ExChristian.Net -- encouraging ex-Christians

Mr. Deity and the Magic

2009-07-08T20:55:00Z

By Mr. Deity

Related articles by Zemanta

What Would (Should) Jesus (God) Do (Have Done)?

2009-07-07T21:59:00Z

By James C

Jesus, being God in the Trinity and therefore all-knowing, all powerful, merciful and loving, can be called to task for questionable actions in both the Old and New Testaments.

For instance…

When he instructed Adam to not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil… he KNEW that would be violated because he knew the future. So why didn’t he simply put a guard of cherubims and flaming sword to protect it, as he did later to keep A&E out of the Garden? Thus saving the world’s population from the guilt of original sin, in which they had no personal guilt!

And in deciding to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he had to know that in the near future Lot’s wife would succumb to simple curiosity and that Lot himself would be guilty of drunken incestuous sex, TWICE, impregnating both of his (non-virgin) daughters. Shouldn’t he have been a bit more merciful on the wife, and less glorifying in inspiring Peter, in Peter2, to call Lot “just.” And that’s without counting the lie to the men of Sodom that his two married daughters had “not known man.”

On to the Exodus from Egypt. The all-knowing God would have been completely aware that Kings, Pharaohs, etc were pretty much dictatorships. The population did not have much to say about the “Boss’s” decisions. In spite of that, God (Jesus) kept hardening Pharaoh’s heart over and over. So the locals suffered all the plagues! But not due to the Pharaoh being stubborn. Instead, due to God’s upsetting the applecart. Not much of a score in the “merciful and loving” area! And what happened to his “all-knowingness” the night of the first Passover when all the first-born were murdered. He who could tell the difference between the cattle belonging to the Egyptians and the Israeli slaves, couldn’t tell which house was whose without a slosh of innocent lamb blood over the doorway. Wha hoppen? Cataracts???

And in Mathew, Jesus/God says that any man who looks on a woman with lust has already committed adultery and thus… OFF TO HELL WITH HIM! So, why didn’t this all-knowing, all-powerful creator of everything foresee this problem and create men who only got aroused when they wanted to have a child?

If this were a resume, would you hire him?

Enough faith?

2009-07-07T21:45:00Z

By John L

Image via Wikipedia

Jesus tells us in the New Testament that if a person has the faith equivalent to that of a mustard seed, we could move a mountain. Fair enough.

Given that Jesus himself provides that there is a quantifiable AND unconditional aspect to faith, here is an interesting question for Christians.

Let us say that there are two people praying for a given event. One of them has enough faith, while the second does not have enough.

My question is "Which prayer will be honored?"

Will god ignore the person who has enough faith and thus violate the unconditional aspect of the mustard see promise? Or will god ignore the requirement for the right amount of faith and violate the quantity aspect of the promise?

Given the number of unanswered prayer requests, I find the later highly unlikely. God is clearly not one to grant anything based on my observations. All I've ever seen is "no", especially from those who need him the most.

This line of thinking leaves me with one conclusion. Is there anyone on earth with "enough faith"?

If there is, then why don't we hear of the miracles that would have been done? If there is not, then what good is god if we don't have access to him? Why is he leaving the situation as it is? For someone who is so eager to be involved in our lives, he certainly seems selfish and legalistic when it comes to demonstrating his love.

Just a thought.

End Times: A set of prophecies or a set of hallucinations?

2009-07-07T00:41:00Z

By Valerie Tarico

Image by J. Mark Bertrand via Flickr

Real Christians are going to disappear abruptly someday soon. The world is going to descend into a bloodbath while someone known as the antichrist attempts to seize control of the planet. That is what some of your neighbors think—and some of your politicians. Many of them even relish the thought. Is Revelation, the last book in the Bible, a set of prophecies or a set of hallucinations? Neither, says Reverend Rich Lang of Trinity United Methodist in Ballard, Washington.

If the Book of Revelation isn’t a blueprint that tells us what is coming in the End Times, what the heck is it?

Like any book in the Bible, Revelation was written from the perspective of faith for the purpose of giving faith. It was written in the early days of the Jesus movement to a persecuted minority that was fearing worse persecution.

As the Jesus movement started in Jerusalem and Jesus was crucified, and there was this experience of resurrection, at the same time, there was a simultaneous political movement within Judaism of rebellion against the Roman Empire. It peaked in the 60’s and 70’s. It culminated finally—horrifically-- in the Roman legions marching into the country, destroying Jerusalem and burning down the temple. These two factors – the young Jesus movement and the brutally crushed rebellion–intersect in the writings we now call Revelation

But Revelation doesn’t talk about Jerusalem being destroyed. It talks about a beast with many heads and a dragon and the four horsemen. . .

That poetic language which sounds so strange to us was actually familiar to ancient readers. The author was writing a dramatic script in a form of popular media. Today we all recognize different modes or “genres” of writing—the detective novel, the love sonnet, manga. . Each has its own familiar structure and images. The same was true in the past.

The book of Revelation belongs to a then popular genre of literature called apocalyptic. The term apocalypse means “unveiling.” There were lots of apocalypses, each a graphic poetic vision of some radically transformed future in which the good guys win. This genre began around 200 BC and went out of style around 150 AD. The book of Revelation is also called the Apocalypse of John, and it is one of several explicitly Christian apocalypses that still exist today. In each, metaphoric language was used to communicate something that, experientially, felt too big for words. It was a way of trying to speak the unspeakable—and to inspire endurance and hope.

So what was the author of Revelation unveiling?

Revelation was written about twenty years after the fall of Jerusalem. The author, who we know only as John, had lived through the horrors that accompanied fall of the city. Imagine: the Roman Empire is surrounding Jerusalem. At the same time, civil war is raging within the walls. People are literally starving to death. As the siege continues, the Romans capture 20,000 Jews and crucify them on the walls of the city—while the city still is under siege.

20,000! We think of the crucifixion being unique.
No. Crucifixions happened all the time. There were thousands and thousands of crucifixions. The Jews wanted freedom. To them it was a blasphemy to have the Romans in their land. Many of them rebelled, and they lost. Eventually, the city fell, and the people were slaughtered. Those remaining were expelled from the land. This is the time of the Diaspora—the scattering of the Jews, who were dispersed around the Mediterranean—Asia Minor, Greece, Northern Africa and Europe.

But the author, John, is a Christian.

Remember, the earliest members of the Jesus movement were Jews, and so the early Christians scattered with the rest of the Jewish people. During the Diaspora, Christianity began to be adopted more widely by gentiles and at that point it began to grow rapidly throughout the Mediterranean. John is writing to Pauline (gentile) churches, but they are very rooted in Judaism and the Hebrew scriptures.

At the time Revelation is written, about twenty years after these devastating events, the young scattered Christian movement is being persecuted. They are treated like Blacks in the South during the ‘30s and ‘40s. A Christian carpenter might not be able to get work. Some are lynched. John, himself, is writing from exile, so whatever he was preaching was viewed by the Roman Empire as a threat to law and order.

Why was the message so threatening?

Clearly, part of his message was “Stop participating in the imperial cult. Stop participating in the patriotic way of life of the Roman Empire which requires paying homage to the gods of the Empire and in particular the emperor as an incarnation of God.” The Early Christian movement was an alternative to the way of empire. You know, Jesus is called “Lord and Savior”. If you ask where did that language came from, that language came from Caesar. Caesar was “Lord and Savior.” Christians celebrate the birthday of Jesus on December 25, which was when Roman celebrated the birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The pagans believed that if they didn’t take care of the gods, the gods wouldn’t take care of them. By forbidding the cult of the gods, the Christians threatened this balance.

One thing confuses me. Is John writing about events in his past or events in his future?

First of all, he is writing from a lived experience of what Empire can do. That is the key to understanding his perspective. He is writing a book that combines familiar political images. The dragons, for example, are much like our political cartoons. When you see an eagle and a bear you know it means the United States and the Soviet Union. For him, he is using images largely out of Hebrew scripture to convey what the Roman Empire is, and what he believes will happen to the early Christian movement. John’s primary message comes in Chapter 18: Empire will fall. Rome cannot last. This power structure that seems so big and is so crushing of the people will crumble, and God will re-create out of the ruins a new Jerusalem. John continually counsels the movement to hold fast: Those who endure to the end will be saved. This is a book of hope: The empire is going to fall. God is going to make a way where there is no way.

But had he—lost it? With all of the bizarre images, I’ve heard Revelation called “John on Acid.”

No. Almost all the imagery in the book of Revelation is rooted in the Hebrew scriptures, and some comes from Greek myths. In Chapter 12, you have the woman clothed in the sun and Satan falls out of the sky and there is this dragon that chases the woman. Well, that is the birth of Apollo. Dominion, who is the emperor at that time, he likens himself to Apollo. He is the sun god. So John is taking this known story and writing a counter-myth. He is saying that Dominion is not so important as he thinks. The birth of the child, Jesus, that’s the real big story.

The religious impulse easily gets perverted into a quest for secret knowledge because it makes me more than you. The images of Jesus himself are rooted in Hebrew stories. They simply cannot be understood unless you know that they are coming from the book of Daniel and Ezekiel and Zachariah. The narrative, the story line is rooted in the Exodus story in which God liberates the Jews from Pharaoh’s empire – walks them through the Red Sea and the wilderness and sends them to a promised land. Revelation is a recapitulation, a re-telling of the same story. God is the god who frees us from empire, whether Pharaoh or Dominion. We will come out of this into a land flowing with milk and honey. One of the big exhortations of the book is: “Come out of her.”—Come out of Roman Empire (as the Jews came out of Egypt).

What you are saying helps me to understand why people who are immersed in this theology are so fearful of empire – the League of Nations, the Soviet Union, the United Nations—any form of internationalism. Among the “Left Behind” crowd, people who are bridge builders or peacemakers are seen as evil and to be mistrusted. That is what John was talking about, that was his experience, even if people take it out of context.

From the very beginnings, part of the Christian message was the notion of an end time. God is going to clean up the world –which is a messy awful a place with a lot of violence and evil. After all, the central hero of the Christian story is tortured and crucified-- put to death by an empire! How is God going to clean up the world? Jesus is going to come back and rule the world and shepherd the nations.

The Hebrew understanding of history is that it is going somewhere. It is linear, not cyclical, which is a break with the agriculture-based earth religions. Christianity, which is a child of Judaism, picks up the Hebrew storyline: History is linear. But –and this is really important-- in the Bible the end is never the end of the physical world. It is the end of an age. It’s the end, for example, of the Roman empire, and then what happens is not that everyone is whisked off to heaven but that on earth there is a renewal , a renewal of the earth itself, of culture, of the nations ,peace and justice, everyone has their own vineyard and fig tree.

So, where did the notion of everyone being lifted out of their clothes and cars and cockpits come from?

That comes from the 19th Century. An Anglo-Irish theologian called John Darby created a new interpretive lens for the Bible. It’s called Dispensationalism, because in this system, history is divided into seven “dispensations” or ages within an age. In this system, the Rapture leads to the Millennium when Jesus reigns on Earth for 1000 years but before the Millennium is the reign of the antichrist. At different historical junctures different bad buys are picked as the antichrist. In the 1970’s, thanks to Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late Great Planet Earth, it was all about Russia. And the ten nations, the European Union would become part of the Beast. Today dire warnings about Barack Obama being the antichrist are scattered about the internet. Or Osama Bin Ladin.

Believe me—I’ve seen plenty of both—even Chavez and Bono. But come back, for a moment, to the Rapture itself. What about that verse in Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:16). There’s the Lord descending with a trumpet, and the dead in Christ rising and then “we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.”

That is wonderful graphical mythical language which, when written, had very little to do with the plot of Left Behind.

Thessalonians is Paul talking with an early church in southern Europe, and he faces a specific challenge: Christians have died. We had expected Jesus to come back before that happened. Now what do we do? Paul thought he was living at the end of an age. He thought he would see the day that God would come back, clean up the earth and restore Paradise. But it hasn’t happened within the timeframe he expected, so he offers an explanation that integrates the existing facts—instead of Christ returning before any Christians have died, the dead and the living are united with Jesus together.

Flash forward a little bit. When you study very early church history, if you study the art of the early church you don’t see a lot of images of the crucifix or scenes of the crucifixion; you see images of paradise. And there was a proclamation of the early church that had an optimistic view – that where we were headed --on earth as in heaven, was a paradise. This was the expectation of many in the early Jesus movement.

There was a historical process, and over time this expectation changed for some. This process, which I don’t have time to go into, was wrapped around when Constantine became emperor and absorbed Christianity as the state religion. Rather than being a minority faith it became the dominant faith.. Once it became the dominant faith Christianity radically changed because it became about politics and power and control of the nations.

You have this book that is all about how evil empires can be because he has this horrifying experience and now all of a sudden Christianity is in power; empire is on the side of Christianity. That’s a little awkward.

Yes. And, the book of Revelation was dormant for many many years because of this. In our time the book of Revelation has come back with a vengeance because the imagery is made to order for wild interpretation. You’ve got an entire generation of children being raised in these fundamentalist end-times churches, being told they are the last generation.

You obviously think this is a bad thing.

Well, thankfully these families don’t live as if what they say is true is really true. They are still stashing away money to send their kids to college and for their own retirement. If they really believed you would see a hardening of the faith. There is a far right segment of Christian in which you do see this hardening—churches focused on “spiritual warfare” building walls rather than bridges, organizing services to celebrate gun rights, praying public prayers for the death of abortion providers or Barack Obama or judges. This kind of far right hardening comes out of the misuse of apocalyptic literature. Christianity gets translated into a quest for purity and righteousness that will bring these prophesies to fruition.

