The god to which every Christian prays is identical to the god that every Christian shaves. All Christianity is Self Projection as God. Part 4 of 4.

We started by saying that “If you take Jesus seriously, he gives you every reason not to take him seriously” and have been proceeding on fact that the Bible is an impossibly contrary hodgepodge.

But you know and I know that not all Christians do take Jesus seriously, don’t we, and that many of them aren’t bothered by a confounding bible? In fact, among confessing Americans it’s safe to say that most don’t take him seriously and that probably fewer are bothered by the bible’s unreliability.

Do those Christians SPAG? Of course they do and it’s comical when liberal Christians object to being SPAGs on that ground because that’s not an objection to SPAG. It’s an example of SPAG: The liberal Christians looking down their noses at the ridiculous fundies, claiming a more valid insight into the bible, its meaning, and its interpretation.

You don’t have to take Jesus seriously to SPAG. The very fact that there are proof texts saying you must take Jesus seriously proves the point.

Nor does any Christian, fundies included, believe the entire bible. That’s impossible. Fundies are only less honest (with themselves or with others) about the fact.

We’ve been proceeding on the fact of an incomprehensible bible because a a true and cogent religious revelation would make faithfulness possible. Lacking one, faithfulness is a meaningless term and the Christian, to be a Christian, must construct a god and define faithfulness to it.

The false and unintelligble bible makes Self Projection as God necessary. But SPAG doesn’t depend on the Christian’s effort to harmonize the bible.

It only depends on the Christian’s decision to rationalize the bible.

Once that decision has been made, the methods of rationalizing the incoherency will vary just as the SPAGs’ contents will vary. They’ll vary with individual Christians, but they’re all Self Projections as God.

Remember that Christians agree only that some parts of the bible don’t count. They don’t agree what those parts are nor do they agree on what to do with those parts. All Christians won’t proceed in the same manner, but they will each proceed with the same purpose: to rationalize the bible in a way that’s personally pleasing.

Some Christians do that by attempting a biblical harmony. Most do not.

It doesn’t matter.

The difference between fundies and liberals and every Christian on the continuum between them isn’t the fact of SPAG. The difference is in the verses they choose to SPAG and what they do with the verses that don’t fit their SPAGs—whether forcing the pieces in (fundies), throwing the pieces away (liberals), or trimming the pieces to shape (moderates).

SPAG doesn’t depend on the Christian denying that the bible is rife with contraries and contradictions, but only upon her or his unwillingness to reject the bible and its (SPAGged) god because of that fact.

To confess Christ—and it doesn’t matter if your confession is flippant, social, or devout—to confess Christ is to Self Projection as God, simply because finding a Christ in the bible requires choosing what to believe about him, intentionally or otherwise.

That’s why all Christians will find a Christ that perfectly meets his or her own needs and preferences.

It is an absolute identity: All Christianity is Self-Projection as God.

The god to which every Christian prays is identical to the god that every Christian shaves. All Christianity is Self Projection as God. Part 3 of 4.

Christians need not despair, though. There is a least common denominator underlying the laughable Christian disarray. It’s the one-and-only thing on which every Christian agrees, but they most certainly do agree on this one point:

Parts of the bible that say they count, don’t really count.

Every Christian believes that. Ironically, that single point of unity is the source of the laughable disarray, because of course, Christians don’t agree on what those parts are—only that those parts exist.

They don’t agree on what the bible actually says. They don’t agree on what the bible really means. And they don’t agree on what the bible truly requires. But they all agree that it does not really mean and does not really require what it says it means and requires.

Christians will disagree to Hell’s gate on what and how to exclude, but every Christian will agree that exclusions must be made. Head-for-head.

It turns out they have no choice.

Rational Belief or Rationalization?

The Bible contains a lot of paradoxical statements, conflicting accounts that cannot be unraveled and even a formal contradiction or two. It also has commands that the Christian does not wish to obey and descriptions of God that the Christian does not want to worship.

Still, Christians can’t reject the bible entirely. That would be throwing out the baby Jesus with the holy water. The bible is the only reason to believe certain things they do hold dear—things that don’t make sense without it.

Because it’s impossible to rationally believe the bible and because the bible cannot be divorced from Christianity, it is built on an internally inconsistent revelation that can be neither completely accepted nor entirely rejected.

Christianity depends on personal rationalizations.

