When religious thinking paves your way: Ten ways in which Trump used the arguments we get from Christians to become a god in his own right

Well it's almost the end of 2016. It's safe to say that it's one that we'll never forget. Many are calling it the worst year ever. I don't quite subscribe to that. Undeniably 2016 had it's lows but so have other years before and we'll have lows in years to come too. People have pointed to the death of a number of famous entertainers. Starting with David Bowie and Prince who succumbed early in the year. Since then there appears to have been a steady procession and then a recent spate of deaths again to end the year. I am not sure whether indeed the number of celebrity deaths in this year are significantly higher than any other year. I just feel as if people decided sometime ago that 2016 was horrible and every unfortunate death is met with a "Damn you, 2016!"

I can't remember any other year being held up to such a standard. Perhaps we hope that if we just put all the bad stuff and wrap it up neatly into a 2016 holiday package, we can make ourselves believe that we will have a smooth 2017 with none of the current negativity.

One thing that it's hard for me to deny is that this year has been bizarre. Last week I actually met for the first time ever a believer in a flat earth!  I feel as though my conversation with that guy defined my feeling about 2016. Up can be down, hot can be cold, black can be white, and a circle can be a straight line,  you just need the right person behind it to carry the message and it's all good.

Of course there is one person who was at the cusp of all this, leading the way in the post truth world. None other than the President Elect of the USA, Donald J Trump.

This year I have had the benefit of travelling to a few places in the world and everywhere I have been there has been a similar level of incredulity surrounding Donald  Trump's rise. How could a person so clearly egotistical, misogynistic, bigoted and generally ignorant of  world issues, be in the running to be nominee for a party in the world's most powerful and influential country? How could that person BE the nominee of a major party in the country? How could he actually BE president of that country? At every level that Trump conquered in his journey, the degree of bewilderment just got more and more pronounced.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around it all, but the more I think about it, what has happened is that the world in general has got a taste of the bewilderment that many of us atheists experience when we encounter believers of different stripes within the Christian faith, or indeed any faith.

I'll concentrate on the Christians in my writing here as these are the kind of believers  that I talk with on the most regular basis. I and many other non-believers have often asked them how they  can endorse a book that so clearly demeans women and  foreigners, supports slavery and actually directs the rape of children and slaughter of entire communities. Incredibly to those of us on the atheist side, people of faith find arguments to justify it, still referring to this book as "The Good Book". The book that they are willing to stake their lives on. The book whose author trumps everything and everyone. So, it's not just that they give the book a pass, they turn things upside down and make the book with all the worse things in it, into the standard for GOOD! They swear on it! It is indeed their gospel truth.

I, and I daresay the majority of my fellow atheists in the world of activists,  have sought to push against religions and faith for this reason. It seems clear to us that religion is one of the main devices, if not the only device under which this inversion of morality can occur on a mass scale. We have made this argument again and again about how belief in religious dogma can be dangerous. Over and over again we have been told that we are a bit extreme in blaming religion for everything. We are accused of falsely assuming that a little belief in a book that gives people hope and purpose in life can actually harm somebody. Many people have assured us that the people of faith know and understand that the way of thinking they use in church shouldn't be and cannot be applied to other aspects of life, where the ability to reason is the one and only thing that matters.

So even the world's most fundamentalist believer can be a brilliant scientist, an insightful economist or and A+ scholar when needed. He can make informed and rational decisions about which is the best route to take to get home, what is the best part of town to live in, or who is the best candidate to vote for. This I considered a reasonable counter argument to my position, one that at least gave me pause. There are indeed lots of good examples of people who have not allowed their irrational religious faith cups to runneth over into other critical aspects of life, and to the extent that these people are able to get the psychological and emotional benefits from those beliefs, they appear to be winning the game. They appear to be able to effectively  cherry pick what they want for  their faith life without damaging their overall reasoning capabilities. In an odd way I sometimes admire these people.  The way that they are able to  self delude, so that the faith support that is so much available from religious institutions all around us,  can be used by them to get through the dark days and nights. We as atheists are well aware that as soon as we accept that we don't believe, we lose any opportunity to get benefit from those beliefs that we consider logically unjustifiable.

But this year has made me look again at the argument that suggests that it is difficult for irrational beliefs encouraged by religious groups to spill over to other areas. Indeed, 2016 provided a text book case on  how religious thinking can overflow from that shallow faith box and be capitalized on by a person skilled in the art of the con. We always knew it could happen. We have seen totalitarianism backed up by various forms of dogma throughout history. However,  for many of us living in North America and the Caribbean, who have had experiences of relatively stable democratic governments, it was incredible to see the USA succumbing to uncritical thinking in such a dramatic way.  I guess it's just a reminder that anyone, any country, any population in the world can get taken in. None of us can be complacent. We can't assume that we'll always be rational, we can't assume that the people around us that we see every day will always be rational. All of us are vulnerable to personal biases and fallacious arguments.

That's one of the reasons why I love to be part of the skeptic community. It's not that skeptics can't become trapped in superstitious thinking or irrational beliefs. It's just that I think that when you make it part of your life to actively try to minimize personal biases and flawed reasoning that can hurt you,  you are just a little more likely to actually recognize the con when it comes. You might still fall for it, but at a minimum you are a bit better equipped to handle it and maybe find a way out.

In contrast, religious organizations encourage you to put that reasoning aside and go with your subjective feelings which are highly influenced by your personal upbringing and the individuals and leaders that you have put your trust in from the time you were small.

For Christians, this means the church, the bible and Jesus in the main. The faithful are taught to hold on and defend those beliefs come what may. And we atheists see this in action often if we care to enter into debates or discussions with them.  It's my view that they became so used to using flawed reasoning in defence of their belief that it was not difficult for someone like Donald Trump to gain legitimacy by using those same techniques.

Below I will show you ten ways in which Donald Trump borrowed from arguments commonly used by Christians to defend their beliefs to atheists. I'll give you first the common argument for God we get from Christianity and then show how Trump used it to get the same immunity from responsibility or blame for actions that the gods typically get from their followers.



1.  'Nobody is perfect. He who is without sin cast the first stone'

How Christians use it 

This is a classic technique used by religious people when they want to deflect from the 'sins' committed by someone from within their ranks. More often that not it is to defend some pastor who has been caught doing the very thing he preaches not to do.  Might be a Jimmy Swaggart found in a hotel with a prostitute, or Pastor Eddie Long found having sex with a young boy in the choir. Here the idea there are trying to put forward is that nobody is perfect and everybody falls short. Of course what other people do is irrelevant to their argument. But the aim here is to try to make you feel guilty for trying to hold them to a standard. It's a form of gas-lighting where the implication is that the fault is with YOU in trying to hold THEM to impossible standards. It makes the person being accused sound humble as they admit that they are less than ideal. Of course condemning these people for their practises is not an attempt to hold them to an impossible standard, it's just to hold them to a standard they have set for others. But conveniently many of the believers do not see it that way.

How Trump used it

Trump went straight for this argument after the Access Hollywood tape showed that he had made some demeaning and insulting comments about women. He immediately said the he had never claimed to be a 'perfect person'.  Trying to make it seem that people were expecting perfection from him. Of course that was never the case. We just wanted to hold him accountable for his action. But his response implied that it was the accusers that were being unreasonable, not him. His only crime 'was not being perfect'. This victim blaming is exactly the same used by Christians in arguing that ' he who is without sin cast the first stone'.



2. ' You are not worthy to judge my faith without having a personal experience with the faith'

This is another one we hear a lot as atheists. Many Christians believe that their personal experience with god and in faith, means that they have the insider knowledge and that gives them the leg up on we who have had no such experience. They might make the argument that you can't expect to argue about the effectiveness of a drug if you have never studied medicine or pharmacy. Of course this is a bad analogy. We know medicine and drugs exist and we have a well established scientific protocol to investigate and evaluate them. In the case of  religion vs atheism, it's the existence of God that is under investigation. You can't start by claiming the existence of the thing for which you are trying to  give evidence. Flawed argument it may be, but by using this technique, you can dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as being an unreliable witness. You are effectively saying that the only people that can give an opinion on the existence of your god and the veracity of your religion, are those who already believe. It's circular, but it can work for people who already believe and don't think through the argument carefully.

