Three Steps To Success (Part 2)

...in which the author continues with Part Two in a three-part series on religion, faith, and the proper application of caulk to a bathtub

The first blow to my High Religious Ideals happened because my parents, like so many middle-class suburbanites in the 1960s/ early 70s, belonged to the Book Of The Month Club. Most of the books were on some shelves in our library. When I was bored I'd either grab a random volume of the Book of Knowledge encyclopedia (my favorite was 'M') or one of these book club editions. One day when I was about ten or eleven while I was scanning the spines for something to read, the title "The Naked Ape" jumped out at me, so I removed Desmond Morris' book and started to read. It was fascinating and eye-opening. He theorized why women wore lipstick. He postulated as to the reason why humans had just as much hair as chimps but hair that was soft and light and thin. He hypothesized as to why human females have prominent breasts. And guess what? None of the reasons were "because God said so." I looked at human beings differently from that point on.

Then, when I was an undergraduate, one night I did what I usually did in order to put off writing a term paper and went to the library for a book. I found Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene." Very interesting reading. Basically, Dawkins puts forth the case for humans simply being the vehicles that genes use to propagate themselves through the millennia. If this was indeed true, it left little room for "the soul", etc, because if anything "religious beliefs" were simply yet another thing genes used in order to ensure their survival.

If Morris made me look at humans differently from a macro level, Dawkins accomplished the same thing at the micro level. Not only were we just animals, but we were really a bunch of genes fighting it out with other genes; the bodies and brains and fingernails and kidneys were just necessary baggage that were really there to protect the genes in the same manner that a house with its plumbing and siding and shingles and foundation and grout and dry wall only really serve to make the people living within more comfortable.

Finally, the third in my triumvirate was put in motion by my girlfriend in college. I don't think she knows this, and would probably find it funny since she chides me over my apparent atheism, but she was the catalyst. It happened this way:

Texas A&M University, like most schools, had its own movie showings in the large auditorium on the weekends. This one Saturday, around 1984 or so, the movie was "Jesus Christ Superstar". I'd always liked the music, so we went. During the movie I made the comment to girlfriend that, "Gee, Jesus and Mary Magdalene seem awfully close", at which point she whispered to me that there was a theory by some that they in fact were married and had children. I had not heard this before, and after the movie she told me about this book called "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" that put forth this theory. I of course found the book in the library and read it. It made a good case, in my opinion, that Mr. Christ was not killed on the cross (and thus had no need for a resurrection) and did in fact have children with Mary Magdalene, and that the Holy Grail was really the bloodline of The Christs, brought to England by Mary and Joseph of Arimathea .

Now, as I'll discuss in Part Three, this alone shouldn't have necessarily changed my religious views, but given the other two books mentioned it didn't help. If we add to that my basic growing belief that I'd later learn was already put forth by one Occam... that being that given multiple explanations, usually the simplest is the correct explanation... and if we add the problem I always had with the nature of Free Will and its confliction with the idea of an almighty deity (yes, believe it or not this always bothered me, even as a young child. And yes, I know this is a peculiar thing for a third grader to worry about, but there you have it), and if we add to that my study of the split-brain patient literature that to me showed that what we call "consciousness", "personality", etc, are really just a manifestation of various neural pathways and brain formations... well, the notion that The Church might have been propagating a myth about the divinity of Christ didn't help any.

(As an aside, I might mention that I think I've solved the Free Will Problem, at least to my satisfaction... i.e. I've come up with a way that one can have Free Will and still have an Omnipotent Being. Someday I'll post said explanation as a sort of appendix to this series).

Next: Does it really matter if JC rose from the dead and was celibate his whole life?