That’s exactly why Christians can’t and won’t agree on anything and it’s why they can be so damned annoying. What they don’t understand or simply won’t admit is that rejecting any part of the bible rationally requires rejecting the entire bible, including its god.

Self Projection as God

That rationalization produces a predictable result. Having embraced a self-refuting, ethically repugnant ersatz revelation, the Christian has forfeited any objective religious canon and must adopt a subjective religious standard. Not surprisingly, that canon becomes his or her own predilections, so that every Christian will describe and interpret the bible in a manner that matches his or her intellect (or lack of intellect), ethic, and personality, using the bible’s own objective unreliability and primitive content as reason to reject what doesn’t appeal.

Christians simply dismiss the parts of the bible that don’t please them and adopt those parts of the bible that match their worldviews.

Now that wouldn’t be a terrible thing if the bible were taken as a cultural book and certain parts plucked from it not because they’re “biblical” but because they make sense to the person. Like the Golden Rule. It certainly predates Jesus and can be found in a lot of places, but if someone found it in the Jesus legends and adopted it as a sensible way to live, as judged by experience and common human morality, that would be great.

Unfortunately, that’s not how Americans use the bible, is it? When they find something they approve, whether the Golden Rule, the misogyny, or the slavery, they ascribe it “biblical” authority. It’s not something to be adopted because it makes objective sense, but something to be believed because it’s from God.

Likewise, when they find something they disapprove, whether the Golden Rule, the misogyny, or the slavery, they reject it with “biblical authority.” It’s not something to be rejected because it makes no objective sense, but something to be rationalized because it’s from God.

For example:

When faced with the bible’s misogyny, the feminist Christian will reject the chauvinist Christian’s proof texts, interpreting them through other less misogynistic biblical tales. The chauvinist will insist on his proof texts and interpret her stories through them.

Or:

A fundamentalist Christian might believe in a literal physical resurrection and be resolute in condemning homosexuals, while a liberal Christian could embrace a metaphorical resurrection and lead the way for gay Christian rights in the churches.

Meanwhile:

A gay Christian might believe in ordaining homosexuals and a physical resurrection while a conservative female minister believes in the physical resurrection but not ordaining homosexuals.

We might sympathize more or less with different Christians, but each one is doing the same thing.

Rather than rationally rejecting the entire revelation, the Christian eclectically picks, chooses, dismisses, ignores, and rationalizes the bible’s various and conflicting commands, ethics, accounts, and contradictions to self-project her or himself into the bible.

Some Christians will dismiss more of the bible, others less, some in pious sounding ways, and others more flagrantly. The better educated, more articulate Christians might perform mental genuflections to explain biblical contradictions and write grand systematic theologies to describe the gods they project, while the uneducated ones might tell you only what they feel in their hearts and the religious yuppies will tell you what meaning they take from the bible. What each Christian is telling you, though, in her or his own way, is that he or she has a peculiar understanding and a unique ability to cut through the laughable Christian disarray.

The result is a rank and unique pride that claims a divine stamp of approval upon the Christian’s own life. A religious conceit that rejects both all of the bible that doesn’t appeal to her or his liking and the gods reflecting those parts of the bible constructed by other Christians.

It’s an arrogant and irrational syncretism that we call Self-Projection as God (SPAG).

Some Christians will dismiss more of the bible, others less. Some will rationalize the bible in the most pious sounding ways, others more flagrantly.

The better educated, more articulate Christians might perform mental genuflections to explain biblical contradictions, write grand systematic theologies to describe the gods they project, or project themselves through linguistic and historical critical redactions.

The less educated Christians might tell you only what they feel in their hearts, what they know to be true, or what “God just wants” while Christian yuppies will tell you what meaning they take from the bible.

What each Christian is telling you, though, in her or his own way, is that he or she has a peculiar understanding of God and a unique ability to cut through the laughable Christian disarray.

There might be 635-plus of them in the United States, but that’s not really the number of denominations.

The number of Christian denominations, in fact, is exactly equal at any moment in time to the number of Christians, because every Christian has his own God, his own Jesus, his own bible canon, and his own ethic.

All Christianity is Self Projection as God.

Tomorrow: Part 4, But What if They Don’t Take Jesus Seriously? Subscribe now.

The god to which every Christian prays is identical to the god that every Christian shaves. All Christianity is Self Projection as God. Part 1 of 4.

Christians don’t agree on much. It might just be fair to say that as a group Christians don’t agree on anything.

Because they don’t exist as a group.