How Trump used it

Trump and his supporters used this by just saying that a lot of the people who were saying bad things about Trump, didn't really know him. They couldn't really judge him unless they were in the inner circle and new the 'real' Donald Trump. Those trustworthy people were those like his family his children and his close advisors like Kelly Ann Conway. Those folk had never experienced all the horrible things Trump was accused of. Those were the people whose opinions really mattered, not the angry non believers on the outside. Yes, the only people worthy of judging Trump were the ones who already believed in Trump. Very simple way to 'poison the well' and dismiss the opposers through what is a variant of an 'ad hominem' attack.


3. ' Atheism is a religion too!'

How Christians use it

This is another tactic the religious like to use, and it can be extremely effective! Very often we atheists get caught up in definitions for 'religion' and in the end it becomes an argument of semantics and no substantive point is really made on either side.

The reason that religious people like to make this argument has become clear to me over the years. It's an attempt to put your position and theirs on an equal footing, when in reality there is a huge difference. They are the ones making the claim, the atheist is not making an equal counter claim of 'no god'. The theists are the ones that are making the supernatural claim and need to provide the evidence.

By claiming atheism is a religion, theists aim to argue that both atheism and Christianity are equally unfounded. Both relying on 'faith' to prop them up. As such, it makes sense to choose the worldview that provides more benefit and gives more hope. At worst they can make the 'undecideds' out there believe that atheism vs Christianity is an 'eeny-meeny' decision and once it comes down to a toss up like that, there is always a fair chance that the coin will land their way.

How Trump used it

This was an important technique for Trump to use. Similarly to the people arguing on the side of religious faith, he had little in the way of facts to offer. So he just had to argue in the debates with Hilary Clinton, that Clinton also was arguing from a non factual basis.

He had to emphasize that SHE was being dishonest and had no factual  basis for what she was claiming. And just like many of us who  are atheists, Clinton got caught up in trying to defend why the position she was given was indeed based in fact. Arguing strongly that there was science and evidence to back up what she was saying. But Trump had none of it,  he still maintained that she was  arguing dishonestly, putting forward her own faith position that her followers would obviously swallow uncritically. The more time Clinton spent defending her 'facts',  the less time time there was  to address the weakness or gaps in Trumps version of the truth.

Often the debate came down to

 "You're lying"
" No you're the one that's lying"
"You're a puppet"
"No you're the puppet"

as a back and forth.

No different than  the

 "Atheism is a religion"
" No atheism is not a religion!"
" It takes more faith to be an atheist!"
" No atheism is not a faith"

that I have heard so many times in the atheism vs theism debates.

In the minds of people watching, these kind of exchanges can seem like childish " Yes you are!" " No I am not!" shouting matches.  They tend to bring down the credibility of both participants in the eyes of  observers. So it feels like it's a draw with both players being equally bad. If you are in a debate where you are weaker and you can make your supporters think that you at least held the other one to a draw, it's an equivalent of a victory. Spectators will always go for the one they like  better in a case like that. If you can make that be you, you're home free. I have seen it  happen in many a debate of creationism vs evolution. Trump played the game exactly that same way,  he may have lost in the scientific battle,  but he won the rhetorical game and that was all that mattered in the end.


4. 'Why do you keep ridiculing my faith?'

How Christians use it

This is a big one and is honestly one of the most difficult ones to deal with when a Christian brings it up. It's hard to counter, because to a large extent it is true, we do tend to ridicule faith quite a bit within the atheist community even when we try to do it in a respectable way. Of course we always explain that  it's the belief we ridicule and not the believers themselves. But it's a hard sell, especially if the Christian herself holds the beliefs in question extremely deeply.

Often this accusation of ridiculing is followed up with the idea that we think they are stupid. Again this is a tough one to hear. Generally speaking I don't believe that believers are stupid at all. There are many I know who I would rate as being more informed and more rational than me in many areas. It's just that they have not quite given the degree of skepticism necessary to this one cherished belief. But it's still not always to easy to convince them that you are not insulting them personally.

Once you get to that point, it's hard to go forward with the argument because the believer feels a bit insulted and will tend to dig in to their beliefs, even if they at some level recognize the points you are making. I know for myself that when I get to this point I usually back off the argument in order to not offend further. I tend not to push ahead with arguments when I feel the interlocutor is being severely effected emotionally. So they can go away feeling like a winner, not because they made a good argument but because they successfully disarmed me from effectively making mine.

How Trump used it

Trump used this much better than I gave him credit for initially. We can all point to a number of laughably ridiculous ideas that Trump had from the start.  Building a wall across the US Mexican border? How could you help but laugh at an idea like that. It's as implausible as Jonah in the belly of a fish or Noah and his floating boat. Hard to hear any of these ideas as a faith  'outsider' and not snicker or downright fall over laughing.

Not allowing any Muslims in to the country? How could you administer something like that? Go after families of terrorists to torture them for the 'sins' of their sons or fathers? How could any of that be taken seriously? But getting us to laugh was a great weapon that Trump had. Late night shows also played they part by ridiculing the ridiculous. The more we laughed, the more his supporters thought we were laughing at them and their leader. They felt insulted and dug in their support even deeper.

In the end there were attempts to let them know that our problem was with Trump not with those who had been the unfortunate (not stupid) victims taken in by Trump. But it was too late, they felt insulted and ridiculed and we felt the backlash at the polls.


5. ' Why do you always pick out the bad parts of the bible, why ignore all the good?

How Christians use it

This is again a deflecting technique. It's not surprising that atheists in critiquing the bible point to the absurdities and atrocities and the contradictions that go throughout the bible, rather than the good advice and the stories that emphasize peace and love. We do this because so many Christians make the argument that the book is authored or inspired by God. It would stand to reason that a book with divine authorship would be flawless, ALL good. Why would a divine being allow bad advice or ludicrous ideas to be circulated in his name?

Yet, I can think of many times that Christians when made to face embarrassing parts of their holy book, simply point to another verse that offers an entirely different idea. So once they can point to Jesus' command to ' love thy neighbour as thyself ' the book is all good and worthy as an object of worship.  It doesn't  matter how many times other passages in the book sound like the rantings of a barbaric cult.

For those of us looking from the outside the only thing these 'good' passages do is highlight the contradictions throughout the bible. They do nothing to nullify earlier passages. But for those within the faith already, they can hold on to these 'good' passages that are clearly understood and then live with the fact that they just don't quite have the level of understanding to explain those horror passages.

How Trump used it

There is an old saying that  ' even a broken clock is right twice a day'.  The idea being that no matter how inaccurate or dysfunctional something is it can be correct sometimes, just as a matter of chance.

Trump is a master at saying anything and everything. Comments coming out of him often fly as fast  and erratic as an AR 15 machine gun. The contradictions are often sprayed left. right and centre.  Even today as I write this, Trump tweeted that Obama was putting every obstacle in place to stop the transition but at a later press conference also TODAY,  Trump said he had phone call with Obama   that was  'very nice'  and the  transition was going ahead smoothly.

This kind of juxtaposition is no less jarring than what we find so often in the 'good book'. From one who has 'not come to bring peace but a sword' but yet is 'peace' himself. One who wants you to leave your family to follow him but also love your family and build around them. One who created evil and yet comes to destroy it. A god who is somehow all merciful and yet all just. It's enough to make you dizzy, but the great thing is, that whatever the situation, whatever the idea or philosophy you want to promote, there is something somewhere within that bible to support it.

Trump now can do the same thing.  Anything he does that you don't agree with? No problem, you just have to find one instance of something opposite that he has said in the past and that is the nullifier. So 20 women can come forward and say he molested them but all you need is one to come forward and say, he always treated her respectfully and that seals the issue. And just like the bible,  Trump words carry much more weight than action. So when he emphatically states ' no one respects women more than ME!" that all but ends the debate. No different that when a Christian gives us the 'love thy neighbour' quote, drops the mic and walks out.



