Although not all denominations have been outspoken about their views, there is sufficient data in the media since Trumps’s re-election to highlight that immigration is an extremely divisive topic within Christianity. Many Evangelical groups, including the Southern Baptist Coalition, stand in staunch support of Trump’s immigration policies. Pro-immigration Christians typically reference Romans 13:1-7, a passage written by Paul indicating that Christians should submit to the ruling establishment under which they live. Groups opposed to the current immigration policies, including many Catholic clergy, cite Old Testament verses such as Leviticus 19:33-34, in which God’s chosen people are commanded to treat strangers well, and New Testament verses such as Matthew 25:35,40, in which Jesus tells his followers to treat strangers as well as they would treat him. As with any dispute over Biblical interpretation, both sides have rebuttals against the other’s interpretation, and both sides frequently claim that the particular Bible verses being used by the opposing side are being taken out of context. Most notable of these arguments involves the Pope himself, as rebutted by House Speaker Mike Johnson, an outspoken Southern Baptist.

Given that there are over 200 denominations of Christianity in the US alone and well-over a thousand sects—nearly all claiming to have the exclusively-correct interpretation of the Bible—it is not a surprise that a moral hot potato such as immigration will lead to conflicting views among Christians. This is nothing new in the US, as exemplified by the topic of slavery at the time of the Civil War. Prior to the Civil War, religious groups, primarily from the South, advocated for the continuation of slavery and correctly pointed out that slavery is very clearly and frequently described in the Bible in both Old and New Testaments (Leviticus 25:44-46 and Romans 6: 15-23) and is nowhere condemned. Anti-slavery religious groups, mostly in the North, could not deny that slavery was considered acceptable in the Bible. Rather, they countered that the Southern religious groups were missing the point entirely. More important than the discussion of slavery in the Bible was to understand the ‘spirit’ of the Bible, specifically the love of your fellow man (John 15:12) and treating one another equally (Mark 12:31). As such, slavery could be considered something that does not match that spirit. Interestingly, perhaps the most persuasive and Biblically accurate argument against slavery from that era was to highlight that the Bible did not distinguish slaves on racial makeup alone, and that if slavery were okay for blacks, then it should be equally okay for whites. After the war, neither side gave up on the previous justifications for their positions on slavery. Pro-slavery pastors told their flocks from the pulpit that the loss of the Civil War was the result of God chastising them for not treating their slaves well enough rather than evidence that God was against slavery. Others resorted to the old Christian standby when things in life do not go according to plan: in this case, losing the Civil War, and thereby the slavery debate, was simply a ‘test of faith’ of Southern Christians whose interpretation of the Bible was nonetheless correct. The anti-slavery religious groups pointed to the winning of the war as God’s validation of their cause. (The Civil War as a Theological Crisis by Mark Noll is an excellent resource for more information on this topic.)

The question arises then, what exactly do we make of Christian values when Christian groups have polar opposite definitions and each lay claim to the truth? It seems that, if the Bible were the absolute source of morality and truth, as many Christians claim, its words would lead to agreement among its readers. Given that this does not happen, a far more likely scenario is that humans rely on their own judgment to define the moral answers to questions, and as such are influenced by rationality, emotions, and external incentives. After all, there is no theological reason for the coincidence that the pro-slavery pastors happened to be in the south and vice versa. There is an all-too-human quality to the supposedly divine question of ‘Christian values.’

For the Christians whose rebuttal will be that I misrepresented their particular interpretation of a Bible verse or failed to mention a different Bible verse or passage that applies here, the argument does not change. For any given moral or ethical question of modernity, there is no definition of Christian values that will provide consistent answers from believers across the spectrum of Christianity. It is simply evidence of human beings using the name of their belief system to justify their own particular feelings about a topic, conscious or unconscious.

Given the fervor surrounding the current immigration policies themselves as well as the often-inhumane ways that they are being carried out, in conjunction with a president clearly motivated by his desire for his name to end up in the history books, it is unclear what Christians in the future will think about this particular topic. What is almost guaranteed, however, is that Christians of the future will join Christians today and Christians from the past in the spectacle of voicing entirely contradictory opinions about any given moral question and use the Bible to justify their interpretation. As such, there really is no coherency or substance to ‘Christian Values.’ It is a myth.

