How I Got Religion, And Then Lost It
Initial Conversion
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I completed the seventh grade in June 1958, and with the end of school came, as usual, the start of vacation Bible school at Planada Community Church. This year my parents, untypically, wanted their four children to attend. I suspected at the time, and still suspect, that their main interest was in the free baby-sitting, but I never got around to asking them whether it was so. In any case, they assured us that we did not have to go if we preferred not to. It was, nevertheless, apparent that they really wished we would.
I would have preferred not to. I did not expect the classes to be fun. I thought they would be boring. However, Dad wanted us to go, and I wanted to respect his wishes. Besides, the activities were supposed to include some arts and crafts, and so I would not be entirely wasting my time.
The class for seventh- and eighth-grade boys was taught by the church pastor, the Rev. Gilbert Wantland. I had no reason to suspect that the message I was getting from him would have been any different if I had gotten it from any other pastor of any other church. I did not know why there were so many different churches, but it did not occur to me that it would have anything to do with fundamental disagreements over what Christianity itself was all about.
The message I got from the Rev. Wantland was as follows:
The Bible asserts that God created the heavens and the earth. We know this is true because the only alternative is to believe in evolution. Evolution is a ridiculous theory promulgated by atheistic scientists. The Bible further teaches us that, because of Adam and Eve(s transgression, we are all sinners and for this reason condemned to burn in hell for eternity. However, because God so loves us, he sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for us, sacrificing himself as atonement for our sins. If we believe this, our sins are forgiven and we spend eternity in heaven. Belief is sufficient; it is also necessary. Skeptics will burn as surely as everyone else who rejects the Word of God.
I was skeptical at first, but I knew no one from whom to seek another opinion. I did not know that there were any other opinions on these issues besides "It(s all true" and "None of it is true." I was confronted with Pascal(s wager, many years before I ever heard Pascal(s name: The consequences of believing in error were trivial compared to the consequences of disbelieving in error. I stuffed my skepticism and resolved to be a believer.
No one commits an act of faith just because he is convinced that it would be a prudent thing to do. I was not exercising faith. I was exercising reason. It was a poor exercise, but it was all I could do at the time.
My major difficulty in this exercise was in persuading myself that evolution was actually a ridiculous theory. Given the limits of my comprehension about scientific matters, this was not too difficult. The Rev. Wantland presented the theory in such caricature that, even knowing it to be a caricature, I thought he had a point. Wishing it were so, I persuaded myself that evolution could not have happened. I accepted, in my ignorance, the false dichotomy that if evolution could not have happened, then the world must have been created the way Genesis said it had been created. I accepted the further inference that if Genesis was right, then the entire Bible was right.
Nobody had told me that one could believe in both evolution and Christianity. I was learning one kind of Christianity, unaware that there were any other kinds. I was informed, by a grownup who seemed to know what he was talking about, that if I wanted to go to heaven, I had to believe that evolution was a lie.
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