6. ' God is good all the time and all the time God is good!" (or some other meaningless catch phrase)

How Christians use it

Yes, you know it and you've heard it. Things that are said that sound good because there is a rhyme or a nice alliteration, But when you break them down even the most ardent followers can't explain what it means. God is good! What does that really mean? Does it mean that good is defined by what God does? If so it's a tautology, like saying God is god or good is good. If good has a definition independent from God, how can you be sure that God will always be good? How could you assess that unless you had the ability to observe everything that God ever did and knew everything that God would ever do in the future? What human being could do that?  Clearly it's just a statement where the hope is that repetition will make it true. I have yet to have a Christian explain to me how they arrived at that ' God is good all the time' knowledge and whether the good comes before the God or the God comes before the good. But it doesn't matter.

There are other similar phrases like ' Christianity is not a religion it's a relationship" This is another vacuous statement. It's done to imply that Christianity is somehow different from other faiths, that there is some relationship that makes their faith unique. But when you try to break it down, it is puzzling. Whether there is a relationship or not, surely Christianity is a religion. There is a still a set of core beliefs that one has to believe as a matter of faith. Denominations may differ on some details, but there is still some dogma to be accepted.  Religion and relationship are not mutually exclusive. And what is the relationship they speak of? How is that defined? How can you assess that when you can't even give evidence to satisfy anyone outside of the faith that the entity even exists? The words are empty, but is sounds good to the believer. It is a cool catch phrase, that they can repeat when people challenge them. That is enough to keep many believers confident in maintaining their  positions.

How Trump used it

As a former TV reality show star, Trump knows all about using the catchy phrases to get the attention of viewers and maintain it. The 'sound good', emotionally satisfying phrases that don't actually have to have any real meaning.

The big one he went to from early was 'Make America great again!" From the time he made that statement people were asking what that meant. Was America great in the past? If so when did it stop being great? What factors removed the greatness? What were examples of the things that would need to be restored to make America great again? What measures could you employ to determine the point at which America could justifiably be considered great again?  We never got an answer to any of these questions, but his supporters didn't care. They went out to the rallies and bought the hats in their millions. Everyone wants to be great and to make something great. Just like everyone wants the assurance of worshipping a good god.

The other catchphrase that Trump came with was "Drain the Swamp!" again it sounded exciting and aggressive but we also had no clear idea what he really meant by that. What exactly was that swamp? How was he draining it? What was being replaced? How could we know when this process was complete? Was the drain a drain of people, policies, ideas? What were they talking about?

That's the beauty of the catch phrase, meaning is always secondary. It  just has to be something simple and memorable that people can sing together in chorus and feel good about. It works in church and it certainly worked in Trump's congregations all across the US.


7. ' Doesn't matter what evidence I give you, you'll never believe in God, you have an anti God worldview from the start'

How Christians use it

This is another way in which the religious attempt to disarm the atheists in discussion and debate. The idea here is to make it seem that the disbelief is not based on reason or evaluation of the evidence. It's based on a presupposition of. non existence of the supernatural. If that were true, of course it would mean that no evidence would be sufficient to convince us. But what evidence do they have to make this assessment of us? Most of the time we give them at least some evidence that if available would make us have a second look at what we believe. A few instances of human limbs growing back or people suddenly walking out of graves would certainly help to tip the scales towards belief in the supernatural. But many Christians dismiss all that talk from us and simply conclude that we would stubbornly resist any possible evidence, because we just MUST believe that there is no God there.

By convincing themselves that all we are doing is conveniently choosing a 'non god' worldview, they feel justified in choosing a worldview of their own and putting a god in it. It's similar to the claim that 'atheism is a religion' discussed earlier. The more they can discredit the legitimacy of our analysis the more they can feel justified in sticking to their own unfalsifiable beliefs.

How Trump used it

Trump and his supporters use this technique a lot too. Any view against Trump is just because you are biased against him from the start. They argue that there is nothing that Trump could do that would make us change our view of him. We just start from the presupposition " Trump = bad". There is some truth in the fact that this is how many people see him. But it's not just because we believe that apriori. It's just that this is the evidence that Trump keeps presenting us again and again and again.

We would be happy to change our views if given evidence to the contrary, it's just that we never get it. So it just seems reasonable to conclude that we likely will never get it. But that's not how his supporters see it. They still consider those against them to be brainwashed by somebody. The media, the regressive left, the academic elites. Somebody out there is deceiving us in a similar manner to how the devil has been doing since Eve was tempted in that magical garden.

Meanwhile, those in the Trump camp continue to essentially do what they were accusing the other side of doing, dismissing those on the other side no matter what. For many on Trump side, Hilary Clinton was synonymous with the devil. That was their chosen worldview. She was 'Crooked Hilary' by definition. One of the easiest way to emphasize a presupposition is by creating  a label for a person. A definition to be applied before the discussion even starts. Trump was a master at this, whether it was "Crooked Hilary" "Lying Ted' " Little Marco" or " Low Energy Jeb".

So, just like the religious people, all Trump did was accuse the opposition of doing exactly what was his own trade. It put those on the other side on the defensive and they just weren't able to counter it. How can you accuse everyone else of bias and deceit while you engage in it blatantly? Religions have been doing it for years. Trump just jumped on that bandwagon.


8. "They're still many questions that science can't answer'.

How Christians use it

This is an effective tactic often used in debate, helping to distract from the lack of evidence for the religious idea being presented. It's an argument from ignorance but it is amazing how many people I have met for whom this argument helped them become more open to belief in the supernatural.

For sure, there are lots of mysteries of the universe that science has yet to provide satisfying answers. Foremost among these are the details of how the universe that we live in got started and how life, conscious living organisms, first came to be on this planet. However, in spite of these gaps in the knowledge, the amount that we have learnt through the application of the scientific method is nothing short of remarkable. Indeed all the things that we feel justified to call 'facts'  about the universe have been revealed to us through coming up with hypotheses, testing these hypotheses through observations or other available evidence and drawing inferences. That is the scientific method in a nutshell and without it I could not be typing on a computer and you couldn't receive the ideas coming out of  my head, thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.

Still, in spite of the undeniable success of this method, people consider that it's not enough on it's own. There must be something more, some other way outside of this mainstream method that we need to tap into, to gain the other elusive knowledge floating somewhere out there in the ether. For many people this other way is through their God and their religion. A mysterious method for connecting directly with the universe that some kind of prayer, meditation or obscure form of telepathy  can unlock.

Unlike the scientific method, these other areas have not contributed to human knowledge. It's not to say that engaging in forms of spiritual reflexion are a waste of time, it's just that when it comes to knowledge about reality itself, they don't take us closer. This can be clearly shown by the fact that any time that people attempt to justify these methods, they attempt to get some verification through science. So far no mechanism they have suggested has led to any knowledge that gives results that are consistently reliable.

It really is like going in to a room realizing that the hand stand there is shaky and  concluding that it's therefore better to throw it out and hang your hat on an invisible hat stand instead.

How Trump used it

Well Trump of course jumped all over this idea that our religious friends often raise with us. Again it was highly effective given his own lack of knowledge and understanding of the subjects he was dealing with. Once the debate could focus on the weaknesses of his opposition, he never had to give any arguments or evidence of what he was proposing. Instead of hitting at the weakness of  'science' as religious people generally do, Trump's opponent was 'the establishment' Arguing against how the established systems, the established personnel, the establish institutions had failed to provide the benefits to the country and the world that they had been put there to do. This is undeniably true. It's just like the scientific method discussed earlier. Many of the social and political institutions in the US and further afield fall short of what they should be doing. There is corruption and human greed and desire to manipulate that get in the way many times. But still the benefits such as they are, have also been served by these same institutions. It would stand to reason that where such institutions and systems fall down, the way to fix is to see where the weaknesses are and attempt to make them stronger or more effective. Foe those that have no longer the ability to provide benefits, we can get rid of those altogether, but we always need to have something that that we can replace it with. A new idea or theory that has at least an equal level off legitimacy to to take its place. That's how changes and modifications are made in the scientific world and it is how you would expect to changes in the socio political world to be made as well.

