That Guy From China

I’m someone who experienced quite a number of what I considered to be ‘supernatural’ experiences as a youth; and know others who claimed quite sincerely to have experienced others.

I’m now an atheist…and that required a significant re-evaluation of those occurrences. Let me share with you how I came to the conclusion that they were not, in fact, supernatural. There are two main phenomenon that I’d like to mention in this regard.

First, the fact that there are many real experiences which can, most definitely, appear entirely supernatural. You have people who really do hear voices telling them what to do. Sometimes its because of a diagnosable psychological condition. Other times, it can be a hallucination, or simply wish-fulfillment (you want it so badly that your mind causes it to happen). I certainly experienced the latter…as a teenager, when I was going through some particularly difficult problems, I prayed desperately for God’s guidance. There was one situation that required me to make a decision that, no matter what decision was made, would cause great difficulty for myself and others. I didn’t know what to do…so I asked God to tell me. I prayed over and over and over again, with no answer. And then finally, one night, after another round of desperate, pleading prayer, I quite literally heard a voice in my head, telling me what to do. I can still remember this quite clearly now. It wasn’t just a voice, either…there was a clear sensation of ‘someone’ being there with me, and a feeling of calm and peace.

At the time, I interpreted this as God speaking to me; and, in addition, as concrete proof of God’s existence, and his involvement in my life.

Today, I interpret it as my own pysche’s means of dealing with a very stressful situation, and providing me with an answer to a situation that absolved me of personal responsibility — it was God’s decision, not mine, so whatever difficulties resulted from that decision were on God, not on me. I had many similar experiences of the ‘supernatural’; and I know many others who’ve had ‘supernatural’ experiences that are every bit as real to them as my experience was to me.

So then, how did I come to change my opinion on this? How did I go from “This was a supernatural proof of God’s existence”, to “This had nothing to do with the supernatural, it has an entirely natural explanation”?

Through knowledge. I’ve always had an insatiable thirst to learn, and particularly to understand others. At the time, as a Christian, I wanted to help others see The Truth, and bring them to a Personal Relationship With Their Lord And Savior, Jesus Christ. But it wasn’t enough for me to just preach at them about my beliefs…I felt it was necessary to understand their beliefs, and their experiences, so that I could relate to them on a much deeper and more meaningful level. So I started learning about Muslims, and Buddhists, and Scientologists, and Mormons, and all those other groups out there.

As I did so, I discovered something rather disturbing (at least, it was disturbing to me at the time). There was absolutely no religious or supernatural experience that I had experienced, that peoples of other religions did not also claim to have experienced. And their belief in the reality of those experiences was every bit as sincere as my own.

At first, I tried to fob this off with “Satan is wily, and of course he will ‘counterfeit’ supernatural experiences so that he can lure people away from the One True Path”. But the more I studied, the less this excuse worked. First, if some experiences were real, and others were ‘counterfeit’, there must be some way of distinguishing between the two. But there wasn’t. Essentially, in every religion, it came down to “If my god did it, its real; if someone else’s god did it, its not”.

And then as I got into university, and started learning more about human psychology, I learned that exactly the same phenomenon could be reproduced without any religious involvement at all. The use of certain drugs. The instigation of certain psychological states. Mass hysteria. Hypnotism. The list goes on, and on, and on.

Derren Brown is probably one of the very best examples of this…he’s been able to consistently and predictably reproduce a wide variety of ‘supernatural experiences’ in people…despite the fact he’s an atheist, and can give a 100% rational, non-supernatural experience for all of them. He’s convinced people to convert to Christianity after they felt the power of the Holy Spirit flowing through them. He’s convinced top psychics of his own significant psychic powers. He’s reproduced amazing martial artist performances demonstrating the power of ‘qi’.

As the evidence grew and grew, I came to realize that my own experience, regardless of how real it was to me, had an entirely rational, non-supernatural explanation. And I came to the conclusion that if a non-supernatural answer existed to explain what had happened, then there was no reason to accept a supernatural answer, unless there was significant evidence to the contrary.

There wasn’t. And there isn’t now.

But I said above that there’s a second aspect to this. Its what I call “righteous lies”. Its a phenomenon that I experienced quite regularly as a Christian. That is, another Christian would talk about some supernatural event that they’d experienced (“I was talking to this Chinese guy about Jesus, but his English wasn’t very good, and then suddenly I started speaking in fluent Chinese, even though I’ve never studied the language!”). I’d hear that story, and think, “Wow, that’s amazing!”.

But the thing is, even Christians are competitive. We want everyone to think of us as “good Christians”, people who can demonstrate their real relationship with God. Having miracles happen means that you’re on good terms with god; no miracles means that you must be doing something wrong.

