ExChristian.Net -- encouraging ex-Christians

Why I'm Not A Christian Anymore

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 05:24:03 PDT

By Myra ~

I'm not a christian anymore because of all the different religions I have come across, Christians are the most judgmental little pricks I've met. They tell people they're going to hell for being gay or not being a Christian and they JUSTIFY it by saying "In the name of God" or "this is want Jesus said" or something stupid like that.

Protesters preach love and tolerance

(Photo credit: The UpTake)

I mean, the people who were involved in 9/11 were Islamic, and you call everyone in their religion evil and stupid and see them ALL as Satan. That's stupid.

You can bash everyone else's religion, but when someone says something about Jesus or God you flip out and swear and yell and carry on. I'm pretty sure Jesus said you should love your enemies.

Also, I'm tired of these Christians shoving their religion down other people's throats. I mean, c'mon! Are you serious? Be mature. Let them believe whatever they want to believe, and you believe whatever you want.

I don't see Buddhists or Islamic people going around shoving their religion down your throat, but knowing you, you'd punch them in the face and say, "It's god's will."

I understand that not every Christian is like this. Most of my family is Christian. and even though they have their moments of hating people who don't share their beliefs. I still think of them as good people and better than most Christians;

Times Must be Difficult for True Believers

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 06:09:46 PDT

By Carl S. ~

It has to be difficult to raise children to be serious believers of one‘s own religion. To raise yet another generation to carry the baggage of traditional, sectarian, unresolved problems into a world which is becoming increasingly accepting of diversity and the myriad beliefs of other religions.

It must be difficult to accept a “personal relationship “ with a universally available, 24/7, father god who can neither be seen nor heard, when you have a cell phone to reach real people: friends, family, lover, husband, wife, at any time, from any place on earth.

It must be hard to preach or believe that gay people are immoral and worthy of punishment just for being true to their natures when you personally know gays who are friends or relatives, or other people you admire.

It has to be difficult (or should be) to tell your children that there were times in history when cities were destroyed by incineration because most of their inhabitants were gay. Or that the human race was universally evil to the point that everyone and their animals had to be drowned everywhere on earth - when the evidence all around you tells you that such a state of humanity never existed.

It has be increasingly difficult to maintain that supernatural forces, in reaction to human actions, are responsible for tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and other catastrophic events, when the evidence tells us that these are caused by random and indifferent Nature.

It has to be repulsive for believers to even consider that religion's “answers” are fabrications.

It will be difficult for one believing in an unalterable soul to have research and tests reveal that the mind is a product of a material organ, and not separate from the body. And, that the visions of saints, gurus, and prophets can be accounted for as being hallucinations produced by the mind-body connection which are experienced as just as “real” as reality.

It must be extremely difficult to reject someone you intensely love, just because the other person does not believe what you were taught to believe.

It ought to be difficult to feel sorry for a man who died two thousand years ago as you watch TV news reports, or read in media, reports of genocide, ﬂeeing refugees in camps, or of the starving and persecuted throughout this world. And it must be hard to give your money for the “glory” of yet another god while so many people are suffering, starving, and dying of preventable diseases, or who need opportunities or loans to become financially liberated, and who are all going without the help of that god.

It must be uncomfortable to continually forgive and make excuses for pedophile clergy who work to deny women control over their reproductive freedom. It must be a contradiction to be a member of a faith that preaches a heaven as the goal of life, yet denies a believer the right to die and immediately acquire that goal.

It has to be uncomfortable to send one's child to a Sunday school where the child is taught to believe, as authoritative, things even the parent rejects; or to know that the children they play with are being taught to be close-minded.

It has to be difficult in the 21st century to have to keep telling oneself some things are true, when evidence keeps accumulating in the real world that they are not. Having a medieval mind in these times is an enigma wrapped in willful ignorance, however reinforced by religion it may be.

It will become ever more uncomfortable for those who believe the universe is all about “us” to confront the ever accumulating knowledge of a mind-bogglingly vast, infinitely complex and chaotic universe, with billions of stars and planets, which cares not one iota about mankind or its cares.

It has to be a struggle to ignore the facts of evolution when tons of evidence have been accumulated for them and shown in museums, on television, in magazines, books, and videos; when modem medicine itself is based on evolutionary principles.

It is hard to maintain the established doctrine that a proof of the existence of “God” is that man has a conscience, in light of evidence that psychopathic killers have no conscience and feel no remorse.

It must be hard for a true believer or a believer‘s spiritual guide to admit, let's face it, that a good roll in the hay is better than any “relationship” with a, yet again, invisible god.

It must be not only difficult but well nigh impossible to confront that one has been conned by religious authorities who sell their products without proof of any value to them. It’s uncommon enough just to accept that one has been willingly deceived, even in small matters, let alone that this has come about through one's own propensity to self deception. One does not want to admit being trapped in a system which raises self-deception to the level of being virtuous.

It has to be a challenging unease for righteous men to hide their caches of pornography.

One does not want to think of how difficult it can be for a believer to make the choice between theology and morality, between obeying and acting as a morally responsible individual. Too often, with belief systems, one contradicts the other.

Surely the habit of secrets-keeping must grate on the consciences of clerics eventually. Holding hypocrisy inside oneself has to be hard on the organism; unless one enjoys deceiving, that is.

It is astounding how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.It has to be very difficult for individual believers to deal with differences of beliefs/opinions, because they avoid, like the plague, questions about their core beliefs, often by turning on the questioner. It must be rough to go through life avoiding and depending on other believers who parrot the propaganda they’ve absorbed without thinking. (It is difficult enough for those who must “walk on eggshells” to accommodate them.)

It must be fearful for those on the inside to contemplate stepping outside the cage religions provide, or to even consider actually thinking about what one has gotten oneself into. Yet, reality, which speaks with a “soft but persistent voice,” keeps butting up against the superstitions which are called religions. (Why does nature contradict scriptures?)

All of these realities I have mentioned present mind problems for true believers. Therefore, they keep trying to protect their children from them. They don’t want the kids associating with gays, nor taught evolution, etc. They want them home-schooled, unexposed to sex education or other beliefs, other points of view, and anyone else who doesn't believe as they do. But, what happens to those kids when they have to go out into the real world? Raised in a bubble of ignorance, they are unprepared.

Contemporary life makes it difficult for members of religion-cults to maintain beliefs with so much factual information available all day, every day, describing how the world really works, not the way humans would prefer it did, for their own interpretations.

Reality is persistent, and blocking out reality requires much needless effort. As one psychiatrist stated, “People come to therapy when their behavior patterns aren’t working anymore.” And yet the true believers keep repeating the same patterns even when they don’t work, thereby perpetuating denials of all evidence to the contrary and never learning the way out. To quote the philosopher Eric Hoffer:

“It is astounding how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.”

Finally Freed from the Shackles of Guilt & Doubt

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 02:12:57 PDT

By Liz ~

In a recent life experience, where I met with a cohort from a previous and equally important year abroad, I realized that who I "am" is not who I am at all...

During a weekend in the beautiful mountains of Colorado, I was thrust into a familiar, yet completely unique situation with people I have known for ten years. When we lived abroad in our teens, we were all made up of snippets of our parents & influencers, geographical upbringing, and surroundings. We weren't really "us", but we were a young, bright-eyed version of the people we were about to become. Ten years has allowed us to become teachers, openly gay, artists, extremists, professionals, adventurers, parents, and influencers. All of us entered the experience with an "I wonder what they will think when they know who I have become" mentality. I'm glad we were all worried about it, because it proved to be a prolific catalyst for my life change. For some reason, unknown to me at the time, I kept repeating the mantra, "This is really important." I had no idea.

The time leading up to the reunion was a struggle. After a year and a half of planning, I was finally at a point where I just wanted it over. It was a hassle and I didn't anticipate anyone being grateful or even enjoying it and I was ready to just put the weekend behind me and move on with my life. Little did I know, all of these friends who had grown into amazing human beings would teach me something about myself that I had been scouring my heart to learn. I was worried all weekend that I was going to "screw up", that they weren't going to have anything good come of the reunion and that I was wasting my time.

After over a 100 reassurances that everyone was enjoying the mountains, our company and the accommodations, I started to reflect on what it was that made me feel like I am eternally "not good enough." Why do I doubt myself? Why do I ache with guilt from my past decisions, so much that I am paralyzed in a constant state of disconnect?

A quick look back into my history:

From the moment I understood language, my mother preached the "good word." We went to church. I went to bible camp for 10 years as a camper and then as a counselor when I was old enough. I was involved in the local youth group, mission trips, evangelist meetings and plenty of at-home study of our religion. When I was young, I remember thinking, "I don't want to go anywhere forever...that sounds scary and awful," but I kept it to myself, because that is what a good Christian does. They effectively taught me about what a filth monger I was; I was born in sin and lusting for it at every turn. I had to learn to deny the actual good and bad in my heart and alter it to meet their agenda if I wanted to spend eternity in paradise. The opposite, you see, would be to have my little body burn for eternity...so I chose paradise. The cost? Guilt. Doubt. Envy. Anger. Hatred. Separatism. I wasn't born to feel those things, I was taught how.

Back to the reunion:

After our last night of reflection from our important year abroad, I retired with a friend of mine only to continue the conversation into the wee hours of the morning. We began discussing God when I asked, "What do you believe in?" I was actually open to hearing her answer, rather than rejecting it like I did on most occasions where someone had an opinion that didn't align with the Christian Community that I had committed myself to. Her answer was unsure, and instead of feeling sad about the eternal consequences of her not picking "a side", I felt motivated to learn more. Through tough questions, we resolved that we did not want to die...and why not? I don't want to become dirt, but I don't believe that if there is a heaven that only those who have "said the magic words" will enter. Even as a Christian, I didn't want to spend eternity with nothing but Christians! If there was ever an all-loving, all-knowing God above who is in control of everything, why is he incapable of loving the non-Christians who are in my life that I would give up my eternal soul to save? Why, if he is so powerful, would he need constant praise and recognition? And why, if he loves us SO much, could he deny his children paradise for neglecting to say those magic words? Where I was previously so sure of my faith, my world was now spinning.

Before, when people asked me if I believed in aliens, my answer was easy, "No, because if they exist, then my God does not." It was ignorant, but it stopped intelligent people from pursuing the conversation further. Obviously, I was an idiot who could not be reasoned with. The eternal consequences (in my mind) were far too great to consider other possibilities. I was a wonderful Christian. I mourned constantly. When bad things happened, I believed it was because I deserved nothing good anyhow because we live in an ugly, fallen world. When good things did happen, I believed it was a fluke and that someone or something made a mistake. I expected something entirely external and invisible to guide me and make my life noteworthy, even though I didn't believe I deserved it.

So the weekend that I wanted to put behind me kick started a journey I have been on for four short and beautiful weeks so far. I was right, it WAS IMPORTANT! I am not a Christian, and I’m happier than I have ever been. I believe in Love and Acceptance. I believe in myself! I want to do beautiful things, experience intimacy without guilt, live each day because it is mine, and do things that make my heart sing. And you know what? I can. Because this life is mine, it doesn’t belong to a bully in the sky who is watching my every move. My mission on this Earth is not to spread the word of Christian men from one corner of the world to another, but to choose my actions and reactions wisely for the sake of making a better HERE AND NOW! What an exciting journey I am on.

This was the first website I found when I Googled, 'I am not a Christian anymore, now what?' I thank you for creating this page and giving me a place to share.

Religious Oppression, Healing, and My Journey to Self-Love

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:55:33 PDT

By Danae ~

Self-love is a journey that cannot begin until you dig into your past and try to figure out just when, where and why you ever learned self-hate to begin with. It’s taken me years to learn that my own hatred of myself was not a result of my innate unworthiness, impurity or evilness. So what was it that pushed me to write desperate journal entries such as this one at the age of 17?

“I feel so filthy, I’m selfish, I’m gross, I’m fat, I hate myself. I don’t do anything for others. I’m such a loser. Help me if you want to. I don’t know what else I can do.”

Wow. There’s a lot to try to uncover in an entry like this. I must try to understand how a 17-year-old who didn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, have sex or bully her classmates could feel so desperately sinful beyond the hope of forgiveness. And to understand it as well as possible, I have to face the fact that it was a specific brand of fundamentalist Christianity that poisoned me and pushed me to the point of such intense helplessness, that I often found myself on my bedroom floor, writing these desperate pleas to God.

For those who are confused when I reference this type of indoctrination, let me try to give you an overview. Christianity is a form of brainwashing that presents you with a list of beliefs that not only contradict each other, but leave you feeling bad enough to want out, but loved enough to stay. The parallels to the cycle of abuse are incredible. In a nutshell, the message is as follows:

We are all innately sinful because of Adam and Eve. Christ died for you to save you from your sins. But it’s not really a freebee; you have to say a magic prayer in order for the transaction of said gift to go through. Also, I know you’re only 10 years old, but save your friends or else they will burn in hell. But God is still loving and all-knowing and all-powerful, yet the burden has been placed on your 10-year-old shoulders to bring them to the “truth.” Also, you’ve sinned, haven’t you? You’re dirty, aren’t you? Of course you are. Are you experiencing lust? That is not the result of your natural growth as a human. It’s the devil trying to keep you from walking with Christ. Oh, and since you were born with a vagina, there’s an extra set of rules for what your life should look like. And don’t forget, you’ll never be as worthy as your male counterparts. But remember…God loves you!

Ah, but the kicker is I didn’t know that this was being done to me. All I knew was that if I thought I was dirty and wrong, I must have been dirty and wrong. And the worst part is that even after I let go of the belief in a God like the one I just described, the feelings of worthlessness stuck around. And now I must find a way to navigate this world while still paralyzed by the belief that I’m inherently less than because of my gender and overall lack of value.

It can be difficult explaining to family and friends why my experiences with religion have left me feeling this way. The negative effects of physical and sexual abuse are generally understood. But religious abuse has yet to be fully recognized as not only real, but extremely harmful.

Additionally, when something is triggering my past experiences, it’s hard to recognize it as a trigger and not just me being overly sensitive. A sexist remark that may not have been intended as such can push me over the edge. I get angry. To the rest of the world it appears to be an overreaction. I’ve become that angry feminist who should calm the fuck down. On top of all the chaos, I can’t even explain to myself why something has bothered me so intensely. It makes dating the opposite sex not only challenging, but also borderline impossible.

Most of my postings have focused on the media’s contributions to feelings of inadequacy, and I stand by my argument that those influence have no doubt contributed. However, all women are exposed to these forces. All women see magazines and movies and advertisements that tell them they aren’t good enough. But not all women find themselves in a situation where they are so broken they cannot make the kinds of connections with others that they so long for and deserve. It makes it clear that there’s an underlying issue…that self-hate was not only taught to me from society, but also from exposure to a toxic form of religion.

I hope someone will read this and know that they are not alone. No matter what you feel, there is someone else out there going through the same thing. The journey to self-love is not one you have to travel alone. I am here.

Website: http://somedaywewillchangetheworld.com

The Virtuous Woman Workout: Sanctioned by God

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 05:01:47 PDT

By Klym ~

No matter how hard I try, I just can't get away from the constant bombardment of Christian culture. Granted, I live in the Bible Belt of the USA, in the south, so why should I be surprised? But, still, I find myself getting "evangelized" in the strangest places and at the strangest times.

Picture this: I'm minding my own business at work last week when I go to my work mailbox and find a plastic 16 oz. bottle of water, the neck of it wrapped with a pretty bow of pink netting, with a couple of cards attached to the bow advertising "P31 fitness". Now mind you, I'm an educator, so this was in my "secular" mailbox at school. Every single mailbox in my school (even the men's boxes) had the "message in a bottle" placed in it that day.

