239. refluent

You’re quite a bit further out from your loss of faith than I am (I lost mine only 3 months ago)… I wonder if you’d consider blogging about how you survived your initial loss of faith, and if you have any advice for those of us who are earlier in the process? You may not have the time or the desire to address such things, but if you do, I’d be interested in what you have to say.

Ain’t No Shrinking Violet asked this question in a comment on one of my posts about four months ago, and regrettably I’m just getting around to answering it today. This is partly because of how crazy my schedule has become with grad school and not having much time to write anymore. However, it’s also because until recently I haven’t had a good answer and have been avoiding dealing with that.

A few weeks ago I was on my friend Keith’s podcast, Vita Atheos, and he asked me this question, about how I survived my loss of faith. The short answer is that it took a long time to recover, and I’m still recovering. I was incredibly angry in the year and a half after I decoverted, and not without cause. I’d spent 28 years beating myself up for no reason—over struggles with doubt, my sexuality, and my increasingly secular outlook—and now it felt as if someone had been ransacking my house for most of my life, and I’d just noticed.

My set piece on this subject is that I went from being a Christian to Christopher Hitchens overnight. [Cue laugh track.]

Like many of us, my initial loss of faith was the shockwave of an implosion that happened almost a decade earlier—9 years, 4 months, and 22 days, actually. You can read about that story here if you like, but in hindsight, I wish I could have gone about it in a healthier way. My deconversion was the equivalent of going cold turkey off heroin after a lifetime of dependency on it.

As Julia Sweeney says in Letting Go of God, I had to “change the wallpaper of my mind.” Only I went a step further and burned the enire house to the ground. It wasn’t great, and I burned a number of bridges in the process. I have some regrets about that, about not giving some people a chance to get to know the “real” me, but I probably wasn’t ready, especially considering that the majority of my social circle at the time was evangelical Christians.

I will say that if the Secular Therapist Project had been open for clients in 2011, I would’ve been one of the first to sign up. As it is, it wasn’t until 2012 that I finally started seeing a therapist, and until last year that I finally connected with one who “gets” the deconversion and rebuilding process. It’s rough.

And it’s a different process for everyone. For some, it just made sense to stop believing in God, and for them it was largely a joyful and liberating experience. They don’t necessarily carry around the negative scripts and narratives that dominate the inner lives of former fundamentalist Christians.

I was raised in what in hindsight was an extremely toxic belief system. My parents, pastors, teachers and other authority figures taught me to not trust myself, to not trust others, to find fault in others, but most importantly, to find fault within myself. If I couldn’t find anything wrong within myself, I was to assume that I had allowed myself to become blinded myself to spiritual Truths (with a capital T).

Of course, these weren’t the lessons they were trying to impart, but it’s a natural and unavoidable consequence of the theology we accepted that this is how I’d come to see myself.

The reality I come face to face with today is not so much what they taught me as it is what they didn’t teach me, which is how to love and accept myself, and how to love and accept other people. You can’t truly do either of those things with the fear of eternal damnation continually looming over your head, and the fear that something you or someone else might do could put that in jeopardy.

So this is reality for me right now:

• I don’t know how to be happy without the impulse kicking in to find something wrong with that happiness and ruin it;
• I don’t know how to love myself because I can’t look at myself in the mirror without wanting to vomit or smash it, because I can only see the things that aren’t perfect or that don’t meet my impossibly high standards and expectations;
• I don’t know how to let people in for fear of their actually seeing who I am and possibly rejecting that… or more like my inability to understand their acceptance when I can’t accept me.

That’s a long way of getting around to the question of how I survived my loss of faith four years ago. One answer is that I barely survived—I certainly didn’t grow. I lashed out at and pushed virtually everyone in my life away, especially those who were connected to Seth and his church. I retreated into an angry echo chamber of blogs, books, and online forums which only fueled my hatred of Christianity and Christians.

And a lot of people ran away. They could only see the angry, rage machine David, because that’s I wanted them to see. I didn’t want anyone to see the hurt, grieving, loss-wracked, and confused David who felt cut adrift and isolated from everything and everyone he ever knew.

Going to therapy has helped. Finding the Former Fundamentalists helped. If it had been around in 2011, Sunday Assembly might have helped.

