Right sequence, wrong foot

**In order to get out of marching around on an October's cold, muddy field in Buffalo, I volunteered for the ROTC band. It didn’t seem to matter that I said I played piano, they needed drummers and so I was handed a drum. I can keep a beat pretty well, though I don’t do all the flourishes real drummers can do. I enjoyed rehearsing with the band up in a nice, warm third floor lecture hall that overlooked the frozen sleety grounds where my less fortunate comrades slogged around hefting icy rifles and soggy boots. The band practiced all winter for the big spring parade, which of course occurred outdoors in a still-cold Buffalo spring, like March or April, maybe even May. One of my first impressions on reaching the street was that the drum was damn heavy to walk with, and had sharp hardware that bashed against my thigh with every step. Never having been fleet of foot, and concentrating so much on dodging the pain of marching with a drum on my hip, I lost track of the “left-right-left-right” cadence bellowing from the drum major ahead. While everyone was stepping with their left foot, I was stepping with my right, and vice versa. So while I was perfectly in time step to step, I was completely out of step with my group. Of course I was soon made aware of this mistake and skipped around to reverse it - with corresponding extra jabs to my thigh.

A current luminary in the Christian Science movement, is also an astrophysicist. So he’s not only a scientist who happens to be Christian, he’s a Christian who also claims to be scientific about Christianity. About the only thing these two disciplines have in common is that their arguments follow in logical progression. But like my faulty marching, CS starts on the wrong foot. Which pretty much invalidates all of its conclusions. And results in pain. I recently read the text of a talk he’d given in which he made many unsubstantiated claims, using the same quotes and cadences I used to make when I was on the same lecture circuit. 

I was once impressed with that tight logic. Until I discovered that the starting assumption — that there is a divine entity managing everything in perfect harmony— was bogus. It had previously, over many years, been an unchallenged assumption, I having been brought up with that assumption and participating in all the religious activities that sprang from it. So, while the CS arguments stemming from that assumption are in time with each other, they are totally out of step with reality.

Another kind of theist might find the logic of CS convincing, if they were free enough from parochial influence. But in the end they’d wind up just as disappointed and frustrated as I was. While some may argue that the existence of God cannot be proved, or unproved, the claim of CS to be true is defeated by its own measure. All through its literature is the claim that the truth of its assumptions are demonstrated by physical healing. Not just feeling better, or bearing up optimistically or becoming a nicer person. Physical healing. The kind of healing that millions (billions?) of people seek and find without resort to prayer of any sort, least of all “Christianly scientific prayer.”

No matter how strenuously Christian Scientists claim to be healed, there have been no convincing instances of it in my experience. Just the opposite. I’ve seen people so sick and unhealed through prayer that they let growths develop on their face or body; who put up with days of migraine pain; who even let helpless children endure suffering, sometimes to the point of death. Despite all kinds of rationalizations, it is not the patient but the practice that is at fault. 

If “spiritual healing” were effective, people would seek it, pay dearly for it. It would be so popular that whole industries would spring out of it, and educational institutions would teach it. And there’d be no bad press. Believers say that such can’t happen because of the perversity of humanity, its materialism and false education. But a healing practice based on the principle that there is an infinite, omnipotent and readily available divine source cannot have such conclusive and consistent failures. At least there should be some spectacular successes! And those successes would drive further interest and patronage. But what do we have instead? An increasingly inward-looking church, members and publications quietly congratulating themselves that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, real physical healing is going on and therefore they are in step with the truth. 

The CS “movement” is quietly grinding to a halt. The decline is aided, of course, by the fact that a large segment of its (lucky) membership is aging and dying. The righteous claims of younger, more robust members are being shredded as they age by the ailments typical of a human body that is exceeding its evolutionary design. Many secretly use medical services. Most parents are compelled by community laws to have their sick children treated by real medical doctors, cutting down on the most egregious of their practices. Many of their kids, not brainwashed by parents and grandparents, don’t join churches and thus don’t make up for the deceasing membership. 

Whatever can be said about the sound logic of Christian Science, it does not deliver on its promises. There is no spiritual healing. None. And if there is no such healing then the logic that would predict it is totally internal, and its practice is out of step with reality.   

My main problem with Christian Science

**Christian Science is a bogus system with lots of money behind it (more in previous eras than now but still substantial), and still some political support. My complaint is that it is so BELOW visibility. Starting to read "Caught in the Pulpit" by Dan Dennet and Linda LaScola: stories of clergy who have lost their faith and yet are trapped in their clerical and pastoral roles. My problem is that I am as legitimately in their field of inquiry but no one knows or cares about about Christian Science anymore. What's so embarrassing and humiliating is that I got snagged in this 19th century relic and wasted over 35 years of my life on it. If I had been a Catholic or Episcopalian priest people would be interested in me and I might even get some speaking gigs, etc. But as it is, it's like being guilty of philately. Not worth anyone's attention. And I feel like the waste of my life should be worth somebody's attention and sympathy. 

Lamar Smith: what kind of scientist?

**VOX.COM recently published a troubling article about the current chair of the House science committee, Lamar Smith (R-TX) .

"Are you now or have you ever been a climate scientist?"

The headline proclaimed:

The House science committee is worse than the Benghazi committee

The article claims the committee's "open-ended, Orwellian attempts to intimidate some of the nation's leading scientists and scientific institutions" has more dire consequences for the nation than Gowdy & Co's brazenly partisan attack on just one politician, Hillary Clinton. That's because recently Republicans granted chairman Smith vastly more subpoena powers than previous chairs, which Vox points out has much wider and more devastating implications than the Clinton witch hunt. Think of all the critical issues the science committee can affect – climate, NASA, stem cell research, etc – and think of the damage it can do if its aim is to discredit and halt the work of the scientists and institutions that focus on them.

