“Secret Cat War” by Richard F. Yates

There was a Cat War going on---a SECRET Cat War. A Cat War so secret that not even the cats who were directly involved knew anything about it. It was an awful war---and very confusing---and it ended when all the cats got bored and went to watch birds flying around outside the window.

THE END???

---Richard F. Yates

“Interview with Richard F. Yates” by Spork Ryyder

[WARNING! This is a fake interview that I did with myself back in February of 2014 and published on The Primitive Entertainment Workshop blog! It was written for educational purposes, and I still think it's pretty funny and relatively accurate! ---Richard]

---This interview was originally published in the January 2014 issue of Spork Ryyder’s Poppengluup art journal. Thanks to Ryyder for permission to reprint the interview here!---

Richard F. Yates is an American artist, writer, poet, and editor whose most recent project is The Primitive Entertainment Workshop, a blog that combines art and literature, humor and horror, and which has garnered international attention for its belligerent attitude and quirky sense of humor. This interview was conducted by phone with Richard from his home in Washington State in the U.S.

Spork Ryyder: Thank you for taking my call, Mr. Yates. Let me start with a standard Poppengluup question. What were your major childhood traumas?


Richard Yates: My childhood…oh boy. The earliest that I can remember are getting run over by a car, my dog, Bongo, getting hit by a car, my dog, Shasta, being run over right in front of my eyes, and my mom dying in a car wreck when I was fourteen.

Ryyder: My god! So you’re not a big fan of cars, I take it?

Yates: Not a fan.

Ryyder: That’s understandable!

Yates: And then there were the minor tragedies that probably seemed major at the time—moving around a lot, my parents getting divorced, my mom remarrying and then getting divorced again. Stuff like that. Heartbreaking when you’re a kid, but now, as a grouchy old man, they seem more like normal life stuff.

Ryyder: Do you have any major childhood inspirations?

Yates: Oh, tons! I watched a lot of t.v. as a kid—Godzilla movies, The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, Sci-Fi Theater, lots of monster movies and bad, old science fiction. I still love that stuff. And Star Wars! Star Wars was big, but I was also really inspired by video games. I grew up in the Golden Age of arcades. The lights and noise. Watch Tron. The arcade scenes at Flynn’s are a lot like some of my best childhood memories.

Ryyder: I see a lot of Pac-Man in your art.

Yates: Yes! Absolutely. The character and the ghosts are so easy to draw, but really iconic. I love Pac-Man. Then when I got to be around ten or eleven, I really got into music. Devo, Blondie, Pink Floyd—anything with synthesizers or weird noises, I loved it. Still do. I’ve also always been really into comics and books. I read a lot, still, but when I was young, I devoured books and comics. Superheroes, horror stories, ghosts, monsters, any of that stuff that I could get my hands on—and my mom was pretty cool about buying me books, even scary stuff. I remember when I was really young, she came into a comic shop and signed a paper saying they could sell me the “mature” books because I was really into things like 3-D Tales of Terror and other big kid books.

Ryyder: How old were you then?

Yates: I don’t know, maybe eleven or twelve, but we lived in the woods at the time, outside of a little town called Castle Rock in Washington State, and it was too far for me to walk to any of my friends’ houses, so all I had to do was read or listen to records or watch t.v. My brothers both liked to play outside—ride motorcycles, make soapbox racers, go on adventures in the woods, but I didn’t like to get dirty, so I’d stay inside and make masks or record little stories and songs with a tape recorder, or I’d read.

Ryyder: So the move into art and writing wasn’t difficult?

Yates: Nah, I’ve always drawn and written stories as long as I can remember.

Ryyder: Okay, so let’s move up to the present. Your current project is The Primitive Entertainment Workshop. How did that get started, and why did you chose a blog format for the project?

Yates: Because it’s easy. I’ve been published in more straight media, journals and newspapers, and I’ve had artwork in galleries and shows, and frankly, I just don’t work well with others. I’d think a painting was done and perfect, but the gallery owner would say I couldn’t hang a piece of cardboard that I cut from a cereal box on the wall next to something in a nice frame. (Laughs) And with publishing, the lag time between writing a piece and it getting into the hands of readers can be months! I’m not that patient. If I write something, I want people to read it right now, while it’s fresh, not in six weeks.

