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.

Trying to deny the undeniable: Why can't God come down like gravity?

"You'll definitely know it when it happens to you." 

It's the trope that I am hearing more and more nowadays as believers tell me that my conversion moment will come and it will be so emphatic that my life will instantly be transformed. God has a special plan for me and I better had be ready for him when the time comes. But there is an element of contradiction in this, because they will also say that I have to accept it, have my heart open to it in order to truly be able to experience it. But an undeniable experience is just that, it is what it is. It is one that by definition just can't be denied. Hearts open, closed, half way locked or on the floor there is just no other way of interpreting it. How could you possibly deny the undeniable, even if you wanted to?

The more in depth the discussions that I enter into with my theist friends, the more it appears to me that if and when I become convinced that a God exists, it will be in a single spectacular event. Something 'experiential' as one person put it. The kind of  'Saul on the road to Damascus' experience which I won't be able to deny. I have to admit that this worries me . It suggests that revelation comes from God knocking me over and beating the belief into me, rather than by just standing back and letting the evidence speak for itself. 


Tampering with the lab equipment

about.com - chemistry

I see it like if you go into the lab to do a chemistry experiment and you don't get the concentration measurement of the acid that you were expecting. Rather than looking at the mixture under review and making sure you prepared the chemicals in the way you were supposed to, you recalibrate the burette and tamper with the pipette until you get the result you want. 

In terms of evidence for God, Christians treat us like that burette. Instead of looking at the compositions of the solutions they want us to accept, they spend all their time trying to bias our 'readings', so we can give them back the 'right' results. What they forget is that just like in chemistry, tampering with the lab equipment is not going to change the nature of the reality under test. Reality is reality whatever the dials on our heart meters may tell us. Pulling my emotional strings to get me over to your side really doesn't prove anything one way or the other. That's why I am unimpressed with the claims of death bed conversions even if they are real. It is telling that a change from non belief to belief even under duress counts as evidence for God, for them. They never take into account that meters often malfunction in extreme conditions.

However, when when we change colours from a red blooded believer to a shade of grey agnostic atheist during the course of our lives, the theists want to dismiss our experimental conclusions as flawed. They insist we throw out all the chemicals that may have affected us, clean out all the beakers and start all over again from scratch. A change from belief to non belief they will argue means nothing, as they will say that God still exists whether we believe in him or not. I tell them that bringing such clear personal bias to an experiment could not get their findings published in any respectable journal but they tell me that the only publication that matters to them passed peer review by their saviour centuries ago.

Still, I am really trying my best to be open and understand what this 'experiential' evidence that theists talk so much about could be like. In trying to construct this idea, I am taking the key aspects of what these believers tell me. I have heard that this revelation is just something that hits you inside, when you feel it you'll know it is there. It is undeniable, impossible to explain from a scientific perspective but you just know that you know that you know.

Ok, I think we can use science and what we know through that method to study this concept of undeniability. I am not trying to compare types of evidence here, just the way that human beings react to something they consider undeniable. The type of reaction we have to something undeniable should be the same regardless of the way we come to the conclusion that we have experienced something we can't deny.

The closest thing to undeniable that I can think of in the natural world is the law of gravity. Sure, the purist will say not even that is strictly speaking certain, but it is as close to it as you can get in science. What the religious people are telling me is that the thing that they experienced, manifests itself in such a way that they can be as certain about it as we as general human beings are that gravity is real.

So, whatever it is that these people who have this personal experience go through, it leaves them with gravity-like certainty. Clearly the difference between the two examples is that the spiritual revelation is not something experienced by everyone, at least not yet. People experience this gravity-like spiritual awakening at different times in their lives. So I am quite open to the idea that God just hasn't gotten around to given me my heart jolt yet. Why God would have some of us wait decades while giving some others revelations at  age four is of course another of the mysteries in this convoluted novel that is God's, but we can wait for another day to explore that chapter.

The point I want to make here is that I would expect the reaction of those religious people fortunate enough to have the spiritually undeniable experience, to be similar to my undeniable experience of gravity. Curiously, when I look further, there are some differences when it comes to undeniablity in this spiritual realm.  Here is a look at some of the things that Christians and theists in general will say about their undeniable experiences that just don't measure up to me and my gravity.

1. The God I believe in turns up regularly

I could perhaps say the same thing about my gravity. Actually no, I would put it more like he came at the beginning of time and never left. Gravity is truly impossible to ignore. He is in our face from the time we walk out the house in a morning and see a leaf fall from a tree, to in the evening when we drop a fork into the sink before washing up after supper. Gravity is indeed so omnipresent that it is difficult to remember when was the last time you saw evidence of him. I mean, how many times did gravity reveal himself to you this week? You can't count because you don't even notice him, that's how eternal and ever present he is.

