The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (30 page)

In this chapter, we will look at some of our own issues as non-theists. Many of us were raised in the world of religion. Guilt and anxiety do not go away when we decide that religion is a manipulative tool that is largely a detriment to the human race. What does virus-free living mean and what are some of the practical issues that non-believers face?

I asked Terrill to read the manuscript for this book and provide some feedback. When she returned it, she also sent part of her own story. Here is what she had to say:

I was raised a Catholic but have been a non-believer for many years. I questioned a lot starting as a child. First, I asked, “How could something so all-loving, all-caring, cause such fear?” but I had no one to talk to about it. When I went to college, I felt guilty relief not having to go to church every Sunday.

When I read your manuscript, I found it to be so painful that I put it down only to pick it up some time later. This was a life-changing book for me! I rarely read a book twice, but this invoked such reaction that on second reading I was able to absorb more of what you were saying and put it into the context of my life.

At first, I did not understand why it was so intense; why it was evoking such strong feelings in me. I have come to realize that my intense reaction had to do with the “virus” but also my avoidance to look more in depth at my non-believing. It is almost like being gay in a heterosexual world. You deny it, or keep quiet about it, for fear someone (even liberally minded people) may reject you and/or do the conversion thing. I live in a conservative community and am surrounded by people who are deeply infected and unable to communicate or share outside of their religion. This is a “taboo” subject. There are few if any people I can talk to about this.

While I have been without religion for many years, living virus-free is new and has a feel of freedom and relief. Until I read the manuscript, I did not realize how much I still felt the effects of the virus in my life and how it has affected my family. Understanding the god virus concept allowed me to see my behavior and those around me in a very different light. I now understand one of my infected children better and have tools to relate more constructively to her. I recognize my emotional responses and childhood programming much better. The process was painful for me, but worth the effort to get the god virus out of my life.

Many non-theists have had experiences similar to Terrill’s. The seeds of disbelief were firmly in place by their mid-teens if not earlier. Some sense the manipulation early in life, others recognize it in their teens or early adulthood but keep quiet about it for fear of rejection. You may be one of these individuals. From early on, the things you were taught did not seem to make sense. You may have made comments to parents or teachers and felt the full force of the infected come down on you.

I noticed this myself from about the time I was 13. The things I saw did not match up. The creationist view of my church, for example, made no sense. I spoke up on occasion but was tactful enough not to ruffle too many feathers. Since I was the son and grandson of elders of the church, most people just thought, “It is a teenage phase he is going through. He will come around one day.”

When I was in college, I taught a course on early Christian heresies to a senior high Sunday School class. Some parents didn’t approve, and my class suddenly became smaller. Some of the kids secretly found me after church to learn what we had talked about and get the handouts. At the same time I started a “bus ministry,” using the church bus to pick up children from the housing projects and bring them to church. While the elders could not really criticize me for my efforts, they clearly did not want these children in our clean and orderly church. Comments and rumors soon circulated about my program and the children. The program died the week after I left for graduate school, killed by the very person I had trained to take my place. He was voted in as an elder soon after that. These experiences gave me a good sense of how the virus works, although I didn’t gain that understanding until much later in life.

Another clue came when I was a 20 year-old youth leader and still in college. I intentionally brought my all-white youth group together with a black youth group from the same denomination. I was fired from the job within two weeks for reasons I was never told. The last thing any church wants is someone in its midst pointing out its own glaring inconsistencies in how they view truth, race, sex, education, etc. My big mistake was believing Jesus’ words;
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
¹
I didn’t realize that it wasn’t referring to all truth, just their version of it.

The ability to resist the god virus is built into many people, especially those with critical thinking skills, but there has to be a place to practice these skills. I was raised in a white, protestant neighborhood in Wichita, Kansas, and attended church three or more times a week. I was isolated from other religions. There was a Catholic family living on our block, but we didn’t interact with them much.

The more isolated we are from other god viruses, the harder it is to see the contradictions between them and practice critical thinking skills. The Muslim child/teenager growing up in a small tribal village in Afghanistan has little opportunity to practice critical skills since he has little or no exposure to alternative ways of thinking. The home-schooled evangelical or the parochial school child in the United States can be very isolated from other religions.

In western society, we may have many different religions in our community but god viruses are remarkably good at isolating one group from another. The insular Jehovah’s Witnesses function quite well within our communities. Their children are remarkably well infected and insulated. Baptists and evangelicals are not far behind in many respects. From church schools and church camps, to home schooling and frequent church activities, the goal is to keep children immersed in the god virus until the infection has taken hold. It is difficult to learn and practice critical thinking skills while immersed and isolated by the god virus. That is the purpose of immersion. When an individual is able to compare and examine the various religious claims, she soon realizes that religions are full of mythology dressed as fact.
²

1
John 8:32.

2
For an excellent book on virus-free living, see Robert M. Price,
The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For?
(Prometheus Books, 2006.)