Ryyder: Yes, but self publishing has a stigma.

Yates: It does. It does. But look at all the really well known authors who’ve started with self publishing. Whitman, Pound, not to mention all the indie music and zines that came out of the punk and post-punk scenes. That’s probably the biggest thing for me. I really identify with that punk / D.I.Y. aesthetic, that Dada / conceptual art “fuck the rules” spirit. I don’t want an editor or gallery owner, or anybody, telling me that what I’ve made or what I’ve written isn’t good enough. Good enough for what? To make money? That’s not why I draw or write. I do it because I love to do it, I’ve always done it, and if I’m being honest, because I like the praise. I’m a solid writer, a good writer, and I should be. I have a grad school education and I’ve been writing for almost 40 years. My artwork, and I’d be the first to admit this, isn’t great. It’s cute, sometimes clever, on occasion interesting or evocative, but it’s not very good. (Laughs) But it serves my purposes.

Ryyder: Which are?

Yates: I don’t know—to make people laugh, I guess. Or scare them. To amuse myself. To make stuff. It may not be much, but I still think it’s important to just make stuff. To play. Too many people grow up and forget how to play. I’m pretty proud of myself for not forgetting how to play.

Ryyder: So you don’t have any commercial aspirations?

Yates: Oh god, yes! I do! I would love to make money as a writer or artist. My wife would love for me to make some money, and of course I’d love to own a nice house and a new car, or at the very least to be able to pay my bills, but I’m horribly lazy. Plus, I’ve somehow fooled myself into believing that I’m a great Artist, capital “A.” That this cerebral, raw, bizarre, elitist, conceptual program that I’ve set myself on is somehow very important, and that spending all of this time and energy documenting my weird thoughts and the stories and poems of all my weird friends and family will someday be worth it. Probably after I’m dead, though. (Laughs)

Ryyder: So the blog format?

Yates: Like I said, it’s easy. I can write something, copy and paste, and publish. I can paint a picture, take a digital pic, and upload it. A friend can email me a poem or story, and bam! Up and readable in seconds. And the blog site I use, Word Press, is really easy and has pretty good search features. It’s a good archive, although I’ve posted over 800* things in the last year, so I do worry that some of the material is getting buried under all the slush. How many people will go back through 800 pictures and articles. Probably not very many.

Ryyder: Well Mr. Yates, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer a few questions.

Yates: No problem. It’s been fun.

Ryyder: Any last words for the readers?

Yates: Yes! Buy my stuff! Books, shirts, posters, stickers. I really need to start making some money before my wife makes me get a full time job at a supermarket or something! (Laughs)

Ryyder: Okay. Thanks!

—Spork Ryyder

[*At the time of this reprinting, 2 April 2017, The Primitive Entertainment Workshop has 4,792 post up. That's a LOT of slush...---RFY]

“Travelogue – 001: Evergreen Lanes, Everett, WA”

Lanes, Everett, WA”

Since our younger daughter was in middle school, she’s enjoyed competing in bowling tournaments. (She’s 19 now.) As such, we’ve traveled to about a thousand bowling centers all around the West Coast. This weekend was the 2017 Washington State USBC Queens Tournament in Everett, WA. However, we learned long ago that bowling is only a part of the excitement and that we need to make these trips into mini-vacations.

With that in mind, on Friday morning (24 Mar. 2017), we loaded a bunch of luggage, snacks, and NINE bowling balls into the Escape, stopped by Starbucks, and then hit the freeway. Our first stop was the Centralia Outlet stores where Elise purchased (for the first time in history) some bowling skorts from the Nike store. (The primary reason for this outfit choice was so she could show off her cool Crash Bandicoot tattoo.)

Next, we traveled further north, past Olympia, until we decided we were hungry and then stopped for a bite at a Mayan restaurant. (The food was pretty good.)

