"It's better to have no religion at all, just Jesus, himself, alone." -- ACTUAL QUOTE

Actual quote from a real person:

"It's better to have no religion at all, just Jesus, himself, alone."

My fellow atheists, this is a perfect example of why many of you are way too excited about all those polls claiming that "religion is in decline." Someone tells the pollster they're not religious, but what you don't see when you read the poll results is them saying, "I don't need religion -- just Jesus!"

But you should sense it, because quotes like the one above are now so common that nobody but me remarks upon them. Once again, I have to do everything by myself. (A perfect example of why I deserve the Nobel Prize in Literature.) It's the people who often call themselves SBNR or "spiritual but not religious," whom I often call "religious but in denial about it" or "the disorganized religious." And of course, these people who don't call themselves religious are finding each other and organizing into groups that they don't call churches or temples, led by people they don't call clergy -- place where they get together and talk about how great God is and discuss His plan.

Similar to religion? Gee, ya think?

Yes, it's identical to religion. Identical to early Protestantism in most cases: people leave their churches because the churches are "doin' it wrong," and start their own, more self-righteous and Bible-obsessed groups.

At the very least, those doofuses taking the polls should become aware of all this, and adjust their polls to distinguish between atheists and the disorganized religious -- but as I've said before, sociologists aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer either.

Stupid disorganized religious, stupid atheists, stupid pollsters -- I'm surrounded by idiots! And no, this doesn't make me feel smart. Not at all -- I've allowed a bunch of idiots to surround me!

(Review Of Why I Am An Atheist Who Believes In God By Frank Schaeffer) I Wonder Whether There's A Precedent For This Willy-nilly Re-Definition Of Terms:

-- "spiritual but not religious." "Followers of Christ but not Christians." "Jumbo shrimp." (Just kidding about about the term "jumbo shrimp;" it doesn't belong in this discussion because if the shrimp in question are unusually large, the term actually makes some sense.) And Now: The Amazing Story Of Frank Schaeffer, The Atheist Who Believed In God!



If it were not already quite enough that Schaeffer claims to be simultaneously a believer and an atheist -- oh, but it is, it is -- in this book Schaeffer claims never to have met an atheist nor a believer. Nonsense is one thing. Inconsistent nonsense is quite another, and writing "or" when "nor" is correct -- strike three, siddown, Schaeffer!

Just as there was a serviceable existing description of SBNR's etc -- they're Protestants -- so also is there a term for what Schaeffer is talking about in the title of his goofy new book: he's a Christian who has crises of faith now and then. If he had them a lot he might actually wake up someday and become a nice sensible atheist, but we really shouldn't hold our breath in Frank's case.

A Big "Duh" Moment: Why They Call Us Nones

Ever since I have heard the term "nones" to describe people who identify as religiously unaffiliated, I have been extremely annoyed that we atheists are called "nones" along with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, etc, etc, who lately haven't been going to church or temple. I object to being put into the same group as those people -- sometimes also called "spiritual but not religious" -- every chance I get.

But then today it suddenly hit me why we all would but put into the same category, and also why that category is called "nones": because "none" describes the financial contribution we are currently making to traditional religious institutions. From the point of view of those institutions, that is exactly what we all have in common.

We Don't Need Would-Be-Deep Theologians Telling Us What We Need!

I only use the word "we" in the headline to make fun of all the articles with "we" in the headline which purport to tell entire civilizations how they feel. It may be that there are such essays written these days by people other than clergypeople and theologians, I don't know. I just know that more often than now and then a reverend or priest or rabbi or Professor of Theology, or sometimes more than one of the above united in one person, gets depressed, and projects his mood upon millions. "Why do we feel so empty inside?" one of them may ask. What you mean, "we," Kimosabe? I don't feel empty inside at the moment. I'm not completely unfamiliar with the feeling, but at the moment, I feel alright. "People don't seem to trust religion anymore." Well, good! Sounds like maybe they're recovering from religion, or potentially about to, or never suffered from it to begin with. Religion hasn't been at the cutting edge of human thought for thousands of years. (Yes, I know that in Medieval Christendom, all scientists were Christians, or pretended to be in order to be allowed to be scientists. That was a forced unity of science and religion -- worse, actually: a forced unity of science and one religion -- which is very convenient for the nincompoops today who insist that there is no conflict between science and religion, and was very bad for science at the time.) Perhaps what really feels particularly empty inside at the moment is the house of worship where the depressed clergyperson-author is attempting to make a living. I feel for someone who entered a profession which not long ago seemed like a completely reliable way of making a living, and now, all of a sudden, does not. I feel for the farmers who used to make a reliable living growing tobacco, and now, all of a sudden, cannot. I feel for them, but I still think they should switch to other crops.