Compare this to how the believers speak of their 'undeniable' experiences with God. Ask people about how God has touched them and they will inevitably provide you with a list of events. A story about something that happened yesterday, or last week, last year, ten years ago. Some will tell you God has made his presence felt so many times they can't count them, but the fact that they can pinpoint specific God moments is telling.

I don't sit down marvelling about the time when gravity revealed itself in all its glory twenty years ago when I saw a coconut fall on a pavement. I don't have a journal set aside to remind me where and when I saw gravity at work. Even though I see gravity every day, I can't give you a single gravitational testimony, because he is always there.

If the spiritual experience of God was as undeniable as gravity, you would expect that theists would have similar difficulty in pinpointing specific instances of a God manifestation. A god that is always there should be always obvious to the believer. I can provide evidence of my gravity at any moment. Wake me up in the middle of the night and I can pick up a pen on my night stand and drop it. I don't need to give you anecdotes our point towards epic stories of how gravity moved through history.

The spiritual is different, but it shouldn't be. Sure, since I am not in their special club, I cannot expect them to provide evidence to my satisfaction, but they should at least be able to give immediate God examples to convince themselves. I know that people will say that the religious do see God in everything. That not even a breath can be taken unless God gives his say so.

That may be so, but they never go for these trivial arguments when they want to convince us through personal experiences. Whenever I have asked Christians to tell me of their evidence or experience that convinced them God was real, they give me something far more telling. A life transformed from drugs or prostitution, an illness defeated against the odds, a surprising job opportunity that came out of nowhere, or an indescribable super feeling that one day shot them deep down in their hearts. When it comes to convincing us our convincing themselves the more spectacular the evidence the better. But why the need to even bring these up? If God is the one who gets you out of bed everyday why do you need to reach further by bringing out these majestic accounts.

Indeed by emphasizing these major God moments they are in effect saying that the 'he woke me up this morning' proof does not cut much ice.  Interesting again to compare with my gravity. I don't need to look in to a meteor shower or some other once in a lifetime event to strengthen my belief in gravity. A  drop in the bucket is more than enough.

If the evidence is all around, you don't need to look beyond present time and place to prove it to yourself. You can't detect the presence of God without recognising the absence that immediately precedes and follows it. If you have to wait on something to show up at specific times it means it is spasmodic and that's not what you expect from something undeniable. That ex boyfriend that shows up regularly in your life, leaves you standing on your own just as often.

2. You need to understand (insert religion here) in order to understand your experience

Spiritual revelations tend to have a strange mix of the intellectual and the emotional, even as God supposedly can speak directly to the heart. It does make me scratch my head when I hear religionists tell me that it's so obvious that God made the world that even a five year old can see it, yet Prof. Richard Dawkins is unqualified to speak on whether there is a God or not because he lacks a PhD in theology.

Yes, God can move any heart, but you need to read up and learn exactly what he is going to reveal to you before he reveals it. God miraculously manages to reveal himself with a message identical to that which his followers told you in advance. I suppose God is like a lazy university lecturer who has his Teaching Assistant  hand out notes with worked examples on the first day of class and then brings back every one of those questions in the final exam. Not surprising then that students in every religion come back with 100% regardless of the name of the God that does the grading.

Again my gravity seems to beat out all of the religionists. Sure I can present references, resources from all branches of physics and cosmology and even at the quantum level to explain how my gravity works throughout the universe. I can give you all the differential equations that will make your head spin. But you know what? None of that is necessary. You can experience gravity without any prior knowledge in any field.

You don't need to speak ancient languages, you don't need to know Newton or Kepler,  you don't even need to be literate. You don't need to be at the age of reason either, a toddler in a pram understands that her favorite toy drops when she opens her hand. In fact even if you live alone on a desert island and never had a single human interaction, you can notice that things high up tend to fall. So universal is gravitational revelation you don't even need to be a human. You could be a chimpanzee or a primate on a branch of any evolutionary tree, but you know that when you let go of that twig you will fall.

Yes, the revelation of gravity has the ability to come down from on high and touch everybody, everywhere in the same way. But spiritual revelations not only seem to be open only to the privileged X %, followers apparently need to come with specific pre existing conditions as well.

3.  Sometimes in moments of weakness I have doubts

Doubts!!!? Doubts!!? How on earth can you have an undeniable truth and yet readily admit to moments of uncertainty. But this is exactly what believers who have this experience with God will tell you. They will speak of dark, desolate hours where they wonder what God is doing or if he is even there.  Then they will tell you they will get through after prayer or directly through a revelation of the same God.