Back on the road, we started hitting traffic just south of Tacoma, right around Lakewood. (Happens every time.) And thus we began THE I-5 CREEP. From this point on we crawled north, inch by tedious inch, water splashing the windshield, giant trucks pushing their way in front of us, and the bathroom calling in a high-pitched, unpleasant voice.

After an eternity, we reached Lynnwood, WA, and the thrill packed Alderwood Mall! (It wouldn’t have taken quite so long to get there, but the stupid cell phone gave me some very bad directions...That robo-lady is a bossy jerk.) We hit Build-a-Bear, Vans, Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, Hot Topic, Cinnabon, etc…. The women-folk bought some clothes, Ellie got a pair of shoes, and we all chomped some sugary goodness. After the main mall, we ventured to Barnes & Noble (down the street a ways), and I get a couple of books.

By now it was dark, still rainy, cold as SMURF, and we zipped back onto the freeway for the last few seconds of the journey to Mukilteo, WA, and the Hilton Garden Inn, which was surrounded on three sides by Boeing! (Those planes are big up close, and I’m phobic… So creepy…) The room was perfectly adequate, and we were tired from driving, so we crashed and burned pretty quickly.

The next morning, 9:00 A.M., was check-in for the WSUSBC Queens Tournament at Evergreen Lanes (which was about 10 minutes away from the hotel.) The house has 20 lanes, which are synthetic, and wood approaches, and there were 36 women there all attempting to take home the crown! There were also a number of fun people there who we were very pleased to see and talk to, bowlers and spectators both, and these people, the regulars, the BOWLING FAMILY, are the main reason that we love going to these tournaments. (This is at least true for Mariah and I---Ellie might be more addicted to the challenge). The competition is great, but getting to visit old friends is really what it’s all about.

Qualifying was six rounds on a 40 ft. “flat” pattern. (“Flat” means that the oil goes from edge to edge of the lane. On a normal “house” shot the oil coats the first 35 to 36 feet down the lane, and the thickest oil is in the middle of the lane, getting drier as you get closer to the edges. This helps people who hook the ball make it to the “pocket.”) Long story short, the shot was TOUGH, slick as an ice-skating rink, and scores overall were pretty low. (Only one bowler averaged over 200 for six games, and the cut was minus 159!)

Ellie had a rough time on games two and three. Lots of splits, couldn’t get lined up, and she might have even started to lose heart (just a bit), but thanks to some great advice and encouragement from a couple of friends (Thanks Cindy Mattingly and Tanner Spacey!), Elvis found the right ball and a great line and made a SERIOUS comeback! (She even cracked 200, twice, on this very challenging shot.) Unfortunately, the last frame of the final game of qualifying, she needed a double (two strikes in a row) to make cut, threw a GREAT ball, and the 7 pin started to fall, but got bumped by another pin and stood back up! (She missed cut by 8 pins!) The Bowling Gods just didn’t want it to happen this time. Elvis was upset when she realized she didn’t make it to the second round, but quickly got over it, and we stayed to watch our friends who made the semi-final rounds! (Congrats to Crista, Lori, and Cindy for making it to bonus bowling!)

We watched the next four games while we ate some lunch, then said our goodbyes, and dashed back to the hotel! (Stopped at DQ for some frozen desserts, and mine had a bit of wire in it, like from a Brillo pad or something, so they made me a new one---even though I’d already eaten like a quarter of it! Awesome…) Although we considered taking a nap once we got back to the Hilton, we noticed that the swimming pool was unoccupied, so we quickly changed and hit the water! The pool was tiny and not very deep, so we did what any group of people like us would do in that situation, and tried to create a whirlpool by quickly walking around the edge of the pool in a circle. (Oddly, we chose to walk counter-clockwise. I’m not sure why…) We splashed around, had a fun time, sat in the hot tub for a bit, then went back to the room for that nap. When we woke, we found a local pizza joint (Brooklyn Brothers) and grabbed some pie.

