That Day I Exorcised Demons. At Burger King.
Posted on 01. Dec, 2008 by dewde in Christianity
I used to be a rational, level-headed sort of chap before I became a Christian. All that is behind me now of course. Once the Christians get ahold of you, it’s not likely you’ll make a reverse turn, or even make a lateral one to another religion now that I think about it.
At least this is the impression I get.
It’s not impossible, mind you. I’ve met a few that have travelled that path and to be honest, I like the way they think. Such as Slacktivist, Brand New Atheist, and Gareth. They were wholly immersed in Christianity and they managed to un-immerse. To de-couple. The further I get into my Christian journey, the more appreciation I have for the courage it took for them to surface.
That is not my path, however. Mine is the inverse. From Atheism to Christianity. Which brings me back to my story, the one I don’t want non-Christians to know about because it will almost immediately discredit me, even further, from being any sort of influential voice. And I’m not talking about those three random strangers I met online. I’m talking about my real Atheist and Agnostic friends and family. People I know well, and care about thoroughly.
But this blog isn’t for strangers, friends, or even extended family. It’s for my daughters. And I have a story to share with them, so I will.
In September of 2007, Dewdette and I took the kids to Burger King for some oh-so-fine dining and playtime. Here in America most fast food chains have indoor playgrounds with intricate tunnel systems and twisting slides. Burger King is no exception. We ate our lunch and I finished first. While Syd made long work of her food, I decided to crawl up into the playground tubes and investigate. I doubt employees ever clean up there and I wanted to make sure my 2 yr old little girl wasn’t about to go sloshing through someone else’s vomit, or take a slurp from some kid’s discarded, 3-day-old milkshake.
The tunnel stairs wound upwards and spilled into a large, circular “room” of sorts. As I entered this hamburger-shaped area I was met with something quite unexpected. The previous occupants had fashioned crosses out of red drinking straws and decorated the interior by hanging them upside down on the wall, all around the circle. They had even thrown in a few anarchy symbols as an artistic flourish. I looked around, soaked in the scene, and then I did what any normal, clear-thinking rationalist would do.
I prayed.
“Oh come on. It was probably a bunch of teens goofing off!”
I know.
“You’ve lost your senses completely.”
I’ve considered that, thanks.
“Didn’t you feel like a fool?”
A bit.
However, when I decided to become a Christian, I decided not to pussy-foot around. I’ve gone all in, you see. And so in this case, at this point in my journey, I prayed.
I took down all the crosses and anarchy symbols one by one. I prayed that the spirit of God would dwell there and protect the children who played. I demanded, authoritatively (and under my breath), that any and all demons would be gone by the power of Jesus. I cleaned up the remaining litter, came down out of the tunnels, and told Dewdette that I was a freak.
Then Sydney and I had a terrific time chasing each other through the tunnels and sliding and enjoying our afternoon until my kneecaps were sore from all the crawling.
Sydney and Savannah:
Your mother and I will love you forever, regardless of the spiritual path you take. More than anything I hope that you will both be intellectually honest with yourselves. We aim to model for you, to the best of our ability, how to navigate life. We have chosen to do so with a version of the Christian worldview. I realize that this will make it difficult for you both to evaluate the world with truly neutral eyes. I’m sorry about that.
Regardless, I encourage you both to question and test the world around you. Not only in areas of religion, but in all areas. We encourage you both to be your own, unique persons. And at any given time, in any given area of life, have the courage to follow your convictions thoroughly. Even if it means you end up feeling, or looking, a little bit silly.
Case in point, I once exorcised a Burger King playground. I did it with my whole heart and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I love you both,
Daddy
On my Facebook profile, for Religion I have listed, “Christian – The Scary Kind.” Now you know why.
I’m guessing you have some stories, too. When have you been courageous in your decisions? When have you felt completely, utterly silly? Theists and non-theists welcome. This is an all-skate.
Chris F.
Dec 1st, 2008
Dude, that's whacked — the scary kind. Your other Christianist posts just sort of seemed quaint, but this just rubs me the wrong way. I have a question that I hope you could answer here… what did you hope to accomplish with your prayer? Do demons exist in your fanciful world, and do they inhabit fast food restaurants (trans fats and excessive sodium excepted)? Do they cringe in fear when some loon climbs into the burger and exorcises (I think that's the word you might be looking for) them? Heck, here in the southeast you could probably organize some traveling ministry that would help you travel the fast food circuit and fix those wayward playgrounds right up, and probably even make a little spare change while doing it.