There are over nine thousand denominations listed in the World Christian Database. You’ll find that many of those denominations have nationalities or ethnicities in their names: Dutch Reformed, Armenian Apostolic, and Black Baptist, for example.

You’ll also find that the post-modern, individualistic United States leads the way with 635 denominations—and that’s ignoring the innumerable independent churches. Each independent church is another denomination to itself.

Among those 635-plus denominations there are various versions of baptism, of the ten commandments, and of the bible. There are corresponding assortments of salvations, of Jesuses, and of gods.

In fact, it’s a lot easier to make a list of things on which they disagree than on things they do agree. Here’s one.

Here’s a long list, but that’s the point. Christians insist on some underlying unity, some common ground with one another, but where is it at? These are pretty basic, even some fundamental, points of Christianity on which Christians simply and self evidently do not agree.

Even if you only scan it, its length and cumulative power is impressive.

That’s why there are 635 denominations and countless independent churches in the United States: Christians can’t agree on anything.

They can’t agree despite Jesus’ claim that he would lead them into all truth. They won’t agree despite Jesus’ claim that they would be marked by love and unity. They refuse to agree despite Jesus’ claim to be truth itself.

Christians don’t agree on anything, including the fundamentals.

Tomorrow: Part 2, Why Jesus Is an Incompetent Boob. Subscribe now.

In one of [Dr. Robert] Price’s chapters in his book “The Reason-Driven Life”, he mentions a good friend of his who gave up his faith before Price thought he was really ready to do so. Even though Price definitely holds a non-theist view, he was afraid his friend might come apart without some kind of comforting delusion to hold him together. It’s a very odd concession to the idea that faith, flawed as it is, might have its uses. To those who have never really lived in a community of faith, I’m sure it makes no sense at all. Believe me when I say that I envy those people.

A friend of mine wrote those words as part of something that I want to share with you. It’s a stark description of his struggles through a depressive episode—a tough period rooted in his struggles dealing with deconversion.

Yep. Deconversion.

He’s an exChristian and has been one for two-and-a-half years, but still struggles with the social and psychological voids left by leaving the faith—particularly the community of faith.

Here’s what he said to me about it:

I had a bit of a meltdown recently, concerning faith issues. …I’m better now… and later found out that [a mutual acquaintance] had been there at Skepticon II the whole time yet we were both unaware! Just talking to more people, I’m sure, would have made my experience a much better one; instead, it was a lonely, alienating experience which triggered a deeply depressive episode… not the first, but one of the worst.

I’m not suggesting his experience is typical of deconversions and by his own words this bout was among the worst he’s had, but I will suggest that his experience is not an anomaly among those leaving behind a lifetime of faith.

What he’s written is a vivid look into why I believe relevant atheism, an atheism that deals with people and with struggles and with personhood, is vitally important.

It also makes explicitly clear what I mean when I say “God is real.”

I’m now 2 1/2 years into a deconversion experience, after having lived more than 30 years as a Christian, first fundamentalist and later more moderate/liberal. One might think that I would be happily exploring my new-found rationality. In truth, I often try (and fail) to find ways to trick myself into not even thinking about it, because of the depression and even morbidity that so often accompanies my thought patterns.

Deconverting was less like a step into freedom and more like an ongoing funeral and mourning process for my best and dearest friend. Say what you will, with all the admittedly strong evidence you can muster, about the biblical God; for all his flaws, he was one swell friend to the friendless, a comfort when nothing seemed to go right and when no actual humans had time to help me pick up the pieces. It is no help whatsoever, none, to attempt to consider that all the good things I managed to do all those years were actually on my own power rather than part of an almighty God’s eternal plan. Without faith to fall back on, I have to consider every failure a real and honest failure which might never yield anything good, unless I stop failing. Needless to say, thoughts like these are not exactly conducive to avoiding failure.

The most striking thing to me about Skepticon was realizing that I knew almost nobody. Late in the process I did run into a family I knew, and was rather shamed by the fact that they have endured worse trials than me and have better attitudes. I guess they’ve been at it longer. As far as what little I got to see of the events, I’ll admit to laughing a few times during Richard Carrier’s talk about the unlikely history of Luke and Acts. Then it hit me that I had been reading those books for three decades before I ever started to see the discrepancies. I’d basically been stupid for thirty years. I suddenly didn’t feel like laughing anymore. PZ’s talk, while actually fascinating, was so far over my ability to comprehend the concepts that it made me a bit angry that I’d only studied fine arts and had pointedly ignored the sciences. I had no idea I’d someday need them this much; I’m shockingly behind.