I know they always have an explanation, but remember we are speaking of the UNDENIABLE. If something is clear and certain to you there is just no way you can doubt even for a second. Again I have never had this issue with my gravity. Not once in my life have I gone to bed with nagging feelings that things may not fall for me tomorrow the way that they did today. And it's not only me, nobody has ever taken me aside to tell me that they have worries over a drop in their gravity faith. You can only have doubts if you have some evidence that is in opposition to your certainty. Doesn't matter how fleeting or rare, doubt in any form means you have something that can be denied. Once again the spiritual experience falls flat in the face of gravity.

4.  You can never get the experience if you don't want it.

This is another very strange condition of an undeniable truth. This statement is a variant of 'your heart must be open.' When it comes to undeniable truths, there is literally no way you can reasonably come to another conclusion when presented with the facts. It doesn't matter how much I don't want to gravity to be real. How much I wish I could just take off in the morning and fly to work over the traffic. I can rationalize about how much better my life would be without gravity. The benefits of a life without gravity at least some of the time can easily be seen. If only we could turn off that earth attraction for just a moment.

But no matter how much we dream of these things, how many sci fi movies we come up with where this is possible, how much we wish upon a star or pray to a fairy, we can't will ourselves into becoming anti-gravitationalists. We would indeed feel justified to lock away in a mental institution, anyone that denied the existence of the law of gravity.

It's strange that in the spiritual realm, desire can have such a telling effect on the experience that you get.  No alarm bells go off when someone says no to their undeniable experience. No move to throw those who don't accept the revelation into an institution for the spiritually crazy. In fact, many believers have told me that to have a spiritual experience and not accept it as real is quite reasonable. Undesirable, but reasonable just the same. But it just doesn't follow, it's like telling someone you're a bit sad they don't believe in gravity, but you can accept it so long as they don't impose their anti falling dogma on you.

So I am left in confusion. I am to expect an experience straight to heart from an all powerful God that I have no power to deny and yet I have to make a decision to be open that heart and allow his omnipotence in.

Whatever the case, I simply wish God would leave my heart alone, it seems a bit of a cheat to circumvent the brain he gave me and just go inside and turn on some magic switch in the ventricle.

I would prefer if he left my internal organs alone and just provided the evidence for me like my gravity does. You would think that a deity that has dropped the ball so many times in the past would have grasped this simple concept by now.

Messages of faith for Birthday week

No, the attempts to woo me back to Jesus have simply not let up. While the lady that I went to church with a few weeks ago continues to do all she can to make sure my first visit is not my last, I have had new measures aimed at restoring my faith, coming from back home in Barbados.

I celebrated my birthday last week and was thankful to receive many messages of good will. However, two messages in particular demanded my attention. The first was from a close friend from childhood. We were born just two weeks apart and many of our friends used to say back then that we looked very much alike. Because we also spent a lot of time together around church, music and other social circles, people tended to assume that we were brothers. The belief became so widespread that we started to see ourselves in that way, and eventually we came to refer to each other as  'brothers.' This 'brother' of mine was actually Best Man at my wedding. I will never forget that because he said on that day, that one thing my wife could always be sure of is that with me, she would always have a committed Christian by her side. I have often wondered if ever a more ironic statement has been made in a wedding speech.

Well, my friend and I have remained close over the years in spite of the fact that we have both spent considerable time out of Barbados, the country where we both grew up. This time that we have spent out of the country, in addition to the fact that my friend is a leading professional in his field and always in demand and busy,  has meant that although I have seen him on the last two visits I have made to Barbados,  we have not had the chance to sit down for an extensive discussion. In other words, we have not had THAT religious talk. Another important point, is that this friend is not on Facebook. Facebook is the main medium through which I have revealed my non belief to the wider world. He is not part of that network and therefore has missed out on this news story.

In spite of our lack of time interacting in recent years, one time of the year that we always make contact is on each others birthdays, this year was no exception. However, the text that he sent me this year made me sit up and take notice. Here is what it said:

"A beautiful, holy and God filled birthday to you. May God grant you many many more birthdays."

Wait a minute. What was this? I am still caught in two minds about what happened here. At first glance it seems obvious. He is laying on the God thing just a bit too thick. Clearly someone has told him of my atheism and this is just his way of testing the waters. Either pushing me with a stick of provocation to see if he gets a resistance reflex or putting that stick there with words for me to grab hold of, hoping he can eventually pull me out of the abyss.

