by Scott Kaelen
Would the boy who tortured and killed his younger sister have done so if he hadn’t been influenced by a particular movie or book? Might he instead have grown to an old age alongside his sister, none the wiser of what course his life could have steered due to external influence? Or is he inherently imbalanced without any such mental steering?
When a religious extremist tortures and murders someone in the most brutal of ways, does he stop to consider that what passes for his will may have resisted the influence of indoctrinated religion if it hadn’t been so manipulated? Or is religion merely a vehicle for his depravity?
Does free will really exist, or doesn’t it? To an extent, yes, it does. But not to the extent that many of us like to believe. Throughout our lives we are faced with choices where we ponder our possible paths. Each of our psyches is a product of gained information and influence. Your life could have played out quite differently in a number of circumstances. How you reason particular situations could have greatly differing outcomes in the decisions you make. But to believe you are capable of making any decision you choose, in any given circumstance, is arrogant folly.
The neurological tools at our disposal – logic, reason, critical thinking, morals and ethics, worldly knowledge, emotions beyond fear or hunger, a resistance to influence – take us as close as we can get to having complete free will. But, delude ourselves as we might, only deterministic free will exists. This means that the scope of cause and effect is widened, but remains burdened by the limitations of self.
Completely unrestricted free will assumes a perfect balance in perception, and an infinite ability both mentally and physically. In other words, it is synonymous with the powers ascribed to most religious arch-deities – omnificence, omnipotence, omniscience – and is utterly beyond the human grasp as anything more than a concept of infinity.
Moreover, if a religion’s deity really existed – for instance the Christian “God” – and genuinely possessed complete free will on top of the rest of his assumed godliness, then there would be no need for the Bible, no need for commandments, no need for religious representatives and holy places, no need for people to exhibit devotion and worship, because God would be able to make anything happen, whenever, wherever and however he willed it. To further on that, complete free will also demands a lack of one or more overriding, dominant emotions; in the case of the Abrahamic deity, his own alleged words in the various scriptures disprove any notion that he could possess perfect free will, since he openly describes himself as jealous. Jealousy muddies logic and reason, it increases influence and inherent likelihood, and it is a strong manipulator. The existence of jealousy, or any other prevailing emotion, nullifies the chance of being omni-willed, and therefore negates the existence of the Abrahamic deity by the use of critical thinking.
The mixture of emotions and desires that make me who I am also impede my free will, but that only proves I am human and in possession of some free will, governed by finitude and determinism. That’s a compromise I can live with. If existence has one talent, it’s implementing restrictions on all things. Except, perhaps, on itself.
PSYCHOLOGICAL PROJECTION
(TRANSFERENCE OF GUILT)
The transference of guilt is something that Christians are good at. Very good, in fact; right up there with the other Abrahamic faiths of Judaism and Islam. Some Christians claim that atheists could not be in possession of morality, on the basis that atheists refuse to accept the existence of God. The claim is that disbelievers, being Godless and therefore lawless, must be incapable of having morals. Therefore atheists are loose cannons, able to go on a killing spree any moment, liable to turn around and rape the person next to them at the drop of a hat, or to engage in something equally nefarious. However, atheists – according to Christians – do have a soul, and they’re all going to Hell, where they can practice their immorality to their immortal soul’s content.
Ask a Christian how they would behave without God in their life, and a disturbing amount will answer that they’d probably end up committing immoral acts. Some say they might kill, or rape, or be adulterers, homosexuals, or paedophiles. Without God, it seems anything is not only possible but, for some, almost guaranteed. The only things keeping the demon at bay are God and his Commandments, and Jesus and his teachings (whether any given Christian could quote his words or not.) How deeply disturbing is that?
I’ve even witnessed minor celebrities in the Christian movement admit that they’d kill their own children if God ‘told them to’. This is just as bad, if not worse, than saying you would kill your children if you lost God from your life. For some people, there are no limits to how ingrained God has become into their existence. Irrevocably intertwined; beyond any means of psychological help. In short, these are mental cases and ticking time bombs, in serious need of being kept a close eye on.
It doesn’t take a great psychologist to realise that there is obvious guilt transference occurring with many of these people. Most Christians will grudgingly admit that they sin, be it occasionally or often. Most theists will claim that sinning is in human nature, because we’re born wicked, or because we’re imperfect creatures; well, they got the last part right, at least.
Perfection is as big a myth as its religiously supposed elements – omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. You can find the omni prefix on other words, like omnificence, but we’ll leave it at the recognised big three for now. So, most Christians can be pressured into admitting their weaknesses and shortcomings. Take them one step further and you’ll hear them say they are held back from committing the deeper sins only by God himself, because of their acceptance of him commanding their lives.
“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” is a well-known part of the Lord’s Prayer, and it’s a mantra for many Christians to quell their inner demons. Demons that, without God, could run rampant across the Earth.
So, it seems all atheists possess such immoral demons as those the Christians also have but keep on their Commandment leash. And not just atheists, mind you, but all Hindus, Buddhists, deists, agnostics, homosexuals, so on and so forth.