But it's even worse than that

It would be bad enough for any clueless politician with only a secular ideological agenda to head up such an important committee. But it's even worse when you consider this individual's religious beliefs, which few seem to have noticed. I wrote a response to Vox, and this post is an expansion on it:

Thanks for a well-written article on the abuses of Lamar Smith as chair of the science committee. I think the problem is even worse than you detail when one considers that Smith is a long-time Christian Scientist. No, not a scientist who happens to be a Christian, but a card-carrying believer in the religion of Christian Science. I am a former believer and teacher of Christian Science doctrine and can verify that the ideas that his religion espouses are diametrically opposed to what the rest of the world knows as “science.” And the mission of the House science committee. A fundamental concept of the religion is that “matter,” the stuff that normal science investigates, is “unreal.” Yes, the very substance of science is an illusion, and those who profess to be normal scientists are deluded and therefore erroneous from the get-go. The first premise of Christian Science is that only “spiritual” things are real. His hidden agenda, then, is to destroy or at least weaken the credibility of the whole field of all normal science. Republicans in general tout the idea that it’s good for a government official to let religion influence his or her governance. It’s pretty obvious that Lamar Smith, whom I’ve met, intends to shape government policy by his religious beliefs and agenda. Most Christian denominations are not this radical, and have a long history of opposing Christian Science. Do Republicans think that the religious tenets of this politician are acceptable? 

How many of his colleagues understand the nature of Lamar Smith's religious convictions? Could it be that current Republican reasoning is as simplistic as to conclude that if he's a Christian Scientist, well, that's close enough to head the science committee? It's not really that far-fetched. And as the visibility and influence of Christian Science has waned almost to invisibility, he might even seem innocuous, maybe like Ben Carson's Seventh-day Adventism. But he's not.

I met Smith in 2004 while I was working at the headquarters of the Christian Science church in Boston. We exchanged mere pleasantries at a church event, but his attendance attests his commitment to its teachings. Unless he has become a worse Christian Scientist since then, people need to consider the implications if he still believes what his religion teaches. And fundamental to that teaching is the specious nature of the material world – the same material world that most scientists study and work in. If you personally know some Christian Scientists you probably don't think of them being as crazy as that. And perhaps the reason is that in order to appear less fanatical, Christian Scientists tend to practice an unstated dualism, holding privately to the primacy of absolute spiritual reality while going along with the "seeming reality" of the physical world. This sustains a subtle hypocrisy whereby many, if not most, believers indulge in all sorts of materiality, including medical treatment, rationalizing that they and the rest of the world haven't advanced to the wisdom of their teachings. What suits this dualism is a characteristic velveteen veneer, a terminal niceness that hesitates to get all absolute on people – and having to put up with all that push-back. Smith exhibits this veneer, even while wearing the brass knuckles of his newly amped subpoena powers.

Who am I to criticize?

Though I am hostile, for what this blog chronicles are good reasons, I am not an ignorant sniper at Christian Science, as many of its opponents are. My knowledge is deep and extensive: I was a believer and church member for over thirty-five years; wrote for its publications, lectured about and taught its precepts and practice. For twenty of those years I was a professional practitioner of what I ultimately came to realize is the sham of "Christian Science healing." It eventually didn't seem right taking money from people in order to convince them of the unreality of their problems, especially when there was never any discernible, verifiable physical healing as a result. I even pressed those precepts on a mother who let her child die of diabetes even while he screamed for medical attention. That horrendous event and its legal consequences plus five years snarled in the gears of Christian Science church politics led to the end of my faith.

Playing the religion card?

Let's remember that what Republicans mean when they blow the dog whistle of "religious liberty" is that government officials (like Kim Davis) should be free to institute, change or overrule public laws according to their personal religious beliefs. The world is a lot scarier place when legislators like Lamar Smith have extraordinary legal power to frustrate, harass and squelch real scientists and their work. The whacko fringe of the party (arguably not just a fringe) may have found a velveteen-clad wrecking ball in this mild-mannered "scientist."

Government officials like Smith frequently allow their religious beliefs and power to infiltrate the legal realm to generate religious exemptions* that include practices like Christian Science "healing." Though fortunately many of those exemptions, especially for children, have been overturned in recent years, it would not be surprising that a believer like this newly-superempowered chair of the House science committee would try to influence public policy based on his religious convictions. He is and will be as anti-normal-science as his religion, in its purest form, teaches.

Yes, I'm playing the religion card. But not in the way it was played against Romney, whose religion had little to do with government and more to do with its (and his) weirdness. It's more akin to JFK, whose opponents suggested that as a Catholic president he would be more loyal to the Vatican than to the US. But Kennedy stated publicly and firmly that in a conflict between his religion and his country his loyalties would always be with his country. How likely is it that Lamar Smith will publicly proclaim his allegiance to normal science versus that other kind?

Connect with Sam Harris

**Sam Harris is one of the five writers who eased me across the boundary from religion in general and Christian Science in particular. His early books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation  pushed him into the spotlight of those "New Atheists" eloquently exposing the deception and hazards of religious belief. I recently read his latest book, Waking Up, which deals with the nature of the self and meditation. Can't say I've crossed over into meditation territory but his ideas on consciousness intrigue me.

I also subscribe to his podcast. His latest is an interview with Joshua Oppenheimer who recently released his two films about the genocide in Indonesia in the mid 60s. The films are apparently devastatingly powerful and uniquely produced. Take a listen to this interview. Coming so close upon reading Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me it adds another splash of cold water to my white privileged life. Though I've been jailed, put on trial, successfully sued for $1 million, all for practicing my religion at the time, I am unscathed by prejudice and ignorance compared with those who have suffered in these ways.

The Hard Board

**BW was one of the most intelligent, well-read and astute thinkers I have ever known. A couple or three years ago he graciously invited me to play Words with Friends on our phones. At first he would win handily, of course. Still, I enjoyed his companionship, virtual and actual, especially when he and his wife got a place nearby in the City. Gradually, after I'd gained some experience, learning much by playing him, the results weren't always so lopsided. In the past year it was getting closer to 50-50.

Too hard

On occasion, he'd explain his low score by stating that this particular game had a hard board, meaning that the tiles he'd drawn were difficult to turn into high-scoring words. It was an acknowledgement that regardless of the innate intelligence or expertise of a player, the game — like life — is subject to the luck of the draw.

The hardest board

Our last game

About a year ago BW's body was dealt a hard board: Cancer. Despite a generally healthful lifestyle and the best medical treatment money could buy, bad genes also had a place at the table. He played all-out to win, with many ups and downs along the way. But the last move of that game was a few days ago, on March 1 (WWF informed me that "It's been 10 days" since we'd exchanged plays). And it's a down

Not an immortalist
One of several books he'd recommended to me, a book I could actually follow, was one he'd recently re-read: Immortality: the Quest to Live Forever and How it Drives Civilization. We discussed and agreed with the conclusion of that book: though there is no way —  here or hereafter —  to gain immortality, the best policy is to live here kindly, seek the welfare of others and be rid of as much illusion as possible. Qualities BW exemplified amply, gently.

