant major doubts as to their absolutist idealism.

For me, it was a sweet, elderly nun who came to my bedside after the delivery of my third child. While she read a simple prayer from her prayer book for my health and safety, I was praying silently to God, “Lord, are you really going to send this gentle, kind old woman to Hell because she believes what the Catholic church taught her about who You are and what You require?” From that point on, even though I remained a fundamentalist Christian for many more years, deep down in my heart, I was a Universalist.

4) Make it personal.

Fundamentalists are human – and as Brian McClaren states, we are all people in a predicament – only fundies can’t admit their personal predicaments because it’s a bad witness. So they smile and they tell you they’re okay and everything’s good.

But we know better.

Be the sort of compassionate, non-judgmental person that the fundamentalist can relax and be real with. If a fundamentalist were to admit her struggles to her “like-minded” circle of friends, the whole company would be obligated to engage in a the-Lord-works-all-things-together-for-good dialogue of faith, trust and obedience. Most likely, she’ll stick with the smile and skip the guilt-inducing ritual.

If you are honest – without the need to justify or rationalize or pretend – it will be a huge relief and a nearly-impossible-to-resist opportunity for a fundy to open up and be real too. If she can admit to you that sometimes she feels like sassing her husband – and you don’t make her feel like she ought to be ashamed for even thinking such subversive thoughts, it won’t be long before she’ll tell you things you would never believe would enter a fundamentalist’s head!!

Don’t beat her up with her imperfections – her own heart and mind are already doing plenty of that – not to mention her fundamentalist friends who are her only “support system.”

5) Look for opportunities to disprove her idea that you (an unbeliever or at best, “not a true Christian” according to her definition) are not truly happy or fulfilled.

Don’t feel like you have to “witness” to your friend the way she does to you, but do point out when you take pleasure in the good things in your life.

Small luxuries which you probably take for granted – if your friend were to experience the same thing – she might think she’d died and gone to heaven.

Have you engaged in an intelligent conversation with someone of the opposite sex? Fundamentalist women rarely talk to adult males other than their husbands. (I can’t resist adding here that it is questionable as to whether talking to patriarchal husbands qualifies as adult conversation.)

Do you regularly take time for yourself – doing something you enjoy that makes you feel good about yourself? Most fundamentalists almost never get a moment to themselves, and when they do, they guiltily spend that “quiet time” in prayer and meditation.

Do you have a good relationship with your own children? Tell your friend about it – not in a boasting sort of way – just to let her know that public school children do not hate their parents as she has been told.

When your husband respects your personhood, be sure to let your friend know. Often, patriarch wives have been in one-sided relationships for so long that they really can’t fathom that a man and a woman can relate to each other without power being an issue at all.

Relationships trump dogma

Uncle Ron and I wrote back and forth about philosophy, politics, history, education, science, popular culture, morality – no topic was off limits, and we were able to write about some very personal stuff too. He challenged me to seriously reconsider the validity of my thought processes – while I challenged his patience and tortured his sense of incredulity with the sheer magnitude of the “WTF? factor” of my fundamentalist belief system which he rightly called, “ignorant, atavistic, and irresponsible.”

But the thing that most confused me and totally threw a wrench in my whole fundamentalist paradigm is this: he’s a genuinely nice guy. I fried my brain trying to figure out how that could be possible. I’d been convinced that no man can be good without God (my “Big Guy in the Sky” god, to be precise) – and yet, Ron is a good man. That fact totally did not fit with everything I believed about “Truth” and Faith and the nature of God and humanity. In the end, it was our friendship that won out over my ideology.