I have been atheist since I was able to formulate critical thoughts; I was about eight years old when it slowly dawned on me that the teachings at the local church, at Sunday school and primary school, and a plethora of other places, was nothing more than fictional waffle. I reached the conclusion, perhaps easier than some might reach it, in large thanks to being an avid reader of fiction from a young age. I managed to separate fact from fiction. My logical and rational mind saw religion as a very transparent illusion woven purely for the masses – not because they fear God, but because they fear mortality, and because, without the guiding hand and words of God, they also fear they lack the strength and free will to shackle their inherent immorality.
That’s right; without God, the streets would be rife with people gone off the rails. It is these people who persecute atheists (and other sinners) by accusing them of not possessing morals and ethics, and yet as an atheist I can safely say I have completed 38 years of existence (and counting) without resorting to rape, murder, paedophilia, or any other crimes against my fellow humans. How, if I am such a demon-possessed heathen, have I managed to maintain such a power over my infernal spirit? Well, the answer is easy: I’ve got my own self-made set of morals, ethics and social rules. In short, I have a personal code of conduct. I know right from wrong, and I don’t need the contents of a book to realise or maintain my code.
Christians who admit they would sin without the presence of God, and who also accuse disbelievers of lacking morals, are doing something that anyone who knows the tiniest whiff of psychology can recognise. They know that without the binding forces of religion – and admittedly also without the consequences of breaking non-religious laws – they would be capable of committing immoral acts. With this admission/accusation combo, they are transferring guilt from themselves onto those they call sinners. Accusing an atheist of being capable of inhumane acts is
nothing more than psychological projection. In a way, that projection is like going to confession and wringing sins from yourself like stagnant water from a sponge. How convenient it must be for them to have the absolving of sin as their no-questions-asked get out of jail free card.
As for the transference of influence, the preachings of the first prophets of the Old Testament wormed their way down the centuries until they reached the ears of Jesus, some two millennia after Moses. In turn, Jesus’ preachings found their way to Muhammad, six centuries after Jesus’ death. Fast forward to the present day and we’ve got a boiling pot of Abrahamic faiths, filled to the brim with billions of humans who are equally as enraptured in their faiths as were the original writers of the Torah, the New Testament and the Quran.
This type of psychological transference relies on the spreading of so-called ‘belief’ by capitalising on influence, from the infected to the not-yet-infected. It began many thousands of years ago, even before Moses first started chatting about Abraham. This is the transference of the deadliest neurotic disorder, across time and space.
Religion is the most viral manifestation in human history. And the saddest part of this millennia-old story is that a pitifully small percentage of humans throughout the ages were immune.
But a vaccine is being developed, and you’ve just tasted a small dose of it. Don’t be afraid.
THE RELIGIOUS DISORDER
Some Christians see atheists as people who need to be saved, and, if the poor atheists don’t find that salvation, they’ll burn for eternity in a lake of hellfire. Practically all Christians believe atheists are just ‘ignoring’ the existence of God.
How I, as an alleged heathen, differ from that barbaric condemnation is that I see theists in a much more clinical light. I believe not that Christians need salvation, not that they deserve an eternity of torture, but that they are sick. Mentally sick. For some of them the sickness is mild, but for others it’s extreme. Sometimes their immune system manages to shrug it off eventually, and those people dis-attach themselves from their organised religion and become merely spiritual, or deists, or even atheists. But for others, religion becomes so embedded into their psyches that it is inextricably intertwined; such people have gone beyond help.
Many psychologists recognise a connection between religion and schizophrenia: prayer to an apparently extrinsic entity; worship of said entity; psychotic episodes; intense “experiences”. Some people develop to the point where they believe that they themselves are “Godsent” – I’m not just talking about religious figureheads, but also the average man or woman on the street. In these instances, religion is symptomatic of the underlying neurological disorder, whether it be schizophrenia or something other. The root neurological cause is most often the catalyst that can evolve into a religious disorder, but sometimes the catalyst is the presence of religion in someone’s life leading to neurological trauma.
It tends to be true that people who “hear” God’s voice talking to them are more religious than those who do not. Such individuals are often more outspoken, more feverish in their proclamations (especially against anyone or anything that contradicts an element of their faith), and they will tend to exhibit other symptoms such as claiming to experience visions which they attribute to mystical elements of their religion.
I believe that such things as faith in a deity, prayer, worship, and the following of religious doctrines – especially when such actions are subjected onto children and other family members – ought to be recognised and treated as a neurological issue. God is not real, but the dangers of religion are very real. Even now, the Islamic State is infiltrating probably every country in Europe and every state in America, and people across the world are joining their fanatical, extremist religious movement. Tell me that is not a neurological issue.
Natural diseases are bad enough: between the Black Plague and the Red Plague, roughly half a billion people died across Eurasia and the Americas, but religion has the capacity to spread with just as high a death-rate if left unchecked. Every few years, we can safely say that the death toll as a direct result of religious extremism by those in positions of power, and their followers, number in the millions, across the world. This is not an exaggeration.