Nothing I saw made me feel any better that, each day, I wake up in an evolved world where there is no greater plan and that terrible, pointless things happen. Theodicy (the problem of human suffering) has become a crushing weight. Rare is the morning I don’t wake startled from a nightmare about being in a plane crash or dying in a building fire; the night after Skepticon, I was treated to a dream about being drowned to death. I know why this is happening; during my faith years, I got way too good at meditating on the presence of God. Now I can’t stop meditating on the absence of God, and I have no positive imagery to associate with it. The Christians, ironically, managed to get this one right in my case. No Jesus… no peace. And it’s too late for me to go back; I reject the Christian god and the historical Christ for all the same reasons everyone else does. But without the comfort of the delusion, I’m falling apart under the weight of all this reality.

Price never did show up again. I held out hope (foolish me) until the very end that he might make an appearance. It’s not that I think he would have had any magical words for me; I’m not so naive to expect that. But I wish I could have talked to someone who at least had had the experience of having, and losing, faith in the same kind of way I had. And I wish I could have asked him, simply, “When can I expect to get better?”…

What do you say to this?

Buck up?

Here are some pictures from the hubble telescope showing how insignificant you really are?

You’re better off?

You’re hopeless?

Talking about his experience after it passed and he was “back to normal,” my friend told me this:

I found it interesting that the comments from nontheists, both on Xanga and Facebook, were even worse at answering what I thought must be a relatively simply question… “when can I expect to get better?”. No one even attempted an answer; they made comments to the effect that I’d never get better, or brushed it off as irrelevant, or simply ignored it. It’s just like you said; the problem didn’t fit their tool set.

I did say that and I will say it again. Atheists, especially the ones that conflate atheism and science, are far too likely to dismiss others’ experiences. It’s tempting to do when our tools can’t address a problem—just dismiss the problem, so that we can use our tools.

I’ll also say that it’s not really such a simple question, but it’s an important question and it’s a question Christians are poised to exploit. There are a range of human experiences that all exChrisitans will encounter after deconversion—death, loss, profound disappointment.

Those are experiences that could trigger similar confusions and the same question, “When can I expect to get better?” even among those that deconverted without such difficulty.

The Christian deception is that there are easy answers for that question. Snake oil peddled as an elixir for the pain and confusion that sometimes comes just from being human.

Ignoring or belittling the question isn’t going to make atheism relevant. If anything, it will reinforce atheist stereotypes and make the Christian snake oil all the more appealing.

Here is his final thought on that:

It’s okay to not be able to address an issue or answer a question. But I do hope that my letter made them a little less eager to trust their current assumptions, or to promote atheism as a sure-fire path to hunky-dory land.

I hope it’s done the same for us.

Oh, here’s my answer. I’m sure it reflects my own toolbox, but here it is: You can expect to get better when you figure out what part of you resonated with your imaging God and how to tap into that same part of you in ways that are meaningful to your new atheist worldview.

Please feel free to offer yours.

Godlessness is not lasciviousness and it’s not license. Those are antiquated terms from an antiquated book of mythology rife with error. Judgmental terms intended to demean and demoralize others. Vulgar terms intended to control those that use them.

The Christian god and its bible are as irrelevant to the moral, thinking person, as are Zeus and Hermes.
A lot of people have moved beyond god to godlessness and just don’t realize it yet, but godlessness is something to be embraced. The New Godlessness is rejecting god because god concepts deserve to be rejected.

Here is a list of comparisons between primitive god belief and the New Godlessness.

Godlessness is moving beyond archaic thinking, mythological explanations, and categorical moral judgments of amoral decisions.

God is an excuse to continue with those things.

Godlessness is the relentless pursuit of verifiable knowledge.

God is explaining what we yet to understand by fairy tales.

Godlessness is the courage to face reality.

God is hiding behind folklore.

Godlessness is the tireless pursuit of personal meaning conveyed through individual artistic expression.

God is traditional roles.

Godlessness is the unyielding effort to authenticate our own lives and the lives of others.

God is endorsing our own lives by judging the lives of others.

Godlessness is the ruthless pruning of unfounded judgment and biases we hold against others.

God is the bastion of the bigoted mind.

Godlessness is seeking out and building thriving eclectic communities.

God is defining community by who we reject.

Godlessness is building families built on love and volition.

God is opposing families built on love and volition.