But Trump rode on the argument that the religious fundamentalists and creationists often use. The entrenched theory isn't working as well it should so you need something new. Something totally different 'an outsider'. The argument is since those in there aren't able to fix all the problems, you need someone with no experience, no track record, no evidence to support his ability to fix any of the issues at hand, to do the job. The idea that what we need to fix a  political situation is a person whose main claim to the top position is ' he's not a politician' is in essence no different from religious people suggesting that the way to fill the gaps that science has been incapable of filling is by embracing total 'non-science' with 'an outsider' theory like creationism.

Yes, Trump tapped into that ever growing idea that facts, evidence and science are secondary to just raw passion, aggression and talk about what you can do. You're on a plane about to crash, forget the guy with five years of flight school that barely failed his final flight exam yesterday, leave it in the hands of the mouthy 10 year old who once when to the airport with his dad and saw a couple planes land and take off from the tarmac.

9 ' You can't take the bible literally

How Christians use it

This is the favourite of the liberal Christian and it was one of my go to arguments as well when I was on the Christian side. These kind of arguments make religions far more palatable for people who tend to have a more intellectual approach when looking at faith.

There is no doubt that the bible has a considerable amount of poetry and artistry in putting forth its messages. Parables and allegories would have been a large part of the culture and tradition from which the scriptures that eventually came to make up the bible emerged. However, that not withstanding, there are times when the scriptures give clear instructions for genocide and rape. In such situations it's hard to argue that these are examples of the bible using an analogy or being poetic. Furthermore, even if it weren't literal what deeper positive lesson for life could be obtained from such stories? So you should go out and figuratively kill all the Amalekites, metaphorically take all the women and concubines for yourself?

Of course what we get from believers when passages like this come up, is that we are taking the bible 'out of context'.  Really? But in what context, place or time in the history of mankind could rape, slavery, misogyny, xenophobia and blood sacrifice be a good thing? Still haven't got an answer, but it is amazing how effective the 'out of context free'  card is played by the religious and how effective it is in sweeping away the obvious horrors of the bible that would be  declared as abhorrent had they appeared as passages in any other book on the planet.

How Trump used it

Well it's his supporters and apologists that mainly used this tactic. Trump himself just reaped the benefits. Trump went about making statements with his typical bravado and brashness in the lead up to the election.

Declaring that he will build a wall to keep the Mexicans out, speaking about the problems  with immigrants from that country, suggesting that they send their worst people, rapists among many other things. He spoke about a complete ban on muslims entering the country until they could figure out 'what was going on'. He spoke about going after families of terrorists and torturing them for information because 'they have to know something'. This is just the tip of the iceberg, he made many many more statements that had us  scratching our heads. They were extreme and absurd ideas in lots of cases but his base seemed to love them and he kept going up in the polls.

At the same time those on the opposing side sat in a bit of shock wondering how anyone could believe that these actions were either plausible or desirable. As Trump has now moved to President Elect, inevitably he had to back track, and that's when the apologists have come to his rescue, suggesting that the problem is that many people take Trump too literally. They tell us that we must remember that Trump is a past TV reality show host and is accustomed  to using provocative behaviour and language to boost ratings and keep audiences coming back. Hyperbole and stretching the facts for a cheap laugh or online zinger are part of his everyday trade. We as pundits were naive to think that what Trump brought in his campaign would be anything like the serious presidential leader that we would see after January 20th 2017.

Seriously? This is the sort of nationalization we get when Christians tell us we should just forget the God of the Old Testament, because things were different back then. The droves of supporters that went to his rallies weren't backing him because they thought he was speaking in parables. They didn't jump on his bandwagon because he was going to build  a metaphorical wall to keep out Mexicans. They loved him because he was a straight talker and didn't try to sugar coat what he was saying, He was direct, that's what they liked, they said that over and over again. Now the argument is you can't take hm literally? How can you reconcile those two positions? Well clearly his supporters can, in the same way that supporters of the bible can too!

Many Christians will point to the fantastical claims of the bible as reasons to follow Christ. Who else has a saviour that walked on water, fed 5000 from two loaves, was dead and came back to life three days later? These 'facts' for many Christians is the reason they serve Jesus, because he has done things that prove that he is no ordinary man. But then when you challenge them about the veracity of these claims, there are another set of believers that come behind to say these are parables meant to convey a deeper non literal meaning. But if that's the case why is the bible special, different from any other book that uses stories or parables to give deeper meanings? Would Christianity have the millions of followers if it was just presented as a good self help book for living, with a few decent stories to make it a tad more interesting to read? Let's not fool ourselves, the appeal of the religion comes from the widespread idea that God and Jesus did do the things the bible says. That's what initially draws in the people even if they later drop some of those more bizarre stories with talking snakes and donkeys and a human living in a fish for almost a week.

It's the same with Trump. His following came because of his extreme fantastical statements. The 'crazy' things he said he would do are what made him popular among his people. Whether you are a bible or Trump believer you can't have it both ways. You either have to admit that you are for them because of the extremes that others find controversial or you have to go with the idea that the extremes don't move you, in which case you have to make the argument as to why your  Mr. Trump or holy bible is any different from others out there that are basically doing the same thing and believing in the same ideals.

Well at least that is what should happen. In reality both bible believers and Trump supporters  have found a way to have their cake and eat it too,  So this is what we get,

The bible is the clear, infallible and undeniable word of god, the unequivocal manual for everyone's life........except you can't take it literally

Meanwhile

Donald Trump is the clear speaking, strong , emphatic. shooting from the hip, unequivocal truth teller, the firm kind of leader that the world  needs.................except we can't take what he says literally.



10. ' There are mysteries of God that we will never understand, we just have to have faith'.

How Christians use it

This is usually the last argument we get when we are discussing the issue of God's existence with a believer. That's why I have included it as the final one here. It's the last argument you get because usually by this time all the other defences have been shown to be inadequate. This one is often seen as their final trump card. God, they say, is above man's understanding. His ways are higher than ours. Whatever we can't understand is our shortcoming, there are some mysteries of God we just have to accept even though they may make no sense to us humans. So our inability to understand is always a fault in our comprehension, it can never be a fault in God's communication. For some unknown reason there are just some secrets that God has to keep to himself, no matter how much it may benefit us to have them.

So they win, because there is no way that we atheists can prove that this secret knowledge of the divine that would explain all the contradictions and absurdities doesn't exist.

How Trump used it

Well, as a former  host of ' The Apprentice' , Trump is well aware of how to market the idea of mystery.  He knows how to use the smoke and mirrors and uncertain plot directions to make sure you're back in front of the TV screen same time next week to watch the next episode. He knows he can never divulge it all, even on one of his debates he laughably made the comment that he would leave the country in suspense about whether he would accept the election results or not.

He used the idea of suspense all through his campaign. How would he deal with ISIS? Of course he had a plan. a great plan, the greatest plan ever, after all he knows more about ISIS than the generals do. And what is the plan? You guessed it, it's a mystery. 'Why would I divulge my plan I don't want my opponents to know what I will do before it happens'. That was Trump's master statement. Once it's a secret you don't have to give out anything.

You just have to keep saying "Believe me!" "Believe me!" "BELIEVE ME!"  which is the exact equivalent of the Christian phrase " You just got to have faith!"

Yes that's how it works. First you set up the mystery, then you claim that only you have the ability to understand it,  and then you implore to everyone else that they need to have faith in you. After that it's plain sailing.

And that's how Trump did it. how he confounded us all and sailed smoothly into the White House. There is a verse in the bible that speaks of the foolishness of God being used to confound the wise. We have no better example of this than with Donald Trump in November 2016.