You said earlier that there were lots of apocalypses. It was a popular medium. How did this particular book get into the Bible?
Well, there was controversy about that. Many Christians didn’t want it in the Bible, and even Martin Luther question the decision of the Catholic councils to include it. Revelation got into the Bible because the church fathers chose to believe that the same John who knew Jesus in person was the author of this and several other texts. Their primary criterion was “apostolic authority.” What we now know – this is just the evolution of our own knowledge—is that the authors who wrote the Gospel of John, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Letters of John, and the Apocalypse of John, were not the same person. The script is very different. The same phrases are not used. One is written by a highly educated Greek author, the other written by a person whose primary language is Semitic.

These books that the counsels thought were written by John, the companion of Jesus, they were written by two or three people?

The people who actually knew Jesus, the twelve, none of them left writings for us. All of these writings are written well after the death of Jesus. The Church was looking for authority, and so they tried to choose writings that fit a hierarchical form of Christianity and that traced their lineage through the apostles back to Jesus. The Bible is the book for the church and it was compiled by the Church for the purpose of helping the Church advance faith. The books didn’t become finalized as scripture till 300 years after Jesus lived and died.

I was taught as a child that the Bible was essentially dictated by God to the authors. I was never taught about which books were chosen and how. But I would assume that Catholics believe God gave perfect insight to the councils that made the decisions?

I would assume so. And that is a wonderful mask for authority. When religion becomes a pursuit of power—a system to keep people in control, you are always going to have those games that are being played. Against religion, you have the message of Jesus, which is a spiritual message – a message of freedom.

Part of what this comes down to is: What is the Bible? When you are dealing with an end times fundamentalist Christian, you are dealing with a person who believes that the Bible was written by God– God writes it and there is a secret code and if you are in the know you will know the code and the elect will know the code. The Bible itself becomes a magical book, a secret script. If you just know how to read the script, you’ll know where the world is going. And so people begin to live this script as if they live in the end times.

We’re so into that secret knowledge thing, aren’t we? You see it many places: Gnosticism, the Knights Templar, Freemasonry, the Mormon temple, childhood clubs, Skull and Bones . . . .

Yes, and I think you see it in all religions. I think that part of the religious impulse easily gets perverted into a quest for secret knowledge because it makes me more than you. I am special, I am elect, I am closer to God, I know the truth. The reality is that we are all schmucks trying to muddle through as best we can.

This article is adapted from an interview conducted by Valerie Tarico on Moral Politics Television, Seattle, June 12, 2009. Special thanks to Producer Bill Alford.

The God of Abuse

2009-07-05T11:15:00Z

By Fuego

I've been trying to figure out why it is so difficult to get believers to even listen to why we left Christianity. Even though some of us experienced decades of solid Christian belief, we are dismissed as having never believed, or never "truly" believed. No matter what evidence we bring, no matter if we are aggressive or kind, there always seems to be an invisible wall of condescending resistance to any criticism or evidence against Christianity.

This may not be a new concept to some of you, but it all fell together for me today. The pattern so clearly fits with another relationship pattern among humans that it startled me. Christianity is a form of abuser/victim codependency.

I know the word codependent seems way overused, but hear me out. Codependency is the perpetuation of an abusive relationship by two or more people, each of whom derives enough emotional support from the relationship that it outweighs the strife. In fact the strife itself fuels the emotional intensity of the relationship. Sure there are good times of singing, music, friends, and even an intense feeling of God’s presence. This is what kept us coming back and enduring the abusive side of the religion.

“Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?” Right away, I anticipate that believers reading this will say “Abuse? What abuse? My God is the Shepherd of my soul, the Lily of the Valley, the bright Morning Star. He doesn’t abuse me. He may discipline me, but he does that because he loves me.” Many of us felt the same way, and clung to God just as fervently as any believers do today. The abuse I speak of is sometimes physical, often verbal, and always mental/emotional.

Just like in a human-to-human relationship, a believer invests trust, time, money, and emotion into the faith until the religion itself defines normality, and that person becomes quite unwilling to believe anything negative about the religion. The abuse may come through fellow believers or authorities in the religion, as well as in self-abuse over by guilt imposed by the religion. But ultimately the abuse comes from the God of the Bible. The believer is conditioned to think that the abuse is deserved due to his or her inherent sinfulness. Some go so far as to mutilate their own flesh because their natural desires conflict with the religious ideal and therefore must be subjugated to prove loyalty to God. Jesus himself said, “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” (Matt 5:29)

But even if the believer becomes desperate enough to want to quit the relationship, the circle of codependency is sealed by the fear of what will happen if the believer leaves the "relationship" (damnation).

Allow me to demonstrate how the Bible validates and promotes this abuse as right and proper. Compare what you typically hear in an abusive relationship to what you hear in the Judeo/Christian faith:

*If you leave me, I'll kill you (Exodus 20:3; 22:20)

*If you ever look at another man, I'll beat you black and blue you fucking whore! (Jeremiah 13:25-27, Nahum 3:1-7)

*I love you so much honey. I'm the best thing that ever happened to you. Look at all I do for you. You were nothing before you met me. You’d best start giving me what I deserve. (Exodus 20:4; Ezekiel 16) [Additionally, in Ezekiel 16, he says he raised Israel like a daughter until she started looking good, then wanted some sexual payback. When she rejects his advances, he calls her a whore and says he’ll strip her and let her be raped by groups of guys. But if she’ll change her mind and submit, everything will be peachy keen.]

*I don't think you love me enough. You better show some appreciation. (Psalm 2:11-12)

*My dinner better be ready when I get home. Thank you? Why should I thank you, it’s the least you can do, and you’re good at doing the least. (Luke 17:7-10)

*Do what I tell you to do and we’ll get along fine. Mouth off or start doing things your own way, and you’re gonna be in a world of hurt. (John 15:14)

*I should've aborted you. You're stupid and useless! (Genesis 6:5-7; Deuteronomy 32:6l; Jeremiah 5:21)

You are worthless! Without me you’re nothing, and every day you do something stupid and prove me right. Stand up like a man, you fucking pussy! I work my ass off, I put food on the table, I fix shit around the house, and you do nothing but sit around on your ugly ass and complain. You think you’re my equal? If I left you, you’d fucking die, and you dare to mouth off to me? (Entire book of Job)

You say you love me, but you keep going off to your parents. They hate me and I hate them. You aren’t worth the time and effort to deal with all their shit. Do you love me or not? If so, I don’t want to see their faces ever again. You owe me that much. (Luke 14:26; Matt 10:35-36; Matt 19:29)

(Holds a propane torch up to her face) You see this blowtorch, bitch? You piss me off again and I’ll burn you! I’ll take my sweet time, too. (Rev 14:10)

Enabling the abuse

Believers perpetuate the relationship through submissive dependence on the abuser. The submissive one minimizes her sense of self-worth, while actually defending the perceived good qualities of the abuser. Believers justify this abuse because "God is holy, and if he hadn't gone to extremes to show us mercy we'd all be damned." So there is this sense that we owe God big time for making a way of salvation, and that we really are unworthy of his presence, and very worthy of torture in fire for all eternity. (Matt 18:7-9; John 15:6; Rom 7:21-25; Rev 3)

The church is taught to take all this and more, and to respond with agreement, worship, reverence, and most of all obedience. This allows the abusive "god" to continue his reign of terror, and his henchmen to carry out his directives. The church is afraid to do anything but submit, because of the threat of torture in hell, or at the very least the withholding of blessings.

As in regular human relationships, codependency in religion is a hard behavior pattern to break. I never even saw it when I was a believer. It is only now that I am on the outside looking in that I see the inherent abuse in these verses and in the thousands of sermons that echo the same attitude. To compound the strangeness of this relationship, the abuser (God) never really does anything since he doesn't exist [well, at least the Bible god and all like him don’t exist]. The fear of damnation or at least being judged is enough to get the church to punish itself. This is also how the inquisitions were justified, since clearly God wasn’t going to do anything to the “sinners”. I preached hellfire myself because it was the orthodox faith. I didn’t like it, but I believed it was true.

Abuser/victim codependency also explains the anger I have when I hear Christianity being called something good. It was and is an abusive relationship and I want it exposed as such, not held up as something wonderful. I realize there are some teachings that are healthful to mankind in the Bible, and I'm not spitting on those. But the primary thrust of the scriptures is that man is separated from God and worthy of punishment. This is why verses like the ones above were written. This concept, and the imaginary god that is the kingpin of the system, are what I revile.

Of course, many believers will scoff at this whole concept, proclaiming their joy and love for God, and their enjoyment of his love for them. "My God would never be an abuser. He is a gentleman. You’ve obviously never tasted of my Jesus." The problem with this "pop" faith is that it is made up on the fly, it is not based in scriptures and yet it is still labeled Christianity. The most common theme throughout scripture is the anger and judgment of God against wicked humans. To selectively only hear the love parts fits in quite well with my diagnosis of codependency, since the abused one doesn't recognize abuse as abuse. Instead she defends the abuser as "a good father" "a good husband" "I don't know what I'd do without him" “I need to quit being so selfish” “He really knows what is best” “I should have no secrets from him” “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” (Job 13:15)

Have you ever been told that the love of God is unconditional? What do you think now that you’ve read the verses above? You did bother to read them didn’t you?

Remember that according to the Bible, Israel would not have been in captivity if God hadn’t arranged it. He told Abram back in Genesis 15 that they would be enslaved for four centuries. He even arranged the famine that drove them to Egypt and turned Egypt from a place with individual landowners to a fiefdom where the land and people all became property of the king. This was all so they could be dependent on him when he “called them out”. Then he continually compares Israel to a whore, and boasts about coming to her rescue after allowing her to be brutalized by other kingdoms.

Mysticism and Stockholm Syndrome

Some Christian mystics describe the death of self and utter submission to God as a deep and wondrous thing, likening it to the passion of two lovers. They seem to wallow in their complete subjugation and humiliation. But many of us who have come out now see the relationship as a betrayal of our love and expectations. We heard about God's love for us and were drawn in by the promises in scripture and the friendships we found in church. Then when we started hitting sour places in our "walk with God" and the promises fell flat time and again, we were told to have faith and continue pursuing God, or to act as if our prayers had been answered (1 John 5:14-15). Or else we were taught that our own desires were sinful or tainted, and that we should learn to be without any desire except for more of God (James 4).

This concept of not only validating the abusive attitude of God, but venerating it as well generates a lot of anger in those of us who have left the faith. It’s like telling a woman to trust her abusive husband and see his abuse as helping her to overcome her selfish nature, when all the while she knows that something is wrong. Her boundaries are being violated, her body is beaten, her self-esteem is crushed, and she wonders if it would have been better not to have been born at all. But then the abuser woos her again with words of kindness, and she thrills to the sudden sense of being loved by this powerful person, and thinks it all must be right after all and that she was stupid to have doubted his love.

Those that actually do surrender their sense of self are exhibiting a form of Stockholm Syndrome, which is a behavior that captives exhibit to lessen the stress of being different then their captors. In order to remove the threat of harm (and ultimately, to fit in with the group) a captive will take on the cause, values, and manner of the group. Being abused no longer seems odd; it seems normal. Reality gets redefined according to the rules set by the abuser. The abuser is seen as a great benefactor or lover. The victim glories in the patience and self-sacrifice the abuser has shown by stooping to rescue the victim from the shame of being different from the abuser.

A popular Christian song is indicative of this attitude:

“King of dreams, now You’ve got it all
All I ask is that you show me how to live without them
Show me how to live with only You”

An older hymn expresses the idea more clearly:

“Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?”

In secular counseling, one of the most often referenced images of a codependent family is the elephant in the living room. Everyone bumps into it, and it really is inconvenient and difficult to live with, but nobody wants to talk about it. “Problem? There’s no problem. You’re the problem!” Rather than deal with the thing causing the problems, people invent solutions for living without having to correct the obvious issue. Similarly, questioning the faith openly or questioning God’s character isn’t tolerated for long in most churches. And rather than really answer questions, the responses range from instant rebukes to phrases like “Well, it’s not that you can’t believe, but that you don’t want to believe”, implying that the questioner only wants to enjoy sin rather than submit to God, and that any questions are mere impertinence rather than legitimate issues.

This issue of God as the abuser is one that needs to be brought to the front more often. The church uses this all-encompassing love to draw in the unwary. It is generally later that they are introduced to the bloodthirsty nature of this deity, and slowly they are taught that this bipolar attitude is normal and good. A few preachers still start out with hellfire and then use love and mercy as a contrast to draw in those that were spooked by the stories of hell. But reduce it back down to the nature of this god, and you still find a being that is willing to set people on fire and not let them die because he sees that as right and just. He is an unapologetic abuser. We were right to dump him.

Damned Reprobates!

2009-07-05T11:07:00Z

Sent in by Colin

Image via Wikipedia

I used to believe not only in Christianity, but in Calvinism. Now on the rare occasion I come across passages like the following, I want to puke my balls out.

"The condemnation of the non-elect is designed primarily to furnish an eternal exhibition, before men and angels, of God's hatred for sin, or, in other words, it is to be an eternal manifestation of the justice of God.. This decree displays one of the divine attributes which apart from it could never have been adequately appreciated. The salvation of some through a redeemer is designed to display the attributes of love, mercy, and holiness. The attributes of wisdom, power, and sovereignty are displayed in the treatment of both groups. Hence the truth of the Scripture statement that, "Jehovah hath made everything for its own end; Yea, even the wicked for the day of evil," Prov. 16:4... This decree of reprobation also serves subordinate purposes in regard to the elect; for in beholding the rejection and final state of the wicked, (1) they learn what they too would have suffered had not grace stepped in to their relief, and they appreciate more deeply the riches of divine love... (2) It furnishes a most powerful motive for thankfulness that they have received such high blessings."

