exchristian.net

Religious Trauma is Trauma

Tue, 10 May 2022 22:22:52 +0200

By Andrew Pledger ~

(*Trigger Warning - Topics of depression, trauma, and suicide)

Hello, my name is Andrew Pledger, and this is my story of religious trauma. My story is long and complex which is why I’ve been working on a book. This entry will leave out many details, but covers the general overview of my experiences and will help people understand how I got here.

Restoration Counseling says, “Religious trauma (RT) is similar in symptoms to Complex-PTSD."

Symptoms of RT:

Negative beliefs about others
Low self-esteem
Struggle with emotional regulation
Depression, anxiety, grief, and anger
Nightmares
Disassociation, flashbacks
Lack of pleasure
Feeling isolated
Feeling empty, lost or directionless
Reduced critical thinking
Feeling out of place or like you don’t belong

According to Restoration Counseling, "Religious Trauma Syndrome is often caused for several reasons for different people. Many people experience RTS as a result of an authoritarian religion or faith community. Individuals suffering from RTS may be struggling with black and white thinking, irrational beliefs, difficulty trusting oneself, low self-esteem, or feeling indebted to a group of people. Skewed views of sex, discipline, emotional regulation, relationships, and self-expression are usually present in toxic religious environments” (Source: Restoration Counseling).

Let’s start in the very beginning, long before I was born. My parents were both devout fundamentalist Christians. My mom’s parents raised her Methodist until they converted to fundamentalist Christianity. My dad’s mom was a fundamentalist Christian and his father eventually converted.

My parents met at Hyles Anderson College in the late 80s. This college was known for being a strict fundamentalist school. My dad was studying to be a pastor and my mom was going to be an English teacher. This college was unaccredited which meant she would only be qualified to teach in a Christian school. After graduation, they got married in the early 90s and were excited to have children.

To their dismay, they struggled to have kids. After six to seven years of being a childless family, they began considering adoption. They had prayed for years to have children and it just wasn’t happening, until it finally did. They interpreted this as an answer to prayer and wanted to dedicate their children to the God of Christianity. Homeschooling was popular among fundamentalist Christians because of the separation from the world and outside influences. It was honestly all about control of their children’s lives. My whole life I was homeschooled and indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity. At eight years old, I converted to Christianity after hearing a horrific sermon on the terrors and demons of hell. I had many sleepless nights and nightmares sometimes having doubts about being saved. It was faith with a foundation of fear, shame, guilt, and manipulation. Little did I know the messaging I received in my developing years would affect me for the rest of my life. I was told I had nothing good inside of me, and God saw me as dirty and wicked. I was taught to not trust myself because my heart was deceitful and that the devil could plant thoughts in my mind. Shame and fear were used to bring people to the altar of the church. There were times in my childhood when I was told by my parents that I deserved to burn in hell. I was usually told this when I tried to seek praise for honorable deeds and said I deserved something. I learned to never ask for praise, but that conforming to fundamentalist Christianity was the only way to get love.

I was raised in Gospel Light Baptist Church in Walkertown, NC. It was pastored by Bobby Roberson for many decades until he died in 2018. He was called "America's Pastor" and Gospel Light was one of the larger Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) churches in the US. It was known for its large bus ministry that brought in thousands of kids every week. My parents idolized him and acted like he was Jesus Christ himself. As I became older, I realized the cult-like obsession my church had with my pastor. I’ll never forget hearing a church member pray in the pulpit and said,

“Dear God, help us to be more like Bro. Bobby.”

What?! What about being like Jesus! What a slap in the face to God! Independent Fundamental Baptist churches across the US knew who Bro. Bobby was and how honored his congregation was to be in his presence. People would overreact whenever anyone said his name. He was a celebrity in fundamentalist Christianity. He knew John R. Rice and Jack Hyles who were big figures in the fundie movement.

The most psychologically damaging was the hateful sermons on the LGBTQ+ community.

Growing up gay in fundamentalist Christianity was tough because I was taught very hateful things about queer people. My church painted an ugly picture by describing and generalizing gay people as all perverts going around raping people and hurting children. When I was finally able to meet other gay people, I realized it wasn’t true. The nicest people I have ever met are gay.

Even knowing this did not stop internalized homophobia. All the years of brainwashing to despise gay people began to reflect in me. All the years of hearing my family say hateful things about queer people were deep in my mind. I was angry because of the lies the church told me and because of the damage to my self-worth.