Let’s look at a modern example before going to the Scriptures: My paternal grandfather took up the genealogy of our family as a hobby during retirement. This was accomplished before the internet and stands as a fairly impressive feat of detective work. He was able to trace our roots to a mixture of northern European ancestors—primarily German and British, in a lineage fairly typical for white Americans. The result was a list of names tracing back through decades, ultimately spanning well over a century. What if, right before he passed away, instead of one list, he provided two lists of names—independent, non-overlapping lists of names that began diverging from his own father and beyond into the past—and claimed that each list was completely accurate and real? It’s not difficult to find something intellectually concerning about this, and cognitive dissonance ensures that something more needs to be done before I go around declaring that I have two valid sets of ancestors. The most obvious circumstance is that a mistake was made somewhere along the way and that one list, or perhaps even both, are wrong. A second possibility would be that my grandfather was experiencing some level of cognitive decline right before his death and was no longer able to use his rationality hardware effectively. If I wanted to actually believe that they were both correct, however, how might I go about accepting both as reality-based truths?

Speculative but logical answers would ultimately be the only possible way to tamp down the cognitive dissonance of a clear contradiction to a level that would satisfy the rational hardware ­of my brain. Even then, it’s difficult to imagine that a mistake would not outrank any speculation as the most likely reason for the differences in data. If, though, I did not want to dismiss the work of my grandfather and believed him to be in possession of his mental faculties when he prepared and provided the lists, I might find myself asking what answer might suffice as a logical reason for two separate lists of legacies. How about the possibility that my great-grandfather was adopted? Therefore, one list traces the adoptive family’s genealogy, whereas the other traces the biological family’s. This would seem a bit odd given that my grandfather never before mentioned the adoption of his father, but it at least provides a logical answer. How about the possibility that he had actually provided a list of his own ancestors as well as a list of my grandmother’s ancestors? This would make sense of the differences in the list but does not explain why both lists ended with my grandfather and not my grandmother. How about the possibility that both lists actually denote the same people, but the list of one includes only the names of the people that they preferred to use, kind of like nicknames—not their legal names? (Although, it would take quite some time to justify why “Robert DeStefano” is a nickname for “William Nix.”) Or what about the possibility that one list is of biological relations, while the other denotes an unrelated heritage that would allow me to inherit a certain status—say, royal—from my grandfather?

Let’s take this same story, change some characters, and look at it again. The Bible provides two separate lineages for Jesus, both found in the New Testament, one written by Matthew, the other by Luke. The lists actually both begin with Adam (yes—of Adam and Eve fame) and provide identical, overlapping names up until David, the Stone Age Israelite king, after which they converge nearly completely until ending with Joseph, the father of Jesus. Some additional differences are that between David and Joseph: Matthew provides 25 names in the direct lineage between the two, while Luke provides 40. There is essentially no overlap between these lists for the names between David and Joseph, even for the very father of Joseph, the paternal grandfather(s) of Jesus. As in the example story above, a variety of reasons have been postulated for these differences dating back over a thousand years. Even St. Augustine, the early Christian philosopher who specialized in providing pseudo-logical answers—many of which are still maintained today—for countless Biblical contradictions, struggled with this unavoidable challenge to rationality. The variety of speculative answers by Christian scholars to this dilemma was analogized in the preceding story: familial adoption, nicknames, or ‘royal’ vs biological bloodline being the most commonly proffered.

While most self-identified Christians today are not even aware of these Biblical passages, having never read the Bible, those that have read it and actually picked up on the differences in the genealogies have been faced with a glaring contradiction that must have caused some level of cognitive dissonance. Given a high likelihood that an actual reader of the Bible has some intellectual investment in a Christian worldview, many who were warned by their brains about this logical problem have undoubtedly been unable to accept the only reasonable answer: that two different writers with the same idea and same agenda thought they were providing appropriate information to justify Jesus as the King of the Jews, but either mistakes were made, or the agenda proved a more important motivation than accuracy for one of the writers. Rather, true believers—those that accept the Bible as being the direct word of God—are confined by the beliefs of their worldview and must make the claim that both lists are accurate and true, and thus they have to start the game of speculation which has led to the absurdities described above. Of course, many Christians are willing to accept that the contradictions in the Bible are fairly obvious proof of the errancy of the book, yet they continue to maintain beliefs in the invisible, the irrational, and the impossible claims of Christianity that have come directly from this book that they know are problematic. This, too, involves a purposeful avoidance of any legitimate attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance, even if it appears less obvious than the case of those who refuse to acknowledge the mistakes in the first place. As I aim to describe on this site, there are real-world costs to this mismanagement of cognitive faculties, and I hope that we can one day reach a point where ‘belief’ is finally recognized as a failure of our brains to deal appropriately with reality.