In the 19th century in the US, religion -- well, Christianity -- well, evangelical Protestantism -- boomed. Pastors proclaimed that what "we" needed was "old time religion." I'm not sure how accurate at the time the adjective "old" was to describe what they were offering, but old-time religion was what it was called, and it was what the pastors were offering, and it was a booming industry. These days, "old time religion" is offered mostly on the political right wing. In the politically-progressive publications where these depressed men and women of God are going on and on about what "we" need, very little could be less popular than old-time religion. And so these depressed theologians insist that we need "new ways" into the same old religious stuff. (Sometimes by going along with the nuclear option of denying that what they offer is religious at all, but the dreaded SBNR.) These are the clearest-imaginable cases of projection: it is they who need new ways to attract people to their congregations. I'm really not so upset with them. They're trying to save their jobs. Trying to sell their tobacco, as it were. Yeah, well, I quit smoking and I think others should too. The depressed theologians need to adapt and change -- and not by trying to re-invent their millennia-old wheels.

I Wouldn't Call Myself A Human --

-- because there's so much unpleasantness associated with the human species and I'd like to distance myself from that.

What's that you say? I'm being ridiculous? Maybe so. But more ridiculous than the spiritual but not ridi -- I almost wrote "spiritual but not ridiculous," ha. Am I being more ridiculous than the spiritual but not religious? No. Less so, I'd say, because I knew I was being ridiculous and I did it for a laugh and to make fun of spiritual but not religious people such as Marcus Mumford, a Christian musician, but be careful if you call him one. He says, I don't really like that word. It comes with so much baggage. So, no, I wouldn't call myself a Christian. I think the word just conjures up all these religious images that I don't really like. I have my personal views about the person of Jesus and who he was. ... I've kind of separated myself from the culture of Christianity.

Uh-huh. Not from his fixation on Jeebus Christ Himself though, of course, which is where the Gosh-darn word "Christian" comes from...

Now, of course, religion has never been about being logical or consistent. And perhaps Christianity has never been about a rudimentary knowledge of the history of Christianity, because anybody with that rudimentary knowledge must surely see the striking similarities between the Protestants separating themselves from the Christian herd, and the SBNR doing it again all around us today: the dissatisfaction with institutions, the effort to have a more direct connection with Gosh and Jeebus, the emphasis on "what Jeebus really did and said" (which today is flying in the face of scholarship which is coming more and more to the conclusion that we don't know what Jeebus really did and said, although the mainstream still recoils from considering the obvious question: did he really actually exist at all? Not that the answer to that one matters so much, it's just an interesting, obvious question), the holier-than-thou attitude wrapped in that very diaphanous Christian cloak of stupid arrogance which is the repeated insistence that one is not holier-than-thou, but very very humble... I don't think it'll come to full-scale warfare like it did between Catholics and Protestants for most of the 16th and 17th centuries, but other than that I think we've pretty much got the entire nine yards. If these people knew that history perhaps they'd begin to see what a hamster-wheel they're on, and stop focusing so intently on one imaginary friend and one thick boring volume of ancient lore as if all the answers were in there and as if every attempt at good sense had to be measured against it -- as if any one volume were justified in such an absurd claim -- and become good sensible atheists and begin to open up more to the entire, real world. But how long, O Gosh, how long yet before we get there?