The self-hatred became so unbearable that my mind started to develop a different identity. This was my mind’s way of coping with the trauma.

As I got older the identity faded away as I learned to love myself. Which was a really challenging thing to do. Loving yourself is so difficult when you feel like the ones closest to you find you unacceptable.

As a result of all the years of emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of the church, I fell into a deep depression when I was 16. I stopped eating, my body ached, and I mainly stayed in bed. When I tried to eat, I just couldn’t do it. My dad would yell at me angrily to eat as if I was just a piece of shit. The last thing a mentally ill person needs is someone yelling at them to get over it. My parents would not take me to a doctor or a psychiatrist. In two weeks, I lost 20 pounds. I felt like I was dying. I don’t remember how I got out of the depression, but I somehow managed to recover.

I was extremely hurt that the people who were supposed to take care of me denied me healthcare. All my trust of my parents was forever destroyed, and I became ultra-independent because I felt I could trust no one.

I slowly moved away from Gospel Light and attended another church regarding youth activities. Before long, I was shunned from that church because of my perceived sexual orientation. I was all alone, and no one knew what I was going through. I had been suffering in silence for years. Eventually, I decided to get away from fundamentalist Christianity by getting a job. I desperately needed social skills and life skills in general because I was so helpless and dependent on my parents. I worked at Chick-Fil-A and thankfully I was able to find love and acceptance there. I worked there to save money for college.

Flash forward, I was manipulated into attending a Christian university, so I chose Bob Jones University, and I was not happy about it. I tried to convince myself that it was fine and that it was only four more years until freedom. I feared the prejudice and bigotry I would experience at BJU. I was bullied and harassed at the school a lot during my first year. I had already experienced two depressive episodes and I was falling into my third. What I did not know at the time was that I was struggling with repressed emotions, sexuality, and trauma.

After pouring my heart out to this counselor about how I was mistreated growing up, he said I was paying for my sin. He basically said I deserved what happened to me because I existed. Towards the end of the first year, I nearly committed suicide, but I managed to call the Trevor Project hotline. I saw no way to escape my personal hell of fundamentalist Christianity. I found the courage to explore outside the fold and find a community. I found an affirming church and met a wonderful family who lived within walking distance of BJU. They gave me a key to their house so I could escape BJU when needed. They were my haven.

The pandemic started in 2020 and we were all separated. I did not want to go back to an unaccepting home, but there was no option when everything shut down in the US. The summer of 2020 was when I fell into my fourth and worst episode of major depression. There were deep psychological issues I was not dealing with, but I had no education in psychology or mental health. I had to fight to go to the doctor so I could get on antidepressants. That summer I discovered the term religious trauma, and I was relieved to know the issue, but I was overwhelmed and wondered if it was possible to heal. This episode lasted 7 months and I did not dig deeper into my religious trauma because I was afraid of it. I did not know where to start and I was busy with college.

The religious trauma was going nowhere, and I underestimated the power of trauma. I ended up struggling with suicidal ideation my Junior year and I had no options except for Biblical Counseling.

After pouring my heart out to this counselor about how I was mistreated growing up, he said I was paying for my sin. He basically said I deserved what happened to me because I existed. Just for existing, I deserved terrible things to happen to me. This was too much to handle with my depression. This was the moment I decided to leave Christianity. To be honest, it was never personal to me because it was forced on me my whole life. It was not going to be easy to de-convert after all the years of brainwashing.

In my senior year, I began working on my religious trauma by digging into psychology. I decided for my photography internship to create an art photo series about religious trauma. This pushed me to explore my trauma on a deep level to tell my story through photography.

I reached out to Josh Harris to talk about my photo series on his IGTV show. He was excited to have me on and I was nervous because I decided for the first time in my life to be authentic. I had processed so much of my trauma in the last few months that I was ready to tell my story. I knew I risked being expelled from BJU for this opportunity, but it was worth it to me.

Ten days after the release of the video I was expelled from BJU in January of 2022. I now live with the family that took me in my first year. For the last few months, I’ve been working on my personal growth. I’ve been in therapy for two months working through my religious trauma. I’ve been grinding to finish writing the rough draft of my book. I read two books a week to expand my mind and get rid of black and white thought patterns. I’ve become an influencer to bring awareness to religious trauma and I have shared my story with many podcasts. I’m now on a mission of pursuing psychology to become a therapist and eventually a psychologist. I want to research religious trauma and help survivors of religious abuse. This story is far from being over.