But truth is I am just not sure. I think it may just be his way of wishing me birthday greetings with sincerity. I have to add that he was always a bit more into religion than I was anyway. If he had sent me a message like this even three years ago, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. I may have thought to myself that he seems rather 'godly' this year, but it would have ended there. It made me realise how much I had changed. I have moved so far from religion now and spoken so much in its opposition, that any mention of the 'G' word just resonates in my head. It's like an alarm that goes off or a red flag that goes up. Quite often in everyday discussions with believers who are very aware of my atheism, God will be mentioned by them in passing.

' I hope to God this' or 'Thank God for that,' ' God help me with this' ' The Lord knows what's best' 'God don't sleep' and many more.  I smile to myself when these phrases come up. The believer carries on with whatever he or she is saying without missing a beat. I know that if I stopped them to point out their use of a superstitious referent that I don't subscribe to, they would be completely oblivious that they had called on God. If they were aware, I am sure they would have stopped and smiled, teased me a little or at least made a note of my non belief. Indeed, there have been times when I have expressed to people in no uncertain terms about the difficulties of being an atheist, the isolation I sometimes feel, or the anger I feel when people try to make judgements about my morality or intelligence because I don't believe. The person I would be talking to, would nod and empathize and say that they understand and agree, then attempt to give me support with a reassuring , 'God is good.'

I know it sounds like something from a sitcom, but the theist makes the statement in these situations out of sincerity. It's not something said in irony or to piss me off, it's actually said in love. Because that's how it is when 'theish' is your native language. 'God is good' in that context is a statement meaning to say I feel your pain and wish you much better. So I wondered if it was just my God sensitivity at work when reading my friend's text. Maybe it was just a nice little note my friend was giving me in his own 'theish' way. Assuming of course that he was talking to David the committed Christian, the one who he knew, the one who existed as recently as 2006.

I know I have gone through a transformation. I have a 'God-dar ' now. It's a kind of antenna that I am sure must have some commercial application which I can put to use some day. I have this ability whereby I can have a conversation on the most mundane subject with a theist and at the end of it I can tell them how many times they said the word 'God' and what was the context in which it was used. Not that I actually do that, of course. However, I know people who pay quite a bit for software that is able to do word frequency analyses like that. Try to top that, Google!

Well, whether it was a proclamation of my friend's faith or a provocation due to my lack of faith, one thing is for sure. I have to respond by telling him something now and I will.

The Auntie Fundamentalist 

My friend's short text was not the only one that caught my attention on my birthday week. A few days earlier I had received a letter from my aunt. This aunt is no ordinary auntie, by the way. She is one I can only classify as a super fundamentalist. From the time I was a small child this was clear to me in every visit we ever made to her home. There were bible verses on the walls, the bible itself was always on hand as a reference and conversations never wondered far away from God and the spiritual. It seemed every time we visited her, that she was either just about to get ready for church or had just got back. She asked me several times on visits even before I was ten, whether I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and saviour. Back then I hoped that telling her that I go to Sunday School regularly would be good enough.  From her facial expressions, I don't think that it was.

In my childhood, her strong emphasis on faith made her not the most fun Auntie to be around. Birthday parties, movies and sporting events were definitely not part of her repertoire. In adulthood, I had come to know this Auntie better and appreciated having a relationship with her more. Of course she would still bring up the subject of faith from time to time, but I generally didn't engage her in this area. This was especially so when I came to the period of my life where I was beginning to have doubts. I just knew there would be no way I could talk to her about such things. I remember just before I left to live in Canada she told me that she hoped I would be able to balance the spiritual, with the intellectual. It was as if she sensed danger on the horizon.  I agreed to keep that idea in mind, even though I knew by then that my faith was extremely close to slipping right of the scale.

When I reached that point where I had recognised that I was indeed an atheist and was contemplating if, when and how I would tell others of my change, I thought of my Auntie regularly. I just couldn't imagine telling her, it would break her heart. I knew it would.  In fact, at one point I just vowed that I won't tell her. I would just smile and play along with her God talk and just be atheist when I was outside of her four walls.

I remember receiving a phone call from Auntie on December 31st, 2009.  This date sticks in my mind because I made a New Year's Resolution that I would start making my atheism public in 2010. It is amazing to reflect on it now, but at the end of 2009, my wife was the only other human being that knew I was an atheist. On that last day of the year, Auntie called and we wished each other a Happy New Year and she spoke about how the weather had been in Barbados, that it had been very strange and that the waves had been extremely rough, even on the usually placid west coast. I told her that I thought it was clear that there were significant changes in climate patterns all over the world and that we had to get serious about studying the phenomenon and put our minds together to find ways to effectively deal with some of these impacts. I got a response from my auntie, that stopped me in my tracks. " No!" she said. "There is no way that any human being can do anything to solve these problems. Our only option is to call upon God. The answer to these problems has to come from the supernatural!"