Thanks to Oliver Carter at Upwork for editing

https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/editing

Story 1. Imagine you want to take a break from the grind and you decide to leave your two young children at your babysitter’s house while you and your partner go and see a movie. While you are out, the babysitter sits your kids down and tells them that she has a cookie that tastes better than any other cookie. She sets this cookie down in front of them, and tells them they can look at it but not eat it. She does not tell them what will happen if they eat the cookie--just that it is the sweetest, most delicious cookie ever and that they are not allowed to eat it. Then she leaves the children alone with the cookie.

The children resist as long as they can, but finally talk each other into eating the cookie.

The babysitter returns a few minutes later and finds the cookie eaten. She is angry. She tells your kids that they were very bad for eating the cookie that she had left in front of them, because she had told them not to eat it. She says that because they disobeyed, she now has to punish them. She leads them outside of the house and locks the door. She turns the porch light off. She does not respond to their knocking on the door or to their crying. When you return to pick up your children hours later, you find them cold, scared and desperate on the front steps of your babysitter’s house.

Story 2. Imagine that an all-knowing, all-powerful deity created two children in a beautiful garden. He sat these two, innocent creatures down and told them that there was a tree that grew the most amazing fruit in the entire world. He led them to the tree and showed them the fruit. He told them eating the fruit would give them special powers, but they should not eat it. Then he left.

The children ate the fruit.

When he returned, this all-knowing, all-powerful deity told them that they were very bad for eating the fruit he had left in front of them. He said that because they disobeyed, he now had to punish them for the rest of their lives, and after they died, he would have to raise them from the dead and continue to punish them forever. The punishment would cause the most horrific, painful, agonizing suffering imaginable. But he explained that they deserved it because they ate the fruit.

He continued. He said that any babies that they had in the future would be getting the same punishment. He said that, since they—his first children--had eaten the fruit when told not to, that this meant that all of their children would have made the same choice and would automatically be evil just like they are.  He explained that all of their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren—on and on, for all of their potential offspring, would be receiving the same punishment starting as soon as they were born.

The story does not end there: After consideration, the all-knowing, all-powerful deity said that he definitely had to punish them now and had to punish all of their children when they were born, but maybe they didn’t have to be punished again forever after he raised them from the dead. He said that maybe he could make a way for them to go to a happy place instead of a horrible place after he raised them back to life.  

He suggested that, yes, he would offer this option to their children and all of their offspring as well. All they had to do was be in the right place and the right time to hear a story that would sound completely unbelievable and would go against all known understanding of the universe and against every observation of biology and physics--and believe it.

Finally, the deity said since they ate the fruit, he was soon going to stop talking with them or anyone else until after they died and he raised them from the dead, which would take place at some unpredictable time in the future. The children’s offspring would have to read the unbelievable story in a book that would be written, well—also at some unpredictable time in the future. He didn’t mention that there would be lots and lots of other similar stories that promised a happy place rather than a horrible place, and that they would have to hope they chose the right one—and, of course, the cost of picking the wrong one, no matter how well-intentioned, was to end up going to the horrible place.

Then he kicked them out of the garden and never spoke with them again. Because they ate the fruit.

How is it that this foundational moral story from the Bible--so utterly sadistic, irrational and cruel—is so easily accepted by millions of people when they would never even consider treating their own children the same way? Of course lots of Christians do not believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible, but they still consider this deity to be a requirement for objective morality and/or consider the Bible to be the ultimate source of ethical principles. The continued cycle of indoctrination and conditioning to accept unreasonable claims is responsible for this blind acceptance of utter absurdities by millions of people whose own moral intuitions should be calling out to them that there is something very wrong with this story.