Connect with Andrew @ Linktree: https://www.liinks.co/4ndrewpledger

Interpreting Reality

Fri, 06 May 2022 01:06:47 +0200

By Webmdave ~

Reality for my dog is uncomplicated. She understands life to be a series of eating, sleeping, running, sniffing, barking, guarding, trusting some and distrusting others, and above all expressing affection and loyalty to her pack (human family). In short, reality for my dog is displaying the qualities usually associated with a dog. She neither searches for or desires a higher purpose, nor does she fear sickness or death. She does not accumulate possessions and is not afflicted by envy, avarice, or demanding addictions and passions. Beyond just living out her days according to her nature, there is nothing else. She is at peace and content with her lot.

Regardless of various differences in appearance, aptitudes and situations, dogs appear to be consistently content with their lives. People, however, are complicated. We believe we are somehow special in the universe and are notoriously discontent with nearly everything in our lives on a regular basis. Just sitting still for an hour can be torturous for many of us. Being unoccupied with busy activities is a burden that many find loathsome to bear. People are constantly on the search for purpose and meaning. They want to understand the purpose of the universe and why people suffer. They want a reason why some people receive so many privileges and blessings from life while others suffer privation of health and basic necessities. Many are of the opinion that the benefits of life should be equally distributed to all, and when it is not equally distributed, they think justice is not being served.

Of course there are others with completely different views of life. Historically, the various systematic interpretations of reality believed in and adhered to by human beings are as varied and as divergent as are the star systems in the cosmos.

“Life is opinion,” or “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations IV, 3

In my opinion, how any of us interprets reality is ultimately inconsequential to the operation of the universe. I sincerely doubt that the incomprehensibly vast universe is even aware of humanity, much less actively devoting any energy toward designing and assigning unique individualized purposes for our short natural lives. While it may be pleasant for some to believe that each of the nearly 8 billion people on this planet have cosmically significant (and even eternal) meaning, the likelihood of that idea approaching any level of truth is probably considerably less than microscopic.

Except for humans, no other lifeform on the planet believes their individual lives are invaluable to the cosmos. Only humans are guilty of indulging in self-congratulatory interpretations of reality that resemble self-aggrandizing fantasies.

Now, to be clear, my life is pretty important to me. And your life is likely very important to you. And both of us may or may not be considerably important to those close to us. However, is it reasonable to assume that the vast cosmos has singled each one of us out and placed extraordinarily priceless values on our individual lives?

There is no evidence that a supernatural (or natural) being outside an individual’s head is assigning value and meaning to an individual’s life. — Webmdave Some reject this thinking and believe their lives lack meaning without their god(s), their family, their job, their freedom, their culture norms, and hosts of other fabricated human constructs. Societies throughout history clearly indicate there just doesn’t seem to be a standardized system for interpreting reality, as each population group defines reality for themselves. In other words, there is no evidence that a supernatural (or natural) being outside an individual’s head is assigning value and meaning to an individual’s life. People ultimately make their own decisions and assign their lives meaning through their gods, their family, their clan, their country, their hobbies… (you fill in the blank).

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality” ― Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Letter 13 to Lucilius

This delusional thinking has likely at least in part something to do with our ability to imagine things that do not exist. Our imaginations predict optimistic and pessimistic futures for ourselves that more-often-than-not never come to fruition outside of our anxious imaginations. We observe happenings in the world and make unreasonable conclusions based entirely on intuition and feeling. Or, in other words, based on imagination. People hate to answer a direct question with “I don’t know.” They usually make something up for an answer based on – you guessed it – their imagination. It astounds me when I ask someone a question they could not possibly have an answer for, yet that person will immediately blather out an answer. Just answering with an honest shrug and an “I don’t know” is anathema to nearly everyone, or so it appears to me.

“People are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.” – Epictetus, Enchiridion Ch 5

We do have the ability to reason things out. I think, however, that other animals also have this capacity, but of course in smaller doses. Our reasoning abilities outshine other lifeforms on the planet, and we rightly place a high regard on our demonstrated superior brain power. We dominate our planet because of our brains, but our understanding of reality is still woefully lacking. We really only understand the reality we create in our heads. Our interpretations of what we see, hear, touch and feel emotionally fleshes out our reality. In the end, our opinions frame our reality. Our perception is our reality, and our perception is frequently (if not always) incomplete.

