If you follow U.S. politics, especially the doings in Washington, D.C. you’ll know of Ana Marie Cox, who achieved internet fame with her snarky political blog Wonkette. That site, and her writing, was known for its sharp tone, its humor and sarcasm, and for breaking more than one important political story. Cox gave up that website in 2006, went to work for GQ magazine, and now writes for the Guardian.
Given her history, I was astounded to see an announcement that she had become a devout Christian. I first thought this was a joke (and perhaps it is, though I doubt it), but her confession and rationale is laid out in her Feb. 28 post on the Daily Beast, “Why I’m coming out as a Christian.” It’s even more astounding because Cox was known for her incisive analysis of politics, but has now abandoned all that to throw herself unquestioningly into the arms of Jesus. Anyone who’s followed Cox will be astonished to read this statement: “I try, every day, to give my will and my life over to God. I try to be like Christ. I get down on my knees and pray.”
And she abjures any rational approach to the topic: for example, why she became a Christian rather than, say, a Muslim or a Jew. (She describes her mother as an “agnostic ex-Baptist” and her father as “a casual atheist.”) Some quotes:
I am not smart enough to argue with those that cling to disbelief. Centuries of philosophers have made better arguments than I could, and I am comfortable with just pointing in their direction if an acquaintance insists, “If there is a God, then why [insert atrocity]?” For me, belief didn’t come after I had the answer to that question. Belief came when I stopped needing the answer.
That’s simply abandoning any rational approach to faith—but I guess that’s why I call it faith! “What reasons do I have for my belief? Jeeez, I dunno, but you can check Aquinas and Tertullian.” And as for not needing the answer to questions like, for instance, why God allows evils like the Holocaust, one would think that an inquisitive believer would at least think about that question. After all, it bears on the very nature and moral dicta of the being you worship! “Not needing the answer” to a question that important is like saying, “I’m a devout Muslim, so I don’t need to understand why Allah wants us to stone women and kill apostates.”
Apparently the reason Cox became a Christian is simply the Jamesian notion that she feels the presence of God, and knows that she has a personal relationship with him. This is the classic reason offered in The Varieities of Religious Experience for why people become religious. It’s not the arguments, but the feelings:
Here is why I believe I am a Christian: I believe I have a personal relationship with my Lord and Savior. I believe in the grace offered by the Resurrection. I believe that whatever spiritual rewards I may reap come directly from trying to live the example set by Christ. Whether or not I succeed in living up to that example is primarily between Him and me.
My understanding of Christianity is that it doesn’t require me to prove my faith to anyone on this plane of existence. It is about a direct relationship with the divine and freely offered salvation. That’s one of the reasons that when my generic “There must be something out there” gut feeling blossomed into a desire for a personal connection to that “something,” it was Christianity that I choose to explore. They’ll let anyone in.
Belief without good reasons: the classic definition of faith. The problem here is that she gives no reason for accepting Christianity as the “right” faith, and also for buying into its notion of salvation via faith alone. Why is that any saner than becoming a Scientolgist and embracing thetans, Xenu, and diagnosis of spiritual problems with an e-meter, or becoming a Raelian and adopting belief about aliens in UFOs who make crop circles? Any “gut feeling” can blossom into full-blown delusion without the check of reason. Is it that Cox’s form of Christianity is a lazy person’s faith, requiring only acceptance of Jesus as savior, and not any real work, to ensure a spot in Heaven? Or was it Christianity’s lax criteria for acceptance? (It’s much harder, for instance, to become a Muslim or a Jew.)
Without the least mote of criticality, Cox accepts the Christian doctrine—which is not universal, by the way—that salvation comes through faith, not works. That doctrine claims that had Hitler accepted Jesus right before he died, he would have found his place in heaven, regardless of the evils he had done. And Cox buys into that:
One of the most painful and reoccurring stumbling blocks in my journey is my inability to accept that I am completely whole and loved by God without doing anything. That’s accompanied by a corresponding truth: There is nothing so great I can do to make God love me more.