An important part of life is learning to be honest, but religion creates many ways to fool ourselves. It is like looking into a mirror that looks at a mirror, the image recedes infinitely. As St. Paul said,
“I see through a glass darkly.”
³
Religion seems to darken the glass quite effectively.

Self-deception is the essence of religious belief. As non-theists it is important for us to identify our self-deceptions and develop the courage to face them head on. Getting the smoke and mirrors of religion out of the way is a great start, but the work is never ending. Let us explore some areas of self-deception that may affect even non-theists.

The god virus is by nature socially conservative. Change threatens its existence. Questioning within a strict religious community or family can bring strong sanctions, from family isolation to excommunication, from threats of violence to economic or social boycott. The virus has powerful ways of keeping people in line.

People with high dependency needs have difficulty standing up to this level of social sanction. The more dependent, the less able they are to use their native intelligence. They depend instead on the word of religious authority.

Dependency limits a person’s ability to act as a free moral agent. Religion may sedate and undermine the courage to live life completely. People stay dependent because they are fearful of the freedom and consequences it may have. Better to stay with the religion than risk social ostracism or disapproval of others.

3
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Religion takes advantage of human life stages to propagate and insulate itself, but it doesn’t contribute to understanding. Understanding the adolescent stage in mental, social and sexual development can help manage and teach children, but most religions oppose this kind of study or teaching, especially when it deals with sex or values development. Similarly, understanding the marriage stage in sexuality, parenting and relationship patterns has great potential to help solve problems of divorce, but few religions want to see research that shows religiosity is correlated with divorce. In short, understanding the life cycle takes power away from religion and undermines its credibility.

The Bible is one big exploration of death and fear of death, but it wasn’t until Elizabeth Kübler-Ross wrote
On Death and Dying
in 1969 that somebody undertook a non-religious exploration of death. Religious literature is full of advice on how to live your life as a youth, parent, adult or older person, but it was not until Gail Sheehy’s publication of
Passages
in 1976 that a non-religious view of life stages was expounded. As in many things, religion is quick to jump on the bandwagon if it benefits the god virus, but rarely initiates the discussion.

Much of guilt comes from religious training. Once you have accepted a non-theist stance in life, guilt does not magically go away. You were infected years before your consciousness had the tools to reject religion. Years after I became a non-theist, I would wake up on Sunday mornings and feel guilty about not being in church! A friend of mine felt guilt about contradicting some religious dogma his children heard from his parents. Another said she still felt guilty throwing a religious solicitation in the trash. Non-theists may notice that religious attitudes about sex, learned in early childhood, still haunt them.

Pay attention to your guilt. Let it come, let it roll over you, talk to it, feel it, listen to it, then examine it in the light of personal responsibility without any god involvement. Once the “god delusion” is exposed (to use Dawkins’ term), guilt often collapses. It is liberating to know that your child-rearing, marriage or sexual practices are yours to decide in the context of the positive and negative consequences to you and those around you. Getting the god virus out of the picture connects you with yourself, others and the environment. No imaginary friend gets in the way.

Awareness of your programming can enhance your marriage and other relationships, as you learn who
you
are, not what you’re programmed to be. As a non-theist, you probably absorbed many ideas and assumptions of religion from family and culture that remain hidden, yet affect your life. Just because you don’t believe doesn’t mean the virus hasn’t affected you.

My own experience has been one of learning to be who I am, not what my parents, ministers or Sunday School teachers said I should be. “Shoulds” are the tyranny of any relationship. Being in relation to another person means learning about your own hang-ups, biases and insecurities. What are your hidden shoulds? What do you expect of the other person that you never tell him? What things do you want in the relationship but are too afraid to say. How much does fear of rejection or loss play into your communication patterns?

It is difficult to communicate if you cannot recognize the “shoulds” and myths that continue to infect you. For example, many people in the United States are married in a religious ceremony with religious vows. What do those vows mean now? Is that religious pledge something you feel bound to? If not, how would you go about renegotiating it with your spouse? If you recommitted to your spouse, how would the vows be different? What unspoken assumptions or beliefs have ruled your marriage because of those vows you made years or decades ago? How does the pressure and expectations of other people influence your decisions and relationships?

Divorce is a pervasive problem in our society. How might more open and rational communication affect the quality of relationships and marriages? What if both parties were virus free and able to define the relationship in a way that ensured a safe environment for child rearing and freedom to pursue marital happiness outside of traditional, viral definitions? Many of
our marital assumptions from monogamy to child rearing practices have been prescribed by religion to enhance propagation, not the best interest or happiness of the couple or family.