I eagerly look at the cards attached thinking, "Wow, I haven't heard of this new fitness craze---I wonder what it is?" Since I was 18 years old I have been a fitness junkie---you name it, I've done it---Jazzercize, Pilates, TaeBo, martial arts, yoga, power yoga, belly dance, Zumba, tap, ballet, jazz, kettlebell, water aerobics---you get the idea. So, I'm on this like stink on a skunk thinking it's something new and different I can try---I'm so excited...

UNTIL....I read on the card that along with the exercise I will get daily email devotionals and a devotional will be delivered at each workout. Can you hear my balloon of enthusiasm bursting? POP! I can't help myself though, I have to go to the website that is advertised on the card to satisfy my curiosity.

Here's what I found: "P31 fitness" is based on Proverbs 31:10-31. The cluster of verses in the Bible known as the "Virtuous Woman" verses. It basically describes a woman who works her ass off from before the sun rises until after dark so that her husband can go sit at the city gates and be respected by the elders. But his poor wife NEVER sits down for a minute to rest her weary bones. Virtuous?? I think not.

The "P31" website states the following:

"Taking time to workout isn't crazy. It's Godly. And no one does it because she loves sweating . She does it because her day is otherwise full of service to others--working, mothering, caring for a home, caring for parents, serving every other person--and she needs that hour to put herself first, just for a little while."

Excuse me, but nothing in Proverbs 31 says anything about the "virtuous" woman taking time out for herself. It says that "she eateth not the bread of idleness". Of course I realize that working out for an hour is not being idle, but here is just another example of how Christianity can take verses from the Bible and twist them to meet the needs of whatever agenda they are promoting. This P31 Fitness is not free; it is not provided to God's followers just for the joy of getting healthy in God's name. I understand that Christians have to make a living too, but still, the whole thing just irks me. I'll be damned if I'm going to a workout where I have to be preached to about being a virtuous woman. And, I resent that a blatant advertisement for Christianity was put in my mailbox at work, at a federally funded institution,at a public school!!!! The thin line separating church and state in our country is getting more blurry by the second.

I highly doubt that my school in the Bible Belt would have allowed Muslim, Buddhist, or Freethought pamphlets to be put in my work mailbox. And yet I am unknowingly subjected to this type of advertising in the workplace. I haven't decided yet who to complain to about this. Since most of my colleagues are Bible-believing Christians, I know my complaints would not be well received. And, to complicate things, the church who sponsored this ad provides free food for some of our needy students. I guess if we accept their charity, we also have to accept their evangelizing?

It's a lose/lose situation for me. If I speak up, I will become a pariah; if I stay quiet, then I am not being true to myself. But being true to myself in this instance could cost me more than I am willing to pay for my nonbelief. After all, it's only an exercise class---how much harm can it do? ALOT, as we here at ExC know all too well. While I'm sure the creators of P31 fitness are well-intentioned people, how much good/harm will they do in the name of their god?

This situation reminds me of how fortunate I am to have escaped the bonds of this religion---a religion that infiltrates every waking hour with some message telling us that we're not quite worthy enough just as we are. We can't even exercise without God's sanction!? I am so thankful that I can vent to my fellow escapees---what would you do if you were in my running shoes? I'll probably just drink the water, recycle the plastic bottle and the cards, and use the bow for a future gift wrapping decoration. Us ExC's have to pick our battles carefully.

Man always gets it wrong

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 04:43:03 PDT

From Marc ~

My Story is precisely the opposite of yours. I've read the same articles and the same messages propagated by atheist agenda. My initial distrust in Religion was fed by the would be Christians dominating the headlines. I'd see a public figure who represents a church somewhere with a strong constitution saying and doing things that are not a reflection of Jesus and his teaching. This is repeated over and over again in society. I believe you quit your learning to early. The messages you have received from the internet sites are not accurate. To many prosperity sermons, or intolerance sermons or fear sermons. These are not the message. Being a Christian should be hard not easy, as I have found, It means thinking of others and not yourself. It means living for God. I struggle with this daily.

One thing is clear when it comes to the Bible and Prophecies, Man always gets it wrong. When people try to Predict the ways of God, they simply develope expectations and assumptions and the perpetuate arguments rain on. When all is said and done, God does exactly what he says, it ways we can not possibly have imagined.

Jesus was one of those ways. Indeed, the Jews at the time had something else in mind when they were waiting for a Messiah. At first they Cheered him, worshiped him, praised him, When he did not live up to their mortal expectations, they abandoned him. Jesus knows we lack faith, Indeed, those that were with him, saw his miracles and did miracles in his name, lost faith, denied him and fell into a state of unbelief. These people ate with him at the same table, spoke with him, saw with there own eyes. Come back to god, look into it again without expectations or fear or confusion. Reach for the message that is in the gospels. Understand the dynamics of the time period. Dynamics like, Linguistic Hyperbole and Mnemonics.

lastly, I felt much the same way about Paul, but I didn't understand at first, then I did. Here is something to consider: No printing presses, most people were illiterate, many uneducated. Paul was a prominent figure because he was educated. What is asked of us is not what was asked of Paul. Paul knew with out faith, Paul had direct contact with Jesus. We are asked to believe without knowing and when we do we are blessed.

As you continue this crusade against Christians, ask yourself, are you really in a better place. Help fix what is wrong. I wish you success and enlightenment about the gospels.

THEO-CRAP

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 05:25:49 PDT

By Rev. Ex-Evangelist ~

While working out at the gym this past Sunday morning, I watched a mega-church, "non-denominational", charismatic minister deliver his sermon on the television monitor in front of the treadmill I was on.

The guy was dressed casually; no stuffy and formal, traditional dress coat and tie. This guy had a cool hair-cut and glasses. His delivery was flawless, funny, entertaining and personable. He looked like he works out regularly. I guess he is about 40+ years old. He was a total hipster.

You could tell by the verbal response of his congregation that they think this fellow is the best thing since sliced bread. I know they thank God that they have such a cool, modern and holy ghost-anointed pastor.

But for all the cool cat vibe he presented, and the background music accompanied by electric guitars, drum-sets awesome sound-system, choir and assorted bells and techno whistles of American-style "contemporary worship," his message was the same old, irrational, nonsense that I use to preach decades ago.

What he said was this: God wants to bless you so much IF you will just exercise faith in "His promises". God can't lie; trust "His Word"; reach out and accept by faith what "He" wants so badly for "His children" to receive!

He urged them to not block all the wonderful solutions "God" has in store for them by their lack of faith; exercise that muscle of faith! He said it all with such charm and empathy.

Of course, I noticed that he did not spell out the clear flip-side of this line of theology: you are at fault if you are not getting your prayers answered and not being materially blessed by God.

On a superficial level, it was a positive, uplifting message: our Invisible Friend Jesus/God has your back! Just use the debit card called "Faith" to make a withdrawal from your heavenly bank account! What a positive and uplifting fantasy! His message made his audience shout and dance for joy. It's soooooo simple! Faith unlocks God's storage bin of spiritual and physical blessings!

I was thinking to myself: what a load of crap! That's it! I coined a new word for what I was hearing: THEO-CRAP!

I also reflected on how dangerous his message could be if people tried to apply it to a real-life medical emergency. They are being taught to ignore real problems while waiting for "God" to come down and fix it for them because they are now exercising faith. A recipe for disaster.

I'm so glad I no longer have to get up on Sunday morning and preach make-believe and fool people into believing that I have some kind of special knowledge or insight that they don't about God or how the world supposedly works on invisible "spiritual principles". It's nice to go to the gym on Sunday morning and afterwards go get a cup of great coffee at a nearby shop, read the paper and just relax.

I'm glad I now use my Sunday mornings for something constructive and useful. Since I left all that behind, I truly do have a "day of rest" from the week.

My (non)Theism

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 06:10:41 PDT

By Chris E. ~

I was raised by my grandparents, who were Christian, while we did not go to church much, there were plenty of readings of bible passages. I can remember once, I was about 5, had lied and my grandmother sat me down and read to me the book of Job and thinking “wow, this God person is mean!” This was pretty typical of my childhood, if I didn't get spanked with a belt, I had a passage from the bible read to me. Skepticism from an early age came almost naturally for me, maybe it was the thrust into religion without any questioning, or just basic curiosity. I did not have many friends at this age, but I did have my brother and cousin who were pretty much my age. They both had imaginary friends, my cousin had some weird duck thing, and my brother had a T-Rex and Apatosaurus. They would always run around telling me how great they were, and even my brother told me that if I was alone and called their names that they would come to me. This was sometimes a daily occurrence, and all I can remember was thinking “that's just dumb, they are not real! How can you talk to something that does not exist?” This is where I think that my deep rooted atheism was first born.

Years went by and I started to just accept God, Jesus and all of that as fact. Granted that my high school years I went through this 'dark' phase where I decided to worship Satan to get back at my family, but that did not last long and I returned back to Christianity. Fast forward to being an adult, I still retained my 'faith', but always had this skeptical outlook on it, but was fearful to question it. My life to this point was anything but good, but I was always told 'God has a plan, and everything that happens is a part of it' so I just accepted it. I went on to college and did quite horribly due to a massive drug and alcohol addiction, but hey, it was Gods plan; wasn't it? I used that for everything, and it seemed to make my life seem better, even though it was crap. Couldn't hold a job? Well that's not the job that God wanted me to have anyway. Overdosed on pills and alcohol? Well God made sure that I survived because it's his will. I led a life of self-destruction because I could simply will it away, and make it seem like it's part of this divine plan. I eventually started to warp Christianity to my own doings and wants just to justify my actions.

In 2005 I met my wife, who became pregnant in early 2006, and I started to work menial jobs to get by. I wound up in a restaurant that was ran pretty loose, and became friends with the general manager. At this point I was about as hardcore conservative right wing as you could possibly get, and he was agnostic/atheist. I would always view anyone who was a non-theist as being 'evil' and bound to hell, he knew this, but would argue in such a way that was persuasive in a sly manner. He would tell me about Paine, Hitchens and Dawkins and how our founding fathers were deists. This started a very slow snowball effect. After the restaurant closed down I was serving tables at an Italian restaurant, there I met a bartender who was the driving force for Smut for Smut at UTSA and he loved to debate, but like my previous general manger, he did it in a very sly way. They never told me that I was 'wrong' or that I should change my view points, but that I should explore other options. Yet this fear of an Omnipotent being that would smite me at the slightest attempt kept me docile from straying. As the years progressed, I started to see things in a new light, I saw little by little the hypocrisy from other Christians who shunned me for being unwed with a child, and not going to church or being baptized. Slowly, this greased the wheels to begin turning and started to raise questions about my own faith. “Am I wrong?” “Should I really be going to church?” and many more questions arose in my mind. Eventually I got my wife on board to begin 'church shopping'. We tried Calvinist, Lutheran, Catholic, Christian churches, but no matter what, I always felt out of place. The more I tried to be a 'good Christian' the more I questioned my faith, but would usually write it off as a test from God.

In 2011 I took an ethical philosophy course that basically set me off once and for all. We studied many ethical perceptions, but my professor basically made it clear “ethics and morals are not products of religion.” So little by little I started to piece together many things and answer my own questions. I started to fall from my faith as a result of this. I was beginning to ask “If I was wrong about X, could I be wrong about Y?” I eventually just put it in the back of my mind, but held to what little of my Christian beliefs were left. This came back one summer when my wife and I were talking about going back to church and baptizing our children. We started looking around at non-denominational churches as a 'middle ground', and asked my mother-in-law to be the godparent to our children. She objected because they would not be baptized in her church. We kept looking, and found a church that incorporated parts of Buddhist teachings in their sermons. I asked my grandmother if she would like to be the godparent, and told her about the church, and she objected because they did not teach true Christian ideologies. At this point I was taken aback by this, and we just stopped looking, but I still felt that I needed that structure of religion in my life.

Sometime in mid 2012 I began to look to alternative religions under the Pagan umbrella as I slowly started to doubt the existence of one God. While I was reading some books that are 'gateways to Paganism' the gears went into full swing. If I was easy to dismiss one God simply because I lacked the faith, what would be the use in looking at praying to multiple deities? Did I even believe in God for that matter? I started to look at my life, and it struck me like a ton of bricks; there is no God. I looked at every time I gave credit to God for something positive in my life, and saw that it was just a placebo. I thought that there was this supernatural force that would assist me in gaining employment, or accomplishing something in my life, and realized that it was just me with an added confidence boost. I did not become manager of several restaurants due to divine intervention, I did it because I worked hard and impressed all the right people. I did not make a 3.62 in my second round in college because I had assistance doing my school work from a deity, I did that. All these years I had low self-esteem simply because I did not take credit for my own doing. When I felt I couldn't do something, I would pray, and that gave me a boost of new life and strength to make it through that interview, or ace the exam. I looked back to my childhood and saw that deep inside myself as a child I never truly believed in God, whether it was mocking those with imaginary friends or just questioning why all these bad things happened because of God to people in the bible. Earlier in that year I had cut ties with my fathers side of the family, including the grandparents who raised me, and I think that is partially what fueled me to be able to break free of the constraints of my faith. See, I realized that I was never truly Christian, I was only what I was told to be, out of fear and for acceptance.

Once I became free of these constraints I spent many nights contemplating religion, and it's effects on societies ills. I saw that this placebo effect was not just with me, but with most (if not all) of those who followed some type of faith. I began to see that if someone was sick, doing poorly financially, and so on, that they would pray and magically everything was better. What I saw, that they didn't, was that with this prayer they began to devote a little more to their health, their job, their spouse. If they did not succeed, then they did not choose to learn from this failure, but to say “well, it's His will”. But if they did succeed, then 'it's part of his divine plan', forgetting that they put in that bit of overtime at work, exercised a little more, or paid a little more attention to their spouse. They are what I used to be; blinded by divination. A placebo, in simply terminology, is a treatment that is meant to be deceptive to the patient, as to mock a cure for their ailment. Religion is a mass placebo effect on society, and prayer is one of the devices used to administer the placebo. Society has gotten to the point where we are addicted to this feeling and will dedicate our lives to maintaining this high. A search online will find many stories of people giving their life savings, houses and even their own lives, away to their church. Now I will not go out on a limb and make a correlation to most Abrahamic religions and cults, granted they come off that way, I feel they lack the true organization of cults, but they are in a close second (given that some sects do qualify).

Given my short tenure with being 'out of the closet' with my atheism, I feel it is not my place to tell those who follow religion in a near cult manner that they are wrong, or anyone for that manner. I still maintain friendships of people who are Catholic, Christian and Pagan, and they exhibit the best mannerisms of their personal sects. Although I do feel the need to voice my distaste for atrocities that are directed towards atheists as a whole. Non-theists are not free from zealots, bigots and just all around pretentious jerks. But what non-theists lack is that placebo, and that is what really sets us apart from those who are our religious counterparts. If an atheist is racist, homophobic, misogynistic it is because that is who they are, they do not need to mask their disdain for others behind biblical teachings. The same goes for the religious placebo effect, we do not need to pray to gain something that we need, want, or desire. We simply just go out and do it, and if we fail, then we learn a valuable lesson. That is one of the many constraints I had to overcome, and in such a short time.

So this is where I have came to in my life, raised to be conservative Christian, and ended up an atheist. I have dropped my quest to acquire 'eternal life' through simply doing what God wanted, and just living my life for my family and for others. I came to realize that religion is a convoluted method for rewards and punishments, where you are not deemed worthy of this eternal life unless you accept whatever prophet and deity as your saviors. I have come to terms with being wrong means that all the good I have done, and people I have helped is not going to mean a thing, and I get to spend eternity in a pit of fire with midgets in red paint poking my butt cheeks with pitchforks. I have chosen to no longer take the placebo, and live life as it comes.