Maybe instead of praying, you could have done something that could *possibly* have been effective, such as telling the manager that it's nasty up there. Did that ever cross your mind? IMO, it's hard to feign courageousness when your action was in fact a no-op.
When I was in high school, I worked at a Burger King for a while, and it wasn't uncommon for, um, poop to be found in the playground area. There was little in the way of sanitation after the fact, other than to simply throw away any of the unlucky colored plastic balls that happened to be affected. No customers seemed to ever complain about its cleanliness, which somehow makes it even more disgusting to think about.
I hope you did the truly good deed in this situation and at least encouraged your daughter wash her hands when she got out. My bonus rhyme of the day: Microbes don't care about prayer.
Chris F.
Dec 1st, 2008
Dammit, I wish I hadn't read this tonight, because I find it even more grating than I did when I first read your post. The saving grace, IMO, is your imploring your children to test things for themselves. Hopefully, by God's grace, they'll realize that prayer is a no-op, and your act of cleaning up the joint was the good work. It's too bad you didn't mention that in your letter to them. I think that's the real example that you set with this encounter.
I see you did correct the exorcised/exercised issue. You should ask me to proof these things!
Matt Hardwick
Dec 1st, 2008
I feel that you missed the point of the prayer. There were anti-christian symbols constructed and displayed inside of the playground. He said that he took them down and prayed over the place. The cleanliness (physically) was the original cause for concern that made him go in and check things out, but when he explored the inside of the playground, Chris found symbols that directly contradict what he (correct me if I'm wrong, Chris) believes and has tried to teach his children.
It isn't a matter of “fixing those wayward playgrounds right up”. I don't feel that that was the message Chris was trying to convey.
I might be wrong.
Chris F.
Dec 1st, 2008
Maybe that's my problem. It's hard to see what's important to Dewde here. (I didn't know we were using real names!) The way I see it, he did two things: 1. He prayed. 2. He cleaned up the place. IMO, despite the possibility that he cleaned up solely because of the religious implications of the trashed burger, #2 is the good deed. I'd have been much more impressed with this act of superior parenting if he'd said that he enlisted his daughter's help in cleaning up and used that as a teaching opportunity about the benefits of good deeds. Heck, I'll go out on a limb and say that it'd be an acceptable, even nice, place to bring jesus into the conversation there in the context of good deeds and their advocacy.
I unrepentantly reject the idea that symbolism of any stripe should be bothersome to Christians. That's thin-skinned and childish, and the possibility that Dewde was primarily concerned with this aspect of the fiberglass burger is really disappointing. Surely his daughters are too young to be hindered with this emotional baggage, anyway.
Adrian Rodriguez
Dec 1st, 2008
Man that's awesome. See I probably would have been more irrational and not allowed the children to play in there, but instead your idea is much better. I once did something I thought was foolish and embarrassing and that was kneel down in the middle of a sidewalk and start crying out to God. People came by and thought I was nuts, but I had an awesome experience.
human3rror
Dec 1st, 2008
puahahaha.
“skating uphill”
dewde
Dec 1st, 2008
I know! I was hasty. I'll have you proof them from now on. Maybe then I would have made my case more clearly as well.
My point wasn't that the little crosses meant anything more than the obvious. Some older kids were goofing off. I have no other evidence what-so-ever that this was sinister. I don't recall being scared. I don't recall my hairs standing up on the back of my neck. I didn't see any demon prints or ecto plasm.
I felt a bit silly and awkward. Admitting it publicly is embarrassing. Sure, a subset of my peer group is just Christian-enough to hold me in esteem for doing something like this, but those are also the people I care less about impressing or maintaining credibility with.
My point is in my letter. Whatever you do, do it boldly. Don't let the fear of the opinions of others prevent you from action.
dewde
Dec 1st, 2008
I did also believe it was possible that a real evil presence was there. I didn't think it was probable, but I did think it was possible. Or I wouldn't have bothered praying.
Rob Jones
Dec 1st, 2008
Cute story, we do crazy stuff for our kids.
Archiemck
Dec 1st, 2008
Ha, I'm loving it. Wait, that's Mcdonalds…
Lisa
Dec 1st, 2008
Thanks for posting this. Just another reason why I admire you both as people and parents.
dewde
Dec 1st, 2008
LOL! Because we're completely out of touch with reality???
dewde
Dec 1st, 2008
Indeed sir.
