During The Amazing Meeting 8, Robin Ferguson and I sat down to talk with Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy.

I had planned to transcribe it, but there’s so much interesting stuff Phil discussed — ranging from his “super secret project” to PepsiGate to not being a dick — that it was much easier to upload the audio and just put it out there.

(Speaking of not being a dick, here’s a a decent transcript of Phil’s TAM8 talk.)

You can download the interview here (MP3).

(This is the image he refers to in the interview.)

And now you know why I don’t do a podcast

Religious fundamentalists have a lot of babies.

They don’t even have to be fundies. I mean, there’s clearly something in holy water that makes a Catholic woman’s uterus extra-powerful.

Last year, I shared an excerpt from Kathryn Joyce‘s book Quiverfull that really haunted me. It described a patriarch’s long-term plans for his family:

One of Geoffrey Botkin’s catchiest contributions to patriarchy is his branding of the dominion vision in his “two-hundred-year plan for multigenerational faithfulness”: a concept that started as an Excel spreadsheet he put together stretching from his marriage in 1980 to his projected death, in 2038, to the culmination of his vision in 2180. It has since become a cornerstone of the Vision Forum message and the focus of a new three-day ministry conference teaching Vision Forum followers to emulate Botkin’s ambitious plan.

Botkin’s personal plan plots major family accomplishments on his Excel sheet — both completed and those they aim for, such as books published, films made, churches planted — and priorities are set out for the family that will unfold over the course of generations: a thorough listing of goals set down for generations of children yet unborn. The generations themselves are projected as well: Botkin’s sons (still unmarried) are listed with their projected marriage dates, the projected births and number of their children, and their projected deaths. His grandsons and great-grandsons are charted as well until two hundred years’ worth of Botkin heirs and accomplishments have accumulated. At the end of his two-hundred-year plan, Botkins estimates that he’ll have been the patriarch of some 186,000 male descendants, all of whom, he is confident, will begin their own two-hundred-year plans modeled on Botkin’s ideals…

(p. 229)

Scary, no?

Eric Kaufmann has been thinking about this problem for a while now. He believes that religious fundamentalists will grow/breed even more rapidly this century — especially in the West.

The new book explaining his theory is called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century.

A recent article about the book in the Telegraph (UK) carried the headline: “Atheism is doomed: the contraceptive Pill is secularism’s cyanide tablet.”

Yikes.

Kaufmann graciously agreed to do an interview for this site.

In it, I ask him whether atheists should be having more babies (because I’d *totally* volunteer to help out), whether his thesis is wrong because studies show increases in the percentage of non-religious people (at least in the US), and whether this religious baby-making trend will change in the future:

How did you become so interested in this topic?

My background is in studies of national identity and ethnic conflict. In my previous books, I focused on Canada, the United States and Northern Ireland. In all cases, the changing ethnic makeup of the population is a major issue and has at different times contributed to ethnic conflict. Having lived much of my life in Vancouver and London, I have always been aware of rapid ethnic change. Having said this, assimilation has the power to break down ethnic differences. But with religion, the assimilation process requires secularisation, which is not so automatic. In the US, for example, the pot melted Catholics and Jews with Protestants, but the division between fundamentalists of all religions and seculars remained, and has solidified into the battle lines of the so-called ‘culture wars’.

Why do fundamentalists have so many babies? Is this a relatively recent trend?

Fundamentalists have large families because they believe in traditional gender roles, pronatalism (‘go forth and multiply’) and the subordination of individualism to the needs of the religious community.

Is it recent? Yes. First, when we all lived on the land, had no contraception and poor medicine and sanitation, most people — pious or otherwise — needed to have large families to survive. Now, family size has been freed from material constraints by urbanisation, modern medicine and contraception. So values come to the fore, and seculars express their values in smaller families while fundamentalists resist the trend. Fundamentalists don’t actually have more kids than they used to, but nearly all survive, and their relative advantage over others grows. It’s also worth mentioning that fundamentalism is a modern (post-1850 or post-1900) trend: a reaction against secularism or secularised (read: moderate) religion that has become more intense since the 1960s sexual revolution.

Are fundamentalists concerned with the prospect of an overpopulated earth?

No — they feel God will provide and consider such concerns ‘anti-people’.

Is there any way to convince fundamentalists to have fewer children? Do you think the trend will change in the future?

I think there are different species of fundamentalist. The more open ones, such as pentecostalists or neo-evangelicals, are only slightly above average when it comes to fertility. So it is really the closed fundamentalists, like the ultra-Orthodox Jews, Salafi Muslims, or even many Mormons and neo-Calvinist Protestants, that one has to worry about. And here I think there is an explicit determination to set one’s face against modernity. So fertility is unlikely to fall. This is something quite different from, say, traditional Catholic or Muslim fertility, both of which were high for ethnocultural reasons but have fallen with integration into mainstream society. I think one can try and lean on fundamentalists by flagging up an ethic of planetary and civic responsibility, but this will probably fall on deaf ears.

