The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (33 page)

In the face of overwhelming evidence, the virus continues to resist a strictly biological understanding of disease and health. We can see this most clearly in the way many religions treat homosexuality. The virus programs those infected with a sequence something like this: Sinful acts like homosexual behavior incur a god’s wrath, the god then causes suffering because of sin, and the god punishes sin with disease. As long as the virus can maintain the god-fear-disease link, the god virus is safe. When the host recognizes that the god has nothing to do with the disease or suffering or that the so-called sin is a normal biological drive or function, the god virus is in danger. The fear factor is lost or weakened.

Here are some current preachers’ writing about HIV and homosexuality.

[There is an] obvious link between AIDS and God’s judgment on sodomy ... When God allows the act of sin itself to carry with it the penalty of death, the man who denies any link to divine judgment is simply a fool.
⁸

The sins of the Sodomites are of the vilest nature. God’s hatred of their abominations is revealed in their incurable disease that strikes with near 100% mortality – AIDS!
⁹

The connection between fear, disease and the god virus is clear in these quotes from three famous preachers, but what other diseases and conditions might be a result of the wrath of god? How does one stop with one disease? If the god is visiting suffering on the “sodomites,” might he do the same on the gamblers, wife beaters, adulterous ministers and pedophile priests with cancer, chicken pox or the common cold? Where does godly retribution stop? With each disease science cures or treats, the view of godly retribution diminishes, and the god-fear-disease link is weakened.

With the link weakened, people may continue to pray to Jesus, but they go to their physician for real healing. To get around this weakening of the link by science, the god has become a guy that I can talk to when I am afraid and ask for special favors. The personal god part of the virus is a powerful adaptation in the face of science and reason. The person says, “I experienced the miracle, so science cannot challenge it.” The god of personal experience trumps science and prevents examination, explanation and learning. If I think a god healed me, then I owe my allegiance to that god. Here is an interesting quote from a woman infected with HIV by her “unfaithful” husband.

8
Tim Bayly is pastor at Church of the Good Shephard, Bloomington, IN. David Bayly is pastor at Christ the Word Presbyterian Church, Toledo, OH. Bayly Blog,
Aids As Divine Judgment: A Personal Note...
[article on-line] (10 May 2006, accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.baylyblog.com/2006/05/aids_as_divine_.html
; Internet.

9
BibleBelievers.com
,
The Sodomites
[article on-line] (accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.Biblebelievers.com/Sodomites.html
; Internet. editor of
The Perilous Times,
a Baptist doctrinal publication.

In the months that followed, she wondered why God had spared her. Then she came upon Psalm 118:17, which says, ‘I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done.’ Then she knew God kept her alive so that she could share what God had done with others suffering from HIV/AIDS. ‘If God can do this for me, and I’m nobody, than it show that He cares for us all.’
¹⁰

In the entire article she never mentions the anti-retro-viral drugs she is taking or the insurance money she uses to pay the doctors with years of medical training and equipment, all dedicated to her survival. If there are any gods in her story, they are the missing medical practitioners who have kept her alive to propagate her god virus.

For those who are less infected, a basic knowledge of science makes it more difficult to believe that prayers give a special edge in the world. If science can heal and explain better than the god, what is the role of the god? He has become a special buddy that I talk to occasionally. Not much different from a child talking to her teddy bear as she goes to sleep. Many of the less virulent viruses have moved to this level. Unitarians, Quakers, Episcopalians and liberal Presbyterians recognize that the real player in the world is science. Their god tends to be a marginal player, more for comfort than for any healing or miraculous intervention.

The big difference between science and religion is found in the presence or absence of error correction mechanisms. Through error correction, science builds a continuing body of knowledge that can be objectively tested and relied upon. Religion has no way to correct errors or make statements about the relative truthfulness of one god virus over another. How does one test Islam against Christianity or Mormonism against Catholicism? The huge success of science and the utter failure of religion have led many god viruses to adopt quasi-scientific ideas in the hopes of attracting some of the success of science. Unfortunately, no god virus adopts error correcting mechanisms. The result is a religious method that does nothing more than support and propagate the virus. God viruses resist science because science strikes at the core strategies of most religions. To the degree that science undermines the fear object of religion (gods, devils, demons, disease, punishment for sin), it will be seen as a threat.

10
Joan Yorba-Gray, an HIV-positive Christian from Costa Mesa, California. AFC Newsource,
HIV Devotional
[article on-line] (7 October 2002, accessed 22 November 2008); available from
http://www.acfnewsource.org/religion/hiv_devotional.html
; Internet.

“When a man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.”

-Sigmund Freud

Religion is not going away, but we can challenge it in the marketplace of ideas in an effort to make the future less fertile for the god virus.

When Freud wrote his analysis of religion in
The Future of an Illusion
(1927), he captured critical elements by suggesting that religion served three functions:

1. It provides for the child-like needs of humans – parental care and concern.

2. It explains the terrors of nature and society and promises a reward for cooperating in a civilized manner.

3. It provides explanation and solace for the ultimate individual death.

Religion served these three purposes to largely illiterate and scientifically ignorant societies of the past. Effective god viruses helped the political leadership maintain control and prevent economic rebellion. Rewards or punishments in the hereafter kept millions under the thumb of kings, popes and despots. It is in this sense that Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses.

