Risking the Alienation of Some Readers, or
Most of My Beliefs About Religion Were Decided in Kindergarten
By John Ross

Copyright 2008 by John Ross. Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given.

For a long time I've considered doing a column about my views on religion, but have always decided it offered a poor risk/reward ratio. Two books I've read recently, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great have changed my mind about speaking my piece. These two authors have written their books as if they were reading my mind, and convinced me that for most of my life I've been an intellectual coward on this subject. So here goes:

I cannot accept the premise that there is a supernatural and personal god, a supreme being that can control all things, sees and knows everything including the future, listens to and answers prayers, can do anything (including violate the laws of physics), and who is going to send me someplace good or bad for all eternity based on arbitrary and capricious standards of conduct (concerning many trivial issues) regarding the actions I committed during my lifetime on earth. I have felt this way for about as long as I can remember.

When I was a small child, my father read to me at bedtime. He often entertained me with Greek mythology and other classic tales that I loved listening to. I especially liked Hercules, the offspring of the god Zeus and a mortal woman. Hercules was cool. When faced with an overwhelming task, he spat on his hands and got to work. I also liked Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded Hades, although I couldn't figure out what there was to guard against.
At the time, I was attending a private elementary school that had three years of full-day preschool, five days a week, before you got to first grade. In Senior Kindergarten, the last year before first grade, the teachers gave the students a smattering of Bible stories along with preparations for reading, writing, and arithmetic.

When the biblical God was first described by the teachers, as the supreme designer and builder of our entire world, and the explanation for where all things originally came from, it slowly dawned on me that some of the other kids viewed this as fact, rather than just a good story dreamed up by someone a long time ago like Greek mythology. I naturally asked the teacher, "God made everything? Where did He come from?" A little girl classmate (whose parents had obviously discussed religious issues at home more than mine had) said immediately "He just is." The teacher smiled uneasily when she saw the incredulous look I gave the girl, which said "And you call THAT an answer?"

That evening I related this story to my parents, and they explained that different people had different beliefs about God. Those that believed in such a supreme being belonged to one of various religious groups, and they went to church to be with other believers of similar mind. "What do they do there?" I asked. My parents tried to explain what happened in church, but my five-year-old brain couldn't grasp what was going on. It certainly didn't sound like much fun, nor could I see that anything was being accomplished. It sounded like a colossal waste of time. They told me they'd take me to a church service so I could better understand.

They then explained that those people who weren't sure about there being a God were called Agnostics, and those that said there was no God and made a big deal about it were called Atheists. "What's the word for someone who doesn't care?" I asked. Both my parents covered their mouths and I realize now that they were desperately trying not to laugh. "I mean, there's no way to know, is there?" I went on. "And if everything came from God, or if it didn't and it came from something else, what's the difference?" Instead of a verbal answer, Dad gave me a big hug. This religion stuff was all very puzzling.

The Sunday morning trip to church provided me with no enlightenment whatsoever. The concept of people working for a living made perfect sense to me; you got paid to stock things in a store, build a house, fix the car or dishwasher, put out fires, cook and serve food, et cetera. I couldn't figure out what the guy in the front of the church was doing to earn his keep. Whatever it was, everyone was being awfully earnest about it. The best part of the morning was singing the songs. I liked that, even though the lyrics were kind of boring. I wished we could have all sung Abdul Abulbul Amir, The Walloping Window Blind, Torpedo Jim, or Johnny Verbeck's Machine instead.

Some days later, our schoolteacher told us about Noah. Many of the other kids were enthralled with the tale of building the ark and herding all the animals onto it. I took a somewhat different view. "You mean God decided that everyone else on the whole earth had to die? Babies, and little kids, and all the moms and dads and grandparents everywhere, and their dogs and cats too, everyone and everything except Noah's family? None of them were good enough to let them keep living? Why? What did everyone in the whole world do that was so bad that God had to drown all of them?" I received no good answer.

Things did not improve when the teacher told us about Job. I've forgotten the specifics, but for one reason or another, God decided to test this man by visiting much misery on him, to see if Job would lose his faith in God. This misery included killing off his whole family! This sounded like some evil Nazi experiment. (My uncle had told me about the Nazis and what they had done during WWII.) "What did Job's wife and kids do to deserve to be killed?" I asked. Of course there was no answer.

Decades later I would take comfort when I read Thomas Jefferson's comment that the God of the Old Testament is the single most unpleasant character in all of recorded fiction.

When my father lay on his deathbed, dying of pancreatic cancer, a well-meaning family friend advised me that "All you can do is pray." "What for? God knows everything, so He must know Dad is sick and He must also know I want Dad to get well. Why waste time telling God something He already knows? Why not spend that time actually doing something good for Dad, like reading to him or playing his favorite music, instead of wasting it begging God for something He already knows I want?" The family friend quickly changed the subject.

My eyes really got opened when I visited Catholic relatives in Ohio and attended Mass with them. The whole lengthy proceeding (the part in English, at least) seemed to be about nothing but sin sin sin sin sin. Apparently, everyone was sinning all the time, and you would burn in hell for all eternity if you died before you went to confession to confess your most recent sins, the ones you had committed since your last confession. This was true for EVERYBODY, even little kids killed suddenly in car wrecks. But if you managed to get a priest to hear your confession on your deathbed, you were okay. Then, as now, I wracked my brain trying to think of what sins I had committed recently, as the priest assured the congregation that we were all sinners.

