Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1843

Gay Christian Teen Takes Her Own Life, Fearing Her Parents Wouldn’t Accept Her If She Came Out

A 14-year-old girl in Manchester, England has taken her own life because she couldn’t bear to come out to her devout Christian parents as gay — though they say they would have welcomed her with open arms.

Elizabeth “Lizzie” Lowe (below) was recently found hanged at a local park, according to the U.K. news site The Telegraph. Her friends say that she was questioning whether she might be a lesbian and was having trouble reconciling her sexuality with her strong Christian upbringing and her own faith.

Her parents, however, have said that her coming out would not have been a surprise, and that she would have been met with “a wealth of love and acceptance.”

During the inquest Lizzie’s tearful father Kevin, an engineer, said he and her mother Hilary had no idea about the issues their 14-year-old daughter was grappling with.

He said: “She was just normal and seemed happy. There was nothing to suggest she was distressed or had any issues. She was very mature, she knew what she wanted and she knew her own mind.”

Asked how the family would have reacted if she had spoken to them about her sexuality, Mr Lowe said: “It wouldn’t have come as much surprise. She was very much a tomboy. In fact she was more of a boy than some of the boys were, so it would have been no surprise at all. We would have been very supportive.”

While Lizzie didn’t have any “diagnosable mental health problems,” according to the report, she had a history of self-harm and had discussed suicidal thoughts with her friends before.

Speaking about Lizzie’s concerns over telling her parents about her sexuality, one of her friends told an inquest: “She said she wasn’t sure if they would be OK with it. I told her that I didn’t think it would be like that but she did not want to tell them.”

Some of other friends also told the hearing that they had discussed suicidal thoughts with Lizzie and she had also self-harmed in the past.

One told the hearing that Lizzie had told her that cutting herself was a “coping mechanism”.

Another said she was “finding it hard to connect with God as she thought she was lying to him”.

Breaks my heart. If you need help, please contact the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Forget North Korean Threats; Center For Inquiry Tells Sony Pictures It’ll Gladly Screen The Interview

Yesterday, as Sony Pictures announced that it would not release the Seth Rogan/James Franco movie The Interview because of threats from North Korea, the Center for Inquiry stepped up and said it would be glad to host screenings of the film:

In a letter to Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton, CFI president and CEO Ronald A. Lindsay expresses his disappointment at Sony’s capitulation to threats by still-unknown individuals, as it sends a troubling message that even powerful corporations will censor ideas that might offend certain people.

“Much of our work is centered on securing the right to hold and express unpopular opinions and beliefs in places where dissent is crushed through persecution, violence, imprisonment, and death,” writes Lindsay. “It is a sad turn of events that a powerful source of free expression such as Sony Pictures could choose to give in to a shadowy group’s intolerance of dissent.”

You can read the full letter here.

It’s not the first time the organization has done something like this. In 2006, in response to the violent uproar over the Muhammad cartoons featured in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the CFI-overseen magazine Free Inquiry published several of the images in their pages, leading Borders bookstores to remove the issue from their shelves:

Paul Kurtz, the editor in chief of Free Inquiry, said, “To refuse to distribute a publication because of fear of vigilante violence is to undermine freedom of press — so vital for our democracy.”

Odds are Sony won’t take CFI up on its offer, but that’s all the more reason for more groups to follow their lead here. If the movie is shown everywhere — or at least if that offer is made by many groups — there’s strength in numbers and a showing of solidarity. (Hell, it doesn’t even mean anyone has to watch it.)

Well done, CFI. Even if the movie isn’t screened in Buffalo, this is the message more Americans need to hear.

Male Shame, the Root of Female Shame

This is an article by Darrel Ray. It appears in the current issue of American Atheist magazine. American Atheist magazine is available at Barnes & Noble and Book World bookstores in the U.S. and at Chapters/Indigo bookstores in Canada. Go to Atheists.org to subscribe or to join American Atheists. Members receive free digital subscription. It’s also available from iTunes.

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For thousands of years, religions have used shame as a method of control. It is easy to see how shame is detrimental to females in patriarchal religions, but it has grave consequences for males as well. We hear a good deal today about the shaming of women and girls, but we don’t hear as much about male shame. Male shame is all around us and starts at infancy. Its message is strong and consistent: males must act a certain way or they are not really male. Males must always be seen as distinctly different and superior to females. From male shame comes a wide range of behaviors designed to oppress women and ensure male dominance. Understanding the interplay and dynamics of shame makes it possible to explain much of the misogynistic behavior we see in the religious and non-religious alike.