While expected and prepared for, his death still pains me. I will miss the companionship of this formidable opponent and virtual/actual friend.

But, wait —  sadly, there's more.
Just a couple hours after being informed of BW's grim prognosis I got this distressing tweet from my former colleague and friend, CG:

She's a brilliant writer, specializing in food. Her restaurant reviews, descriptions of food, travelogues and the like were always fascinating, even if one didn't care for her subject (my favorite is an entry, with video, about dining on a pig's head.) After leaving our religious citadel, where she was employed as a rare "non," she got a job at a cancer hospital.

And then got cancer.

In the mouth.

In the mouth.

Hard board, indeed.

A couple years of chemo, some ups and downs, and now: "end of the line." What makes it more appalling is that she's supposed to be in the prime of life — arguably unlike BW and, certainly, me. She's supposed to get a better deal. Life is supposed to be a lot easier. And longer lasting.

How tweet it isn't
Adding to the weirdness of this experience is the fact that she's sharing her death process ON THE INTERNET! Now, I accept that we're in a connected age, but this is bizarre. Maybe outrageous. Yet, strangely, in her case, it's also inspiring. She can pull it off because her good cheer, humor and eloquence take the edge off.

But beyond the edge is the rest of the blade: She'll be gone soon. Too soon.

Why me?
I don't know if I have better or worse genes than these two hapless friends. If better genes, I'm sure I've compromised their ability to help me. I smoked for twenty years — two+ packs a day and drank heavily during several periods in my life, including the most recent seven years. High salt. High fat. High alcohol. High tension. High risk.

But easier boards:

As I've blogged about before, last October, when an echocardiogram showed that my heart was delivering only a 37% ejection fraction (40%-50% is considered below normal), it was decided that I needed an angiogram to determine the cause and treatment. This involves slipping a very thin tube into a coronary artery (don’t ask how) and taking a look around. What they saw was a vessel 99% blocked by plaque — a sign of hard living, and maybe hard genetics. As I understand my cardiologist's explanation, when this thin tube (catheter) was inserted into that coronary artery it made the blockage go from 99% to 100%. This essentially induced a "heart attack" right there on the cath lab table. Emergency measures ensued and the medical team was able to bring me back and complete the mission. I left the hospital a couple days later with three stents in that artery.  

As boards go, this was "hard." But not "too hard," thanks to medical expertise.

And a stroke of good luck 

It affirms where I stand now: soberly atheistic after decades of believing in, teaching about and advocating for a supreme benevolent force for good in the universe. I am not naïve and unschooled. I've studied the Bible, theology and metaphysics; studied and unsuccessfully practiced an unrealistic 19th century healing system based on that premise; taught it; written about it; and carefully observed my life and the lives of others (including those of my atheist friends BW and CG, as well as my believing family and other friends). I have studied and tried several different belief systems including the no less loony one I was brought up with. 

And my conclusions: We live in a material universe that has originated, evolved and is run by chance. "Spirituality" has more to do with insight into human consciousness than with any tangible substance. In sum: There is no "God."

Why not?
By far a most convincing argument against a theological ground of existence is expressed by the website: Why won't God Heal amputees? It's based on the fact that there has never been a credibly documented case where an amputated limb was restored to normality through "spiritual" means. If a god can't do that, the rest is bullshit. The "goodness" in our experience has nothing to do with any "Principle" of goodness. It's just optimal human practice.

As a blog pal and also former religionist, Liz Heywood, has expressed it: "I'm happier with Chance instead of fate." Well, I wouldn't exactly say I'm happy with chance — I'm not happy with anything that determines my destruction. But it's certainly more intellectually honest and satisfying than believing in an imaginary but impotent Friend.

I'll leave it there for now.

Farewell, precious fellow players. 
Sooner or later I'll be joining you in oblivion, if not renown.

And to my still-playing companions in this perilous and doomed game, for as long as possible, may the boards be with us.

A Pope of hope

**As a born again atheist, I have less than little regard for the theology of the Catholic - or any - church. A church can do good without having any theology because doing good is an end in itself. It's what people do, not what they profess, that matters.

That's why I am impressed with the the Catholic Church's latest Pope. When I saw this report, cited in my Twitter feed from ThinkProgress.org, I knew I had to say something about it. The story is about how Pope Francis "Sneaks out of the Vatican at Night to Serve the Homeless." He is accompanied by his "almoner," the guy who hands out the papal charity. And he doesn't do this with a press release and a gaggle of media. Instead he goes out dressed as an ordinary priest and just walks the Christian walk.

Can it be that the Catholic church will finally do what no leader of any institution has done: show the world by example what it means to be a caring human being? Will the power of the huge institution of the Church force the hands of those hypocrites who profess to be followers of Jesus while rejoicing in the their worldly accomplishments. Tellingly, Francis has said:

How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

The answer is that the Christian Right, and the Right in general in this country, makes up the obstructionist faction known as the Republican party. The "party of business" is also the party of religious hypocrisy, the lapdog of the 1%, enemies of women and the largest constituent of Faux News' audience. This is not to say that some on the Left are not like them - many are liberals in name only. But at least the Left aspires to the the ideals that the Pope demonstrates in daily life. The Right, on the other hand, screams about "small government," while insisting that government stick its nose and other probes into the bodies of women; that jails pot smokers for years while letting politicians off for smoking crack; that cuts off aid to poor people while awarding bonuses and tax breaks to the very institutions whose greed oppresses poor people and wrecks the economy.

For over 30 years I was a loyal member of the Christian Science church, a bastion of the kind of hypocrisy that Pope Francis repudiates. Though I never acquired the Republican attitude, I and a few other Liberals had to sneak out of the church to do what seemed the Christian thing to do in the style of this Pope. If not always overtly political, the leaders of the church at that time were mostly of the Republican mind set. They were fond of describing their form of charity as above the messy materialism of ordinary do-gooders because they worked in the realm of thought where "knowing the truth" meant convincing yourself that nobody was really poor, or sick or oppressed. This easy cop-out enabled them to appear charitable because they doled out some of their money to charitable causes. But you would never find them at a homeless shelter or in a soup kitchen or in a hospital or jail. And more than a few church members adopted the attitude that they needn't contribute filthy lucre because they gave all their charity to their own church.

