God and Drugs

introduction to the Drug War Philosopher website at abolishthedea.com

God and Drugs

why I am not (entirely) a Christian

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 12, 2024

In "There is a God," former atheist Antony Flew stops short of embracing Christianity, but he lauds the religion as the front runner among its rivals in presenting a compelling case for belief. "No other religion," writes Flew, "enjoys anything like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul"¹.

Update: May 25, 2025

Although I have never been an atheist, I have my own qualms about Christianity, which can be reduced to two main points: arbitrariness and irrelevance.

Arbitrariness

Consider the second appendix to Flew's book, which is a discourse by Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright entitled "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: a dialogue on Jesus"². Taken in itself, it might strike one as a compelling argument about the self-revelation of an acknowledged divinity. But surely it presupposes the importance of its subject matter. Why does the subtitle not refer to Buddha, or to Lao-Tze, or to Mohammad, or to some more obscure thinker? It seems to me a trifle arbitrary or random. I have no doubt that a large variety of biographical figures could be discussed by an active mind in such a way as to plausibly flesh out a backstory about self-revelation. Why have we granted the importance here to Jesus as opposed to all other possible contenders for that role? If I had to answer this question for myself, I could only say that the faith of the reader must be presupposed by authors like Wright for only then can their arguments be properly seen as compelling. Otherwise they are making just one case among many possible cases for the legitimacy of a certain instance of self-revelation.

I'm not saying that this is wrong: perhaps faith DOES have to come first. But if that is so, then say so. Do not present such treatises as authoritative arguments in and of themselves. Follow the lead of all good electronic toy companies: tell your customer base that "batteries are not included."

Irrelevance

You may talk about your men of Gideon, you may brag about your men of Saul. But after Gideon trounces the Midianites and Saul teaches the Ammonites a thing or two, the survivors all go back to their homes and start groaning about their lives and wondering if life is worth living at all. This, at least, is the takeaway message of many a Shakespearean drama, that war is necessary for keeping men virile and purposeful and that men become soft, petty and sulky in the absence of such tests of valor. As Bertram says to Parolles in "All's Well that Ends Well":

"War is no strife,
To the dark house and the detested wife"³.

This also seems to be the implicit message of the Old Testament, that war is both natural and regularly required. The emphasis is on the geopolitical world, versus the internal mental world, and that's a turnoff for someone like myself who has been troubled for a lifetime now, not by the social reality in which he lives but by his relentlessly negative and uncreative view of that world.

As I wrote in a recent tweet:

The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism ⁴ . The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.

And what world is that which controls and limits your most basic feelings and attitudes? It is the world created by Drug Warriors, who outlaw drugs that would allow one to mentally transcend their environment, be it never so petty and unfair.

This is why my eyes glaze over when you talk about your men of Gideon. This is why I say "whatever" when you brag about your men of Saul. Their battles, at least for me, have nothing to do with the price of tea in China. I have to live with myself 24/7, and until I can do that peacefully and productively, Solomon himself could not construct a sociopolitical setup that would float my boat.

These qualms about Christianity are only heightened when I reflect that most Christians support the War on Drugs, if only by their silence, and in so doing willfully block my road to self-actualization and happiness in life.

Like most of my essays, my reasoning above will only make sense to those who are familiar with the fantastic but largely untapped potential for demonized drugs to inspire and focus the human mind. For a quick primer on this subject, I recommend "Psychedelic Medicine" by Dr. Richard Louis Miller ⁵. The latter book demonstrates the slow awakening of western science to the mind-enhancing pharmacopoeia to which I allude. Of course, tribal peoples have always known that drugs can help. For information on tribal medicines around the world, read "The Plants of the Gods" by Albert Hofmann and Richard Schultes ⁶. As you do so, try to imagine all the wonderful psychological and spiritual progress that could be made by human beings were we only to consider those tribal drugs as godsends rather than as devils and so devote our time to establishing and promoting safe scenarios for their therapeutic and spiritual use.

Author's Follow-up:

May 25, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

For those who think that drugs have no positive uses, consider the following descriptions of the use of psychoactive medicines:

"Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening"
-- From Pihkal, by Alexander Shulgin ⁷

"To breathe the [nitrous oxide] was, simply and literally, inspiration."
-- From Emperors of Dreams by Mike Jay ⁸

"In the meantime the morphine ⁹ had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf- in the hue of a blade of grass- in the shape of a trefoil- in the humming of a bee- in the gleaming of a dew-drop- in the breathing of the wind- in the faint odors that came from the forest- there came a whole universe of suggestion- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought." ¹⁰
-- From "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" by Edgar Allan Poe

In fact, the beneficial uses of psychoactive medicines are limited only by the human imagination. That is, of course, if we approach substance use from the standpoint of psychological common sense. Unfortunately, medical doctors view the matter through the passion-scorning lens of behaviorism and professionalism, and so have no interest in the fact that drug use merely helps one, psychologically speaking ¹¹. They insist that effectiveness can only be determined by looking under a microscope -- hence their laughable inability to find any use for laughing gas in fighting depression ¹² ¹³.

Open Letters

Notes:

1: Looking for God in All the Wrong Places DWP (up)
2: There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind Flew, Antony, 2007 (up)
3: All's Well That Ends Well Shakespeare, William, The Folger Shakespeare Library (up)
4: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
5: Richard Louis Miller. 2017. Psychedelic Medicine : The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. (up)
6: Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers Schultes, Richard, 1979 (up)
7: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
8: “Emperors of Dreams : Drugs in the Nineteenth Century : Jay, Mike, 1959 December 14- : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/emperorsofdreams0000jaym/page/n3/mode/2up. (up)
9: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
10: A Tale of the Ragged Mountains Poe, Edgar Allan (up)
11: Behaviorism and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
12: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
13: Glatter, Robert. 2021. “Can Laughing Gas (Nitrous Oxide) Help People with Treatment-Resistant Depression?” Forbes, June 9, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2021/06/09/can-laughing-gas-nitrous-oxide-help-people-with-treatmentresistant-depre (up)

read more essays here

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.

Americans are far more fearful of psychoactive drugs than is warranted by either anecdote or history. We require 100% safety before we will re-legalize any "drug" -- which is a safety standard that we do not enforce for any other risky activity on earth.

The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.

When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.

Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.

Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

Researchers insult our intelligence when they tell us that drugs like MDMA and opium and laughing gas have not been proven to work. Everyone knows they work. That's precisely why drug warriors hate them.

The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.

The real value of Erowid is as a research tool for a profession that does not even exist yet: the profession of what I call the pharmacologically savvy empath: a compassionate life counselor with a wide knowledge of how drugs can (and have) been used by actual people.

The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.

Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us

No cookies, no ads.

Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP

(up)