Male Shame Messages

These messages are on bumper stickers, church billboards, in religious child-rearing books, and in sermons. You can hear them in speeches by politicians opposing women’s rights and marriage equality. Real men love Jesus, real men don’t watch porn, real men don’t have sex before marriage, real men don’t “spare the rod,” real men are straight, real men are tough, real men don’t masturbate, real men control their women, real men discipline their daughters, real men don’t believe in gay rights, real men openly shame other men who do not conform to the religious ideal. These are only a few of the messages that our culture in the U.S. deeply programs into many men.

Male shame is most easily seen in relation to women or girls. Boys who act superior to girls are exhibiting the results of male shame. Someone taught them this idea, and behind the idea are a number of shaming messages beginning with, “If you are like a girl in some way, then you are less than male, less than a man.” For example, if a boy has a mannerism that is seen as feminine, he may be teased and bullied by other boys for acting like a girl. In this case, it is the bullies who are responding to male shame. They feel they must contrast themselves from the feminine in order to avoid being shamed themselves. They are afraid of the feminine but terrified of becoming the objects of shaming and teasing by other boys.

The ultra-masculine bully tends to set the tone for everyone around him. His power comes from the threat of him labeling someone else in the group a “homo,” “fag,” “sissy,” etc. Out of fear, other men go along. It is a form of intimidation and bullying that keeps the group in line and any potential “gay” threats at bay.

This is a powerful pattern that starts early in life and is perpetuated across generations by parents, teachers, preachers, coaches, and other authority figures. A father may tell his son, “Don’t cry like a girl when you get hurt.” A mother may tell her son, “Toughen up and act like a man.” Neither the father nor the mother would tell their girl to toughen up and act like a woman or not to cry like a boy.

Male Shame and Religion

Churches and religious organizations teach male shame as Biblical principles. For example, the Man Up Ministries Channel on YouTube posts a weekly “Manhood Minute” and Man Up Philly is an annual conference sponsored by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. There are countless other examples.

The path to adulthood is full of signals about gender-appropriate behavior, roles, and expectations — as well as the consequences for not complying. They are the roots of the social constructs we live by every day for a lifetime.

All patriarchal religions are hell-bent on maintaining the gender binary, which is the social construct that defines sex and gender as the two distinct and rigidly fixed categories of male and female. It is a critical component of the strategy to keep people shamed and guilt-ridden. In my book The God Virus, I talk about how guilt and shame are the currency by which people stay infected with religious ideas about sexuality. What would happen to most religions if shame were not part of sexuality? Without shame, the notion of virginity, for example, would be meaningless. Remove that shame, and it becomes clear that men are programmed to protect a daughter’s virginity as if her body were his property and not her own. Tying virginity to shame is part of a larger system of social control, one that could be called the procreation culture. It is a culture that wants to tightly control who to marry, when to marry, and what the status of the bride must be. Virginity ideas also say a lot about male status. A man who marries a non-virgin is seen as less of a man and may be shamed by other men.

“The concepts of abstinence and virginity support the religious mantra that sex is for procreation, never for pleasure’s sake alone,” says Sandra Meade, vice chair of the Kansas Equality Coalition and the host of The Tenth Voice on KKFI-FM in Kansas City, Kansas. “The concept of the gender binary is also used to enforce the mantra of ‘sex is reserved for doing god’s will after marriage.’ When same-sex relationships are denounced by a religion, it is because the couple can’t procreate. A couple that can’t procreate goes against god’s law and is unnatural. A transsexual woman doesn’t have a uterus and therefore cannot give birth, which violates the acceptable boundaries of the female role codified by the rigidity of the gender binary. Virginity and the gender binary are both used as control mechanisms to enforce a culture of procreation in god’s name.”

In a patriarchal society, a man is only a man in relation to his status with women. If other men see him as submissive or subservient to a woman, he is less of a man. If he cannot control the women within his family, he is less of a man. If a woman can beat him in a so-called masculine activity, like a sport or an intellectual enterprise, he is less of a man. If a man in a patriarchal society has one or more of these characteristics, then they probably are related to male shame that is rooted in religious dogma about gender roles.

The essence of male shame is related to insecurity about one’s role and place in the world. Patriarchal religions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are rooted in the gender binary and dismiss all other forms of sexuality as unnatural and morally wrong. Sexuality not condoned by the religion is a sin and impacts the status of the man. That is why gay men and male masturbation get so much more public attention and condemnation from religious authorities than lesbians and female masturbation. Neither homosexuality nor masturbation are procreative for a male. Therefore, they are useless to the religion and patriarchy. These behaviors blur the lines and call into question religious categories and the gender binary.