So, to any Christians reading this. If you have ever used any of the arguments above in an attempt to defend the existence of your God or the truth of your particular religion, I  regret to tell you, but Trump has taken his strategy directly from your playbook. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying the rise of Trump is the fault of Christians, I am just showing that the ideas which are required to argue for a faith, any faith can easily be used to argue for a totalitarian leader or dictator. It's just a matter of changing the object to whom the faith is directed  from God 'X" to God "Y".

So Trump effectively made himself into the 'Y" to substitute for the "X" in the equation,. Among his subjects he is the one, the anointed. Like the God of many of the religions he has full powers, he can do whatever he wants and he knows it.

He has no accountability to anyone or anything.  He can bring you into his world and he can take you out. He himself supersedes reason. Many Christians are taught that truth is not a statement it is a person. That person is the big J man, Jesus. Well for the next four years, it's the big Donald J that will be that big 'T'  Truth for those that have come to worship and bow down.

All I can say is 'God help us!' but that would mean praying to the same Trump who is already there with all powers of command, the one who is already successfully getting us to do whatever he wants us to do, all for his benefit. Yes, The  'saviour' Donald  who expects us to continually give him praise for doing things according to his own will for his own purposes. So  in reality there is not much difference between Trump and  any of the other gods. His actions are pretty much business-as-usual operation for any deity,

But, in defence of the new Trump god, is he really asking for anything more that the other Gods that have walked the earth and heavens before him? I don't think so. The only difference is that those other gods ( at least most of them) have been thankfully imaginary. But the Donald!  I wish we could wish him away like the monster under the bed, but sorry kids and adults too,  DJT is very, very real.

Pendulum swinging in our direction: but faith equilibrium a major challenge

It's been quite an active last few months for me as an atheist and secularist. Haven't had the chance to put out all the various thoughts and reflections, but there has been no shortage of material coming in.

Starting back in August, I had the pleasure of attending the first atheist conference held in Puerto Rico. That filled me with optimism as I heard stories of secularism and activities to make sure that the separation of church and state that is clear in the US constitution, extends to this Caribbean island territory. However, at that conference there was also a measure of despair as I heard of the hold that faith thinking has in that country. A kind of addiction to dogma that I have seen at play in many other Caribbean islands. The news that they had a police road stop to force drivers to have a pray was certainly an eye opener. Definitely won't be forgetting that one soon. 

In the USA itself,  the excitement of marriage equality was tempered by the obstinance of Kim Davis and her continued refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. A lot has been written and said about that issue, but it shows plainly that the defiance of those in the religious right who always think they are right, knows no bounds. Then news of Pew studies showing declining interest in faith and religion in the youth was counter balanced by the Popemania that surrounded the tour Francis took to the US. 

On a personal note, the feature of some of my work in Greta Christina's blog was a boost to me to continue to work to promote secularism in the Caribbean. I still feel humbled to be considered an 'atheist leader', but I received quite a few new contacts and messages of interest in our efforts in the Caribbean stemming from that article. I can only believe that this will augur well for our future growth. So thanks again to Greta for all of that.

Meanwhile, in Calgary a torn banner at our counter protest against Jesse Rau,  the driver claiming persecution for having to drive an LGBT bus, reinforced in my mind the vitriol coming from the small but very vocal and influential fundamentalist wing here in this city. A few weeks later, the first Alberta secular conference was cause for some optimism once again, even as we learnt of creationism and other anti science attitudes pervading the schools throughout the province. 

In Barbados, my island of birth, a tragic vehicular accident that left four dead, has been met with calls to pray and look towards God for assistance rather than exploring ways to fix the condition of a road that has seen many serious accidents at that spot over the years. My brave colleagues in the Agnostics, Atheists and Freethinkers group in Barbados still have their work cut out in convincing those around them that leaning on the Lord is not worth it all in the end.

The latest flicker of hope has come here in Canada where the new prime minister Justin Trudeau has brought what looks like a sweeping change to how critical thinking will be valued. Ministries dedicated to issues such as science advancement and climate change are definitely steps in the right direction. Meanwhile south of the border, Donald Trump and Ben Carson battle for first place as the Republican nominee for the 2016 US election. Enough said. 

As I write this, reports are coming in of a deadly terrorist attack in Paris at the hands of ISIS. Yet another grave reminder of what can happen when religion holds sway over reason.

I could speak of many more ups and downs to my secular morale over recent times. Over and over again, you think the pendulum is swinging in a progressive secular direction, but just as you are about to celebrate, there is a sharp and vicious swing back to faith positions and a trust in dogma and the divine.

  

In looking back at how the pendulum has been swinging recently,  I couldn't help but think that the same movements that happen towards and away from secularism in our societies, happen in the minds of individuals who are exposed to the paradigms of both religion and realism on a daily basis. Of course we in the atheist community would just like to grab hold of these ever swinging pendulums and hold them in the rational position. We as persons that consider reason to be the best road to reality, don't go back and forth on the faith issue like so many of our believer friends do. As atheists, we see no reason to return to faith positions even for a fleeting moment. 

However, if we don't understand the nature of the faith/ reason swing in the minds of different believers, we'll never figure out what we need to do to get people to get off this continuing, repeating cycle and dwell in the region of reason, that promises a future ripe with exciting possibilities for all.

Analysing the swing  

So, let's look at this pendulum in more detail. Where does this oscillation come from? It comes from that conflict that leads to the much discussed cognitive dissonance. The dissonance we experience from living in a world where we are regularly fed the message that faith and reason are both important. Every believer that I have engaged in discussion over the god question, has assigned some value to both faith based and evidence based beliefs.

Some believers see the two as equally important, for some faith should always trump reason and for others of them reason takes precedent over the dogma. But whatever they have faith in and however strongly they believe it, they argue that these unsubstantiated beliefs have some value to individual and/ or society and that is why they hold on to them.

That being said, believers cannot deny that they live essentially in a world where rationality rules. A world where we have proven over and over again that looking at the evidence, developing hypotheses, testing those hypotheses in light of observations, drawing inferences and then further testing these inferences through making predictions, is by far the best way to learn what is true about the universe we live in. 

Invariably these truths that reason tells them comes into conflict with what faith and religion tell them, but because ultimately survival in reality is first and foremost on the mind of most people, believers are just as quick as atheists to put all their  trust in science  when it comes to those critical decisions that could mean the difference between life and death.

They will go to doctors when sick, take out insurance, consume medicines that have been FDA approved and wear helmets or seatbelts that have been tested to the required safety standards. When believers engage in these actions, they are behaving like a pendulum swinging away from its faith centre. The swing away is not permanent however, because latent faith inherent in them remains strong even while  they do their reasoning. We know from observation that a swing back to faith is never far away for these believers. That pull of attraction from the extremes of reason back to the centre of faith, comes from the emotional factors in their lives and the widespread idea that is perpetuated in many societies that I have been exposed to. The idea that everybody needs to have faith and that we all 'have to believe in something'.

We are told that we need to have faith even to make sense of anything. In one of life's greatest oxymorons we are told that reason means nothing unless there is faith to ground it in. We are told we need it to have purpose, to be assured of a life after death, to experience love, to be moral beings, to be true supporters of our families traditions or the countries in which we live. The combination of all these forces is what continually ensures that the pendulum swings back towards the faith centre after each journey towards the extremities of reason.

To explain this more clearly, I hope you indulge me in a short physics lesson.

Faith is represented by the middle position (A) which is equilibrium. This is where the believer feels most comfortable. It's a natural, familiar position and any deviation from this point feels like a displacement.

Education, exposure to the scientific method, problem solving and critical thinking pushes the believer away from his midpoint of faith comfort, just like a physical push of a hand on a pendulum 'bob' causes it to move it away from equilibrium. 

Just as with the pendulum in the diagram above, the greater the force of reason the greater the push from the equilibrium and the greater the amplitude of the swing towards (B) or (C) which are the points of maximum 'reason'. These points of maximum reason are where the potential (energy)  of the believer is at its highest. As the distance the pendulums swings increases,  the height which it can reach also increases. It can be thrilling and exciting for even the most  devout believer to push towards those reason 'maximums'  where you can figure things out by thoroughly thinking through a problem. Exploring topics such as the evolution of our species or the expansion of our universe after the Big Bang can be truly exhilarating, like being thrust into the air on your favourite ride at a theme park.