Because before I found God, I had an unconsciously manufactured higher power: I spent a lifetime trying to earn extra credit from some imaginary teacher, grade-grubbing under the delusion that my continuing mistakes—missed assignments, cheating, other nameless sins—were constantly held against me.
. . . What Christ teaches me, if I let myself be taught, is that there is only one kind of judgment that matters. I am saved not because of who I am or what I have done (or didn’t do), but simply because I have accepted the infinite grace that was always offered to me.
That doesn’t sound like salvation through faith really constituted such a problem for Cox, given that the idea of “freely offered salvation” was one of the things that attracted her to Christianity. But any thinking person must ask herself this: what kind of God would welcome you into heaven, no matter how many evil deeds you’d done in your life, so long as you accepted Jesus as savior before you died? How can a lifetime of killing Jews and making war, for instance, be completely effaced with a final change of mind about God?
Cox doesn’t care: she’s stopped needing those answers. She’s happily abandoned any notion of having good reasons for one’s beliefs, and immersed herself in the warm bath of unquestioned faith. And she’s happy about it, averring that since she found Jesus she is “happier, freer, and healtier in body and spirit” than she’s ever been.
Well, more power to her. Scientologists, Raelians, and, indeed, adepts of most spiritual delusions would say the same thing. But the caveat of George Bernard Shaw still applies: “The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.” Well, I wish Cox good luck. She once was sharp, but now she’s found.
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Even a generic feeling that “there must be something out there” carries the same privileged position of being immune to criticism or analysis. Faith is like being on permanent Safe Zone. You’re now epistemically allowed to shift from the objective world where you need to check your conclusions into the warm, accepting, subjective world of me-me-me — only you get to call it God-God-God and avoid any implications that you’re anything but humble.
Becoming “happier, freer, and healthier in body and spirit” is the real reason she converted. It proves she’s right about God — and God is right about her. It also incidentally entails that nonbelievers are unhappier, less free, and unhealthier in body and spirit but hey, she’s just talking about her humble little self. She’s found a personal story which resists the sort of energy and intelligence she once put into her career.
It must be like sinking into the softest pillow.
“My understanding of Christianity is that it doesn’t require me to prove my faith to anyone on this plane of existence.”
How convenient! You can hold a, “belief without evidence”, and you don’t have to supply any evidence even if you’re ASKED for it!
The phrase, “..on this plane of existence..”, however, seems to indicate that there’s still a little “New Age” stuff floating around in there…..
Upon being asked if he will become a Protestant now that he has abandoned Catholicism, Stephen Dadelus, the protagonist of “The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man,” replies: “I said I lost my faith, not my mind.”
Cox has inverted this statement, trading intelligence for Kool-Aid.
To reparaphrase Jerry paraphrasing “Amazing Grace”:
Her writing once was embossed but now is unsound.
I have respect for a person like Cox. At least she is honest it is about feelings and faith. Those apologists who claim theirs is more than faith, blind faith, irk me to no end.
Those apologists who claim there is more than faith, blind faith at least have the guts to rest their case on reason and make an actual argument.
Personally, I’m far more irked by the equating of feeling and belief, in that it simultaneously demeans the reasons for nonbelief while putting oneself behind an impenetrable wall. That speaks of a deeper sort of intellectual dishonesty to me.
I might suggest they couch there belief in a kind of rationale, but at its core I think apologetics is largely a post-hoc rationalization to support feelings and learned behavior no more supportable than what Ms Cox describes. Also, the rationale is almost always poorly derived and dishonest – especially in the questions they choose to brush aside as casually as in the subject essay.
If this represents a gutsier approach, fine, but a little less guts and more brains would be better.
Yes, there’s usually a firm emotional conviction behind the claim to have a “reasonable faith.” But bad arguments can be countered — and we’re at least starting out with people who think it’s important (or believe they think it’s important) to make rational sense. There’s some common ground and a format of mutual respect.
Where do you go however with people who think they’re right and you’re wrong because you’re just not a peaceful, loving, or open sorta guy — and there’s no point in even trying to make you understand? Atheists have personal natures which are too arrogant or blind or rebellious or shallow: more to be pitied than condemned, really.