Lessons from Scripture

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 02:14:05 PDT

By Carl S. ~

The scriptures referred to herein are those of the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, each of which have their own variations and interpretations of what they consider “inspired.” We might seriously consider those lessons which are basic to every one of them, and the implications for everyone not ascribing to those lessons. These ARE the lessons of scripture:

The Ghent Altarpiece: God Almighty (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TWO WRONGS MAKE A RIGHT

The punishment for disobeying the god frequently involves killing an innocent human being. Innocent children are punished, even to the third and fourth generations. Mankind, with its multitude of good people, were drowned as rats even as they struggled to survive under already harsh conditions, to raise families, even as they loved and cared for one another and their pets, as we ourselves do today. To rectify “shame” or dishonor because your daughter or son disobeys you, kill them. (It is a matter of alleged “love” that the innocent son of this god himself had to be tortured and killed to right the wrong done by his predecessors.)

MIGHT MAKES RIGHT

The Almighty is not only unquestionable to mere humans, but his actions are above and beyond morality. The Almighty's actions are explained away by his spokesmen as unfathomable and all-wise. Whatsoever the deity does, on his own or through the powers invested in his agents by him, is to be submitted to. (Our god can do no wrong, and his representatives can do no wrong in interpreting his will.)

THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS

Whatever actions are essential to advance the kingdom of the Almighty and his chosen elect, so that it triumphs over every other system, must be carried out. Under this commandment, lying and cheating are virtuous, as are the destruction and erosion of legal and secular systems which are not seen to serve the deity nor his representatives on earth. The kingdom of God is interpreted as a political force. (One does not need to look far for constant examples of these things, even in present times.)

OBEY THE WILL OF GOD

Whatever you are told to do, no matter how much it conﬂicts with your moral sense and your love of humanity, obey. Hate yourself and your life, but love your neighbor as yourself. If you are told to kill your son, daughter, friends, neighbors, inﬁdels, heretics, non- worshipers, obey. If you are commanded to deprive fathers of the land they farm for their families, and to kill them, or to pull the baby nursing at its mother's breast and slay it, obey. If you are told to slay the sons in those families, toiling in the ﬁelds, helping their parents, obey. If you are told to take their sisters and rape them, enslave them, and seize their lands because the Almighty has made these matters mandatory, you must obey. You must also teach your children that to obey the Almighty through his representatives is their most noble moral obligation.

These lessons are used to justify evil. Anything is permissible in the scriptures, if one wants it to be. As St. Augustine said,

“Love God and do what you will.”

How I Fell Away

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:57:01 PDT

By Cat ~

I was born into Christianity, the son of a deacon. I was a Son of God for 16 years, baptized too. All my best friends were devout evangelical Christians, as was my girlfriend (ex now), and I loved them all and still do. Those were the happiest times of my life, and sometimes I do wish I could go back to them.

At 14, I began being mentored in 1-on-1 sessions by the head youth leader of the church , and I was pretty sure he was teaching me to succeed him, as did his mentor before him (the previous youth head leader, now a pastor). I loved learning about God, Jesus and the Bible - in fact I would go around and attend theological study groups led by well known evangelists. I also led the weekly Christian group at my high school. At 15, I became the youngest leader for one of the largest evangelical youth movements in my country.

I tell you these things because I want you reading to know that by any and all standards and in the eyes of many a pastor or youth leader, and my peers, I was the 'perfect' Christian (obviously I was not and there is no such thing, but, if you imagine one with all the childlike innocence I had, you would pretty much get...me!). No one had any doubts about me in regards to my faith.

Like any Christian, I had doubts about my faith ;) Which we all do from time to time, (which is exactly what makes believing in God a 'faith', otherwise it would be 'fact'). These I would talk to my mentor about, and I would also do my own research into theology, and then my doubts would be annulled.

Now that I look back onto it, what are 'doubts' really? Well, if you get over a 'doubt', then the entire thing becomes a learning process for you and you become a stronger wiser Christian, with a new obstacle under your feet lifting you up.

Which is what I did...for a while.

For such an inquisitive person such as myself, the questions never stopped (the Bible is pretty darn big as you know). There weren't many, but they were there. Some questions couldn't be answered, and I was okay with that (not exactly doubts because I had no problem with the answers, they concerned Predestination and 'Where do babies go when they die?' A:Long story short, only God knows).

When I was about 15~16, however, I began getting questions I couldn't answer. There was one, then two, then three and bang! before I knew it I began falling away. It did not happen immediately, I did not suddenly 'un-believe' like an epiphany, but slowly and surely, as I came to grips with it all, I began to stop calling myself a Christian (in my head).

Over time, the weight of all my doubts couldn't allow me to rationalize the act of believing in the God of the Bible. What was, up until this age, MY ENTIRE LIFE, was falling apart before my eyes. This had been my world since I was a baby, but before reason and logic, the entire world that I was in shattered to pieces - it was as if I had been looking at an illusion of the world all my life, and now it was falling away.

I was just a kid, and all of a sudden I had figured out that my life was a lie. My parents and friends and everyone I loved and cared about were perpetuating it, and what's more, they believed it, so what could I do? I lost all my friends, fell apart with my lovable girlfriend (who is such a nice person btw :D)...and well, I guess I kinda died every day of the week I had to go to school and church knowing I didn't believe what all these other people standing around me did, and that I had to lie to them about it and continue doing so until I was living independently of my parents, and at that time it would be safe to come out about it. In my heart I tried to stop my relationships with these people, partly because of the guilt I felt, and partly because everytime I laughed and had fellowship with them I was reminded of who I wasn't - one of them. I stopped talking to my friends as much, I would reject offers of hanging out, I would take part less and less in whatever my friends were doing until I wouldn't see some of them for months. At the same time, I was trying to come to grips with how to act, how to live, really live!, how to grow up, how to EVERYTHING...my entire world had been obliterated, I had nothing, I even forgot how to love whilst getting over the (self-initiated) loss of my friends and girlfriend. It was like I was performing surgery on myself with a hacksaw, making excruciatingly painful progress, with no-one around but myself to patch me up.

It has been heartbreaking to go through the past 4 years of my life, and it still wrenches every time I see those beautiful friends I once had. Right now it's breaking as I write, reliving it all again.

I am now 19 almost 20, and even now I am still patching myself up. This piece is just a bit of that healing process too.

You know, I thought I was pretty well healed too, until I met a bunch of those friends today, and I had some superficial conversations with them (they still think I'm Christian, though they may be cluing in finally. I do believe my mentor realized a year or so ago, as he made a few confrontations to try to talk to me about my faith but I tried my best to avoid with vague or cold-ish responses - I'm a bad liar and it hurts me to talk to him - and since he's a nice guy I think he's letting me pretend that I'm a believer, even though he doesn't know my reasons for doing so. I saw him today too, but for a long time now he's been avoiding me like I don't exist. He won't even say hi to me if I stand next to him.) Then I felt compelled to write this piece as I realized I still have a long way to go if it still affects me this much.

If anyone would like to know what doubts I had, I will simply post up a link to a .txt file that I opened up whenever I wanted to vent my doubts during my earlier years. I have long since stopped opening up that file, but I used to open up notepad like crazy whenever I was trying to reason my way out of my own mind. Needless to say, those were pretty emotional moments, and so the file might be a little messy and crazy, and perhaps with gaps in logic at moments when my fingers couldn't keep up with my mind or my heart.

And for anyone going through what I went through, I would like to offer some encouragement and support - the process is sometimes scary, often lonely and always painful, but I am afraid it's necessary. I'm not entirely sure what I'll be when I come out, but the results are beginning to show, and I think I like them. I don't really think there's ever really an end, but perhaps you..I..can learn to live with the past and move on.

Here's the txt file with 2 links, one to a download of the original file I wrote in, and another to some online text hosting service I googled up.

http://www.mediafire.com/?3havlg5b1pravaa

http://www.mytextfile.com/public?s=O4j0SFgKUnCphcTHoHs3g3LwtTh4EfRFong3TBWb

If this site allows replies I will gladly respond to any questions anyone has, time allowing.

The Bible: Fount of Primitive Morality

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 05:26:09 PDT

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

Yesterday, my good friend Carl S. called to pass on an observation. He said, “Abraham didn’t free the slaves, Moses didn’t free the slaves, Jesus didn’t free the slaves, St. Paul didn’t free the slaves, Abe Lincoln freed the slaves. Think about it.”

I did think about it, and found a very important message in this observation. If you think about it, you too will see that the Bible presents the morality of primitive men, not the morality of the best of men. Isn’t that odd for a book which is claimed to be the word of god, or at least inspired by god? Just what does that say about those men who set those words to parchment?

We could easily fill a book with examples of Biblical passages which reflect the morality of primitive men, but let me just provide a few. When Adam and Eve disobey god, he doesn’t just curse them, he curses the whole human race. This is even worse than when he threatens to punish the ancestors of men to the third and fourth generation. This, of course, is a Mafia technique; if you want to really scare someone, don’t just threaten him, threaten to harm his family.

Similar examples are the story of two men who displeased god and were buried alive, along with their wives and children (Numbers 16:27-33), and another story of men who plotted against Daniel and were thrown into the lions’ den along with their wives and children (Daniel 6:24). Again, if you want to really, really scare someone . . .

Now note that modern legal systems put all blame and punishment on criminals and ignores their families who had nothing to do with the crime.

Of course, according to the Bible, morality is whatever god says it is, but, if you think killing whole tribes but keeping alive the little virgins to rape at your leisure is moral, as Moses commands in Numbers 31, then I say there is something very seriously wrong with you. In fact, I guess you could say I’m betting my life on it, my “everlasting life” that is.

Other shining examples of Biblical morality include the commands to kill all those horrible homosexuals, blasphemers, disobedient sons, non-virginal brides, and people who work on the Sabbath. Let’s see now, did we miss anyone? How primitively stupid! But was Jesus on board with all this disgusting stuff? Well, as you may recall, Jesus did say that he came to fulfill the law (Old Testament law), not destroy it (Matt. 5:17).

Whenever I see a poster that says “John 3:16,” I wish I had one which says “Hosea 13:16.” Maybe if a lot of Christians saw my poster, a few would be curious and look it up? That’s the passage where Bible-god proclaims, “Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up.” Now that’s a proclamation worthy of a primitive man!

In Malachi 2:2-3, the Lord says, “And now, O ye priests, this commandment is for you. If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name . . . Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces.” Now, really, does that sound like a god of love or a primitive man?

But, all this is Old Testament stuff and Jesus isn’t like that, you say? Well, in fact, Jesus is perhaps the worst of these primitive offenders as he introduces the concept of hell, a punishment which goes on for ever and ever with no possibility of parole, a punishment which is not in the Old Testament (see John 15:6)

Abraham was ready to kill his son to please a voice in his head, Moses orders his soldiers to go back through the camp, each man “killing his brother and friend and neighbor," Jesus said those who abide not in him would be gathered as branches and “cast into the fire” of hell, and St. Paul said women should shut up in church and never have authority over a man. But Abe Lincoln freed the slaves.

For a guide to morality, I’ll take Abe, thanks. You can have all the rest; they’re all way too primitive for my taste. “Good Book” my arse!

Wait.....What?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 06:11:41 PDT

By Discordia ~

I found a free Android app that lets me create memes for posting on various social sites. One of the myriad templates is the philosoraptor with the following text offered as a sample: If Satan punishes the evildoers, wouldn’t that make him a good guy?

That question made me sit back and think. (I love when that happens, by the way!) The only logical answer would have to be "Yes". I have always heard that Satan is the enemy of God and stands against everything God is for. Since God orders the eternal punishment of people who don’t believe in Him, then why would Satan follow that order if he was The Bad Guy? According to Christian doctrine, Satan and Hell are a special creation of God to punish people who don’t believe in God. Christians believe that people who don’t believe in God are enemies of God, just like Satan. So….what possible reason could there be for Satan to torture those billions who should be his steadfast allies in his fight against God…..unless Satan is on God’s side?

If Satan is indeed the rebellious opposite of God, then Satan would have to be very much AGAINST eternal torture and would absolutely refuse to engage in it simply because God wants him to do it. God could send everyone ever from anywhere to Hell and Satan would not harm them if he were indeed the enemy of God. But if Satan is doing God’s work by following God’s orders to torture people then Satan is God’s muscle, not his enemy. Therefore, Satan is a good guy.

Two or Three Witness Rule Violations

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 02:15:29 PDT

By Daniel out of the Lion's Den ~

My mother claims that when she was four years old, she floated down a staircase. Astonished by this feat, she ran to the neighborhood children to tell them about her amazing achievement. Some were skeptical, and demanded that she repeat the event in their presence. The crowd gathered in her house as she climbed to the top of the stairs. She stood there trying as hard as she could to launch into the super-human glide that she was certain occurred just minutes beforehand. But nothing happened. As the naysayers began to dispersed, she exclaimed, “You have to eat a lot of carrots!”

“At the mouth of two or three witnesses shall the matter be established.” This biblical axiom is scattered through the Old and New Testaments. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s actually not a bad rule. Certainly, in modern courts of law, when more than one witness independently corroborate a story, the story is given credence and becomes believable. In the Bible, this rule is the premise for excommunication, defrocking, and capital punishment. Yet, this foundation for establishing truth is trampled underfoot in almost every occasion related to the most important circumstances in all of scripture – the interactions between the God and man.

No other person heard the voice that told Abraham to sacrifice his only son, then not to kill him, or the argument he had with God about finding a righteous man in Sodom & Gomorrah, or any of the other messages that Abraham received from God or angels. That’s rather damning for the founder of Judaism, Christianity and Islam…

No other person heard or saw the burning bush where the voice of God commissioned Moses to become the deliverer of the Israelites from Egypt. No other person heard or saw God deliver the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. No other person saw God pass by Moses while he hid behind a rock.

No other person heard God tell Noah to build an ark. No other person actually saw a whale swallow - then subsequently vomit out - Jonah. No other person heard God tell Solomon to ask for anything he desired. Certainly, anytime a prophet communicated with God, it was a one-on-one conversation. Even the angelic messages to Mary and Joseph were delivered individually to each. No one else saw or heard the conversation between Paul and glorified Jesus on the road to Damascus.

“At the mouth of two or three witnesses shall the matter be established.”This observation is not confined to biblical accounts. I can think of no account ever provided by preachers, evangelists, missionaries, apostles, and overly zealous Christians when a message from God was delivered and witnessed by more than one person.

No other person heard God tell Oral Roberts that he would die if he didn’t raise 13 million dollars. Whenever Jimmy Swaggart, Ken Copeland, Jim Bakker, Jerry Falwell or Ernest Angley started a sentence with, “God told me…” then it’s a safe bet that no other person heard this conversation. This observation can even be extended to the angel Gabriel delivering the Quran to Mohammed, the angel Moroni giving golden plates to Joseph Smith, or when Mother Mary appeared to 14 year old Bernadette Soubirous near Lourdes, France in 1858. There was no other person present during these events.

“At the mouth of two or three witnesses…” You would have at least thought that something as incredulous as God writing the Ten Commandments in stone with his finger would have been important enough to do in front of a crowd. None of these people are to be believed. I don’t even believe my own mother. If two or three of those neighborhood children would have witnessed my mother float down that staircase, what might have been…

My Story: Why I Left Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:57:30 PDT

By Tom Brower ~

I trace the beginnings of my spiritual journey to a time when, as a young teen, I began to take interest in the great questions in life and was frequently distracted by a desire to understand how I fit into the big picture. Living near the beach, I often took advantage of the opportunity to sit and contemplate on the shores of Huntington Beach, California. I felt a palpable sense of peace and belonging at the ocean and I often would retreat there for solace. My answers to life’s great questions remained ill defined at this point in my life, but my own native religion was nature-centered and non-theistic.