Sleeping in hotels is never easy for Elvis or myself, but we were tired again, so we did eventually crash. The next morning (it was Sunday by then---funny how that works), we got up, gathered our gear as quickly as we could, and drove straight home, somehow sliding through Seattle, Fife, and Tacoma without incident. All in all, it was a great weekend. We got to visit with some very entertaining people, Ellie felt pretty okay about how she bowled at the event, we had fun shopping and swimming, and we got home nice and early. Couldn’t really ask for more than that, and I can’t wait for the next tournament!

---Richard F. Yates

Read a Damn Book (with Richard F. Yates!)

Don't forget to check out my BOOK REVIEW blog where I discuss my influences and type about the pros and cons of written entertainment! Follow the link below to discover exciting new worlds!

Read a Damn Book!

Then send me your suggestions for books to review!

---Richard F. Yates

“The Raspberry Brute” by Richard F. Yates

The Raspberry Brute was eight feet tall and four feet across at the shoulders, with fists the size of vintage, metal lunchboxes. In the fall of 1981, something happened in one or the other of the two brains in his gargantuan skull, or perhaps in BOTH brains, and the Brute went BAD.

On October 6th, at the flower shop where he’d worked for seventeen years, the Raspberry Brute snapped and strangled all of the roses and petunias to death. Next, he flooded the bathrooms on the first and second floors of the building by stuffing the sinks with old socks and turning the water faucets on full blast. Police investigators believe his rampage began at approximately 2:00 P.M., although there was no one else in the shop to see its inception. By 6:30 P.M., however, the lives of everyone in Stencil, Washington, had been forever changed.

After ruining Borko’s Flowers, the Raspberry Brute took to the streets. He threw motorcycles through store windows; he peed in a mail box and stole the legs from a young nun. He ate an entire display full of donuts from Chippy Chad’s, then forced Chad to cook his own eyebrows. He folded a swimming pool in half (it HAD been an in-ground pool), made fun of a schoolgirl’s haircut, and committed countless other atrocities. By the time he’d headed out of town on a stolen moped, the Brute had injured, maimed, or murdered more than 70 humans, caused 12 chickens to cry, and shaved a goat completely bald.

Driving west on highway 4.666, the Brute stopped in Chuckanoogie and drank the entire State Patrol Office. He then threw boiled eggs at an Orthodox Church of Dim Temple, painted a mustache on a stop-sign, and hid a five mile stretch of highway in a middle school gymnasium. Luckily, when he stopped at a local Petrol Pit to refuel his moped and steal a pound of jerky, his picture was taken by a hidden camera. This image was quickly shared with hundreds of law enforcement agencies, bounty hunters, and Squirrel Scout troops throughout Washington and Oregon.

When the Brute reached Splorch, Washington, where the toll-bridge over the Columbia River connects with Broken Ankle Point, Oregon, a roadblock had been establish, and hundreds of humans were prepared to stop the rampaging ne’er-do-well in his tracks. With the majority of southern Washington on fire, thanks to the Brute’s shenanigans, he was fairly easy to spot against the orange blaze as he cruised toward the angry militia. It was almost midnight by then.

The Brute, smiling a smile that caused half of the citizens manning the roadblock to piss themselves (and the other half to go blind,) picked his nose with his pinky, then launched himself into the crowd. He snapped necks, tossed bodies off the bridge into the river, and occasionally tore an arm or a leg off a victim and popped it into his mouth. (He didn’t actually like the taste of human, too fatty, but he enjoyed the looks on the faces of those around him when they saw those fingers disappear between his lips.) Helicopters flew overhead. Squirrel Scouts shot slingshots and threw water balloons, and the few state troopers and sheriff’s deputies that hadn’t expired of fright fired rifles, bazookas, and pellet guns at the Brute, but he just kept coming.

The Brute fought through hundreds of people and was about half way across the bridge when a helicopter pilot, in a panic, accidentally pressed a button on his dashboard that switched the music he’d been listening to in the cockpit to the external speakers on the chopper. When the Brute heard the music, the pilot had been listening to the collection, “Greatest Elevator Disco Classics of ’79,” he fell to his knees, obviously in excruciating pain. The crowds saw what was happening and began singing along to “I Want to Have Sex with You on the Dance Floor,” in ridiculous falsetto voices. The Brute screamed and covered his ear, but the crowd sang louder. As a last resort, the Brute dashed for the side of the bridge and threw himself over the edge, falling hundreds of feet into the river.