Darrel Ray (image via Steve Solomon)

Male Shame and Domestic Violence

In most religious societies, males are at the top of the pecking order and receive the message that they are superior to women. But their senses may tell them otherwise. A man may observe that his wife is better at math, his daughter may be better at sports than his son, or his female boss may be better at handling people and getting results. The evidence for female equality, if not superiority, is all around them, yet their religion and religiously dominated culture say otherwise. This leads to confusion and emotional turmoil in men who try to live as their religion dictates. Reality constantly interferes with dogma. The result can be threats and violence against those who don’t conform to the patriarchal ideal. Independent women, girls, homosexuals, and transsexuals all violate the patriarchal norm and deserve ostracism, punishment, or worse.

I would suggest that male shame is at the heart of much sexual abuse, both emotional and physical. It begins with the messages boys receive from infancy. Many religious parents display anxiety when infant boys touch themselves. There are actual discussion groups on religious websites that discuss what to do when infants or young boys touch themselves.

As boys grow up, they get constant indoctrination from religious music, literature, teachers, and peers about the evils of sex and the temptations of the body. Even if they are raised in a somewhat sex-positive home, any boy suspected of “playing with himself” will get teased and harassed in the locker room, school, and playground. At church, he will be told that any kind of sexual activity before marriage is sinful. At school, he may be subjected to “abstinence-only” classes that have strong messages of shame for both boys and girls. In these classes, they will be taught about the importance of protecting a girl’s virginity and how sex before marriage will eventually destroy the marriage.

Male shame around masturbation is just the beginning of religious training. With this insidious brainwashing come other messages about manhood and dominance over women, about a woman’s duty to serve and please a man, about men’s bodies and sex organs, and about male dominance. At the same time, boys are taught to judge people with these religious notions, from judging boys on how manly they act or don’t act to judging girls on their bodies and looks. The father who uses religiously based shame on his daughter for dressing too provocatively is exerting dominance as the patriarch over the females in his family or group. The mother who tells her son to marry a virgin is perpetuating ideas of male ownership of women’s bodies.

It is only a small step from here for the father to feel the right to use emotional or even physical means to enforce his shame message. The religious father who harasses his daughter feels he is well within his rights as the patriarch. Often the mother is totally complicit in this. What is the motivation? In religious families it is twofold. First, religious families fear being shamed for not controlling their children, especially their daughters. Second, the threat of eternal damnation in the afterlife is very real to many religious parents. I will discuss these in order.

Male Shame and Family Shame

In patriarchal religions, a man must be seen as being in control and in charge, especially of his family, and, most of all, the females. His fear of losing control may lead him to shame and even abuse his wife, daughters, or any sons who are not manly enough. Loss of control can bring shame down upon the man by other men and women. “How are you a man if you cannot control your own daughter or wife?”

In some communities, the shame of the man may even lead to expulsion from the family or death to the daughter. Honor killings in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and even Toronto are a product of males protecting their honor and expiating the shame they perceive from the community.

These horrendous acts toward girls are really shame-avoidance behavior. In shame-based religions, men are taught that shame must be avoided or else vindicated. This leads to violence, largely against girls, though it can and often is used against boys, especially gay boys. Many Mormons and other Christians find great shame in a homosexual child. That is why 40% of all homeless children in Salt Lake City are gay boys and why so many Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, and Pentecostals disown their gay and lesbian children.

Male Shame and Eternal Damnation

The focus on eternal punishment or separation from a god is central to many patriarchal religions. Believing that one’s child will be damned for their sexual behavior or identity gives the parent license to do almost anything, including beating, isolating, and even disowning them. They do this for the child’s own “eternal good” and to prevent other children from catching the disease. A child who disobeys a fundamental sexual premise commits an unforgivable sin. Unless that child turns away from their sinful behavior, they might as well have not been born.

The afterlife is an excuse for all kinds of control and abuse of children and spouses. In the name of the afterlife, fundamentalist Christians beat their children so they will not go to hell. Muslims disown or even kill daughters for having premarital sex. Mormons condemn their gay sons and kick them out of their homes. Concern for an afterlife gives a parent permission to invade a child’s private space, tell him what he can and cannot do with his body, ostracize him for sexual behavior that the god disapproves of, and beat or otherwise punish him for rebellion against the god.

Without the worry of having to avoid hell, the reasons for abuse disappear. Focusing on present life makes people more cognizant of goals and desires in the near term, rather than in some vague eternity. When the afterlife is constantly looming in a parent’s mind, the anxiety often overwhelms common sense about normal childhood behavior and leads to incredible parental anxiety and anger against a defiant child. This can often lead to a power struggle as the child naturally resists this unnecessary and irrational level of control and the parent becomes even more insistent and controlling to keep the child from disobeying god. All too often, the result leads to panic and punitive action by the parent, and abuse and emotional trauma for the child.

You may think that I am talking about isolated events or at least something that’s uncommon in your neighborhood. It is not. If there is a Baptist, Mormon, Pentecostal, or Jehovah’s Witness church in your neighborhood, to name a few, it is happening in the majority of those families with preteens or teens.