Chris F.
Dec 1st, 2008
Good in the “this is not good for me when it's already 2 a.m.” kind of way?Yes, definitely!
But actually, no, I haven't been hoping for this. I actually hope and pray (heh) that you'll once again see the light of rationality and reallocate that effort that would be otherwise casually wasted on prayer. I feel you might not have had the supportive group you needed in your vulnerable time as an at-risk atheist, and I blame myself for not being there for you. A single soul lost is one too many, in my book.
But honestly, your effort at parenting is fantastic in its conscientiousness and its fanaticism. I just am saddened by the elephant in the room. You do (or at least write about) all these really good deeds that simply don't demand the silliness of religious motivation. Your kids will succeed because of your effort and guidance, and you would have exerted that same effort in your pre-Christian days, IMO. And then you would have more honestly attributed the results to the significant hard work rather than divine providence.
snowcone
Dec 1st, 2008
prayer is always a good idea no matter what the situation
Chris F.
Dec 1st, 2008
I'm astounded by this apparent one-sidedness in the responses here. You did one thing that was unequivocally good, and you also prayed. People here are lauding you for the latter. Is this some sort of Sokal-like prank?
dewde
Dec 1st, 2008
We are Borg. You will be assimilated.
Wendy
Dec 1st, 2008
I'm not really sure that you can call it one-sidedness. Each individual that reads the post has their own side and they each have the free will to decide whether or not to post it. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on “unequivocally good” and the basis for what is good outside of a God perspective. Maybe the people who would post that he did “nothing good” are what we are missing, and THEY would certainly think you are indeed on the same side as everyone else.
Chris F.
Dec 2nd, 2008
Actually, I might be convinced that Dewde did “nothing good” here, but I am reluctant to actually come out and say it. Okay, that's not really true, because he *did* clean up the burger. That's something that nobody else I know would ever think of doing (of course, nobody else would climb in there in the first place…). I just wish he'd involved his kids in the good act, since I think that would have been *the* best possible outcome of this scenario. But it's tough to criticize someone like Dewde who seems to thoughtfully consider every significant parenting opportunity.
Anyway, as for “good,” it surely doesn't take a belief in God to believe that the clean burger was better than the vandalized burger. Dewde did a good deed there. Does the bible's Absolute Morality dictate that people should pray over plastic defamations of religion and then clean them up? Perhaps that's in some lost gospel, but otherwise, no. How, then, did I decide it was good? Well, that's a good question, but it can easily start with the idea that this act simply increases the enjoyment potential of all future playground users. Family X comes there, and instead of being turned off by the vandalism, Family X sees a clean playground and spend a more worry-free, enjoyable time with their kids. “Good” doesn't have to be some grand supernatural concept.
While we're on the subject, the whole concept of some absolute morality is a farce. It's trivial to come up with contrived situations where the “good” choice is far from obvious. First, people act in situations with incomplete information all the time. You might counter that with some claim like, “well, yeah, but God knew what the right answer is.” Okay, supposing that some God exists with such a moral compass that all possible situations are accounted for, the fact still exists that it's impossible for you to know all of those right answers, or even to obtain unambiguous answers after some effort. Some situations are just murky. Thus, God's absolute morality might as well be nothing, since you will have to fall back to your innate sense of “good” in all but the most obvious cases. An absolute morality that you cannot possibly know is no different from any murky morality. You simply fill in the gaps with your own experience. Don't fool yourself. It's not God talking to you. It's the fact that you're a human being who cares about what happens to yourself, your family, and people who you share a community with. And those people care about you, too. You make varying degrees of tough decisions every day. Take credit for the hard work, recognize and learn from when you screw up, and keep working hard at it. It's really not hard to dissociate this from some God.
Orez
Dec 2nd, 2008
Chris,
How do you know that Dewde did good by cleaning the hamburger-shaped plastic hut? On the one hand, you're claiming that there's no way to know what's good or not, then you come out and say that cleaning up someone else's mess is good. I don't get that.
You can't say “praying isn't good, because there's no point in prayer” and then say “cleaning up other people's messes is good, because I see some point in it.” I don't think you're qualified to be the final judge on either matter when you don't think there's a real or true morality. You're just making stuff up.