For the sake of the world I do hope this Pope manages to stay alive long enough to turn Catholics - and especially my right-wing-nut relatives - into more genuine Christians who will join a revolution that restores democracy in the world. It will take a long time, but I hope the transformation has enough time to develop into a potent force. This is not merely a tentative hope on my part, but a reasonable doubt, especially if the Church starts to lose lots of members because of him. The last Pope who tried to restore humanity to the Church, John Paul 1, managed to die mysteriously, to be replaced with more typical leaders.

Unbelievable

***One of my favorite bloggers is Harry T. Cook. I've been receiving his essays by email for several years now, on the recommendation of a friend of mine who is also a former religionist. What I like about Harry is that despite decades of education and faithful practice as an Episcopalian priest he eventually came to the realization that religion as mostly BS. I don't agree with him completely in that I would go further and call it poison.

In a recent essay, "Believing, We Do Not Believe, he begins with

    "Among the many readers of these essays are a number of older, mostly retired members of the clergy. They are Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, several rabbis [former Christian Scientists like me] and others who can no longer identify fully -- if at all -- with their religious pasts."

 ...
    A few of them have become convinced that, for example, most of the Bible is pure myth. I think they are wrong about that, but the point is that they had to deal with biblical passages for their whole ordained ministry and evidently felt constrained to treat many of them more or less as historical reportage. Some of them express relief at no longer having to put on such an act week after week.

Speaking from experience I can say that the acting doesn't come on suddenly. It accrues over many years, and for too many years before the spell is broken life is more or less an agony as the disparity between profession and understanding becomes wider.

I'm one of those who have concluded that the Bible is mostly a pack of myths, propaganda and outright lies. What isn't in those categories is pretty good, but doesn't need the Bible or theistic agencies to give them credibility. They are constituents of what might be called secular humanism in drag. As the billboards say: we don't need a god in order to be good.

Harry goes on to recommend a book by Elaine Pagels, which I have read, where she cites an experience she had walking into a church during the depths of her faith crisis. Even though she had known that church doctrines were unsupported by science or reason, she "fell in love" with that church. I think the import of his statement is that the church provided something essential to her as a human being, a kind of comfort that helps some people bear up under their disillusionments. I have heard this also from many others who claim that the true value of religion, and its churches, is to provide that comfort regardless of the challenges life presents them.

Just as most drugs have various degrees of negative side effects, the drug of religious comfort has costs to the believer. Those costs are too high for some of us, while others struggle to bear up. Regardless, the problem is that religion always wants to point to a deific source for that comfort instead of recognizing that human nature is complex and susceptible to many influences. So many of the recent studies on the brain illustrate that susceptibility and the wide range of influences —  none of them deific. To some of us, the blatant unreasonableness of spiritual concepts is untenable, to the point of causing extreme anxiety and bizarre behavior. Maybe stalwarts like Cook can stand being in the same room with believers and their proclamations. I can't.

As I've stated before, it's not that I have found an exact replacement for the drug-induced comfort of religion. Indeed, I would have to say that the pains of living without that drug are sometimes overwhelming.

Recently I attended a funeral for a dear friend of mine. The service was held in the Unitarian church that for decades I would see from the parking lot of my Christian Science church directly across the street. Sometimes I'd deride that sect for being wishy-washy for having no real god to believe in. And yet, my recent experience at that church, and my contact with the pastor, were so comforting that I said to her: In another context this would be the church I would attend because it provides comfort without exacting a profession of faith in an unreal supernatural being.

As a person of reason I can't bear the hypocrisy of eloquence in defense of bullshit, which I think was one of my special talents during those personal Dark Ages. These days, this blog is my main antidote to the poison I spread for 30+ years as a Christian Scientist. I really don't want another platform from which to rail against religion. I don't have time for it at my age. And besides, religion is doing a very good job of poisoning itself.

I like Harry and recommend him to real thinkers both within and without the ranks of religion, spirituality or whatever label applies to belief in things that are unbelievable by nature. But unlike Harry, I would claim to be Unbelieving, We Still Do Not Believe.

Not all perspectives are equal

**A response to a friend's blog.

What I’m becoming more convinced of over time is that there is no one “right” perspective. There is no objective fact out there. Even with things like the sun going around the earth, I only know what I’m told.

Gotta disagree with you here. There IS a right perspective, although at any one moment any given individual may not grasp it. But reality is real and everything else is interpretation. That’s what you might call a “perspective.” Anyone can have a “perspective,” and it will be more or less consonant with reality. In the above quoted passage, you immediately say that the “science makes sense to you,” but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that IN FACT the earth rotates around the sun. As someone aptly said, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts.

Glad you moved away from dogmatism, but in my opinion you haven’t moved away far enough, otherwise you wouldn’t say that you have an “open-minded view of religion, even of God.” To be truly OPEN-minded, you would need to discern if there is any factual basis for your view. It’s not enough that you have the view, but that it be consonant with facts. True, some “perspectives” provide varying degrees of psychological comfort while reality is having its way with you, but that’s like saying that an anesthetic eliminates the fact of a wound.

When I finally ditched the claptrap of religion I did not feel better. I felt worse. I longed for the drug of belief in a better state of reality. I wrote a song, “Bone On Bone” that alluded to this bereft state. But there is no way to alter reality.  Sure, you can change the way you perceive it. And if a certain “perspective” dulls the pain, then congratulations. But it is still a drug, a barrier between your perception and reality. And nothing makes this more clear than being conscious in an aging body.

The folly of prayer

**Whenever there's a high-profile tragedy, especially if it involves kids and guns, there are two voices that rise to the top of the clamor. The gun advocates. The prayer advocates. Many of my friends and family are in the latter category so I'm reticent to be more public with my opinions about that silly and useless practice. But here, in the safe confines of blogscurity, I can rant all I want and only those die-hards may know.

I practiced prayer for over 35 years. Not just prayed but advocated it, taught it, explained it, actually believed it myself. True, my brand of prayer was the Christian Science variety, which has a veneer of intellectuality about it. "Scientific prayer" was seen as not an appeal directly to a deity but as a way to neutralize "erroneous beliefs" in the minds of those who are experiencing or witnessing bad things. The underlying assumption is that everything in existence is in good harmony everywhere and that disharmony is the perceptual result of conclusions that assume the possibility of disharmony. The standard scapegoat is "matter," or that which the senses perceive. In other words, the physical world – the constituents of everything from the sub-atomic to the astronomical realms. Furthermore, these illusory items are considered to be only the phantasmagoric projections of something called "mortal mind," or a mental state so limited that the possibility of evil, or "error," can seem to exist. In other words, you'd see everything as perfectly good and happy if it weren't for your mental state, which you inherited from the false beliefs that your parents gave you by causing you to be conceived and born in the first place. A loser from the beginning, you have no hope except through the use of "scientific prayer." Such prayer, by focusing on the concepts of goodness, benevolence and perfection that refer to the "real" spiritual world you can break the spell of illusion that makes you believe that somebody shot a lot of kids in an elementary school. You will not only feel better, but the effect of this "prayer" can ripple out and help sway the receptive minds of everyone so that they will in turn believe in evil less and feel better and – eventually in some vague future – all false belief will be corrected and the world will appear in its naturally perfect state. Which, by the way, is also the definition of heaven.

