The Oblivious Devout Keep Christianity Chugging Along

But its god, like thousands of others, will end up on the scrapheap of history

Many years ago I was the pastor of a small church in a small town in Massachusetts. I did the baptisms, marriages, and funerals. When a middle-aged woman in the congregation died, I officiated at the funeral, then at the burial. It was a beautiful day, sunny with a scattering of clouds. I so vividly recall that a sister of the deceased proclaimed, “She’s up there already, pushing the clouds around.” I was struck by the naivete of this comment. Was she just joking? I don’t think so. Here was a woman who apparently accepted the concept of the cosmos embodied in the Bible: we’re down here, and god is up there—somewhere—on his throne above the clouds. And because of this close proximity, the Christian god can keep a close watch on everyone and everything. He knows how many hairs are on our heads, he monitors all of the words we utter, and even knows what every human is thinking (how else would prayer work?) There are Bible verses to back up all of these ideas about god. 
 
But human discoveries about the cosmos have moved us far beyond these naivetes.
 
 
Where are we in the cosmos?
 
So many of the devout seem to be hopelessly oblivious. Those who have learned about scientific discoveries and insights are among those who now identify as “nones” —those who admit they’ve moved away from traditional faith. 
 
There are many questions—in this category, Where are we in the cosmos?  —that we could pose to the oblivious devout.
 
·      Please describe our solar system. Name the planets that orbit the sun, and their order, from the one closest to the sun to the one that is most distant. Planet Earth’s nearest neighbors in the solar system are Venus and Mars. Is god’s realm—including his throne—floating somewhere between Earth and Venus, or Mars?
 
·      What does our sun orbit, at about 450,000 miles per hour—each trip around it taking 230 million years? Our sun is one of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Our solar system is located “… in a spiral arm called the Orion Spur that extends outward from the Sagittarius arm.” (see Our Sun: Facts)
 
·      What momentous discovery did Edwin Hubble make in 1923? —indeed, it is one of the most important discoveries in human history. During ten days in December, 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope focused on a very small patch of sky—about the size of a tennis ball 100-meters away. The resulting photographic plate showed almost 3,000 galaxies. The telescope was named after Hubble because he had determined, in 1923, using the 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson, that the impressive swirl of stars known as Andromeda is not within our galaxy, but is another galaxy about 2.5 million light years away. Many astronomers at the time believed that our Milky Way Galaxy was the entire cosmos. Since Hubble’s time it has been established that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies. This reduces the possibility to zero that there is a creator-god closely watching—and judging—every human being. That idea made (some) sense when it was believed that god’s realm was a few miles overhead. 
 
It was in 1950 that Pope Pius XII issued the dogma of Mary’s bodily assumption to heaven. In his childhood home, his mother maintained a shrine to Mary, and the children prayed there every day. So the devotion to Mary was embedded in his brain early in his life. Thus the 1950 dogma is no surprise. But allow me to be cynical here. This was a quarter century after Hubble’s discovery, so my guess is that the pope wanted to do what he could to keep Catholics believing that heaven was a place above the earth that a body could go to. So, is Mary also floating somewhere in space between Earth and Venus, or Mars? Many preachers and apologists have noticed this problem, and suggest that heaven is a state of being that devout folks can transition to. Nice try. But they have yet to provide reliable, verifiable, objective evidence for this state of being. 
 
I do wonder what percentage of humans today are aware of Edwin Hubble’s 1923 discovery. It’s probably pretty low. So the oblivious devout have plenty of company in their ignorance. In my article here last week I voiced my doubt that any preacher, from the pulpit on Sunday morning, would assign everyone in the congregation to read the gospel of Mark carefully, critically—then submit their toughest questions about it. Likewise, there’s probably no preacher who would urge everyone to study Edwin Hubble’s 1923 discovery, and think seriously about its implications for their faith.  
 
Was life intended and fine-tuned by an Intelligent Designer?  
 
Here again, the oblivious devout follow the lead of apologists who suggest that if certain fundamentals of the cosmos were just slightly different, life would not have arisen. So there was fine-tuning involved, hence an intelligent designer is behind it all. Then they make an easy, slick transition to the god that apologists have been taught about since they were toddlers, to the god who sent his son to die for our sins. It takes a lot of theologizing, a lot of guesswork and wishful thinking to get from an intelligent designer to the deeply flawed god described in the Bible. 
 
And it appears the intelligent designer got bored with his job much too soon. Dan Barker, in his new book, Contraduction, makes this point:
 
“Outside the little niche incubator in which an organism evolves—such as the thin skin of Earth’s atmosphere or waters—nature is utterly hostile to life. And even within the niche, it can be dangerous. The universe appears to be exquisitely fine-tuned, not for life, but for death.” (p. 84, Kindle)
 
Utterly hostile to life. Indeed, what kind of intelligent designer would place us on such a dangerous planet? Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, firestorms—and so many other things are a constant threat to human and animal life. Our bodies are so poorly designed (the human birth canal being just one example), and are subject to thousands of genetic diseases. Why are there cancers, mental illnesses, dangerous microbes, and the utterly humiliating aging process? It took thousands of years for modern medicine to come up with ways to prevent high infant mortality—and to discover the science of dentistry: we now know how to prevent tooth decay and the horrible pain that comes with it. It would seem there was a barely intelligent designer, one with a very low IQ.
 
Oh yes, the oblivious devout applaud the idea of an intelligent designer—“That’s our god!” But fail to grasp the many examples of poor, bad design. For more on this, see Abby Hafer’s book, The Not-So-Intelligent Designer: Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not.
 
The oblivious devout fail to see that Christianity is a big mess. 
 
The mess started with the New Testament, written by a variety of theologians (not historians) who disagreed profoundly about Jesus, and had different ideas about how to achieve eternal life. So it’s no wonder that Christianity has splintered endlessly in the following centuries. By some estimates, there are now more than 30,000 brands (denominations, divisions, sects, and cults) of the faith. The oblivious devout head off on Sunday morning to the church they’re used too (from childhood, or of recent choice), and don’t seem to be bothered that other churches don’t agree with their brand of the faith. Don’t they ever think about that—and its implications for “the truth” they cherish so much as they sit in the pews? 
 
Maybe they could shake off their indifference—their ignorance, actually—if they picked out ten other denominations to visit, to attend their worship services, to compare notes. Southern Baptists could try out Catholic churches. Methodists could show up at Mormon events. But, above all, Christians could take the time to carefully, critically, read the four gospels; the flaws and contradictions are shocking. Then tackle the epistles, especially those written by Paul, who never met Jesus. He based his version of the faith on his hallucinations; he considered them visions from the heavenly realm…yawn, so have countless other religious fanatics.   
 
There are ways to overcome the status of being oblivious devout. Curiosity, skepticism, critical thinking skills are required. And a willingness to acknowledge that trusted authority figures who pounded religions into our heads (parents and clergy), who insisted that they knew the truth about god, could quite possibly have been totally wrong. Because they too were victims of indoctrination. They didn’t think to ask for reliable, verifiable, objective evidence for the god(s) they were taught to believe in. But, really, that’s not too much to ask. We should be ready to move beyond Mark Twain’s observation: “Faith is believing in something you know ain’t true.” The oblivious devout should try to grasp what that means. 
 
 
 
David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 
 
His YouTube channel is here. At the invitation of John Loftus, he has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.
 
The Cure-for-Christianity Library©, now with more than 500 titles, is here. A brief video explanation of the Library is here.