Many of these same people are about to cast votes based entirely on this Biblical morality, and the outcome will directly affect the rights and freedoms of each of us. The alternatives to religion provide far better sources of comfort, meaning, and morality, and yet the tide of belief continues to move out to sea, sweeping the minds of billions along with it, generation after generation.

Consistent criticism of bad ideas is the only way to break this cycle.

Return to FaithFreeFuture.com

Return to FaithFreeFuture.com

The term ‘belief’ as typically used can convey a wide range of ideas. Because of its imprecision its use can lead to assumptions and confusion. It is often substituted for the more descriptive terms ‘know,’ ‘trust,’ or ‘hope.’ I believe that my partner loves me. A coach believes that his team is going to win the game. Many believe that the world was created 6000 years ago out of nothing by an invisible, all-powerful being. A physicist believes that matter and energy are interchangeable under certain conditions. Karl Marx believed that communism would inevitably spread across the world.  Does ‘believe’ mean the same thing in these examples?  For the purposes here, ‘believing’ will be used to describe the process of ‘knowing’ something without having sufficient evidence to support the claim. By this definition, belief likely arose in our remote ancestors as a cognitive tool in their attempt to provide explanations for their experiences and observations. Having an answer (no matter how poor) to difficult questions can reduce anxiety about living, and dying, in the world. At the risk of oversimplification, belief can be thought of as existing on a functional spectrum. At one end, when informed by empirical evidence, belief is merely a slight extension of our understanding of the world and very nearly matches what is actually happening. Based on the predictions made by a scientific understanding of the universe, I ‘believe’ the sun will rise tomorrow because my worldview incorporates concepts of gravity, light, and of planetary bodies. This is a highly testable theory: every day that I awake and the sun rises is further validation of the likelihood that my belief matches reality. The quantity of belief required in this scenario is on the low end of the belief spectrum, essentially near zero. Compare the predicted rising of the sun to the prediction of finding psychological traits in someone based on the month they were born. This is one of many predictions made by astrology, another explanatory tool that attempts to provide particular details about the universe. It purports that configurations of planetary bodies are predictive of temperaments and traits of human beings. This too is testable, and studies have been performed. The results when testing predictions of astrology vs predictions made by science consistently reveal that astrology has no more actual predictive ability than simply guessing, or chance. (A single important point to make is that the appearance that stars form patterns in our sky can have absolutely nothing to do with their spatial proximity—for any one of two stars that appear side by side, the distance between them may far exceed the distance to a closer star, even though the closer star appears nowhere near the star in the night sky.) Maintaining that astrology provides the best (or any) explanation for human traits and temperament requires a level of belief that lies on the opposite end of the belief spectrum than the belief about the sun rising--the very high end. Beliefs in fairies, ghosts, alien abduction, homeopathy, astrology, and anything in the ‘supernatural’ realm all lie on this end of the spectrum. Delusions and irrational beliefs experienced during a psychotic break lie on this end of the spectrum. Non-testable claims made by religions also exist on this end of the spectrum. Concepts that require belief on this end of this spectrum unfortunately have the common characteristic of being maintained with no good evidence--or worse--despite evidence to the contrary. Another word for belief at this end of the spectrum is ‘faith.’ Because it does not rely on good evidence, faith provides a grossly distorted and inaccurate lens from which to view reality. For a brain confined to a faith-based worldview, the reality of a claim is more often related to emotional reaction than evidence. Furthermore, imagination can be misinterpreted as reality. As with any other cognitive process, practice increases the likelihood that it will continue to occur, and thus critical thinking skills suffer significantly when one regularly uses faith to define the real.