Male Shame and Cults

Male shame is an excellent tool for tight social control. That is why all cults use it liberally. The rules about marriage, baptism, diet, clothing, etc., vary dramatically from one cult to the next and can be quite arbitrary. What does not vary is the shame each cult places on violating those rules. A Jewish Orthodox man who does not dress exactly as prescribed will find himself pushed from the community. A Wahib Muslim man who educates his daughter instead of his sons would be seen as blasphemous. A Jehovah’s Witness father who openly approves of his daughter’s marriage to a Buddhist would suffer serious consequences in the community. An Amish father who supports his children going to high school — never mind college — would be seen as betraying the community. Serious consequences for deviant behavior are what make a religious community cohesive and able to resist the outside world. The cornerstone of this begins with male shame and moves on down through the generations and genders in the form of female shame.

Over the years, I have spoken with many fugitives of religion and cults. Those who left mainstream religions often say it was the fear of hell and damnation that kept them in the religion. Those who have left cults, however, speak of hell and damnation, but also of the shame and fear of being ostracized, cut off from family, losing contact with lifelong friends, losing children. Whether Jehovah’s Witnesses or fundamentalist Hindu, families fear the shame that comes when one of their own leaves the cult. In order to show that the disease has not infected everyone, the family must cut off all contact with the lost member. These are almost universal rules for cults, and the enforcement of these rules falls heavily on the men.

Unfortunately, it can be far worse than simple ostracism. Some cults enforce physical penalties such as stoning, rape, or selling a girl into prostitution or slavery. The horrors being committed by ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) is just one example.

How do societies convince men to enforce such horrendous crimes against their own families? Fear of shame from the entire community, especially other men, will drive men to do many violent acts. Allowing communal violence against a fallen family member demonstrates the willingness to defend the community as a whole against threats both physical and ideological.

These examples may seem extreme, but they can be found anywhere religion holds sway. If you have a Jehovah’s Witnesses family in your neighborhood, there is tremendous shame being taught to girls and boys every day. If there is a strictly observant Muslim or Jewish family near you, the shame being taught in those homes is ruining lives in the name of keeping the religion pure and the family untainted by sexual sin. In a misguided approach to religious freedom, many states in the U.S. allow children to be beaten. What would otherwise be classified as child abuse is tolerated as religious discipline in the home.

How is This Relevant to You?

Even if you or your family are not directly connected with any of these cults, you are still surrounded by shame rooted in religion. As a member of this culture, you were exposed to these ideas long before your rational mind had the ability to evaluate them. No matter how you identify — transsexual, bisexual, heterosexual, male, female, etc. — our culture has a shame message for you, and you probably respond to some of those shame messages at some level. Our challenge is to identify the beliefs that hook us into shame. You cannot feel shame if you do not have the shame hooks already present in your belief structure. Shame is a learned process, and it can be unlearned. You were not born feeling shame about masturbating, fantasizing, or being homosexual; you learned it.

If you are afraid to admit you masturbate, chances are good that there is a lot of religious shame underlying that idea. You may believe that real men don’t need to masturbate, that masturbation is for sissies, that a man who masturbates is violating his body and damaging his marriage, or that it is shameful. I have met many non-religious people who are quite uncomfortable with the whole notion of masturbation. Even if you are a secular parent, you may be passing along this message to your children, just as you may have learned it from your parents.

If you are interested in getting science-based sex education into your schools, you will face a host of shame-filled parents who want an “abstinence-only” curriculum. If your son is on a sports team in high school or college, he will frequently hear male-shame messages in the locker room. He will hear other boys using religious ideas about sexuality to shame girls and berate them. He will get strong shame messages about homosexuals and transsexuals. He will hear male coaches berate boys by using terms such as “sissy,” “girl,” “pansy,” and other sexist and misogynistic language designed to shame boys and show that girls are inferior.

Let’s Challenge Male Shame

It is time for our culture to face the destructive power of male shame and recognize that we cannot hope to improve the treatment of women in our culture until we deal with this insidious belief system being taught to boys and men in locker rooms, sports teams, and churches right now. If men are encouraged and taught to use dehumanizing language for those who do not fit the gender binary, then we cannot hope to see homosexuals and transsexuals treated with dignity in our society.

Male shame seriously disrupts healthy relationships with women and other men. In my book Sex and God, I talk about how male shame keeps men from exploring their emotions and communicating them to those they love most. Male shame keeps a man from telling his partner his innermost sexual feelings and desires. Male shame makes a man hate himself every time he masturbates. Male shame can drive a man to express his sexuality illegally or violently when he projects his shame onto homosexuals or women. Male shame leads a man to violence against those he loves when he feels other men may think less of him if his wife isn’t properly submissive. Male shame keeps a man enslaved with the fear of hell, damnation, or public humiliation.