But it was ultimately writing, and this blog, that saved me. Sharing my story and connecting with others with a similar story helped contain that fire.

I’m still recovering, still rebuilding. But it’s still a long road ahead.

212. cuittle

On Sunday, in the Wall Street Journal online, writer Dave Shiflett penned an opinion piece about the upcoming American Atheists convention in Salt Lake City, Utah — on Thursday, in fact: “Where Atheists Meet to Evangelize: Telling believers they are rubes may not be the best recruitment strategy.”

Frankly, I’m still not sure what to make of it. I don’t know what Mr. Shiflett’s personal religious views are, but his article contains a number of mordant jabs. “… deity-dissing group,” he calls American Atheists at one point.

“… suggesting that the uninitiated are delusional and feeble-minded might not be the wisest way to expand your brand.”

I’m reminded of what Julia Sweeney reports in Letting Go of God, what her mother says in a phone call after Julia is accidentally outed to them: “Everyone knows that there are those few people out there who don’t believe in God, but they keep it quietly to themselves!”

The timing of Shiflett’s article was curious, because on April 11, Kellie Moore wrote a piece in the Washington Post about the growing number of secular communities: “Don’t call it atheist church; secular communities are growing.”

Moore notes that many of the secular groups are geared towards families with young children, and that the children’s activities don’t include “teaching atheism.” In fact, they try to steer clear of any kind of indoctrination.

“Teaching atheism”? What would that even look like??

In my own Evangelical upbringing, a fair amount of time in church was spent teaching us theology and Christian apologetics, the systematic field by which Christians learn how to present a rational basis for the Christian faith and defend it against objections. Everything from having us memorize Bible verses to lessons on Sunday mornings about the Christian life were intended to prepare us to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).

Going between these two articles, it’s interesting to see how religious people superimpose their models of church and community onto atheist assemblies. To paraphrase Queen Victoria: “Whatever do atheists do?” They assume that, like them, our goal is to make more atheists; to break down the deeply held beliefs of Christians with cold, hard, scientific logic and rational arguments.

The popular image of an atheist is based on media figures like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, aggressive and vituperative voices bent on destroying any belief that isn’t founded in hard science or reality. We are portrayed as angry, bitter loners without a moral foundation or compass. A recent study covered today in Pacific Standard confirmed that Americans intuitively judge atheists as immoral.

One article on Crosswalk.com claims to expose “Chilling Strategies of Neo-Atheists.” If you’re paying attention, this is how Evangelicals portrayed Communists in the 1950s—godless, immoral atheists mobilized by Stalin to turn the United States just as Communist and atheist as the U.S.S.R.

Nicoll claims that part of the atheista strategy is to target the young and turn them into god-hating, anti-religious clones. (Transference much??) He then quotes philosopher Richard Rorty, who described his dream that students might enter college “as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists” and leave full-fledged atheists.

“… we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”

It’s true that some atheists share this view; that religious people are feeble-minded and that religion must be stamped out if humanity is to survive and thrive. Yet what Nicoll accuses us of sounds more like what Evangelicals having done since the inception of Christianity. “Give me the child of seven,” said Francis Xavier, “and I will give you the man.”

This is the distorted view of atheism that we have to contend with, just as many liberal Christians try to distance themselves from their bigoted brethren.

Honestly, how often does the average atheist think about religion? Probably not much. For those of us who follow the news (politics in particular), it’s difficult to ignore the presence of Christofascism, the kind of belief that seems eager to wield a sword to spread and enforce Christianity far and wide.

So were it not for city councils opening meetings with Christian prayers, daring anyone to bring a lawsuit; wedding photographers and bakers making martyrs of themselves in their increasingly bizarre war on marriage equality; and politicians trying to write their religious views about women’s bodies into law… well, most of us wouldn’t think much about religion.

The new Cosmos (with the amazing Neil deGrasse Tyson) is a reminder that there’s more than a lifetime’s worth of amazing things to think about and ponder!

Yesterday, I posted an article with the musing that punishing those who hold (increasingly) unpopular views about marriage equality “seems to run counter to the very message of the LGBT movement, which is that there’s room at the table for all. The real question is whether equality opponents are willing to sit at the same table.”