Although most of the people present assumed that this was the end of the Raspberry Brute, he managed to survive the fall and swam on to Oregon. Once on shore, he was able to sneak into the back of a laundry truck where he fell asleep. The next morning, the driver of the truck left Broken Ankle Point with a stowaway on board.

The Brute’s wave of mayhem was finally brought to an end when he was pummeled to death outside of a waffle shop in New Drainage, Oregon, by an elderly woman who believed he was her long deceased first husband.* The woman, Eleanor “Crane Fist” Westingberger, was arrested in the act of beating the Brute to a pulp with her purse full of costume jewelry, but she was later released when her victim was identified as the perpetrator of the crime spree from the night before. (She was also given a stern talking to about hitting people with her purse by the sheriff of New Drainage before being released. She’d managed to break the noses of three of the arresting officers before being restrained and handcuffed.) With the reward money she received for stopping the Raspberry Brute, Mrs. Westingberger bought all new needles for her friends in her knitting circle and had enough money left over to pay a monster $10,000 to bite Vice President Gorge Shrubbery’s face off.

The End.

[*Mrs. Westingberger’s first husband, Bernard “Sparky” Sparkowitz, died under mysterious circumstances in 1961 while on a tour of the Bindlepoke Marshmallow Factory. Although never officially charged with causing his death, Mrs. Westingberger was heard on several occasions to murmur, “That son of a bitch got what he deserved.” Although Westingberger was married fourteen different times, and “outlived” each husband, she never had children.]

—Richard F. Yates

[Originally published 22 Apr. 2015 at The Primitive Entertainment Workshop!]

“Thoughts on the ‘Pain Induced Marathon’: The Morning After (30)” by Richard F. Yates

When one peddles in the absurd, when one deals in banalities and micro-concepts, when one pushes that boulder up the hill only to watch is tumble back down, there will always be a certain element of resistance to the idea that what one is doing has any value. I’m certain that this is true because I live the consequences of working in MUNDANE MAGIC on a daily basis.

I’m economically embarrassed, but psychologically fulfilled.

Even the most die-hard of adherents can only be expected to suffer inanity for so long before becoming bored and moving on to greener pastures. I’m cool with that, and happy with yesterday’s “outcome” (for lack of a better term.) Not counting Scotty Sparks’s two ACTUAL poems, and a single silly drawing of mine posted BEFORE the marathon, I ended the day with TWENTY-NINE pieces of nonsense, in total, in my performance. I consider these marathons (when they occur) to be performances as much as I consider them fiction, poetry, and visual art, because part of the barrage is the simple ACTION of making and posting each BIT. The MASS POSTING is as much a part of the activity as the making of each drawing or written piece.

But consider this: most of the individual pieces in this marathon, taken on their own merits, would be a throw-away---a tiny bit of NOTHING. “2 + 1 = love triangle” or a stick figure surfer with a halo or a nonsense poem about growing up poor and having to take lunch to school in a paper bag (which most people probably didn’t get)---none of these things, presented on their own and considered in isolation, would have made any impact on the world. However!!! When a multitude of tiny pieces (of nothing) begin to swarm, when they appear suddenly all grouped together and descend upon the world in mass, people notice. Each individual element of the swarm may be nothing but wings, some pollen, and a useless stinger, but the mass taken together can inspire fear and panic in the population (not to mention great B-films, like Attack of the Killer Bees!) Or confusion. I’m cool with confusion, too.

It’s not a question of whether or not I’ll keep making my silly drawings or micro-stories or nonsense poems, I’ve created these things since my childhood, and I’ll continue to make them until I keel over and drop. Shit, I’ll probably try to make a drawing with my fingertip in the pool of blood I’m lying in when I’m finally beaten to death by that angry crowd, and I’ll smile just a little bit through crimson teeth as they kick harder than even, confused and infuriated by the snake with the halo that I scrawl as my eyes roll back in my head and the lights go out! And I’ll probably keep having marathons as well, once or twice per year, if for no other reason than sheer perversity.