We can break the chains of this system. Let us begin by recognizing and challenging male shame in ourselves. What shame messages were you taught? What secret beliefs about women or homosexuals do you harbor? What ideas about masculinity and power over women are part of your inner world? Where do you feel shame in your sex life?

If you are in a relationship with a man, consider that male shame impacts you as well, and that you may inadvertently contribute to it. If you feel shame around your own sexuality, that may translate into poor communication with your partner. If you are horrified of your partner sharing his real feelings about sex and sexuality, especially if those feelings do not conform to your masculine ideal, you may be responding to shame-based beliefs. If your partner told you he often fantasizes about sex with other people — male or female — what beliefs would you reveal in your response?

All too often, men and women say that they want their partners to be open and honest with them, but when that honesty is expressed, shame-based beliefs rise up and create huge barriers to communication. This leads to less honesty and a shutting down of communication. It can, and often does, lead to the loss of intimacy.

Eliminate male shame, and the roadblocks to intimate communications fall and the relationship can develop without the corrosive influence of sex-negative religious ideas. Openly examining male shame will shed a bright light on religion-based child abuse, pederast priests, the beating and brainwashing of children, and the shaming of girls by men and boys. Men’s own mental health will benefit by eliminating the oppression of dogma and learned fear.

Humanist sexuality focuses on healthy human development, informed adult consent, education, and open communication about wants, desires, and needs. It is a refreshing vision for anyone who wants a full life for themselves and their families. It is also invigorating to explore and identify shaming beliefs and change them into affirming ideas and behaviors.

It is my hope that the West, especially the U.S., moves rapidly toward a humanist society that values people for who they are, not what their gender, race, ethnicity, or religion may be. It is a final step in the journey toward everyone having the civil rights to be who they are without fear of persecution or bullying. As we challenge male shame, I think we will find that alternative ways of relating to one another are much more rewarding. Having a full appreciation for sexuality in all its forms will liberate us from the shackles of religious sexual shame and make communication within and between the sexes much more enriching.

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Darrel Ray, Ed.D., is a psychologist and author of several books including Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality and The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. He is the founder of Recovering from Religion and director of The Secular Therapy Project.

You can view his latest talks and interviews on the topic of male shame here.

His podcast, Secular Sexuality, is free on iTunes. Its discussions are aimed at ridding us of the effects and control that our religious culture has had on the way we view sex, our bodies, the bodies of others, and so many other important ideas that affect our quality of life.

“America’s Doctor” Doesn’t Seem to Care About the Scientific Merits of His Claims, Says New Study on Dr. Oz

This past June, Dr. Mehmet Oz was called to testify before Congress at the request of Senator Claire McCaskill because of one particularly egregious scam that he, among others, promoted.

Now, the British Medical Journal has weighed in with more substantive charges against the sell-out doctor. A study published on Wednesday shows that his recommendations are far from scientifically sound:

The researchers, led by Christina Korownyk of the University of Alberta, charged medical research either didn’t substantiate — or flat out contradicted — more than half of Oz’s recommendations. “Recommendations made on medical talk shows often lack adequate information on specific benefits or the magnitude of the effects of these benefits,” the article said. “… The public should be skeptical about recommendations made on medical talk shows.”

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They selected 40 episodes from last year, identifying 479 separate medical recommendations. After paging through the relevant medical research, they found evidence only supported 46 percent of his recommendations, contradicted 15 percent and wasn’t available for 39 percent.

Remember: This is the same guy who invited a psychic on his show and said of her: “The last time she was here… her readings blew me away.” Hardly a paragon of sound science.

Perhaps what’s most disturbing is that Oz is still listed as a faculty member in the Department of Surgery at Columbia University. You have to wonder whether he spouts the same nonsense to his medical students as he does to his television audience.

It’s also a mark against daily medical-based talk shows. In order to keep the audience interested, you have to keep giving them something new and exciting… even though scientific advances don’t work on the same schedule. It almost forces you to promote stuff that doesn’t deserve to be promoted.

Dr. Oz used to be (and still is, in many respects) a brilliant surgeon. He’s written a lot of papers in peer-reviewed journals. Yet he’s thrown away that credibility in recent years in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator with the same garbage medical advice someone in his position would be expected to denounce.

His show won’t last forever. But, at this rate, neither will his reputation.

If Religion is a Regrettable Waste of Time, As I’ve Argued, What About Other Pastimes?

Yesterday, I wrote a controversial post that explained why I’ve gradually crossed over from atheism to anti-theism. I partly hung my case on the fact that religion is a huge time-suck, and calculated that in the history of humankind, roughly 600 trillion hours have been wasted on all manner of faith-based activities and observances.