Yes, it's convoluted and tautological and unverifiable –in other words, not really as "scientific" as it claims to be. But because it comes dressed in intellectuality, it is believed in by those who consider the kind of prayer everyone else practices to be plebeian . Also, because it lets the pray-er feel better and often has a placebo effect. Countless "testimonies" of "healing" are based on this gut feeling that because the pray-er did the right thing by thinking the right thought then a bad situation was "healed." Oh, and if an individual victim of evil isn't spiritual enough to do it for themselves, they can hire someone else, a "practitioner," to do it for them and in some way nudge their mentality in the right direction. That's what I used to do, and teach, and preach about. And which for the past ten or so years have come to know is pure bullshit.

This doesn't mitigate the folly of prayer as the hoi polloi views it. Theirs is a much simpler, and probably more natural response to evil. It's based on the power structure in families. Kids learn that there are people out there who have the power to do them good or do them harm. Parents, at first. It's natural for a kid to run to a parent for comfort and healing when bad things happen, and that's because parents usually feel compassion and obligation to take care of their kids. As adults, many still cling to the habit, but instead of their too obviously fallible and undependable parents (and other adults) they run to a Super Parent figure, the conventional "God." But it's still folly. When people call for prayer at times of ghastly tragedy, like Sandy Hook, what are they actually expecting? That their divine friend will suddenly change the situation so that it didn't really happen (a la Christian Science)? Probably not. That their Big Friend will stop what It's doing and run over to the "souls" of the kids killed and make them feel better (assuming they exist in a state where they still have conscious feelings) or save them from Big Friend's nemesis, the Devil)? Probably some do. That their Big Friend, who didn't or couldn't stop the tragedy in the first place will now rush into the feelings of everyone else grieved by the event and make them feel better? Probably many.

Folly. All folly.

Instead of going into a dreamy state of wishing, people should get off their knees and do something practical. Like raise hell with legislators and stop the gun lobby's warping of the 2nd amendment to allow practically untrammeled commerce in the sale of weapons (we don't need citizens with assault rifles protecting us against a government with drones and cluster bombs and all sorts of mayhem-producing products from that same industry.) An interesting story surfaced recently where a madman in China broke into an elementary school and wounded a number of children with a knife. Guns are illegal in China. And the kids were WOUNDED and will recover. Not quickly KILLED en masse by a nut with guns made available by a warping of the 2nd amendment by a huge industry that profits from the mass marketing of weapons.

So, stop with the pious folly and realize we don’t live in a perfect world and probably never will. DO stuff, not just believe stuff.

how does one stage a coup in such a tightly-held organization?

**Hi Anonymous, and welcome back. You are referring to what I called a "coup" in 2004. I was speaking almost figuratively. Two distinct factions had sprung up over the previous ten years. The newer one might be called "liberal," which held that the church needed to tear down the walls of exclusivity and let new ideas, people and programs come in to invigorate the church. And the other was, well, pretty much the opposite. They liked walls because they believed that any change from what the founder had done, prescribed or thought about would cause the fragile structure of the denomination and belief system to fall apart. As it turned out, both of them were right. A lot of big money from the heyday of Christian Science was still around and able to finance programs like the website I was involved with. The old guard raised countless squawks about how the religion was being watered down, but their objections were overruled by the new leadership, which had the cunning and force of will to hedge itself about with the wealth and ingenuity of several key players. I was part of that new guard, recruited for my rebel nature, willingness to be led and the flattery of being brought to some level of prominence in a new venture.

The reason both factions hastened the demise of the "movement" is that both were based on magical thinking, which couldn't withstand the ever-increasing prevalence of more realistic views of the world. The old guard believed that Mary Baker Eddy had invented something so radical that it was unique, and that its uniqueness - and therefore its very life - was preserved only by keeping it unadulterated, i.e. unchanged in the least degree. The new guard had believed that with just a few tweaks, Christian Science would become popular again. People would look past the nineteenth-century world view and see that it was basic christianity for the modern era, heedless of the fact that christianity itself was dying out because of its fundamental irrelevance and corrupted institutions. At the same time, it believed that many of the central tenets and systems should be preserved. So, for instance, it published Eddy's foundational book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, word for word as she had left it 150 years before. The problem is that the book was prohibited from ever being revised after her death - regardless of new information about how the world works. Her view of evolution, for example, was to ultimately blow it off even while admitting that Darwin had a reasonable explanation. Welcome to the two-mindedness of Christian Science. You can call Darwin a perceptive thinker and at the same time deny his validity because ultimately he was talking about the material world, which Eddy taught was essentially unreal. The liberals failed because they really weren't all that liberal, and all the lipstick they could trowel onto the pig of an outdated world view couldn't convince very many people that here was something they could reliably believe in and practice. Especially when it involved abstinence from the health care practices that have become the standard throughout the world.

So the "coup" came about because there were some other well-financed and savvy people (today we would call them tea-baggers) who were willing to take advantage of the succession system in the church and put a couple of its people on the Board of directors. These, in turn, raising the specter of fiscal irresponsibility (the church had squandered millions in its camouflage efforts) worked on enough of the remaining new guarders to turn on their liberal leader and throw her out. Once she was gone it was easy to undo all the innovations she had put in place. The walls went up again and there was universalrecognition that if the movement was going to die out, life for the old guarders should be kept comfortable to the end. We're talking about a very elderly population here, people generally not inclined to change anyway, and fierce about protecting their comfort. So, the world stopped hearing about Christian Science in either its new or its old form, and never missed it. It's just not an idea that has legs (the image of Darwin's fish comes to mind).

Safely inside its cocoon, the members congratulate themselves on their purity and go about their rituals as always. And Christian Science continues to die with each of their deaths.