Godlessness is living vitally each day.

God is pretending life will never end.

Godlessness is helping others.

God is giving to the church to pay a preacher and maintain a building.

Godlessness is genuine.

God is obligation.

Godlessness is courage.

God is weakness.

Godlessness is something to be embraced by the ethical and thinking person.

God is what they should reject.

There’s a difference between listening and hearing and sometimes I’m afraid that atheists aren’t very good listeners.

Let’s talk about that.

Chloe is five, and I’m trying to teach her the difference. I can tell when she’s not really listening and tell her so. She normally tells me that he is. Her point is that she’s not ignoring me and that she can hear the audible sounds I’m making.

But, that isn’t necessarily listening, is it?

Judging by many of the adults I meet, a lot of parents didn’t work as hard then as I do at teaching listening skills. I’m afraid most listening lessons don’t go far beyond, “Be quiet when I’m speaking to you.” And, judging by a lot of people I meet, even those lessons are in short supply.

People sometimes compliment my memory because I recall minute things they said. I guess I do have a pretty good memory, but I think that listening much better than most people is the real reason I recall things better.

That helps me do things people appreciate. And, people appreciate good listening in general. Good listening makes you more valuable to people and it makes your responses relevant to them.

That’s what we want.

The principle is that conversations aren’t an opportunity to demonstrate what you know, deliver your routine stories and canned replies, or to impress others with what you say.

See that woman in the picture—you can just tell she’s listening, can’t you? That’s because listening comprises a set of actions, attitudes, and intentions that manifest physically.

People can tell if we’re listening or not.

With that in mind, here are here are a baker’s dozen practices, things you can do (or stop doing) to improve your listening skills.

1. Get over yourself. I’ve noticed that a lot of people tell the same stories over and over and don’t remember that they told them to me before. They must not listen very carefully to my response, which after the second telling becomes, “You’ve told me that story before.”

2. Stop the multi-tasking. Sometimes my kids come into my office while I’m writing. I can’t listen to them without stopping my typing; nor can I typically stop typing mid-thought. It’s far better to say, “Hang on just a second ‘til I finish this thought,” than to fail to listen. It’s no different with mates, coworkers, partners, or employees.

3. Don’t just wait for your turn to speak. That isn’t listening. I know one guy that smiles, nods, and waggles his finger while other people are speaking. When he does it to me I know that I might as well stop speaking, because he’s stopped listening and is waiting his turn.

4. Listen with the conscious intention to understand the person you’re speaking with and what he means.

5. Listen with the intention to understand exactly what the person wants or needs from you.

6. Listen with the conscious intention to make a relevant response.

7. Don’t assume that a response has to be a declaration, conclusion, or solution. Asking for more information or clarification is a valid (and often useful) response.

8. Look at the person you’re speaking with. Looking others in the eye engages both them and you. It also makes it harder to lie to you.

9. Don’t interrupt. Let the speaker finish his thoughts, sentences, and paragraphs.

10. Ask questions. (But don’t interrupt with them).

11. Give minor feedback while the speaker is speaking. (But don’t interrupt with it.) Let them know your listening with things like nods, uh huhs, and wows.

12. Don’t offer your response immediately. Consider what you’re going to say. People appreciate considerate responses and, really, there’s a certain class and gravity when you allow things to settle before launching into a response.

13. Take a sincere interest. And, if you can’t, say so. It’s far less rude to ask if it can wait for a commercial, rather than continuously glancing at the TV while someone is talking.

Bonus Point: Notice that the woman in the picture is smiling. It’s not necessary to effective listening, but it sure helps communication.

Facts don’t spread. Stories do.

It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads.

Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up.

It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light.

Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization.

When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief.

Results Determine Reality

The thing is when we opt to bury our heads in reality we’re creating and maintaining a social reality we don’t like: the hegemony of Christianity over reasonability.

Me? I’m a results guy and for atheism to be relevant it has to touch people where they live.

When I tell a Christian that I don’t believe in her god, I’m also telling her (because of SPAG) that I don’t believe in anything she holds dear or values. It’s not unreasonable that she wants something to back that up. Christians have as much right to demand evidence for our assertions as we do to demand it for their beliefs.

But here’s the thing: They don’t want the sort of evidence we’re prone to give them. They don’t want evidence from science. They want evidence from life. They want stories.

I suppose we could sing the Bare Naked Ladies’ theme for The Big Bang. Or we could simply point to ourselves as evidence.