Besides, there's one correlative aspect you're missing. Perhaps the old Dewde, the pre-brainwashed-Christian Dewde, would not have bothered to clean the mess. Maybe he would have thought it was funny. Perhaps it is his belief in absolute good and absolute evil that makes him able to understand what the good thing here was…
- Zero
johntindale
Dec 2nd, 2008
I gotta admit- you're really going for it, aren't you.
Chris F.
Dec 2nd, 2008
Man, typing into these increasingly small comment boxes is tough! Dewde, do you know anyone who knows anything about html and css that might be able to fix something like this? No? Hmmm.
Okay… After reading Zero's message, I'm confused as to how I'm anywhere saying that there's no way to know what's good. I'm saying that there's no way to know what some God would consider good, unless such a situation is explicitly written in some God-authored book. I can state that his cleaning up the mess was good, because I also stated my definition of “good.” The act was good in my definition, because it heightened the enjoyment of others and lessened their pain. When *you* say something else is “good,” I suspect you're making some value judgment based on your best guess. You surely don't know the mind of God, right? So how can you possibly suggest that you have this absolute morality available to you? Instead, you might do what you *think* God would advocate in your situation, based on your reading of the bible or personal revelation or whatever other source of religious opinion you might have. This seems a good approach, but it still involves a decision on your part. My issue with that is that the outcome of your decision — your action — is not really any different than the action taken by the person who simply tries to maximize happiness and minimize suffering in their environment. And because life is complicated, it isn't any more obvious what the “right” and “good” answer is. I reject any assertion that any two identical actions can vary in their level of “goodness” simply because one was religiously motivated and the other was not. Please let me know if you're really arguing from that perspective.
I'm not necessarily saying that there's no point in prayer. I suspect many people derive great personal enjoyment out of it, presence of mind, or just some quiet time to consider their thoughts. I'm not really bothered by that at all. I do think that it's being way too generous to claim that one's prayer helps *others*, though. Intercessory prayer has repeatedly been shown to have no measurable effect on the people being prayed for. Look, I defined good as something that has a murky but measurable outcome. Of course there are situations that are way more complex and difficult to measure. I'm not being the judge here: this could well be the opinion of Family X themselves. I'm claiming that it's likely that Family X had a ever-so-slightly better time at the playground because of Dewde's act. If you disagree with that last sentence, then you're surely just disagreeing for the sake of disagreement. Sure, it's possible that some family just *loves* vandalized playgrounds, but let's play the percentages here. If they had a better time than they otherwise would have had, then that's good.
I agree with your point that Dewde and probably many other Christians do perform good deeds because of some heightened religious sense. I don't know if Dewde would have cleaned up that space in his pre-Christian days, but he seemed like a nice guy then, so he very well might have. You seem to be implying that Christians are just more generous people. I dunno. They might be. I'm not sure how easy that is to really measure, though, since despite the occasional claim that Christians are X percent more likely to give to charities and give Y percent more money, much of that is both self-reported and is funneled through and distributed by churches, so it's just really hard to get real and unbiased numbers. I suspect the real differences are not as stark as some people report. Still, even if Christians give more money and time, it doesn't change the issue of what is “good.” I'm happy to acknowledge that many Christians and Christian charities do a lot of “good” things.
I have a question. You seem to think that this sense of absolute morality, truth, and goodness is available to the religious and not to the non-religious. Can you think of any situation at all where you would define a “good” act as something different from the “good” of the person who simply seeks to minimize suffering? I'd be interested to hear this. And please try to make it as straightforward as possible, since it's certainly possible to argue nuances in complicated situations where there's no choice that's a clear winner. (If I do A, then this person is miserable now for a short time, but this other person is *way* happier a year from now, but if I do B, then both people are sort of happy all the time…) Despite our possibly different motivations, the thought process is likely to be the same, and we are likely to come to the same conclusions much of the time. And the cases where we disagree are likely to be because of subtle issues that could reasonably have been argued either way from *either* a religious or secular perspective. And again, I'm asserting that no action can be better than an identical action simply because the actor was religious. That's begging the question. So, I'm quite interested in your, or anyone's, opinions here.
dewde
Dec 3rd, 2008
testing threading.
Matt Hardwick
Dec 3rd, 2008
Say a person is really thirsty. In fact, he has not had water all day, and he is really suffering from the discomfort of having a dry mouth and throat. He happens upon a person's house who is not at home, and there is a large bottle of water sitting on the front porch.