Is this trend occurring in certain parts of the world only? Where? Within certain faiths? Which ones?

The trend is more advanced in the developed world, where urbanisation, contraception and modern medicine have reached their height. The pattern is most immediate and intense within Judaism where the ultra-Orthodox are already a significant share (over 10 percent) of the population and have three or four times as many children as liberals and seculars. But even within Christianity and Islam, fundamentalists have twice the family size of seculars.

Do most of the children born into these religious families remain in the faith?

Yes. First off, stronger religions retain members more effectively than moderate faiths because when you leave a fundamentalist religion, you leave your entire life — family, friends, leisure — behind, not just one compartment. Moreover, retention rates have been rising as fundamentalists have become better organised and began to harness modern technologies of communications, media and record keeping, which help weave a whole world around their members. I use the analogy of nations, which became institutionalised into our contemporary system of nation-states with the delineation of borders, maps, censuses and bureaucracies. That gave them better retention and fixity. So too with fundamentalist religious sects.

Are atheists having fewer babies than “average” or are we simply not keeping up with the religious?

I think the evidence is pretty clear that atheists have spearheaded the trend toward below-2.1 children which is now universal in the developed world. So it’s a case of everyone having fewer, but the relative gap between religious and secular widening. When the religious have 2 and atheists 1, that’s a 100 percent advantage. 4 versus 3, which might have been the case a generation or two ago, is only a 25 percent advantage.

This trend of “quiverfull” Christian families and large Catholic families (to name a couple) has been around for a while… And yet, the percentages of non-religious people keep increasing according to recent polls. Does that contradict your thesis?

No. The composition of a population is always a product of the relative pace of secularisation and religious growth. I use the analogy of a treadmill. Seculars are running on a treadmill that is tilting up and moving against them because of their low fertility and immigration. The religious — notably fundamentalists — are standing still or walking backward, but their treadmill is pushing them forward and tilting downhill. So in Europe in the late twentieth century, seculars were running fast enough to overcome their demographic disadvantage and overtook the faithful. But today, secularism is slowing down outside England and Catholic Europe, and is facing a more difficult incline from the treadmill of demography. London is a good example: it is more religious now than 20 years ago despite secularisation, simply because of religious immigration and fertility.

Should atheists start having more babies?

Tough question. My instinctive answer would be ‘yes’, but this would only be effective if immigration were reduced and religious fundamentalists responded to calls for smaller families, which is unlikely. There is also the matter of global warming to worry about — we don’t want a population footrace with fundamentalism. So in the end, the most promising course is to somehow attract more people away from fundamentalist religion, no easy task.

What information do you hope readers take from your book?

I’m interested in generating a debate about the impact of our global demographic turmoil, what Jack Goldstone recently termed the ‘New Population Bomb’, on the ideological direction of our societies. Most people assume that events, policy debates and cultural currents are the main influence on where our societies go. Francis Fukuyama assumes that the end of the Cold War, the failure of socialism and the spread of liberal-democratic values will lead to an ‘End of History’. I don’t discount culture and politics, but in a post-ideological, post-heroic age, slower-moving forces such as demography can come to the fore and generate powerful social changes.

Kaufmann’s book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century will be published next week.

Ray Comfort is the man responsible for the recent distribution of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (with a 50-page introduction explaining why it’s all junk science and how Darwin is connected to Hitler) at college campuses across the country. He distributed the books a day earlier than he said he would. On Tuesday, he announced that his ministry will be giving away a million more copies of the book.

He’s also the man speaking alongside ministry partner Kirk Cameron in the infamous video about “the banana: an atheist’s worst nightmare.”

You asked questions and Ray responded.

A few notes:

• This is uncut. I added in links when appropriate. I also fixed a couple grammatical things, with the goal to preserve the intended meaning at all times.
• All emphases are his.
• I did not ask Ray many questions about Creationism in general, because any Creationist could answer those. I tried to stick to questions which only he could answer.

And with that, here we go:

Hemant Mehta: Why did you distribute the books a day early? Do you think that was deceptive?

Ray Comfort: Whether or not it was “deceptive” depends on your point of view. We originally intended to give the books out on the 19^th but because of the threats of book burnings, of “unilateral resistance,” and the many threats to tear out the Introduction, we changed our strategy. I believe it was a strategically good move. Many atheists had planned to disguise themselves as students and collect multiple copies themselves to stop students from getting the books. One atheist benevolently said, “I wish people would stop ragging on him distributing the books early. It’s a good strategic move to try to pre-empt our events, themselves intended to oppose his . . . it’s a legitimate tactic, no matter how frustrating.”

Hemant: Why did the first editions of your book not include four important chapters from Darwin’s book? (They are in the second printing, you have said, but why not the first?)

Ray: When laying out the book for the first print (30,000 copies), the publishers found that it was over 400 pages and a book that size was too expensive to be a free publication. I therefore randomly removed four chapters and Darwin’s Introduction, saying within the book that they could be freely downloaded at www.originextra.com. But for the second print (175,000 copies) we dropped the text-size, and that reduced the entire book to 304 pages, making it affordable as a giveaway. It was the second print that we made available to students.

