Customer Reviews

The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth

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As a former Christian with a Ph.D in Psychology this is an admirable book for her intended audience. The focus of her book is described in the subtitle to it: "How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth," and she does an admirable job of showing this. It is not written for Christian apologists or scholars, knowledgeable skeptics or people well versed in their faith, although I myself learned a few things from it. It doesn't deal with the arguments for the existence of God, the problems with an incarnate God, or the resurrection of Jesus, which would've made this a much better book. Its focus is mainly on the Biblical teachings themselves and how they "counter both reason and morality." (p. 38). I liked the fact that she doesn't make any exaggerated claims about her book.

Her book is written in an easy to read conversational style and respectful tone from a unique female Psychologist's perspective that is rare among debunkers. It would be potentially doubt-producing if placed into the hands of the average Christian sitting in the pew. It's probably intended to be a resource for people who were teetering on the edge of Evangelicalism (either on their way in or way out) and who hadn't thought a whole lot the moral and rational implications about what evangelicals teach. As such, her book may be more dangerous to the Christian faith than many other books in the same genre, since she targets her audience so well.

She tells her personal story of her deconversion (which can be read over at debunbkingchristianity dot blogspot dot com), and which is similar in kind to our other stories there. She describes how she moved from "certainties to questions," which is a story similar in kind to many of us. She briefly describes what evangelicals believe and how they inherited their beliefs (via Catholicism and Protestantism) in their attempt to reform Protestantism. But the distinguishing difference is that Evangelicalism is derived from "the extraordinary status given to the Bible by Evangelicals." (p. 37). Turning to the Bible she tells how the Old Testament and New Testament came to be, and how scholars study the Bible, which might be eye-opening to many Christian people. She provides evidence showing how the Bible "contradicts science," how Biblical commands "oppose each other," how images of God "conflict with each other," how the Bible stories themselves "contradict each other," and argues that the Biblical prophecies and promises "don't stand up" to scrutiny.

Without going into detail in arguing for these claims of hers, she turns instead to how Christians argue against them. She writes, "a whole industry has sprung up to convince believers and non-believers alike that these difficulties are inconsequential." She quotes from Gleason Archer's New International Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, where he tells his readers that when looking at the Bible one must first assume God inspired the authors and preserved them from error or mistake. Then she writes, "Archer says, essentially that the reader must start the process of inquiry by assuming a certain outcome. Don't look for the most likely hypothesis suggested by the evidence, he says, nor the one that is most likely straightforward or reasonable. Start by believing that a certain conclusion is already true...Examine the evidence through the lens of that conclusion...Ask yourself, `What explanations or interpretations can I come up with that would allow me to maintain my belief that these texts are not contradictory?' If you can find any at all, then you have succeeded in your task. By implication, if you cannot, the problem lies with you, not the text. Archer's approach, in almost any other field of inquiry, would be considered preposterous." (pp. 62-63). I wholeheartedly agree.

Tarico offers up some hard questions for those Evangelicals who believe the Bible. She does this with regard to science and the Bible, the Adam and Eve story, human and animal suffering, the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, the Christian belief in heaven and hell, and the problem of those who have never heard the gospel. I don't believe these questions, upon deeper investigation, can be satisfactorily answered by Evangelicals.

Tarico devotes one section (37 pages) to the hypocrisies and injustices done in the name of the Christian faith by professing Christians. She mentions the Crusades, the Inquisition, Slavery, the witch hunts, the slaughter of American Natives, and something so simple as the selfish prayers of the saints. She critically examines the excuses Christians offer in response and argues this violence is not just a thing of the past, as can be seen in America's previous "cold war" against "godless communism," and the Iraqi war. She also argues against the idea that our morals come from the Bible, since "all societies produce guidelines they treat as moral absolutes whether they attribute these to one god, to many gods, or to none." (p. 194).