The intuitively "good" thing to do is to leave the bottle, because it does not belong to the man. The guy is going to want to steal that bottle of water, because it would relieve his suffering, but if he relieves his suffering, the other person who owns the water is going to suffer a financial loss. Sure it isn't much, but this is a simple example and I am sure there are more expensive things that are stolen in the name of discomfort.
If you are going to go the route of saying that good is relieving suffering, then absolute good cannot exist. Everything is relative in amount of suffering. The thing that makes me believe there is some absolute good, is that the intuitive action(that is, the action that we know to be right whether we want to take it or not) doesn't line up with relieving the most immediate suffering.
This might be getting into too much.
Every person knows what they should do in a given situation, and it is almost always rooted in giving the other person the relief to suffering. We know that we have done something wrong (usually lines up with selfishness), even from childhood. Everyone can relate to feeling like a complete jerk when they cut someone off on the freeway because they need to get onto the exit ramp. You feel that way because you know you have inconvenienced someone else for the sake of relieving your suffering. That is what I mean by the intuitive good being the absolute good. That is what I mean by the absolute good being to decrease the suffering of others first.
Jason K
Dec 4th, 2008
I can say from another Christian (possibly the scary kind) point of view that the prayer served another purpose. There really shouldn't have to be a discussion on the "goodness" or "practicality" of the prayer in relation to the playpen itself. For myself, I think through my actions as they relate to bringing glory to the God that I believe exists and loves me. Even Dewde's decision to clean up the mess need not be considered to be good or not. His action was an effort to glorify God.
It is true that the Bible, and certainly not the Gospels, contain any mention of what to do when you encounter a playpen with anarchy symbols. However, as Chrisitans we are faced with many situations that are clear cut. In those times you must find that option which will most clearly bring glory to God and put others before yourself.
Fascinating discussion going on by the way.
Chris F.
Dec 4th, 2008
How is "bringing glory to god" any different than doing "good" things? This is begging the question, IMO. Surely there is nothing that you might do to glorify god that you wouldn't also call "good." In that case, I think "good" is a more accurate descriptor, since you could at least make an honest effort to measure goodness in some way.
Jason K
Dec 4th, 2008
I believe that many actions can glorify God. Most notably, they include doing "good" things for others. However I also believe private actions such as prayer or worship can glorify. It seems that you have labeled these actions as useless or not "good." I'm all for doing good things. I find no problem in also clarifying that these actions can bring glory to God.
Chris F.
Dec 4th, 2008
Well, I sure am calling private actions useless, but in the context of useless for the community at large. It might make you feel better, but whatever personal benefit you get from it isn't really relevant, and in fact could be demonstrably bad. For example, if you chose to pray *instead* of cleaning up the mess, then what are you really doing? You're patting yourself on the back for being religious, but not living up to the charitable label that many Christians want to give themselves. go ahead, glorify god in whatever way makes you feel good, but recognize that it could be as selfish an act as you can possibly perform. If you want to *both* pray and perform good acts, then who am I to complain? It's the acts you do for others that really matter, IMO.
human3rror
Dec 4th, 2008
whoa.
portorikan
Dec 5th, 2008
Great letter, and encouraging to a childless father (haven't started trying yet, not dealing with any issues).
Regarding the comments that I got distracted reading. As Christians, we believe in a spiritual world in addition to a physical world and that there's a connection between the two. I don't believe Dewde was afraid of the crosses or the vandalism he saw, but there's a different spirit that would lead someone to vandalize something than one that would choose to clean up something. Not to say that someone was possessed by a demon or an angel (although I do believe that's possible), but in cleaning up and praying over the area, Dewde was just asking for GOD's spirit, a spirit of hope, life, love to reside over the area as opposed to a spirit of destruction and vandalism. At least, that's the way I see it. My apologies to Dewde for putting words in your mouth if that's the case.
Again, an encouraging letter and great example to follow.
That and those slides are ridiculously gross. My sister once slid on baby poo at Chuck E. Cheese. Nasty.
Ben (of BenandJacq)
Dec 5th, 2008
Chris F,
It seems that you have a large stake in this conversation, judging by the length and intensity of your comments. Why? (seriously… I'm not being sarcastic… why?)
