Frequently Asked Questions about the Heirophant's Proselytizer Questionnaire

Do you want me to answer these questions?

In general, No, I do not want you to answer these questions. Unless I personally have specifically handed you a printed copy of the Heirophant's Proselytizer Questionnaire (HPQ), or have directed you to a page on which they reside and asked you to provide me with answers, I am uninterested in knowing what you think about the topics mentioned in that document. If you really do feel compelled to write to me about this questionnaire, please read this entire FAQ, the document called A Guide for Writers of Responses to The Heirophant's Proselytizer Questionnaire, and the document entitled Before You Write to Me about the HPQ before you do so.

If you don't want me to answer these questions, why did you post them on the Internet?

For a variety of reasons. One of these reasons is that I want the document to be available as a resource for other unbelievers. (See the history of the HPQ for more information.) This document is not meant as a personal challenge to you or to your beliefs. As far as I'm concerned, you can worship Jesus or be a Buddhist or a Muslim or have sex with Tinky Winky and call that a religion: It's all the same to me. Really. The HPQ was meant to state my own reasons why I'm not a Christian; it's not meant to imply that you shouldn't be one. (There's a big difference between the two, and many Christians would do well to learn it.) Be a member of whatever religion you want; just leave me alone and don't push it on me. I'm not knocking on your door asking you to be a Wiccan or a Buddhist or a Satanist or an atheist or a Muslim or anything else that you're not; all that I ask is that you extend me the same courtesy.

If you're really wondering why I'd put these questions on the Internet despite the fact that I don't want you to answer them, you're probably not one of those people for whom these questions are intended. You are not the center of the world. There are plenty of things that do not pertain to you. Some of them are on the Internet. This Questionnaire may be one of them. Please move on to something relevant to your own life.

You mention that you used to be a Christian. Which sect were you a member of?

First: this question is entirely irrelevant. The main reason that people ask this question is because they're looking for a way to circumvent the questionnaire itself and try to deal with the real reasons why I left the religion. I assure you that the real reasons why I left the Christian religion are, to a large extent, addressed in the document itself. If you really want me to return to the religion, you need to answer those questions.

But I've been asked it so often that I'll provide a real answer: I was raised Catholic, and was a good, pious boy. I was devout, believed fervently, and attended religious education classes. I served as an altar boy. I left the church at sixteen, largely because none of the priests I talked to could answer my questions, many of which are reflected in the HPQ. At that point, I assumed that my problems were with Catholicism, and searched for answers in a variety of other churches. I attended Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopalian, Pentacostal, Adventist, and other Christian services looking for answers, and gradually came to realize that my questions were essentially unanswerable within the framework of Christianity, and left the church itself.

I am uninterested in trying your particular flavor of Christianity on the basis of the uninteresting fact that it does not appear in the above list, largely because I fail to see how the fact that it does not appear in the above list makes it radically different from the churches I have attended in the past. I assure you that the real reasons why I left the Christian religion are, to a large extent, addressed in the HPQ itself. If you really want me to return to your religion, you need to answer those questions.

Is the HPQ meant to be a comprehensive list of reasons why you're not a Christian?

No. It's only the first one hundred and fifty problems I could think of in a four-hour period. The HPQ is meant to be:

  1. A sop to throw to fundies who want to convert me.
  2. Blatantly offensive enough that most proselytes will stay away from me in the future.
  3. A partial listing of the reasons why I'm not a Christian.
  4. The opening move in a potentially fruitful dialogue with the rare genuinely thoughtful, well-educated Christian who is interested in discussing his/her religion with someone of a different viewpoint.

Is the HPQ meant to be a comprehensive list of biblical contradictions?

No, there are many, many contraditions in the bible that are not listed in the HPQ. The HPQ only lists those contradictions that I could find quickly, that seem to be especially problematic or important, and that seemed most actively to resist the acrobacy and backflips of Christian biblical apologetics. There are plenty of other resources about biblical contradictions, inaccuracies, and incongruencies on the Internet. These contradictions, inconsistencies, and problems deal with the Old Testament, the New Testament, the relation between the two, and the relation between either or both with the exterior world. Many of these pages are useful, high-quality resources, but I always encourage you to evaluate their utility yourself. A claim is made on this page that there are some 150,000 errors, contradictions and/or variations in the New Testament alone.

The HPQ is really offensive.