Hemant: Similarly, why reprint a first edition of Darwin’s book and not the sixth edition (which contained corrections and an additional chapter)?

Ray: I published the first edition because that’s what we were celebrating — 150 years since the publication of the first edition of On the Origin of Species.

Hemant: The arguments you make in the introduction to the Darwin book have been stated before — and refuted repeatedly by scientists. So why repeat them? Are you interested in hearing atheists’ responses to your questions?

Ray: I don’t deny that the arguments I have used have been addressed many times. However, it’s only atheists that believe that they have been “refuted.” I don’t. I listen to arguments and if they don’t hold up, I don’t accept them.

Hemant: In your own words, how would you describe how evolution and natural selection are supposed to work according to the theory that is broadly accepted in the life sciences? (In other words, can you explain what evolution is before trying to debunk it?)

Ray: Someone who believes in the theory of evolution believes that life started simply and over millions of years evolved to the complex state we now see. The process of change is supposedly brought about by something Darwin called “natural selection.” Evolution has no explanation for the genesis of life, and it has never been “observed” to take place. Nor has it been scientifically proven — because it’s never been “tested” in a laboratory. Evolution, as you have conceded in your question, is simply a theory. Darwinian evolution is often confused by believers with a species adapting within its own kind. Transitions within a species (a kind) is not Darwinian evolution.

Hemant: What is the strongest evidence you can think of in support of evolution by natural selection?

Ray: There is no indisputable evidence for species to species evolution. All “evidence” comes down to faith — does the believer believe the dating process or the information given by other believers in evolution. The mantra is that there are millions of fossils that scientifically prove evolution. I am often sent long lists of missing links. But as I investigate each one, they are not true missing links between kinds. There are millions of fossils that reveal adaptation within kinds, but there are no undisputed fossils that show one species (kind) evolving into another species (kind). The links between kinds were missing in Darwin’s day, and 150 years later they are still missing. To date I have seen no evidence for the theory of evolution.

Hemant: What evidence would you need to see in order to accept evolution?

Ray: If you can think of something new that you think is credible, please let me know and I will be happy to consider it.

Hemant: Many atheists say you make a lot of errors when talking about science. If you heard us saying false things about Christianity, odds are you wouldn’t take us very seriously. Why should we take you seriously?

Ray: Many atheists believe that I make a lot of errors when talking about science. Let me correct them just a little. I have made errors about the beliefs of evolutionists. I am told that I am in error by using the phrase “the law of gravity.” If that’s unscientific, I’m not alone. Many scientists also use the phrase. I am told that I believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, when I have said many times I don’t have any idea about the age of the earth. Those who believe it’s 4.5 billion years old have to have faith in radioisotope dating techniques. I don’t have that sort of faith.

Hemant: What are the last few books about evolution which you’ve read (written by people who accept evolution, I mean)?

Ray: Evolution For Dummies (I’m sure some would say that that is an appropriate book for me). As usual, the explanation [as] to why we have 1.4 million kinds with both male and female was ignored. The Wild World of the Future talks about future evolution speculation, as opposed to the usual evolution speculation of past. The last book I read was On the Origin of Species. I read it from cover to cover and found it a difficult read because most of it is pretty boring. I have heard atheists say the same thing. However, thanks to our generous giveaway of a total of 205,000 copies, others can read for themselves what Darwin actually believed, and make up their own minds.

Hemant: The banana. Do you stand by the argument in your video? Do you regret saying what you did? Do you like when people associate that video with you? Was it a joke? Are you aware that the banana in your video is genetically modified while a “natural” banana would be virtually unrecognizable? (There are several other questions regarding the Banana, but these are the overall themes).

Ray: I deeply regret doing the banana routine on television without a live audience. I have been doing it for live audiences for more than 20 years, and it’s never failed to get a lot of laughs.

Regarding genetic modification. There isn’t any evidence that the banana has changed its shape in the last 2,000 years. The anonymous creator of the well-publicized YouTube clip used a picture of a modern banana that was shaped like a potato, to make me look like a fool (and he did a pretty good job). To see evidence that the banana hasn’t changed shape, go to the bottom of http://www.livingwaters.com/origin/presskit and click on the PDF of “The Banana Controversy.”

Humbling though it has been, the subject has worked in my favor. Being “The Banana Man” has left me with a very low bar to reach. People are quite amazed when I’m able to string a complete sentence together.

Hemant: Many countries with high numbers of non-religious people have lower rates of crime, spousal abuse, divorce, etc. Doesn’t this go against the idea that non-theism is dangerous?

Ray: Theism or non-theism isn’t the issue. For example, religion has caused terrible atrocities throughout history (and still does today). It comes in at the number two spot. Number one is atheistic communism, which has been responsible for an estimated 100 million deaths throughout history*. So the problem has little to do with religion or atheism. The root problem is people that use whatever means possible for their own evil agenda. Crime is all over this world, because sin dwells in every person.

