A retired lady who volunteers in my department asked me to join her church, knowing that I don't believe. "We're very liberal, for Methodists," she said. "We're a very social church. We'd be happy to have you." I asked, "Would I be expected to worship and act like I believe? Could I express my honest feelings if I were asked? Could I just come for the social projects and to work at the coffee stand?" She said that I would be expected to worship and behave like a believer, to avoid upsetting the others.

Can't do it, Tom. If I visit a church as a guest, I will follow the house rules, because I understand about polite behavior. But if I join a church as a member, and I must put on the false face of belief and worship every week for which I am accepted and honored, is it really me who is accepted? No. It's the mask that is accepted. Any sense of belonging, socially, is torpedoed by this knowledge. And if I'm wrong, and there is a God, a personal God, do you think that I would be fooling Him?

I know people who have joined churches for social reasons, and they are very happy with their choice. I don't think they're wrong or bad to do this, but their tolerance of this kind of thing is much higher than mine. The whole idea of spiritual life and belief in the deity is far too personal and important to me for me to barter it for social acceptance. There isn't enough antacid in the whole world to ease, for me, the feelings of hypocrisy.

I find belief in a personal God to be disturbing, because the evidence I see supports a sadistic God. If there is a Big Cop out there, why is He willing to look the other way when so many people are being wounded every day? The "free will" justification for letting human beings be abused in so many ways is just disgusting. "When bad things happen to good people", and especially to the little innocents, well, to me, that's one more indicator that there's nobody out there watching each and every one of us.

If we are alone out here with our ethics, or if the God that is is remote from us and outside our ability to know, then the cruelty that we visit on each other is truly not a shared responsibility, but our own, with no omniscient, omnipotent Accessory Before And After The Fact. This we can fix, this we can strive toward.

Just as an aside, when fervent believers find out I am an agnostic, they find it very attractive. They hear the word "doubt" and they think I just haven't been convinced enough yet. It's not armor. It's a magnet. And frankly, sometimes it's a pain.