I can respect someone who at least attempts to assume we’re both honest but considers me mistaken more than I can respect someone who pulls this sort of crap right at the get go.
I might suggest they couch there belief in a kind of rationale, but at its core I think apologetics is largely a post-hoc rationalization to support feelings and learned behavior no more supportable than what Ms Cox describes.
I agree that it’s still a poor place, but the nice thing about forcing your opponent to play by the rules is that it’s more obvious to bystanders when they start flouting them. Once people stop thinking in terms of authority figures, credibility, and personal character, they can start paying attention to whether or not their claims are gobbledegook.
These people are, consciously or not, shying away from anything that might reveal that they’re talking rubbish. They want bolt holes, and they don’t have many once you write open and clear standards on the chalkboard for everyone to look at. I think, if someone did the study, that there’d be more believers when intellectual standards were not policed than when they were.
Sastra, both are intellectually dishonest. The one group claims to use reason but rely on faith and the other group wants us to take their word because they feel it so.
I agree. It’s just that the first group turns ugliest if and when they finally reveal themselves to be in the second group. But giving a nod to the common ground of reason is an improvement over an instant denial.
I’d compare it to the difference between dealing with a student who was caught cheating and argues that no it wasn’t cheating it’s okay to paraphrase like that — and dealing with a cheating student who sneers that education is a big fat joke you’re actually the one with the problem.
My spouse is under orders to get me a brain scan if this ever happens to me.
I knew it! I knew as soon as I read “belief came when I stopped needing the answer”, that soon to follow would be something about a personal relationship.
All this is, is “I don’t wanna think, I just want something to make me feel good.”
I, for one, hope she quickly sheds the mantle of the enthusiastic new convert and adopts a more critical perspective.
How sad.
The idea of a personal relationship with God “resonated” with her- you know; the more an idea makes you feel better, the more true it must be….
It’s self-contradictory, too. You can’t have a relationship with someone while waving away pesky questions about whether or not they even exist, for the simple reason that the other person has to exist first before the relationship can occur. At my most charitable, I’d concede the other person could be fictional, or you could be mistaken about them, but in that case the problems with the religious position would be obvious.
It makes for a sort of abusive relationship, too. Not to diminish violence, but being steadfastly ignored or whatnot by someone you love is very heartbreaking. And the nonexistent will look similar – as even Mother Theresa noticed.
I read about two paragraphs of this story when it was published, and I thought it was so embarrassingly stupid I couldn’t read anymore.
It seems she doesn’t like herself very much, and is so desperate for love and approval she’s turned to religion to get it. Those with children in their lives: do your best for them, especially when it comes to showing your love, or they might end up like this too. And just be nice in general – it’s easy if you try.
That is how I see it too. She is a perfectionist (always a recipe for dissatisfaction) and has spent her life trying to be good enough. She was in urgent need of someone to tell her she was already good enough, and being American the obvious alternative was Christianity. She could have got a better result from psychotherapy but it sounds like she didn’t think to try that. I recommend she read “Self Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind” by Kristin Neff. Then maybe she can abandon the search for someone who accepts her as she is, and be that person for herself.
“I stopped needing the answer” means she gave up.
And by the grace of G*d goes another human into the bliss of ignorance.
The less aesthetically-pleasing way U.S. Navy sailors put it: “fat, dumb, and happy.”
“Reasoning opens the door for deception and brings much confusion. I once asked the Lord why so many people are confused and He said to me, “Tell them to stop trying to figure everything out, and they will stop being confused.” I have found it to be absolutely true. Reasoning and confusion go together.”
Joyce Meyer
I always wonder why this God of theirs gave them a perfectly good working brain and then tells them not to use it.
It needn’t be Christian. Your quote could also be paraphrased from any loosey-goosey Spirituality proponent. The answer would be that God also gave you a heart, so that you might find Him/Her/It.
Isn’t that sweet?
My heart is fine but – other than the basic fact that it (amongst many other bits) keeps me alive and functioning – it isn’t much use in finding things.