”It’s the stories you tell!” – John Winger

Remember in Part 1, I said that influential people are, among other things, successful and in part 3, that we can most easily influence others that are like us our would aspire to be like us?

When we become successful in our lives and are openly proud of our achievements, instead of crediting imaginary men for what we’ve done, we’re the walking atheist testimonials. That’s the sort of thing Christians like to hear.

(Of course, I’m not suggesting that it will make deconverting Christians a simple matter. Or that some won’t recoil. What I am saying is that being willing to talk about our own experiences and point to our own successes as atheists gives us an important inroad communicating with most sensible Christians. Finding the Relevant Argument is a full post series about successfully communicating with Christians.)

I’d like to start compiling an “I’m better off as an atheist because…” list and would love to hear your personal evidences. If you have comments about that please leave them. Or if you’d like to write a 300-500 word contribution and email it, we’ll consider publishing it.

This is Part 5 of a weeklong series, Atheists of Influence. Subscribe to our RSS feed and be sure to see it all. Other subscription options are here.

There’s a unifying principle underlying all discussions of influence: We can most easily influence people that are like us or aspire to be like us.

It gives us a couple of important points and a lesson and I’m going to use PZ Meyers as a foil to explain them.

Point 1. The better rounded we are (the more of the Baker’s Dozen influential traits we possess), the more people we can influence.

This is pretty straightforward. The more we’re confined to our own niche and defined by it, the less influence we have outside of it. A dry and humorless scientist can influence other dry and humorless scientists.

PZ can influence not only scientists, but also a lot of less scientific people that enjoy his wit.

See the distinction? According to Alexia, among the general internet population uneducated users are greatly over-represented at Pharyngula. I suspect that’s not very common among other biologist’s blogs.

It’s probably because of stuff like this:

There is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I’m blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I’m too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room.

That’s great prose and better story telling. How can you not want to read more? Predictably, the story was worth the read. (That was a gratuitous link; the chance you read this blog and not Pharyngula at this point is probably slim.)

It’s also because PZ is an atheist. Do you doubt we’re the bulk of his readership? A lot of atheists read and learn from Pharyngula, including the ones other science blogs.

Atheists like me.

Of course he and I have different ideas about (or at least different expertise in) eradicating religion and he obviously has a lot more influence for his ideas than I do right now, which brings us to the second point.

Point 2. The more successful we are, the more people we can influence.

We grazed this point in Part 1 of the series. We tend to think of celebrity as creating influence, but it doesn’t. Celebrity only measures potential influence.

It’s celebrity’s underlying success that actually affects influence. Success attracts not only people like us, but people that would aspire to be like us into our sphere of influence.

PZ is a very successful mocker, debunker, and provoker of Christians and Christian insanity. It’s brought him a deal of celebrity. I think it really blossomed when he interjected himself into that sacred cracker hostage situation a couple of years ago. It caused quite a stir and it no doubt extended his sphere of influence considerably.

Pharyngula’s Commenters section comprises articulate and intelligent persons that are committed to sharing in what PZ is doing via his blogs comments. Some in addition to their own blogs, and apparently many en lieu of their own blogs.

That’s influence.

Of course, promising to treat consecrated communion wafers “with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse” no doubt alienated a lot of people that PZ will never be able to influence again, but that’s okay.

Nobody can influence everybody, which brings us to the lesson.

The Lesson: We should never sacrifice authenticity to achieve influence.

I wrestled with including authentic as one of the Baker’s Dozen influential traits, but it flows so naturally from the list itself that I thought it would be redundant.

You can’t be integritous, honest, passionate, prone to action, and future directed and fail to be authentic. When you’re authentic you sacrifice influencing people that you couldn’t influence anyway. When you sacrifice authenticity, you’re sacrificing actual influence.

You might be able to sway and manipulate with lies or PR, but when the deception is sensed or discovered, you’ll never influence again.

That’s why exChristians can’t be influenced by creationists and read PZ’s blog instead.

This is Part 3 of a weeklong series, Atheists of Influence. Subscribe to our RSS feed and be sure to see it all. Other subscription options are here.

I fully expected to have a good time on God Discussion’s podcast Thursday night, but it went way past my expectations and I’d like to extend one final thank you to Deborah, the callers, and the chat participants.

It was a good time and we were able to discuss SPAG, Relevant Atheism, Christian Deconversion, the Cultic American Culture and a lot of corollary topics.

If you missed the show, the podcast is now available.