- Loraine Boettner, 'The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination', pp. 121-122

"It is a proper and excellent thing for infinite glory to shine forth; and for the same reason, it is proper that the shining forth of God's glory should be complete; that is, that all parts of his glory should shine forth, that every beauty should be proportionably effulgent, that the beholder may have a proper notion of God. It is not proper that one glory should be exceedingly manifested, and another not at all. . . .

Thus it is necessary, that God's awful majesty, his authority and dreadful greatness, justice, and holiness, should be manifested. But this could not be, unless sin and punishment had been decreed; so that the shining forth of God's glory would be very imperfect, both because these parts of divine glory would not shine forth as the others do, and also the glory of his goodness, love, and holiness would be faint without them; nay, they could scarcely shine forth at all.

If it were not right that God should decree and permit and punish sin, there could be no manifestation of God's holiness in hatred of sin, or in showing any preference, in his providence, of godliness before it. There would be no manifestation of God's grace or true goodness, if there was no sin to be pardoned, no misery to be saved from. How much happiness soever he bestowed, his goodness would not be so much prized and admired. . . .

So evil is necessary, in order to the highest happiness of the creature, and the completeness of that communication of God, for which he made the world; because the creature's happiness consists in the knowledge of God, and the sense of his love. And if the knowledge of him be imperfect, the happiness of the creature must be proportionably imperfect."

- Jonathan Edwards as quoted by John Piper

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByDate/1476_Is_God_Less_Glorious_Because_He_Ordained_that_Evil_Be/

Some Random Thoughts on Love, Sex and Governor Sanford

2009-07-04T11:34:00Z

By Bill J

I read some of the emails allegedly written by the Governor Sanford and his girlfriend from Argentina. A few sentences stood out to me as I read thru them. Gov. Sanford speaks of an emotional bank account full of love. I remember someone else who used this term back when I was a Christian. It got me thinking, is there such thing as a bank account of love? What is love in this context?

Is love a feeling? Is love a commitment? Is love grace, mercy, empathy or unconditional acceptance? Love in the English language simply means a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Among other definitions it means sexual affection and intercourse or simply a term of endearment never implying any sex or physical attraction.

Love is a complex issue and one that seems unique to the individual because it is based on their motivations. When we do anything, even love someone, we draw from whatever is stored in our minds and what is stored in our mind is a catalog of information and facts based on our education, experiences and self knowledge. It is these items that form our beliefs about love and consequently our feelings, motivations and eventually our actions, behaviors and attitude.

When we say I love you, what are we saying? In reality, meaning the day to day meanderings of your average person, saying I love you probably means you are important to me even if I don't feel anything so intense as sexual attraction, physical desire or I'm ready to throw myself under a bus for you. It probably is a simply expression of endearment that let you know you are not alone. When you are feeling attraction coupled with trust, I love you probably means I want you to know how good you make me feel. When you are in the middle of passionate sex with someone you trust and are attracted to, it probably means keep going because this feels really good.

How do we really love someone? I Corinthians 13, which is a letter written presumably by the Apostle Paul, tells us many attributes of love from his point of view. The list states that love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Love never fails.

Please don’t blame divorce on a lack of morals or an evil selfish society lacking in a god. Divorce among Christians is far higher than among atheists. I think this is a good list detailing love, but honestly, these are actions and not feelings or at least the absence of certain emotions like envy, and pride or being easily angered. So in retrospect, the author of this letter is telling us that love is prohibiting certain emotions and acting out behaviors like kindness, trusting, protecting, and persevering.

We can learn just as much by what a person doesn't say as by what they do say. The writer never says love is a feeling of sexual desire or physical attraction. The writer never says love is getting married or having children. The writer never says love isn't possible with more than one person. The writer never says jealousy is a part of love. This last one is ironic considering God is a jealous god, according to ancient Jewish writers (the penalty for straying from God in those days was death). Is jealousy a good or positive emotion in any relationship? In essence, love as defined by this Biblical writer, is mostly, if not entirely, about actions and behaviors or the lack of some of them.

I have to agree with this writer. I find meaningful love to be an attitude, which translates into certain actions and behaviors that facilitate good will toward people or a person. Can everyone love according to this definition? Can a psychopath love according to this definition? Can a mentally ill person or low functioning person love? You be the judge.

If love is the greatest of all commandments, as is attributed to Jesus, then some people can't love because of mental or organic birth defects and some people, meaning psychopaths can love even if they feel no emotion like affection, remorse, empathy or guilt. Do you need emotions to love someone? If so, what happens when those emotions cease to exist in a relationship?

As I am sure that you know, emotions come and go and sometimes for no discernible reason. Do we always feel positive emotions toward people in our lives? Is it possible that positives feelings simply are not love, but the byproduct of our thoughts, and beliefs? Seems to me that love is an attitude created by our beliefs and thoughts and these translate into behavior.

Having an affair isn’t about love in my opinion as much as it is about capturing emotions that make us feel good or escaping boredom, and/or depression. Falling in love isn’t about noble values as much as it is about being physically and sexually attracted to someone. Jealousy isn’t about love as much as it is about fear and insecurity. Sex isn’t about love as much as it is about the feel good chemicals that release in our brain from sexual stimulation and orgasm. We all remember those first pangs of attraction and desire. They are powerfully good feelings and sex can feel similar to them. The best sex, in my opinion, happens between two people who trust one another.

When feelings of good will or emotional attraction no longer exist in a relationship it can usually be boiled down to our thoughts. Sometimes mental issues like organic depression take away feelings, but mostly our belief and/or thinking, is the cause of our diminished feelings. Sexual attraction or just being horny has as much to do with biological cues that seem to be motivated by visual attraction to body shapes, contours and the subtle exposure of those body parts, and of course facial characteristics. Yes, I know, women are often aroused by more than visual stimulation; however studies show that women respond just as much if not more, to visual signs as do men. For women, the next level is often more about the emotional connection which they seem to translate into trust and trust allows for a much deeper form of intimacy that men seem to be in short supply of.

Can you love someone who isn’t physically attractive to you? Can you love a partner who no longer can have sex with you because of a physical limitation? Do you need sex and sexual attraction to be happy, stay married or remain in a relationship? Is sex with someone other than your partner or spouse a deal breaker? If you could not longer have sex would you let your spouse or partner have sex with someone else even if they loved you and didn’t want to leave you? I think we need to ask ourselves these questions rather than stand for ideals and values that may not work.

Considering that about 60% of marriages fail in this country. What does that tell us about the state of commitment, marriage, and our ability to live up to these values? Please don’t blame divorce on a lack of morals or an evil selfish society lacking in a god. Divorce among Christians is far higher than among atheists. Muslims have a much lower divorce rate then Christians. The suicide rate among Muslim countries is also very low compared to the U.S. What does that tell you?

There are many biological components to attraction, bonding and mating. Many different types of chemicals are released during attraction, sex and touch. These chemicals are powerful in that they shape our thinking and influence our feelings. The research shows that it takes about 18 months for all those chemicals to subside and go back to normal levels. In the mean time, who you bonded with, moved in with or married may not be your ideal mate. Unfortunately many people, under the influence of attraction and sex chemicals, didn’t really pay attention to the aspects of their partner that bothered them. Sometimes it’s too late to back out and people stay together often out of responsibility or practicality rather than mutual trust, values, attraction and respect. The love is gone so to speak. Those feelings of lust and sensuality may never come back if there isn’t a deeper connection then those initial chemical markers released during the honeymoon period.

In reading Governor Sanford’s alleged emails to his girlfriend, I see some of the same issues that plague us all. He is stressed, unhappy (even though he has much and attained much), middle aged and wondering if he will ever feel those powerful feelings of sexual attraction again i.e. love. Governor Sandford forcefully abandoned principles and values that he espouses just to be with his girlfriend even to the point of leaving his wife and children on Fathers Day. His actions should tell us something about how powerful attraction is.

I think we all long to feel overwhelmed with those powerful feelings of attraction and sexual desire. They make us happy and pleasure is what motivates the human race according to Freud. We all hope to be unconditionally loved and made to feel secure, but we know that no relationship is perfect simply because we are not perfect. Love is not a feeling of attraction, sexual satisfaction or simply a commitment to some moralistic value system. Neither is love simply a choice. I certainly don't want someone saying they love me simply because they choose to. It's as if choosing to be nice is another word for love. If that were the case wars would cease, divorce would never happen and sex would be boring. Love is as much about an attitude of the mind that respects both oneself and others.

Love is about being honest, secure with simply being yourself, emotionally transparent with people you trust, authentic, kind, open minded, gentle, compassionate, empathetic, reasonable, not giving up and always treating people as you yourself would wish to be treated. It is about reaching deep down and finding what really matters and forgetting about trying to possess another or control them to simply make your life feel safer or secure. In my opinion, we don’t need a back account of love collected by good deeds, we are better off being true to ourselves and authentic with others.

Bill J.

The Little Christian Who Cried Wolf

2009-07-04T10:50:00Z

By Neal Stone

Image via Wikipedia

You've probably have heard the term “Crying Wolf” before. Here is the origin of that term. It is an old Aesop fable. One of my favorites.

“A bored Shepard boy who entertained himself by calling out “Wolf!". Nearby villagers who came to his rescue found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock.”

I have met Christians who have claimed how things will change or we are going to make changes and then swing back to the old ways. I have also met some who always proclaim some prophecy only to have it not come true over and over.

I one had a room-mate who was always bragging about himself around the church regarding his supposedly high IQ, or he would come across some new way to change your life, he being right and you being wrong. If you disagreed with him (which he couldn't handle) he'd accuse you of being judgmental. Sound like any Christians you know?

My step-dad was king of the “Cry Wolf “ crowd. The pastor would preach some sermon against TV and boom... the TV would get unplugged, but eventually we would have it back again. Or even worse, the pastor would preach some convicting sermon and my step-dad would come home and say there were going to be changes and would look straight at me. Funny how he never felt the need to make changes to himself, but was ready to make the rest of us make changes.

Then I had Christians friends (when I was in church) who would do something to really hurt my feelings, then apologize and promise to change only to go back to the old ways. This is one reason I attach rules to friendship, you hold me back and tare me down, you get let go.

Then there were the endless promises of how things were gonna change in the church and get better. Or maybe if i prayed more, read my Buybull more and gave more to the church, I would be healed, or find that right job or some oterh open ended promise.

How many times do we have to hear Jesus is coming back and the signs of the times are upon us. Most of the signs are just cold calling. Come one, war and rumors of wars! When was that NOT an issue? Earthquakes are increasing in number and intensity. Really? Not according the US Geological Survey which states there have been consistent in number in the past century AND earthquakes 7.0 and above are DECREASING in number. Even now my parents are still preaching that Jesus is coming and the time is soon.

So many times have I heard Christians and Christian leaders proclaim some prophecy or promise from God only to have nothing happen. Christians are the kings of promises. Whether from god or from them about how things will change/get better and so on.

Just have faith. Believe in God. He will answer. Only God knows. God works in strange...WOLF, WOLF!!!!

I get so tired of hearing it all, Jesus coming, God is working somewhere in someone's life, if you just pray/read/serve God will answer your prayer/work in your life.

After 23 years of this, I have had enough. I am so glad I turned away from it all years ago. If you have read my past posts you will know how much better my life is as a result.

My life is now built on logic and evidence based living. Today my life IS changed and things ARE better! Why? Because I stopped crying wolf and stopped listening to those wh still cry wolf. I made a decision to get rid of silly religious garbage and clean up my life for the better.

Today I am a better person and the wolf is dead!

We are all Equal

2009-07-02T09:34:00Z

By Aimee

Like many people who once believed in Christianity, I was born into it and brought up with it. My parents attended a rather rare type of church, calling itself the Church of Christ, and it tried to the best of its ability to follow the New Testament as fully and completely as possible. This church is exceedingly absolutist - in fact, most of the sermons I can remember dealt entirely with pointing out what denominations of churches did wrong. We'd have a sermon on Catholicism, Mormonism, Baptist, Pentecostal etc etc.

In fact, I knew more about the depth and breadth of Christianity than any other Christian kid I met. I believed the pastor when he said that these churches were wrong because it was so very supported by the Bible itself. This church did not shy away from the hard side of God and Jesus and did not indulge in any frivolity, and managed to remain fairly clear of hypocrisy as well. But one thing that my upbringing missed was any real mention of beliefs entirely independent of the Bible. It was easy to follow the logic: if the Bible is true, than this church is telling the truth; but what if the Bible is not true? This thought did not enter my head for many years.

But these religious beliefs were not my only moral guidance. One thing that I always held strongly was the idea that all human beings are of equal worth. I always deeply cared for other people, not just their soul, but their lives - the whole person. I didn't think much about the eternal damnation they supposedly faced. If anything, I trusted that God treated everyone equally, based on each person's experiences and birth place and culture - to believe otherwise would make him to be a very terrible person in my mind. I only worried about doing the right thing and being as good a person as I could be. I didn't talk about religion much to friends at school (I went to a normal public school), but tried to lead by example only.

I also always had an affinity for nature, trees especially. The 'feeling' of God I longed for in church I found when outside alone at night, looking up at the stars from beneath - or within - a tree. I was very sensitive as child, I talked to trees, rocks, dolls, even furniture. I read books with a passion and fell in love with all things fantasy. Lord of the Rings became my Bible and I still treat it with what could be called reverence. I boxed my religion as something that I think about in church, but rarely felt the need to take it out in every day life.