And before you might shout, “What about Hitler! He was an atheist!” I’ll remind you that Hitler was not an atheist but a deist, and therefore believed in the existence of a cosmic deity and an afterlife. Hitler hated Judaism and despised Christianity, despite having been earlier indoctrinated into the latter. He disliked Arabs, but admired Islam. Admittedly he was a barbarian, and a madman, but he wasn’t an atheist. Just because a genocidal leader isn’t labelled with an organised religion, don’t automatically assume that he doesn’t believe in a cosmic engineer; most of the time this is not the case. I have absolutely no doubt that Hitler suffered multiple neurological disorders, and that his departure from Christianity, followed by his deistic beliefs, were by-products of some of those disorders.
PLAYROOM
From the poetry volume DeadVerse
by Scott Kaelen
A little girl enters her darkening playroom
and kneels before her doll-house.
She idly peers into fragile chambers,
their impersonal walls unblazoned.
In her hand she grips a lifeless form
made of stuffing and paisley plush.
Green marble peeks through a plastic crack,
while its twin stares sightless and blank.
Her mind is crammed with scripture and verse
from the one book she possesses.
Her parents insist she needs no other,
which the churchman also stresses.
The Bible holds all she will ever require
in this world the Lord created.
But she knows that the truth of existence
is we’re just distractions for God’s entertainment.
Tomorrow she’ll wear her best frock for service,
with shoes that are tight now but shiny.
Dragged down the aisle, she’ll peer at depictions
of disciples, all sharp-edged and scary.
The assemblage stares mutely to the pulpit,
bowing heads when the preacher commands.
Their faces are austere, scowling or joyous,
with eyes dead and empty as the doll in her hands.
The spellbinding sermon floods through her, inside her;
wide-eyed, heart pounding, she trembles.
The preacher’s voice rises, drunken with fervour,
like Daddy sometimes in the evenings.
Over her bedside a picture solemnly hangs,
of Jesus arrested, resigned to his fate.
A blush heats her skin as she feels his eyes on her
while she sits there cross-legged and plays.
With a frown and a gasp and a twist of her hands
there’s a rip and the doll’s head detaches.
Just a fraction of guilt as she casts it aside
to the corner for broken toy pieces.
Their faces all grinning, lost or bemused,
beneath layers of dust, they moulder.
She wonders if one day she’ll have to join them,
a plaything discarded when she’s grown a bit older.
She unbuckles her shoes and kicks them aside,
rises and slips her dress down to the tiles.
A chill pricks her skin as she gathers the garment
and holds it, a moment, in a fist-clenched caress
before laying it down in a neat, folded square,
shoes under the chair just like she’s supposed to.
By the bedside she kneels, like a good little girl,
praying, as bidden, for God’s absolution.
She climbs into bed and flicks off the lamp,
pulls the covers close up to her chin.
On the wall the Christ frowns, black-gazed in shadow,
like the heap in the corner, of tors
os and limbs.
Perhaps God feels no love, just a bored, helpless child,
hooking strings to his toys of skin, flesh and bone?
Then she shrinks at the Lord’s calloused touch,
knowing though she may sin, she never does so alone.
BLESSED ARE WHO?
It’s not only atheists who have to tolerate the worst of what Christianity has to offer. It’s also the best, the most decent of the Christians who have to endure their hate-dribbling brethren constantly vomiting about how unbelievers are a big gaggle of sinning nastiness and have bought themselves first-class tickets on the barge to Holiday Hell where they’ll roast for eternity. There are a lot of Christians out there who find such venom-filled preaching embarrassing and abhorrent.
But let’s cut the bull for a moment. Every time I’m told that I’m destined to deep-fry in eternal damnation, I know what those people are really saying to me: they’re saying that they wish for me to suffer the most agonising torture for as long as I can possibly endure it. Now, tell me if you can, what makes those Christians who would say such horrid things any different from Muslim extremists who gang-rape mothers and daughters before setting them on fire, mutilating them and hacking the heads from their bodies? Give these Christian extremists the same free rein that the Islamic State currently has, and I think we all know what atrocities would occur, once again thinly disguised under the name of religion. If only the moderates would stop trying to defend their faith and just leave it for a better and more peaceful ideology.
I don’t recall hearing an atheist proclaim a theist to be destined to burn at the heart of a star for billions of years, or be crushed to subatomic particles within a black hole where physics runs haywire. Atheists don’t make such horrible proclamations, but we have to bear the brunt of them from theists.
When Christians read the Bible (if, indeed, they ever bother) they open it and read a few verses, and mull them over. If at first they don’t like what they’ve read, then their subconscious will reason over the words until they reach a compromise that interprets those words in a way that allows them to fit into that person’s psyche, and lets them continue practising their faith. So many people utterly disregard the Old Testament, even though it is allegedly much closer to God than the New Testament. Take what you like the sound of, what slots nicely into your existence, into the way you view the world, and cast away the rest.