[* Footnote: “Communism has been the greatest social engineering experiment we have ever seen. It failed utterly and in doing so it killed over 100,000,000 men, women, and children, not to mention the near 30,000,000 of its subjects that died in its often aggressive wars and the rebellions it provoked.”]

Hemant: You write on your website that “It is impossible for a Christian to convert to atheism because a Christian is someone who knows God.” People have sent me letters talking about how extremely devout and Christian they used to be, even though they are now atheists. What do you make of their testimonies? (Are they liars? Are they not really atheists? Were they never truly Christians?)

Ray: These people are the results of the horrible manipulative practices of modern Christianity. Many of these spurious converts fall away from the faith and (understandably) become very bitter. Some become atheists. Some stay in the church and give God lip-service (they play the hypocrite). If this doesn’t make sense, take the time to listen to the two free audios (“Hell’s Best Kept Secret” and “True and False Conversion”) on www.livingwaters.com. Hopefully they will help to shed light on what has been happening because of the practices of modern Christianity.

Hemant: Can you name some other Christians you believe are doing good work to spread Biblical word? (In other words, what other Christians do you respect and support?) What do you make of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church? Are their actions and beliefs consistent with the God you believe in?

Ray: There are millions of Christians (and thousands of Christian organizations) that I love and wholeheartedly support.

I know that many atheists will disagree with me when I say that I love atheists. But if I didn’t, I would have paid for the meals of 40 atheists when they invited me to dinner, in Orange County. Why would I give Red Lobster meal vouchers to atheists on my blog? Why did I give away 120 hard cover books to atheists? I don’t hate anybody. I think that the people at Westboro Baptist church are terribly misguided and that they are misrepresenting Christianity.

There has been a lot of talk about Hitler using Christianity for his hate filled agenda. But he perverted the message of Christianity, which says to love your enemies, and to do good to those that hate you. But Hitler spoke about evolution in his autobiography and then used it correctly for his own ends. He took survival of the fittest to its logical conclusion. Richard Dawkins says that evolution is “survival of the fittest,” and that he is thankful that we don’t instigate Darwin’s theory in contemporary society, where we care for the elderly. You can see Dawkin’s saying this in an interview on the Press Kit on www.livingwaters.com

Hemant: When scientists uncover million-year-old fossils or discover evolutionary “missing links,” do you think they are lying to themselves or somehow misinterpreting the data?

Ray: The Theory of Evolution is like a puffy summer cloud. It changes almost daily. It is nebulous, and can be as large or as small as the imaginations of men. I have said many times that its language is the language of speculation — using words like “believe” “suppose,” “probably,” and “perhaps.” Nothing is sure, because “science” is forever changing its position as it searches for truth. Today’s “missing link” is discarded for tomorrow’s, and something that was 300 million [years old] years ago can become 400 million years [old] overnight. So much is based on faith in dating methods and unscientific beliefs of men who have an erroneous presupposition. I don’t have faith in the same things in which evolutions have faith.

Hemant: On your website, you’ve mentioned some nasty things people have been saying about you. But you never link back to the original postings. Is there a reason for this? Wouldn’t it be good practice, so readers could see the context of the quotations for themselves and judge the statements for themselves?

Ray: This question was asked by “Linzee Binzee,” who quoted someone saying that they hated me, and wished that I had a heart attack. Then Linzee said, “Quote-mining is a tactic Comfort is constantly guilty of, and in this instance he used it to defend his pathetic cowardice.” The quote in question was from the comments section of my own blog.

The general rule is that if it is a scientific claim, you will find “Notes” at the bottom of my posts (you can check on this by looking at previous posts). But when people say negative or hateful comments, it has no academic importance and it’s a simple thing to Google and find the source.

Hemant: You spend a lot of time talking to and writing about atheists. Yet, people of other faiths (Muslim, Hindu, etc.) also don’t believe in your god. Surely, they’re facing the same perilous future as the atheists. Why not spend energy on them as well? Why focus solely on the atheists?

Ray: I have preached open air more than 5,000 times. That took a lot of energy. Most of those times I was addressing people outside the atheist community. I have also written 60 or so books, most of them have nothing to do with atheism. If I seem to focus on atheists it’s because they won’t leave me alone. They hang around my blog like bugs at a camp fire, and when I go to give books out at universities, they are waiting for me. But I love and honor them, and count it a privilege to speak with them.

Hemant: Why have Christians like Francis Collins accepted evolution so wholeheartedly?

Ray: I will answer this by quoting from a recent entry on “Atheist Central” (note the “Note” at the end):

A Christian can believe in fairies, if he wishes. While I wouldn’t doubt the salvation of one who did, I may doubt his sanity. This is because Christianity doesn’t come from what you believe (although that is part of the equation), it comes from who you know.