In my later teen years, however, I came under the influence of several enthusiastic Christian friends. At first, I was very resistant to the Gospel message and to some of the content of the Bible. But over time, my attraction to the welcoming fellowship, the high moral standards, the reassuring divine promises, and the ready supply of answers to my deepest questions, overcame my misgivings. I embrace Jesus as Lord and Saviour, in standard evangelical Christian style, and embarked on what became a 20-year sojourn.

From the beginning, my experience of Christianity was focused around an intense interest in experiencing personal communion with God, understanding the Bible, and living a life of service. Over the years, this resulted in much time spent in private prayer and worship, contemplative retreats into mountain or desert, two college degrees focused on Biblical studies, and ministry pursuits that included an associate pastorship, home bible study fellowships, hospital visitation, street witnessing, feeding the poor in Mexico, and soup kitchen work.

Christianity was always an uncomfortable fit however. Unseen by even my closest Christian friends was a fierce inner struggle to make sense of the full Biblical message and to live a life of integrity consistent with that message. Gradually, serious misgivings about the Bible mounted. Rather than alleviate my doubts, the more I learned about the Bible, the more I encountered intractable problems on every hand. Tension and struggle eventually reached such an extreme that I knew something had to give, yet I felt trapped. Certainly, I told myself, something was wrong with me or my apprehension of the faith. I thought by definition nothing could be wrong with Christianity or the Bible itself.

A watershed moment arrived one day when a close Christian friend of mine casually suggested that all one had to do was place any stumbling stone on the shelf and just continue along the path trusting that, in the end, God would take care of everything, including any doubts. The advice was a well-intentioned bit of standard Christian counsel; the timing however was all-significant. My immediate response was to ask what should be done if those stumbling stones became so numerous and heavy that the shelf were to break. The comment was lost on my friend, but it was a self-revelatory moment. It finally occurred to me that all the tension I felt was due to my being at that breaking point. Cognitive dissonance simply overwhelmed me and I could no longer take refuge in pious evasion. I felt literally suffocated under the weight of so many flimsy rationalizations for Biblical problems. I had to act, so at that moment I decided that I would rethink everything, that none of my assumptions would be off-limits, and that I would follow the truth wherever it took me.

The process was nothing short of traumatic. Not to mention lonely. I came to understand firsthand why several of my seminary friends had experienced nervous breakdowns while struggling through the same process. But in the end, I re-emerged wiser and with new focus, and a sense of peace that I had not known for a long time. I was also no longer a Christian.

Through it all I see myself as having come full circle. Once again my religion is nature-centered and non-theistic. Rather than relying on an invisible, imaginary deity, I now try to live life to the fullest, here and now, and to awaken to all the wonders that surround me.

I’ve moved on from Christianity because, in balance, I no longer find it credible or attractive. Decades of intensive study have lead me to conclude that the Bible shows every sign of having originated in the minds of errant mortals, not divine inspiration. As such, it, like all other human works, is a mix of good, bad and ugly. What follows is a sampling of the evidence that convinced me.

1) Because old sacred texts cannot evolve, religions that rely on them keep the people that live by them stuck in the mindset of the times they were written. This creates the dual problem of perpetuating primitive or even barbaric thinking, and impeding progress. Over the last 2000 years, Christianity has been guilty of both offenses.

The issue of slavery offers an excellent example. Ownership of one human being by another is, of course, the abhorrent essence of slavery. In Leviticus 25:44-46 God grants his people permission to purchase and own slaves, and to enslave them for life:

“‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life...”

Slaves could also be obtained during wartime. In this passage, God lumps people right together with livestock, no distinctions, just all part of the plunder of war:

Deut. 20:14 - “As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies.”

If sanctioning slavery weren’t bad enough God also approved brutal treatment of slaves, pronouncing that a master could beat his slave within an inch of his/her life and, as long as the slave didn't die, the master would suffer no penalty. The divine justification for this cruel ruling: The slave is the master's property!

Exodus 21:20-21 - “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property.”

There it is: Divine sanction of the essence of slavery, right from the mouth of God - or so one must believe if the Bible is accepted as divinely inspired infallible Scripture.

Slavery advocates in our own country used Old Testament passages such as these to defend their practices during the debates that raged in the 18th and 19th centuries. Every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination, but this considerable moral progress was made inspite of the Bible, which condones the practice, and not because of it.

2) Accepting the Bible as inerrant, inspired revelation from God also requires one to approve of the barbarisms which ancient Israel committed against their neighbors—including the massacre of men, women, children and nursing babies—at the explicit mandate of God: “Thus says the Lord of Hosts: …attack Amalek…kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child….” (1Samuel 15: 2-3). As it turned out, God was angry with Saul, the King of Israel, and stripped him of his kingship because he didn’t carry out this command completely enough, failing to kill off the king of the Amalekites and the best of their herds.

The enormity of this crime needs to be felt to be appreciated. Imagine this blood-soaked scene: thousands of babies and small children hacked to death with sharp swords, and mothers running in terror clinging to their little ones only to be run down and mercilessly slaughtered. The elderly, the sick and the pregnant similarly shown no mercy. Unfortunately the Amalekites were not a one-time special case as the Israelites went on numerous genocidal rampages at God’s command. See Deut. 20: 16-17 where God demands the slaughter of several other tribes: “...do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.”

Seen in historical context, the ancient Israelites were acting like the other nations of the time period in killing for their war god(s). The Moabite stone, for example, contains an inscription in which the Moabite king Mesha (see 2 Kings 3) told of victories that he had won through his god Chemosh who "saved me from all the kings and let me see my desire upon my adversaries." Later in the inscription, Mesha said this about a victory his forces had won over Israel: "But Chemosh drove him [the king of Israel] out before me." This statement has a very Old Testament feel to it, only this time it’s Israel’s enemies claiming victory through their god. In another example, pavement slabs in the temple of Urta at Nimrud contain an inscription by the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II in which he described the massacre of 600 warriors and 3,000 captives he had taken in battle "at the command of the great gods.”

No matter what kind of rationalization is used by the believer, the chilling fact must be faced that belief in the Bible as infallible Scripture compels the justification of genocide, of saying that these ancient atrocities were right and moral because God commanded them. There is no middle ground here: It’s a choice between standing by this ancient war-god, even to the point of defending his commands to massacre babies, or surrender belief in the Bible as God’s word.

3) The law purportedly delivered to Moses by God bears an uncanny resemblance to other Mesopotamian law codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi, the Law of Eshnunna, and the law of Ur-Nammu. All of these other law codes derive from the Old Babylonian empire or the Sumerians and predated the law of Moses by many centuries. Not surprisingly many (but not all) of these laws appear primitive or barbaric by modern standards. But the point being made here is that, once again, when compared to the background culture of the day, supposed revelations from God start to look all too human, and derived from the thought of the time period, not the mind of an omniscient creator. Here are a few of the many similarities which indicate not only the same laws but the same principles upon which laws were based:

-- Body parts were to be cut off for certain crimes.

-- A raped virgin was to be given as a wife to the rapist.

-- Restitution/penalty was based on the social status of the victim. Lives of slaves are compensated for with money whereas it was life for life with other victims.

-- Trial by ordeal was prescribed to determine the guilt or innocence of a woman accused of adultery. The husband pays no penalty if wife proven innocent.

-- A false accuser was to suffer the penalty that his charges would have brought on the accused. E.g. if the false accuser charged another with murder, the false accuser dies.

-- A conflict involving the loss of borrowed or deposited goods is settled by taking an oath before god.

-- Rules were defined for selling family members or self into servitude, as well as time limits for letting servants go free. The Code of Hammurabi stipulated freedom after three years, the Mosaic law after six.

-- Death was the punishment for a couple caught in adultery.

-- Eye for eye, tooth for tooth principle of justice, articulated using these exact same body parts.

-- Nearly identical statements are made about responsibility for an ox which gores someone to death, and the greater responsibility of an owner of an animal with a violent reputation.

-- Nearly identical statements are made stating that an animal caretaker is not responsible for the death of an animal killed by a wild animal but was required to bring the remains to the owner.

Even what might appear to be highly enlightened aspects of the Mosaic law are also found to be in step with the thinking of the time. Yes, the law of Moses encourages compassion for the orphan, the widow and the poor. But a very similar social justice concern is found in the Law of Ur-Nammu: The orphan was not to be delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not to be delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not to be delivered up to the man of one mina. So also with the Mosaic practice of canceling all debts every seventh year, and the year of Jubilee in which sold land was returned to its previous owners. For centuries prior to the Mosaic law it had been the practice in Mesopotamia during the Old Babylonian period for kings to proclaim an act of justice at the beginning of their reigns or at intervals of seven or more years thereafter. Like the law of Moses these edicts called for the forgiveness of debts and the reversion of land holdings to their original owners.

4) Hell: The ancient Jews believed that the spirits of everyone who had ever lived - including all of their saints - were in the cold, dark and dreary underworld of Sheol. The Old Testament knows nothing of a fiery underworld place of never-ending afterlife torment. This idea, largely inspired by the Greek concept of Hades, grew in popularity during the great cultural intermixing that occurred in the intertestamental period. Active volcanoes, spewing molten lava and smoke from the depths of the earth, were thought by the ancients to lend credence to this notion. Not surprisingly, intertestamental Jewish theologians adopted this idea of hellfire.

So did Jesus and the apostolic writers. But as a result this mere accident of history still saddles us today, some 2,000 years later, with the idea of a divine torture chamber, perhaps the most abhorrent, sadistic concept ever conceived. It’s one thing if Hitler, Pol Pot or Saddam Hussein engaged in acts of mass torture, but the Creator of the universe?

The concept of Hell is actually so toxic and archaic that few modern-day Christians truly believe it. Most believers, out of necessity, employ various kinds of coping mechanisms in an attempt to live a consistent Christian life with Hell as part of their belief system. These coping mechanisms typically take the form of avoidance—the concept of Hell is simply put out of mind—or re-definition—Hell is watered down to be a metaphor for more palatable concepts like separation from God, or annihilation.

5) Anthropomorphic deity: Egocentrism is a hallmark feature of immaturity. Mankind in its childhood supposed itself and its world to be the literal center of the universe. All heavenly bodies were thought to revolve around the earth. The sun existed to give light to the day, the stars and moon, light at night (Genesis 1). Every tribe thought that its central place was the center of the world; not surprisingly, the Jews asserted this honor for Jerusalem. Cut from the same cloth is the notion that the ultimate mystery of the universe and source of all being is a person just like us. Aristotle hit the nail on the head long ago: "Men create gods after their own image...." Just as mankind has outgrown the notion of an earth-centered universe, the time is long overdue to put off the childish notion of a great parent in the sky.

6) The denigration of women—seen both in overt statements, such as "it is a shame for a woman to speak in church," and in the complete lockout of women from any significant leadership positions (“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”)—is clear testimony to bias on the part of the Bible's all-male authors. Human bias of this sort is inconsistent with the idea of divinely inspired scripture, but is exactly what one would expect from male religious leaders in the ancient world. On this score even Mao was a vast improvement: “Women hold up half the sky,” he said. Holding half of the race down, leaving undeveloped half of our talent, is a crime against humanity for which Christianity is guilty.

7) The concept of sacrificing something important to the gods or spirits is found in religions around the world. Usually, the more important the god or the request, the more important the sacrifice had to be. The most important thing which could be sacrificed was, usually, a human being. Typically, the person was sacrificed for the sake of the welfare of the entire community — to appease an angry god who had cursed the tribe, to plea for better crops, to ensure success in a coming battle, etc. Because such needs were universal, human sacrifice was quite commonplace among ancient peoples (e.g., Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, early Greeks & Romans, Vikings, some Middle Eastern tribes, early Chinese & Japanese).

Unfortunately Christianity, through its central idea of the sacrificial death of Christ for the sins of the world, perpetuates this dreadful concept. Unadorned by its social acceptance, developed theology and other trappings, Christianity at its core is a primitive religion based on appeasing an angry, invisible deity through human sacrifice: “Since we have now been justified by his [Christ’s] blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him” (Romans 5:9).

8) Degrading divine-human relationship: Mirroring the authoritarian political structures of the time, Judeo-Christian patterns of worship/prayer follow from a primitive view of God as despot to be placated, appeased and flattered. The similar master-slave depiction of the divine-human relationship, featured prominently in the Bible, is equally degrading and outmoded.

9) In Christianity, this earth is a temporary stage that God will soon destroy, this life a brief passageway to a life without end, in a world beyond death. Believers are encouraged by scripture to see themselves as strangers or aliens in this life, to live out their time here as foreigners, to view their citizenship as being in heaven, and to not love anything in this world, which is under the power of Satan. These sentiments may have made life more bearable to the downtrodden Jews of the first century who despaired of life under foreign domination, and who despised a world wracked with war, famine and injustice, where life was often short and brutish. But this emphasis upon the afterlife and the denigration of life in this world is wrong and perverse in its effects.

At its very least, it prevents the full participation in and embracing of life in this world with all of its joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures. There is also the tendency to create a mindset that discourages improving life here and now. Sure the Bible exhorts one to help a neighbor in need, but there is no injunction to correct structural evil because this world is considered beyond hope. From a strictly biblical point of view, working for the long-term betterment of mankind would make as much sense as trying to establish a social program aboard the sinking Titanic. The only true hope in Christianity involves escape from this doomed world, as from a sinking ship, and resides in a salvation process wherein one is placed on God's salvage list for those to be spared when the current world is incinerated.

This belief also tends to inhibit the progress of science and the natural curiosity that motivates it. Consider this revealing quote from St. Ambrose (a 4th century church father): "To discuss the nature and position of the earth does not help us in our hope of the life to come." St. Ambrose was not at all unique or unusual in his sentiments—biblical theology directly breeds this kind of value system. Christians who hold to different priorities only come to do so when they begin to think independently and/or come in contact with non-Christian influences.

10) Christianity demands an extreme, unrealistic ethic. In large part this is due to the emergency-mode nature of the NT outlook; that is, one must live as if the world were coming to an end at any moment: “What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.” (1Cor. 7:29-31)

This sense of emergency created by an impending apocalypse is further intensified by the high stakes involved: the threat of being sentenced to eternal torment and losing everlasting bliss. If the choices made in this lifetime really do determine an eternity of either torment or bliss, then saving oneself and as many others as possible isn't just the pre-eminent concern, it is life's only concern. Nothing else makes any rational sense. If taken seriously, this perspective renders any kind of normal life impossible, and promotes crippling anxiety and guilt.

The extreme nature of the NT ethic can also be seen in Jesus' unqualified prohibition against divorce found in the earliest written of the four Gospels, Mark (10: 11-12), as well as in Luke 16:17. This simply does not work in the real world—and everyone knows it. The fact that exceptions for unfaithfulness (Mat. 5:32) or abandonment (1Cor. 7:15) had to be added later by apostolic writers reveals the untenable nature of Jesus' blanket proscription. Witness also the Catholic Church and its annulment practice, or most Protestant pastors who, through theological artifice, attempt to stretch the stated divorce exceptions to deal with life's inevitable tough cases.

11) Biblical inerrancy: the concept, at its base, arises as a salve for our existential angst, an answer to that human longing for a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. But certainty in this world is neither possible nor desirable: not possible because life in this world, if it is anything, is ever-changing and unpredictable; not desirable because the adventure of living is in great measure the challenge of forging a meaningful life in an ever-changing world where the end result of one’s efforts cannot be known. Those who seek the certainty of inerrant revelation are demanding a guarantee on life which doesn't exist and short-changing the life that they have been given. Those who think that Christianity has supplied them with certainty have been deceived, and are therefore worse off than before.

