Church Of Bahamut: New Testament

The original article Church Of Bahamut is something that I've reposted a few times and that I originally wrote many years ago now. In the early days of becoming an atheist, you're learning about all the ugliness that religion has caused in the world that you either never gave much thought to or outright never knew about. Roman Catholicism has a veritable buffet of both historical and modern sins to answer for, including the Ratline, many decades (perhaps even a century) of systematic coverup of rape and torture of children, especially the particularly vulnerable orphans, the blood libel, the Inquisition, genocide in Rwanda, the trial of Galileo Galilei, and the epidemic spread of AIDS through modern Africa. Other religions, excluding Islam, tend not to offer quite so rich a buffet of crimes against humanity, but it is still disheartening to learn of the racism present in the Mormons for many years, the complicity of the Buddhists in cooperating with Hirohito, the unimaginable suffering caused by the HIndu caste system, and...well, it just goes on and on in this vein. Just about every Christian denomination in the United States tends to have at least an anti-gay streak to it, along with the obnoxious pro-life stances, so, once you start paying attention to all that, it can be difficult to wade through it into actual theological philosophy. How can one sit down, after all, and talk about morality and philosophy with apologists for all this smouldering institutional evil? Well, there are religious moderates and they're who you really have to be talking to as an atheist because, let's face it, dyed-in-the-wool faithheads, as Richard Dawkins calls them, are not persuadable. So I set about to come up with a way to communicate my ideas to the religious in unmistakable terms. Bahamut ends up being used like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but he serves a further purpose. Essentially, The Flying Spaghetti Monster is there to humorously make the point that all the arguments you make for the existence of your deity and, in the case of Bobby Henderson's original argument, creationism, apply equally to the theology The Flying Spaghetti Monster represents. While Bahamut accomplishes some of that too, he really comes into his own when educating people regarding what I really think about religion. See, I get it. Whatever I say to you about the barbarism in The Bible, the crimes against humanity committed by Rome, or the implausibility of your theology, you'll say that the bad stuff I cite isn't what you believe in. Fair enough, it probably isn't. So while Bahamut, and the satiric Colbert-style voice I used in the first article, should be seen as a statement as to what I find implausible and silly about religion, I also chose Bahamut because, of all the deities I've ever heard about, he's the one I'd most prefer to be real. Perhaps because he was invented by modern humans instead of having been around and actually worshipped through the ages, Bahamut is lacking the barbarism and tribalism present in the theologies of actual human life. 

Bahamut believes that the dragons, being immeasurably older and wiser than the humans, have a responsibility to shepherd them to wisdom and enlightenment. Through his church, he accomplishes this end, and to his clerics he grants a dragon mentor who will accompany the cleric through various adventures, during which the dragon mentor will provide counsel and context to the lessons learned. Something powerful appeals to me about the idea of a deity that wishes primarily to teach us wisdom without seeking worship, or even acknowledgment, for himself. Many of Bahamut's representatives are, after all, dragons, and they take human shape while doing their good deeds. Typically, they'll appear as an old man and be the wise elder callow youths can confide in and seek advice from. Other times, they'll appear as a callow youth themselves, primarily because they're curious about what wisdom actual elders are able to provide. It reminds me of why St. Nicholas is my favorite saint, which is because of his penchant for secret gift giving. Doing good privately with a kind smile on your face and considering your good works all the greater for never being known is far better than any religion I've ever been exposed to. Oh, I know it's in there, kind of, whether it be in the aforementioned saint's gift-giving or Christ's admonishment that we should not pray in public. Some have said to me, "Preach always the gospel. When necessary, use words." Christianity doesn't honor wisdom and anonymous good deeds sufficiently though. From Christians around here who tell me I am too educated to understand The Bible (I have heard this many times, and it has occasionally ended friendships because, yeah, no.), to the opposition of science and technology, to the general emphasis on being saved by the blood sacrifice of Christ instead of good works (Indeed, "Works-based," salvation is positively mocked in many circles, as if people going out and making a positive difference in the lives of others are wasting their time because their ancestor once ate some fruit he shouldn't have and, unless they accept the human sacrifice of Golgotha, they should expect to experience Hell forever as a consequence of this forbidden fruit-eating.) Now, any real-world religion, especially one with some age on it, could hardly be expected to be free of obscurantism, dogma, or tribalism, but this is only a problem if we look at these religions as unassailable sources of truth and moral axiom. No call to do so exists, however, because our powers of discernment are always foremost, even when approaching religious dogma. Fundamentalists are exceptions, of course, but we hold those who follow EVERYTHING in The Bible, or similar texts, in low regard in modern society, especially if, in their attempts to do everything The Bible says, they grossly misinterpret it. To quote Sam Harris, "“You are using your own moral intuitions to authenticate the wisdom of the Bible—and then, in the next moment, you assert that we human beings cannot possibly rely upon our own intuitions to rightly guide us in the world; rather, we must depend upon the prescriptions of the Bible. You are using your own moral intuitions to decide that the Bible is the appropriate guarantor of your moral intuitions. Your own intuitions are still primary, and your reasoning is circular.”
— Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris
Strangely enough, I think my own permanent divorce from religion has a lot to do with optimism for humanity. A religious worldview does tend to pigeonhole humanity into wretched sinners, armies of some deity, a chosen people with a predetermined destiny, or just a bunch of people trying to reach a vague notion of transcendence. Well, I see us getting better than is within the wit of the world's religions to encompass. We're getting smarter, more in command of our environment, and we're past the point where we're just going to stop and have another dark age. As silly as it may seem to you that I hold a dragon deity nobody's arguing is anything but fictional in higher esteem than all the holy men and women that have ever walked the Earth, it's the truth and it's because he values unselfish wisdom, seeks no reward or acknowledgement, and has a great hope for humanity. In a way, it's probably appropriate that Bahamut comes out of Dungeons & Dragons because, in its geeky way, it comes out of the same place as Star Trek. Star Trek predicts that future where humanity has managed to transcend the lowly stamp of its origin and become what Michio Kaku refers to as a Type II civilization, meaning an interplanetary one. There is freedom and wonder in not knowing and it is the fundamental difference between how religion and science deal with the unknown. Religion will either claim to know what is not actually yet known or it will declare it permanently unknowable in principle. Science will either claim to not know something or to have failed at all attempts to disprove whatever can be claimed that it knows at the present time. Progress involves admitting you don't know a thing and then working on figuring it out. So I cast my lot with Bahamut instead of the Flying Spaghetti Monster because mocking creationists and theistic arguments is all well and good, but I want to point out that intelligent geeky humans writing a book for other intelligent geeky humans to play a game with can come up with a better deity than any available in actual religion today. Being an atheist is fairly simple to explain, but being an anti-theist takes more. Essentially, I think The Flying Spaghetti Monster does well enough at explaining atheism, but I think Bahamut, by being far wiser than Yahweh could ever dream of being, explains anti-theism so well. Having been exposed to the world's religions, I am not impressed that they couldn't do better than what has been available for decades in the Deities And Demigods Manual.

-Frank