I hope you see my point in the last several posts. It's not that anybody did anything wrong that caused the demise of Christian Science. Its basic premises cannot stand up to the realities that the physical sciences reveal. It's old. It's creepy. It's delusional. It's not only snake oil, it's snake oil that has far exceeded its expiration date.

The few, the healthy, the lucky

A “truce” with medicine

A mild stir has ensued from a report that my former church is trying to make some efforts to ward off criticism that its form of spirituality is in conflict with general standards of health care. The NYT story didn’t go the way the PR department at the church had expected. It conveys the image of an organization in the final throes of its own death. The few remaining adherents are getting deeply into old age.

To be a Christian Scientist is to attribute health and healing to right thinking about reality. It includes the belief that there is a universal benign power that creates and inhabits a world of perfection and happiness. It also attributes all imperfection and unhappiness to wrong thinking, or the belief that we live in some other universe. Healing involves aligning “thinking” with the the perfect world. So, ultimately the responsibility for health is on each individual.

One of the most serious consequences of this belief system is the implication that sick people are to blame for their problems. I have seen people with every kind of ailment endure pain, disfigurement and various degrees of impairment because they believed that these problems would go away as soon as their minds clicked into alignment with the belief that everyone is perfectly OK.

As detailed here recently, a fine and spunky member of the family succumbed because: 1) she refused to have a fibroid removed, and 2) because, at her insistence, no one would give her nourishment via some alternative means.

The church can posture as much as it wants about how it is liberalizing its policies, but the fact of the matter is that most of its dwindling membership is seriously senior and their brain pathways are deeply grooved in the old policies. Most of them will judge the church as straying from the true path and will continue to hobble through the rest of their lives hoping they will pass away quietly in the night with little or no discomfort. And a few of them may welcome the excuse to finally get a medical diagnosis or a prescription for a pain killer or antibiotic or whatever they need. Parents have been scared for the past ten or so years because of legal measures that provide severe punishments for failure to provide medical care to children - so they aren't a significant part of the intended audience.

The whole belief system is defined by a book, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, which she has deemed perfect and complete and is not subject to revision or updating in light of new facts that may emerge to challenge some of her assumptions. One of the most egregious, for me, is her damningly faint praise for Darwin’s discoveries. She basically says that as far as wrong explanations of the natural world are concerned he is less wrong than most. But still wrong. The world isn’t material, she claims, is not governed by universal physical laws, but is a dream state that is the exact opposite of the true spiritual state, which is totally good and eternal. What I eventually came to realize is that the “spiritual” world is the dream state, while the material one is the one that deserves and needs our attention.

People who take up the Christian Science way of life are idealists who sincerely want a better world, and are appalled that there is so much evil and ugliness in their daily lives. The ones who defend it the most, however, are those who have strong constitutions, good genes and a ton of good luck. Their commitment to advancing the cause of Christian Science allows them to attribute their good fortune to the ideas and techniques taught in Eddy’s book.

However, the aging process moves inexorably along and even the Directors of the church must be feeling it - a recent photo of the five of them is scary. If it weren’t for the attempt to get the public to pay for their religion’s wacky prayer treatments they wouldn’t have bothered to posture as “liberals.” Incidentally, most of the Directors took over the church in 2004 coup because they represented staunch conservatives who thought the religion was being diluted by appeal to an increasingly skeptical public and as well as an increasingly confused and discouraged membership. The effort to get this brand of “right thinking” health care covered by government-paid health insurance is laughable and its rejection is a scrap of evidence that there are still some legislators who can think straight - at least for a few moments at a time.

Family-assisted suicide

Dr. Kevorkian was pilloried and branded "Dr. Death" because he was willing to help terminally ill people who had come to a decision to end their lives voluntarily. "Physician-assisted suicide" became synonymous with the macabre, the unprofessional, the criminal.

And yet, when religious beliefs enable people to do the same thing by withholding essential medical or nutritional aid, we chalk it up to religious "freedom" and "patient rights."

I'm brought to these considerations because a dear woman in our family circle was allowed to starve to death because she had instructed her family not to intervene when a physical condition made it impossible for her to take food. I don't know what the physical condition was, but from all appearances she had a very large growth in her abdomen. It might have been a fibroid or some other kind of tumor that had grown so large it could have compressed her digestive system to the point where she could not take food normally. We will never know because she was a Christian Scientist and was sequestered in a Christian Science "care" facility where no medical diagnosis is allowed, much less medical treatment.

So I am presented with the stunning picture of a starving woman insisting that her children in attendance not allow her to take nutritional sustenance. After about two weeks of starvation, the woman died. No surprise there. Yes, she was elderly and frail and who knows if something else was eating up her innards, but to die from starvation when food in some ingestible form is available seems like a macabre tragedy. But what makes it outrageous is that her children took turns watching her die that way. As far as I know, none of them even suggested that a medical diagnosis be given, simply to see if some natural means might be used to keep her alive.

I was a deeply committed Christian Scientist for over 35 years, an advanced student who had been elevated to the position of "teacher," so that others might learn how to "heal" through prayer alone. I eventually (after far, far too long) realized the lunacy of this belief system and severed all ties both official and psychological with Christian Science. But my deep knowledge of the intricacies of that system reveal several "outs" with which these children could have probably prolonged their mother's life. Specifically, there are passages in the "sacred literature" that allow for consultation with medical experts on "the anatomy of the case." Meaning, that they could have at least known the physical situation that was causing their mother distress. Perhaps in that "anatomy" there could have been a workaround that would have allowed the poor woman to receive essential nutrition. And continue living.

However the four children of this dear woman had been raised from birth in this belief system, which probably explains why they found it at least tolerable to sit mutely by and watch their mother starve to death. I've found that "lifers" like this are firmly imprisoned in their ways and despite all rational explanations to the contrary just cannot let go of a reverence for a system that believes there is a "spiritual" power available to the faithful that can reverse natural processes of life and death. There isn't. Plain and simple. There isn't. And those of us who did not get programmed at an early age to believe the lunacy find it a little easier to let go. But brain pathways so deeply imbedded are very, very difficult to reroute toward the reasonable.

There will be a memorial service for her at a Christian Science church in her area, and I have been asked to not attend if I cannot celebrate her life instead of being swayed by the tragedy of her death. Her death is not the tragedy. It is the manner of her death that is so odious. That her children, her church members and friends are asking reasonable people to come to "celebrate her life," is almost too preposterous to contemplate. Perhaps I can be removed from the mawkish "celebration" by helping to park cars, babysitting or something.