Let me back up a little to explain what I mean. The Bible teaches the Jesus Christ was pre-existent before He was manifest in human form. He claimed to be the source of life, saying things like “I am the life” (see John 1:4, 11:25, 14:6). When someone repents and believes the gospel (that Jesus Christ died for his sin and rose on the third day), he places his trust in the Savior and comes to “know” God. Then God “seals” the believer with the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ “who is our life” dwells within the believer (see John 14:16-18). The Scriptures say “Christ, who is in you” (see Colossians 1:27). Jesus said that he would come to and would actually dwell within the Christian through the Holy Spirit (see John 14:21).

Here now is the bottom line. If you have Jesus Christ, you have life, irrespective of your denomination. God knows those that love Him. If you don’t have Jesus Christ (through the new birth of John 3:3), you don’t have life. You are still dead in your sins and justly under the condemnation of God (see John 3:17-18). Here’s the pivotal verses:

“He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life…”(1 John 5:12-13).

That said, if you have the Son of God, then the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth (see John 16:13). Your theology in time will become “sound,” and you will align your beliefs with those truths revealed in Holy Scripture, because it is God’s revelation to mankind. If the Old Testament says there was a literal flood (Jesus did also), the Christian cannot believe otherwise. If the Bible says that the earth freely floats in space when “science” of the time said that it didn’t (see Job 26:7), the Christian quickly sides with the Bible.

In the case of evolution, Scripture is very clear that God made man in His image (not as a primate). He made him and all the animal kingdom as male and female (“Evolutionary biology is unable to reveal why animals would abandon asexual reproduction in favor of more costly and inefficient sexual reproduction.” [1]), and He gave them (and every living animal) the ability to reproduce “after their own kind,” and not to evolve in time into other “kinds” or species of animals. We see the truth of all of the above both in the fossil record and in the creation that surrounds us.

Michael Baigent is the co-author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, the book that provided the underlying idea behind The Da Vinci Code (that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child and the bloodline lives on). In fact, his last name is an anagram for a main character in Dan Brown‘s book. His work has been both revered and vilified and, in 2007, he was on the losing end of a lawsuit against Brown.

Baigent has just released his new book, Racing Toward Armageddon: The Three Great Religions and the Plot to End the World, which is about… well… you can figure that out yourself.

Here is one excerpt from the prologue:

At its heart fundamentalism is a relentless progression deeper and deeper into intolerance and ignorance, which, unless opposed, will by default achieve its aims. Judged and measured against their own pronouncements, we must conclude that the fundamentalist religions of all denominations are opposing the free will and vibrancy of human life — they are, paradoxically, performing the very task they attribute to the feared Antichrist: they are attempting to convert a distorted view of reality into such a skillfully packaged shape that it might be taken as truth.

Fundamentalist religions are humanity’s greatest enemy. Blunt speaking, certainly, but time is short, and I see no reason not to call it as I see it. The fact we all have to face is that the fundamentalist religions leave no room for human frailty, for compassion, for forgiveness, or for creative freedom of thought. They are trying to return us to that time of darkness we thought was left far behind, where blind belief was considered more important than farsighted discovery, where the dogmatic was more valued than the tolerant and the false was more important than the true.

You submitted questions to Mr. Baigent about his current (and previous) work and his responses are below:

You have made a name for yourself promoting supposed conspiracies. Why do you think these alleged conspiracies are so secret? What do they have to gain in utter secrecy?

The nature of conspiracies is that they are secret; or, at least, they try to be. But the fact is that most people are not capable of keeping a secret for very long and so pieces of all conspiracies tend to leak out.

And there are others which are hidden in plain view –- my colleagues and I have always argued that certain of the Grail stories are of this type. For example, the Perlesvaus and the Vulgate cycle is focused upon the perfect knight whose bloodline reaches back in the past to Jerusalem. We see this as a literary packaging of a little known historical fact entangled with the deliberate medieval aspiration for the institution of knighthood being made into a spiritual calling.

In the end though, if we define a conspiracy as a group of people meeting unobserved and unreported to decide events which affect all of us, then we can see many commercial and governmental decisions in this way. We are told very little of the reasons for most of the decisions which directly affect us. And we accept this as normal. Why?

I think that people with power tend to act in this way quite naturally which is why it is so important that we maintain the institution of democracy with its checks and balances and insist at all times upon as much transparency and freedom of information that we can.

If decisions remain unchecked and uninvestigated those making them will all too easily slip into a self-interested way of operating. Secrecy allows them to more easily act without oversight; to more easily act in accordance with their own agendas rather than that of the people they supposedly represent.

If these massive conspiracies are true, what should the average person do about it? How can anyone fight against shadows that only a handful even know exist?

Ask questions of everything. Demand answers from even the most powerful. Publicise your investigations. Fear no one.

What do you believe about these religions you write about? About Jesus? Are you a skeptic or do you have any beliefs in the supernatural? Do you believe there is one true God we should follow?

I had a very powerful experience in my twenties which was of a spiritual nature. It was not, however, linked to any single belief system or religion. And this has driven me ever since. So I consider myself deeply committed to the spiritual but as deeply opposed to the manipulation of religion and belief structures.