I tried to argue that I didn't think we could just pray the angry waves away, but I knew my Auntie would have none of it. I also knew at that moment that I had to stick to my New Year's resolution. This was exactly the reason why I thought that religion was a foe rather than a friend. Much of my work and research is aimed at promoting the development of renewable energy technology. A large reason for doing this, is to reduce the climate change impacts relating to burning fossil fuels. When people like my Auntie, tell me that ' there is nothing human beings can do about these problems' they are effectively telling me that all my work is for nought. Better just sit back and do nothing. I thought of how much her words sounded like a slap in the face of the scientist. Declaring my atheism starting the following day, would be my way of sending out an SOS. I just simply had to save our science.

I am happy to say that was one New Year's resolution I stuck to. Probably the only one ever. From the next day I started to make the movement 'out of the closet.' A journey that of course continues to this very day. Since our New Year's Eve talk three years ago, the interactions between my Auntie and I have been brief "hellos" over the internet and a solitary visit to catch up with her when I was home in Barbados last year, but not much in the way of discussion. Then earlier this year I got a friend request from my aunt on Facebook. That made me sit up and take notice. For one, she is not the person that I would easily associate with technology and social networking, but more than that, I knew that I could be in for a difficult ride. Once I accepted her request and she clicked on my wall, my atheism would be revealed.

I thought a bit, and then considered I could handle whatever came and basically waited for the other shoe to drop. Months I waited and nothing, but I also saw that she wasn't ever posting or commenting and concluded that she was one of these people who signed up for the service but didn't really use it.

Then I got the email for my birthday. I have posted it below. You may wonder whether I have done some editing because after the subject heading of 'birthday blessings' the word birthday, never actually appears in the email. No, it's not an edit, that's just the way I got it. I can only surmise that the atheistic shock after finally visiting my wall, blasted the birthday thoughts straight out of the brain. Anyway, I am still glad she took the time to write me and share her concerns.

The only part I haven't included here is the link she sent me. She went to youtube  and put in a search for 'testimonies of atheist conversions,' copied the link of the page showing the search results and put it at the beginning of the email. I watched a few of the videos there and soon I found myself laughing. Of the first four search results, two were by atheists giving an idea of what it would take to convert them to Christianity and saying why the religion has fallen so woefully short of meeting this mark. There were arguments that could not have explained my present position regarding faith any better. The next video was this hilarious parody shown below, where an atheist, ironically named David, talks of his 'conversion' to Christianity. He talks about how he traded in his thinking for belief in the bible and now he has all the answers he needs, including the knowledge that slavery is OK.

I was in stitches when I watched this video, the irony in the fact that my Christian Auntie had inadvertently sent me videos that were anti Christian was thick. But after I got over the comedy of the whole thing, I had to accept that this was typical of a Christian fundamentalist's reaction when finding herself in a situation where someone's soul was at risk. It was quite clear that my Auntie had not watched any of these videos before she pressed 'send.' This was not any systematic argument being built to convince me to come back, this was just her pelting widely at the dartboard hoping that something, ANYTHING would stick.

" See these atheists in this video, they came to Christ, so can you!" That was the simple message.

This is not a new approach by people trying to reach us that are atheists. It is how they operate, but they just don't get that this is not what will work with us. They always think that if we could just hear one more testimony, we would be right back inside the house of the Lord, but they really don't understand. We don't make decisions on what is true based on that which makes our heart bleed or moves us to tears. Indeed, when we find ourselves emotionally reacting to something, that that's when we become more skeptical of the message of 'truth' that is wrapped inside, I have said it many times that truth is truth no matter what we think about it. Emotional pleas just don't cut it.

Well, no matter how many times I said it before, I had to put my head down and prepare to bring the message one more time. This time specially for my Auntie. Some of you may be surprised to hear that I thought long and hard before crafting the reply. After all, I have quite a bit of experience now in dealing with fundamentalists, I also have gone through the experience of discussing my deconversion from faith with close family members. However, this was the first time I was dealing with both individuals within the same person.

Talk to family members who are not quite bible thumpers and you know that in spite of their shock you can get at least a modicum of empathy from them by knowing that they have their doubts as well. When you deal with a fundamentalist that is not your relative, at least you can take heart from the fact that even if they fear for your soul, they will breathe easier that it is not their family in the fire.