A common retort that I hear when discussing this concept with people is ‘you believe your partner won’t cheat on you, don’t you?’ I can certainly say that I ‘trust’ my partner won’t cheat on me, but I would also say that this trust is the direct result of my lived experience with her. To the extent that I believe she won’t cheat on me, my belief is on the low end of the spectrum. If she were to cheat on me and I were to become aware of it, my trust would reflect the new data and drop considerably. If I maintained a belief that she would not cheat on me after she had cheated on me, my belief would actually move further up the scale. What if she cheated on my repeatedly, let’s say a dozen times. If I stayed with her and actually believed that she would not cheat again, I would agree that I would indeed require a huge amount of belief to attempt to conform this to my reality. This is an important feature of the high end of the belief spectrum: the higher the belief on the scale, the less evidence there is and the less likely the belief is to match any experienced reality. One of the main problems we face as humans today is that it has become normalized and even encouraged within most societies for beliefs on the high end of the spectrum to be thought of as legitimate as ‘beliefs’ on the low end. Claims to have ‘faith,’ to actively believe things with no evidence at all, are even a badge of honor in much of the world. Not only is this absurd from a rational perspective but also has real-world negative consequences that we face on a daily basis. The final example that I will provide is one given by a good friend. He agrees on many of the above points, but states that he continues to consider faith a valid phenomenon because he has ‘faith in humanity.’ I would argue that he has ‘hope’ in humanity, or a desire that humanity will continue to succeed and progress, but that the belief required for this still remains on the lower end of the spectrum and is nowhere near ‘faith’ level. I happen to know that he is well-read, intelligent, and a keen observer of human behavior. His ‘faith’ in humanity is actually an appreciation that humanity is moving in a positive direction that is informed by our history, and with the recognition that human brains are remarkable problem-solving machines. Despite all the ranting about belief, I too have faith in humanity. Happy Sunday.

Return to FaithFreeFuture.com

Return to FaithFreeFuture.com

Leviticus 26: (God talking to the Israelites)

27 ‘And after all this, if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me,

28 then I also will walk contrary to you in fury;

and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.

29 You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.

John 6:56

He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

Ones we left out:

Jeremiah 19:9

Ezekiel 5:10

2 Kings 6:28-29

Lamentations 4:10

Lamentations 2:20

Deuteronomy 28:53-57

There is clear condemnation of cannibalism in the Bible. At worst, it is considered a necessary evil in times of famine. At best, well, it seems to be some kind of imperative for salvation? Most often, it is one of the favorite threatened punishments of Yahweh: disobey and I’m going to leave you in a situation where you will have to eat your children to survive.

Props to this amazing foundational source of morality!

Return to FaithFreeFuture.com

When I recently posted this challenge on a social media site, dozens of angry self-identified Christians took offense to the post and claimed that the issue wasn’t about morality, it was about ‘not trusting the vaccine.’ This raises the second red flag: even if we grant that some Christians were not merely using their ‘Christian’ label selfishly in demanding the religious exemption, they evidently have flawed critical thinking. Within weeks of the rollout of the vaccine, the evidence was overwhelming that vaccination saves lives and minimizes hospitalizations. Ignoring this evidence seems to indicate an inability to appropriately evaluate incoming medical information. Obviously, we are in a hyperpolarized political climate, and the left and right each have a history of spreading misinformation to some degree when it suits political aims, but the ‘it’s political now so I don’t trust it’ excuse only goes so far. There are and have been plenty of apolitical sources available online providing data that there is substantial benefit from the vaccine. Conspiratorial claims that the vaccine is dangerous or worse, that Bill Gates wants everyone to be injected with a tracking chip were sadly more convincing for many than a pile of actual evidence of vaccine efficacy. It does not seem surprising that a worldview based on unchangeable supernatural claims would lead to erosion of critical thinking. Maintaining beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence is only possible when one learns to avoid cognitive dissonance and treat the irrational with more respect than it warrants.

The third red flag is a major problem with Bible-based groups as a whole: the ease with which believers can project their own interpretation onto any random Bible verse to justify almost any behavioral imaginable. This fact is why the Bible has been used by various individuals and groups to justify homophobia, slavery, misogyny, bigotry, racism, even murder, going back for centuries. While the US has made significant moral progress over the past several hundred years, this has been the result of humanistic values being projected onto Biblical passages, not the other way around. As with the abortion issue, climate change, gun ownership—any other modern moral issue, the Bible has nothing relevant to say and lacks any moral foundation other than: obeying the arbitrary commands of a celestial dictator leads to reward or at least the avoidance of punishment. A quick google search reveals countless inane interpretations of Bible verses used to justify the religious exemption discussed here, but the most common seems to be the ‘body is a temple’ Bible verse found in 1 Corinthians 6:19. In context this verse is discussing the nature of sexual relations with others and is sadly also frequently used as one in the arsenal of many bible verses targeting homosexuality as evil. In this case, apparently, it also means that you are not to use preemptive medicine that could decrease the risk of illness for yourself and everyone around you. It seems silly to even have to state that there is no logical connection that can be made from those words in the Bible and their interpreted meaning.