So far as Jesus is concerned: according to the testimony of Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger, he did exist. Fine. And some fine words have been attributed to him. Whether he actually said them or not is actually irrelevant as far as I am concerned. However, one thing is clear, Jesus was never God. For a Jew to claim this would have been so outrageous that he would have been stoned to death as an heretic rather than crucified by the Romans as a political agitator — a crucifixion [that] the evidence (such as it is) suggests he survived.

I am also opposed to any suggestion that [there] is one true anthropomorphic god we should follow although this does depend heavily on how you define God. I tend to avoid the word since it is a male noun and this tends to exclude the feminine as well as separate “God” from “his” creation. If the word is to have any real meaning then it must tend towards unity rather than separation. Language is an imperfect tool but we do our best with it: I tend to prefer the word “Divinity” since it seems to me that it has a wider embrace and avoids the dangers of the sectarian.

To whom do you aim your books? The people following the major religions in your new book? The atheists and skeptics? The people who tend to believe in conspiracy theories?

I aim all my books at people who have questions but do not perhaps have the time or the opportunity to investigate them. I am, if you like, doing it for them. The most important thing we can do is to keep asking questions. We should tech our children to ask questions rather than fill their heads with dogmatic belief structures.

In this latest book, though, I am also trying to provide ammunition for moderate theists to oppose the excesses and errors of the religious fundamentalists.

Should we be worrying about one religion (Islam, Christianity, Judaism) more than the others when it comes to their views on Armageddon?

Well, we should worry about all religious bigots: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, to give a few. In pragmatic terms Judaism is perhaps the least offensive in this respect since It is not trying to set up a world-wide domination as is Fundamentalist Islam and Christianity. And Judaism has no concept of Armageddon although it is hard to see how they might destroy the mosques on the Temple Mount in order to rebuild the Temple without precipitating the worst jihad yet.

In layman’s terms, what should we look for if the end of the world is near? What are religious people doing to bring it about?

Let’s be clear: the world is not going to end, though we might if we are stupid enough! Those who believe in Armageddon might cause this prophecy to be self-fulfilling and instigate a major war in the Middle East. That is the danger.

One reader wanted to know how you felt about Dan Brown’s atrocious prose and ham-fisted storytelling.

I don’t really have an opinion. How do you feel? [Hemant says: I wouldn't assign Brown's books to an English class, but I'll be damned if they aren't all addictive little page-turners.]

Speaking of Brown, how have you dealt with losing the lawsuit against him? Have you been able to pay off your legal fees? Have you recovered from it or are you still upset/angry about the ruling?

I was never upset or angry about the ruling. My colleague and I considered that Brown had stolen our Intellectual Property and so we had no alternative but to mount a challenge. We were either going to win or lose; we lost. In these situations, as James Lee Burke has observed, you need to walk upright out of the cannon smoke with a smile on your face.

The release of this book coincides with the release of Brown’s new book The Lost Symbol. Is that a publicity move or mere coincidence?

So far as I know it is a coincidence though [it] does seem strange to me how my last book also came out with the paperback version of Da Vinci Code. Perhaps there is some celestial marketing strategy which is linking our books together? Or perhaps there is a conspiracy?

Is there a place for moderate theists in our world? Or do you, like many of the “New Atheists,” believe that they simply lend cover to the extremists of the major faiths?

I am not an atheist but a mystic. I think that the search for spirituality and meaning is as much a part of being human as the need for water, air, food, sunlight, love. But I consider that people can worship whatever they like from an anthropomorphic god to a lump of rock but I object if they begin insisting that I should share their belief. In essence I consider belief to be intrinsically dangerous. I contrast it to knowledge.

If someone tells me not to put my hand in a fire because it will burn and be painful then I can believe this and so never act in this way. But I cannot say that I know what this pain is. However, if I decide to experience it for myself and put my hand in the fire, get burned, and feel pain then I am in a better position: rather than believing in pain as an abstract concept, I now know pain through personal experience. Both approaches end with avoiding the fire but one comes from belief and the other from knowledge. Knowledge is wiser than belief.

I feel about spirituality in a similar way. The spiritual is personal and experiential; religion unfortunately very quickly becomes a power structure promulgating belief using dogmatic texts and ruling with sacerdotal hierarchies.

I think that there is certainly a place for moderate theists in our world so long as they are not evangelical in their approach to others. It is not for me to tell them what to believe. But I think also that moderate theists can too easily find themselves lending cover to extremists because, in the face of the extremists’ certainty, self confidence and aggressiveness their initial response is to step back rather than to oppose. One can say that they are too tolerant of intolerance.

I conclude from this that it would be a good idea to try and strengthen the hand of moderate theists since they are a huge group potentially able to reduce the power of the extremists — they speak the same language and use the same texts. By opposing moderate theists one is attacking a major ally in the fight against extremism.

In your new book, you warn against the danger of a society in which we are so tolerant of faith that we allow these extremists to run amok. What’s the remedy? What can we do to stop these religions from destroying the world?