Among the more than 500 comments was a recurring question: What about time-wasting activities that I didn’t criticize? What about, for instance, going to the movies or watching TV or reading fiction or playing video games? Why would I care how people spend their free time as long as they’re not hurting anyone?

That’s a good point that I perhaps can’t wholly refute, but I can at least shed some more light on what I was going for.

Like all people, I do plenty of things that aren’t productive (except in the indirect sense of “recharging” myself mentally and physically). In recent weeks, I’ve binge-watched Peaky Blinders; read The Satanic Verses cover to cover; and played Stick Hero on my iPhone in a still-ongoing digital duel with my 12-year-old daughter.

It seems to me that enjoying these activities is different from observing religion in two crucial ways.

The first is that they are relaxing and non-binding. There’s no self-coercion. I can read or watch TV or play screen games whenever I choose, as long as I have free time. There’s no guilt trip I lay on myself, or that my peers lay on me, if I don’t do these things.

By contrast, religion is self-imposed and community-imposed duty, whose stakes couldn’t be higher. Muslims who don’t pray five times a day, or who don’t undertake the mandatory pilgrimage to Mecca, cannot ascend to Heaven. The same is true for Christians who don’t live scrupulously by the Bible and the Ten Commandments, with all their prescriptive injunctions. Conservative Jews twist themselves into pretzels to avoid touching a light switch or an elevator button on the Sabbath. On that day, they also may not pick bones from a cooked fish; must attend synagogue lest they become “lost to the Jewish people”; and are forbidden from “transporting an object between private and public domains.” Their God commands it.

All are most welcome to follow these crazy, arbitrary rules to the letter. But, while I don’t doubt that many people get peace and contentment from their religion, the behaviors I just described strike me as a fairly joyless and stress-laden way to go through life – especially if you believe that diminished compliance will put you at the mercy of a wrathful God.

The second and perhaps more substantive difference between religious observance and the triad of watching TV/reading fiction/playing video games is that religious followers think their made-up world is real.

I recently watched this video by a YouTube user called GrapplingIgnorance, an avid gamer who frames the issue pretty well.

Starting at 3:03, he says this of entering supernatural worlds via his game consoles:

I know those places aren’t real, and I know that the consequences of my actions in those places are strictly digital. But if I ever start to think that when I’m playing a video game, I’m actually doing the actions I digitally simulate, I want to be informed. If I ever become adamantly convinced by my own blind faith that a princess has been actually captured by a Turtle Dragon King, then I want someone to give me a clear, calm, rational series of explanations to bring me back to reality. …

[I]f you’re a religious person who goes to church for the fellowship, community networking, or because you like the taste of communion wafers, but you realize it’s all an act, I don’t think you’re wasting your time. … [But] if you are a religious person who actually believes the claims of your preacher, and the claims of your holy book, as if they are 100% true, and you are paying a significant investment of your annual time and/or finances to your religion and to your religious institution, then I’m here to explain just why your God needs your money as much as Princess Toadstool needs your heroism and gold coins.

One commenter on the video summed it up in a nice TL;DR:

When someone escapes into the fantasy of video games for an hour or two, most of the time they return to reality when the gaming ends. With religion, the fantasy is their reality, which distorts their view of what is real and what matters.

Admittedly, that still leaves on the table all non-religious recreational activities that do not involve fantasy worlds, from listening to rock music to playing sports. Are those worthier pursuits than observing religion? The other way around? The same?

The comments are open.

(Top image via Shutterstock)

After 2,800 Entries, Here’s a Secular Version of the Ten Commandments

To promote their new book Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century, authors Lex Bayer (a Silicon Valley entrepreneur) and John Figdor (the Humanist chaplain at Stanford University) held a contest in which atheists could suggest their own Commandments. Each winner would receive $1,000. (Disclosure: I was one of the judges.)

After 2,800 entries, the final list of Commandments is now out. What do you think?

1. Be open minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.

2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.

3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.

4. Every person has the right to control over their body.

5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.

6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognise that you must take responsibility for them.

7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.

8. We have the responsibility to consider others including future generations.

9. There is no one right way to live.

10. Leave the world a better place than you found it.

Even if any individual idea there strikes you the wrong way (the commenters at The Blaze are already spinning them in the worst possible ways), I feel we’d be living in a better society if God delivered these rules to Moses instead… in no small part because there’s no death penalty for violating these rules.

Friendly Atheist Podcast Episode 34: Rabia Chaudry, Catalyst for the Serial Podcast

***We’re relaunching our podcast today with a brand new website and an early release of our next episode!***

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Our latest podcast guest is Rabia Chaudry, the catalyst for the Serial podcast.

Rabia is an attorney who specializes in immigration law, a National Security Fellow at the New America Foundation, and President of the Safe Nation Collaborative, an organization that, among other things, consults with federal agencies about how to counter violent extremism. She also writes at SplitTheMoon.com.

