Photo Dr. Carrier took of his bottle and glass of wine at the airport. Venue menu on the table reads Carlolina Vintages. Bottle label reads Restless Soul Red Table Wine, from Old North State Winery. Label depicts drawing of a rising skeleton's arm lifting up a glass of wine.So when I came out as polyamorous in February, the godless Slymepit blew a gasket. But so did Christians. Their freakout was quaint. And hardly substantive. So I just filed it as something to amuse over when I had time. Now as I sit for hours in the Raleigh-Durham airport awaiting my flight home, drinking a lovely bottle of Carolina wine from the Old North State Winery, what better fun than to survey the Christian panic over poly?

First I’ll summarize a sample of some of what happened, then delve into a long treatment of the most thoughtful (albeit still totally wrong) example…

(1) Commonly, of course, there were calls to pray for my ex-wife. Because she must be so downtrodden. Divorce between equals that is to the best of both is not conceivable to conservo Christians. They cannot imagine a strong financially independent woman who gets to do her own thing when she wants.

They also think prayer can make someone they never have any contact with feel better about personally sad changes in their life. Because they believe in sorcery. And third-party mind control. These are, after all, superstitious magical thinkers who believe superbeings in outer space not only listen to them, but also cast mind-altering emotion spells on random people they don’t know.

(2) There have also been a slurry of ad hominem / well-poisoning fallacies, of the general form “Carrier is polyamorous, therefore his arguments about history and theology are all bollocks,” which just demonstrates Christians don’t do logic well. (That’s why they’re Christians.) Likewise the “this proves you are only atheists because y’all just wanna sin” argument, which is funny, because Christians frequently use that argument in defense of evil (e.g. attacking homosexuality or women’s autonomy or even the freedom of speech and conscience).

To call polyamory, which is about honesty and love and the assurance of consent, “sin” is just to expose how immoral Christianity has become as an ideology. What Christians call “sin” is all too often “being a decent, well adjusted human being minimizing harm in the world.” In any event, either way, Matt Dillahunty already scorched the earth on this one, responding to an example of such irrationality from Robert Martin. Watch that. I couldn’t say it better myself.

All I would add is that this is exactly the same as saying I’m only an atheist because I’m gay (if such I were) and “just want to sin.” Or saying I’m only an atheist because I’m a woman who wants to wear pants (Deuteronomy 22:5), and teach classes and manage male employees (1 Timothy 2:11-15), and therefore “just want to sin.” And the only reason Jews ever convert to Christianity is because they just want to sin—by eating shrimp and bacon.

Note to Christians: Learn how logic works. Please. By all you think is holy. Because this shit is just embarrassing you.

(3) Then there was also some laughably extreme bigotry, such as an article by Ken Ammi (who?) for the Examiner online that was eventually pulled, but the Internet Never Forgets (it also came to be re-hosted at various other sites), titled “Richard Carrier Is a Polyamorous Dog,” in which he says polyamory is just code for “perverted sexual deviant” and that we atheists are all just governed by our erections (somehow I don’t think he was including engorged clitorises in that remark; yet nearly half of atheists are women now).

Ammi also repeatedly and confusedly thinks polyamory means having “temporary sexual parterns de jour” (never mind the redundancy; he’s fond of the phrase). He didn’t get that from anything I wrote. In fact, one of the things I am enjoying now is the opposite of that: building multiple lasting relationships with my loves. And that is in fact a major credo of polyamory: having many non-temporary sexual partners. So, bigotwhocantgooglesayswhat?

Ammi also thinks this means atheists should just conclude “any orifice will do.” Evidently forgetting the existence of, you know, people.

(4) I’ll just briefly mention the amusing entry on me at Conservapedia, which is a menagerie of the fears and terrors of ultra reactionary conservative wingnuts. It ironically documents with moral terror my love of alcohol (why yes, after all, in five hours I finished that bottle of wine!); the existence of orgies in the world; my adulteries, and polyamory as solution to them; my Soviet-style (no shit) doubting of the historicity of Jesus; my abandoning of Atheism Plus (which they don’t describe) within one month (which is weird because they even quote an article of mine defending Atheism Plus one year later, illustrating that conservatives can’t do math); and my providing evidence that Antony Flew was abused and manipulated by Christians for propaganda purposes when in a state of declining senility (an accusation that really gets their dander up). Random. All, of course, slanders and bullshit. Except when it’s true, then it’s just funny.

(5) I heard some folks at Triablogue were faux raising money to fund my prostitution habits (because poly is prostitution, ergo my girlfriends are whores), but I don’t know where that went on. I also heard some stuff was said by Jason Engwer, Lenny Esposito, and Frank Turek (but not William Lane Craig?), but I couldn’t find it, or recall where I saw any of that myself. So if you know of Christian handwringing over this event online, feel free to add links in comments (note comments on my blog close after six days).