Compounding this bizarre notion of constant sinning was the revelation, provided to me by a cousin three years older than I, that the priest at the church liked to get "handsy" with some of the boys. My cousin said that some boys seemed to like being fondled, while others viewed it as something mildly annoying to be tolerated, like eating your Brussels sprouts. It was no longer an issue for him, as he had recently gone through puberty.

The more I saw of religion, the less I felt it had to offer me.

In the last few years, the Catholic Church has been hit by a number of scandals involving pedophile priests, and a joke comes to mind:

A priest hearing confessions has a pressing need to use the toilet, so during a lull, he steps out of the confessional and asks a painter working in the church to take his place for the next few minutes. The workman balks, saying "I won't know what to tell them!" The priest shows him a sheet of paper he's typed up that lists all possible sins, in alphabetical order, and the appropriate act of penance, so the painter agrees and takes the priest's seat. A good-looking young woman then enters the confessional.

She says, "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. Last night I gave my boyfriend a blow job." The painter scans the cheat sheet, but there is no 'blow job' listed under the letter B, and no 'oral sex' under the letter O. The priest has listed this sin under F, for 'fellatio,' but the painter doesn't know this proper term, so he has no idea what to say to the young woman. He fakes a massive coughing fit, excuses himself for some water, dashes out of the confessional, and grabs an altar boy.

"Quick, what does Father O'Grady give for a blow job?" the painter asks. The altar boy shrugs and says, "Usually, either a Snickers bar or a Coke."

The interesting thing about this joke is that I first heard it when I was eleven years old, .forty years ago, in 1968. I’m sure it's been around longer than that.

Growing up, it seemed logical to me that if you have a profession where the men in it are not permitted to marry or have any sexual contact with women, then that profession is bound to attract a greater percentage of homosexuals than professions without such a ban. The law of averages would dictate that some of these homosexual men will prefer physical contact with young boys rather than (or maybe in addition to) men their own age.* Hearing stories from neighborhood friends in Catholic families, I learned that priests with a predilection for fondling boys were not uncommon. For this reason, I am baffled at the massive recent outrage heaped upon the Catholic Church over this issue. It reminds me of the scene in the movie Casablanca where Claude Rains, in his role as a policeman ordered by his superior to close the casino, does so with the pronouncement that "I am shocked, SHOCKED to learn that gambling has been occurring in this establishment!"

By the time I finished grade school, I had determined that silence was the best course of action when asked questions about my religion. If asked, I would say that I felt religion was a private matter, rather than admit I thought it was utter nonsense. That has been my practice for several decades, until Mssrs. Dawkins and Hitchens made me realize I was copping out.

I do not mean to single out Catholicism for criticism. ALL religions have major elements that leave me as perplexed today as they did when I was five. To the Baptists, dancing is a sin. DANCING! Okay kids, let's all imagine Fred Astaire burning in hell... It seems to me that religions always give us rules that are literally impossible to obey, such as the ban on certain thoughts. The commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" is an obvious example. This commandment doesn’t say I mustn't make unwanted (or wanted, for that matter) advances on another man's wife. Oh no, this commandment says I can't look at Heidi Klum in a Victoria's Secret commercial and THINK "Gee, I wish she were my girl." Though I've never met the man, my guess is that even Heidi's husband (a black vocalist named Seal, I believe) wouldn't want me to burn in hell for all eternity just for thinking it would be nice if she were my wife or girlfriend.

When someone with a debilitating illness makes a miraculous recovery, or someone on his deathbed stays alive and lucid until an important event has passed, like the birth of his grandchild, and people praise God for His benevolence in these matters, I want to slap them. Isn't it more likely that the patient's indomitable will had more to do with these events than the hand of a supreme being? And isn't it massively conceited to believe that God would decide to have Grandpa Smith in Missouri live long enough to see his grandson, on the same day He committed the wholesale murder of thousands of other families on the other side of the planet with a tsunami?

As H.L. Mencken put it, I respect other people's religious beliefs in the same way I respect a man's notion that his wife is beautiful and his children are brilliant. I understand that religion apparently offers comfort and solace to some people. I also know that many enjoy church as a place to see friends and socialize. These things are not true for me, however, and when some wide-eyed automaton asks me if I’ve accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and tells me that every word in the Bible is literally true, I want to reach for my gun.

Don't get me started on Scientology, let alone Islam...

John Ross 4/22/2008

*The Catholic Church is not alone in providing appealing career opportunities for men who are physically attracted to boys. At least three of the eighteen counselors at the summer camp I went to in 1968 were gay, and I know that at least one of these three liked to fondle boys. When he started to fondle me, I made it clear I didn't want that, and that was the end of it. I was hardly traumatized by this mildly awkward encounter with an otherwise likeable person. It is with no small amount of amusement (and irony) that I tell you that this man was the camp's riflery instructor...

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