But of course with that excitement comes a level of fear as well. The further the believer gets away from that initial ground level, the greater the worry of being separated from 'home territory'. They can see their faith slipping away in the distance, even as they revel in the height of discovery in science and reason. Eventually the forces that act as a constraint to reason become too strong, and the believer slows down as 'reason maximum' is approached. 

If you look back at the pendulum above, you will recognise that the greater the distance from the initial equilibrium point (A) the greater the force pulling the 'bob' back to that equilibrium point.  In my experience, this is how faith works with a lot of believers. The greater  the extent to which their faith is tested, the stronger the urge within them is to get back to their faith. The more they start to doubt, the more scared they become and the more desperately they try to cling back on to the faith centre that keeps their life in balance.

This not only comes when they are pushed into reason by intellectual pursuits, it happens when they have those emotional jolts in the pendulum of life  that make the god they believe in seem distant. The times like four families in Barbados are facing right at this moment, as they come to terms with the fact that four of their most beloved have had their lives snatched away in their prime. Those kind of tragedies that push the believer's pendulum into planes of uncertainty and doubt are followed up by extremely strong dependencies on faith present at their core to get through it. In essence, the more experiences in life push these people away from belief, the greater their desire to hold on to that same belief. That's how it tends to work for believers and that's why they keep swinging like a pendulum and most never get to the point of  grounding themselves in reason's territory.

Sadly, this swing back to faith centre happens also when we atheists engage believers in extended, discussions and debates. For many, the more you bring arguments against their belief the more they dig into hold their belief.  They'll acknowledge the points we make but still say that the belief in the god they believe in is locked at 100%. I can't tell you how many believers that I have had discussions with, claim that their faith in God has been STRENGTHENED as a result of our discussion. It's frustrating as hell, but now I am realising that it is nothing more than the simple harmonic motion of their pendulum of faith.

The strength of the centripetal force in the faith pendulum is immense, but remarkably still often underestimated. Faith congregations, faith communities and faith countries all play a large part in this force to bring back those swaying from the faith. They do this by telling the believer who deviates from faith that they just have to pray more, ask Jesus for help, or just go to the pastor for a counselling session. The more the believer questions the more measures the faithful around the believer will put in place to stop them from drifting completely away.

With these types of messages circling around, the believer will then actively try to erase the doubts. The desire to have faith will at that point come to the fore. The believer will while acknowledging doubt, continue to tell themselves that they 'just got to have faith'. It's the old 'fake it til you make it' rule. If you believe enough, suppress your reason enough, you will be able to force yourself back to the centre with the help of those 'pulling for faith' around you.

But what happens when the believers get back to centre? Let's look at the pendulum again. The believer starts moving away from faith once more. That is because as much as faith is a comfort, it's easy to be pushed away again to reality through reason. Indeed in a pendulum the velocity (speed) is maximum as it moves through that equilibrium point. The 'bob' of the believer just can't stop there in the middle as the challenges to faith and belief are always around. They feel the urge to keep moving, because in that position they have a large amount of kinetic energy. As much as a believer just tries to remain at that faith centre, it very seldom happens. Many Christians will claim that this failure to remain at the centre is the fault of sin or the devil. But I don't think so, it's just nature and reality. You just can't live in that fantasy world all the time. That's why so many faith activities, are done at certain times with a definite start and finish and then it's back to 'reality'.Church on Sunday morning, bible study on Wednesday night, or praying facing mecca at five specific times of the day. Faith is a little 'check in' with god to make sure you are OK. Then you can move back out in to your world of reality and reason, until you have the realization of too much drift and then come surging back to centre for one more go around.

This is the reason why believers, however questioning and skeptical they may be in everyday life, never quite get away from oscillating back and forth around their faith equilibrium. They may swing miles and miles away from their faith home, but there is always something in their centre that brings them back. The swing back may be after one week from Sunday to Sunday, a year between Easter and Easter, or even decades between when the children came along and when the sceptre of death begins to threaten.

I know many believers that are on the pendulum. They swing a lot, they swing widely and sometimes wildly, but they keep hanging on.  I was on it myself for more than 35 years. So I know more than most, that it can be extremely hard to remove yourself from it.  As it is with the pendulums we come across in physics, so it is with believers. Not all of them swing to the same extent or with the same frequency. Below are three types of pendulum believers I have come across. Maybe you know them too!

Wrecking ball believers

These are by far the hardest believers to deal with. The ball on their pendulum is heavy, really, really heavy. You try to push it and it just doesn't move an inch. Yon can try every instrument you have in your reason toolbox, but they just won't budge.  They are rigid in their beliefs,  the entire bible is inerrant, everything written there is absolutely and undeniably true. 

You bring your skeptic friends around, yell at everybody around to push simultaneously, and still no movement. Feels like this type of believer's  stubbornness weighs over a tonne and it probably does. They deny evolution, climate change and any other part of science that even appears to be a distant threat to their cherished dogma.

You may have to bring a crane to get movement, but you must be careful, because balls of that mass at the end of a pendulum can be really unstable. And because they are heavy if they move and hit something they can do a lot of damage to everything around them. People, buildings, towns, vehicles, nothing is safe. These are wrecking ball believers.

Their beliefs in absurdities can easily turn to atrocities. These are the raging fundamentalists. The Fred Phelps, the ISIS, the Westboro Baptists. No controlling these kind of believers, just best to try to contain them and make sure they are never close to anything that can be destroyed.

Metronomic believers

These type of believers are not usually dangerous but they can be infuriating as hell. I know quite a few of these and there were common in the Anglican church that I was once a part of.

For these believers its all about routine. Everything has to be done in an exact and completely predictable way when it comes to worship. They are like clockwork. Like a metronome keeping exact time to the music.

Prayers must start at a certain time. Incense must be swung when it has to be, not a moment too early or late and the swing must be consistent.  Hymns must be played as written, no slowing down or quickening up, no pretty improvisations. These guys will go crazy if anything changes in the church. Ask them what their faith means to them they can't tell you. Ask them what they believe is true and they give some vague wishy washy answer.

But change one thing in the liturgy and it's hell to pay.

Free swinging pendulum believers.

These are the type of believers I like to engage with and I daresay most atheists too, even as we wonder why they don't just jump off the swing and join us. These believers swing in reason's pendulum with childlike glee. Not that they have childlike faith, far from that, they have great maturity. However, they have a child like curiosity, that spurs them on higher and higher. They are like the kid playing in the park that just wants you to push the swing harder and harder, so that they can feel their body going up, up into orbit. They don't settle for the regular or ordinary, they seek to push the envelope of discovery.

At their best these free flowing pendulum believers can be among the greatest of scientists and skeptics. They can blow your mind with ideas, levels of creativity and understanding of complex concepts. 

These tend to be the liberal believers, the 'spiritual but not religious', those that insist there are agnostics or even ignostics. Yep they'll carry any label that sticks just to avoid 'atheist'. Let me clarify that  I respect people's right to self identify in their faith or non faith in any way that they see fit. But when I see people who essentially agree with my philosophical position, desperate to avoid the label that quite clearly fits, I tend to ask why.  I think it has a large part to do with there desire to keep that faith equilibrium, be seen to have it or at least not be seen to have lost it. Perhaps the strongest emotional force that keeps people wanting to have a faith centre of some kind is the idea that faith is a virtue. It may be irrational, it may sometimes be laughable and ridiculous, it  may even in some people lead violence, but it's still all in all seen as a trait to be desired.  And nobody wants to identify with a trait that is undesirable. People generally don't want to go around saying they have thrown away that faith equilibrium that is valued by so many.