My feet are probably more useful. 😉
It’s applicable to any religion but Joyce Meyer says it so well! Abandon reason to avoid confusion. HAHAHAHAHAHA
For want of a better word “heart’ is the product of all the knowledge accumulated by and in our brains multiplied by the amount of compassion we have for our fellow passengers both human and non human.
God has nothing to do with it.
Even if there is a xtian, jewish,muslim hindu god he doesn’t deserve praise. Rather she/he/it deserves a really good kick in the ass.
I always find this line of thinking ironically amusing especially since it is held by almost every Creationist out there.
We are different from the animals, God’s special creation. Arguably, the biggest difference is our intellect and reasoning capabilities (often wrapped up in their notion of free will). Yet, we should abandon this and be more like the animals!
A.M.C. lost faith in her own thinking. I think she’s tired of struggling to reconcile the real world with her point of view. She’s intellectually exhausted and grasping for “peace of mind.” At 5 or 6 years-old most children figure out that reindeer can’t fly and that pet cats are sometimes killed by cars. Some can deal with it. Some can’t. Those that can’t deal perform a kind of self-inflicted lobotomy and simply don’t go there. Where “there” is where cold reason lies. Life is easier that way.
Since she comes out in such a public way I suppose it would be okay to send sincere condolences to the entire family.
God is a concept, by which we measure, our pain.
I don’t think I can decipher any meaning from that sentence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_%28John_Lennon_song%29
Well, DUH. Thanks. 🙂
Good Lennon quote.
AM Cox was once a favorite talking head on MSNBC. Then, suddenly and inexplicably, she disappeared. She appeared on no one’s show.
I took notice and always wondered what happened to her. I now wonder if her disappearance from camera and her “conversion” were related.
She was on “Up, with Steve Kornacki,” twice I think, just 4 to 6 weeks ago; MSNBC, Saturdays and Sundays, 8am to 10pm. She really didn’t seem herself to me; somewhat subdued.
She was on “Morning Joe,” 3/5/15.
Ana Marie Cox: I have found gratitude
The Daily Beast’s Ana Marie Cox joins Morning Joe to discuss the response she has received since penning a Daily Beast column on why she came out as a Christian.
on.msnbc.com/1BKVaLf
(pasting all the above worked for me)
Apparently, the kind of god who’s only interested in having his ass kissed in just the right way. Righteousness, mercy, justice, compassion — none of that matters. Only tonguing technique.
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God is Big Brother, apparently. A big, untouchable, absolute ruler who can dish out punishment and reward on the lightest whim. That would at least explain the bizarre emphasis on praise, worship, and God PR (aka whitewashing). In that light, I could almost feel sorry for believers.
Here is another, probably more intellectual approach to a search for a god, but it is still wishful thinking:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/my_atheist_search_for_god_were_debating_science_and_religion_all_wrong/
This is a fascinating turn of events. I think religion may be a red herring here. Her description of struggling for approval, for “extra credit,” to be in essence a teacher’s pet sounds like the real deal. A religion that required good works or specific behavior would just feed what for her was a dysfunctional striving; a religion that tells her she is saved irrespective of works sounds like it fills a burn-out-shaped hole.
I wonder how she will feel in 5 years, or 10. A drunken man may be happier than a sober one, but he may also hit rock bottom at some point.
That’s an interesting question. The “God loves you no matter what” version of peace-and-happiness Christianity does conflict with other versions which emphasize the “yeah, but if you love God you’ll follow His many rules” aspect.
If Wonkette is used to arguing she may eventually find herself getting drawn into theological debates with Christians Who Don’t Understand God As Well As I Do. Given that she’s bound to recognize that the “I just stopped asking questions” approach doesn’t exactly put anyone on firm epistemic ground, that could go poorly for her. The whole edifice could crash down.
Any belief on its own can be inclusive – just believe it and there you are. Religions are not inclusive, though, and after excoriating fundamentalism for years, on its being the source and promoter of the very positions – on abortion and women’s rights generally, same-sex marriage and homosexual acceptance generally, church-state separation in education, safety net programs, the death penalty and criminal justice generally, anti-Democrat (ie, Racist) voting restrictions, immigration reform, and the will to make war in the Middle East, for starters – that Wonkette fights and has fought from the start.