Push that boulder to the top of the hill, then grin as it rolls back down! Thanks for playing!

---Richard F. Yates

[To check out the "Pain Induced Mega Nonsense Marathon" and other weirdness, look no further than The Primitive Entertainment Workshop! It's ginchy cool, daddy-o...]

"Why I am Not a Christian" by Richard F. Yates

I grew up in a 50-50 household: Mom was religious, Dad did not seem to be (and, later, Step-Dad didn’t seem to be, or at the very least preferred football to sermons.) Mom made me go to church from the time I was tiny until she died (when I was 14). My best friend in junior high was the son of a preacher, so I often went to the church that his dad ran. Even after my mom died, I continued to go to church with some skateboarder friends that I had, until I was about 16 years old. I was somewhere between 16 and 18 when I realized that I no longer believed the stories.

As a kid, I was always a reader. I loved ghosts and bigfoot and folktales and U.F.O.s and the possibility of psychic powers, so I read about them. A LOT. I’ve always loved to read, since my first Dr. Seuss books and my HOBBIT storybook that came with a record that chimed when you were supposed to turn the page. My first R.I.F. book was WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE (and the fact that I can still remember, forty years later, what my first R.I.F. book was should tell you how exciting it was for me to get a FREE BOOK!) I’ve always read a lot, and after my mom died and I seriously threw myself into my religious studies, I started reading everything I could about Christianity: how it started, how it developed and changed over time, how the Bible was compiled from older manuscripts, how the stories in the Bible were different from (and often NOT different from) so called PAGAN religions, how much politics influenced the development of religion, etc., etc., etc.... I devoured books on world religions, psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, history, and philosophy. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I have read between 50 and 100 books a year since I was 14 or 15 years old.

And through all this reading, and my personal writing and thinking, and my experiences in both the religious world and the secular world, I started to doubt the veracity of the Christian conception of the universe. The doubt actually started pretty early, like around six or seven, and it would grow bigger, then ebb back, throughout my childhood.

At about 16, the church that I went to at the time had a guest speaker who performed a stage trick called “slaying in the spirit,” which I later learned (in a cultural anthropology class about shamanistic rituals) plays on “group think,” a fear of upsetting the room by not participating, and the well known psychological phenomena of self-hypnosis. At the time, I still believed that the “supernatural” was a real part of life, that people had souls, that angels and demons were real, but despite my willingness to believe, the guest speaker was unable to “slay” me. It just didn’t work. No Holy Spirit flowed into me, no all consuming light caused me to lose control of my body, no healing took place. It was just an old guy pushing my head backwards until I lost balance and fell over. I seriously felt cheated.

In fact during his presentation, I got a bit bored, so I started chatting with a friend, keeping half an ear on the guy in case he said something interesting. He thought I wasn’t listening at all, though, and tried to catch me and embarrass me. He stopped in the middle of his talk and asked, “Did you hear what I just said?” And being a weird freak with an odd memory, I repeated the last three sentences he’d said, word for word, then went on talking to my friend. (I’ve always had a freaky good memory for sound. I’m shit at remembering the passage of time, but SOUND, I’m solid.) The guy stood there with his mouth open for a minute, then went on with his talk and left me alone until the end of the night.

After the talk, the guy grabbed me before I left and told me the LORD had spoken to his heart, and that I was meant to be a prophet. I’m not shitting you. The guy actually told me that, and then he gave me a few chapter to read in the Bible, which I read as soon as I got home. However, I didn’t feel like a prophet, I felt let down. Everyone else at the event had experienced this great mystery, and I didn’t feel anything at all. I started to wonder how much you had to PLAY THE GAME, and let the stuff that isn’t working slide in order to keep the belief alive. Maybe the game wasn’t for me.

A few weeks later, I was at the same church for Sunday service, my last day being at a religious service EVER, and the preacher got up in front of everyone there and said that God had told him that anyone who smoked was under the control of the devil, that the devil wasn’t going to be allowed in their church, and so if you wanted to be saved, if you wanted to stay at that church, you had to quit smoking. I didn’t smoke, but I couldn’t believe the EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL, the fear of damnation that this man was attempting to use in order to control his “flock,” so I got up and got the FUCK out of there and never went back.