Many things changed for me at eight years old. I was extremely sheltered and ill equipped to handle what a man would do to me while my parents were away from home. A man that was supposed to be baby sitting who instead raped me in the shower. As I lay in the pink tinged water waiting to die (as I thought I surely was going to) the only thing I could think about was the terror that awaited me in hell. I did not understand what had happened, except that it was bad. Even while my brain put the event in a little box and vaguely named the box "something bad" the only thing I could be certain of was that something incredibly sinful had just happened.

I did not tell my parents. I couldn't, the shame would have killed me. But for weeks I could not sleep in fear of the eternal hell fire that awaited me, and death seemed so very close. I told my dad that I had to be baptized because I was in sin and couldn't bear to be separate from God any longer. He baptized me, reluctantly because he thought I was too young, but did so nonetheless. And for a while, my child's brain was satisfied. My sins were washed clean, I was a new child in Christ and did not have to think about the past anymore.

If you read what little the bible has to say about rape, as I did years later, you will find it to be extremely indifferent to the woman, more concerned over her lost virginity than her shattered mind and body. This experience effected my life despite my attempts to cover it up and forget about it. I read everything the bible had to say about it and was all the more distressed because, by all accounts, the worst thing that could happen to me was to not be a virgin on my wedding day. No amount of praying or hoping could make that fact go away.

Through puberty the effects of both the rape and the resulting guilt complex gifted to me by Christianity drove me into depression. One other hot topic for my church was the sanctity of marriage. One man, one woman, both virgins, married for a lifetime no extraneous sex, woman in submission to the husband. Over and over it was pounded into me, how important it was to be a virgin when you were married. A girl in my church proudly stated that it was the greatest gift she could give to her future husband. I had nothing to give.

When I was 15 my parents got separated and later divorced. Because it was their church and their beliefs that held so strongly that marriage was to be for life, I had a difficult time with it. I later found out that my dad cheated, but that was probably the least of their problems. Neither of them could stand to be home for any amount of time and I found myself raising my younger brothers in absence of having anyone else around. This lasted for about a year. All this time I felt alone. I no longer felt anything at church but shame, guilt and fear. At home it was only stress of my parents crumbling marriage, and all the beliefs they tried to bestow upon me. It made me feel utterly worthless.

I looked around at my closest friends, none of whom could be called particularly christian, one a Hindu, one Buddhist, one a Mormon, some just pleasantly agnostic. I never had any "true" christian friends, but I had the best friends in the world. Never once in high school was I offered drugs or alcohol - not because my friends were Christian - but because my friends were smart. I looked at them and acknowledged that they were all equal. And they were intelligent, and were living the life that made sense based on their upbringing. My life didn't make sense to me. My church became increasingly full of hate and judgment, I didn't even care anymore. If my friends were going to hell for their beliefs (or lack thereof) then I would be willing to join them there.

There are many intellectual reasons to reject Christianity, or God all together. While I completely agree with those who have set out all the reasons not to believe, I only needed one. We are equal. When we die, the same thing happens to us all, the same thing happens to everything on this planet. And even if, in the wildest probability, the Bible is true, I still am glad I made my choice and got free of it. As I told my grandmother, 'I would rather go to hell with my friends than go to heaven without them.' If that is what happens, so be it, I am no better than they and deserve salvation no more than any one else. I have eaten from the tree of Knowledge and I am glad I did.

On a personal note, the feelings of guilt and fear and despair won out in me for a long time and I found myself in a dangerous situation that ended in another sexual assault. I do not blame Christianity per se for the things that have been done to me, but it put me in the position to be a victim, blame myself, and never seek help about it. I was a girl, meant to be submissive to adults and to men and this is the consequence of such teachings. Had I not had the love and support of my non christian friends, and later my non christian boyfriend (now husband) I shudder to think what else might have happened to me.

Just as I never felt the need to talk about my faith as a Christian, I have rarely felt the need to talk about why I am not one any longer. Disbelief was easy and did not require me to share my reasoning with anyone. I wrote this, and I could have written much more, because I see people point out the hideous verses that describe rape in the Bible, but have never read someone who has experienced it, read those words and felt the lasting agony they can cause. It is a story about how the religion is not only illogical, but harmful and debilitating. How could I worship a God that at times encouraged his people to rape others, placed as much blame on the victim as the rapist, suggest that the rapist should then marry the girl he violated, think it righteous for a man to offer his own daughters to be gang raped rather than a man etc etc. It is just too terrible. That is reason enough not to believe, isn't it?

*I could have looked up all the verses, but it makes me depressed. Its not hard to find them if you are looking.

If God Died Tomorrow, How Would You Know?

2009-07-01T23:35:00Z

By E Chamberlain MD, San Diego CA

Well, it's finally happened, after praying for it for so long. God has revealed to me ways to tell if he exists. (I guess he wants me back.)

Here's one way to tell if god is real-- If god died tomorrow, how would you know? How could you tell? Would you just wonder why he hadn't shown up for work? Would you look around in church and wonder, 'Where is he?' Would you begin to be concerned because he hadn't returned your call? Would Christian Science Monitor newspapers begin to pile up somewhere? Or would we notice after a season that tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes oddly didn't happen this year? Or would they increase? Would the reports of miracle healings and speaking in tongues die down? Would those able to speak in tongues no longer be able to read and write in tongues? Would people keep sneezing incessantly even after we said 'God bless you'? Would food taste funny after we said grace? Would Christians who'd previously been empowered by god's word and holy spirit now be publicly seen to commit sins such as rape and abuse of minors, televangelism extortion, and adultery? Would the amazing inspired Sunday sermons across our land become redundant and boring and stop being so compelling and convincing? Would lightning bolts stop flashing and thunder be silenced even though some pagan takes the lord's name in vain? Would unicorns and giants suddenly become extinct? Would devoted leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell lose their way and start saying indefensibly stupid things? Would the bible stop making sense to us? Would god's holy word in the bible no longer be preserved and protected, now confusing everyone who reads it? Would the curse on snakes no longer be enforced so that they start walking standing up? Would childbirth no longer hurt? Would Christians no longer do miracles greater than Jesus himself did? If Christians ask, will it stop being given them? Will those Christians with the greatest faith ever no longer be able to move mountains? Will we have to put the mountains back where they were? Will people no longer be crippled by god as a punishment for sin?

Would you find that you're bitterly missing him?

For those of you who are more serious-minded and can't take me seriously here, see my epic "Day Eight" in the forums' creative works section here at exchristian.net for another consideration of the subject.

(The revelation was actually given to me in Greek and, when he noticed that I looked puzzled, he repeated it in King James English, because that's what he spake. Don't laugh. Have you ever spoken to him like I have? Even though Jesus spoke Aramaic back then-- and not Hebrew or Greek-- God still wrote the first and original New Testament in Greek. So, to convince you, I've posted the Greek original version of last night's revelation here below also. Man, it sure looks official and important in Greek. Kinda like the bible does.)

Εδώ είναι μονόδρομος για να πει εάν ο Θεός είναι πραγματικός-- Εάν ο Θεός πέθανε αύριο, πώς θα ξέρατε; Πώς θα μπορούσατε να πείτε; Θα αναρωτιόσαστε ακριβώς γιατί αυτός hadn' τ που παρουσιάζεται για την εργασία; Θα κοιτάζατε γύρω στο churcha και θα αναρωτιόσαστε, ' Πού είναι; ' Θα αρχίζατε να έχετε σχέση επειδή αυτός hadn' το τ επέστρεψε την κλήση σας; Οι εφημερίδες της Christian Science Monitor θα άρχιζαν να συσσωρεύουν επάνω κάπου; Ή θα παρατηρούσαμε μετά από μια εποχή εκείνους τους ανεμοστροβίλους, τους τυφώνες, και τους σεισμούς παραδόξως didn' το τ συμβαίνει φέτος; Ή θα αυξάνονταν; Οι εκθέσεις των θεραπειών θαύματος και της ομιλίας στις γλώσσες θα πέθαιναν κάτω; Εκείνοι ικανοί να μιλήσουν στις γλώσσες να είναι σε θέση όχι άλλο να διαβάσει και να γράψει στις γλώσσες; Οι άνθρωποι θα συνέχιζαν διαρκώς ακόμα και αφού είπαμε ' Ο Θεός ευλογεί you' Τα τρόφιμα θα δοκίμαζαν αστεία αφότου είπαμε την επιείκεια; Χριστιανοί who' δ προηγουμένως εξουσιοδοτημένος από god' η λέξη του s και το ιερό πνεύμα τώρα βλέπουν δημόσια για να δεσμεύσουν τις αμαρτίες όπως ο βιασμός και η κακοποίηση των ανηλίκων, του εκβιασμοου televangelism, και της μοιχείας; Τα καταπληκτικά εμπνευσμένα κηρύγματα της Κυριακής πέρα από το έδαφός μας θα γίνονταν περιττά και τρυπώντας και θα σταματούσαν έτσι αναγκάζοντας και πειστικά; Λάμψη και βροντή στάσεων μπουλονιών αστραπής να κατασιγαστεί ακόμα κι αν κάποιος ειδωλολατρικός παίρνει το lord' όνομα του s μάταια; Οι μονόκεροι και οι γίγαντες θα γίνονταν ξαφνικά εκλείψες; Οι αφιερωμένοι ηγέτες όπως το Πατ Ρόμπερτσον και Γερμανό στρατιωτικό Fallwell θα έχαναν τον τρόπο τους και θα άρχιζαν indefensibly τα ηλίθια πράγματα; Η Βίβλος θα σταματούσε νόημα για μας; God' η ιερή λέξη του s στη Βίβλο δεν συντηρείται πλέον και προστατεύεται, συγχέοντας τώρα η καθεμία που το διαβάζει; Η πληγή στα φίδια δεν θα επιβαλλόταν πλέον έτσι ώστε αρχίζουν να σταθούν επάνω; Ο τοκετός δεν θα έβλαπτε πλέον; Οι Χριστιανοί δεν θα έκαναν πλέον τα θαύματα μεγαλύτερα από τον Ιησού ο ίδιος να κάνουν; Εάν οι Χριστιανοί ρωτήσουν, θα σταματήσει δόσιμο τους; Εκείνοι οι Χριστιανοί με τη μέγιστη πίστη πάντα δεν θα είναι σε θέση πλέον να κινήσουν τα βουνά; Θα πρέπει να ξαναβάλουμε τα βουνά όπου ήταν; Οι άνθρωποι δεν θα ακρωτηριαστούν πλέον από το Θεό ως τιμωρία για την αμαρτία; Θα βρίσκατε εκείνο το you' επαν πικρά ελλείπων τον;

More on Paul's, Jesus', and Christianity's Moral Fallacies

2009-07-01T23:05:00Z

By E Chamberlain MD, San Diego CA

After posting "Paul's And Jesus' Moral Fallacies" (June 22), I've been encouraged to elaborate more. I wanted that earlier essay to be brief enough to not seem preachy and to accommodate any attention span and be read during commercial breaks between, say, ESPN's Pardon The Interruption and Outside The Lines. This follow-up post won't do that. I apologize in advance, then, to those without a DVR and with other important things to do.

Much of this post here below is plagiarized, excised, or revised from my own earlier review of the movie "Jesus Camp," (posted in the forums section here at exchristian.net, a movie that was nominated for the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature), but I thought it worth it to get it to a broader audience than those who would read a movie review. And there are also some important additions, not presented in that movie review. So, if some of it sounds familiar to any of you, that's why. I begin by referencing that same movie, which I recommend.

There are subtle Christian moral fallacies that we've all probably been exposed to without necessarily challenging and "cutting off at the pass." I think they warrant serious holy ghost busting though. Here are some.

The movie Jesus Camp (2006) tells us that "forty-three percent of evangelicals become 'born again' before age thirteen." Children's minds aren't mature enough before age 13 to be making commitments to belief or disbelief. They can't know enough facts to combat fictions and they can't think abstractly. They therefore can't and aren't making truly informed choices then or even for a long while after. I am absolutely certain that, just as we do with Santa Claus, I could tell and teach my child at a young age that the writing on the back of a box of Cheerios is the written word of God and teach him to reverence and memorize it and sing songs about it and I could teach him that Snap, Crackle, and Pop on the box of Rice Crispies are the all-knowing, all-powerful Holy Trinity of God who loves him and I could teach him to attribute all good things to this God and all bad things to Tony the Tiger, even despite Tonys's beaming smile on the box of Frosted Flakes. My young child would believe me because I love him and shelter and provide for him and always have done so as far back as he can remember and no one else has or does. None of this indoctrination is fair to a child, let alone true. It is all the more ill-advised when we realize that only about one in twelve children break away from their parent's religious beliefs (The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006, p. 102). Ill-founded beliefs are and have been perpetuated, I'm convinced, because it's also quite likely that many, many religious parents-- who themselves never broke away from their own parents' religious beliefs-- have never investigated the many criticisms made against their accepted faith in a way that even begins to be objective, if they've even investigated at all.

Like their God, Christians have no evidence whatsoever that there is a devil. Christianity teaches us, from a young impressionable age, that "God can do anything." Children readily accept this tutelage. Yet children's minds aren't fully matured until about age 12 or 13 and they can't think abstractly or maturely enough to critically challenge this religious assertion with which they are now brainwashed. Can God really do anything? Can God make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it? This kind of unsatisfactory pre-programmed theology and thinking will become more and more problematic if these kids ever dare to open their minds when they open their bibles and will leave them confused and conflicted. Nice. Great legacy to leave children. Ultimately, simplistic but thoughtless retorts like "God can do anything," as the answer to most anything, will, in the ever-resounding discussion of the origin of the universe and other issues, do nothing to satisfactorily answer the interesting questions we all seem to find ourselves contemplating at some time in our lives. "God" must've come from somewhere or something and concluding that the answer to such questions is "God" only pushes the answers, and the questions, further from us and dead-ends the discussion. That's the typical mindset of the Christian, who, by "faith," has already dead-ended, deciding ahead of time what the answers will be before real discussion or investigation begins.

