Atheist Meditations

I just read an article that C- recommended to me about the species of the evagelicals out in the Pacific Northwest on Salon. For those of you who are members; the link.

The article by Lauren Sandler summarizes the author's insight from his recent book, 'Righteous'; many illustrive anecdotes are laid out to clarify the situation. Here's one I cut out of the article:

During a community group evening, a couple of weeks before I visited, Dietz was hanging out with the men in the backyard, while the women were inside cooking and watching the kids. Scrutinizing the dilapidated fence that had come with the house, Dietz began talking about how he'd really like a new one, but wasn't sure how much the whole endeavor might cost.

A few days later, the men in the group pulled up in front of the house with a pickup truck full of lumber and set about building a new fence on the spot. Now whenever the Dietzes look out their kitchen window, they see a proud and solid reminder of the strength of their community, and the unity of their faith in God. Dietz recounts this story sitting squarely in his big chair in the living room, his eyes set on mine over the rim of his coffee cup. I tell him the truth: I have wonderful friends who I have considered close as family for many years now, and I can't imagine any of them helping me lug the wood, much less building me a fence. He pauses and sets down his coffee cup in a motion that is about to put a definitive end to a delightful evening. "Listen," he says. "We have a really nice rapport. But we believe different things. And let's face it, because of that, you're never going to feel like family to me. So, what I'm saying is, this is as far as it goes." Stung at first, upon reflection I can't blame him. I have nothing like his shared faith to connect me to other people. It's no wonder Dietz and Sarah glow when they talk about their group with the same tones of veneration in which they join hands and say grace before dinner.

End Quote

Now this strikes so many irritated chords with me that I can barely focus on just one to begin my rant with.

First is the manner of inclusion/exclusion that is used. This is a big step up from 'if you havn't felt the love of Jesus I pity you'; this is, 'If you don't believe what I believe than you don't mean shit to me.' See the cultiness here? That's definately a trend towards the Hard Right.

Secondly, why can't we just call a spade a spade and start to refer to these types with the same language we use for drug addicts? Earlier in the article the author describes what evags these days are calling 'agape' - the type of love that Jesus has for them, which effortlessly belittles the experiences of love that are psycologically paired with family, friends, or sexual partners. Agape can be used as the brand name for their group love drug. By exploiting the psychology of the herd, and also maximizing the mental fantasies of the group regarding safety and 'being special', the religious leader can generate incredible feelings of belonging and love. Like a version of Titanic adjusted on the fly by a skilled 'TV psychic' to generate as many shrieks out of that audience as possible - these freaks don't smoke nothing, they use group dynamics to get high.

And DAMN do they get high! 'Agape' is a the best trick their stale little culture has come up with yet to describe the experience to the rest of us. But even without possessing the religious underworkings which animate the word 'agape', we can still compare the imagry to that of drug culture and infer that they are talking about some religious Maui Woowie.

Group dynamics huffing works off the fact that our species is a very social animal (we have always found social bonds essential to survival and thus the continuation of our genetic material) yet too many of us are allowed to survive in this society dispite glaringly primitive social skills. Even me - a being that I like to think is very socially developed - can find myself sweating through my shirt and desperately hesitating when a novel situation requires me to interact with a stranger. Most Americans have some difficulty expressing themselves honestly and interacting comfortably with other human beings who are not a member of their family or close group.

What the evags do is use the power of group suggestion. Some members of the group claim to feel this incredible pleasure inside of their bodies, and they occassionally make unusual movements or noises to represent this transcendental pleasure. Other members of the group have a strong psychological instinct to relate to the other members of their group. So if one is claiming to have a groovy feeling of love right now, the others . . .

Anybody else have one of those early teen experiences where someone claimed to have some alcoholic beverage or a drug or something, and then everybody tried it and started acting goofy until finally the perpetrator admitted he was just playing you all for fools - it was just koolaid or granulated sugar? Evags have been taking that joke too far for about a hundred years now.

The first evags to initialize the group to a feeling of pleasure from this elaborate group dynamic are not lying to themselves. They honestly believe that the endorphins they are releasing are proof of a magical world. The process does release real chemicals in the brain, and those chemicals are very potent behavior modifiers.

The author of this article refers to Evagelicalism as 'gobbling up this entire generation.' The size of this locomotive of the damned is nightmarish.

Dietz is no different from a heroin addict that mocks your inability to score horse and 'feel the music.'

How many human beings are free of the slavery of the addicted mind? One percent? Two? Fuck us all.