With fundamentalist and family mixed together, you have to be able to handle the situation with double the care. Hopefully I was able to do that. In my email, I tried to emphasize that I wanted to build on the good relationship I have with my Auntie but at the same time made it clear that I was comfortable with the decision I had made and was happy with no regrets.

I have posted both her email and my reply so you can tell me how you think I did. So far I have not got a reply back from her, but I now know from experience that one has to have patience when it comes to these faith and family matters.


Subject: Birthday Blessings

Hi David,

Truth, David, I do not know what it is not to believe in God. I don't even want to know. He is too good to me.; He is very real to me; He is my best friend.  He has "rescued" me time and again.

I know my story- I may have been insane if He was not there for me and saved me.  I owe my life to Him.

 I thought it best to let some of those who have walked the path you have now chosen speak to you.

Above is a whole web page for you.  Listen to the converted atheists.   L-I-S-T-E-N!!

I love you,

Auntie

P.S---  "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "  I agree.  This is true.

Re: Birthday Blessings

Hi Auntie!

Great hearing from you and thanks for your greetings and birthday blessings. I enjoyed the day.

I recognize and understand the concern that you expressed in your email. Admitting to myself and others around me that I no longer believed in God was not an easy thing for me to do and I gave it considerable thought before telling others about it.

One of the main reasons why I thought so long and hard about speaking out, is because of persons such as yourself. Indeed, you were often in my thoughts as I went through this transition. I know that for you, faith is the centre of your being and as you said in your email, you couldn't imagine and don't even what to imagine a life without it. I figured that  knowing that  a close family member like me had openly declared that he no longer follows this faith, would likely cause you some distress. However, at the end of the day I felt that it was more important that I be honest and express who I really am and what I really feel, rather than what I thought others would like that I feel. So, I hope that you will understand and accept this, even though I am not expecting that you will ever see things my way.

Amazing as it may seem to you, I have actually found a level of joy and 'new life' in becoming an atheist and have found a great deal of fulfilment in encouraging people to challenge and critically assess the beliefs that they hold. Not specifically in order to prove or disprove the existence of a God, but to get a better understanding of reality, whatever that reality may turn out to be. I think that a better understanding of reality will lead to better decision making by people and we will all benefit in the long run. I believe that if God is part of reality, applying reason and critical thinking to that which we experience within this reality, will eventually point us in the direction of him, her or it. 

One of the main ways in which I have tried to reach out to others, is through a blog that I have been posting articles to over the last two years. The link is below you can check it out if you want to.

http://www.caribatheist.blogspot.ca

I appreciate that you sent me some links to videos that you want me to see. I have watched a few of them.  All of the perspectives presented there are ones which I considered before I came to my position and some of them are actually produced by atheists who are expressing a view similar to that which I now hold. 

Auntie, I respect that you have always believed in God and see him as working daily in your life and I have no intention or desire to take from you that which you hold dear. Likewise, I hope that you will understand that I also have principles which I hold dear. I no longer hold to faith as one of those principles, but I am as committed as I ever was in trying to live a life based on honesty, treating others as I would like to be treated and being tolerant of persons who may have opinions and perspectives different from my own. 

The way I see it, that means we have far more that unites us than separates us. I love you as much as a friend as I do as  an auntie and I hope with all my heart that the fact that we have a difference in what we consider reality to be will never change that.

Best Regards,

David

Put down the duckie!

  

Oh yes! Another one of those Sesame Street classics. " You got to put down the 'duckie' if you want to play the saxophone!"

The lyrics and melody are as fresh today as they were when I first heard this one back in the 80s. This song was a definite influence in encouraging me to take up the saxophone myself. But like so much of the old Sesame Street, I look back at it today and see meaning on a whole different level. I had a similar feeling when I wrote about how I rediscovered 'Ernie and the Invisible Ice Cream' a couple of years ago. Now Ernie is at the centre of attention again, as Hoots supported by a  myriad of celebrities, explains to him that he can't play the sax if he insists on keeping his favourite toy in his hand. It's a lesson that Ernie takes a while to get, even as Hoots tells him,


 "Don't be a stubborn Cluck!"

I died  laughing when I heard this line today. Sesame Street keeping it 'G' rated, even if just barely.

Anyway, once Ernie realises the wisdom of the advice he tosses the 'duck' away in liberation and goes on to break away into some attractive improvisations. Whether you are a jazz lover or not and even if you've never picked up a wind instrument in your life, you've just got to love it.