In the same vein, Christians say that god knows everything. Now let's think this through. Right now, there are billions of chemical reactions going on in the bodies of billions of people across the planet. Does god know the exact position of every electron, proton, neutron, or quark of every atom, of every molecule at every 1/1000th of a second, during this second and the one before (and the one after), in my body and in every one of us? And did I leave out other forms of life? Does god know that about them, too? Does god know the exact and multiple pressures at this very milli-second in the left ventricle of my heart, and at every milli-second during and between my heart beats, in every position in that left ventricle-- and the right ventricle and left and right atrium and the pulmonary arteries and the capillaries at every position on my skin and at the far reaches of my fingertips? Is it on the tip of his tongue right now? Does god know, right this second and tomorrow, the micro- or millimoles of Acetyl Choline, Dopamine, and Serotonin pausing at the junction of every synapse of every neuron in my brain and body? Does he know where, precisely, in all my cells, every ribosome is resting? And which direction every nucleotide of every codon of DNA and RNA is facing and what course the transfer RNA is taking? Please, give me the vectors and coordinates. That's only a minuscule fraction of what there is to know. And if god doesn't know it, then, no, god doesn't know everything. There will be a pop quiz, let me assure him, when I lean on the pearly gate and knock with every foot-pound of pressure I can (or, if he works in the metric system, every 1.3558179483314004 joules, or-- see, I'm not dogmatic, we can talk in kilocalories of force-- every 0.000323832 calories, because I'm not sure what units of measure he was using when he wrote the King James bible). Does he know that I'm that incorrigible kid who refuses to be afraid of him and I will require these answers of a god before I believe?

Christians seem to have an inordinate disdain for what science has to say when it threatens their belief system, all the while using the electric appliances in their modern homes enabled by the advance of science. Funny how the true and testable knowledge of science-- the real quest for truth in life-- doesn't prove anything when it conflicts with their beliefs, yet improves so much. Why don't they just pray for Jesus to cook the food, clean the dishes, and light and warm or cool their home instead of using electricity brought not by religion but by science? Don't believers allege that Jesus said that believers would do even greater miracles than Jesus himself did? Shouldn't Jesus' followers who claim miraculous abilities be able to make their whole life a Mary Poppins miracle so that none of this unproven science stuff would be necessary? But, truth is, it's the bible's words that don't prove anything and are empty, null, and void, and that's what parents should be teaching their children. Of the 43 studies since 1927 on the relationship between religious beliefs and intelligence or level of education, all but four found that the higher one's intelligence or educational level, the less likely one is to be religious (Mensa magazine, 2002, as referenced in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006, p. 103).

There are 35 miracles of Jesus described in the "gospels." We could sure have used some those and more in the past 2000 years. Instead, it's mankind's-- not Christianity's-- achievements that have healed leprosy and given sight to the blind and more.

In the same light, a typical misleading and misbegotten idea propounded by the Apostle Paul in the bible is that the non-spiritual person thinks the things of God are foolish and he (the non-believer) can't understand them. Paul is wrong, as he is about other things. We, the accused non-spiritual, think the "things of God" are wrong, not just foolish, and we do understand them. There is really little or nothing that escapes our understanding about the supposed "things of God." We who know the bible and Christianity understand those "things of God" but reject them because we understand them to be wrong and untrue and despicable and we don't bow down in blind belief because some unsubstantiated source 2000 years ago said they were true. In the "things of God" in the bible, there is so much that can be shown to be untrue and wrong-- even without resorting to sources outside the bible-- that the Apostles and bible writers have no credibility, nor do those who believe today. An honest and honorable God would have to acknowledge this incontrovertible fact of life and would honor unbelievers for their unbelief rather than honor believers for their belief. But their man-made God is neither honest nor honorable. No matter how sincere, sincerity doesn't prove one right or wrong like science can. Bible believers are sincerely wrong and they school their children to be so.

When children are told and taught to do what god says, in chant-like uncritical acceptance and obedience, they are, in fact-- because God is presented via the beliefs and biases of their parents and church-- essentially pledging obedience to parents and church and not really to "god" (if there is one). Convenient. Because this allegiance is instilled by church members who insist that God speaks or has spoken to them and insist that they know God's words and his will, there is danger looming. When conflict between conscience and creed emerges, then guilt, inadequacy, and neuroses begin to be hard-wired into the psyche of these innocent victims of false beliefs.

Young Christians pledge their allegiance to the bible, but, you can bet, they haven't yet read the book they're pledging allegiance to. In their allegiance, they are, have been, or will be forewarned and scared off by the teachings of their faith, at the risk of losing their faith, from discussing these issues with an open mind, if at all, with people like me who would sometimes like to politely and patiently confront their beliefs and who have probably a thousand arguments against the book these believers are sworn to. Their allegiance at such a young age is etched into the neuro-circuitry of their thinking. A healthier allegiance would be an allegiance to Truth and the search for it, not allegiance to a pre-determined set of beliefs that forbids or fails to consider any reality that would confront and contradict the indoctrinations of Christianity. Those of us who are non-believers don't pledge allegiance to any book or belief-- especially not at a young age before we've considered the issues and developed a more mature mind so we can think abstractly and for ourselves. Young Christians will, thereafter, unfortunately be subject to an ever-looming disturbing dissonance in their lives when or if they later try to think for themselves and they find out that the book and belief they've pledged themselves to and invested themselves in is a huge and horrible lie and they will feel compelled but afraid to reject the world of beliefs they grew up in and pledged allegiance to-- especially as their church lives becomes more avid, devoted, and public and their circle of friends includes only those or predominantly those who also protect and perpetuate these false and ill-informed beliefs. Unfortunately-- or possibly fortunately, because we as a society, even among Christians, don't take pledges as seriously as a pledge should imply-- this will only be a small part of their future dilemma. More sad and concerning will be the years and energy wasted in their allegiance to this fairy tale fiction they call faith.

Christians are taught-- and I remember being taught-- that there's a hole in our soul that only god can fill and that's why the sick and lost unbelievers are looking for something that only god can provide but are, instead, filling the void with, say, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. If that was true, I'm sure Budweiser would've used it in a TV commercial. This belief beknights the religious person with purpose in life to supply such supposed sick and searching people a fundamental need. But have Christians who subscribe to that philosophy really met and known enough people deeply enough to draw this conclusion? No, they inherit this assumption and assertion, like their religion, from people who spend their lives in the pew and pulpit. Parents and church authorities have taken it upon themselves to insinuate-- without researching, exploring, or even asking or truly knowing many people outside of their church circle-- these claims of alleged sickness or an alleged search for something. It's all actually rather presumptuous. Of course, they justify it all because their religion tells them this. But I see no reason to believe that the writers of or leaders in the bible truly proved these issues either. What they and the bible offer is to be "saved." When we stop and think about it, beyond that supposed other-worldly "salvation," there is nothing real that the bible or Christianity in any of its forms offers that can't be gotten outside of the bible or Christianity. And, really, truly, when we consider the message of the bible, what it says that one needs to be saved from is God himself, because, in Christian theology, it is God himself who plans to send non-Christians to hell to be tortured and tormented forever. Now, seriously, does it seem wise to run into your tormentor's arms to escape his torment? And, in saying that we're "looking for something," Christians insinuate that such searching is a sad or bad thing and that God is really what we're all searching for (even though we don't know it). Well, no, the "search" itself is not a bad thing and, no, we're not looking for God. "Looking for something" is what drives this world to a higher standard of living, a better life. We are apt to always be looking. And that's good. And, moreover, it is really undeniable that "finding God" doesn't solve the world's problems. I see no evidence to the contrary. But, rather, "finding God" is one of the world's most excruciating problems. Religion and faith create and have created problems in excess of whatever supposed good they do or have done.

Christianity teaches believers to fast and pray. What could be immoral about that? Fasting and prayer are neither particularly commendable nor viable ways to solve the world's problems, anymore than hibernating in the winter would be. Misplaced emphasis on fasting and on prayer (except possibly benign because of its possible meditative effect) deludes the religious person into thinking he's accomplishing something real. He's not. I call it "minoring in majors and majoring in minors" and the Christian spends his life-- wastes his life-- doing it. There is so much more important stuff that could and should be done and taught. But fasting and prayer, I think, imparts a self-delusional confidence that one is doing the will of god. That self-delusion is just not defensible and, armed with it, can lead the believer to believe that whatever he does next is right. That's dangerous.

The "Devil" is real to Christians and Christianity's traditional scare tactics have been used for millenia, impuning the "devil" for "temptations" they will encounter in what should really readily be explained as a battle against their natural mature, civilized and their natural immature, uncivilized proclivities. Like their God, Christians have no evidence whatsoever that there is a devil. But this devil is part and parcel of Christian theology and is a monster created to ultimately try to blame someone other than God or oneself for evil and "sin." The devil concept is partly to blame for what can reasonably be considered a recurring anxiety or even panic inherent in the Christian's thought-world. This devil monster induces fear and, sooner or later, I am convinced, all too often if not always in sincere, deeply committed believers, inflicts neuroses in those who would have otherwise outgrown their childhood ghosts and goblins as soon as and as readily as childhood invisible friends disappear. Christians then attempt to fend off this devil, the false and fearsome phantom of their faith, by a continued dependency on prayer and reciting bible verses and asking God for help-- a help that, were it not for this belief in the existence of the devil, would be unnecessary. Or, instead, beleaguered believers drift away from the faith far enough that these nasty neuroses of faith can be forgotten, at least for awhile. In fact and moreover, they are taught that the devil targets the steadfast believer all the more, so they experience this sense of suspicion of the monster lurking all the more. Whatever one believes about human nature, Christians mistranslates the darker side of our nature as a "spiritual" battle, one of the grisly characters being the devil, accompanied by his minions. They then see the rest of us, because we don't have "God in our lives," as pawns of that devil and are suspicious, if not outright (though inwardly) paranoid, about any influence we non-believers have in their lives. They are therefore isolated from nonbelievers who could otherwise help them escape this labyrinth of lies they call faith that they've unwittingly walked into.

Christians are taught that "the punishment for sin is death." Funny, it seems that the punishment for doing good is death too, seeing that even the best among us dies. So, then, morality, in the Christian scheme of things, has no real bearing on whether we live or die. That would be obvious, were it not for theology that tries to insist otherwise. Heck, it seems that, by the Christian's line of circular "reasoning" (if "circular" reasoning can truly be said to be a "line" of reasoning in the first place), the punishment for drinking water or breathing air is death too, as I've noticed that everyone who drinks water or breathes air ultimately dies. How does one know that it's sin and not drinking water or breathing air whose punishment is death? Has the Christian disproved this by drinking less water or breathing less air? Would he be the first to try? Oh, and animals and plants die too. So, please, won't these Christian self-proclaimed experts on moral and judicial matters, explain to the inquisitive ones they take it upon themselves to teach, what sin have the animals and plants (or their ancestors if you like) committed that the punishment of death is now being consummated on them also. Can plants and animals sin? This Christian tenet, like so much else in their philosophy, is therefore specious and should not be thrust upon those who don't have the power or permission to object-- children and unsettled youth especially, still striving to find their way in the world.

And, despite the threats of death due to sin, it's my contention that, in general and in the broad scheme of things, the real criminals in this world aren't much persuaded toward being good or dissuaded from being bad by any sermon, on the mount or otherwise. It is those of us who are generally decent people-- without and before religion's supposed moral influence-- who truly internalize any remorse and regret about our actions deeply enough to make lasting changes. In other words, decent people don't need religion to tell them to be decent and indecent people don't much listen anyway. Christianity therefore ends up inflicting psychological (or spiritual, if you wish) pain on decent people, but indecent people effectively go unpunished (by religion's irrational ravings or by crises of conscience). What it really takes is an effective and efficient earthly judicial-- or social-- system to bring people to justice, when it even can be done.

Christians teach and very self-righteously believe very commonly that they've 'got to take back the land for Christ.' When was this Christ's land? Who said it ever should be? Ours was a land carved out by separation of church and state after people fled religious persecution in Europe. Ours is a country that was constituted to welcome those of all faiths and no faith to live with tolerance in harmony. Despite the incessant insistence to the contrary, the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion, as one can see by what the contemporary senators near the time of our founding believed and said loudly to the world, at avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp, in the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, ratified by the United States in 1797, Article 11: "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." The reason, I'm convinced, that we haven't seen the violence we now see in Islam in the invectives of Christianity is because separation of church and state takes the persecutory and political power of the pulpit out of public life-- an unacceptable predicament for the recently emerging brand of Christian fundamentalism-- while the beliefs of Islamic theocracy have logically led to the same religious violence of earlier ages and which at one time or another has been endorsed by religious leadership of all three of the Abrahamic faiths when imbued with the power of government. (The Abraham of the bible and Koran is considered the "father" of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, generating the term "Abrahamic" faiths, for those who didn't know.) No matter what the New Testament translation, the Old Testament is part of the Christian faith and there is in it too much violence commanded and committed by the God they worship and written in the church's own autobiography to trust them near the trigger. They are only safe when disarmed, disabled, and disconnected from governmental affairs that would allow them to lord it over others. Unlike a Constitution underlined with a separation of church and state, the three Abrahamic faiths, when empowered, cannot be counted on to countenance dissent from their dogmatism.