Judeo-Christian patterns of worship/prayer follow from a primitive view of God as despot to be placated, appeased and flattered.12) Revealed religion—that is, religion built upon revelation from God—carries within it a terrible, built-in danger. Followers of revealed religion understandably believe that they possess the final, ultimate truth of God, which inevitably leads to the imposition of that truth on others, justified by the belief that they are acting according to divine mandate. To compound the problem, the New Testament commonly refers to unbelievers in the most disdainful manner—“wicked evil doers,” ”unholy,” “of the darkness,” “lawless,” “sinners,” “of the devil,” “under the wrath of God,” “damned,” bound for hell, and “dead,” just to name a few. The result is a truly dangerous mix which has the potential to go far beyond mere judgmental attitudes, intolerance and divisiveness, though those things are certainly bad enough. One could easily predict that a revealed religion of this nature would inevitably lead to all manner of horrors: everything from witch hunts to wars and inquisitions. History has more than borne out this prediction.

In modern times, this same unholy cocktail of incendiary ideas—inherited in part from Christian theology—currently drives much of the religion-inspired terrorism and the us-versus-them religious violence that sweeps our world. "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." (Blaise Pascal) "Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion -- several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight." (Mark Twain)

In addition, revealed religion and intellectual freedom are mutually exclusive. If one accepts the concept of revelation, that once-for-all truth has been delivered to humanity by the Creator of the universe, what a person can and cannot reasonably explore is severely restricted. If revelation makes it clear, for example, that there is a destiny of heaven or hell awaiting every person, can one reasonably consider otherwise? If God weighs in, the debate ends and the limits of inquiry are defined. Certain concepts are simply out of bounds; the idea of heresy is born. Thus Christianity narrows the range of human thought and behavior, corralling both mind and life, creating unfree conformists to a supposedly divine dictate.

13) Faith is a trusting commitment not substantiated by evidence or reasoned proof. To make the ultimate life commitment required by the Christian salvation experience, without reasoned consideration of the issues and ramifications, is foolhardy and dangerous. This is the means by which millions become trapped within absurd cults, sometimes with lethal consequences. What may start with an admonition to "just let your heart guide you" may end with a final taste of funny Kool-Aid.

14) The New Testament's claim that Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled many Old Testament messianic prophecies doesn't withstand scrutiny. Virtually every example of fulfilled prophecy exhibits abuse of the original Old Testament context or the facts.

Matthew's 14-generation scheme in Mt.1 (“Thus there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Messiah” (1:17)), whereby he attempts to show how Jesus is the grand culmination of Old Testament salvation history, is a classic example. It’s a force fit: he left out a handful of generations in order to make it work.

Mt.2:18—the New Testament writer contends that Herod's decree to kill the male children at Bethlehem fulfilled a prophecy of Jeremiah (31:15) which refers to "Rachel weeping for her children." Jeremiah however is addressing the problem of Jewish dispersion caused by Babylonian captivity. The "children" referred to are the Jewish people, the descendants of Rachel, who were relocated to Babylon. They were not the victims of a massacre. Far from it, for they, as Jeremiah stated, would "…come back from the land of the enemy (Jer.31:17)." Jer.31:15 has everything to do with the Babylonian captivity and nothing to do with Herod killing children at Bethlehem. Only by doing violence to this passage can Mt.2:18 assert prophetic fulfillment.

Mt.21:4-5—here the New Testament writer commits two fouls in first misinterpreting Zech.9:9 and then manipulating the Jesus story in order to match his misunderstanding. He mistook the obvious parallelism of the Old Testament passage to mean that both a donkey and a foal were being ridden at the same time, instead of the donkey and foal being parallel references to the same animal (perhaps the most common of all Hebrew literary devices). Then he, unlike either of the other two gospel writers who retold this story, portrays Jesus stunt-riding on both animals simultaneously. At best this is an embarrassment; it certainly isn't divinely inspired predictive prophecy.

In historical context, the New Testament writers were employing the same technique used by their contemporaries at Qumran (the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls) who likewise wrested numerous Old Testament passages from their context in order to use them as prophetic credentials for their leader, the one they called the "Teacher of Righteousness."

15) In a religious environment where predictions about the end of the world were very common, Jesus fit right in. He explicitly and repeatedly promised to return to his contemporary generation, an event which he said would usher in the end of the world and the final judgment:

“For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Mat. 16:27-28)

“At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.” (Luke 21:27-33)

See also Mat. 10:23; 23:33-36; 24:30-34; 26:64; Mark 9:1; 13:26-31; 14:62; Luke 9:26-7; 18:6-8; John 21:20-3.

When Jesus warned his contemporaries about the coming judgment he was talking about a cataclysmic event, an imminent, apocalyptic inbreaking of God that would hit them, his immediate hearers. The Gospel writers summarized his message as “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” (Mat. 4:17; Mark 1:15) a reference to the impending end of the age when God overturns the forces of evil and restores his rule (the “kingdom of heaven”) over a rebellious world. In short, Jesus was a doomsday prophet analogous to the kind found on modern street-corners holding a sign with “The End of the World is Near.”

The New Testament writers frequently repeated this belief in Jesus’ promised return, that the end of the world was imminent, and that they were the terminal generation. In fact this theme is so prominent that no coherent understanding of the New Testament is possible without its recognition. See Rom. 13:11-2; 16:20; 1Cor. 1:7-8; 7:29-31; 10:11; 15:51f; Phil. 1:6, 10; 4:5; 1Thes. 1:9-10; 2:19; 4:13-7; 5:23; Heb. 1:1-2; 9:26; 10:36-7; Jas. 5:8-9; 1Pet. 1:4-7, 13, 20; 2:12; 4:7, 12-13; 1John 2:18; Rev 1:1-3; 3:10-11; 22:6, 10-12, 20.

When first generation believers began to die before this promised coming, the apostolic leaders sought to shore up the faithful as Paul attempted to do with his explanations in 1 Thes. 4:13-17 and 1 Corinthians 15: 51-2. In these passages he clearly indicates that not all of the believers then living would die but that some would be alive at Jesus’ coming:

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thes. 4:13-17)

“Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed — in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15: 51-2)

However when the first generation of believers had completely died off, the church faced a thorny problem with opponents who used the failure of this grand promise to mock the faith. 2 Peter, likely the latest of the New Testament books, explicitly addresses this crisis:

“Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” (2 Peter 3:3-4)

But, sadly, rather than face a difficult truth squarely, the author of 2 Peter still clings to the notion of living in the “last days” and proceeds to try and rescue the situation by resort to theological spin doctoring (2 Peter 3:5-18). These efforts at damage control remind one of what religious groups throughout the ages have done when prophecy fails. Rather than learn the lesson that failure attempts to teach and rethink basic assumptions, the sacrosanct is shielded from all true reappraisal and the prophecy is salvaged through the use of spiritual fulfillment notions or other creative theological recasting. The truth is sometimes painful: Jesus was a failed doomsday prophet.

16) Airbrushing Jesus:

On three occasions the earliest Gospel, Mark, records that Jesus became angry, 1:40-45, 3:1-6 and 10:13-16. When Matthew and Luke adapted these stories from Mark (roughly half of Mark’s material was used by Matthew and Luke), in each case they sanitized the text by removing all reference to Jesus’ anger. (See Mt. 8:1-4; 19:13-15: Lk. 5:12-16; 18:15-17) Apparently anger wasn’t thought to be a suitable emotion for the Son of God to display. In the first of these cases, Mk. 1:40-45, Jesus inexplicably appears to get angry with a leper due to how he asked him for healing. This appeared so unseemly to later handlers of the NT text that some changed the wording so that it read Jesus felt compassion toward the leper rather than anger. Most translations, like the King James version, contain the “compassion” reading because it is obviously more palatable, but the oldest and best texts read “anger”, and this is reflected in some newer translations (e.g. NIV).

The makeover Jesus underwent is clearly on display when comparing the earlier Gospels - Mark, Matthew and Luke - to the latest Gospel, John. Apparently realizing that a lot of hellfire and brimstone talk wasn’t the best way to market Jesus, John sanitized most of this from the text and significantly ramped up the love talk which, of course, is how the Gospel of John has come to be known as the love Gospel. Jesus actually speaks very sparingly about love in the earlier three Gospels, a grand total of about 19 verses between them. By comparison over 220 verses depict Jesus the firebrand preacher speaking of hell, condemnation or judgment. (In fact, Jesus speaks more about hell than everyone else in the Bible combined.) So there’s roughly an 11 to 1 ratio of judgment talk to love talk in the first three Gospels, whereas love outweighs judgment in John roughly 60/40 - quite a radical shift! And quite an extreme makeover.

As described in #15 above, the early church had a real problem on its hands due to the failure of Jesus’ promise to return during the lifetime of his contemporaries, a problem which cut right to the heart of his reputation, and by extension the integrity of the gospel message. This of course couldn’t be allowed to stand. Paul was already starting to address this issue mid-century as believers began to die off, and the author of 2Peter had a full-blown crisis to deal with by century’s end. Coming toward the end of the century the Gospel of John was written against the backdrop of this crisis. Not surprisingly, John repeated none of these statements about the impending apocalypse and the return of Jesus which would usher in the end of the world. His makeover now complete, the fiery, volatile, doomsday prophet had now been transformed into the kinder, gentler Jesus of popular imagination.

17) New Testament miracles: These were very superstitious times wherein people believed that miraculous events occurred routinely. Humankind was only beginning to mature out of its childhood at this stage in history and was prone to using supernatural explanations for any process in nature that was not understood, which means just about everything. Gods, angels, demons, fairies, spirits, etc. were a means of labeling the inscrutable. This method was applied to anything from sickness to comets, lightning to volcanoes, bird flight to sunsets, rainbows to windstorms.

The miraculous was also frequently used to adorn momentous occurrences and revered individuals. The writings of both Jewish and Roman historians during this time period attest to this practice. Suetonius, a Roman historian, claimed that the Roman Senate witnessed Augustus Caesar ascend into heaven. Both Suetonius and Tacitus, another Roman historian, assert that the emperor Vespasian healed a blind man by putting saliva on his eyes, and a crippled man by touching him—miraculous events which purportedly were witnessed by many people. Josephus, a Jewish historian, claimed that during the time of the First Jewish War (66-70 CE) a heifer being led to the temple altar gave birth to a lamb, that the temple gate, which took some 20 men to open and close, opened of its own accord one night, and that chariots and soldiers were seen in the clouds around Jerusalem. He further states that the latter miracle was seen by too many people to doubt it.

Evidence from within the New Testament, and from the extra-biblical Jesus tales that followed, reveal a myth-making process that began with the earliest apologists (the Gospel writers) trying to make the case for Jesus as Messiah. As the New Testament repeatedly affirms, the "Jews seek [miraculous] signs"—and that is exactly what the New Testament writers attempted to provide. So some 30 to 60 years after the death of Jesus they gathered the circulating miracle stories about Jesus and compiled them into the four Gospels. Yet close inspection of the parallel miracle stories they wrote reveals evidence of growth and accretion. Just like the proverbial fish story, the miracle story has a tendency over time to become more miraculous. The non-canonical stories that followed grew ever more fantastic and attempted to fill in the gaps left by the New Testament accounts, such as miracle stories from Jesus' childhood. Many of these stories were considered by early Christians to be as divinely inspired as any of the books of the Bible in our present canon. They were read at church services as regularly as we read from the Gospels in today's services. Despite the fact that the church eventually chose to distance itself from these later stories, they form a continuous line of tradition with the officially sanctioned tales.

That the miracles of Jesus are non-historical myths would explain why no contemporary writers ever mentioned Jesus or his miracles which supposedly attracted multitudes and put Judea into such an uproar. It also accounts for how raising Lazarus from the dead neither caught the attention of at least one historian nor that of the other three Gospel writers.

There is a very great difference between accepting assertions about impossible events made by a few people in superstitious times two thousand years ago, with no corroborating evidence, and accepting the results of modern experiments repeated hundreds of thousands of times under rigorous controls, always with the same results.

18) Virtually every major aspect of New Testament theology and the story of Jesus can be found "off-the-shelf" in the religious milieu of the day. This reality belies the claim that Christianity is based upon divine revelation, and reveals the all too human basis of Christian belief.

The early Christians behaved like every other group in every other era -- they adopted and adapted ideas from the culture around them. What Paul and the other early biblical writers had wasn't on their tables, it was in their heads. What they had were the same general notions of divinity, cosmology and humanity, and how those things worked together, that everyone had in their time. They knew how gods worked, so when they wrote about Jesus, they made sure he worked like a god. Not only did Jesus do the same miracles the earlier pagan gods did, but the gospel stories of his miracles are told using the old pagan formula of an aretalogy, listing the miracles and great deeds of the god. Jesus is depicted as the son of god who suffered, died, and was reborn. But he wasn't the first son of god who suffered, died, and was reborn. He brought salvation, but he wasn't the first god to do that either. His mother was a virgin; he wasn't the first god there either. It's the same with miracles, baptism, the Eucharist, heaven, hell, prophecy, and eternal life; the list goes on and on. The pagans had them all, and generations before Jesus.

Like Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Mithras and many others, Jesus was a god, shaped like a man, walking, talking, eating, but still having magic god powers. Like the other pagan god-men, Jesus was a subordinate god, son of the great universal god, miraculously conceived in a mortal woman, living for a while on earth rather than in heaven, helping people. Jesus was not a xerox copy of one particular pagan god. Jesus was new in the same way the first Honda Accord was a new car. But the Accord wasn't the first car. The Accord was a new arrangement of old ideas, some new, but mostly old. So was Jesus.

19) The Resurrection: Five reasons why rational people cannot believe the New Testament accounts: (1) Resurrected savior-gods were commonplace in the pagan religions that flourished before, during, and after the time Jesus of Nazareth lived; (2) Typical of very superstitious times, residents of 1st century Palestine were prone to believe resurrection stories (see, for example, Mt.14:1; 27:52-3); (3) The claim that a dead man was restored to life is an extremely extraordinary claim (to say the least!) that requires extremely extraordinary proof; (4) The only biblical proof in support of the resurrection claim is hearsay in nature; and (5) The NT accounts of the resurrection are both contradictory and incredible.

20) Biblical source material: 2 Peter 2:20-1 states that “no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Evidence from the New Testament, however, tells a different story. The writers of 2 Peter and Jude were guilty of serious errors that reveal the all too human, very fallible nature of their enterprise. Both Peter and Jude placed heavy theological weight upon an intertestamental tale about angels during the time of Noah who had intercourse with women resulting in evil, giant offspring (2 Pet 2:4; Jude 6 – I did my Master’s Thesis on this topic and the connection between 2 Pet 2:4/Jude 6 and the intertestamental sinful imprisoned angels tradition is incontrovertible). To aid in combating enemies of the church, Peter and Jude both used this tale as a key, authoritative example of divine judgment against wrongdoers. It is plain by their usage of it that, in their estimation, these sinful angels were as historic and authentic, and the insights gleaned as revelatory as, say, the story of Israel in the wilderness. The chief intertestamental source of this tale, I Enoch, was quoted as inspired, holy writ by Jude (Jude 14-5). Jude also mistakenly believed that the ancient, antediluvian Enoch actually wrote I Enoch (Jude 14). Peter, an apostolic leader, conferred the ultimate seal of approval by incorporating almost all of Jude's letter into his second epistle.