Jason K
Dec 5th, 2008
Ok, I think that we really agree here. I'm not condoning prayer in lieu of action. Never. Faith without deeds is useless.
sullied
Dec 5th, 2008
good stuff here.
i actually had to look up IMO to see what it meant. why the reference to the International Mathematical Olympiad so much? jk
Chris F.
Dec 5th, 2008
Well, my real and primary goal is to de-convert Dewde. I think he's the same good person that he was in his pre-Christian days, except I think he has this weird Christian crust on him now that could just as well be disposed of. In my own life, I waffle between apathy toward the religious and evangelical atheism. I'm leaning toward the latter these days, in part because of the disappointingly frequent injections of religion into politics and other areas of public life. No matter what one's religion is, or if it's none at all, there are no non-superficial good reasons that you should want the government establishing policies to favor one set of beliefs over another. For a recent example, now Kentucky *must* officially acknowledge god for any homeland security issues (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_on_re_us/h... First, it's just stupid. Second, it's blatantly unconstitutional. And third, it's gonna cost the state lots of money to defend this dumb law in the courts, which reinforces the first point. Even if you believe god is important here, you've got to also recognize the waste involved in these shenanigans. So, it's an important topic to me. But if I didn't have a personal interest in Dewde's well-being, though, I probably wouldn't be here. It's like swimming upstream in an open faucet.
Chris F.
Dec 5th, 2008
Oops. The link got hosed:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_on_re_us/h...
Ben (of BenandJacq)
Dec 5th, 2008
I'll agree, you are swimming upstream for sure. I welcome your thoughts, though. I just find it curious why you want Dewde to be de-converted. He has found something that seems to make him happy. It must make him more satisfied than he was before, else he'd go back. So you long for Dewde to be dissatisfied? Or at least less satisfied?
I'll fully grant that the politicizing of faith is sickening at best. I'm totally on board with you, there. People using Jesus to get votes or to get initiatives passed are totally missing the the point. But does that justify tossing the baby out with the bath water? I'd say universities and hospitals, orphanages and hurricane relief, and even the basis for the scientific method (without an ordered universe, testing hypotheses would be silly, seeing that it's all a cosmic accident, anyways…) make the side effects like some idiot using Jesus to get votes seem fairly tame. It also seems to me that your aversion is more to militant evangelicalism, which makes me wonder why you would respond to it with a different brand of aggression. After all, isn't that just politicizing faith in atheism? (By the way, atheism IS a faith commitment, it can't be proven, any more than I can prove theism.)
Again, thanks for your comments. I didn't mean to hop up on a soapbox, as is my natural tendency. Just trying to find out your motivation for trying to "de-converting" someone. Seems counterproductive, unless the guy is beating you (metaphorically or literally) with a Bible. What's in it for you?
Chris F.
Dec 6th, 2008
I'm not convinced that Dewde is really happier because he's a Christian, so that's probably where we really differ here. I might agree that he's happier now than he was before he became a Christian, but there are many factors — a loving Dewdette, two great kids, great career choices, lots of friends, and probably many others — that I think are really responsible for his happiness. I certainly don't want him to be dissatisfied or less satisfied with anything in life. If I thought that my interactions with Dewde were upsetting him in any way, I'd certainly stop. One of the reasons I still keep in touch with Dewde after not living in the area for 8 years or so is because I love to chat with him about this bizarre "faith journey" of his to hear his perspectives on things. I also think that those people who convert from Christianity to non-belief would tell you that they certainly aren't less satisfied with life — quite the contrary. Take the examples of the three blogs that Dewde posted in his original post (that now seems oh so long ago). Those guys surely would agree with me there.
I would hesitate to characterize my stance as "aggressive." I might be aggressive on this blog, but that's because Dewde has actively solicited opinions on how ridiculous his actions were. I don't walk down the street proclaiming my godlessness to anyone I see. I don't try to convert Christians that I know (Dewde excepted). But I don't ever pretend to be religious when in a group of religious folks doing "religious things" (wife's family get-togethers during holidays, for example), which has rubbed people oddly at times… it's amazing how irked some people get when you quietly choose not to pray with them, but they get over it.