In my opinion she is at her best when writing about the morality and the psychology of religious belief. She describes how irrational and external factors affect what people believe, like when and where a person is born, which she calls, "the luck of the draw." She argues this is contrary to justice, since God supposedly sends people to hell because of what people believe. She describes why wrong beliefs survive, why smart people defend them, and why Evangelical beliefs are hard to shake. She argues there are methods by which people can protect against such biases, based on evidence and science.

When it comes to false superstitious and religious beliefs, Tarico claims "it doesn't take very many false assumptions to send us on a long goose chase." To illustrate this she tells us about the mental world of a paranoid schizophrenic. To such a person the perceived persecution by others sounds real. "You can sit, as a psychiatrist, with a diagnostic manual next to you, and think: as bizarre as it sounds, the CIA really is bugging this guy. The arguments are tight, the logic persuasive, the evidence organized into neat files. All that is needed to build such an impressive house of illusion is a clear, well-organized mind and a few false assumptions. Paranoid individuals can be very credible." (p. 221-22). This is what Christians do, and this is why it's hard to shake the Evangelical faith, in her informed opinion.

Tarico ends her book by describing herself as "Coming home," where she is "content living in a universe with no gods, content trusting that the forces of nature and of the human spirit are what our best experience and reason reveal themselves to be." (p. 255).

Reflecting on her case she reasonably concludes that "much of what is wrong with Evangelicalism is not mere hypocricy or distortion of Christian doctrine. The evils Evangelicalism promotes are as much a part of the Bible and Christian history as are goodness and love. The problems lie in the traditional teachings themselves and refusal of church authorities to question them."

She continues: "Virtually all of the harm that Christianity has perpetrated and continues to perpetrate comes from one crucial problem: a failure to understand the Bible itself: the historical context in which its manuscripts were penned, the ways they relate to earlier religious writings, and the very human decisions that compiled them into a book that many now call the Word of God. Without this understanding, the Bible can be seen as timeless and perfect, and rigid adherence to its commands can provide a substitute for nuanced moral judgment." (p. 250). Again, she's right on target.

I liked this book. I could only wish more people would buy it, read it and give copies away for others to read.

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I'm the author of "Why I Became an Atheist," and the edited book, "The Christian Delusion."

There are few people in the world with the combination of background and training necessary to write this book - there are fewer still with the courage to do so. Given her childhood upbringing and schooling in strict Evangelical doctrine and her formal education in sciences and psychology, Dr. Tarico is almost uniquely qualified. That she then went on to write this book not as a dry academic polemic, but by exposing her own personal journey is truly extraordinary.

As a spiritual but non-practicing person raised in Judaism, I have for years been asking "What is up with these Evangelicals and why are they so un-Christ-like?" I started to seek some answers with Jim Wallis' book "God's Politics," but I just couldn't get into it. It was a slog for me. I found his writing slow, redundant, and un-engaging. I kept picking it up, reading a bit, and putting it down again. Then a friend recommended "The Dark Side." It, by contrast, is well written, gripping, clear, fascinating, and well researched. A quick glance at the references in the back will show how broadly the author has looked to support her arguments. I was really surprised how much I learned about not just Evangelicalism, but Christianity as a whole, and even old-testament Judaism.

This is a book that I would recommend to anyone who is wondering about the face of Christianity in America today, regardless of their own religious background. I would cheerfully buy a copy for any Evangelical who was willing to read it!

Valerie Tarico's courageous book is both wrenching personal story and insightful analysis of the seduction / repulsion of Christian fundamentalism. Having heard her speak in person, I can attest to the eloquent inspiration of her unique combination of passion, compassion, maturity, and scholarship.

Those of us who grew up as skeptics outside the sphere of born-again Christianity are only too aware of the public face of right wing Christian fundamentalism. This is the "dark side" that trains the foot soldiers of imperial warfare and propaganda, that goes bananas over abortion and homosexuality, that retreats from scientific insights into "creationist" thickets of irrationality, that seeks influence by theocracy and corrupting alliance with wealthy elites rather than by democracy and social and economic justice. Yet Valerie also shows us the deep emotional responses that are given to those who can suspend their critical faculties to stay within the fold - responses like the promise of heaven, the threat of hell, the joy of devotion, and the security of simple rules and of forgiveness for their transgression.

The basic problem with Biblical literalism is that the Bible is full of contradictions, exemplified by Jesus' admonition to turn of the other cheek contrasted with the fury of Moses' genocidal massacre of the Canaanites. In fact, as Valerie testifies, it is the cognitive dissonance from reading the Bible that leads many fundamentalists to leave the fold. Those who stay end up favoring certain passages over others. Some find the universal values of the saints, while for others it is the power, blood, and greed of empire. The latter certainly contradicts what Jesus taught, but for fundamentalists it is belief, not right action, that leads to salvation. Bad actions can be forgiven, or attributed to Satan, or failure to believe.

Ironically, the "hunger and thirst after righteousness" that was the essence of the Kingdom of God to Jesus, can be found in people of many religious faiths, or no faith. Combine this with the evil perpetuated by so many believers, and you can see why many have left fundamentalism. Yet this is often more difficult than a nasty divorce, so how do we help others to graduate from the primitive, but dangerous, satisfactions of fundamentalism to the earth community envisioned by more mature faith traditions?

I appreciate how painful it must have been to write this book. Dr. Tarico is very frank about how she was effectively brainwashed by a fundamentalist upbringing before she started thinking for herself. She provides useful insight into how evangelicalism not only teaches lies, but dangerous ones. I especially appreciated the chapter titled, "Jabberwoks: Ideas with Claws That Catch." She goes into considerable detail about the contagion of certain words and phrases which Richard Dawkins has dubbed "memes." She correctly compares them to chain letters, including the threat if you "break the chain."

Haven't you always wondered what it was like for an intelligent, inquisitive young adult brought up to be a Fundamentalist to start asking all the hard (fundamental) questions? Like why would a loving God reject unbaptized babies from heaven? How do so many parts of the bible get easily put aside or reinterpreted by Fundamentalists when it serves them, but others are adhered to rigidly and literally? The Dark Side, by Dr. Valerie Tarico, elucidates how she became disheartened and harmed by her Fundamentalist upbringing. As she shares her journey of examining and ultimately rejecting her religion, she gives the reader an insightful and scholarly analysis of the hypocrisies, inconsistencies, and destructive aspects of Fundamentalist Christianity. In her quest to understand its tenets, she illustrates how a patriarchal, exclusive and extremist religion can create and foment an "us/them" (e.g. good/bad) psychology leading to much of the alienating and divisive climate terrorizing our world today.

This extraordinary work combines a stirring faith in Truth and Love, while demonstrating, through the author's own life experience, the damage that the dictates of blind faith in the Bible can do to those values. The author shows how the Bible was compiled over a 600 year period, and the books "admitted" were voted upon by the Catholic Church, yet today the Bible itself is worshipped (Bibliolatry,she calls it)by millions of people to supersede the God of Truth and Love it supposedly describes. If God gave humans reason, why do the bibliolatrists want people not to use it? From her own evangelical upbringing and education, through her own struggles with what she was being told, and what she observed, which she, for a long time, ascribed to lack of sufficient faith on her own part, the author describes her own journey as a paradigm for understanding the Bible's place in the search for Love and Truth.

Let me start out by saying that this is actually a very well written book. Her points are concisely written in small, easily digestible chapters, and they are easy to follow. Her ideas even follow a logical order that keeps you in sync with her thought processes and the language is simple, yet concise. I also happen to agree with a lot of what she says. Her indictment of Evangelicals is spot on. Having met and befriended various Evangelicals myself, I found myself coming to the same conclusions as the author. I even toyed around with becoming an Evangelical myself and eventually decided that it was not for me pretty much for the same reasons as the author. Even her questions concerning general Christianity itself were questions that occurred to me as well. Like what kind of person could be truly happy in Heaven while others are agonizing for eternity in Hell?