These problems cannot be dismissed as incidental or unimportant; they strike at the heart of Christianity’s credibility. Regarding I Enoch, it is plain that Jude didn’t understand the true nature of the very source materials upon which he so heavily relied. He naively placed his full trust in this very contrived, highly fanciful writing which scholars universally agree was produced in the two centuries preceding the time of Jesus. Most modern-day Christians, if they only knew, would be horrified to read I Enoch and to realize that this was the type of material from which the New Testament writers derived their theology and inspiration. Peter, a leading apostolic writer, is thus found engaging in fundamental theological reasoning about God and his character from a tradition which is so grossly mythological, a story which is so obviously fictional, that his reliability on spiritual matters must be seriously questioned.

Thankfully, examples such as this one exist wherein the sincere seeker of truth can sweep back the curtain of mystery that surrounds the production of the New Testament and gain a behind-the-scenes look at how the New Testament writers worked and from what sources their ideas actually derive. If, when we are able to put them to the test, the apostolic writers are found to be untrustworthy, why should they be trusted on matters that cannot be so readily scrutinized critically?

Website: http://leavingchristianitytruthsetsfree.blogspot.com/

Witchcraft and Other Nonsense

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 05:09:56 PDT

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

When it comes to witchcraft, very few things can be proven, but this can: my great . . . [number of greats unknown]. . . great grandmother, Mary Perkins Bradbury, was tried and convicted of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, when she was 78 years old.

According to one source, “Witnesses testified that she assumed animal forms; her most unusual metamorphosis was said to have been that of a blue boar. Another allegation was that she cast spells upon ships. Over a hundred of her neighbors and townspeople testified on her behalf, but to no avail and she was found guilty of practicing magic and sentenced to be executed. Through the ongoing efforts of her friends, her execution was delayed. After the witch debacle had passed, she was released.”

Mary was actually one of the more fortunate players in this sad New England drama. Before it was over, twenty men and women were executed and five others died in jail.

But, witches don’t exist! How could such madness happen? In the end, it appears to have resulted from a few people who actually knew nothing being accepted as authorities on something.

Belief in magic and witchcraft has been around since the earliest human cultures. Man appears to have a built-in propensity to believe that when something bad happens, that thing was intended by some conscious agency; someone must be responsible. With the rise of Christianity, it became common to assume that witches were in league with Satan.

Practically from the beginnings of written language, a wide and deep lore of witchcraft was developed and passed from generation to generation. What might be termed the first “official,” widely read and influential book on witches was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer, a German Catholic clergyman. The “Malleus Maleficarum,” meaning "Hammer of the Witches,” is a treatise on the prosecution of witches, written to discredit those who expressed skepticism about witches, and to educate legal authorities on how to identify and convict them.

Between the years 1487 and 1520, the Malleus was published thirteen times (and sixteen more times between 1574 and 1669). Thus, while the book was never officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church, it was enormously influential and became the handbook for secular courts throughout Renaissance Europe.

The Malleus is basically a how-to guide to recognizing, capturing, torturing, and executing witches. An edition of the Malleus currently available on Amazon.com is 308 pages long, and apparently contains very little commentary. It is thus a very detailed compendium of “knowledge” on witches and witchcraft.

Each chapter in the book is comprised of a question and its detailed answer. While many of these questions strike us as comical today, we must keep in mind that the author was deadly serious; I say “deadly” because thousands of innocent people were tortured and executed because of this work.
Here are a few examples:

Question VI: Concerning Witches who copulate with Devils. Why is it that women are chiefly addicted to Evil superstitions?

Question IX: Whether Witches may work some Prestidigitary Illusion so that the Male Organ appears entirely removed and separate from the body.

Question XVIII: Here follows the Method of Preaching and Controverting Five Arguments of Laymen and Lewd Folk, which seem to be Variously Approved, that God does not Allow so Great Power to the Devil and Witches as is involved in the Performance of such Mighty Works of Witchcraft.

The Malleus makes no attempt to actually prove the existence of witches, it simply assumes their existence and builds from there. For the author, a clergyman, the Bible provided both tradition and authority; no further proof was needed than the words of Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

Yahweh, much like witches, appears to be nothing more than a mirage pasted on a shadow balanced on an assumption.This is the fatal flaw of the Malleus Maleficarum: the existence of witches was never proven. Thus, a broad body of knowledge was claimed and disseminated on a subject the author, the AUTHORITY, in fact knew nothing about!

This created a situation wherein nothing actually had to be proven to convict someone of witchcraft. In fact, nothing could have been proven about an alleged witch or his/her powers, since there never was a “true” witch. By “true” witch, I mean a human with supernatural powers via magical brews, incantations, etc.

It is ironic that the Bible provided the authority for the existence of witches since the Bible suffers from the same fatal flaw as the Malleus; the authors of the Bible made no real attempt to prove the existence of a god. To my knowledge, the only passage that appears to offer any evidence at all is Paul’s assertion in Roman’s 1:20, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” But, of course, this passage just assumes that because there’s a world then there must have been a creator, but it certainly doesn’t prove it. And, besides, what if creation was the work of another god, not Yahweh? Paul never considers this issue. The Bible authors simply assumed Yahweh was the principle (or only) god, and built everything else on that assumption.

Yahweh, much like witches, appears to be nothing more than a mirage pasted on a shadow balanced on an assumption. There is no foundational proof. The Malleus Maleficarum, based on a blind appeal to tradition and authority, tore through the Middle Ages destroying the lives of thousands upon thousands of innocent people. Ironically, it was based on another book which is likewise no more than a blind appeal to tradition and authority. And that book, the Bible, has caused even more destruction as it very effectively undermined reason, man’s sole defense against the ravages of nonsense.

It seems the Enlightenment’s insightful instruction to question authority and demand evidence has enabled huge progress in science, politics, economics, and other fields, but has hardly put a dent in entrenched religious superstition.

The lesson is simple: Beware of anything or anyone claiming to be an authority. If the matter is important, then one should demand evidence and insist on proof. Remember: some of the most influential men in history, like Heinrich Kramer and St. Paul, were fools, frauds, or both.

How the Catholic Bishops Outsmarted Washington Voters

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 05:09:56 PDT

By Valerie Tarico ~

When it comes to matters of individual conscience, Washington State voters have a don’t-mess-with-us attitude that makes Texans look like cattle—and it goes way back.

In 2012 Washington voters flexed their muscle by legalizing recreational marijuana use and marriage for same-sex couples. In 2008, death with dignity passed some counties by as much as seventy-five percent. In 2006, Washington lawmakers outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In 1991 a citizen initiative established that “every individual has the fundamental right to choose or refuse birth control” and “every woman has the fundamental right to choose or refuse abortion.” It also guaranteed an absolute right to privacy around mental health and reproductive issues for teens aged 13 and up. Washington State’s constitution includes an Equal Rights Amendment and (from the get-go) a stronger wall of separation between church and state than the U.S. Constitution.

These measures have broad support from Washington citizens of all stripes including most religious people. That includes most Catholics, who, in the words of one Seattle parishioner, think that the bishops "need to get over it."

In other words, west of Moscow, Idaho, and north of Portland, any bishops who want to control what they think of as their sacramental turf --birth, coming of age, sex, marriage, trippy transcendent experiences, and death—haven’t got a chance in hell at the ballot box. Washington even has extended statutes of limitations on child sex abuse—something Archbishop Timothy Dolan successfully fended off in New York and Pennsylvania. The Archdiocese of Spokane declared bankruptcy.

Rather than care being dictated by medical science and patient preference, a set of religious doctrines place restrictions on what treatment options can be offered to (or even discussed with) patients.But the Vatican hasn’t survived for fifteen hundred years by being stupid. And as my devout family members like to say, “Where God closes a door, he opens a window.” The window the Bishops found open in Washington takes the form of independent hospitals with financial problems.

Thanks to changes in health care delivery, more and more independent hospitals are being forced to merge with large health care corporations. The pressures include expensive equipment, complex electronic record keeping technologies, and an Obamacare-driven push for greater administrative efficiency. Rather like mom-and-pop hardware stores that survived by becoming Ace franchisees with standardized, streamlined supply and distribution systems, independent health facilities are surviving through acquisitions and mergers with other hospitals and health care corporations.

Of the largest health care corporations in the country, five of six are administered by the Catholic Church including the famously conservative Catholic Health Initiatives which operates the Franciscan brand and has $15 billion in assets. By the end of 2013, if all proposed mergers go through, 45 percent of Washington hospital beds will be religiously affiliated. In ten counties, 100 percent of hospital facilities will be accountable to religious corporations, which are rapidly buying up outpatient clinics, laboratories, and physician practices as well.

In the words of the U.S. Conference of Bishops, Catholic hospitals and health care corporations are “health care ministries” and “opportunities:”

New partnerships can be viewed as opportunities for Catholic health-care institutions and services to witness to their religious and ethical commitments and so influence the healing profession,” . . . “For example, new partnerships can help to implement the Church’s social teaching.”

Here is the diabolical stroke of genius. In any merger between a secular and Catholic care system, fiscal health comes with a poison pill. One condition of the merger is that the whole system becomes subject to a set of theological agreements call the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” or ERDs. Rather than care being dictated by medical science and patient preference, a set of religious doctrines place restrictions on what treatment options can be offered to (or even discussed with) patients.

Under these agreements, the patient-doctor relationship becomes a patient-doctor-church relationship: “The Church’s moral teaching on healthcare nurtures a truly interpersonal professional-patient relationship. This professional-patient relationship is never separated, then, from the Catholic identity of the health care institution.” Furthermore providers who work in these systems are required to sign binding contractual agreements to adhere to the religious directives, whether or not they are Catholic: “Catholic health care services must adopt these Directives as policy, require adherence to them within the institution as a condition for medical privileges and employment, and provide appropriate instruction regarding the Directives . . . .”

The ERDs in full are readily available to the public, but here are some key samples and implications:

Fertility Treatment: “Reproductive technologies that substitute for the marriage act are not consistent with human dignity.” This provision excludes in vitro fertilization and related treatments. It especially affects same sex couples, who may rely on surrogacy or insemination for childbearing, but it also affects the 10 percent of American couples who have fertility problems.
Contraception: “Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices.” . . . “Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution.” While we don’t typically associate contraception with hospitals, state-of-the-art long acting methods like IUD’s increasingly are provided at the time of delivery, because post partum insertion improves health outcomes. Under ERD guidelines, a woman who delivers a baby at a Catholic hospital and wants and IUD or to have her tubes tied has to have a second, separate procedure at a secular facility—if they can find one.
Abnormal Pregnancies: “In case of extrauterine pregnancy, no intervention is morally licit which constitutes a direct abortion.” Catholic practice encourages the removal of the entire fallopian tube to end an ectopic pregnancy, rather than the standard practice which simply ablates the developing fetus. That is because the standard treatment is considered abortion, while in the invasive and fertility-destroying surgery, death of the embryo is simply a side effect. More broadly, Catholic “ethics” forbid abortion even to save the life of a mother carrying a nonviable fetus. The battle to save a young woman named Beatriz in El Salvador exemplifies this very situation.
Advance Directives - “a Catholic health care institution . . . will not honor an advance directive that is contrary to Catholic teaching.” Where patient directives and bishop directives conflict, the directives of the bishops take precedence regardless of a patient’s own religious or conscience obligations.
DNR - “The free and informed judgment made by a competent adult patient concerning the use or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures should always be respected and normally complied with, unless it is contrary to Catholic moral teaching.” Since this battle heated up, stories are emerging in which Catholic hospitals have force fed incapacitated patients whose advance directives specifically stipulated that this not happen.
Death with Dignity – “Catholic health care institutions may never condone or participate in [Death With Dignity] in any way.” Physicians are prohibited even from discussing options that exist in other institutions or making referrals.

To many non-Catholics, the most shocking statement in the ERDs is the suggested alternative to death with dignity: “Patients experiencing suffering that cannot be alleviated should be helped to appreciate the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering.” Redemptive suffering is a theological notion that derives from the crucifixion story—the idea that the blood sacrifice of a perfect being could redeem harm done. (Theories about how this works have varied over the course of Christian history.) By extension, suffering itself has redemptive value, which is why Mother Teresa’s order, for example, practiced self-flagellation and glorified suffering of the poor, ill and dying.

Given the clash between Washington State’s independence streak and the top-down approach of the Catholic bishops, Washington citizens are pushing back. After Catholic Peace Health got an exclusive contract near her home in the San Juan Islands, advocate Monica Harrington created a website, Catholicwatch.org to complement the efforts of the national Merger Watch. Merger Watch has been fighting the religious takeover of secular systems across the country for over a decade, and sometimes winning, but describes a recent surge that overwhelms their resources. The ACLU of Washington is ramping up and aggregating funds to fight for a state-wide solution, the first in the country, and is soliciting stories (confidentiality protected) from patients and providers anywhere in the U.S. who have experienced religious interference in medical decisions.

Even so, on May 20, the Seattle Times announced an affiliation agreement between the University of Washington system and Peace Health. Within Catholic-controlled hospitals, less than five percent of revenues come from the Catholic Church. Most are taxpayer funds in the form of Medicaid, Medicare and capital grants for public services—or insurance reimbursement. So, the thought of the bishops influencing a public owned and funded institution adds insult to injury. In response, Columnist Danny Westneat, of the Times, framed a pointed question. “Most of us aren’t Catholic, so I’m guessing we’d never go along with letting the creeds of that one faith run something as universal as education [even if ‘the Catholics have a good record of running quality schools’]. So why are we allowing it with health care?”

Why indeed.

Related:

Eight Ugly Sins the Catholic Bishops Hope Lay People and Others Won't Notice

The Difference Between a Dying Fetus and a Dying Woman

Catholic Hierarchy Lobbies to Suppress Religious Freedom

Self-Flagellation and the Kiss of Jesus–Mother Teresa’s Attraction to Pain

The Freedom to Die in Peace

Anti-Contraception Cardinal Paid Pedofiles to Disappear

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Subscribe at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

Religions: The More They Differ, the More They're the Same

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 03:11:04 PDT

By Carl S. ~

There are times when l ﬁnd myself wishing this were not an ex-Christian, but an ex- believer, site. There are good reasons for this. For one thing, shared experiences for the sake of comparison would be eye-opening amongst believers of many faiths. For another, the rationalizations and convoluted defenses of the faiths would be exposed; those ways in which people were conned into accepting them in the ﬁrst place. Then there is the emotional involvement, the dedication and utmost certainty each testiﬁer would have to offer as evidence why he or she stayed in the respective faith. And, why each believer in each respective faith thought he or she was in the one true one.

It would be enlightening to note that all religions begin with miracles, that all of them somehow manage to lose all the “evidence” for their claims even at their beginnings. And that the conﬂicts in interpretations of their beliefs at those beginnings are still unresolved to this day, as ﬁrmly as they are taught to be believed unquestionably by each religion and sect. Each believer would share the fact that none of the beliefs has evidence to back them, that their god or gods are invisible and untouchable. And, that the commandments from their god or gods are quite different for each of them, dependent on geographical location.

Every religion claims visions, miracles, and martyrs as reasons they are true. But, if believers are willing to die for each faith, and each division within their faith, that is no proof at all of any of them being true. Within every faith are heretics, and, since no one has any evidence of what is true or not in belief systems, everyone is a heretic. Visions and voices of an invisible god are no different from mind hallucinations, and yet all religions reference them as portals to spiritual knowledge.

Every religion begins as a cult.

All former faith adherents can tell you how they claimed to “know in my heart” as their primary reason for believing in their deity's existence. Note that, to members of various faiths, the real deity can be and is Krishna, Jesus, Zeus, Thor, Venus, etc., etc., throughout the centuries. Each religion claims that you need to believe in it completely to be good, and that without obeying its rules you will be immoral and condemned to a fate worse than death. Some will forbid pork and/or alcoholic beverages. All of them will tell you how to control your sex life, what and who to avoid like the plague, and urge you to suppress your curiosity about the world in general, since their scriptures disagree with it. Each of them creates their own “reality.”