Yes, it's meant to be really offensive. If you look at the reasons why I composed it in the first place, you'll see that my primary motivation was, quite simply, to get proselytes to fuck off when they wouldn't do so any other way. By setting a condition for them to fulfill before I'd engage in a dialogue with them and by making the condition more trouble than it was worth to most of them, I wound up able to sleep later in the mornings than I'd been able to when I had a constant stream of preachers on my doorstep. Ensuring that the phrasing of the Questionnaire was confrontational and offensive was an integral part of the process of getting people who had essentially nothing to say to me to leave me alone.

The Internet was never intended to be Magic Disney Happy Fuzzy Bunny Fun Jesus Land. If you can't deal with the content of this questionnaire, don't read it. No one's coercing you.

So you wrote it just to offend people?

No. I wrote it primarily to offend people. The vast majority of proselytes have nothing of value to say to me. I've actually thought about their religion more deeply than they have, and the canned repetition of whatever arguments were floating out of pulpits the Sunday before is hardly convincing to me. These people who have no formal theological training and nothing to say to me, however, were constantly at my doorstep, wasting my time, and refusing to leave me alone no matter how politely I asked them to do so, primarily because they'd talked themselves into believing that God had especially selected them out to be his special tool that converts me. Sure, I'd heard everything they had to say before, but this time, when they were talking to me, I was going to see the light, dammit.

Needless to say, this was an enormous waste of my time.

I wrote this essay because I ran out of other options. I tried everything else I could think of, but nothing else got me any peace, quiet, or consideration. Did I write it to be offensive? Yes. Was it worth my while to offend inconsiderate, offensive people when that meant that I didn't have proselytes ringing my doorbell any time between 6 am and midnight? You bet. I'd do it again without worrying, feeling guilty, or even stopping to think about whether this constituted an ethical problem.

Does that mean that you would never give a response the consideration it deserves?

No, I give each response at least the amount of attention it deserves, and often more. (Most of the responses I've received have deserved very little attention, however.) On those occasions when the response demonstrates that it's more than regurgitated pabulum, I use it as a manner of opening a dialogue with someone who disagrees with me. In the best of circumstances, it's the first move in a complicated but rewarding Socratic dialogue. (This is, however, almost never the case.)

I genuinely am a fairly open-minded person. (In fact, I think that I'm much more open-minded than the vast majority of proselytes.) Under certain circumstances, I would consider returning to Christianity. One of the prerequisite conditions for any return to Christianity that I might make in the future is that the problems I have with the religion must be resolved. A good number of these problems that I have with Christianity are laid out in a document I typed, which I call the Heirophant's Proselytizer Questionnaire.

Have you ever received a persuasive response?

Not to most of the questions. Some of the questions can be (and have been) answered to my satisfaction. Other questions, on the other hand, I suspect are unanswerable. However, it is possible that there are answers that would satisfy me, and part of a respondent's job is to convince me that this is so by providing acceptible answers.

Have you ever spent a great deal of time dealing with a response?

Yes, I've provided detailed critiques to two respondents (out of about twenty or twenty-five responses that I've seen and, as an estimate just off the top of my head, two or three hundred e-mails that don't really qualify as detailed responses). In one case, I spent over a year breaking down the answers I received in a particularly well-researched and well-thought-out response and responding to them. This was, by far, the best response I've received to the HPQ in the twelve years since I wrote it. In that particular response, I found about seventeen or so responses either persuasive or, at least, non-objectionable. (This should give you an idea of what you're up against.)

I wish I still had a copy of that response (I'd consider posting the entire dialogue if I did), but, sadly, I lost it when the hard drive on my old computer crashed. Still, kudos to you, Brad.

Why is the questionnaire so mean?

See This is really offensive, above.

Why is the questionnaire so filled with hate?

I'm not sure that it is filled with hate, largely because I'm unable to evaluate how much hate can fit into a questionnaire of this length and unsure how closely I have to approach that limit before I can non-deceptively describe the questionnaire as full. Moreover, I doubt that you and I would agree on what the word hate means, or whether hate is isomorphic with disagreement. Perhaps, though, you should see This is really offensive, above. That might answer your question.

Hate is, like, bad, man.

You have an opinion. Good for you. Make someone give you a cookie. And tell your mother to stop dressing you so funny.

I'm writing because I love you, and …

If this is indeed true (and not merely a facile rhetorical maneuver meant to garner sympathy with me or some audience), then it seems likely to me that you and I mean such different things by the word love that any discussion on the topic would be pointless.

Hey, question #X doesn't apply to my sect or to my personal beliefs!