(6) But most thoughtful was Nick Peters. And here his remarks deserve a lengthy analysis and response, in the service of education…

Carrying Deep Water for Monogamy

Nick Peters, son-in-law of renowned Christian apologist Mike Licona, blogs at Deeper Waters. He reacted. Not surprisingly, as Licona and I have debated twice, hung out a few times, and communicate occasionally. Maybe that Kevin Bacon number was too small not to try and intervene before the floods of relationship chaos spread too far to crush Christian control.

Peters also fell for the lies and bubble of bullshit promulgated by the Slymepit trolls Yeti and Shermertron. But I already covered that. Note this means Christians don’t know who the fringe atheist wingnuts are. But we can just laugh at that. And return to his more serious article…

Amusingly, Peters begins the substantive part of Along Came Poly with, “prominent internet blogger Richard Carrier, who seems to be the answer to all conservative NT scholarship in the eyes of internet atheists everywhere, wrote a post about” coming out poly. So, a well published Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University with numerous peer reviewed books and articles in major journals and presses is just an internet blogger. Whom Christians are evidently annoyed everyone keeps citing and quoting at them online. Okay.

He then quotes a good definition of polyamory from a legit organization [“Polyamory is the nonpossessive, honest, responsible and ethical philosophy and practice of loving multiple people simultaneously,” etc.], and responds immediately with, “Now if you want to say as I seem to take it that this entails a desire to have sex with many people other than one’s own spouse, then I will tell you that there are many many people who I think are really polyamorous. Namely, every male on the planet, including myself.”

He missed the egalitarian part (um, your wife or girlfriend also gets to do this…and nearly as many women as men want to, BTW; and many men actually aren’t interested, either—and not just asexuals, who are in fact a thing; plus, not all of us poly folk are married, but conservo Christians balk at sex without marriage anyway, so maybe unmarried free lovers aren’t readily conceivable to them). He also missed the loving or caring about your partners part (sex isn’t just fucking; compassionate persons regard their sexual partners as friends…and as people…and have room to be in love with more than one of them). And the honesty and negotiating what you want part (this is with the consent and approval of all involved, not on the sly or against their wishes).

So, does that describe “every male on the planet”? Nope. If only it did. The world would be a far better place. But if you obsess over just the sex part and miss all the rest, you won’t even be able to start getting why the world would be better if all of it were poly. By which I mean, all accepting poly as the baseline, and monogamy or celibacy as the rare personal choices that just suit certain people and not most of people.

People should get to negotiate the relationships they want. Period. Autonomy demands no less. There is no basis, rational or scientific, for forcing on anyone a given model of monogamy. And certainly none for stigmatizing, slut shaming, belittling, or treating with bias and bigotry anyone who chooses not to use that outdated and limiting model of relationshipping. Trying to culturally manipulate people into following and norming that model is just one more way Christianity fucks up people’s lives.

But as with taking away abortion rights, women’s rights, gay rights, free speech rights, denigrating or punishing alternative sexuality, warmongering, pushing for theocracy and forcing religion on people, feigning or even denigrating actual concern for the welfare of the poor rather than preferencing the rich, bigotry against immigrants and anyone who looks even remotely maybe Muslim, and dozens of other ways Christians in actual practice fuck up the world in the name of Christ, it’s vitally necessary to defend the obsolete and damaging institution of socially compelled monogamy. So Peters has to. He has no choice.

As one Christian apologetics clearinghouse says (see CARM on Polyamory), poly is just “another form of wife-swapping” (except that it often doesn’t involve married people, often not even at all, and not all marriages include wives, but whatever). “So,” they ask, “how is this ‘ethical nonmonogamy’?” After all, “adding the word ‘ethical’ to something doesn’t make it so.” Although adding honest and consensual and respectful does. And guess what? That’s the ethical part. So when CARM asks “Why not have such things as ethical adultery, ethical bank robbing, or ethical embezzling?” they obviously don’t know what polyamory is. Or why it is called ethical non-monogamy. And like their irrational terror of homosexuality, they think polyamory will lead to “necrophilia or bestiality.” Because, you know, reasons. Or something.

Oh also, of course, it will lead to pedophilia. I shouldn’t forget to mention the pedophilia. (Even though abundant evidence sooner suggests Catholicism leads to that.)  So, “the necessary consequence is the attack and breakdown of the family” (read: it will end women’s subordination to men) and “an increase of immorality in subsequent areas” (the reader has to fill in the blanks here, because they can’t come up with anything), “and ultimately the demise of society itself.” Somehow. How? I don’t know. Neither do they. It just must, I guess. They are right that “moral integrity is the glue that holds society together” and that “without it, we can have no society.” They just don’t seem to have any clue what morality is. Honesty, compassion, respect, and reasonableness don’t seem to be moral virtues in their scheme of things. Just what objects you fuck.