This leaves the third function, explanation and solace for the ultimate individual death. Paul writes:

When I was a child I spoke as a child I understood as a child I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.

-I Corinthians 13:11

As a non-theist I echo Paul in this way – it is time to put away childish things. As adults in a literate and scientifically sophisticated society, we can come to terms with our own death without recourse to a supernatural afterlife. In a childish longing to be spared the ultimate end, religionists create an illusion of eternal life that pre vents fully living this life. Irrational fear freezes people and prevents clear thinking. Our natural instinct to avoid death is rational. Irrational fear of death leads millions of people to waste
vast resources in pursuit of an eternal life that even their own text shows to be quite uncertain.
¹

All of the prophetic religions – from Christianity to Islam, Mormonism to the Ghost Dance religion of 19
^th
-century Native Americans – proclaim an end time and return of a savior god. Utter terror of a return and judgment keeps people working within the confines of the religion. Non-believers have figured out that there is no second coming, but there may be an apocalypse of viral stupidity. I am more worried that fundamentalism in all its forms will cause a holocaust than that any 12
^th
Imam
²
, Jesus or Messiah will reappear. In world history, there have been many crucified saviors. Many were born of virgins; many were of humble birth with a royal lineage. All of them claimed they will return some day. Some were resurrected; some even flew up to heaven.

This story line has been an amazingly successful ploy for many religions. In Second Peter, readers are advised to live with one eye on the second coming (II Peter 3:11-12). They are encouraged to live in a way that keeps them from taking real life seriously, because this isn’t the real life anyway. In effect, trade this one biological chance as a living being for something totally uncertain. Non-theists don’t have this distracting focal point, but we can see how much it affects others. It wastes their precious time on this earth, drains resources and keeps them closely bonded to the virus.

The end time focus even distracts people in high government office. James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan, made the statement, “We don’t have to protect the environment. The Second Coming is at hand.”
³

The Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum and Family Resources Council all oppose environmental protection. They see environmentalism as a conspiracy to undermine their god virus and rate legislators accordingly. In 2003, 45 senators and 186 representatives earned 80 to 100% approval ratings from the nation’s three most influential Christian right advocacy groups, largely on their opposition to environmental protection, abortion and other religious issues. Many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future. They believe we are living in the end time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. Here is an all too common quote from evangelical leader David Dansker,

1
Questions like, Who goes to heaven? How many go to heaven? When do they go to heaven? are all totally obfuscated in Christian texts. Islam has a lot more clarity about this important detail and Judaism tends to sidestep it altogether.

2
Certain types of Shii’a Islam called Twelver Shii’as believe that Hujjat al-Mahdi (born in 868) has been hidden by God (referred to as the Occultation) to later emerge with Jesus to fulfill their mission of bringing justice and peace to the world.

3
James Watt, Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan,
Washington Post,
24 May 1981.

This emphasis on interconnecting relationships embraced by Green Evangelicals, among others, is designed to foster the world’s view of communitarian equality with, and acceptance of, cultures diverse from Christianity. Young people are in these programs are acquiring a new reverence for simple life forms in order for the cult of Gaia to promote acceptance of simpler, lowered standards of living in an interconnected world community collectively fighting global warming. Shadow boxing was never so sinister; for instead of being taught to resist the arch enemy to the Church, Christian students are being trained to fight one that does not exist.
⁴

There are hundreds of quotes like these on evangelical, Pentecostal, dispensationalist and dominionist web sites. It is clear that the needs of the god virus trump the reality of preserving the earth’s biosphere for future generations. The earth is expendable. If the savior god is coming, he will take care of everything.

As non-theists we owe it to our children to challenge these crazy ideas and work to leave the world a more rational place than we found it. There will be more god viruses and mutations in the future. If we as non-theists offer the god virus model as an alternative explanation for religion, I believe a significant number of people may begin to recognize religious manipulation in their lives. They may be able to see when a politician is using the god virus to manipulate people into voting for him or her. They may recognize a viral tactic in protecting a pedophile priest or sexual predator preacher. They may see through the viral infection that sucks resources from poor people’s pockets and puts them into mega church ministers’ hands, allowing them to live opulent lifestyles. They may be able to see the guilt-inducing methods that create sexual dysfunction.

4
Christian Research Network,
Climate Change: Stand Against False Gospel
[article on-line] (July 7, 2007, accessed 23 November 2008); available from
http://christianresearchnetwork.com/?p=2455
; Internet. David Dansker writes commentary and articles covering various topics, including ecclesiology, eschatology and theology His focus is on those issues that deal with heresy harlotry and the apostasy

Once people recognize the god virus working in their lives, they gain the ability to see its manipulation in many aspects of life. Life does not suddenly become easy, but it becomes less muddled.

You may have seen the 1960 movie
The Little Shop of Horrors.
A flower breeder discovers that his new plant thrives only on human flesh and blood. As time passes and the plant grows, it demands more and more. The cry of the plant, “feed me,” becomes incessant, hypnotizing the shopkeeper into murdering people to feed it. Eventually, it even consumes the flower breeder himself. Such is the god virus as it infects a person and begins recreating him to ensure its own propagation. While it rarely demands the extremes, it does have the power when the occasion calls. From church attendance to 10% of your income, from abstinence to celibacy, from Christian soldiering to suicide bombers – it demands to be fed.