My dear son, whose mother-in-law was the victim of this Family-Assisted Suicide, knows better. But he is a more gentle and tolerant man than I will ever be. I know that he would not want his family to let him die from neglect. And neither would I! Yes, the medical establishment is not perfect. Insurance companies, political pressure groups and the huge industries that profit from the physical frailties of humans make caring for each other a difficult choice. But I would hope that reason, sweet reason, might prevail should he -or I- be the victim of some malady that gave my family the power to facilitate my life or death.

My response to LATimes article on spiritual healing and legislation

Thanks for your article "Healthcare provision seeks to embrace prayer treatments." As a former Christian Science practitioner ("healer") for over 30 years I can vouch for the statements from the critics to which you refer:

But critics say the measure could have a broader effect, conferring new status and medical legitimacy on practices that lie outside the realm of science.

There is no true "spiritual healing." Most of what passes for it are anecdotes where there is no objective diagnosis or controlled testing, from people whose main problems are psychosomatic. Herbert Benson, MD and others have shown that a "relaxation response" accounts for the relief from such problems.

Toward the end of my involvement with Christian Science, and becoming suspicious of the claims I had been taught, I carefully observed if my prayer or lack of it made a difference in my patients. It didn't. People who believe in spiritual healing, and Christian Scientists in particular, are quite defensive about challenges to their faith in this approach to health care and eagerly strive to provide "evidence" for its efficacy. It's also why the Christian Science church in Boston has a large department of people who do nothing but lobby around the world for the kinds of accommodations being advocated in the present health care legislation.

I agree with Dr. Norman Frost, quoted in your article, that more resources need to be devoted to "evidence-based medical practices" and less to long-disproved, and dangerous, systems.

God on the brain

Sam Harris worked on a study using fMRI that sought to compare the brain's behavior when it considered two kinds of topics: god and "tables and chairs." In other words, intangible vs. tangible objects. What the study found is that belief in god was functionally the same as NOT believing in god. Both were identified as "facts" by the person being studied. However, either experience was not considered by the brain as being as solid as the "facts" of physical objets. A different part of the brain is engaged when considering "tables and chairs" and the like. The conclusion is that there is room for some degree of doubt about abstract things. So a believer may reserve just a teeny bit of doubt about the existence of god, and the atheist may have a slight suspicion that god exists.

I have been trying to get in touch with the authors of this study to ask a question that pertains to my experience: what is going on when someone turns into an atheist after having been a believer? And vice-versa. What happens when a "fact" becomes seen as an error - and vice-versa. Maybe I'll find a way to ask.

I still feel the religious "twitch" even though I now am so convinced that theology is the study of fantasy, not of anything real. I suppose one doesn't unlearn twitches that were 60+ years in the making. According to Gladwell, I have way more than 100000 hours of repetition of religious concepts, beliefs and practices. And it is the one "skill" I wish I didn't have. I wonder what I might be now if I had put in even half that time into musical study. Maybe just another burnt out junkie. But maybe not.

Brainwashing children

I will have more to say later about Barbara Bradley Hagerty's new book, "Fingerprints of God." When I have more time, I will take up some of the issues raised in this well-written book. Suffice it for now that her book confirms for me the fact that those raised in a religion find it very difficult to depart from it even when reason and solid, testable facts intrude. I believe this is especially true for people raised in Christian Science. Where other kids may recoil from stern fundamentalism - and thus be ripe for apostasy - most CS kids are raised in such an atmosphere of pleasantness and self control that they come to associate the metaphysical claims with goodness. So even when their theology is refuted by facts, they still cling to the notion that there MUST be something to the concepts they were raised with. Hagerty's book confirms this. Even after interviewing articulate atheists and scientists, she still, in the end, relaxes into the belief system that gave her comfort and hope.

I am not such a person I was raised as a Catholic, and though I was assiduous in my practice I eventually left the religion, though I clung to the idea of some kind of God for many years afterward. Now that I am free of all that I notice the stickiness of religious education, and recoil against it. I see great wisdom in Dan Dennett's proposal that all kids be required to learn about all religions. Only in this way can the relentless drumming of one orthodoxy be prevented from establishing tyrannical control of a person's mind.

Young people and religion

A recent Pew poll states:

Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the "nones") has been very small -- hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. However ... the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans. (via ABC news)

I certainly know what it is to be young and religious. I was raised as a Catholic and was quite faithful until my mid-30s, when I locked onto Christian Science. But it took until my mid-60s to see what more and more young people today are seeing, according to the above poll.

It is only now after having been away from the absurdity of religion the past four years that I am gaining a sense of what I lost. For over 30 years I fancied myself - and tried hard to be - a spiritual healer, a thinker, a defender of the faith, a biblical scholar, a visionary, and at times even a savior of a church. Though along the way I met a few interesting and lovable co-religionists, in the end I just couldn't abide the hypocrisy, the dullness, the meanness and the arrogance of those who were supposed to be my leaders and examples. Also, unknowingly, I was slowly (at first) losing my ability to swallow some of the absurd beliefs and traditions of both conventional and unconventional religion.

Yes, this took a long, long time to devolve. Shortly after I left the fold, I resumed being the person I was when I was took the leap of faith and set off on a spiritual career. That's why these days I often say I'm immature for my age.

It took a few years, but I gradually reestablished my interest in music. Today I play in a brash blues dance band and work part time at a cool computer store. I can't help wonder where I would be by now if I had stayed on a musical path, developed my skills as a writer and composer, poet, essayist, etc. I'll never know. What I'm grateful for is that during that lost period I somehow managed to keep those embers glowing - though on a back burner.

So I'm somewhat resentful - ya think? - that I wasted my youthful years - truly wasted them since I never really fulfilled even the religious/spiritual expectations. I don't want to admit it, but I am getting to be an old man and while I rejoice in my present activities I know that I will never ever achieve my potential since I am 30+ years behind where I would be if I’d continued to develop along my natural, non-religious lines.

That's why I occasionally speak out against religion - especially for young people. I know what a comfort it can be to adhere to what seems certain, authoritative, and beneficent. When things get crazy in your life the orderliness and fixedness of religious belief seems like safety. But it isn't. It's a huge waste of your time. Get to your true potential - explore it, hone your skills, learn from your mistakes. Yes, if you're going to make mistakes - and you certainly will - let them be in the right direction. Don't let them be like mine, thousands of mistakes within a single Big Mistake.