We as atheists often don't see this when we are dealing with these free flowing pendulum believers. When they swing up in to reason's territory we get excited. They reason with a critical eye, see through biblical contradictions, smell the bullshit like it really is and we sit there waiting, thinking that it's just a matter of time. We'll just keep the challenges up, show them more and more about how faith isn't worth it and they'll come around to reality, happily throwing faith away completely, just like we did. But they don't, they keep holding on to that faith centre no matter how much their rational mind tells them it's not needed. And what do we do? We keep adding more reason pushing them harder, forcing them more but like the pendulum 'bob' they just keep swinging back.

We have to understand that giving then the push of reason is not effective on its own, the only way to truly make the difference is to break the chain of the pendulum and set the 'bob' free completely. We need to break the pendulum not just push it harder in the hope that magically sometime in the future the system will collapse under its own weight. Breaking the oscillatory cycle means chipping away at that centripetal forces that draw believers to the centre. That force is mainly about desire stemming from an assumed need, so essentially what we have to do from an individual and community perspective is to work at removing that desire to embrace faith. As long as people continue to hold the position that faith is a virtue, they will seek it out and we'll keep going through the same cycle over and over again.

We atheists often actively encourage believers to cling to their faith equilibrium.  We tell them if faith works for them they should cherish it and  keep it. Sometimes we even apologize for not having faith ourselves. I used to do that a lot. We tell believers that we wish we could believe but we just can't. It gives people in the faith the idea that atheists are people with an emotional handicap, a kind of 'god blindness'. So those liberal pendulum believers begin to feel they are better than we are. Having the best of both worlds, reasoning with the best and still able to hold on to a steadfast faith.

We have to stop speaking about losing faith as if it we have lost something of value.  We have to emphasise  that faith is NOT a virtue. This is where I agree a lot with Peter Boghossian's approach of showing faith as a flawed epistemology, a bad process for making decisions, doesn't matter if it's a decision about what to eat for dinner, which elementary school to send your children to or what god to believe in. It is more the method of faith belief rather than the content of faith belief that we should be attacking.

If people start to realize the dangers of making decisions without evidence, eventually they will abandon it. It will be a long eventually, because of all the other emotional forces that keep the believer swinging back to faith centres.  But in time as we build the secular institutions and show how much wonder there is in the world and the satisfaction associated with really figuring out an answer rather than guessing at an answer, faith will become less attractive. I look forward to the day that the masses look for centres for inquiry rather than centres for faith, to keep them moving froward. When faith is seen universally as an unattractive way to live,  believers will cut away from the pendulum themselves. I did it and more and more people are doing it. As I said, I was swinging on that pendulum for years before I got my scissors  and had the courage to cut the cord.

In the end, my decision to cut that faith out was done not because I no longer needed it. It was done, believe it or not, because I no longer wanted it.

Reaching the goal of Marriage Equality: Why I truly felt the pride

It happened now over a month ago, but I am still reflecting on how the aftershocks of THAT decision in the USA continue to reverberate all across the Caribbean. The lingering vibrations even greater than the ones the Kick'em Jenny underwater volcano has been able to produce.

It was Friday June 26th. The day when we all read the headline.'Same sex marriage is now legal all across the U.S'. Ever since then, pastors from my home country Barbados and the wider Caribbean have been been digging their heels in, vowing to keep 'marriage equality' from reaching their island shores, as if it were a rare and lethal form of dengue or ebola.

Of course for me, it was not a decision that filled me with any worries. Indeed, I saw it as a landmark victory and I felt without doubt that I was part of the winning team. In some respects, it reminded me of how I felt in 2008, when Barack Obama was declared US president. It was a day you hoped you'd be alive to witness,  but never in your wildest dreams expected be there to see. I felt elated for the LGBT community, because I know for them it has been and will continue to be a long hard struggle. But even in my own euphoria, I stopped to reflect a bit.

I am not a member of the LGBT community and I don't live in the US,  so why was I feeling so excited?  Why was I so emotional?  Why was I fighting to hold back the tears? To be quite honest, I really wasn't sure. Canada has had marriage equality for a decade now, so it's no really an issue here where I live. However, though we don't always like to admit it, what happens in the US tends to have a far greater influence on the rest of the world than what happens in other countries. I knew what happened in the US would have a big impact on the debate  in other parts of the world and that has happened. As a result of this ruling,  I believe that full marriage equality worldwide is now a matter of 'when' rather than 'if'. And that, as a certain vice president would say is  'a big fucking deal'.

But that still doesn't explain why it was a big deal for me. Having had now more time to think about it, I  recognize why. It is because I myself have had my own journey over the last few years.  A journey which has brought  as significant an opening of the mind as an opening of the heart. My journey has not been one where I was to trying to be able to love who I wanted to, mine has been one of a loss of love, separation from the God I once believed in. It was coming to terms with accepting an idea I embraced six years ago. The notion that there is no higher power, no cosmic leader or arbitrator beyond space and time that pulls the levers or keeps things in motion. Going through that transition in my belief system certainly provided its degree of emotion and at that time I considered it to be perhaps the biggest struggle of my life to get through. I remember well the anxiety and uncertainty of walking that narrow secular road ahead.

At that time, it was all about finding my own way and figuring how I would "come out" to family and friends and psychologically be able to navigate in the world without that spirit to guide. Still, I happily embraced the world of 'reason' and looked on it to lead the way. In trying to come to grips with my new life, I started to reach out. First through this blog which I started back in 2010 and then through joining organizations such as Centre for Inquiry (CFI) here in Calgary.

In time these associations and activities brought me in contact with more atheist, humanist and secular groups. I discovered atheist and secular podcasts which quickly became my daily diet of listening. Two years later, I would also become a podcaster, doing what I could to add to reasonable rational voices already out there.

I realize now, that on that Friday 'same sex marriage' morning the journey that was pulling at my heartstrings was not my journey to atheism, but my journey since atheism. The journey that has led to me walking arm in arm with so many secularists all over the world. Now that I have successfully navigated my personal 'coming out' as an atheist,  I have discovered that my non-theism is about far more than ME.  It goes far beyond just getting through as David Ince. It's about a family, a community and a world that is held back in so many ways because of the prevalence of religious laws, religious norms and religious thinking that will still take many more years to sweep away.

In the beginning of my atheist life, as much as it was exciting to find a community that I could identify with and feel good about being able to reason with, it was also at times distinctly uncomfortable. The discomfort came from the fact that I realised just how much 'un-reason' there was in the world and how many people were suffering because of it day by day. People have lost their lives, families, jobs and been sent into exile in many places due to 'unreason'. Much of this irrationality stems from religion, and I felt that we as secular people, who understood these issues more than most, had a responsibility to try to fix them. But were we doing enough? Was I doing enough?

Moving beyond my disbelief

I quite quickly realized that one of the biggest issues that the secular movement was involved in, certainly in the western world, was gay rights and rights within the LGBT movement in general.
The first president of the CFI in Calgary when I joined back in 2010 was Mike Gray, He was an enthusiastic leader, passionate about building the secular community and also openly gay. I remember he would from time to time wear a t-shirt with the word "Gaytheist" emblazoned on the front.

I smiled when I saw him do that, but it also was a genuine eye opener for me. For all my time growing up in Barbados I knew my fair share of gay people, or should I say my fair share of people 'rumoured to be gay.' But that's the point, it was never something anyone wore as a source of pride, it was a mark of shame, something to hide from at all costs.

Discovering the word 'homosexual'

I remember very well the first time I heard the word 'homosexual' when I was about seven years old.. One heavy set young fellow pushed a smaller boy on the pasture at school and the little guy responded with the words  "You're a homosexual!" I can guarantee that none of us around there had a clue what that word meant. But we just knew it had to be something bad, really bad. A word so big couldn't be benign. It had four whole syllables, it had to be something dangerous and terrible. Indeed at the time, I think it was the only four syllable word we knew.

So, for the rest of that term the word 'homosexual' became the insult word of choice. It was all fun for us as kids, nothing too serious. But looking back I think the anti gay sentiment was set in for us even back then. I came to learn that homosexual was just the more formal word for 'buller' that pejorative 'b' word for being gay in Barbados.