I don’t think that there is any sure remedy. The basic situation is that we are all human beings living on this world; how then can we get along together — without feeling the need to blow ourselves up on buses or aeroplanes?

In my book I suggest that the era of one god has come to an end; that it is causing more problems than it solves. People with only one god tend to argue aggressively which is best.
But in the end I think that all these differences are superficial: religions always had an inner and an outer aspect. All the problems of extremism arise from an obsession with the outer form of religion; the inner is deliberately ignored and if not ignored, derided. So long as we find ourselves locked into the outer forms then, I fear, peace and harmony will be elusive.

I write in my book: “To have a society that accepts different expressions of Divinity is one that allows a path for everyone. No one need fight over the name of the god -– or goddess –- one worships; if others do not like one, they can seek another. It doesn’t matter. Ultimately, all these paths lead to the top of the sacred mountain, though some are perhaps rockier than others.”

Racing Toward Armageddon is now available in bookstores.

A trailer for the book can be seen here.

If you heard the following, you’d likely find it sexist, misogynistic, and misguided.

When Martha Peace says it, though, she’s a hero to thousands of fundamentalist Christian women everywhere:

… [P]riorities [for Christian women] may include rising early to feed the family, being available anytime to satisfy a husband’s desires (barring a few “ungodly” or “homosexual” acts), seeking his approval regarding work, appearance, and leisure, and accepting that he has the “burden” of final say in arguments. After a wife has respectfully appealed her spouse’s decision — a privilege she should not abuse — she must accept his final answer as “God’s will for her at that time”… The godly wife must also suppress selfish desires (for romance, a career, an equitable marriage), practice addressing her spouse in soothing tones, and maintain a private log of bitter thoughts to guide her repentance. “If you disobey your husband,” Peace admonishes in The Excellent Wife, “you are indirectly shaking your fist at God.”

Peace is one of the women profiled in Kathryn Joyce‘s new book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

“Quiverfull” refers to the notion that women should “receive children eagerly as blessings from God, eschewing all forms of birth control, including natural family planning and sterilization.”

Essentially, a Quiverfull woman breeds and keeps breeding, knocking out babies until her uterus gives out or menopause kicks in.

This leads to families with 6 or 10 or 14 or more children (in my mind, every batch of seven children is referred to as a “Duggar of kids“)… and if this trend continues… well, you can anticipate the problems.

You submitted questions about the Quiverfull movement and Kathryn’s thoughtful and detailed (and all-too-disturbing) responses are below:

What kind of education do Quiverfull children receive? Do a significant percentage of them go to college? Do females get the same opportunities for education as males?

Almost all Quiverfull children are homeschooled, and while there’s no single curriculum to point to, a number of leaders within the movement have advocated tailoring boys’ and girls’ education to the future roles they will hold. In the case of daughters, homeschooling leader R.C. Sproul, Jr., a prominent face in Quiverfull circles, argues that their education should prepare them to be mothers and stay-at-home wives.

In a particularly disturbing anecdote, he recounts the story of a 9-year old daughter of an acquaintance who couldn’t yet read, but was a very responsible and maternal older sister to her younger siblings: a situation that confirmed his view of the daughter as an “overachiever” well on her way to being a successful helpmeet and mother herself one day.

As for college, it varies a bit. Many sons are allowed to attend, particularly if they’re taking distance courses. This path is open for some daughters, but Quiverfull leaders strongly argue against allowing daughters to attend college away from home, as the encounter with worldly outsiders could damage or destroy their faith. Instead, they suggest that daughters stay at home after they graduate from homeschool, and practice being a helpmeet to their father as they will one day help and serve their husbands.

How many Quiverfull children marry and start their own families before the age of 25? Is this a movement that passes on from generation to generation?

It’s hard to give real numbers for the movement, and particularly for where the younger generation is now. As Quiverfull began in earnest in the mid-80s, it’s only in the past few years that there has been a real wave of second generation Quiverfull children marrying and having children. The movement, which has a vibrant internet presence, makes a lot of these developments, celebrating the marriages and new children of young believers. The older generation also stresses the dire importance of passing on their beliefs to the next generation, and to this end are focusing massive attention on outreach to daughters as young as five, inculcating a sense of their destiny in embracing the Quiverfull lifestyle. And they certainly also encourage women and men to marry early. While a number of children will leave the movement when they come of age, the lifestyle is structured to make that difficult, often keeping children sheltered from too much outside influence that could turn them away from the conviction.

Do female children in these families have much freedom regarding who they marry? Regarding anything, really?

A qualified yes. When children of the movement marry, it’s not through arranged marriages, but it is often through a courtship process that has an unusual amount of paternal involvement. Courtship is promoted through homeschooling and conservative religious circles as a chaste alternative to dating, which with or without sex is disparaged as the casual “trying on” of different partners. Courtship, alternately, is explicitly marriage-minded, and only occurs after a young man proves himself to a woman’s father. Quite literally, the male suitor is actually courting the daughter’s father, long before she is supposed to know that someone is interested in her. This is discussed as a way to protect vulnerable girls’ hearts from becoming emotionally invested before there’s the safety of commitment.