But you may know her best because she’s the person who brought the story of Adnan Syed to reporter Sarah Koenig, resulting in the Serial podcast phenomenon. Rabia’s little brother was Adnan’s best friend and their families were also close.

(I should point out that we taped this episode the day before the final episode aired. Rabia reflected on the final episode and entire series in this article for TIME)

We spoke with Rabia about what she learned from Serial that she didn’t know before, her relationship with Sarah Koenig, and whether she was compelled to respond to the misinformation about Adnan online.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you have any suggestions for people we should chat with, please leave them in the comments, too.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, stream all the episodes on SoundCloud or Stitcher, or just listen to the whole thing below.

And if you like what you’re hearing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon and leaving us a positive rating!

This Promotional Video for the Christian Movie Do You Believe? Raises Multiple Red Flags

This is a guest post by Andrew Spitznas, M.D.. Andrew is a board-certified psychiatrist and member of the North Carolina Film Critics Association. He has contributed to the Tinsel blog in the past and is currently a regular contributor to 1 More Film Blog, both on Patheos. During the past decade or so, he’s progressively deconverted from the fundamentalist Christian faith of his youth.

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Pure Flix is presently best known for their movie, God’s Not Dead. Released earlier this year, it generated $60 million in domestic revenue on an investment of just a few million dollars, despite a dismal 17% critic’s approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

Now, Pure Flix is gearing up for the March rollout of their next film, Do You Believe? The company uploaded a 9-minute promotional video aimed at church leaders earlier this week. Having viewed it a couple of times, it raised numerous red flags for me as an atheist, film critic, and health care professional.

First, the arrogant smugness of the creators of these two movies seems almost boundless. The video is hosted by David A.R. White, one of the producers of both films. In his introduction, White pats himself on the back for the splendidness of God’s Not Dead, claiming that it “validated the existence of God.”

That’s a doozy of a claim, considering that counter-apologists can easily point out the gaping holes in the arguments for God’s existence posited by apologists like Thomas Aquinas and C.S. Lewis. If their arguments are that flimsy, I don’t have much hope for White and his cohorts. In fact, in my own review of God’s Not Dead, I pointed out at least seven major flaws in the reasoning employed by Josh Wheaton and other Christian characters in this movie, including the use of ad hominem attacks, the Straw Man argument, and the appeal to emotion.

David A.R. White then proceeds to state that the core question driving their newest movie is “what comes next, after you fully understand who God is?” What presumption! Even when I was a Christian, I didn’t believe that I would completely comprehend the divine until after I breathed my last, let alone immediately after I prayed the sinner’s prayer. In this lifetime, “we see through a glass darkly,” and only in heaven will we “know as we are known,” right?

Frankly, such spiritual certitude is frightening. From total confidence that one knows the mind of God, it is only a small cognitive leap to other forms of black and white thinking, such as demonizing those who don’t live and believe as you do.

Which leads me to my second point. Looking at the trailer for Do You Believe? and its promotional video, it appears as though this movie, like its predecessor, employs ugly stereotypes in its depiction of unbelievers.

In God’s Not Dead, Kevin Sorbo and Dean Cain played nasty, bullying, coldly materialistic characters whose vileness was a natural offshoot of their godlessness. In Do You Believe?, we’re served up a physician who self-pityingly resents that God gets the credit when his patients survive. (Since he’s played by lovable, cuddly Sean Astin, wanna bet that he sees the light before the credits roll?)

More notably, we also have a sinister lawyer (below) who’s prosecuting an emergency medical technician (EMT) who shared his faith with a dying patient. This attorney’s villainous caricature just needs a Snidely Whiplash moustache to twirl as she gloatingly tells the EMT that she’s only pursuing this case for the money. (My money’s on a humiliating, triumphal comeuppance in the courtroom for her.)

Next, this entire subplot indicates that Do You Believe? will be continuing the work of God’s Not Dead in perpetuating the myth of American Christian persecution. How such persecution could occur so systematically as to warrant coverage by two Pure Flix films boggles my mind, considering that only 5-7% of our population identifies as atheist, in a country lacking a single openly atheist congressperson.

I’d also like to comment a bit on the artistic merits of this upcoming movie. Obviously, I reserve final judgment until I see the entire film next year. However, based on the clips currently available, it looks as though the acting in Do You Believe? will be a mixed bag, as opposed to the unrelenting awfulness of God’s Not Dead.

No doubt, this anticipated improvement has much to do with a stronger cast. The likes of Mira Sorvino, Cybill Shepherd, Delroy Lindo, and Sean Astin are a clear upgrade over the God’s Not Dead showdown between Kevin Sorbo and Shane Harper.