Christians should take note and remember that their God of the Old Testament is, in their own theology, the same person as their supposedly moral Jesus of the New Testament. Their God-- let's face it, Jesus-- commanded stoning (or execution by unspecified means) for quite a number of offenses:

A rape victim who is engaged and fails to scream loud enough when raped
A woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night
Adulterers
Homosexuals
Anyone who blasphemes
Anyone who breaks the Sabbath
Believers who go on to worship other gods
Anyone who curses the king
Anyone who touched Mt. Sinai
Someone who takes the "accursed thing"
Animals (like an ox that gores a human)
And witches and warlocks (Samantha and Tabitha both in "Bewitched"-- and Esmerelda, but I never did like her meddling in Darrin and Samantha's life anyway, so I'll let that pass-- and Harry Potter).

These strident strictures of scripture are similar to the tenets of Islam currently practiced unchecked in our modern world and those now engaged in employing such extremes are not misinterpreting the Koran but, rather, are obeying it (despite the superficial and politically correct statement that "Islam is a religion of peace"). Blind and blinding faith built on false premises and promises-- whether, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam-- can and does lead to these horrors. We've been there-- in the Dark Ages and-- it should not go unnoticed-- even in the early years of the founding of this country when "we" stoned witches to death. That wasn't that long ago. Unchecked fanatical and fundamentalist brands of faith will all too easily lead us back there or way too close. And, though seemingly innocent enough, non-fanatical, moderate Christianity facilitates this. Acknowledging these insane, inhuman injustices and abandoning this god can prevent this. Right now, Christianity is constrained by our Constitution. Otherwise, what's to say "we" wouldn't revert back to these biblical practices?

Some non-believers are willing to concede that the precepts "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "Love your neighbor as yourself" are the highest moral imperatives. At first glance, they seem to be. But I disagree. First of all, they are not unique to Christianity, so Christianity can't claim to be the one true light as it would have us believe. But beyond that, those precepts are, in fact, null and void-- because no one can, by definition, love his neighbor as himself. It cannot be done. So setting it as the highest moral standard is hypocritical of anyone who proposes it and, worse, sets us up to feel like a failure. It's possible that I can drive the speed limit at all times. It's possible that I can balance my checkbook without errors. It's possible that I can pay all my bills on time. But it's absolutely not possible that I can love anyone-- anyone, even the one or ones I love the most-- as I love myself. Heck, I can't even love myself perfectly-- and I'm not sure what loving myself perfectly would be. So, while it's good to aim high, the supposed highest moral standard we get from the bible is itself defective and, in fact, taken to heart, will make any thinking, sensitive, and sincere person ultimately feel bad about himself, thereby not loving himself and thereby unable to love others perfectly. If we need, for philosophical or other reasons, a moral standard to live by, there must be a better one out there than the biblical one that, whether we're Christian or not, we've accepted carte blanche without enough serious deliberation because it sounds good. But, considered more thoughtfully, it's not good. Christianity lost its moral authority to set the standard way back in the beginning, saying that parents should stone their disobedient children to death (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). And their god continued to show his moral ineptitude-- no, depravity-- throughout the bible to the very end. So they have no moral authority to speak on such profound issues.

Conclusion:
My comments aren't ultimately just about bashing the church and religion. That's too easy. Although that can be fun and sometimes it'll just wear us down if we stay too serious about these grave issues. But the very real concerns are the damaged lives. Exposing the errors of this belief system is just the way to move the wreckage we call Christian faith to get to the victims.

Harassment By Evangelicals Lit My Path To Atheism

2009-06-30T20:47:00Z

by The Atheist Geek

Image by Dan Patterson via Flickr

II was almost 18 when I attended my first meeting at a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses. Or I would have attended it if I had found the Hall before the meeting started. I had been talking to a girl at High School about The Watchtower Society's teachings for a few weeks when I asked her for directions to the Hall. Her directions were wrong, so I was late.

I sat in the Kingdom Hall's parking lot for an hour that night because I didn't want to interrupt the meeting. The Witnesses were already leaving their book study when I finally walked up to the front door. The conductor was just locking up when I stepped into the light. He was a congregation Elder. He shook my hand as the girl who'd invited me came over to say hi. Then he accused me of attending the meeting just to get into her pants. A few minutes later, he was handing me a couple of magazines to read. I came back two days later.

Things went OK for a while. Everyone wanted to meet the kid with the strength to "do the right thing" against his parent's wishes. But this changed once the congregation got used to having me around. There was a lot of pressure to start proselytizing and to get baptized. They began to disapprove of everything about me, even my clothes and hair. I began conforming to their standards one at a time and even got baptized. That only made it worse.

I didn't blame God for any of this. It wasn't his fault or the Society's that the Elders at my Kingdom Hall were jerks. I had to stay loyal to the organization if I wanted God's approval. You can't live forever in a paradise Earth without that. Trouble was, did I really want to be a part of the New System if people like these were going to run the show? After nearly 6 years, I realized that the answer was no. For the first time, I wondered if I should take the Society's word when it claimed to be the one and only "True Religion." I wanted to get away from it all so I could sort out how it had gone wrong.

I stopped going out in field service, a big no no for one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Then I stopped attending meetings. I hadn't given up on God or religion, mind you. I actually prayed about it, hoping God would understand. I thought I would return if the Society became less haughty and its Elders less authoritarian. That never happened. But I digress.

No one was bothered by my absence from the Kingdom Hall for about two weeks.

The Dam Bursts

I remember coming home that first night and finding about 40 messages on my answering machine. Most of them were from people I hardly knew. This continued for weeks. It was a small town and I had been part of a congregation of nearly 250 people, so I couldn't go anywhere without bumping into one of Jehovah's Witnesses. "Haven't seen you in a while," they'd say as they snuck up behind me at the grocery store. Then they'd hassle me about my meeting attendance without a care for the attention they were drawing. I finally got my wife to run all of our errands so I could avoid them.

This was not an easy journey. There was a lot of pain and misery along the way. But it has been worthwhile. It made me who I am today. They began stopping by my home--always two or more at a time--to preach at me. My wife was eager to let them in. She was a Jehovah's Witness too and hoped they'd straighten me out. Instead, all they did was make me angry as they quoted scripture or the Society's literature. Both are deemed irrefutable by Jehovah's Witnesses, and both always "proved" that I was wrong. Years passed before the visits from Elders ceased. Other Witnesses continued dropping by to get their field service time started or stopped at my expense. (Witnesses add up the amount of time they spend preaching door to door and turn the tally in to an Elder at the end of every month. They can only start their time from the moment they start preaching to someone and must end it with the last person. The more hours you have, the more spiritual you are.)

Each confrontation put my stomach in a knot. To them, I was the dope who'd thrown away paradise to serve the Devil just because the Elders were picking on me. It was more than that, of course. But I had no answer for their accusations because I hadn't sorted figured it out for myself yet. Their presumptions and their arrogance still made me want to stand up to them. My experiences were painful, but I would have to think about them if I was ever going to do that.

They wanted to bring me back into the fold. Instead, their efforts only pushed me further away.

Search For Answers

I began researching the Society's literature to see if their claims were backed by evidence. I found a lot of web sites that were more about anti-Watchtower rhetoric than arguments of substance, but some were good. I paid special attention to the Society's "Creation Book" (AKA Life-How did it get here? By evolution or creation?). This was the Society's infamous attempt to refute evolution. I found that many had refuted it instead. For those of you who've never heard of the Creation Book, Richard Dawkins later talked about it in his own book, The God Delusion.

I came across articles on philosophy and especially atheism along the way. In reading these, I believed the arguments for nonbelief were irrefutable. I began to realize that I was already an atheist, but not a skeptic. I still believed in ghosts because many in my family had experienced poltergeists first hand. Still, reading articles about atheism made me realize that you don't have to be a skeptic to be an atheist. Then I discovered that there were rational, scientific explanations for my family's supernatural experiences. Soon, I became a skeptic as well.

Much Better Now

Ultimately, the efforts by Jehovah's Witnesses and others to aggressively convert me to their beliefs backfired. In trying to sort out my views on gods and the supernatural to stand up to evangelists, I began comparing the arguments for belief and non-belief because I wanted to know the truth. In my book, the atheists won. Now I'm one of them.

I admit that I fit several atheist stereotypes. I have had a bad religious experience. I don't get along with my father. I don't submit to authority for its own sake any more. Yet my reasons for being an atheist are too complex to write off as petty emotional damage. I didn't become an atheist to get back at a god I no longer believed in. My experiences simply put me in a place where I wanted to find real answers, even if they weren't answers I would like. So when I found atheism, I was open to it.

This was not an easy journey. There was a lot of pain and misery along the way. But it has been worthwhile. It made me who I am today.

I wouldn't change a thing.

VBS Nazis

2009-06-29T22:23:00Z

By Daniel Brown

Summer is time for fun—swimming, fireworks, family reunions, and trips to Disney World. It’s also prime time for unfettered Christian indoctrination of our youth. Yes, I’m referring to Vacation Bible School (VBS).

One of the most effective ways to convert a person to Christianity is to capture their mind as a child. All religions and totalitarian regimes understand this. Take for instance the Hitler Youth. A ruthless and harsh organization whose goal was to indoctrinate German youths so that, once adults, they would fight faithfully for the Third Reich.

Likewise, Christians have established Vacation Bible School. By contrast, VBS is filled with fun, games, cookies, and harmless child’s play. However, at the beginning of each day, the children are called to congregate to recite Scripture, pledge allegiance to the Bible and Christian flag, and listen to a dogmatic lesson about a nonexistent afterlife and a zombie magician. As a child in VBS, I remember singing “Onward Christian Soldiers”—a blatant homage to the Crusades and song that is still sung today in VBSs across the Western world. VBS is full of war-related overtones.

Christians claim they are loving people who only care about the children’s souls, but it is more than that. It is a blind allegiance to a myth that is reinforced daily in their own lives and they feel driven to force it upon their children and the children of others. The following anonymous quote from a Christian parenting website demonstrates the Christian adult’s attitude toward discipline and indoctrination:

“If you don't chasten your children, if you don't use the rod in obedience to God's laws and drive that child's foolishness far from him, if you spoil that child by sparing the rod, you don't love that child or care anything about that child! You hate that child! God cannot stand any kind of unfaithfulness in His army anymore than any other Commander of any other military force can take a chance on security risks and disobedience and failure to follow orders and obey commands.”

Vacation Bible School is nothing more than an annual indoctrination program disguised as a harmless fun time for kids run by the most devoted, dogmatic church members. It is detrimental to the development of a child’s reasoning ability and corrupts his worldview. Christian indoctrination of children is utterly immoral and evil.

A Good Christian Wife

2009-06-29T22:15:00Z

By Daniel Brown

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Christian men are very insecure. As with all insecure people, they must domineer others to feel good about themselves. Once they snag a woman, the goal is to force them to submit. Women must be kept under their thumb at all times. Physical abuse isn’t necessary as emotional, psychological, and religious abuse are usually much more effective.

Below are some methods whereby Christian men accomplish this:

Make lots of babies. After all, this is her ONLY purpose in life. Right?
Make the woman homeschool them.
Keep her nice and plump so no other men look at her.
Buy her books about being a “Christian” mother.
Make her wear frumpy clothes.
Encourage her to have a benign hobby like scrapbooking, Pampered Chef, etc.
Send her to Beth Moore conferences.
Demean her. After all, she IS beneath you.
Buy her new kitchen appliances so she gets the hint.
Break her spirit.

I’m sure there are other methods I’m unaware of, but you get the picture.

Militant Atheists

2009-06-28T09:34:00Z

"Militant Atheists" - a letter on the term to those who use it.
• http://www.youtube.com/RobTheMonk8

A (biased?) Wikipedia article on antitheism and militant atheism:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitheism

ATHEIST (n.): one without a belief in, or one who lacks belief in, the existence of god or gods.

Secular Humanism:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9_Vsd...

Rejecting Atheism:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0zSCp...

Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 5 of 6

2009-06-28T01:17:00Z

By Valerie Tarico

How Viral Ideas Hook Us

Did you know that Temple Baptist Church was built on land that sold for 57 cents, the amount saved by a little girl that had been turned away from their Sunday school? Did you hear about the guy who died in his sleep, killed by his own farts? Can you believe it?! Elvis Presley said, "The only thing a nigger can do for me is buy my records and shine my shoes." And,guess what--scholars at the Smithsonian Institution have uncovered new interpretations of Nostradamus that relate to Barack Obama.

The above statements are false. But that hasn’t kept them from circulating the internet for years. Each of them is the heart of a viral email, which means that each has some quality that makes people forward it, over and over and over. The first is a kind of message commonly known as “glurge,” too-sweet-to-be-true stories that nevertheless give people a warm feeling or even chills. The second makes us laugh and piques our sense of curiosity. The third plays with our contradictory fascination with celebrities, which includes a desire to tear them down. The fourth appeals to our yearning for magic. These stories all are drawn from the urban legends fact-finding site, Snopes.com. What is the common theme? Emotional arousal.

Comparing religion to chain mail seems crass, but the kinship is real. And as Francis Bacon said, “The eye of the understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or holes, so you may see great axioms of nature through small and contemptible instances.”

Viral email has a variety of reproductive strategies. Like computer viruses, many chain mail messages contain explicit “copy-me commands.” Some promise us good luck if we forward the message to ten people before the day is up – or a week of happiness, or even prosperity. Some threatens us with bad luck if we don’t. Some tries to shame us: “If you care about your friends, you’ll send this information about cervical cancer/visa fraud/brown recluse spiders . . .” But most viral emails simply contain something that makes us want to pass them on. They may make us laugh or feel validated and righteous. Many delight us. A few tap our sense of magic or mystery or transcendence.