Then explain why it doesn't apply to your sect or personal beliefs. This is why the Questionnaire says, at the beginning, If a question does not apply to your particular sect, explain why. It's really very straightforward, but a lot of people get confused when this happens.

The HPQ was not tailored specifically to you; I wrote it to be useful on a variety of proselytes who describe themselves as Christian. And no, you don't get bonus points in my esteem for insisting that real Christians don't believe in X, Y, Z. As an outsider to Christianity, it seems ridiculous to me that you people are constantly arguing about what constitutes a real Christian, especially when you base those arguments on what your silly little bible really says or really means. Your bible is so vague and contradictory that what it really wants people to believe on any number of issues is essentially undecidable (except, perhaps, by specially trained experts), and every Christian I've ever talked to has had some part of the bible that s/he ignores.

Hey, I can't find a biblical basis for the so-called Christian doctrine you're criticising in question #X!

There are two possible answers to this, depending on exactly which question you're talking about:

I'm assuming that anyone who's composing a response is smart enough and well-versed enough in your bible to tell the difference, of course.

It would be really helpful if you'd put together a writer's guide for non-stupid people who genuinely do want to respond to the questions.

There is a mostly (say, 85%) complete writer's guide that I've largely stopped working on because I have so much else going on in my life. If you'd like to see what I've got so far, please look here.

Are you really the original author of this document? I can find other copies all over the Internet.

Yes. Yes I am. If you want more information about its composition, you should read this document.

But some guy claims on his web page that his old buddy from high school wrote the HPQ! (He also calls you a prick for linking to his web page without his permission.)

Ronin seems to have a variety of objections to me. As for linking to his page without his permission, there is no legal requirement that I obtain his permission before linking to his page, or that, in general, anyone obtains permission before linking to another site. (Linking is not republication, but rather a way of embedding an address for another page into my page in such a way that it's easy for the viewer of my page to navigate his/her web browser to the page mentioned. Linking creates a pointer or reference to the other page, but nothing else. Although there are certain situations in which the way a link is used can be deceptive, I believe that my reference to his page is completely fair and legal. After all, I'm not claiming that I wrote his page—his version of the HPQ is shorter and has substantial differences—nor that it is part of my site—merely that it's out there and that it's something that readers of the HPQ might want to look at it. Ultimately, this is the point of the World Wide Web: It's a web, and linking increases its value. Given that fact, I'm surprised by the level of venom in his message at the top of his page: It's something you would expect from a Christian.)

His other complaint—that a buddy of his wrote the HPQ, and not me—is simply not true. Now, I've never claimed that a list of objections to Christianity is a unique idea, and it may be that he read some other similar list that was written before mine was. I never even claimed that I thought up the issues all by my ownself—although some of them came from my personal thoughts or journals, many of them came from books on my shelf or from the Internet (especially from the now-defunct Why Christians Suck website). Even some of the phrasing—just a little, but it's some of the better stuff—on that document was borrowed from WCS. But the list itself is by me, and well over 90% of it is in my own words. Ronin is either confused or lying. It's that simple.

Can I prove that I wrote it? No. I didn't put my name on it when I sent it in to WCS for publication initially because I'd read the hate mail that they'd posted on their website. Once I'd published a document on that site, they started forwarding the electronic Christian love messages that they got to me. Some of those messages contained death threats, so I'm fairly sure that I made a good decision. I gave people permission to republish and circulate it, and it made its way around the globe in various modified an unmodified forms. I wanted it to circulate, and it did. I'm not sorry that I gave up the ability to prove that I wrote it, because it seems that it's been a useful resource for unbelievers.

Can I offer strong supporting evidence that I wrote it? Yes. Talks with my friends would demonstrate that I circulated copies amongst them in early 1997, which is the only contemporary date in the document. That would also verify that I attended that Marilyn Manson concert to which that date is attached. And a search of library and bookstore records would show that I had read many of the books quoted in the Questionnaire about that time. Records of what classes I was taking at the time would show that some of the rest of the books were required reading during the time that I wrote the Questionnaire. But no, I can't prove that I wrote it.

If you'd like to read my story about how and why and when I composed the HPQ, you should read this document.

You say you don't believe in god, but I think you're really angry at god.

This is not really a question, but it's a position that's asserted so frequently that I think it deserves a brief response.

Since you're responding to the Heirophant's Proselytizer Questionnaire, I take it that you mean Yahweh/Jehovah when you write god, as opposed to Vishnu, Thor, Apollo, Ahura Mazda, or any of the millions of other possible options.