With all that said, why would this not be a 5-star review? For one thing, she has a tendency to over-generalize. All Evangelicals are depicted as clones of the most outrageous amongst them. Though she does make some attempt to differentiate the behavior of other Christian sects, ultimately she lumps them in with the Evangelical lot as well. The usual references are made to the sordid history of Christianity over the years and the wars, crusades, and inquisitions that resulted. Yes, these historical events are true, but no effort is made to explain the context in which they occurred nor how they are relevant to today's Christians. She even suggests that the war in Iraq is a 'Christian war', I guess because she sees our Evangelical president having started it. Wasn't that war effort approved by Congress? Aren't there non-Christians in this country who support the war as well as Christians who oppose it? Can a Christian president start a war, even if it is in the best interests of the country, without being accused of 'Christian aggression'?

She also tends to use Christian hypocrisy as an indictment of their beliefs. The trouble with this is that hypocrites are not necessarily wrong in their beliefs. They just don't follow them very well. For example, let's say that I smoked cigarettes. Now I tell you that you should never start smoking as it is a very bad habit. That would make me a hypocrite since I myself smoke, though my advice about not smoking would still be good advice. Christian beliefs are similar. You can always find Christians (or at least those who claim to be Christian) who fall short of their own Christian values. That does not mean that those values are bad. The danger of using the 'hypocrite defense' is that it eventually erodes all moral behavior over time. As long as you can find a 'hypocrite', you can do anything you want until nothing, even civil behavior, is sacred.

Ultimately, what bothered me most about this book, was that I sensed an agenda being formulated. It's funny how Atheism can be shaped to support feminist goals and socialized governance. The bible's 'silence' on abortion somehow turns into tacit approval of it. Christian charity is seen as motivated by the desire to evangelize amongst the poor while social programs, where you get to force your social agenda on the tax-paying public, are somehow honorable. I suppose if Christian charity were 'more honorable' then they could garner church donations from the tax-roll too? Probably not. My guess is that the author became an Atheist more to align her feminist and socialist agenda with her beliefs than because of any real concern about Christian ethics.

Still, this book is useful in understanding this particular point of view. Evangelicalism is presented pretty accurately, though a tad bit 'over-hyped'. Her knowledge of Christianity is thorough. You can tell she is no fraud on this matter. Just prepare yourself for some Christian fear-mongering (this is what the left does while they accuse the right of Muslim fear-mongering) and keep an open mind. It is a worthy read though with some valid points - 3 stars.

I spent my youth before college in an evangelical church, with a loving, intelligent, and fundamentalist-minded mother (and acquiescing father) -- and can identify, strongly, with the author's experiences growing up. On my personal and academic journey I've been reading many of the same books Dr. Tarico has (from Bart Ehrman to Robert Wright and others), and have been wrestling with many of the same tensions and contradictions that drove her to reconsider, and ultimately reject, the web of beliefs comprising evangelical Christianity. Dr. Tarico's book really hits at the gut as much as it stimulates the mind -- I was "with her" every step of the way. She contributes an even-handed, clearly-written, thoughtful and compassionate critique of evangelicalism to a discourse that's too crowded with caustic or dogmatic writing from all corners. She has the great virtue as a writer of being trustworthy -- she don't force conclusions down anyone's throat, but urges, firmly and lovingly, rigorous thinking about the key issues. An excellent, and timely, book.

In this book Valerie Tarico successfully and effectively argues why all "Godly" religions are products of the imagination. The book is broken down into easy to read sections. While she focuses on evangelical Christianity, many of her arguments can be extended into other religions as well. This is not my main topic of interest, but the book captured my interest. Of course, those who believe in fairy tales will continue to do so, despite sound reasoning to the contrary, and probably won't even read the book. Such is life.

Evangelical Christianity and its literal interpretation of the Bible was a mystery before reading Tarico's book. She gives a studied, knowledgeable description of the "how" and "why" Evangelical Christianity ensnares believers and also points out why the discrepancies in the Bible are important. Chapter 8 is particularly informative, as Tarico gives her experienced psychologist's view of why some smart people are still in the Evangelical Christian movement.