The term “viral marketing” has itself gone viral recently, popularized by books like Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, or Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. Corporations have discovered that their best sales staff are satisfied customers, and they’ve been experimenting. Can we figure out the formula for starting a fad? Can we seed the virus with a few hired hands who create buzz? The Heath brothers offer communications professionals a simple formula which they call the “Six Principles for SUCCESs:” SIMPLE UNEXPECTED CONCRETE CREDIBLE EMOTIONAL STORIES. Look at the formula. Now think back about what I said regarding the boundaries of supernaturalism and the born again experience. The fit is remarkably tight.

In the field of medicine, epidemiologists study patterns of contagion. They might track, for example, how an influenza virus spread across one region and how it jumped from country to country in the bodies of specific carriers. Based on the way infections fan out, they may even be able to identify the “epicenter” of a disease. Some of the tools of epidemiology are now being applied to study the spread of viral ideas. But whereas diseases spread passively, meaning people rarely try to infect each other, viral ideas, also known as “memes” spread by harnessing the human desire to share what we know and to learn from each other. Memes get transmitted through established social networks. They spread horizontally within a generation, and vertically from generation to generation. That is why specific religions are concentrated in one part of the world or another and children tend to have the same religion as their parents.

For developmental reasons, children are particularly susceptible to simply accepting the ideas of their parents and community. If a parent says stoves burn you, cars can squish you, and bathing keeps you from getting itchy, kids tend to do best if they simply trust what their parents say. Nature has designed children to be “credulous.” This allows them to learn from the mistakes of their elders. It makes them more efficient in acquiring valuable information and adapting to cultural norms. It is also why evangelical parents are encouraged to convert their children. Research on identity development shows that if children can be contained within an enveloping religious community through their transition into young adulthood, few will ever leave. Bring up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

A successful religion needs to have the qualities of a successful virus. In a changing environment, this means it must have the ability to mutate and adapt. In the past, religions were spread largely by edict and conquest. Today, though, religion is perceived as an individual choice and religions must gain share by attracting adherents. This is why, today, the religions that are gaining mindshare are those that have good marketing, high birthrates, and what economists call “appealing club goods”. In the current environment, Christianity has been able to produce offshoots that need no edict or conquest.

Significantly, the religions that are growing right now are ones with strong copy-me commands. Evangelical Christianity is centered on what Christians call the Great Commission: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost.” In addition, just as the Roman church latched onto the strategy of competitive breeding (keep women home, sanctify a high birth rate), so Evangelicals have begun to explicitly add this form of copy-me command to the mix. By contrast, modernist Christianity is more often centered on what Christians call the Great Commandment: “Love the Lord your god with all your heart, soul and mind, and . . . love your neighbor as yourself.” In a straight up competition, the copy-me command wins out, and in fact, evangelicals are gaining mindshare, while modernists are losing it.

One of the fastest changing aspects of our world is the growth of information. As knowledge grows, some varieties Christianity accept new scientific or historical findings and reinterpret their sacred texts and traditions in light of our best understanding of the world around us. Tangentially, this is the approach taken by Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th Dalai Lama has said, "If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.” This kind of adaptation is common for forms of Christianity that, like Buddhism, are more centered in praxis (practice) than belief. For those that are centered in belief, adapting to new knowledge is more difficult, and the survival strategy more often is a sort of fundamentalist retrenchment. Karen Armstrong’s book, The Battle for God, describes this retrenchment in the Abrahamic religions.

The need to adapt may seem at odds with the recent success of fundamentalism, but in actual fact, fundamentalism is an adaptation to a changing world. Rather than revising dogmas, fundamentalists develop stronger defenses against external threats to a traditional homeostasis. An extreme example of this can be seen in the case of the Amish or Hassidic Jews: the belief system sustains itself relatively unchanged by engaging people to re-create an ancestral environment in which the belief system emerged.

But most theological fundamentalists have a more hybrid approach. They protect their children from external influence by home schooling or parochial schools but don’t mind accessing creationist materials from interactive websites. They offer in-house social services that include pop psychology. They promote hierarchy and sexism but are willing to have women and children as spokespersons for these views. They play up the risks of inquiry and doubt and yet use scientific findings to make their arguments convincing. Fundamentalist populations resist ideological change, but they have learned to exploit popular culture, best business practices, new technologies, and even scholarship itself to maintain the survival of their beliefs.

Since a virus and host fit together like a lock and key, understanding viral ideas helps us to understand the human mind, and vice versa. Retro-viruses and influenza mutate rapidly, which makes it hard to develop immunizations against them. On the spectrum of religions, Christianity shows a similar flexibility, regularly spinning off new sects, denominations, and even non-denominational renegades. And yet each of these taps a familiar range of emotions and social mechanisms and is constrained by the cognitive structures that place bounds on human supernaturalism. Christianity has adapted to a broad range of human minds and cultures, a strategy that has resulted in success beyond the wildest visions of the patriarchs.

Learn More:
Memetic Lexicon
Richard Brodie - Virus of the Mind
Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Made to Stick:Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die(New York: Random House, 2007), 253-257.

If you don't want to miss any of this series, subscribe to Valerie Tarico at this blog or send email to vt at valerietarico.com and request to be added to her weekly articles list. Missed Parts 1-4? All past articles are archived at www.spaces.live.com/awaypoint.

Related articles by Zemanta

Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 4 of 6 (exchristian.net)
Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 3 of 6 (exchristian.net)
Christian Belief Through the Lens of Cognitive Science: Part 2 of 6 (exchristian.net)
Christian Belief as a Natural Phenomenon: A Six-Part Series Part 1: Why Cognitive Science is essential to understanding Christianity. (exchristian.net)

Things I Wish to Say to My Mother

2009-06-26T20:41:00Z

Image by sakura_chihaya+ via Flickr

Although this may need some polishing, this is what I wish to one-day say to my mother, but having difficulty working up the courage due to her anger when I say something contradictory to her beliefs. It is more or less in open-letter form, boldly packed with much emotion, which I have yet to send to her, if I ever do. She will never see it on the net, because she has some issues with modern technology, but none the less I wrote it and maybe one day soon I can say these things to her or at least mail this to her to read. Regardless of the intent, I still see her reacting vehemently with anger. That is the way it has been when I stepped “out-of-line” in her view and probably will always be until one of us dies- hopefully in the order nature intended. The thing is I have always been better at saying my thoughts in writing than verbally, regardless of other people’s reactions to my words.

Mother, have you ever noticed that when I left home twenty-four years ago, I did not stay in the Lutheran Church ELCA, Free Methodist, Church of God, or any other church with remotely similar to Evangelicalism? Instead, in order to meet one of your requirements, I chose the Episcopal Church and spent many years studying various religions and philosophies in order to find my own way.

My rejection of the crucifixion because of its barbarity you forcefully pushed aside in favour of your dogmatism concerning it. Because you and my relatives said it was the ultimate sacrifice, that made it so in your minds and I had to believe it or else. However, just because authority and the Bible say so, does not make it so. It is all a human concept and the Bible is not the inerrant word of God, but rather the very errant word of Man, written and inspired by Man.

Your wish was to get me to attend church after your third born-again experience and even said you knew I would rebel if you chose something like my great uncle or grandparents’ church, so you chose the Lutheran church for us. Unfortunately, the one you chose carried the Evangelical label. While I have nothing against Lutherans, it was not for me, yet you did not comprehend why I stayed sick with anorexia and got upset when others blamed you, for you did not see yourself as abusive.

No, you were not physically or sexually abusive like my father, but the demand that I conform to your beliefs was and is abusive. It instilled fear of you and my other relatives, not of a deity, especially when you reacted with anger in response to what I said that you did not agree with.

The list of things that should have given you a clue that our beliefs differ somehow did not register with you or if it did, you pushed them aside, because you want to see your family in your very human concept of an afterlife. You did not notice that I went up to comfort you after you went up to my great uncle’s altar for a third time due to your “backsliding” and not to “be saved” nor did you realize that you wanted me to be baptized and that you and my great uncle were intimidating concerning the baptism.

Yet, when I attempt to tell you, “I’m a humanist” you cry, “You’re hurting me!” and then take an emotional turn into venomous anger as you demand to know what I believe under no uncertain terms. What do you expect me to do when you are rabid with dogmatic ideology? The only thing that calms you is to give you lip service and appease you. However, I am tired of playing the game and want to be myself with you and allow you to get to know me, not some fantasy version you desire.

How easily you forget the first seven years of my life, in which your raised me by the humanist philosophy. You may not have known it consciously, but the various influences were there, especially with Dr. Benjamin Spock’s childrearing ideas and the various books you were able to read to me without me throwing a fit about what others were doing.

Please do not regret that though, because I am very happy with my philosophy and live a good life of reason and compassion without reliance on any superstition or dogma. I strive for that at least. I thank you greatly for all the humanist influences you gave me during my very early years. In fact, since I chose humanism for myself in my thirties, my health has improved greatly over the last several years. I chose to live my life as I see fit without allowing others to do it for me. I chose to stand on my own two feet and face reality head-on as I brushed aside trying to be what everyone else wanted me to be.

I do not need anyone to send a letter to an adult Santa Claus because of it either. What I need is acceptance and real unconditional love that is not contingent on believing and conforming to what you believe. I need acceptance and acknowledgement as a human being who has a mind of her own and the capability to think for herself, not someone pounding me with their Evangelical dogmatic ideology.

Just once I would appreciate it if you called to ask, “How are you?” instead of the first thing I hear out of you being something to do with your religious beliefs only to bring you down with my lack of response to your enthusiasm. I have no logical or rational reason to get excited about such things, contrary to your belief.

You have a choice. You have always had a choice, but if your reaction is like that of my grandfather towards his brother, then it only serves to reject actually knowing who your daughter really is. I am still the same person, minus trying to appease and please you. Except for that one thing, nothing else about me is different.

I am not you. We are not the same person because you gave birth to me and it is well past time to change the all-inclusive “I” and “me” to “you and me”, because I am a totally separate person, an individual. I have never been you, either. My thoughts and opinions, which I kept to myself all these years, have never been your thoughts and opinions. They have always been my own, which I kept to myself, regardless of having a voice that is all mine.

Please keep in mind, that I am not that doll that you spoke so much about and supposedly prayed to come alive and a reality. A doll is something a little girl controls and manipulates, but it is not real. I am a real human being, not made of wood nor do I have a wooden heart. I am flesh and bone, which you conceived years ago, but not a doll that came to life due to a prayer answered by God. There was no fairy-winged angel dust that brought your doll from many years ago to life. It pains me to force you to see that reality, but it is a reality you must face.

Dolls are toys. Daughters are real and unlike dolls, they have feelings, thoughts, and opinions, which cannot and should not be manipulated, imposed upon, or ignored. There was no prayer in which some deity brought any doll to life. That is only a little girl’s childhood fantasy in relationship to a god concept about a favourite doll and nothing more.

By the way, I always hated that song “Wooden Heart/Muss I Denn” too, because for some reason, the actual words were ignored in favour of a fantasy of a doll coming to life by a little girl’s prayer to God. IF I lost my strings, then there is no more controlling or manipulation from anyone, not even you. It is time to give up such Pinocchio fantasies, especially when you know I never could stand Disney stories.

That is the first of many fantasies I wish for you to discard concerning me. The second one is your belief that everyone should share the same god concept, because not everyone shares your god concept. The rest we can work on slowly and at your own pace, but I do not expect you to disregard all your beliefs, which you hold so dear, nor do I intend to force you to do so, just the ones you impose and/or project upon me in relationship to what you believe everyone should believe. For me to do so would be psychological abusive to you and I do not want that either, especially since you held them for sixty-four years. However, those beliefs you hold so dear were imposed upon you and even enforced on you from day one of your life, yet you did not question them completely, even when you “backslided”.

Also, please do not send me any more propaganda about people having a bad relationship with their father reflecting their relationship with God. This has nothing to do with that, but rather an education, which you feared so much. I will grant you that a real education brings about critical thinking skills, which in return brings about reason and logic. However, an education did not harm or destroy any faith that I might have had, which was never the same as yours. Rather it answered my questions and doubts about religious beliefs, which I was denied until after I left home and made decisions for myself.

It took me over twenty-five years to get this far, but these are the choices I made for myself. I claim humanism as my own worldview. I did not choose disbelief in your god, but rather, it chose me years ago. Not once did I ever share your god concept and still do not. Whatever god concept I ever possessed was purely pantheistic, or sexed up atheism as Richard Dawkins calls it, and never theistic. Such atheistic beliefs do not require any religious text, so there never was any faith to destroy via an education. It all came from within myself and never was external or other worldly, which is something I do not expect you to comprehend, even if I explained the neurological basis of it to you. What an education did was help me understand the god concept I possessed as a child and gave me a greater appreciation for the human condition.

Sadly, your concept only brought me pain and misery. It was a source of misery and never a source of comfort, contrary to your belief. I watched our relatives over the years and I doubt such a concept ever actually brought anyone comfort, maybe pseudo-comfort, but not a real sense of comfort. The dogmatism behind it all did little except to perpetuate a cycle of abuse and neglect, which I am sadden you never saw. Trying harder to believe and clapping your hands together, like that in Peter Pan, will not change any of that.

I do not say these things to anger or upset you, but rather to continue my ongoing journey into adulthood and maturity, independent of any authority. In addition, I have not “backslid”, for I never dedicated my life to any deity as you have, but rather tried to keep you from being angry with me, especially as a child. My only regret is that neither you nor my other relatives ever saw what they were doing or even enabling with Evangelical beliefs, such as the abuse I endured from my father. I broke the cycle of abuse when I left home at nineteen, never to return or subject my offspring to such psychologically abusive ideology. You may be my mother and respect you as that, but not your beliefs. I never shared your beliefs and I never will. I cannot share your beliefs for it is not within me to do so and I am very happy to say my sons always had freedom of religion and from religion. There is no freedom of religion without freedom from religion, thus they had an advantage I never had until I left home.