Mind you, I wasn’t suddenly anti-religious, but I saw how controlling and how manipulative the ideology could be, and no longer felt any desire to be involved in the organized form. About this time, I ran into Bertrand Russell’s book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, and he recounted all his moral objections to the Christian ideology (including some seriously unfair treatment that he himself had received because of his outspoken atheism), but his moral objections still didn’t convince me that there was nothing to the GREAT MYSTERY. So what did convince me? Why did I give up the faith? How did I go from TRUE BELIEVER to NON BELIEVER? It was a process of reasoning, gathering information, and learning to put what I WANTED to be true behind what seemed more PLAUSIBLE.

I read. I thought about it. I wrote essay after essay trying to clarify my thoughts. I searched for answers to life’s biggest questions. I took philosophy and religion and anthropology and logic classes. I talked to people and got their views. And slowly, I stopped believing in magic. I stopped believing in superstitions. I learned how critical thinking and reason produced reliable, repeatable, useful results, while praying tended to have the same success ratio as not praying.

Now, after three decades of study and research, I know more than I did when I was a 16-year-old kid with some doubts. I know about how translation works, now. I know the political motivations behind which “Books” were kept in the canonical Bible and which were excluded. I understand how, historically, psychological phenomena, like DREAMS, were not understood, and so a person could have a “vision” and write about it, and at the time, people thought they were really seeing a dead person or an angel or a djinn or a demon.

I understand that people are AFRAID of what it would mean if there wasn’t some all-powerful figure with a wonderful plan in charge of the universe, that life would be, ultimately, meaningless---that HUMANS WOULDN’T REALLY BE SPECIAL AT ALL, and that death would just be “GAME OVER.” These things just don’t jive with what most people WANT TO BELIEVE. I get it.

But I also don’t see how the magic that religions suggest is real could possibly be real. There is no evidence for it. (No modern miracles ever survive scientific scrutiny, and if all it takes for someone to invalidate a miracle is looking at it carefully, it’s not a miracle.) Critical reason, using the evidence of your own eyes and ears, is enough to tell you that magic isn’t real. It doesn’t happen. But more importantly than that, using scientific techniques to TEST magic, test psychic powers, test for auras or spirits, you get nothing. You have to look beyond what you WANT to believe. I would love to believe that there are ghosts and monsters and magic, but I don’t. I love the stories and the art and the folklore and the movies, but I know they are products of human creativity, not reality. I believe that we live in a strange world, that human brains are awash in weird chemicals that make them see things and believe in things that aren’t there, but once you start to understand the HOWS and WHYS of the world, then the ghosts and monsters start to fade, and it becomes abundantly clear that the physical world is just what you see in front of you, and any MEANING or PURPOSE that exists in the world isn’t instilled by a divine, floating, non-human entity. It has to be put there by YOU.

Why am I not a Christian anymore? Because I understand now that the Bible, the basis for all this BELIEF in all these supernatural entities and occurrences, is just stories, newer than some, older than a lot of them, but JUST STORIES that were made up by HUMANS to try to explain how the world worked and how people should behave. The stories were based on the knowledge that the writers had when they were writing, a pre-scientific conception of the world. We have a better understanding of how the universe works now than we did 2,000 years ago. (Technically, 1,800 years ago, because the earliest New Testament manuscripts are actually dated to somewhere between 100 and 200 years AFTER the time in which stories that they are reporting on happened, even though they are presented as if they are eye-witness accounts. They aren’t. They are stories…)

Today’s stories are better, to me, than those old tales, which seem pretty naïve, if you actually bother to read them (which I have…) I am not a Christian because I don’t want to live in the world created by those stories. I want to live in the ACTUAL world, however frightening that might be or how meaningless that might make it. Plato advocated the “NOBLE LIE,” but I think it’s time we start living with the NOBEL TRUTH instead.

---Richard F. Yates