Thus, sexual desire has to be bad. It therefore, as Peters says, requires “self-control” to deny yourself what is obviously a natural and normal inborn desire. Because, for some unintelligible reason, “sex is meant to be between two people who make a covenant together,” even though, if that were the case, we would have been designed to only sexually desire our covenented partner. That we were built to desire many partners, as even he admits, seems to falsify his entire thesis.

Bible Study Interlude

It’s also weird that he thinks “two people,” when even if he is ignoring science and relying on that antiquated prescientific hodgpodge of random superstitious tracts called “the Bible,” the entire Bible is 100% pro polygamy for the rank and file: God-sanctioned covenants with many partners are normal throughout it. (Only for men, of course. Because the Bible is sexist. But then, so is Peters. Since he thinks only “every male” wants multiple sexual partners.) His God was once also 100% pro-sex slavery, BTW, but presumably Peters is a cafeteria Christian and ignores the uncomfortable commandments in his own Book. Or the fact that the God he worships was once totally cool with them.

Jesus never commanded monogamy. He only is reputed to have said, quite explicitly, that a man cannot take another wife after divorcing a wife. He said nothing about taking several wives, divorcing none (Mark 10:1-12). Similarly Paul says a woman must have a husband all to herself (idion), but explicitly did not say that of men, but rather only that men should not fool around with someone else’s wife (but only a wife who was his own, heauton: 1 Cor. 7:1-16).

Even when in the second century someone forged the letters Titus (1:6) and 1 Timothy (3:2, 3:12) in the name of the then long-dead Paul, they explicitly only mandated monogamy for church leadership. Not for the rank and file Christian. Probably because polygamy was against pagan law at the time, for anyone who wanted Roman citizenship, and so thus needed for anyone who required respectability among the pagan authorities. Like the church leaders who had to deal with them. By then Christianity was distancing itself from polygamous Judaism and seeking respectability within pagan culture.

In other words, a century after it started, Christians started adopting monogamy not to be more biblical, but to be more pagan. They chose popular culture over the Bible. (Hmm. I wonder what Nick Peters thinks about Christians choosing pop culture over the Bible?)

Back to the Water

Next Peters then lays out a standard sexist case for monogamy: polyamory is “going to a woman and saying ‘You’re not enough for me. I need more than you’,” and “That hits at the core of a woman’s identity very often.” Except when it doesn’t. Because just as often it’s the other way around: a woman going to a man and saying the same thing. Does that “hit to the core of a man’s identity?” Not evidently according to Peters, since he thinks all men want many partners. Yet these same men have to want to be the only one a woman desires? Nick Peters, meet sexism. Also, meet pseudoscience. Our identity should not be based on totally possessing another human being.

Quite a lot of women want multiple partners. Quite a lot of men do. So why can’t they get together and negotiate what works for them? Indeed, shouldn’t those very people do exactly that, and not remain attached unfairly to monogamous partners? Ineed, if monogamy is the woman’s thing, and not her man’s thing, or vice versa, doesn’t that entail they shouldn’t be married? Relationships must be based on mutual consent and compatibility, not sex slavery. Right?

Of course in all this I’m only speaking within the context of heterosexuality. Because I know Peters would not recognize the existence of loving sexual relationships between women and women, or men and men, polyamorous or monogamous. And bisexuality? That would probably blow a spring out of his head.

Is Marriage Supposed to Be Hard?

Peters then goes on about monogamy being hard. Note: if you think “relationships are hard,” you are doing them wrong.

Parenting is hard. Coping with debt is hard. Being stuck in a job you hate is hard. Relationships should actually in fact be the one thing that isn’t hard. Does anyone say “gosh, friendship is hard”? No. Ask yourself why. Because if you are a mature person, adding sex to a friendship shouldn’t suddenly add a ton of hardship. It shouldn’t add even an ounce. So why do people like Peters think “marriage is hard”? What on earth are they doing wrong?

Maybe charitably one can assume he is confusing non-relationship things (raising kids, servicing debt, struggling with career) with being in love with, finding comfort in, spending time with, sharing life with, and having sex with your friend. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. He clearly seems to be saying it’s hard solely because it requires constant laborious struggle to keep your natural non-monogamous desires in check and thus compel yourself to remain loyal to what is essentially a sexual property contract. A sexual property contract that serves no purpose. At all.

Welcome to Christianity.

That many atheists have yet to realize how Christian this is is a testament to how pervasively Christianity has dominated and constructed our culture and social system.

The sad irony is that Peters tries to use “people … did monogamy for centuries and found … it seems to work pretty well” as an argument in favor of it, knowing full well that that is false: cheating has been universal and rampant throughout all those centuries. As has marital misery, so common in fact it became a universal trope. Evidently, people can’t do monogamy. Centuries and centuries of evidence proves this. So why are we still recommending it? Why are we still trying to force ourselves to fit a mold that isn’t in fact human? It’s a system that has never worked. (But for at best a relative few.) We just pretend it works for everyone by ignoring its vast quantity of fails. But any product that failed this routinely we’d have stopped using by now. Think about that.