It’s funny, I am sure I would be far less bothered and disappointed if she had converted to Reform Judaism or an Eastern belief system – but then, liberal Jews and Sikhs are not funneling millions into campaigns to make America more theocratic than it already is.
Like other commenters, I am curious to see what happens over time to this very incisive, intelligent and otherwise exceptionally rational person.
Middle aged woman finds Jesus because she feels her mortality and wants a foot in the pearly gates but makes up her own version of Christianity since she doesn’t like the ones that are out there.
not surprising at all.
People are ‘converted’ by mystical experiences such as Cox’s, because they always include an overwhelming feeling of absolute certainty, a certainty undiminished by any question of possible error. This is a feeling, not an intellectual process. And the feeling lingers, perhaps for a lifetime.
It’s extremely difficult for anyone experiencing this absolute certainty – ‘realer than real’ is a frequent description – to question it. What worked for me, bringing me to deconversion, was encountering someone who was equally as certain about something I knew to be erroneous – his abduction by space aliens. It took many months to realize that my certainty of my personal relationship with god was of no more value than his certainty of alien abduction.
The mystical experience is real. As with viewing an optical illusion drawing, it’s our interpretation of the experience which is in error. The real explanation of the mystical experience lies within the mysterious structures of our brains, not out there in the cosmos.
As with meeting someone who was swallowed by a great white shark and lived to tell the tale, unless you’ve personally experienced the certainty inherent in the mystical experience, it’s probably impossible to grasp how overwhelmingly convincing it is.
“The mystical experience is real. As with viewing an optical illusion drawing, it’s our interpretation of the experience which is in error. The real explanation of the mystical experience lies within the mysterious structures of our brains, not out there in the cosmos.”
Excellent!
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Well, she has to accept faith, ie the death of reason, if she wants to believe in salvation through faith.
If she wants to feel good about any sort of salvation, Christianity does not offer that. People forget the “if” part of “going to heaven if you accept Jesus Christ as savior.” It is kind of one of the most basic doctrines of Christianity as it is today. It is definitely an old doctrine and can’t be called a new innovation. That “if” makes it an abomination.
Anne Frank is in hell. Christians will dance around this fact by saying they aren’t God so can’t know that, but if they believe their ideas about salvation coming from faith, she is in hell as a logical consequence. They
She can be quite certain that traditional Christian beliefs going very far back have both her parents in hell. She will be in heaven while they are in hell.
Salvation comes through faith, not works. Those are very, very pernicious words. Christianity has simply taught them to focus on heaven these days while forgetting what it really means overall.
The attempted rules patches just make things worse. Adding an age of reason just means murdering people below the age of reason is beneficial for them and just gets them to heaven faster. Adding a “haven’t heard of Jesus” clause just creates the old joke that ends with “then why the hell did you tell me?” And all these patches end with tons of people better than the average Christian going to hell, solving nothing. The harrowing of hell is there for the people before Christ, but there is kind of the issue of all the people who weren’t even Jews and were pagans before Christ.
Any combination of hell, including even finite hell or a hell that is supposedly just being without God, and salvation through faith alone leads to such insanity. hell being finite in length would not stop it from being a horrific thing. Just being without God, a modern Christian claim to make it seem less horrific than traditional Christian claims, is still a punishment. This is even before getting to the various verses that are descriptive enough to show it isn’t just going “oh, poo, I don’t get to be in God’s presence.” Any sort of punishment would end up producing an atrocity if real because a person being punished for being something other than Christian while the Nazi who made sure she was executed but asked for forgiveness or converted soon before execution avoids it is an atrocity in itself.
I have ranted a bit too long so I will just end this by saying that “they will let anyone in” only sounds nice before you realize that everyone who isn’t in when they die or the apocalypse happens will be punished.
“going to heaven if you accept Jesus Christ as savior.”
Xtianity is the ONLY religion (that I know of) that punishes you for believing in and worshiping its Creator God. Salvation only comes from believing in and worshiping Jesus. Which is why Anne Frank is damned even though, as a Jew, she believed in and worshiped the same God as Xtians.