And atheism is emphatically *not* some faith commitment. Why do Christians like to spout that? The default position you'd take with anything else in your life is that you don't assume something is there in the absence of evidence for it. Atheism is no different. It's just saying that there's no reason to posit a god's existence, because it doesn't provide any extra explanatory power over the things we observe and events that occur. Anyone who would say that they're an atheist and they know that no gods exist and that no amount of evidence will persuade them otherwise is just plain stupid. If something wildly out of the ordinary happened this afternoon and it suggested that a god existed and was actively participating in the world, of course I'd take notice. It might persuade me to dig out my Christian Bible, or it might persuade me to get a Koran, or a subscription to a nice Larry Flynt publication. Who knows? But that evidence just hasn't hit me. No evidence seems even slightly compelling at this point, hence my current position. The only "faith" involved here is that evidence is what motivates actions. I certainly have no faith that no god exists, because no faith is required to think that.
What's in it for me? I'm really interested in how people think about this stuff. I like Dewde because he's open about his thought processes and he responds to criticism and name-calling very well! I also like knowing that he used to be an atheist (albeit an apparently very bad one
), because that promises to make his "faith journey" easier for me to understand. Of course, to this point, I'm just as perpexed as I can be why he turned this corner. But it's interesting nonetheless.
Chris F.
Dec 7th, 2008
That's what I like about Christianity. You can just make stuff up and claim the win.
BenofBenandJacq
Dec 7th, 2008
First off, sorry to Dewde to have hijacked the post, and necessitated moderation of the comments. I understand, though. I'd be worried some Christians would come in here and make asses of themselves. Hopefully at the end of the day I don't find myself numbered among them. My goal is honest dialogue about the real issues. And after all, they don't call this comment interface "intense debate" for nothing, right?
Back to the discussion at hand. My impression is that you (Chris F.) value your own experience over that of others. You say that there are things that could happen to make you reexamine your commitment to atheism. But you don't afford Dewde that same right. Is he not capable of making rational decisions? How can you be so sure that he doesn't have info that you don't have? You obviously know the guy. What if he's truly experienced the things he claims to? Now you are trying to convince him they didn't really happen. What if they really happened?
That brings me back to atheism as faith commitment. If it is not a faith commitment, you sure are treating it like one. You are so certain that there is no evidence for God's existence that you would persuade others to believe the same thing as you. Anything you can get "evangelical" about, as you put it, starts to fall into the faith category, whether it is belief that a certain candidate will save America, or that the Cubs will win the pennant. Your faith commitment is that your take on the Bible or the Koran is correct. Your faith commitment is that there is no persuasive evidence for the resurrection of Christ. But it is very much so a faith commitment, based as you said on the absolute fundamental tenant of "evidence motivates actions." And you are convinced of your take on the evidence. That's faith, albeit faith that is rooted in yourself, and your intellect and experience.
I'm not trying to pick a fight, but I do wish we could discuss the two worldviews on an apples-to-apples level. We all place ultimate faith in something. I place my ultimate faith in Jesus as revealed in the Bible. You place ultimate faith in something else. I don't know you well enough to know for sure what that is, and the comment thread on a blog is hardly the place to start pointing fingers. But I know enough to know that by virtue of being human, you are placing ultimate faith in something.
I'd love to discuss this more, but already feel pretty bad about turning this post into something I'm certain Dewde did not intend. Feel free to email me at ben.meredith@gmail.com and we can continue the dialogue.
dewde
Dec 7th, 2008
Ben:
Bloggers are comment whores. The more the better. No worries.
Chris:
You'd know if any of our convos were upsetting to me, because I would tell you. I know that you know this, but just wanted to reassure.
Both:
If this convo keeps going, it will get thinner and thinner until a black hole is formed. I would appreciate it if one of you would concede defeat before that happens. But if it doesn't… it was probably God's will anyway. Christianity, FTW!
dewde
Dec 7th, 2008
LOL, I can't really argue with that if I'm being honest.
The Husband Protocol » Blog Archive » How My Brain Was Washed By Christians
Dec 7th, 2008
[...] light of my recent post about exorcising demons at Burger King, and the hailstorm of comments that ensued, I think the timing is right to dig deeper into my [...]
BenofBenandJacq
Dec 10th, 2008
Still waiting on the reply you promised. Not hatin', just interested in your thoughts.
Chris F.
Dec 10th, 2008
Yeah, this commenting business is hard work! I'll try to do it this evening. I'm interested in the lines of thought, too. I also got distracted by Dewde's newer post. He needs to slow down a little to help me remain calm!
Ed
Jan 7th, 2010
Nice blog post – I found your site through AOL.