So, I’d appropriate some of those stories for my own. I’d re-tell the story, but with myself being the one who actually experienced the miracle. And I didn’t really consider it to be lying…because the other guy who told me the story was a Christian, so he obviously didn’t lie about it. I was telling a story that was 99% true…the only part that wasn’t true was that I was the one who had experienced it.

Not only was the story “true”, but by re-telling it, I was also giving Greater Glory to God. I was giving other people real evidence of God’s amazing power. If I told the story as “something that someone else told me”, then it lacked authority (those damn skeptics would ask, “If it happened to someone else, how can you know its true?”). But if I told the story as “something that happened personally to me”, then people couldn’t question it without directly accusing me of being a liar.

Thus, it was justified as a small, white lie…but one that worked towards glorifying God, and thus was justifiable.

Now, here’s the thing. On two different occasions — once at a Christian summer camp, and once at Bible College — I talked with other Christians about this…I mentioned that at times, I’d claimed other people’s “miracles” as my own. Both times, almost everyone else in the group (all of them sincere, Bible-believing Christians) admitted that they’d done the same thing.

And all of us concluded that it may not be the best thing (it was, after all, lying)…but that as sins went, it was a very minor one. After all, for the most part, we were telling the truth!

And it didn’t occur to most of them (although it occurred to me, and is one of the things that started me questioning the reality of such miracles), that the person they heard the story from might also have heard it from someone else, and then appropriated it for themselves. Nor did it really occur to them that others would hear their story, and assume that “because they’re a Christian, it must be the truth”…and likewise appropriate that story for their own use.

The important thing here is that when I, or other Christians I knew, related such stories, we did so with complete sincerity. I had no doubt that such a miracle had happened (it just didn’t happen to me). Thus, I could relate the story as a real event, something that had absolutely happened.

Between the two different explanations I’ve listed above, I’ve come to find that there is absolutely no “supernatural experience” that doesn’t, in fact, have a completely rational, natural explanation.

This is related to my upcoming speech at the American Atheist National Convention in April.

There seems to be a huge debate surrounding teaching religious beliefs.  Of course, every religion feels that they should have the right to teach their beliefs to their children; and many atheists oppose such teaching, some going to the point of comparing it to child abuse.  And in general, those who have a particular religion oppose the teaching of beliefs that contradict their own.

The fact is, pretty much every person is going to face a choice as to what their beliefs are.  Will it be one of the many Christian denominations?  Islam?  Buddhism? Or will they reject supernatural beliefs?

Let’s focus on the key word here — CHOICE.  A choice means understanding the options, and choosing the one that seems best to you.  If you don’t know or understand the different options, then you cannot make a real choice.  My position is that we should not be teaching simply what we want others to believe, but rather that we should be teaching others how to make those choices for themselves.

I’m not opposed to a Christian teaching their beliefs to their children; but I am opposed to a Christian who seeks to keep their child from learning about the other options.  And my feeling is the same regarding atheists — if they would seek to prevent their children from learning about other beliefs, I’d be opposed to that, also.

My proposal is rather on the idealistic side, but is a goal that I personally think we should be working towards.  Create a curriculum that presents all of the major belief systems, be they theistic or atheistic.  Have a section on Christianity, a section on Islam, a section on Humanism, etc.  Each section is divided into three parts.

The first part gives an introduction to that belief system written by people from that belief system.  So have Christians write the intro to Christian beliefs.  Muslims write the intro to Muslim beliefs.  Etc.

The second part gives a general history of the belief system, giving an overall perspective of how that belief system has gotten to where it is today.

The third part gives those who have other beliefs the chance to discuss what they see as flaws, inconsistencies, or problems in that belief system.  So Muslims, Humanists, and Buddhists would have the chance to comment on Christian beliefs…and vice versa.

In my opinion, if someone is a Christian, or Muslim, or Humanist, simply because that’s what they were taught, and they’ve never really learned about or understood anything else…it is wrong.  But if someone, after honestly learning about and understanding the different options, then chooses a particular belief system, I have no problem with that, even if it is different than my own.

In discussing this with others, I’ve generally gotten a lot of support from the atheist/Humanist community.  The Christian community, on the other hand, seems to generally be quite opposed to it.  It seems that “faith” is actually dependent on ignorance…know what you believe, but not much about what others believe (and by this, I don’t mean just what Christians say about other beliefs, which has a very obvious bias).  It seems to me that, if you really have the Truth”, you should welcome the opportunity to put your beliefs up against others, since the superiority of your own beliefs will inevitably come out.  Its the fear of letting people hear about and understand other beliefs that is one of the most telling aspects of religion.

Now, lest I be accused of stereotyping, I’ve met atheists who’ve opposed this idea; and Christians who’ve supported it.  But for the most part, few atheists I’ve met are afraid of having their children exposed to different belief systems, so long as it is done in a balanced manner; whereas the majority of Christians I’ve talked to, even if they say they support this idea in theory, are opposed to it if it involves their own children.