There are undoubtedly millions of well-meaning Christians who did understand the science, did get the vaccine and want to do what’s right for the right reasons. However, a worldview that allows for the misattribution of one’s personal viewpoint to an alleged principle that can be interpreted from excerpts in a Stone Age book undermines the logical ground on which we need to remain in order to have conversations about reality. Persuasion is becoming a lost art, and sadly, identification as Christian increasingly carries the likelihood that one is unresponsive to reason and evidence.

Return to FaithFreeFuture.com

It is fairly well known and reported at this point that Trump is beloved by ‘white evangelical’ protestant Christians and is the de facto Messiah of Christian alt-right white power groups, but what seems to be less known is that in 2016, he won the majority of the white non-evangelical protestant vote and the majority of the white Catholic vote as well. These three groups approved of his first four years of leadership so much that he again won the majority of votes from each group in 2020, even when running against a professed Catholic. These three groups combined comprise the majority of people of faith in the US, so we can arguably thank the faith-based vote for Trump and all that came with him.  

How can such an unapologetically unethical, immoral candidate attract so many votes from those who claim to be the standard bearers of ethics and morality (as based on extensive interpretation of isolated excerpts from a collection of Stone Age books), especially after they watched how he operated for 4 years?  

Here are a handful of posited explanations:

1.     Many Christians actually think Trump is a good person (even with an outdated moral foundation, I think most are aware enough to recognize that this is not true)

2.     Many Christians will only consider Republican candidates for some or all of the next reasons (sad but true)

3.     Many Christians, for unclear reasons, think that abortion is the only issue that matters in an election (sad but true)

4.     Many Christians believe that the ‘end times’ are near and Trump fits into a series of predictions about what is going to happen (scary but true)

5.     Many Christians actually want a white, Christian nation and know that he is the most likely candidate under which to see this achieved (saddest and scariest of all and definitely true)

6.     Many Christians see Trump as a flawed individual but recognize his ability to help enact their moral agenda (as based on extensive interpretation of a collection of Stone Age books) on the rest of the country in exchange for their votes (frustrating but true)

7.     Many Christians are unable to clearly think about current issues because their well-intentioned but outdated faith-based worldview has trained their brains to downplay evidence and respond to emotion when evaluating incoming information, making them easy prey for the outrage-equals-dollars advertising formula of right-wing media-- because of this they are convinced that Democratic programs intended to help the poor, decrease the wealth gap, promote equal rights for all, and fight the impending disaster that is climate change are somehow going to cause America’s ‘spiritual demise,’ and electing Trump is the only option to keep this from happening (sad, scary, frustrating and true)

The truth is, there are likely dozens or even hundreds of reasons that white Christians would give for voting for Trump and they could all be linked to their beliefs. The concern is why it is fairly predictable that the vast majority of his supporters would claim to be people of ‘faith.’

This post is not meant to offend. It is meant to encourage awareness of the elephant in the room of American politics and American life in general: faith-based worldviews drive decision-making, behavior, and voting for an enormous number of well-intentioned people in the country. A faith-based worldview provides almost no practical guidance on what matters in a modern, global society filled with dangerous ideas and inching closer to climate disaster. Faith-based worldviews are remnants of the earliest attempts of our prehistoric ancestors to make sense of the world around them. They are outdated, incapable of being updated with new information, and limiting in their ability to provide a true sense of purpose rather than a mere illusion of purpose. They promise but do not deliver on providing either a sound foundation for morality or an appropriate vantage point from which to attempt to understand and prepare for death of loved ones and of ourselves. Other posts on this site will more directly address these ideas further; however, briefly it’s worth mentioning the alternative. In contrast to faith-based worldviews, evidence-based rational worldviews have allowed for significant progress in understanding morality and providing ethical principles in a modern world of nuanced, complicated issues. Science has opened the door to an incomparable understanding of how things work and has provided the foundation for medical knowledge and technologies that allow us to live longer, more comfortably and more fulfilled than at any previous time in our history. Non-religious meditation, mindfulness practice and examination of the illusory self can provide an awe-inspiring appreciation for our place in the universe and the connections we share with everyone and everything else that exists. Ultimately, there is a much better way to experience life and love than that offered by faith. To bring it back to the reason for this post, there is a much brighter potential path for our country, but we must manage to consistently see for ourselves and point out for others, the inadequacies and flaws in the prevalent, faith-based worldviews that continues to dominate the brains of well-meaning people in our society. There must be a path of escape from the confinements of belief, and this can only come from those of us who are already free or were never trapped to begin with. Although we are in the minority, we need to stand up for an evidence-based worldview and show by example that embracing reason can provide a better alternative pathway to meaning and morality. If the majority of Americans had had a rational worldview informing their voting 10 years ago, Trump would no doubt have remained in reality TV-land rather than in charge of the free world.