This is where I’m also at with Evangelical Christians.

The fact is that, until we invent spaceships to whisk us away to other planets, we’re stuck learning to live peaceably together on this one. The atheists I know are willing to reach out, to build a table where there is space enough for everyone, their views and beliefs (however strange). Because right now, outside of academia, we’re rarely invited to join the party. True, we often self-segregate, but mostly, that’s because we’re accustomed to not even being recognized.

We don’t want to necessarily make atheist converts. We don’t want to dash anyone’s hopes and dreams. Rather, we desire a renaissance of critical thinking—and less dogmatism. We want children (and adults) to be free to consider every possible idea and facet of human knowledge, and decide for themselves what they believe instead of being told that they must accept one particular narrative, without question, or burn forever in Hell.

That’s all.

Because it’s about time we started celebrating the wonder of being alive.

130. pococurante

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them:
that’s the essence of inhumanity. After all, my dear, if you watch people carefully,
you’ll be surprised to find how like hate is to love.

— George Bernard Shaw, The Devil’s Disciple (1901), Act II

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pococurante, noun: Caring little; indifferent; nonchalant. Adjective: A careless or indifferent person.

Denzel Washington loves his Jesus. He goes to church every Sunday. Allegedly he reads his bible every single day. But you know who he apparently doesn’t love? Atheists.

“The overwhelming majority of sociopaths aren’t violent. They just have a desire to win. They just don’t have a conscience — they don’t have it. The majority of them are atheists as well. So that was the book that was sort of my Bible if you will… in preparation for this part.”

The part in question is his role in the recently released film Safehouse, where he plays an ex-CIA agent turned international criminal. Denzel was talking in an interview (from which the above quote was taken) about his preparation for his part in the film. Now, to be perfectly honest, I think that this is a non-story. Here’s another interview where he talks about the movie:

Washington talks more about waterboarding than he does about atheism. Atheism is mentioned in passing, more as his own personal takeaway from Martha Stout’s The Sociopath Next Door: The ruthless versus the rest of us.

Now, before we get carried away with media portrayals of sociopathy, it’s important to actually define what a sociopath is. Both sociopathy and psychopathy are classed under Antisocial Personality Disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual, fourth edition (DSM-IV), and are characterized as “a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.” Both sociopathy and psychopathy are characterized by (among other things) a noticeable lack of remorse, regard for the safety or well-being of others, deception (“as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure”), impulsiveness, and “failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.”

This is not just a lack of guilt—it’s a complete inability to relate to other human beings. What’s probably most frightening about sociopaths is that they often look “normal,” and that’s part of the mask. The character of Dexter in Jeff Lindsay’s novels exemplifies this sociopathic trait: They don’t understand how other people operate. They’re often very intelligent and are able to study and emulate human behavior in the way that an actor takes on a role, but they don’t internalize.

Okay—back to Denzel.

Shortly after these interviews, the reference to atheists blew up in atheist circles. “Did Actor Denzel Washington Really Call Atheists ‘Sociopaths?’” goes one recent headline from this morning, which signals to me that this is yet another example of people needing some excuse to get bent out of shape. You see this a lot in the gay community too, although (to be fair) atheists don’t have a reason to hear anti-atheist slurs, whereas homophobia really is woven into the societal fabric to an extent. And atheists aren’t routinely harassed, bullied, tortured and beaten to death (or worse) for being atheists. Or being suspected of atheism.

But to be fair to atheists (and myself), we’re tired of having to defend our morality against those who say that you can’t be good without god. I’m not going to waste a keystroke on the various ways that nasty little question is thrown around, but I can make the jump that by even mentioning atheism in the same sentence as sociopathy that Denzel Washington is saying that atheists are sociopaths. But he didn’t. He’s an actor who was quoting from a book. If anything, we should be going after Martha Stout for writing that about atheists! And that would be a waste of time and energy.

So yes, Denzel is a very religious man. He has never made that a secret.

But you know who we’re not talking about in terms of sociopathy? Religious conservatives.