What I believe

Tue, 03 May 2022 19:25:13 +0200

By Jerry ~

I am a senior man who would consider himself an agnostic when it comes to belief in a creator of the universe, but an atheist who rejects the idea that there is a loving being wishing the best for mankind.

Because of the design of the earth itself and the completely hostile environments of the planet, I believe we are more of an accident then a purposeful creation.

I don’t accept the Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian or pagan gods.

I had been involved with Jehovah's Witnesses in my youth and Christian Evangelical Fundamentalists most recently. I found both to be equally troubling for various reasons. However, my wife is still a staunch Pentecostal, and I must at least pretend in order to keep my marriage. But, in my heart I know the Bible was a book written by men and not at all accurate or inspired by anything other than their imaginations.

One only need to study the Old Testament to see that not only was God a monster, but compared with the New Testament it’s a completely different religion. Yet, I am supposed to believe Jesus is the God of the Old Testemant? They (those gods) couldn’t be more different.

I believe in love and good people. Even when evil triumphs, I will be the best person I know how to be.

Believe Nothing

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 19:11:18 +0200

By Tyler ~

Luckily, I was not born into a religious family! However, I was born into a family that lived around religious Catholics and Jews. Oh no!

When going to school with people who were primarily Jewish, I was ridiculed all the time and heard their silly jokes to each other, which I never understood. They were all well dressed, totally materialistic and did not make sense to the rest of us who did not grow up with their religion. One actually came to my house, stole something and tried to put the blame on me. Then we called his mother. She tried to blame it on us too!

Same thing happened to my sister: false accusations. I think they secretly think everything belongs to them, much like their Catholic and Christian enemy/brothers.

Anyway, I eventually went to a community school with a Roman Catholicism class. Uh Oh! I was sitting in the first seat in front of the teacher and he immediately looks at me and tells me, "Come out of her my people." I did not say a word but looked down and thought, "He must think I am religious." He begins telling me that I am a murderer. Then he accuses me of being a Jew. Knowing full well that I was not one, he begins to explain that my family came from Spain.

Number 1, I am not Spanish. I have record of where my family is from. It's not Spain. And my last name is common in the land where I came from. Far far away from Spain.

Anyway, He then says that the Christians who came over on the Mayflower receive money from the Catholic Church now for free. Then, he asks if I want to work for him. Then, he says Benjamin Franklin was a murderer. "You like Benjamin Franklin, right?" Mind you, throughout all of this time that he was making these comments I did not answer or talk to him. It just poured out of his mouth. Then he gossips about Queen Elizabeth saying she had lovers. I'm still wondering what is this man talking about? Then he rambles on about "metrosexuals" and how he likes them.

Listen folks, stay far far away from any religion. Jesus was a nut and so are the people that believe or disbelieve. The whole thing, throw it away.

A problem we are encountering is the majority of Catholics in the representative powers. I thought this was a land of all people. Where are the other representatives of other cultures and religions? America? The land of the free? Where people of different religions and beliefs are subject to Old Testament laws, Catholics, Jews as well as a lying government that is granted the authority to lie and spread religious propaganda through the government? Don't believe everything you hear about other countries. They drum up lies to make people feel "lucky" about their Catholic, Jewish and Christian slavery! Look up the Bruderofs.. That should speak for itself.

Be free, live, have sex and make mini-mes in the name of Buddha wan Chinobi or whatever god YOU make up!

On wasting time

Thu, 07 Apr 2022 20:40:08 +0200

By Webmdave ~

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested... ― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

I retired a couple years ago and people are still asking me what I do with all my time. Responding I am working on personal improvement seems to assuage most curiosity. What I am tempted to tell them is I spend my time the same as everyone: living life.

Until recently, my mindset resembled that of my inquisitors. I believed that a person who spends the day playing video games or watching television is wasting time. Further, I believed that if a person isn’t actively pursuing a goal such as career advancement, acquiring a degree, travelling the world, etc., then they are also just wasting time. In fact, spending time doing anything not measurably productive could be labeled a waste of time. Someone I know, when she is off work for a couple days, feels compelled to fill most of that "free time" completing household chores, maintaining the landscaping, starting craft projects, helping others with special events, etc. If for some reason she spends an entire day in quiet contemplation, relaxing or even sleeping, she bemoans having accomplished nothing. She "wasted the day." If no measurable productive activity is being accomplished, says this philosophy, then time is being frittered away.

Where I disagree with Seneca on this topic is that not everyone – regardless of hard work, determination or investment of every minute in productive pursuit – is destined for the highest achievements in life. