I’ve tried to put my finger on what is so bothersome about BFTD to so many people, beyond the “lack of respect” argument. It seems to violate an old American tradition—religion is a choice. We’ve usually done a decent job in this country—especially compared to others—of navigating religious freedom while not being oppressive. There are plenty of horror stories, sure, but by and large the Founders’ vision of a public, but not state, religion has worked.

Logically, the “you’re dead, what do you care?” argument lobbed at those who find BFTD distasteful is right. It is a little amusing to see people so dismissive of Mormonism’s faith claims get so worked up over something they have no faith in or belief in themselves. It is an emotional response, but one that I see as completely valid.

We prize individuality and choice above all else in this country. These are old notions, and the idea that someone is messing with our names, long after we’re dead, is troublesome. (Would Mormons want someone to donate money to a pro-choice cause in their name after they die?) It also removes choice from the equation (again, if illogically). Right now a Mormon can knock on a door and ask someone to listen. We (for the most part) respect that right in this country, with the understanding that others can refuse to listen.

We’ve decided in the last century or so, that religion is private, a choice, and like politics, damnit you just don’t discuss it in polite company. You gotta respect people’s religion! But BFTD doesn’t feel like it’s playing by those rules. (I think this is why so many people bristle at “in your face” atheism as well.) Baptism for the dead feels like…cheating, in some ways. An old American principle has been violated. It feels a little like “Neener neener, we’ll just get you when you’re dead,” even if that isn’t the intention. Americans are a prideful bunch, we don’t like the idea of anyone forcing us to do anything.

Maybe I’ve just over thought it, but I do find the whole thing to be interesting.

A recent episode of the Point of Inquiry podcast mentioned a book that instantly colored me intrigued. The title, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Behavior, practically begged my inner-skeptic to read it. All the delicious psych topics are here—memory, recall, perception, intelligence, dreams, behavior, the subconscious, human development, even ESP. But one curious theme unintentionally keeps emerging: the unreliability of memory and personal experience.

Consider: Anyone old enough to have seen Dazed and Confused in the theater has had a wild experience, even sans LSD, we deem too trippy to be coincidence. We can’t explain it, we can’t tell you the meaning, but whoa, man, it was just unreal. Then out comes the supernatural explanations. But the bummer is we almost always underestimate the chances of strange coincidences happening. I still can’t work out in my mathphobic brain how if I’m in a room with twenty-two random people, the odds that two of us share the exact same birthday is…50%. But it’s true. (If you feel up to it, check out the Birthday Problem.)

Yep, the book is full of fun little facts. But it’s also chock full of disturbing information. A woman testified that her father had brutally murdered her best friend some twenty years prior. The guilty verdict was read, the gavel was banged, and right on cue the community was outraged. Fast-forward six years and this poor soul is shuffling out of prison after an exoneration courtesy of DNA testing. How on earth did his daughter come to believe twenty years later he was guilty? Under hypnosis, a therapist helped her “recover” the memory. It was mighty kind of the therapist to do that for a hefty fee and all, the only hiccup was the memory wasn’t real.

If that were the only story. You don’t need hypnosis for someone to be certain that a person is guilty of a crime they didn’t commit. There are countless stories of eyewitnesses swearing up and down and back up again that they saw that shady-looking defendant commit the crime. Some are later released thanks to the tireless efforts of the Innocence Project—an organization well worth your support. But I shudder to think how many terrified people keep on sharing a cell with the truly guilty; violent, disturbed inmates who need and deserve to be locked up. I’m long since past the naïve thinking of my youth that the innocent have nothing to fear. The innocent have much to fear, including the flawed human mind of otherwise well-meaning witnesses and victims. What’s more, many of these eyewitnesses refuse to say they made a mistake even with the light of DNA shining in their face. Unruffle the paper, dive into that story on the just-released accused, and you’re bound to see that inevitable declaration: “I don’t care what they say, I know what I saw!”

People know what we saw; we trust our eyes and our brains. And why on earth wouldn’t we? It’s quite literally our only means of experiencing the world. But few of us really think about the process of seeing something—light enters our eye, travels to our brain, and an image is formed. And then, within a millisecond, that image is a memory. Most images come and go without much thought. But some we remember. Some we know we’ll never forget. But we don’t really remember them. We re-remember them. Our brain recreates the memory and it’s highly influenced by our current worldview and life experiences. It’s telling that most scientists who study eyesight don’t call it eyesight; they call it “visual perception.”

All of which finally brings me around to my point: Given the limitations and what we know about the mind, how are we to navigate the very thorny world of spiritual experiences, visions, impressions, and insights? If we can’t rely on the human mind to not convict an innocent man, what business do we have trusting it on these other, even slippier points?

“Ahh…” we’re told, “That’s just the beauty of spiritual experiences. They transcend the mind and the five traditional senses.” Let’s politely pretend like this isn’t extremely convenient and assume it’s true. Instantly after the experience—the vision, the impression, the “other”—don’t we then rely on our mind to remember it, interpret it, understand it, or otherwise catalogue it away for us? Doesn’t this experience, if real, instantly fall victim to all the baggage cramping our brain?

And all that assumes that a spiritual experience was real—that something outside of us did happen. That’s one big, fat, giant assumption given what we know about the mind’s ability to create false images or memories, to create illusory correlations (find patterns that aren’t really patterns), justify our choices (cognitive dissonance), and to otherwise help confirm what we already believe, whether true or not. (I don’t care what the DNA says, I know what I saw!)

I do believe in knowable reality; I preach it on a near-daily basis in the face of increasing truthiness and incuriosity from my fellow citizens, many of whom are too busy admiring the emperor’s new clothes to be bothered with facts. And I maintain that it’s quite possible that at least some of these professed spiritual experiences are real and external. But I also maintain that they hold no recognizable value beyond “there might be something else out there.” Even that requires a leap of faith that it wasn’t all “in our head.” After that, it’s less faith than guesswork and wishful thinking. Given this reality, skepticism seems to me the most reasonable, rational perspective.

Rees, like those who have come before, prefers to ignore the criticisms being made and instead focuses on the rudeness of the one making it. As Rees points out, even non-believers have adopted this attitude. I find this problematic not only for its intellectual shallowness, but also because it seems so self-serving. There is less concern about whether or not someone like Maher is actually right as there is about him ruining the party. Progressive critics of anti-theists often treat the Mahers of the world as if they are grumpy spoilsports.

The attitude is somewhat understandable. Scholars—including non-believers—have spent entire lifetimes and careers studying, writing, and talking about religion, and then Maher has the nerve to come along and tell them it’s all nonsense. I’m reminded of the famous Saturday Night Live sketch when William Shatner appears at a Star Trek convention and berates the fans. “I’d just like to say…get a life will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show! … You’ve turned an enjoyable little job that I did as a lark for a few years into a colossal waste of time!” It’s as if progressive critics of anti-theists hear Maher telling them, “You’re wasting your time—get a life!” This approach either hurts them or frustrates them, so rather than respond to Maher’s points, they simply say, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Personally, I prefer the bluntness of Maher, Dawkins, et al, even with their flaws (and there are flaws) over the political correctness of others. In reality, their bluntness comes no where close to matching the bluntness of religion, but we’re so accustomed to religion critiquing everything but itself, we barely take notice. While Maher does say that religious belief is foolish, he only claims his mind and his opinion as an authority. Mormonism, on the other hand, has claimed God himself as an authority against believers of other faiths and non-believers. And God goes well beyond mocking or calling people fools; if the Bible is to be believed, He summarily executes entire populations who dare oppose his people.

Yes, I’m well aware that Mormonism and other exclusive faiths have tried a kinder approach in the past few decades. However, the canonized disapproval of any belief that is not theirs remains firmly intact: “I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: ‘they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.’” (The Pearl of Great Price, Joseph Smith History 1:19) Is this sacred scripture really any different than the derision provided by Bill Maher?

And what of the claim that Maher is somehow just responding to the worst of religion, conveniently ignoring all the good? This reminds me of the frantic efforts following 9/11 to portray Islam as a religion of peace. Certainly there are millions of peaceful, non-violent Muslims. But the effort to portray extremists as if they were merely a few dozen people living in caves was absurd. And so it is here.

It’s difficult to quantify, but opinion polls can give us a reasonable gauge. Fifty percent or better of Americans routinely align themselves with fundamentalist beliefs. These are not merely a handful of irritating loud-mouths. They number well into the tens-of-millions (if not the hundreds-of-millions) and they wield disturbing power and influence. We learned that Karl Rove, as Bush’s right-hand man, held a weekly conference call in the White House with religious groups that argued for the invasion of Iran as a way to hasten the Second Coming. We saw religious leaders interfere in the Terri Schiavo debacle. American religious fundamentalists influence our world on a macro- and micro-scale.

There are issues in Religulous worthy of criticism. But these have been overlooked by Rees, and indeed most critics of the film. That’s because critics want to appear thoughtful, reflective—“deep.” They want to mine below the surface and tell us what’s really there. But that’s tricky with Maher’s film because he lays it all bare. It is a superficial film, but only because Maher believes his subject is superficial. He truly believes there is no depth, no layers to peel away, no hidden beauty to religious belief.

Scholars need not agree with the anti-theists. But to continue to treat them as if they don’t have a place at the table is a mistake. They are a legitimate movement with legitimate points and legitimate responses to legitimate problems. In short, they are as valid an area of religious studies as any group, and shooing them away to the kiddie table like it’s Thanksgiving only makes scholars and believers alike seem insecure. Maher and his kind are growing in popularity, and the time when religions like Mormonism could demand recognition without scrutiny are over.

This may absolutely be a coincidence but I doubt it. Historically the church has used its news outlets as a way to have its views heard. Officially the church has been cautious in its comments but has always emphasized compassion and understanding for “millions of people.” I think it’s safe to assume they aren’t referring to pissed off tea partiers angry that their lettuce-picking job went to an illegal immigrant.

After seeing the church on the wrong side of the Prop 8 issue (yup, I’m still devastated and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it) it’s so heartening to see them take the compassionate track on an issue with some of the most vulnerable in our society demonized, even called “mules” by the governor of Arizona recently. That said, I’m still disappointed over the church’s obsessive paranoia on speaking out on any issue except gay marriage. I don’t understand how a church with the name Jesus Christ in its title doesn’t have an “official position” on war, torture, healthcare, the environment, the death penalty, and yes, illegal immigration. Moral issues go beyond right-wing boilerplate like gays and abortion, and the church’s silence on these issues is perplexing. Then again, perhaps I’m foolish for thinking I know how the church would come down on these topics that strike me as morally important.