Religions depend on the willingness of their members to lie to themselves; in fact, this is a necessity which they elevate to the status of virtue. And, they are well aware of how willing humans are to be deluded (and easily prone to self-delusion). They demand allegiance to them as the price to pay to be “forgiven“ by their deity, and them, for whatever your offences to the rules might be. And, the rules vary with the sect. (Of course, yours is the “true” one.) And, if you walk away from any of them without explanation, forget all that propaganda about being forgiven. There is nothing to be gained for them from a prodigal son, a moral person who can't accept the dogmas any more, who doesn't repent and bow down to ask for forgiveness. You are ostracized or even killed for not accepting the loving forgiveness of the god and his people. (And to think that you lived with so many strings attached to truss you.)

I wonder if every “ex” from religion has taken the same paths to reach reality, choosing morality over blind adherence to belief systems. It would be great to compare experiences, don't you think?

Why do most people easily trust anecdotes and dismiss data when paranormal is served?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 03:11:26 PDT

By Doubting Thomas ~

Recently I spoke to a friend of mine about a car of a one German producer which has been proclaimed by a study as the most reliable machine on the market. I’ve said to him that I would love to have that car. He looked at me with a smile and said: “No way. That car sucks. I know a guy who bought him and had a lot of problems with it”. He simply discarded data from analysis I showed to him and not even bothered to read it.

This example proves that testimonies are more accepted as evidence of truth than ‘boring’ and comprehensive analysis. That is a known fact which is used in marketing since humanity exists. Let us apply it to religion. When people hear of personal testimony of somebody’s conversion or miracle story they will easily believe it and accept it as a self-evident proof of God’s existence. On the other hand, when you show them medical data or present them with other more plausible scientific explanations they will in majority cases discard them, because “one of those miracles is surely a genuine one”.

Evolution made as we are – some of us are more prone to supernaturalism and some less. Paranormal perspective is mysterious and people are natural mystics.Something similar happened when I had a discussion with an acquaintance who has just graduated in psychology. The topic was psy abilities. While I said that evidence for psy is weak or non-existent, when proper experimental conditions are approved, he replied that “there are millions of testimonies and stories that can not be all false and that modern science can’t grasp or explain psy or other supernatural phenomenon”. Frankly, I was kind of disappointed. This guy studies psychology and before he tried to give some rational explanation he immediately skipped to supernaturalism explanations of strange phenomena. I wanted to say that maybe problem was with cognition processes of people who report anomalous experiences and explain them the best they can in frames of their beliefs and education, or even if we do not have a plausible rational explanation there is no need to skip to a fantastic one, but I gave up…

I don not want to be a hypocrite and say that I am immune to this kind of reasoning. Evolution made as we are – some of us are more prone to supernaturalism and some less. Paranormal perspective is mysterious and people are natural mystics. Probably that makes our lives more interesting or complicated, if you cross the line of exaggeration when magic and supernaturalism is involved. Culture and what we learn also plays important role in this kind of reasoning. That is way despite all the scientific progress majority of people will always be cautious when paranormal is served on the menu. Hopefully, that will change…

A Confused Christian

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 03:10:36 PDT

By Princ ~

I became a saved Christian on January 2013 when I came across the concept of salvation on the internet. I decided to become a Christian because I was interested in following the commandments of God and I also liked the idea of Jesus caring about everyone. Two weeks after my conversion, I decided to read the bible and that is when I was so shocked at the cruelty of God. The Old testament is filled with violence, genocide, rape and threats against the Israelis. I was disgusted at the fact that God orders his people to invade other lands, kill all the people and take virgin women as wives.

There are also detailed instructions on how to beat your slaves. I could not believe that many Christians were defending this type of cruelty by claiming that the Canaanites were so evil or God has the right to kill anyone. I also realized that there were thousands of different doctrines regarding salvation and the afterlife. One doctrine is the once saved, always saved doctrine, another one is the lordship salvation and the third one is the salvation based on works. I was so confused as to which one is the right one. I was also confused and scared when I came across the doctrine of eternal torment. I did not know anything about hell when I initially became a saved believer. Needless to say, the concept of eternal torment caused anxiety, scrupulosity, fear and pessimism in me. I was very concerned that my family members were going to hell because they are not saved.

Many people say that they felt peace or hope when they came to know about Jesus. In my case, I think that converting to Christianity was the biggest mistake I have ever made in my 21 yrs on earth. As of May 2013, I am on a breaking point. I am not sure if I should completely fall away from Christianity or if I should continue in my faith. Christianity has been a source of fear for the past 4 months. I am not sure what to do.

Will the Catholic Bishops Decide How You Die?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Fri, 31 May 2013 05:18:23 PDT

By Valerie Tarico ~

What happens when religious institutions get to manage public funds, absorb secular hospitals, and put theology above medical science and individual patient conscience?

In 2010, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an elderly woman was rushed to a local hospital called St. John. She had suffered a massive stroke and could no longer eat, drink or speak. Mercifully, she was one of the growing percent of Americans who have prepared for such an eventuality by writing an end of life directive. Hers said that said she did not want artificial hydration or nutrition if she wasn’t going to recover. Unfortunately, St. John is a facility where the directives of the Catholic bishops take precedence over the directives of individual patients, and one such directive orders hospitals to feed and hydrate end of life patients whether they want it or not.

Americans would do well to consider what happens when theology dictates health care.

In the official language of the Bishops, St. John is a “Catholic health care ministry,” their term for all Church affiliated hospitals and clinics. Catholic health care ministries are publically licensed institutions intended to serve the general public. They are highly subsidized by public dollars. To fund them the Church uses a variety of public revenue streams including Medicare, Medicaid, county appropriations, federal dollar allocated through the 1946 Hospital Survey and Construction Act, and tax exempt government bonds. As with any hospital, additional revenues come from insurance payments and investments, with the end result that the Catholic Church contributes less than five percent of the funds flowing through their hospitals and clinics. And yet the Bishops place theological restrictions on care for all patients and sometimes forbid providers from telling patients that treatment options exist elsewhere.

According to MergerWatch, Catholic control of health dollars and hospital facilities is on the rise across the U.S. In Washington State, for example, if all currently proposed mergers go through, almost half of hospital beds will lie in the hands of religious institutions by the end of 2013. Across the U.S., as Catholic systems such as Peace Health and Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) quietly absorb secular hospitals, the Bishops are fighting in court for the religious equivalent of corporate personhood, claiming that the constitution gives them institutional conscience rights that trump patient choice. Meanwhile, Catholic owned pharmacies are suing for the right to deny services; and other Catholic owned business are demanding (and winning) religious exemptions from health insurance obligations.

In an effort to standardize the rules of Catholic institutions and the advice that priests give lay people, the Bishops have created what they call “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care," called ERDs for short. When secular and religious institutions merge, the Bishops’ directives often restrict services in both. Patients may not realize that a once secular institution named Swedish or Highline is now subject to theology and could impose religious beliefs at odds with those of the patient. Following mergers, changes often are gradual, occurring slowly as staff leave and are replaced with believers, which makes the shift even harder for patients to detect. (Religious hospitals are exempt from non-discriminatory employment practices, somewhat remarkable given that so much of their funding is public.) Hospital administrators may state that they do not interfere in the doctor-patient relationship, while at the same time advertising for staff who are “deeply familiar” with the Bishops directives.

From a consumer standpoint, one problem with putting religion rather than science in charge of healthcare is that patients may not know they are being denied the full range of medically appropriate options. They may have no idea when institutional rules prevent doctors and nurses from honoring end-of-life wishes or discussing services that are available in secular settings, services like contraception, abortion, tubal ligation, vasectomy, fertility treatment, or death with dignity. For example, one woman tells of being diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy at a religious hospital. She was advised that she needed to have her fallopian tube removed. Fortunately, she consulted her smart phone and realized that elsewhere she could simply obtain a medication to end her nonviable pregnancy. The medication is safer and leaves fertility intact, but the Catholic directives treat this as a direct abortion, while the surgery (which damages long term fertility) kills the fetus indirectly and so is acceptable.

Other countries where Catholic theology limits health options offer a dire warning of what might happen here if the Church had an equal hold on the levers of power. In El Salvador, Catholic theology was written into law in 1998, banning all abortions, even those intended to save the mother. As a consequence, a twenty two year old mother named Beatriz, who carries a nonviable fetus, lies in a hospital bed with her kidneys failing, hoping to be granted an exception by El Salvador’s Supreme Court. She has been waiting for over a month. In Catholic Ireland last October, a young dentist, Savita Halappanavar, died after being refused an abortion.

In an ironic twist, the extremity of Catholic directives leads many people to believe that they couldn’t possibly be implemented here. Consider the case of Beatriz. She is the mother of a young child. Her fetus is anencephalic, meaning it has no brain and never will be a person under any circumstance. (Note: Somewhere between sixty and eighty percent of human fertilized eggs self-destruct naturally before a full-term gestation, most before a woman knows she is pregnant, and many because they are defective.) In other words, the Salvadorian anti-abortion law risks the life of a young mother for an incomplete fetus that is a normal failed reproductive product rather than a potential child. For someone who thinks that morality is about wellbeing, this just sounds crazy. Of course this could never happen in the US, right? You may be astounded to learn that a Phoenix nun was excommunicated and her hospital was forcibly disaffiliated from the Catholic Church for allowing an abortion under similarly hopeless circumstances.

In Ireland, after Savita’s unnecessary death, thousands of men and women demanded medical services based on scientific evidence and individual conscience. Savita became the tragic face of an international movement. Even so, given the power of religious institutions and traditions, legal change in Ireland is likely to be minimal. The largely Catholic Irish Medical Association has declined to request abortion rights even in cases of incest, rape and nonviable fetal anomalies. Currently Irish law allows abortion only when a mother’s life is threatened, which is not good enough for a case like Savita’s. A leading obstetrician testified that Savita probably would have survived if she had gotten an abortion during the first three days of her hospital stay. But at that time, there was not a “real and substantial threat to her life.” By the time she met the legal criteria, it was too late.

Patients count on their doctors to know and suggest their best options to protect health and wellbeing. But as medical options increase, especially at the beginning and end of life, the range of services excluded for theological reasons also increases. Catholic “ethicists” devote millions of dollars to analyzing biomedical technologies in the pipeline and then advocating policy based on theological priorities. They block certain lines of research and prevent affiliated hospitals from participating in clinical studies that require participants to be on contraception, for example a cancer treatment that might cause fetal defects. Procedures opposed by the theologians are likely to be absent altogether from patient-doctor conversations.

Some patient advocates say that mandatory disclosure is part of the solution: Pharmacies that refuse to fill some prescriptions should post the fact that they are not full-service. Church-run abortion diversion centers known as crisis pregnancy centers, should post that they are not medical providers. Treatment consent forms should list the scientifically and medically accepted practices that a doctor or hospital refuses to provide so that patients know that these services are available elsewhere. Conversely, providers who sign onto a “Patients’ Bill of Rights” promising to base care only on medical science and patient conscience could get the equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

Catholic theology sees pain as having positive soul-purifying benefits.But disclosure alone won’t ensure state-of-the-art health care for many Americans, especially those living in small towns or rural settings. Sometimes one clinic or pharmacy serves a wide area, or all nearby services are managed by the same religious institution. In these cases, a woman with a painful and life-threatening ectopic pregnancy might not be able just to get in her car and drive to another clinic. Denial of service hits low income communities hardest because members often have less flexible time off work, transportation, and childcare. The right of religious doctors and institutions to deny services obstructs the right of patients to receive timely care that meets normal medical practice standards, which are designed to maximize wellbeing.

That is because Catholic theology isn’t necessarily about wellbeing; it is about submitting to the perceived will of God. Sometimes these two align, and sometimes they don’t. To serve God’s will, Catholic theologians attempt to derive moral principles that are about the inherent goodness or evil of certain beliefs and behaviors, regardless of their consequences. In this way of thinking, contraceptives or abortions should not be provided because they are “intrinsically evil,” even when contraception or abortion may save a woman's life.

To make matters worse, Catholic theology values passive submission to harm when it is believed to serve Catholic practice or faith. Saints are heralded for their commitment to theological principle even in the face of outrageous and foreseeable outcomes, including martyrdom. In fact, Catholic theology sees pain as having positive soul-purifying benefits. This is called redemptive suffering. In the ERDs, it is offered up as an alternative for patients whose unbearable pain leads them to seek death with dignity:

Dying patients who request euthanasia should receive loving care, psychological and spiritual support, and appropriate remedies for pain and other symptoms so that they can live with dignity until the time of natural death. . . . Patients experiencing suffering that cannot be alleviated should be helped to appreciate the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering.

Former nun Mary Johnson (author of An Unquenchable Thirst) spent twenty years working with Mother Teresa’s organization, the Missionaries of Charity, who have been accused of providing substandard treatment and pain management. She explains the sometimes abysmal conditions in their facilities thus:

Most people today would say that we help the poor by helping them out of poverty. That was never Mother Teresa’s intention. Mother Teresa often told us that as Missionaries of Charity we did not serve the poor to improve their lot, but because we were serving Jesus, who said that whenever service was rendered to one of the least, it was rendered to him. Jesus promised eternal life to those who fed the hungry and clothed the naked.

The point, in other words, is not necessarily to solve the problem but simply to perform service. Ultimately, it isn’t about real world outcomes for the person on the receiving end but about eternal outcomes for the person on the giving end. The difference is important. And although Johnson doesn’t mention it, the passage she quotes mentions the ill as well as the hungry and naked. The Jesus of the gospel writer promises eternal life to those who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit prisoners, and care for the ill. When religion and healing are at odds, the way to get to heaven is to offer theologically principled care, even when more compassionate options are available.

This difference in objectives seems like reason enough to separate religion from medicine. Thanks to science, fertility treatment has come a long way from the mandrakes and dove blood prescribed in the Bible. Victims of sexual assault now have options other than being forced to bear rape babies (also the Biblical solution). As we face death, we have alternatives to convincing ourselves that suffering is redemptive. Do really we want theology at the helm of our biggest hospital and clinic systems?

If not, it may be time for ordinary men and women to speak our minds. In Washington State, where the battle over Catholic hospital mergers is heating up, the state constitution specifically prohibits the use of public funds to support religious institutions. Despite that prohibition, one district actually has a line-item in the property tax code to subsidize a Peace Health facility, leaving the local community with no secular alternative. With the Peace Health clinic newly open the local bishop has already tried to block the now Catholic system from providing lab work for Planned Parenthood, as was done in the past. Legal challenges may play out in court thanks to a patients’ rights campaign by the ACLU and grassroots groups, but the broader question is this:

When it comes to medical options, whose beliefs count, the Bishop’s or the patient’s? Who gets to say whether one woman is forced to incubate a pregnancy gone wrong or another is force fed at the end of life? Whose version of god gets to dictate how you live and how we die?

If you have had medical interference from a religious institution, please share your story with the ACLU of Washington, whether you live in Washington or not: http://www.aclu-wa.org/myhealthcare .