Divorce is a Fundamental Human Good

Peters does make a strange foray into why you should put up with the things you don’t like about a spouse, although that can’t have anything to do with the case he is talking about. We didn’t divorce because my wife was too keen on collecting cats and I kept stealing the covers. We divorced each other because, given the reality (and not the lie) of who we are, we couldn’t be as happy together as apart. This wasn’t about minor annoyances of living together. This was about the fundamentals of our happiness.

Peters doesn’t get that, because he thinks divorce should only be allowed in cases of adultery or abuse. Everyone else should just put up with being miserable and “make it work,” when in fact they both could be not miserable with someone else. So Peters’ recommendation is fundamentally irrational. And fundamentally destructive of human happiness on a wide social scale.

Similarly, because Peters is a superstitious magical thinker, he thinks contracts should be eternal—to hell with happiness (almost literally). Secular folk know better. Any contract can be dissolved. It’s not a promise “forever.” It’s a conditional arrangement: if x, then y. Which means when no longer x, no longer y. Divorce is fundamentally built into the state contract for marriage. When you vow to marry someone, and sign on the dotted line, you are vowing also to allow them to divorce you whenever they want. That’s the law. The law Christians fought so damned hard in defense of just to prevent gay people from joining in. If Christians don’t like that unilateral divorce is also being promised to in secular marriage contracts, they shouldn’t be getting state marriage licenses.

In light of this complete disregard for human happiness, typical of Christianity, it’s particularly interesting that Peters says “Divorce … becomes a way of saying ‘I can’t love you the way you are’,” confusing not having your needs met with “not loving someone.” This may be key to a really harmful notion of love infecting Christianity. Imagine Peters saying the same of a mere friend who insisted he have no other friends but only them: that you had better do what they say, and abandon all your other friends, because otherwise you don’t love them. Or imagine a brother who insisted Peters love none other of his siblings, and not even his parents, but only him. Either scenario explodes the whole idea of love he is trying to sell.

I suspect even Peters would say in such a case, “Hey, I love you, you are a great friend, but I can’t be happy with only one friend in my life, and in fact your asking that I love only one friend and have no others is disrespectful to and controlling of me—in fact, it suggests you don’t love me, because you are acting out of your own selfish possessiveness rather than in concern for my happiness.” And that isn’t the only thing that can be the reason. They can still love you and be hopelessly insecure or burdened with envy. But those aren’t good either. Even then Peters would admit, if they can’t work through that, they can’t be his friend. No matter how much he loves them or they love him. The quantity of love either way is irrelevant.

A New Understanding

And so it is. Just because our culture has so molded the minds of so many people that they can’t be happy unless their “spouse” can be their “only x” does not mean that’s a good thing we should be defending. Any more than we would allow this if it were mono-friendship we were talking about. Or mono-familial love. Obviously we think those are ridiculous. We readily and easily love many friends and many family members, without controversy or difficulty. So why does sex change any of that? Objectively, it doesn’t.

Just as people differ in their hobby and other interests, so people differ in their libidos and sexual interests. With every other domain, good spouses allow their partners to explore such things with others. If they aren’t into sports but you are, they let you enjoy sports with friends who share your enthusiasm. If they are into gardening and you aren’t, you let them enjoy gardening with friends who share their enthusiasm. And even when you share interests, you are still allowed to also share them with others. So why suddenly does this generosity end when it’s sex? There isn’t any valid reason.

And yet I know many people, even atheists, are trapped in thinking there must be. Because their upbringing has programmed them to think that. I know. I was one of them. For a very long time. And it’s really hard to break your programming. I don’t expect everyone can. This is yet one more truth of moral and human progress in which, as Thomas Paine said, time will make more converts than reason. I count myself fortunate that I broke my programming before time erased me.

I am happier now. I love several women now. Just as I love several friends. And a whole slew of family. Peters does not seem to understand that. Love is not limited to one person. Some of the women I have sexual relationships with I love dearly; some are only my friends, and yet I love them too, in the way I love all friends. And all of them have many lovers as well, male and female. And they, too, are in love with some of them, and loving friends to others. The sky does not fall.

Peters does say one correct thing in the end: “Carrier’s embracing of polyamory should be a reminder to Christians that this stuff is becoming more and more acceptable. It’s not going to go away.” Indeed. And while Peters says the way to combat it is for Christians to double down in obedience to their sexual property contracts (which Peters admits is so “hard” to do, but for some inadequately explained reason Christians should just tough it out), I will suggest an alternative: Christian polyamory.

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