Yes, as I grew up into adolescence in Barbados I came to realize that you could pretty much survive being accused of anything, but one thing you never wanted to be was to be 'accused' of being gay. No, if anyone were to think that even for a moment, your entire reputation would be flushed down the toilet.  Guaranteed!  In fact in my parents' generation a common euphemism for referring to a person who was gay was to call them a person 'of doubtful reputation'. I have seen it many times, artists, musicians, scientists and sportsmen. All their achievements glibly glossed over as people say ' but you know he is a 'b*****.

Backing away

I can remember one term in secondary school when I began to talk quite regularly to this one guy, as we both used to get picked up from school around the same time. One morning,  a classmate called me aside and said he had noticed I had been spending a lot of time talking with this friend. He warned me that this individual was known to be gay and if I continued to hang out with him, people would start to believe I was the same way too. I was shocked by what I heard and from the very next evening I started cutting my conversations with my new friend short and about two weeks later I was finding other people to hang out with on afternoons. It's embarrassing to look back at that now and I wish I could go back and change it, but that's just the way it was.

In spite of this, I certainly was not among the 'homophobic' in Barbados.  As a liberal, I was always in favour of gays having whatever rights others were entitled to. However, there was still a level of distance that I felt I wanted to keep from them. I endorsed the idea that gays should be equal but still separate. You should tolerate them, but that didn't mean you went out of your way to have them as your best friend. People may find this surprising, but my position at that time was at the very progressive end of the spectrum of attitudes in Barbadian society.  The more conservative  view was. 'You gays just need to find Jesus and stop sinning'.  And of course as 'good Christians' the conservatives were called to reach out to this community in 'love' by helping them to turn from their 'nasty' and  'wicked' lifestyle.

In spite of this hurtful kind of rhetoric, I have to say that at least to Barbados' credit, we never had the violence against gays that other Caribbean countries such as Jamaica had to endure. Indeed, many in the Caribbean often saw Barbados as the most 'gay friendly' island and we Bajans can attest to being frequently teased about this from our island neighbours. Additionally, within Barbados  we often made fun of the gay community ourselves. The easiest way for a comedian to get a cheap laugh, was to  make a joke about homosexuals or trans sexuals. The way they talked, the way the walked the way they dressed, it was all fodder for various forms of ridicule. That was the comedy we seemed to like more than any other type. The popular comedy and calypso singing group MADD milked it for all it was worth through their 'ArchiBULL Cox' character. For so many years we laughed and laughed, lapping up the hilarity without much of a second thought. For those of us who were straight, we would privately let out a sigh of relief that at least we weren't one of THEM.

So when I came in to the secular world and realized that the people I grew up  identifying as those "THEMS" were actually important allies,  it was somewhat of an about turn for me to take. As I said. I have never had problems with the movement for 'gay rights', but a lot of my feelings before being an atheist activist were pretty apathetic. I thought they deserved rights, but I didn't see it as something I needed to get up off the couch and join them in the fight for.

But my views changed quickly, from the time I started going to weekly CFI meetings, held at the 'Sapien ' night club.' Sapien' was a gay club, it's name a clever short form for 'homo- sapien'. I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable telling people I was going there for meetings. Especially people from the Caribbean, who had enough trouble getting over the 'atheist' thing already. I had to admit that even as a freethinker and atheist I still had lingering fears about someone thinking I was gay when I was not. I felt embarrassed about having such feelings and never shared them with any of my new secular friends, most of whom had grown up in Canada and appeared to have no such hang ups like this at all.

I realized somewhat in horror, that even though I was a liberal by Barbadian standards, I still had a way to go in dealing with aspects of my thinking which still had  remnants of indoctrination. Shedding my belief in a god was indeed only the first step of many I would need to take to embrace rationality fully. Going on to meet people like our following president Nate Phelps (son of Fred Phelps) and strong LGBT activist made me understand more. I began to realize this was more of a fight about human rights than about 'approving' of particular sexual practices. Then we interviewed gay individuals from the Caribbean such as Duane Howard and Dadland Maye on 'Freethinking Island' who had faced backlash in their respective countries of Jamaica and Trinidad. Later we interviewed Angeline Jackson whose work as an advocate in Jamaica has made her  recognized publicly by no less a person than President Barack Obama.

But it wasn't all about the social impact of my new friends in the LGBT Community that affected my thinking. It was reason and  evidence of their arguments that ultimately made me open my mind fully on this issue. The LGBT movement, in putting forward their arguments for their rights, always made a convincing and compelling case. Their arguments  made me realize that not only did they deserve tolerance and acceptance, they deserved to be fully embraced and supported in their push for all basic human rights. That included the important right to all the benefits of being 'married' if they chose to go that route.

I came to learn that to look at the gay community as 'equal but separate' was just not good enough. To do that, would be like saying to blacks in times gone by, that you can drink the same water as the whites but you just need to go to a different water fountain. I began to understand why it was important that the word 'marriage' be used to define gay unions as well as straight ones. Many people like to say that if you let gays have a  'marriage like' union you should call it something else. But that's part of the 'separate but equal' mentality that I now definitely reject.

This is what I have come to love about being in the atheist and secular community. You get your views challenged all the time and you move or adjust your position in the face of a rational argument. That's how it should be. Losing my belief in a god, has allowed me to investigate these human rights issues without the inhibition of dogma. I have come to recognize that a world where rights are extended to more people is a win for all. When this happens we should be proud that we as a human species have identified an imbalance in our system and have taken measures to correct it.

Love your neighbour

So, the marriage equality win is not a win for the 'gays' it's a win for the world. I realize this is a difficult concept for some people. For  as much as Christians claim that being good is about loving your neighbour and caring for others, the truth is that religion is generally not about including others and loving unconditionally. It's about loving your 'neighbour' in a restricted sense. Loving those who are 'next to you' culturally or ideologically. In general, religion is not about loving people who are different and respecting them for who they are. For them, love is about trying to push others who may live far away into  becoming 'neighbours'. For its only when you are in the same 'neighbourhood' as them that they think you can experience love fully

This is where the whole 'love the sinner, hate the sin' comes from. Translated it means, 'We love you, but that love is expressed through placing emotional pressure on you to embrace our belief'. So they will argue that you can't really appreciate or understand love until you experience the love of Jesus. They'll say you will only get God's full approval, if you turn away from your 'sin' of being a homosexual. Love in  a religious context definitely comes with strings attached.

You don't have to be in our neighbourhood

But those of us on the secular side don't operate from that premise. Our aim is to love our 'neighbours' but also those who have taken up residence far away, those who may have likes, preferences and cultures far different from ours. It's about looking to defend the rights of the marginalized wherever they may be. It doesn't have to be us atheists ourselves that are the ones being denied the right. In fact it could be and often is the very religious who we disagree with, whose rights we want to defend.

I realize this is a very difficult concept for a lot of people.  That's why some of my friends in Barbados, including some in my own family, wondered if my putting the rainbow filter on my Facebook profile pic, was actually me coming out as a homosexual!

It's weird, but I think I get it. So often our world promotes a 'stand up for YOUR rights' attitude. Fight for what you think that YOU have been denied. It's important to do that, but that's not where it should end. You need to stand up for the rights of others as well, even as others stand up for YOUR rights. That's how we make the world better.  The fight is not over and the battle continues. Other groups will need the support as the years go on. None more so than the 'T's in the 'LGBT' movement, I think of my brave colleague in the Caribbean secular community Gabrielle Bellot, who is the Founder of the 'Caribbean Freethinkers' Society' blog and facebook group. Gabrielle is a transgender woman living in US, who now lives in fear of returning to her native Dominica since her transition. Given the disparaging comments that have been made about people like Caitlyn Jenner in her island and the rest of the Caribbean, her fear is not at all unfounded. Things like this make it clear that we need to keep up the fight both for those in our 'neighbourhood' and those who live well outside.

So we must go on. It's amazing and remarkable. A journey that started out for me as a mere disbelief in the existence of a god has become so much more along the way, and I truly feel the PRIDE when I think about that.