Now, I don’t think that Michele Bachmann, Tony Perkins, Rick Santorum, Tracy Morgan and any politician or celebrity who has made anti-gay remarks are necessarily sociopaths. Nor do I think that opposing gay rights or gay marriage should raise suspicion of a person being antisocial (although for some it should make us wonder about what other issues they’re potentially hiding). They hide behind their “traditional beliefs” and their religious arguments, and on the surface it appears that they genuinely don’t understand why people are so outraged at what they’re saying and doing.

However, many of these people (Tracy Morgan excluded) are just too intelligent to be that simple. If they were your average, church-going rube fundamentalists I might be willing to cede that, but these are educated individuals who have managed to get elected to fairly high political offices (although that in itself is not necessarily proof of intelligence—a certain former President comes to mind). You can’t get to that level without some cunning, or at least knowing how to surround yourself with the right people.

And regarding homosexuality, I think that if you were to pin every anti-gay politician to the wall or (the ghost of Christopher Hitchens forbid) waterboard them long enough, I think they’d all admit that it’s a MacGuffin that keeps conservative voters coming to the polls and voting keeping them in power. Most of them probably don’t personally care much what two guys or girls do in their bedroom.

However, what I do see in the eyes and speeches of Bachmann, Perry, Santorum and Kevin Bryant is indifference, be it genuine or willful. And when your political agenda trumps achieving equality for GLBT Americans, there’s something dangerously wrong with your moral compass.

So who’s the most sociopathical sociopath of them all?

105. chime

This is a response to an opinion piece by Tom Arcano in the Greensboro News & Record that I just fired off to the editor of the paper.

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To the editor and to Mr. Arcano,

As a fan of all things Hitchens, I recently came across the op-ed tribute piece written about him in the News & Record, and as an atheist myself would like to respond. First, I too was devastated by the unexpected news of his death (though we were bracing ourselves for its inevitability, hopeful though that that day would be a long way off). He was a beacon and a role model for me and others in the rigorous pursuit of truth and the defeat of ignorance, fear and superstition in the world. Few champions of reason have walked the earth, and we were privileged to have had him.

Second, I do feel the need to address the statement posed in the headline of the article: “Hitchens as a role model for atheists today.” I will confess that in the hours after learning of his death, I found myself pondering the legacy that he left behind. Like many others, in the weeks that have followed I’ve watched countless YouTube videos and marveled in his ability to turn a phrase on the spot, or come back with a devastating coup de grâce to an opponent. I am also a huge fan of the works of Richard Dawkins (who helped crack open the door in my own journey of coming out as an atheist) and Sam Harris; but not as familiar with Daniel Dennett or Victor Stenger, the other two prominent “horsemen” of the New Atheism.

However, as I ponder these examples and the attitudes toward people of faith, I’m left wondering if the aggressive anti-religious stance of neo-atheism is a sustainable one. Nor is neo-atheism (or anti-theism) the only variant. There is agnosticism, skepticism, deism, agnostic atheism, agnostic Christianity, secular humanism, and even simply ambivalence to gods and religion. Personally I consider myself a post-theist, not so much rejecting god as considering him obsolete. Like the neo-atheists, I abhor religious fundamentalism and extremism wherever I encounter it. I’m concerned for children raised in such homes, who, like myself, are often inculcated before having a chance to choose what (or if) they believe. We should war against that, and against the exploitation of the poor and the undereducated, who are often unwitting targets of religious proselytization.

But the reality is that religion is not likely to disappear any time soon, and in its proper form I don’t think that it needs to. As Douglas Adams pointed out once in a speech, religion and the belief in god can serve its purpose. And it’s extremism and fundamentalism that has led to the problems in our world. So the question I am pondering is: Are we setting the right tone for discussion? We are just entering a global phase of civilization, with hundreds (even thousands) of beliefs and worldviews literally living next door to each other, sharing a garden wall. Some of these belief systems—such as the one I hail from—claim to be the One True Religion, with the corner market on Absolute Truth and the sole key to Life Everlasting. It was these that Hitchens reveled in going up against, picking holes in logic and pointing out inconsistencies and outright crimes.