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Subscribe to her articles at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

This article first published at Truthout: http://truth-out.org/news/item/16391-will-the-catholic-bishops-decide-how-you-die-or-whether-you-live

Related:

On Loving Life and Leaving It

Eight Ugly Sins the Catholic Bishops Hope Lay Members and Others Won’t Notice

The Difference Between a Dying Fetus and a Dying Woman

Catholic Hierarchy Lobbies to Suppress Religious Freedom

Self-Flagellation and the Kiss of Jesus--Mother Teresa's Attraction to Pain

Anti-Contraception Cardinal Paid Pedofiles to Disappear

What religion has contributed to the world this month - Episode 6 (April/May 2013)

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 23 May 2013 01:55:23 PDT

By ConversationWithA ~

This series of videos chronicles month by month the reported horrid acts committed by the followers and leaders of religions from around the world. This episode illustrates the hate, bigotry, and ignorance spread by religion from mid April 2013 to mid May 2013. You may be shocked at how much harm religion can cause in just one month. Viewer discretion is strongly advised

God condemns himself -- updated and further refined

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 29 May 2013 05:57:03 PDT

By Brian Kellogg ~

I recently had an online discussion with a fundamentalist Christian that encouraged me to think deeper about the below argument. This is the beautiful result of honest debate. It either further strengthens your reasoning or it shows that you may be wrong. Either result is good even when we find we are wrong. Life is about growing. I'd rather not live with my fingers forever metaphorically in my ears.

English: Abraham embraces his son Isaac after receiving him back from God (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This argument was one of the lynch pins as to why I had to leave Christianity. Christopher Hitchens was the one who initially caused me to honestly and critically analyze the story of Abraham's attempted murder of his son Isaac with one of his often finely tuned and targeted retorts in a debate. For this I am indebted to him to do what little I can for the cause of free-thinking as well.

Any Christians reading this please post your rebuttal(s) as I know I am not infallible.

Let's look at the Abraham Isaac fiasco a little more. If we were to judge this event by new testament standards Abraham would be guilty of human sacrifice. Jesus tells us that if we just consider committing a sin in our mind we are guilty of it (Mat 5:28). Unfulfilled intention is as damnable as the intent fulfilling outward act itself. So, in short, we have god tempting Abraham causing Abraham to commit human sacrifice. Whether Abraham actually followed through on his intent to perform the heinous act motivated by god of sacrificing his son Isaac doesn't matter according to Jesus who is proclaimed the son of and equal to god in the new testament.

Now, the christian god does not change (Mal 3:6) so what god considered sin in the NT applies to the old as well. As we have already seen, unfulfilled intention is as damnable as the intent fulfilling outward act itself (Mat 5:28; 1Jo 3:15). The christian god also decrees that human sacrifice is evil (Deut 12:31, 18:10; 2Ki 21:6). By the christian god's own inspired words he judges himself guilty of tempting Abraham to commit a vile sin and thereby is complicit in Abraham's sin of sacrificing his son Isaac. The bible says the christian god cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone with evil (James 1:13), but yet we see that god in this case did tempt Abraham with evil.

The passage Romans 13:10 is found in speaks of love fulfilling the law and specifically states that love does no harm. If love does no harm than how can anyone say that Abraham loved Isaac and that what god commanded Isaac to do was not wrong? Given this, how can god judge his act of attempted murder as fulfilling the law as this is certainly not an act of love? This is a huge despicable inconsistency. This is even more a problem in the light of Hebrews 11 lauding Abraham's murderous faith; Hebrews 11:17-19. Perhaps love is not the greatest of these out of the choices of love, hope, and faith to the author of Hebrews (1 Corinthians 13), or the author fails to realize that what Abraham did was certainly not showing love to Isaac. Abraham would be rightly found guilty of attempted murder in our modern day court of law.

The two greatest commandments are most definitely in conflict here? Must the Christian's god's narcissism always take precedence? Would someone who says they love you really ask something like this of you? What of Abraham's narcissism who was obviously more concerned with "the promise" than his own son's well-being? This is a morally disgusting story. There is nothing worthy of commendation to be found in it. It stands entirely self condemned to any clear thinking critical mind.

Does the christian god stand self-condemned? The only way to partially wiggle out of this textual conundrum, in my humble opinion, is to admit the obvious, that the bible is not infallible. Or, the christian god is not subject to his own moral dictates which would actually hold a lot of weight from the evidence provided by the bible itself; this fits the might makes right philosophy that many of the bible authors subscribe to. After all who are we to tell the potter what it can and can't do with the clay (Romans 9:21); so just shut up and be glad it wasn't you he was screwing with.

Website: http://the-flakes.blogspot.com/

God's Justice System?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 29 May 2013 05:57:03 PDT

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

I read recently that the U.S. has roughly 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prison inmates. This is a major burden on our society as prisoners are expensive to house. Across the country our prisons are overcrowded and more are being built all the time. We must be doing something wrong here.

Now some would say that the “war on drugs” and mandatory sentences are largely to blame for this problem, and they may well have a point. Nevertheless, the political conservatives are adamant that punishment is the path to righteousness and the war must be continued. So, where should we look for a solution?

Well, what if we were to take a solution from the Bible? When god found humans were doing wrongs left and right, he quickly found a solution; it’s called “scapegoating.” So that he could forgive all those wrongs against him, he found an innocent man, pinned all those wrongs on him, then tortured and executed him. Voilà, end of problem.

So, perhaps we should find an innocent man and torture and execute him so that he could pay for all those wrongs the present and future prisoners have done against our society. Then we could empty out all those prisons and put an end to our great social problem. If this is what god would call justice, should we disagree?

Of course, as the Bible tells us, we live in a wicked world, so it might be hard to find a truly innocent man. That doesn’t really need to be a problem though; surely we could find a toddler, 3 or 4 years old, perhaps, or a baby even, to torture and execute?

Here again, the Bible provides a clear precedent in 2 Samuel 12, where god is angry with King David for his adultery so he causes the infant son of David to be deathly ill for seven days and then die, as punishment for David’s wrongs.

So, what do you think, should we use God’s justice system as taught in the Bible? Are we guilty of hubris in thinking we might find a better way?

Actually, I hesitated to publish this since there are people out there who believe the Bible is the answer to all our problems. Some fool may actually think I have proposed a righteous and workable solution to prison overcrowding. I tell ya, religion stands logic on its head and makes the world a very scary place sometimes.

Happy Childless-Not-By-Choice Day

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 29 May 2013 04:32:09 PDT

By Positivist ~

Important: I am not looking for sympathy here. Please don't dish that out, or empty platitudes. This is not a sob story but a point of discussion.

Childless Millionaire and a Poor Woman Blessed with Children (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently a friend, upon learning of our ongoing struggle with infertility, gasped in horror, "I would DIE without my kids!" Realizing the moment she uttered those words that perhaps they were not helpful to my pain, she stopped short and looked at me strangely. The conversation changed direction abruptly at that point. This topic is not popular.

Now, several friends have dealt with infertility by extracting from the clenched fist of God that which they feel is due them, with an equally wide range of methods as results. We are one of the few folks out there who believed in the sovereignty of God and his perfect, loving plan for our prayer-filled lives.

We have finally concluded that God has nothing to do with fertility--or anything else for that matter--but sadly we are left holding the bag from a belief system that failed us monstrously, not only in this facet of our lives but in many others as well.

Shall I assume that God knows best, or should I assume instead that he has nothing to do with anything? Was it God's plan that we sell the house to raise money for in vitro--$20,000 per implantation, regardless of success? Would it be God's will that my husband and I divorce over our pain? Was it God's will that we kept attending our highly fertile church, despite the intense pain it causes us? Is it simply God's will, perhaps for the betterment of my character, that I am the only woman remaining in the congregation while all the church's mothers are called to the front to get a flower to commemorate their robust reproductive systems? Is my pain an "I love you" from God? Or is it simply God's will that I live a life of endless suffering, for his great glory, because the odour of my gaping, purulent and infected child-wound, the saline tears that flush it, and the cries of anguish that underscore it, are pleasing to God?

It is not infertility exclusively that has driven us from belief, but it certainly has not helped. The usual answers we get from religious people regarding why our prayers (for anything) go unanswered are:

We can't understand God's plan ("don't ask questions")
Our suffering may have a huge impact on God's kingdom, even decades after our death ("suck it up; someone else's salvation is more important than your peace, fulfillment or happiness in this life")
The world is a messy place and who can understand why prayers seem to go unanswered ("excellent question; wanna go ride bikes?")
God owes us nothing; we owe him everything ("who cares if it works? It's true, and that's all that matters")
You must have done something wrong, believed the wrong thing, or cherry-picked the wrong verses ("you're not doing it [the christian faith] right")

It is easy to deconstruct each of these and to show how absurd they each are. I was of the "God owes us nothing" belief, in case you're wondering, while simultaneously harbouring the belief that he loves us, loves to bestow good gifts on his children, is more kind and giving than any earthly parent, and is moved by compassion to act on our behalf. It's funny how it's so easy to preach that "God owes you nothing" when he in fact has already given you everything--you see, it's people with children who tell me "God owes us nothing" in response to my pain. Wouldn't it be absurd for a well-fed American to shrug off a Somalian child's starvation with "God owes us nothing"? Where's the compassion, never mind the logic?

Atheists, lesbians and humanists salve my wounds; they comfort me and nurture me back to health. Indeed, much kindness exists where I did not expect it.The other problem with the "God owes us nothing" tripe is the fact that the gospels send a very different message with its inane, grandiose and ultimately empty promises. I fell for these promises, hook, line and sinker. I built my life upon the shifting sands of a Middle Eastern failed apocalyptic prophet.

In all of my hardship, the message I am ultimately getting is not a religious one at all. Instead, I rue the day I stepped foot in a charismatic church. I threw away the best years and biggest talents of my life, poured them into a bottomless inferno along with all that I treasured. I shut my brain off--essentially turning off my intellectual gag reflex--so that I could swallow bigger and bigger nuggets of bullshit doled out by Bible-believing pastors. I gobbled it up, believing it was nourishing my heart, mind and spirit. I cherished spiritual food above real nourishment. Instead of thriving, though, I became increasingly cachexic. Lacking grace for my ceaseless pain and so intellectually bereft that I failed to grasp the simplest of religious notions--like understanding when it is appropriate to cherry pick which Bible verse--I finally, late in my third decade on planet earth, dragged my battered, pain-wracked and nutritionally depleted body that housed a spirit broken by God's withholding of compassion, away from the fading embers of God's cruel inferno and quietly licked my open, weeping wounds in the fading shadows of failing belief. Few followed me to this dark wilderness--but I find a kindness there I did not expect. Atheists, lesbians and humanists salve my wounds; they comfort me and nurture me back to health. Indeed, much kindness exists where I did not expect it.

The wilderness becomes my new home.

I am emerging from the debris of a life of pain and suffering. I emerge but not the way I entered my wilderness; I emerge by a different road. I am changed and so is my path. I am entering a promised land--but not the one that was promised to me. It is a new promised land but of my own making. Bereft of grace and intellectually impoverished, my feet stumbled over great pain, and my strength finally failed, but I finally am finding peace.

Tis a strange road, this path we trod, lined with flowers but paved with despair. Nonetheless, we tarry on each in our own way. May we never cease to be moved by compassion, for such is all that sustains us.

So, I wish you all "Happy Childless-Not-By-Choice Day", regardless of your procreative prowess. As you scan your newsfeed and see everyone thanking a deity for their children, please remember (and maybe even remind them) that a deity is not part of the reproductive equation.

If you are a believer reading this, please do not respond with offers of prayer. I lack the grace to hear what you actually said --"I'll pray for you"--and instead hear "fuck you". Most Christians can't handle an upset theological apple cart. Please don't tell me I "did" Christianity wrong. I didn’t.

Above all, I extend my compassion to those who have tried to become parents, without success, and to those who have found that the grace promised them has been withheld and the promises of their beliefs empty. May you find peace and comfort.

It's Obvious . . . Really?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 26 May 2013 02:17:16 PDT

By Carl S. ~

Kahlil Gibran : “The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.”

Hans Holbein- The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Prior to modern scientiﬁc forensics, there was no acceptable way to prosecute a murder suspect without the actual physical body of the victim. This is no longer the case. Fiber analysis, DNA, footage of the suspect purchasing the murder weapon, or being absent from a place where the murderer claimed himself to be at the time of the killing, etc., are acceptable evidence in courts of law. Whenever enough evidence is amassed to show that the victim was killed by a particular person, a conviction follows.

You can understand how in the past, being unable to prosecute without a body allowed murderers to get off Scott-free. Or how, even with an actual corpse, the innocent could be convicted solely on the testimonies of what presently can be proven to be hearsay and/or dubious “eyewitness” reports. (Such eyewitnesses having their own motives pro or con the accused.) By today’s standards, what was formerly acceptable as “obvious,” isn't.

If we imagine those former times, when a body WAS necessary to prove that the person was actually dead, we might conjecture this conversation:

Luke: They told me the Great One was murdered and interred near the place where the murder took place. I went looking but I didn't find his body. I thought someone moved it during the night and buried it someplace no one would think of looking for it, to cover up the crime.

Matt: I don't understand. You think someone dug up a body and re-buried it?

Luke: It wasn't buried, but I think it could be now. I've been told it was placed in a tomb. I looked into the tomb everybody mentioned, but there was no stone moved away from in front of it. In fact, there were no marks to show any stone had been moved. But, there were many, many footprints on the floor inside, indicating that much activity took place there recently.

Matt: Look. Save your time. I and many others know that the victim came back to life fro the dead and walked away. We have this information from witnesses. In fact, he went back to assure his family and close friends that he wasn't dead. They didn't recognize him, strangely, but maybe it was because of what he'd been through. I don't know.

Luke: So, let me get this straight. According to you, who got your info as hearsay, and them, he went back and returned to his former life, as if his murder didn't affect him? Like people who fail at suicide and find life to be really worth living? I'll bet that everyone who heard about him wanted to know what it was like to be dead and come back to life. This fantastic event couldn't help but spread like wildﬁre throughout the region, and thousands of people would come to visit him to see for themselves!

Matt: Well, that didn't happen. From what I heard, and believe, he just left us soon after, and was never seen again.

Luke: I'm confused. You’re saying that because we didn't ﬁnd this particular body in the ﬁrst place, it’s because the body got up and walked away? Was there really a murder? This implies there wasn’t, because the body wasn't dead after all. But, it's possible that the person ran away or was kidnapped and was never seen again and isn't dead. The rule of proof states, “No body, no murder. No body, no conviction.” A unique event, though, everyone claims?

Matt: Now that you mention it - no, not so unusual, I guess. There are OTHERS whose bodies were not found. They had already been buried, in fact. They clawed their way out from underground. They were seen by many, walking around. Maybe they went home for awhile to assure their families; maybe not. We don’t know, because they also didn't stay around; they mysteriously disappeared. Come to think of it - the one whose death you were investigating - he ﬂoated up through the clouds, and THAT'S why he was never seen again. I can believe that. And so, that's what happened to those others back from the dead; they ﬂoated up too. And some day, anyone who dies will ﬂoat away alive, into the heaven above. It makes sense.

Luke: Except that everything you're saying tells me that there is no evidence: that ALL the evidence VANISHED for major events that happened in your lifetime. Your “proof” went “poof!“ Now I suppose that those un-dead ones you mentioned went somewhere where they lived happily ever after?

Matt: You're not getting it. It's obvious, isn't it? Up, up and away into the sky!

Luke: What's obvious to me is that people DO see things that aren't real. What you've been told by these so-called witnesses usually starts with, “Once upon a time...”

Matt: Well, I believe it. It's obvious to me.

Luke: Obviously. Something else is obvious to me. Unlike you, I can read and write. For three decades now I've written down the testimonies. I've been coming around in my travels and asking the same questions of the same people, and each time they tell different, more and more elaborate stories about what happened, starting from the very beginning when I began to record them. And now, it’s reached the point where the “memories” they have are VERY different from the confused stories they initially came up with. Don't you think it's time you found someone to write them down for you?

Matt: Obviously, it's too late. Who would believe them?

Notice how evidence disappears even in the lifetimes of those “explaining” such evidence - evidence such as a cruciﬁed body, the body of Jesus’ mother, Mary, Mohammed's body, the ten commandment tablets, Joseph Smith's golden tablets, etc.?