The only sad thing is that of course as simple as the lesson is here, millions of people of faith in the world have failed to embrace it. We've begged, pleaded and cajoled just like the artistes in this video, from every corner of the world. But no, believers still haven't got this one into their heads. For reasons which are baffling to us on the atheist side, they simply refuse to put their 'duckies' down.

For years they have been telling us that faith and reason can live together in perfect harmony. That there is no reason to believe that embracing scientific method, logic and critical thinking means we have to toss aside faith. In fact more than telling us that faith and reason can go together, they claim that we actually need to have both in order to have a balanced life. Truth is, that trying to put reason and faith together is just the same as attempting what Ernie is trying to do here. Sax in one hand, 'duckie' in the other and hoping the music will come out just right. Nine times out of ten, it won't. Stories of six day creations, global floods, ladders to heaven, talking snakes, virgin births, resurrections and the like just don't stand to reason. If you include these in any manuscript of science you will have problems.

Putting faith and reason on the same level is like trying to compare the skill needed to squeeze a bathtub toy with that needed to master fingering, breathing, reed control that comes with learning to play a wood wind instrument. It is not discrimination to say that the 'duckie' can't be a part of any self respecting band. 'Duckie' at playtime in the nursery and in the bathtub can be fun, and the squeaks it emits can make you laugh and giggle in delight. But there is no room for this if you are talking about playing serious music.

I suppose some Christians would say that strictly speaking Hoots is not correct. It's not impossible to play the sax while holding a 'duck'.Obviously it can be done, and the music might sound alright some of the time. In this video, the music Ernie plays with 'duckie' in hand is not terrible, some of it is actually quite nice. Especially when he is just holding the duck without squeezing it. But once he tries to interject the duck sound into the music, that's when you get the dissonance. This happens with many  liberal Christians. They keep the 'duckie' in their hand because they feel it is necessary that people see them with it. It's basically aesthetics, to show that they still have a connection to that special gift they were given in their childhood. They want it to be known that they haven't forgotten where they came from. Indeed, they don't really intend to squeeze the 'duckie' while they are playing, and with practice they come quite adept at keeping the 'duck' silent during the music or at least from interrupting the flow of the piece.

But even as they show off their skills you can see they have to try twice as hard to keep the 'duckie' out of the way while they play. Even as you stand to applaud them, you still have to wonder why they don't make life easier for themselves and everybody else and just leave the 'duck' alone. What is the most awe dropping thing is what happens after the music ends, when they declare that there is no way they could even play a single note without their duckie.  All the duckless people like me can say to that is, "What? The duck?"


It's not only the duckless that are a bit mystified though. Even as the 'duck and sax' people accept their praise they upset the true 'duckie' aficionados, those that believe in the true beauty of pure 'duck' music. How can he say he needs his 'duckie' when he never even uses it? They will say. Oh, how I wish these 'duck and sax' players would answer that 'ducking' question.

However, in reality very few 'duck and sax' players are actually skilled enough to always avoid their fingers slipping on to the 'duckie' during performance. When that happens, you hear that 'silly squeak' that Ernie talks about. This  'duckie' sound may be unintentional, but it doesn't matter. It still plays havoc with the music and usually you get a massive discord. It's embarrassing when this happens because the player then has to pretend that the 'duck' squeak is not a mistake but a vital part of the composition. He will say that if anything sounded off in the music, it was in fact the sax that was the problem, because it gives trouble sometimes. In contrast, the squeaky 'duck' always come in at the right time and in the right key.

Of course what happens every now and again is that the 'duckie' squeaks by chance and it actually sounds good. It fits the music perfectly, resulting in an enticing chord or exciting syncopation. Here is when the 'duck and sax' players do their most talking. They will make sure to show the video of that performance over and over again to prove that the 'duckie' makes the music better. If we tell them that it was just a fluke note, they will laugh at us and try to ignore us when we list the millions of times the 'duckie' has ruined performances. They will say we are taking those performances out of context and deliberately choosing only bad examples to make our case. They will add that in any case, we are not skilled enough to understand what is good 'duck and sax' music because we can't play it. We can't judge what we don't understand.

Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

James Randi- Speaks of Unsinkable Rubber Ducks

Yes, if only it was as easy as in this video to convince the Christians and other religious people to put down their 'duckies.' In fact 'rubber duckies' are so much tied to religious thinking that the faithful themselves are  often indistinguishable from the artifacts of make belief  they carry around in their hands. James Randi the famous skeptic and debunker of supernatural claims has often noted this in his talks. He refers to many of the frauds and scammers especially in the evangelical churches as 'unsinkable rubber ducks.'