Your life is yours to develop, not some supernatural being's, not some evangelical community's, not some spiritual leader's or some sacred book's. Religion has been invented to give you the assurance you crave but can never achieve. The ultimate facts are that we live and then we die. In between, we develop our talents and abilities - and have some fun. Work on those and don't waste your time on fantasies of salvation or eternal happiness.

Why I am no longer polite to god

One kind of wisdom says to forget the past and move forward. Another kind, like that espoused by HL Mencken in 1925, says it's noble to contend with stupidity. I might not be so motivated by the latter if I hadn't spent most of my life as a believer. I consider those days a waste, and painfully embarrassing to even contemplate. This is my way of coping.

The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should no better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.

Reply to comment: Why there's no spiritual healing industry

I got an interesting - and rare - comment to my last post, but thought it worth replying with another post instead of burying it in the comments section. The commenter asks:

Why did it take you 30 years to reach the conclusion that spiritual healing doesn't work? How did you survive that long without being able to make a living? I ask these questions sincerely, as a prospective spiritual healer myself, and not out of any sense of hostility towards your position.

Religion works because it offers desperate people a way to find meaning in their lives. It shuts down the critical faculties and gives one a place not only in the universe but in an earthly community. It's like the neighborhood tavern, “where everybody knows your name” and you can obtain the drug that makes you forget the inconsistencies and unfairness of life. I had been raised in a religion that I eventually rejected and had been on my own for 15 years. But when relationships broke up and life got scary I was ready for some kind of general anesthesia. What I found promised not only an explanation for my problems (they weren't real) but a community and a career path that I could join.

Of course there wasn't any money in it but the theology made me feel I was doing something worthwhile and that I would be rewarded with good luck. And I was. I had some investments and a spouse who worked. And then the church started giving me some paying – non-healing - work to do, eventually even hiring me to work at headquarters. So, while the actually “healing” practice didn't pay, there were a lot of auxiliary sources of income.

That's how most people do it. I don't know anyone who makes a full living out spiritual healing work. Some of them make a lot more than I did, but they also tend to be independently wealthy and more charismatic or connected with more affluent and more loyal clients than I was. But if that's all they had to live on I'm sure they couldn't do it – unless they're willing to live at or below the poverty line.

And then there are the people. Such a strong positive theology makes most – but not all - of them cheery and optimistic, and they love to radiate happiness and confidence. They are nice to be around – more pleasant than the fire and brimstone crowd. And they appreciate that their practitioners are making a financial sacrifice in order to be available to shower them with cheer and confidence when they are hurting.

But of course, reason and evidence issues kept nagging away. As I grew older I had physical problems that neither I nor other practitioners could heal. I had to turn to medicine – with a great sense of guilt of course. But further thought and reading forced me to admit that the whole thing is bogus. I now survive on social security, pensions, investments and a part-time job.

Again, if there were real healing, business would be great. But most “patients” are as eager to affirm the efficacy of the practice as the practitioners are. So they will ascribe just about any tiny improvement to the prayer, and are willing to take comfort in – and pay for - the fact that somebody cares about them. Physical healing is mostly the effect of the body's amazing ability to fix itself - it had to be in order to survive eons of evolution. Spiritual healers co-opt this innate ability that is enhanced when patients relax and feel confident - which is the practitioner's main tool. Most older believers – those who survive neglect – get regular medical help, most of the time in secret.

If you're seriously thinking of getting into the spiritual healing racket make sure you have lots of money in reserve. Otherwise, go practice your ministry by helping others in more practical, less dangerous and more remunerative ways. Good luck.

Why there is no "spiritual healing" industry

For over 30 years I practiced "spiritual healing" and never could make a living from it. And I never knew anybody else who got rich off that kind of practice. The little money I did make was from faithful people who believed they should support the practice, or from people too timid to complain they weren't healed, or from people who simply wanted a dial-a-friend. (Yes, there are a lot of lonely, hurting people who just want someone to say nice, positive things and express some love to them.)

But aside from the theological issues, a strong reason I stopped that kind of quackery is that there's no money to be made in it because spiritual healing simply does not work. If it did, it would be the hottest industry in the world. There would be millionaire spiritual healers. IPOs would spring up like mushrooms over every latest wrinkle in prayer technique or practice. Apologists for spiritual healing explain the vacuum by citing the evil materialism of opponents, even while they often admit that medical practitioners are sincere and humanitarian. In other words, most people who rely on or practice medicine just aren't spiritual enough.

And yet, in spite of - or even because of - their greed, there would be a spiritual healing industry larger than modern medicine. Sheer pecuniary interest would make converts of atheists and those billions of vulgar materialists - just as they now invest in the oil and defense industries, that while they do so much damage still have huge markets for their products.

But there's no such investment opportunity. Spiritual healers are pretty much loners, cultivating groups of followers who have more faith in them as shamans than in the spiritual "science" they purport to practice. And I'm not talking about the flashy televangelists who mesmerize millions with their obviously tricked up displays of faith healing. I'm talking about "professional" solo entrepreneurs, like I used to be. And even ordinary folk who offer to pray for sick people.

In the following article, Why Use Medicine If Prayer Works?," this conversation sums it up:

Nurse: “Would you like me to say a prayer for you?”

Me: “Feel free. Now I’d like to ask you a question… why did you go through all the necessary medical training if you believe that prayer can heal people?”

Non-believers: we're #2!

In his inaugural address, President Obama (love that phrase!) mentioned - for the first time, I think - "non-believers" as part of America's "patchwork heritage." This comports with the latest Pew research findings, which show that though Christians comprise 78% of the population, "non-believers" are the second largest group. This is probably a low number considering that of those Christians, many are faking it - including many in Congress.

In a fluffy "statement," the Christian Science Church makes a wild claim that the Obama era marks a trend toward more spirituality:

As significant as this shift in US government is, we are convinced a far more momentous change has been stirring globally—a spiritual transformation.

You have to be pretty selective where you look to make a statement like that. While it's true that in certain parts of the world, poor and underdeveloped countries for instance, the influence of fundamentalist religion is rising, the larger world is decidedly going the other way. Educated and prosperous areas see in rapidly developing breakthroughs in science and technology less and less need for a miraculous imaginary friend to solve their problems.

Bush and Obama represent a stark contrast of vision: Bush smacks of the Manichean black/white world view. Obama is more "ecclesiastical," seeking to include many shades of thought. A good article on this can be found here.

One of those shades of meaning is non-belief in a deity, and I'm glad to be included in the real transformation that the Obama era has begun.