On the flip side, the same screenplay writers (Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon) have been used for both movies. This explains how the new film appears to suffer from the same toxic flaw of confusing didactic preachiness with dialogue that resembles how real people actually communicate with each other. This lackluster writing also undoubtedly contributes to acting in some clips that is as wooden as the giant cross that Delroy Lindo implausibly lugs around the sets of Do You Believe?

The excerpt featuring the gang member on the run from cops (around the 3:00 mark) raises additional questions of artistic originality. With police lights shimmering around the church building and a cop ominously entering the rear of the sanctuary, this scene borrows heavily from the climax of Robert Duvall’s The Apostle.

Again, until I see the final product, I’ll defer a definitive conclusion on whether this sequence is a flagrant ripoff. At least Do You Believe? is drawing inspiration from a top-drawer film (91% critical approval on the Tomatometer). With The Apostle’s fine sense of pacing and resonantly emotive performances, Pure Flix could learn a thing or two from studying this movie.

Lastly, I want to address the EMT subplot of Do You Believe? from my vantage point as a physician. I have to give credit here to the Christian Medical and Dental Society, from whom I learned as a medical student that it’s inappropriate to use our caregiving role as a soapbox for proselytizing.

Since I’ve never been an EMT, I can’t comment on their specific code of conduct. For my specialty of psychiatry, however, it is unambiguously unethical to try and convert patients to your religion. Such misbehavior would be an abuse of one’s position of authority in the doctor-patient relationship, not to mention utterly unrelated to the reason a patient is seeking your care.

These same concerns would surely be problematic for an EMT, so the fact that Do You Believe? uses an EMT’s evangelization efforts as a key plot point sends up yet another red flag. Again, we’ll see how this plays out in the completed movie. For now, however, where the filmmakers claim wrongful persecution, I see a case that would likely call for prosecution by this EMT’s governing licensure boards.

New York Fire Department is Now Selling “Happy Birthday Jesus” T-Shirts

Earlier this week, we saw New York’s Utica Fire Department Station 4 promoting Christianity with a sign outside the firehouse reading “Happy Birthday Jesus.”

Besides the sign just looking and sounding childish, you could make the argument that it’s an illegal promotion of a single faith. That’s what the Freedom From Religion Foundation said in a letter.

The sign at Fire Station 4 explicitly invokes the name Jesus, an exclusively Christian god, and makes a direct statement in support of that deity… This is precisely the sort of religious endorsement prohibited by the Establishment Clause.

The department could, in theory, put up displays of other groups to remain neutral, but they were better off just removing the sign or handing it off to a church.

So what did the department choose to do?

Well, the sign is still up and they’re now selling shirts with the same message on it. Because why honor Jesus if you can’t make a buck from it?

They say a portion of the proceeds will be donated to a local food bank (which makes you wonder about where the rest of it is going), but that’s irrelevant. Why is a fire department getting into a religious debate with the community? If you go through their Facebook feed, you get the feeling they’ve spent more time talking about Jesus lately than doing anything useful.

Safety seems to be the least of their concerns right now.

(Thanks to Joe for the link)

A Day After the Nebraska State Capitol Gets a Nativity Scene, an Atheist Sign Becomes Its Neighbor… Temporarily

Late last night, I heard that the Nebraska State Capitol building was home to a Nativity scene:

The small display, a cedar manger about 6 feet across and 4 feet high, was made possible by a Catholic-associated attorneys association that is seeking to place Nativity scenes in state capitols and other public places across the country.

“We want to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas,” said Omaha attorney Christine Delgado, who heads the Omaha branch of the Thomas More Society.

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Nebraska State Capitol Administrator Bob Ripley said Thursday that he has not fielded any requests for competing displays, but he added that some people have asked if other religions could erect displays.

“Believe me, if we allow a Christian religion to come in, we’d allow any other religion to come in,” Ripley said. “Short of something in poor taste or illegal.”

Great! Because atheists know how to play this game by now. And wouldn’t you know it, just hours later, Scott Braley, a member of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, had put up an atheist sign:

The best part is that he got a stamp of approval from the highest-ranking elected atheist in the country:

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, an atheist, came to view the atheist sign and proclaimed, “This is as much his building as the Catholics.”

“Thumbs up on this,” Chambers said, pointing to the atheist sign, “and thumbs down on that.”

There’s just one problem. Braley didn’t go through the necessary motions to get a display up. He literally went to the Capitol with a sign and stand and put it up himself.

State Capitol security was checking out Braley’s sign to see whether it should be removed, but Braley himself packed up his pedestal and sign by 1 p.m. and left.

I wish he had gone through the formal process, but who knows how long that will take at this point. Still, Nebraska officials are getting a taste of the spectacle they’re inviting if they allow an open forum for holiday displays. They’re better off just saying no to everybody.

(Image via Shutterstock)