However, is this the legacy that we ought to pick up? Yes, relentlessly pursue truth and evidence; and doggedly go after charlatans and oppressors. But just as non-theists tire of evangelicals relentlessly trying to save their souls, theists are just as put off by the caustic and often contemptuous tone of atheists. Take, for what you will, Dane Cook’s story about the man who huffily barks back, “I’m an atheist!” when Cook says, “god bless you” after the man sneezes. Or a more recent anecdote related to me by a friend who took a group caroling at an airport this year and had barely got through the first song when a store employee came over and asked them to “please stop with the religious music.”

Not that we have to hold hands and sing (insert your own feel-good campfire song here), but is it possible to discuss religion without having to poke holes in each other’s beliefs? The conversation seems to have devolved into ideological trench warfare, with an arms race of new and ever devastating ammunition to annihilate the opposition. Certainly there will be those who are converted by such tactics, but the majority will dig themselves deeper into what they already believe and only become more resentful of the other side. A worldview ought to be defined by what you stand for, rather than defining yourself by what you’re not.

I fear that what we are losing sight of is the distinctly human element in faith and belief. Why do people believe what they do? What benefit do they derive from it? Obliterate a person’s faith if you can—but what will you replace it with? Instead of thought warriors like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, what we need are diplomats like Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord or Jimmy Carter to initiate negotiations and address the needs and fears on the part of both theists and non-theists in order to find ways that we can live together while retaining our ideological integrity, and collectively declaring extremism unacceptable.

For non-theists, atheism is about the freedom of a mind unfettered by belief in god or gods. But where Hitchens and the neo-atheists have been (and can be) belligerent, I should like to see us strive for a more generous approach where we are able to get to the root of and address serious questions while always affirming the humanity of those who believe differently than us. After all, we’ve only one planet and we have to live on it together.

99. prometheus

I hate getting bad news. I hate it more when it’s about someone I have admired for years.

Yes, Virginia, Christopher Hitchens is dead.

It doesn’t come as a huge shock since we knew it would happen sooner or later, but it did come as an unpleasant surprise this evening to open my Twitter feed to see the bevy of #GodIsNotGreat hashtags and “Christopher Hitchens is dead!” posts. That put a damper on the rest of an otherwise pleasant evening.

Not surprisingly, major news outlets have published obits touting his career and many accomplishments (one of the best, in my opinion, has been The Guardian’s). No doubt they’ve had pieces ready to go since his diagnosis of terminal cancer. Also not surprisingly, many fundamentalist Christians have been expressing their glee at the passing of someone who they considered a mortal enemy. We’ll be hearing sentiments like, “Wherever he’s going, he’s there now!” And, “Boy, doesn’t he feel stupid!”

To be honest, I haven’t read much Hitchens’. I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed for his column on Slate.com, and have enjoyed reading his views on everything from religion to politics to the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, but have always felt a tad… overwhelmed by his intellect. I’ve fallen victim somewhat to the Systematic American Intellectual Laziness (S.A.I.L., for short) that plagues this land and its people, content with a few clever sound bites or quotes, or a summary in layman’s terms of what he’s saying instead of doing it myself.

Sorry, Hitch.

What is probably most unfortunate is that the thing he will probably be most remembered for is his polemics on religion when he had polemics on just about everything else. Right up until the end of his life (the last article of his published on Slate was dated Nov. 28, 2011), Hitchens was still using the scalpel of a mind that he had to go after Republican presidential candidates. It’s inspiring.

As I was driving home from Starbucks tonight, I was musing over this and some of what I’d read tonight, particularly the negative reactions from the religious community. Hitchens was proud of this, taking every opportunity to attack religion in scathingly brilliant diatribes and essays, gathering scores of enemies along the way.

When I first came out as an atheist, the only role models I had were the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, two of the more prominent and vocal members of the Four Horsemen of the New Atheism. Their vehemence at organized religion fueled and sharpened my own hatred of the Church and of God, which I’m not sure was the healthiest thing at that point since there were a lot of issues I was dealing with by not dealing with them and taking up arms instead. To be sure, I’m as staunchly opposed to organized religion—and to Christianity in particular—as ever.

But as I thought about the work that Dawkins and Hitchens have done, the books they’ve written and the rancor they’ve stirred up, I found myself wondering if that’s the kind of world I want to live in—a world of ideological trench warfare, where atheists are constantly on the attack and saying nasty things about theists, and vice versa; and where there is no hope for conversation or dialogue in the midst of the flying vitriolic projectiles and snares.