I'm not angry at god because I don't have any reason to believe that Jehovah exists. It would be silly to be angry at an imaginary being, because that would be pointless. If the wording of some questions in the HPQ leads you to believe that I'm angry at god, then at least one of two things is going on:

  1. You've totally misunderstood the point of whichever questions you're reading. Although it's difficult to know what you're reading based on your responses, because it's likely that your responses don't include enough information to preclude the possibility that you're an idiot, it's likely that my point was that, even if your god existed, he would be unworthy of worship. My point is not that god exists and has done things of which I disapprove.
  2. You've started from a position that assumes you're correct without bothering to examine the evidence, and you can't imagine how anyone could possibly come to any other conclusion. This is probably because you're deficient in empathy, i.e. the ability to see things from anyone else's point of view, which is a common corollary of Christian belief. Since you're already assuming that you're correct, your interest is not in examining the problems that I have with Christianity, but rather in deflecting attention away from these questions toward what you assume must be the real reasons I'm not a Christian. One of the more common ways that this happens is to assert that I must be angry at god.

To put it another way: My lack of belief in your god is no more proof that I'm angry at him than your own religious position is evidence that you're angry at Loki, Aphrodite, Augustus Caesar, Mithra, Shiva, Chukwu, Olódùmarè, Eru Ilúvatar, or any of millions of other options. Or, to put yet it another way: You and I are both atheists. When you genuinely understand why you don't believe in Zeus, you'll also understand why I don't believe in Yahweh.

Well, you seem pretty angry.

I am. I'm angry about any number of things. One of those things is that smug, self-righteous idiots keep writing to me on subjects about which they know very little, and that their lack of knowledge hasn't impacted their 'faith.' Another is that American politics exhibits such a heavy influence from hypocrites who self-identify as Christian despite the fact that they ignore Luke 18:25, Matthew 19:21, Luke 6:20, and Matthew 5:40 in favor of making Christianity a belief system that gets a person into a place called heaven after death if s/he goes to church on Sunday wearing nice clothes and isn't a homo. I'm angry that the government of the United States is able to come up with enough money to bomb poor people with a different skin color in three different countries while our own citizens are just barely scraping by, and can't seem to come up with money to provide healthcare, education, and other basic services for our own people. I'm angry about a lot of things. But I'm not angry at god. I'm angry at people who actually exist. There are more than enough of them to keep my anger busy.

Since you used to be a Christian, but you're not one anymore, you must have been beaten/molested/humiliated/abused by a priest/minister/nun/reverend/other religious figure.

Nope. In fact, most of the religious figures I've known have been decent human beings despite their religious beliefs. My problem is with the religion, and some of its adherents, but does not stem from an abuse of trust while I was a child. (I suspect that the constant recurrence of this assertion is based in the line of thought outlined in the angry at god section, above.)

Why do you quote biblical passages out of context?

People who assert that I'm doing so often make this claim as a knee-jerk way of comforting themselves: I disagree with them, and quote biblical passages to support my own claims, so rather than investigating what the bible actually says on the matter, they just make a blanket assertion that I must be quoting biblical passages out of context and move on to the real reasons why I'm not a Christian instead of dealing with the issue at hand.

Insofar as I do quote biblical passages out of context—which does happen from time to time, and I am (in fact) aware of this—there are several possibilities:

  1. I'm following an ancient tradition of Christian argumentation. Jesus himself often does this in the gospels, inferring ridiculous symbolic things from arcane scriptures in the Hebrew Torah, which he entirely strips of context on many occasions. The standard Christian mode of argumentation, as nearly as I can determine, is to cite a single verse whenever possible, stripping it of context, and treat its interpretation as self-evident. If you object to this, make sure that you're not doing the same thing at other points in your own response.
  2. I'm expecting you to call me on it. You're the one who thinks the bible is the most important book ever written. I expect you to know it well enough to (legitimately) call my bluff when I do this (as opposed to making a blanket claim that I must be doing so because I disagree with you). This is one of the ways that I evaluate whether your response is worth paying attention to.
  3. I'm taking the broad context into account, but you yourself don't understand what the broad context is. As a literary scholar whose training is in extracting meaning from texts, I tend to look at the sum total of what the bible says on a given topic, whereas the likelihood is that you define context as the verse in question, plus the three verses before and the three verses after the verse in question. This is ridiculous, as even Christian scholars will tell you, but you insist on defining context in a particular narrow manner in order to better advance your own particular agenda.

I expect that you'll be able to tell the difference, of course.

Go back to the home page for the Heirophant's Proselytizer Questionnaire.