And why Xtians have to perform a theological tap dance, creating the Trinity, wherein God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are separate entities, with separate powers but really, really, truly just manifestations of the one God. So, why can’t you be “saved” by worshiping any of His manifestations? Well, because it’s gotta be Jesus, and only Jesus. Because.
And the Bible is astonishingly silent about the fate of those who have not or cannot hear the salvation message – the unborn who die before birth, infants and children (I don’t recall any age of reason specified anywhere in the Bible), the mentally disabled/ill, those died before Jesus’ time and those who never got Jesus’ message. It seems their fate wasn’t of great concern to the OT and NT authors.
I remember an American student at my college (in the UK) who left in tears a meeting with a couple of evangelical Christians because they asserted without pity that the native Americans who lived before “White Men” came had all gone to Hell.
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I think that’s a little off the mark. Most Christians I k ow would not assert that you can worship Jesus and then blaspheme God and the Holy Spirit. You have to worship all of them. “All” even though it is “one”. 1 = 3. It’s a mystery! (Not a contradiction, just a mystery.)
Actually, as far as I remember, Jesus’ words were something to the effect, “Nobody goes to the Father except by me”. Which, to me, sounds like, “I’ll say who goes to Paradise and who not” rather than “Paradise is for those who worship me the right way”.
A distinction with little real difference, IMO.
Sad. Thinking is hard, evidently it wore her out. ‘Belief’ is just so simple.
But you can’t stop thinking. I predict that discordant thoughts will creep in and unless she manages to suppress them, her faith will slowly crumble.
“I tell all of you with certainty, unless you change and become like little children, you will never get into the kingdom from heaven.
Sums it all up right there.
That’s the big J himself I’m quoting.
Jesus seemed to miss the point that most children are naturally curious and it takes fear and indoctrination to make them atop asking questions.
She must have seen something or heard some story, suspended her disbelief and now is latched in believing.
As an atheist Jew, I was always fascinated by the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz who was a very orthodox Jew for whom religious belief is not an explanation of life, nature or history, or a promise of a future in this world or another, but a demand. The implication was that faith should be viewed as a personal commitment to obey God and has nothing to do with all kinds of miraculous or divine stories.
Of course, in Ana’s case there does not seem to be any such deep consideration.
As for me, I will continue “to cling to disbelief.” Honestly, I don’t believe I have read anything she has written, but her characterization of unbelief compared to her own description of how she was OK once she stopped thinking hardly recommends it.
It’s especially odd when she’s the one invoking feelings and relationships, and lazily ducking any call to justify her beliefs. At least the pot had the decency to look at the kettle before calling it black.
“I am not smart enough to argue with those that cling to disbelief.”
Which, if she was being more honest, really reads as; “If any of those nasty atheists point out the absurdity of my beliefs, I’m going to stick my fingers in my ears and say; ‘la la la I can’t hear you’.”
Agreed. Reading such apologetics is like listening to a school truant make excuses for untouched homework. “Please, Miss, I’m not smart enough to answer these hard questions. All the boffins before me did the hard work, Miss. Just go ask them. I don’t really need the answers, Miss.”
It’s obvious the stress of being a wonkette has driven her completely mad, driving her into the arms of delusion and hallucination, causing her to become another knee-bound slave to the insanity of Yahweh madness.
I read (and still read) Wonkette in the good ol’ days when Cox was “Wonkette.” I enjoyed her snarky gossip but she was never a very insightful political commentator. I think her superpower was access. She knew all the right people and went to all the right parties. But her political analysis was, and is, pretty vapid, imo.
Kudos for that last sentence Prof.CC!
” . . . salvation via faith alone.”
Well, as is stated to-the-effect in the New Testament Book of James (the brother of Jesus, I gather), “Faith without works is dead.” The by-faith-alone crowd ignores this.
Also, “By their fruits [works] ye shall know them.”
I’ll wait by patiently for the Sophisticated Theologians to jump all over this and say that she is really an atheist because that’s not the God they believe in either…
Her explanation of faith reminds of the Mark Twain quote: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”