For the first time in history, atheists and non-theists of all varieties are free to come out and be vocal about their views. Not too long ago it was unpopular, even dangerous, to not believe in God and say so in public. In the 1950s you could be labeled a Communist. In earlier periods it could get you jailed, tortured, interrogated, and even murdered. There are still places where that’s the case, in particular countries where radical and extremist Islam are the dominant religions. But in the Western world, people are largely free to be atheists, agnostics and skeptics. We may still face discrimination, prejudice and abuse from religious bigots (and I’m using the dictionary definition of “bigot” here, not just as a slur), but non-theism seems to be rapidly growing in popularity and acceptance.

What comes to mind is the gay rights movement and the attempts for gays and lesbians, and now bisexuals and transgendered persons, to gain acceptance in society. Homosexuals, like atheists, have always been around but have lived underground for fear of persecution for being who they are. (I’m certainly not equating homosexuality and atheism, though in my own experience you can’t force yourself to believe any more than you can change your sexual orientation.) In order to gain visibility and start the proverbial ball rolling, the founding members of the modern gay rights movement had to be loud, controversial, counter-cultural and polemic. As Harvey Milk said, “You must come out.” After all, people can’t understand what they don’t know about or never come into personal contact with.

In a similar way, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have been the pioneers of neo-atheism in a world dominated by religion and religious factions. “We’re mad as hell as we won’t take it anymore!” Sundry flavors of Christianity dot the American landscape like radioactive Skittles; and we can’t stop hearing about ethnic violence in the Middle East between sects of Islam, between Sunnis and Shias, but also with the little-talked-about marginalization of the Zoroastrians (which still sounds to me like the name of some alien race on one of the Star Trek series).

Thanks to them and the flak that they’ve taken, countless atheists have had the courage to come out and identify as atheists and skeptics. Dawkins has stated that this was the purpose of his book The God Delusion; that while his wildest hope was that he might de-convert some of the “faithful,” his true intent was to help those who were privately non-believers find the confidence to no longer hide in the closet. His aim succeeded with me, for after hearing him interviewed on MPR I began my own quest for understanding that ultimately led to my letting go of God. But, looking back on my life, I was already there. All Dawkins did was open the door and show me at least one person who’d gone through it.

That said, just as most gays aren’t lisping drag queens or uber-butch lesbians, most of us aren’t as angry or acerbic as many of the prominent atheists. Or, at least I’m coming to realize that we shouldn’t be.

As I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, flamboyant drag queens and butch dykes paved the way for gays like me to live out in the open—often with their own blood. But as important as those early days for the movement were, the gay community is experiencing somewhat of a convergence as we enter the mainstream. We’re doing away with sequins and feather boas (think the denizens of Queer as Folk) and getting down to the business of figuring out how to actually live our lives. (And, so long as a Republican isn’t elected President in 2012, one of these days we’ll be able to legally marry too.)

Neo-atheists like Hitchens and Dawkins paved the way for atheists to be out and proud, but I’m wondering if it’s time we set the vitriol aside and get down to the business of trying to figure out how to live together without killing each other. Sure, theists constitute a majority in the world today, and they tend to flex their ideological (and political) muscles a lot, and we need to fight that; but religion or belief in God isn’t going away for a long time—and neither are atheists. So do I want to alienate all of my friends who still believe in God by constantly attacking and belittling their beliefs (a là Dawkins)? Do I want to be the atheist in the Dane Cook sketch who takes offense when someone says, “God bless you”?

Is that really productive?

This is part one of a two-part entry that conveniently precedes my hundredth entry on this blog, wherein I want to flesh out how exactly I came to atheism and what I believe now. It’s as much an exercise for me as it is for others to read.

Here’s where I’ll leave this today: As much as I admired Christopher Hitchens, his intellect and his uncompromising articulation of his views, I don’t want to pick fights with every ecclesiastical windmill on the road. Nor do I want to waste another year of my life jabbing at the ghosts of my religious past.

It’s time to start moving beyond religion.

It’s time for post-theism.