I hope that we can move on from here without any more games or attempts to appease to keep the peace, because it is getting old and wearing thin. I also hope that we can move on from here as individuals who are respectful of each other’s worldviews without imposing on each other, as well as have a relationship that is more befitting of a mother with an adult daughter, because a non-theistic worldview such as humanism is not the end of the world, but a beginning. For me it is a way of life, which involves freedom, peace of mind, my own health, and well-being. This is not to anger you in any way, but rather a statement of my own independence as an adult and there is not a thing wrong with that.

Our forefathers made a Declaration of Independence to the Motherland years ago and today, the U.S. has a good relationship with England. In fact, it is a better relationship. Granted, there was a war, but it did not last forever and I expect, or at least hope, our relationship will eventually turned into a better one than it is now, regardless of your first reaction to this.

Note: “Backsliding” is a Wesleyan term that involves one being “born-again” or “rededicating” their life to the Lord Jesus Christ and can be repeated over an over again until one reaches “Christian perfection”, which are two of many Wesleyan ideological terms I may discuss in a later post. Thus, one of many differences between Calvinism and Wesleyan practices that may cause some confusion for some when I talk about the many times my mother has been “born-again”.

Related articles by Zemanta

Out of the Dark (exchristian.net)
Vegetarians are weak? Please! (exchristian.net)
Nice Wake Up Call- NOT! (exchristian.net)
Confessions of an Ozark Bible Belt Girl (exchristian.net)
Childhood Experience With Atheism, or Who Says Atheists are Bad People? (exchristian.net)
Raise a Child in the Way She Should Go... (Proverbs 22:6) (exchristian.net)
Why are you so angry yet make nice with some religious people? (exchristian.net)
I Ain't Afraid of Your God. I'm Afraid of What You Do In The Name of Your God. (exchristian.net)
It Makes No Sense (exchristian.net)
Human Sacrifice (exchristian.net)

Time to grow up?

2009-06-26T20:37:00Z

By Kevin B

Image by doug88888 via Flickr

It has been of my assertion ever since I broke free of childhood that religion quite simply does not make sense. It completely blows my mind to see intelligent people say they believe in Jesus and that they know that God exists. It makes me think to myself, humans as smart as we are, may not have the mental capacity to fully understand exactly what is going on. We have invented great things and advanced a long way but the basis of our intelligence may just be far too low to comprehend exactly how the universe and our world came to be.

We see this on earth, where a species can get to a level of comprehension of something but fail to fully understand. If you teach a chimpanzee to sign, does it really fully understand the language? Is it possible that we could one day teach that chimpanzee to talk and function in our world? The answer is no, and it is because the chimps brain is just not at a level to fully be on par with our own. I think this is where religion comes into play for humans. There are certain things about our physical world that are so far beyond us that we resort to religion so that we feel we understand.

Have you ever looked out into space and then looked at the ground you’re standing on and felt so incredibly small? We are smaller than a single bacterium on a grain of sand on a world sized beach. It seems however some of our bacteria believe they have solved our universe (based on nothing), and that the one Jesus bacteria is the answer.

I have come to peace with the fact that we may never know all the answers, but that to me is no reason to make them up. If we wish to be a species that survives and if we wish to be happy we need to give up on our archaic belief systems. They are no longer relevant and are only holding us back.

Science continues to give us more and more information about our universe, and hopefully one day we will gain a much better understanding of it. But in the mean time, while we are still waiting on those answers we need to focus on what we have already learned. We exist, we evolved, and we are now knowledgeable enough to overcome our tribal superstitions. It destroys families, kills friends, and cripples our ability to enjoy the very small amount of time we have to enjoy this planet.

Everyone, it is time for the next step in our evolution. It is time to break free, and be confident enough in ourselves that we no longer need a god to govern our society. We are a rational and emotional being, and we can function ethically without the threat of eternal damnation. As long as religion divides us, we will never all get along and never fully understand ourselves.

.....Let’s all grow up.

A Friend Dies

2009-06-25T15:07:00Z

By Brother Greg

Image by Harry‧黃基峰‧Taiwan via Flickr

This is something that happened during high school that I wish I had looked at more directly earlier in life – it might have helped me leave Christianity much sooner than I ultimately did. I should mention that this high school was an American school based in Taiwan. In Taiwan, when I lived there, there where there were a large number of white missionaries supposedly there to convert Chinese people to fundamentalist Christianity. I had a friend in the high school– let’s call him Mike.

Mike was a nice guy. He was also quite human. He was proud of his high SAT scores. He was in love with a girl at my high school, and the love was unrequited. He was very opinionated about music, about performing artists, songs, and lyrics. He was someone I could agree with or disagree with, but I respected his intelligence.

One day, Mike invited a friend, Steve, and me to a Christian weekend retreat for high school students, run by missionaries, and, out of curiosity, we agreed to go. There, during that weekend, Steve and I both had spiritual experiences. Given the context of our experiences, surrounded by all the missionaries and fellow high school students who were deeply invested in Christianity, we became Christians. We were told to read the bible, pray, go to church, and clean up our lifestyles, etc. I was stunned by my personal spiritual experience and overwhelmed by the earnestness of all the people so quick to tell me how to interpret my own experience.

Days after that, while hanging out at a local coffeehouse that was set up for Christian teenagers, Mike commented on how he was so happy to have participated in a “miracle”—the conversion of Steve and me. It was a comment that haunted me for years afterward.

About a week later, Mike was diagnosed with hepatitis. He stopped attending school and retired to his home. At the time, it seemed to me to be one of those diseases from which people usually recover. I don’t think, in those days, much was known about the different forms of hepatitis—that some forms are more harmful than others. I didn’t think anything of it. My father had once had hepatitis from eating shellfish, and he recovered. But Mike was getting worse, not better.

I went out to visit Mike at his home one Saturday afternoon. At that time, as he lay in bed, we talked briefly. He told me it was hard for him to have a conversation, because he felt so tired. Even just listening to people was an effort. He indicated that it was hard for him to have visitors, and I got the sense he’d rather not have any. So I let him be.

The next time I saw him, he was in the hospital. Another person and I visited him in the early evening, and he was sleeping. An orderly shook him, telling him he had visitors. Mike woke up, startled, looked at us, and promptly got sick. He was really out of it, and we soon left. That was the last time I saw him.

A strange event that happened after that. It was early on Easter morning, and I had been invited to join with a group of adult, male missionaries for a prayer meeting. During this meeting, we started doing what was called “speaking in tongues” – believing we were praying in another language that we did not otherwise know. Then there was some prayer, in English, about the health of Mike. In this middle of this prayer meeting, someone started speaking, as if channeling a message from God, that we should rise up, go to the hospital where Mike was, lay hands on him, and expect a miraculous healing. Another person added urgency to this message – that we should go now. We all got pretty excited about this, and the prayer meeting came to an end. We got up to leave, with plans to get in cars and go to the hospital, when we were interrupted by a phone call. Someone answered the phone, conversed slowly, and then hung up. This person then announced to us that he had just been told that Mike had died at about 3 o’clock that morning.

We were surprised and perplexed. Mike had died before the time of the prayer meeting. So what were those directions from God all about? Had we misheard? We sat down and started praying again, and soon a new message emerged, that we should still go to the hospital and do as we had been told. In short, Mike would be raised from the dead! We emerged from the meeting, convinced this would happen…. We got in cars and drove to the hospital.

While we were still outside the hospital, as I recall, someone in the group pointed out that we had to get permission from Mike’s dad to see the body, so that we could “lay hands” on him. Others agreed. Someone called Mike’s father, made the request, and was turned down. We felt stymied. We stood around hoping something would happen to make our prophecy come true…. But, of course, nothing happened. We finally left, individually, to go to different Easter morning church services.

I think some of us met later that day or at night at the Christian coffeehouse, where one of the leaders of the coffeehouse expressed his belief that some miracle was still going to happen.

But, as we all could see, nothing had happened.

And as it became clear over the next several days that nothing was going to happen, we stopped talking about it.

Over the years, since then, I’ve reflected on how a group of apparently grown men and a high school student (yours truly) managed to dupe ourselves like that. We earnestly hoped Mike would live, of course, and so there was the motivation. But in the days that followed, no one seemed willing to talk about how childish we had all been – and how wrong we had been, about some so-called “prophecies” from God. I was shocked to realize how these apparently grown-up men, obviously devoted to their faith – men that I looked up to at the time, couldn’t acknowledge we had been absolutely wrong about everything we thought we had heard from God at that prayer meeting. I think, in the long run, it was an experience that eventually made it easier for me to step away from Christian fundamentalism, first, and then Christianity as a whole, later.

The Question They Couldn't Answer

2009-06-24T22:00:00Z

Sent in by koosgirl

Image by Caro's Lines via Flickr

I was raised in a mainline Protestant household. We said grace, had an Advent wreath, went to church every Sunday, etc., but my parents were not overly heavy-handed. Church services were low-key, with the preaching and lessons geared toward positive things--emphasizing God's love for us, how we should love one another, God's mercy and kindness, and so on. I really never knew the negative aspects of the Bible until I was in my twenties and decided to read the whole thing, cover to cover.

It was an eye-opener for sure. I remember in particular the story of Job. In our church, Job had always been portrayed as a heroically faithful man, remaining true to God even when life dealt him the severest of blows--and being recompensed by God for the strength of his devotion.

So it was rather a shock to get the whole picture. God makes a bet with Satan that no matter how much crap God dishes out, Job will keep coming back for more. In cahoots with Satan, God heaps the shit on Job, taking everything the poor guy has--including his kids. Whoa! What was that? It wasn't *life* that dealt these blows to Job, it was...God! Let's just say it was a WTF moment.

Then, having won the bet, God makes good by replacing all Job's possessions--including his kids. Another big HUH? You can't "replace" a lost loved one by having someone new pop in. They're unique individuals, and God is acting like he's just giving Job a new muffler or something. Even we puny little humans can recognize this, but God can't? What kind of God doesn't know that? What kind of God acts like that?

After that, the question of suffering remained always in my mind. I asked many a pastor, religious counselor, and faithful Christian why a loving god would allow people to suffer, and got one of two answers:

"We don't know. It's a mystery, but God does everything for our greater good, so we must have faith in his ways."

"Because God wants us to have free will, he cannot force us to always do good. Unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things and make others suffer. But God has promised that we have free will, so he cannot intervene because he never breaks his promises."

Answer one never really cut it with me. I failed to see how child molestation, murder, traffic accidents, tidal waves, and such, could be for anyone's greater good. Plus, if it really is for our greater good, why doesn't God explain to us how that works? Why does he let people live on brokenhearted and devastated when he could console them by telling them what that greater good is?

Answer two I could somewhat buy. It is true that evil people have as much free will as good ones, and sadly, that does mean that there are innocent victims. Not very consoling, but it made a certain kind of sense.

Then my world changed, and I asked the question no one could answer.

At age 38, I became sick and was diagnosed with a hereditary illness. Medication helps, but I will never be well again.

This is a whole different aspect of suffering, and I wanted to know WHY it was happening. I wasn't even interested in wondering what greater good could come of it, having disposed of that answer long before. What I wanted to know was, how was my illness the result of someone's free will?

Whose free will?

Mine? I could hardly have chosen to have an illness, considering I couldn't even have chosen to be born.

My parents', for having had sex at that particular time that I was conceived? Not only is that nonsense--since they couldn't choose how their DNA would combine--it's unbelievably cruel to extend to them such a crushing burden of guilt. Besides, my parents loved me, and no loving parent would ever want their child to have an illness.

Adam and Eve's free will? Why should their decision to eat the fruit have any impact on my genetics? Why would God hold against me, something that two characters in a story written thousands of years ago decided to do? What kind of God does that?

I read voraciously, I asked all the so-called religious experts, I thought about it till my head ached.

Finally, one night, lying in bed with my brain chasing its own tail, I had a moment of clarity. The REASON I had an illness is because my parents were trying to have a baby. They had sex that particular time when my mom was fertile, the sperm met the egg, their DNA combined. All in accordance with NATURAL LAW, not the will of some Being in the sky. It happened...because it happened. It happened because Nature is random. It happened because that is the way the Universe works.

The remaining scales dropped from my eyes at that moment. No more metaphysical search for meaning, no more trying to make sense of the good god/suffering conundrum. Only the clear, obvious truth.

Some people say that this realization devastates them. For me, it was liberating! I didn't have to run in circles any more trying to defend some mythical god. I didn't have to wonder what was the greater good that would spring from my suffering. I didn't have to search for meaning in my illness. I tossed the last remnants of religion overboard at that moment, and I felt a peace and certainty much more real than anything religion had ever given me.

While I cannot speak for those who have endured the terrible tragedies of abuse, loss of a loved one, and the like, I can say that the meaning of my illness and the good that can come from it are the meaning and the good that I myself impute to it. In the ensuing years, I have found that for me, the good that has come from my illness has been the development of the grit and courage it takes to live as normal a life as possible, and much more empathy for others--indeed, a willingness not to judge them because I don't know their whole story, just as most people don't know mine.

I do not hate religious people. Some of them are horrible, but most are genuinely trying to be good with the tools they have. Most of them simply can't fathom a life without their faith, and that's fine for them. But as for me, I found much more peace in letting go of the supernatural. Now I value every day for what it is, I work to give meaning to my own life, and I accept the hand that has been dealt me. Life is better, and despite my ups and downs with my illness, I can honestly say I am happier.