Let me go back to the very basic question that everyone skips. We hear that people been trying to find out whether being religious is likely to make you more generous. Why have they been trying to find that out? Why do they imagine that being religious might make people more generous? Where did that idea even come from?
No one studies the question of whether playing blackjack is likely to make you more generous. No one wonders whether surfing, or hunting, or delivering the mail, or DJing is likely to make you more generous. No one studies whether being a scientist, an actor, a chef, a police officer, or a cheerleader is likely to make you more generous. No one has ever suggested that any of those activities might have that marvelous effect. Where does the idea come from that religion might do it?
The claim comes from religion itself. One of the central tenets of almost every religion is that you can’t be a really good person unless you become a member. For about five thousand years, people who want us to be religious – and this mostly means people who make their living from religion – those people have been telling us that religion makes people good. And why do they make this claim? Is it because there they have seen overwhelming evidence for it? That cannot be the reason. We know it cannot be the reason because religions claim such moral benefits as soon as they are created, long before the claim could have been tested.
The reason they say that religion makes people more generous is that they are selling a product, and they want us to believe that the product does great things. We want to be happy, so they say religion makes you happy. We’re afraid of death, so they say religion can prevent it. And we want to be good, so they say religion makes you good. That’s how they sell the product: by telling us that it will assuage our needs – no matter what those needs are. There has never been a reason to take such claims seriously.
YASHWATA 
Hey thanks for fixing my comment.
So of course I was going to address your statement that Christianity is “100% lies from top to bottom,” which you boldly offered with no support. Then I discovered that you’re in the midst of writing a book on the subject, so I can understand your not wanting to try and compress nearly 200 pages of thought into a blog comment.
I went ahead and read a little more than half of your book. I try and read these sorts of things when I get the chance, because they often offer insight for the mind looking for truth wherever it is. You’re right that many men abuse faith and use it as an excuse to avoid explaining their own selfish actions, and again as an excuse for their constituents to avoid rational thought.
But, (and I would address this not only to you but also to the people with whom you are arguing) you hit the nail on the head when you described the truths of Christianity as “transcendental.” Biblically, belief in God does not follow from first principles. Accepting an all-powerful God who created the universe we inhabit, one must accept that he could have made a universe with a different kind of fundamental structure. Perhaps a universe where every statement that could be made was simultaneously both true and false, or one with nothing like our concept of time, or whatever else an all-powerful being might dream up. This sounds like madness, because it is, if we understand madness as a departure from the world’s rationality. Believers in an all-powerful creator God need to understand that they don’t get to claim that they know this from first principles, because such a creator would be outside that realm of discourse. To wit, scriptures teach us that “the nonspiritual person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” Spiritually discerned. There must be some kind of spiritual perception that is convincing enough that it would be akin to denying all validity of perception to ignore it, which again is madness. So the believer ought to appreciate the immense gravity of that truth, and never believe through worldly discernment, because such a belief would be nonsensical. They should also never expect anyone else to. Faith as described in the Bible is irrational, from a worldly perspective.
Even so, in Isaiah 1 God invites his people to “come, and let us reason together.” Faith is not a ticket out of rational thinking; that’s a perversion. The two ought ought to go hand in hand, but they don’t because that doesn’t serve the cultural aspect of the Christian church, which is yucky. So to the Christian people you’re arguing with, I say, “accept that your faith is irrational and madness in a worldly context (as it claims to be) or denounce it, and then embrace rationality in the realm where it applies. Then, apply yourself to learning as much truth as you can, quit fussing with the people around you and help them, as scriptures command.”
Because the “faithful” don’t understand this, people like you are compelled to address them in a way that doesn’t make sense. You say they’re wrong because it doesn’t make sense to you, from a worldly perspective. They argue with you about sense, but they ought not; what their holy books say is that they are true despite the fact that they don’t make sense from a worldly perspective. (When I say “world” I mean the created world, in the context of a greater body of natural entities which include both the world and a creator). Frankly, I wish it were the people in the church challenging the beliefs of their constituents, but many of them are false or corrupt, and so the task goes to people like you. But according to the scriptures, you are using the wrong tools for addressing spiritual truths. You’re using only a knowledge of Newtonian mechanics to claim that quantum physics doesn’t make sense. The order of context is wrong. Rationality doesn’t show that a God who led to rationality is wrong. Or right.