However, as advocates explicitly acknowledge, it’s also the best way of making sure that the daughter marries a man suitably in tune with the father’s ideology. For men concerned with keeping the movement going in the next generation, it’s important to make sure they marry their daughter to a man who will be similarly faithful to patriarchy and Quiverfull convictions.

Are any of the members of this movement actually adopting, or are they simply reproducing?

Yes, there is a good deal of adoption among Quiverfull families as well as in the broader conservative Christian community. Adoption usually supplements a biological family though, rather than replace the necessity of a woman leaving her fertility in God’s hands, so they may have six biological children and then adopt four more.

You mentioned in your Salon article that the Quiverfull movement “… likely numbers in the tens of thousands but… is growing exponentially.” Are there numbers/studies to back that up?

No. I don’t know of any real research on the Quiverfull movement yet. Hopefully there will be more in the future. My estimate is based on speaking with dozens of movement leaders, looking at the membership numbers for online communities, and considering that the conviction of having as many children as God gives you is considerably broader than the people who claim the Quiverfull name or participate in its forums.

What toll do all these births have on the mother — Emotionally and physically? You mentioned in your article one mother suffered a partial uterine rupture. Has it ever been worse?

Emotionally and physically, many women — particularly those who have left the movement — say the lifestyle is one of relentless work and exhaustion. Quiverfull mothers perform a staggering amount of labor in terms of pregnancy and childbearing, childcare, homeschooling, cooking and cleaning and being a submissive wife. There does seem to be a high incidence of reproductive problems among some mothers, though of course this could be due to the fact that the mothers are having far more children, and far later into life, than many other women.

Nonetheless, many women have spoken of extremely difficult pregnancies — a number of whom are put on strict bed rest — and labors. Additionally, there is often a focus on natural and even unassisted home births among Quiverfull moms. This isn’t a requirement of the Quiverfull conviction, but like many related facets of the movement (such as home churching or other, agrarian-minded efforts towards family self-sufficiency), it’s an idea many women are exposed to through movement literature. In a very extreme case in Australia, a Quiverfull mother died following the teachings of one fringe home-birth advocate. Though that seems to have been an anomalous case, home births, and continuing conceptions despite poor health do make for some serious health risks for some mothers.

What can we do for women who want to leave this movement? How can we ensure that the daughters and sons of these women and men get assistance out?

That’s a hard question. There are not many vocal exited women, though Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff and Vyckie Garrison are notable exceptions. Exited women face substantial difficulties as single mothers to large families, often including a number of young children, often limited financial resources, and a lack of outside work experience. Additionally, they’re often without references from a community that they left and which will often shun them. Understanding and respect — particularly that they came to their convictions not through ignorance but through devout belief — would likely be a relief to these moms. For both mothers and children, there are serious and very substantial psychological, emotional, spiritual and financial barriers to leaving the movement. Still, Quiverfull is not a cult, but a conviction that many women do choose willingly — however constrained their choices later become.

Are these people (women and children) on some sort of public assistance? If so, what’s being done about it?

Generally speaking no, they’re not. Most Quiverfull believers tend to have very strong beliefs about living debt-free and not accepting government assistance. They believe that churches are the proper custodians of public charity and welfare. However, if they did need public assistance, helping families feed and clothe their children is what public assistance programs are in place to do, so I don’t believe anything would need to be done about the proper functioning of a social safety net.

Are there allies within the religious congregations that perceive this movement as a threat? Or at least a bad idea?

There is abundant and lively opposition to patriarchy and Quiverfull ideologies within more liberal and moderate churches. Much of the momentum of Quiverfull began — like fundamentalism itself — as a backlash against liberalized theology in Protestant denominations. In this case, it was a reaction against the influence of feminism in Christian churches. Though Quiverfull is at the vanguard of a much broader resurgence of complementarianism, or “biblical” gender roles, across conservative denominations, there are many other mainstream and liberal denominations that are passionate advocates for women’s and reproductive rights.

What happens if it turns out that either one of the couple is infertile? If they are willing to accept 17 kids as “God’s plan” are they willing to accept zero, or do they go in for medical intervention? And what is their standing in the community if they can’t have kids?

The philosophy of Quiverfull, of leaving fertility in God’s hands, is ideally supposed to mean that parents accept whatever God gives them: 17 children or none. And I have met a few infertile women who still called themselves Quiverfull — though they spoke of feeling stung by some in the movement who focused predominantly on the number of children one has as a measure of spirituality.

Also, in some of the literature of the movement, Quiverfull mothers who had borne large families spoke of their sadness and loss of identity when they began menopause and began to lose their fertility. One even described herself as feeling dried out and withered when her childbearing years ended. This, significantly, is the same language that is used to describe the side-effects of using birth control, or even women who don’t have children. For me, it was a powerful illustration of what a no-win situation this ideology can be, even for women who followed the conviction diligently their entire reproductive lives.

Kathryn Joyce’s book Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement is now available in bookstores.