n "There is a God," former atheist Antony Flew stops short of embracing Christianity, but he lauds the religion as the front runner among its rivals in presenting a compelling case for belief. "No other religion," writes Flew, "enjoys anything like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul"1.
Although I have never been an atheist, I have my own qualms about Christianity, which can be reduced to two main points: arbitrariness and irrelevance.
Arbitrariness
Consider the second appendix to Flew's book, which is a discourse by Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright entitled "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: a dialogue on Jesus"2. Taken in itself, it might strike one as a compelling argument about the self-revelation of an acknowledged divinity. But surely it presupposes the importance of its subject matter. Why does the subtitle not refer to Buddha, or to Lao-Tze, or to Mohammad, or to some more obscure thinker? It seems to me a trifle arbitrary or random. I have no doubt that a large variety of biographical figures could be discussed by an active mind in such a way as to plausibly flesh out a backstory about self-revelation. Why have we granted the importance here to Jesus as opposed to all other possible contenders for that role? If I had to answer this question for myself, I could only say that the faith of the reader must be presupposed by authors like Wright for only then can their arguments be properly seen as compelling. Otherwise they are making just one case among many possible cases for the legitimacy of a certain instance of self-revelation.
I'm not saying that this is wrong: perhaps faith DOES have to come first. But if that is so, then say so. Do not present such treatises as authoritative arguments in and of themselves. Follow the lead of all good electronic toy companies: tell your customer base that "batteries are not included."
Irrelevance
You may talk about your men of Gideon, you may brag about your men of Saul. But after Gideon trounces the Midianites and Saul teaches the Ammonites a thing or two, the survivors all go back to their homes and start groaning about their lives and wondering if life is worth living at all. This, at least, is the takeaway message of many a Shakespearean drama, that war is necessary for keeping men virile and purposeful and that men become soft, petty and sulky in the absence of such tests of valor. As Bertram says to Parolles in "All's Well that Ends Well":
"War is no strife,
To the dark house and the detested wife"3.
This also seems to be the implicit message of the Old Testament, that war is both natural and regularly required. The emphasis is on the geopolitical world, versus the internal mental world, and that's a turnoff for someone like myself who has been troubled for a lifetime now, not by the social reality in which he lives but by his relentlessly negative and uncreative view of that world.
As I wrote in a recent tweet:
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
And what world is that which controls and limits your most basic feelings and attitudes? It is the world created by Drug Warriors, who outlaw drugs that would allow one to mentally transcend their environment, be it never so petty and unfair.
This is why my eyes glaze over when you talk about your men of Gideon. This is why I say "whatever" when you brag about your men of Saul. Their battles, at least for me, have nothing to do with the price of tea in China. I have to live with myself 24/7, and until I can do that peacefully and productively, Solomon himself could not construct a sociopolitical setup that would float my boat.
These qualms about Christianity are only heightened when I reflect that most Christians support the war on drugs, if only by their silence, and in so doing willfully block my road to self-actualization and happiness in life.
Like most of my essays, my reasoning above will only make sense to those who are familiar with the fantastic but largely untapped potential for demonized drugs to inspire and focus the human mind. For a quick primer on this subject, I recommend "Psychedelic Medicine" by Dr. Richard Louis Miller4. The latter book demonstrates the slow awakening of western science to the mind-enhancing pharmacopoeia to which I allude. Of course, tribal peoples have always known that drugs can help. For information on tribal medicines around the world, read "The Plants of the Gods" by Albert Hoffman and Richard Schultes5. As you do so, try to imagine all the wonderful psychological and spiritual progress that could be made by human beings were we only to consider those tribal drugs as godsends rather than as devils and so devote our time to establishing and promoting safe scenarios for their therapeutic and spiritual use.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.
As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.
There are definitely good scientists out there. Unfortunately, they are either limited by their materialist orthodoxy into showing only specific microscopic evidence or they abandon materialism for the nonce and talk the common psychological sense that we all understand.
There are endless drugs that could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for drug warriors to understand).
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
Drug warriors are full of hate for "users." Many of them make it clear that they want users to die. The drug war has weaponized humanity's worst instincts.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
The American Philosophy Association should make itself useful and release a statement saying that the drug war is based on fallacious reasoning, namely, the idea that substances can be bad in themselves, without regard for why, when, where and/or how they are used.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, God and Drugs: why I am not (entirely) a Christian, published on March 12, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)