And this is sad for academics who like to argue, but it ought not be a big deal because true faith as described in the bible ought to be a gift for mankind’s well-being. But it doesn’t seem like it is. That’s because most faith is false, which is like what your book says. I would argue that not all faith is false, but that all faith which claims to be rationally grounded is false. Rationality has a place in it, but not the ground (scriptures tell us to “lean not on our own understanding” but also that “wisdom is better than folly.”) I would also argue that all faith which does not benefit mankind is false, because of the scriptural truth that I mentioned before, that a faith is dead which does not feed and clothe those without. In the gospel Jesus claims that you can recognize a true follower by his fruit: the observable, measurable good he does the world.
I’m also a fan of small house churches, where there’s no confusion about commercialization. Where all the funds go directly to helping people.
One thing in particular I wanted to address is that your argument on page 21 that Christians claim that God cannot be understood, that statements which are not understood cannot be believed, and that therefore the statement “I believe in God” is always a lie. Christian theology claims that God cannot be understood fully, but just as I believe in internal medicine enough to see a doctor when I’m sick, even without understanding it fully, I can believe in a God I understand partially, an understanding I’m invited to endeavour to increase. I’m telling you this because I want you to tighten your argument, and make the believing and non-believing think better.
The other thing I want to address is that, by the way, I love that song. Casimir Pulaski Day. I heard it one day on my lunch break, and at the time I had a girlfriend I loved. Hearing that song broke my heart, because I couldn’t help but imagine my little love contracting some terminal disease and exiting my life before I’d had the chance to treasure her. Right then I went and treasured her. That’s a precious memory to me, so thanks for reminding me. It’d been some time since I’d heard it.
Yes. I almost agree with this. What you say here would be a very good point — very true and very important — if only there really were a set of transcendental truths at the foundation of the Christian religion. Unfortunately, it is 100% lies from top to bottom. And so the idea that “the point of faith is not to be useful … [but] to know the truth,” although it sounds profound, is just nonsense.
The scripture which religion ought to be based on teaches that true religion is evidenced by charity. Traditions called Christian that are not generous really ought not be called Christian. But this won’t help you, because what I’m saying to you is that if they’re not generous, they’re not Christian, and you would say to me that my statement serves only to protect an idea by shielding it from measurement. That’s not my intention. I don’t have any desire to try and justify the failings of the Christian church. But it is important to know that they simply do not follow from Christian doctrine, as outlined in the Christian Bible.
Real faith ought to be useful. It ought to promote the wellbeing of mankind (in James it is written that a faith is dead which does not feed and clothe those without.) It ought not quibble over matters of conscience, or be insecure on God’s behalf. It ought to be expressed as fully as possible in mercy and good deeds. God writes his truth on the hearts of men, not through their words or deeds. He reveals Himself in part, and that part ought to inspire generosity that the world cannot explain from a rational standpoint. This is what I see described in the Bible. This is not, generally, what I see in the world.
But the point of faith is not to be useful in the worldly sense. True faith is useful, but it’s not necessary to have faith in order to promote the transient wellbeing of our fellow man. Everyone should be doing that. The point of faith is to know the truth. To know the truth without constructing it, to recognize the truth that is set in the heart, to live in a truth that sets a man’s soul free through eternity. It shouldn’t be a surprise that our language and logic are not up to capturing that truth. But that doesn’t make it less true, just much less interesting to argue about.
The tradition of religion, on the other hand, we can measure and argue about. But frankly your conclusion of faith-as-a-product is inescapable. I’ve called it self-help religion before, but it is a depressing perversion of the faith described in the Bible. I guess what I mean to say is that your statement “Christianity is a tradition…” starts with a definition of Christianity, Christianity-the-tradition, that isn’t Christianity as defined by the scripture or by the person of Christ.
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” – 1 Corinthians
To say that “charity is a part of practicing religion” begs the question. My research indicates that Christianity is a tradition of talking about charity rather than actually performing it.
Obviously no one is asking whether playing blackjack makes you more generous. They may however be asking whether playing poker makes someone a better liar. Because lying / bluffing is an important part of the practice of playing poker. There is no grand conspiracy here. Of course people are interested in finding out if religion makes someone more generous because charity is a main tenant of most religions. Charity is a part of practicing religion. Logically then you would suspect that people who practice a particular religion might be more charitable than those that don’t.