He explains that these guys are able to float back up to the surface no matter how much force you use to push them down. You can have evidence to catch them red handed in some act, they always find a way to come back. Most notable among these 'ducks' is Peter Popov who Randi showed was using an earpiece that picked up his wife's voice reading out the names of the people he was 'healing' during services. Popov was clearly pretending that some divine voice was revealing names and addresses to people in his audience. It is hard to imagine how a person could be more 'caught in the act.' However, it was only a blip for Popov, he was soon back on the air and continues to this day raking in even more millions than he was at the time he was exposed. Yes, you just can't keep these guys down.

Ducking experts

The phenomenon doesn't end with people like Popov either. I know many Christians personally and online who are true duck experts. Yes, no one can duck the difficult questions like these believers. Here are some examples of questions I haven't got a straight answer to yet.

• Does everything happen according to God's will
• If God told you to murder your daughter would you do it?
• Why has God not exterminated the devil yet?
• Why does God need to have a blood sacrifice in order to forgive us? 
• Do you consider it moral for a God to send someone to hell just for not believing

You won't believe the amount of ducks I have heard in response to questions like these. When they can, Christians make use of their elasticity too. In their world, whatever the brain can conceive, faith can achieve. You have to try to catch them out with logical contradictions. But even that can't keep them down, because they will argue that God himself can transcend logic. It takes ages to try to convince them that if God and us operate by different rules of logic, we can't communicate with him or begin to understand anything about him. By the time you do that, you are sure to have forgotten what the logical contradiction you were trying to call them out on was in the first place.

In the cases where both their ducking and elasticity fails them and they end up in hot water, they will fish desperately for a response and eventually distract us by throwing out a red herring. Those Christian rubber ducks, you just can't ever win.

How can we overcome the ducks?   

Well, at least so it seems. We have to take heart from this video. We have to take this Sesame Street lesson. The first thing is repetition. We have to keep telling them to 'put down the duckie' even when it seems the message isn't getting through. We also need  a variety of people bringing the message. People of different ages, genders, races, cultural and ethnic backgrounds,  just like the celebrities in this video. We even need different languages, as Celia Cruz says " Suelta el Patito."

One person, however persuasive they may be, is seldom enough to turn the tide. We also need different ways of packaging the message, just like the different styles and genres of music we see in the video.It doesn't always have to be loud and strident. Sometimes soft dulcet tones whispered in a friendly way can be just as effective. We see that here. Arguably the best part of this video is 'Put Down the Duckie' rendered softly by the group 'Ladysmith Black Mambazo

The other key to learn from here is that as strongly as we bring our message, we must never coerce. We have to understand when they tell us like Ernie, that they can't bear to be parted from their 'duckie'. It is important to note that Hoots never tried to yank the 'rubber duckie' out of Ernie's hands. Ernie tossed the thing away himself in his own time, when he reached the point that HE was convinced. The only thing we have to remind people like Ernie is that it's OK to take the duck up after sax but only if its for playing PRETEND.Yes, we must not be afraid to tell people that their 'duckie' is an imaginary friend. Sure they can talk to him but they are not going to get an answer back. As tempted as they may be, they must  never take out their 'duckie' at school during classes especially if its a science subject like Biology, unless  they want to become  'quacks' when they grow up.

All jokes aside though, the last thing we can do to help our cause, is to take things beyond this Sesame Street clip. We have to let believers know that when we implore them to put down the 'duckie' we are not putting THEM down. We have to hold up high others among us who have successfully, 'put down the duckie' and produced great music.

Andre Woodvine- Barbadian jazz saxophonist.
Put down the 'duckie' and is one of the Caribbean's finest

One such person in Barbados is leading jazz saxophonist and composer Andre Woodvine, who has made a name for himself throughout the region. You can find out more about him and his music here. He my friends, has emphatically put down the 'duckie'!

Andre contacted me through this blog last year as he was becoming public about his atheism. I was touched by the positive things he said about my writings. I was extremely excited to make the link with him and we have interacted quite a bit since then. I have always admired Andre as both sax player and composer. I will never forget his composition 'Hold You in a Song' performed by John King and Alison Hinds, that went on to win the Caribbean Song Contest back in 1992. It  remains a favourite of mine to this day. Andre  himself  had a memorable sax solo in that one, you can listen to the entire performance below. It was great to find that music and saxophone playing was not all we had in common. Andre is now open about being an atheist, as he continues to fly the national flag high, representing Barbados as a jazz musician all over the world.

Thank you Andre, for giving the message so loud and clear to the rest of us.


"You've got to put down that 'duckie' if you want to play the saxophone."