Data cited in this post was taken from a Pew poll published in August 2021

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/30/most-white-americans-who-regularly-attend-worship-services-voted-for-trump-in-2020/

Return to FaithFreeFuture.com

Physical health of mother

Mental health of mother

Fetal dependency on mother

Mother’s feelings about pregnancy

Mother’s feelings about motherhood

Pain/suffering of fetus

Likelihood of future physical suffering of child born with birth defects

Likelihood of future mental suffering of child in unwanted pregnancy

Likelihood of future physical or mental health suffering of child born to addicted

mother

Likelihood of future physical or mental health suffering of child born to mentally ill

mother

Relevant input from medicine:

1 out of every 5-6 pregnancies results in spontaneous abortion

Nervous systems development is far enough along that a fetus can likely feel pain

around 28-30 weeks

Typical fetal testing is completed by 22 weeks

My goal is not to determine the answer to the question of morality of abortion in this post. (I am pretty sure that, with the caveat that fetal pain needs to be taken into consideration for late-stage abortions, the moral answer is to allow the mother to make decisions about her body in all cases). My main reason for raising this issue is to simply ask the question:

What does the Bible bring to the table to help answer modern moral questions?

The word abortion is never used in the Bible. The concept of abortion is never addressed in the Bible. There is zero medical advice offered in the Bible. Mental health is not addressed in the Bible. To the extent that suffering is mentioned, there is a complete disregard for human suffering, so long as it is suffering of anyone in another Stone Age tribe that happened to be competing with the early Hebrew tribes for resources. People confined to a Judeo-Christian- belief-based worldview will point to a handful of isolated excerpts or ‘verses’ from the Bible, claiming that they convey moral principles that apply to the question of abortion. The problem is, these verses at face value say nothing that actually addresses any modern moral issue, much less abortion. Beyond abortion, where is the moral guidance on wealth inequality, immigration, treatment of animals, climate change, genetic modification, racism (there actually is guidance on this one—it’s not pretty), doctor-assisted suicide. At the very least, attempts to make the Bible appear relevant today requires major feats of cognitive contortion and mental acrobatics. Most believers are convinced that Bible verses are relevant to modernity only because other believers claim that they have been able to interpret them in such a way that they are relevant. The problem with this is that, for any given verse, there are and have been countless interpretations (go to any bookstore and look at the endless shelves of books written about what the Bible is trying to say), and for many issues since the enlightenment, it is obvious that modern humans are simply projecting their own up-to-date values onto primitive ideas written down by Stone Age tribal humans. When it comes to morality, there are some direct, Stone Age era-appropriate commands scattered throughout, but reasoned argument to justify them by any appropriate moral viewpoint is simply not found in the Bible nor is any depth of thought required for many modern nuanced issues. The Golden Rule is certainly a good approach to take with others, but variations of this advice predated Jesus’s version by hundreds of years and can be found in the Stone Age books of multiple other man-made religions. This post barely scratches the surface of the problems with using the Bible as a moral compass. I will leave it to other posts to address the blood-soaked stories of genocide, rape, and pillage commanded by the god of the first half of the Bible; the recent centuries of slavery and slaughter justified by believers based upon their interpretations of the Bible; and the question of whether doing what has been commanded by a divine dictator-- either for reward or to avoid punishment--can even be considered a moral act to begin with. In defense of our more recent ancestors, much of the world has made significant strides in morality in the past couple of hundred years, but it has been in spite of or irrelevant of what is found in the Bible, not because of it. In closing, this post started off with abortion and politics. The problem is this: abortion as a political issue is never going to be resolved while voters continue to rely on belief-based worldviews and use free-for-all interpretations of the Bible as their moral guidelines.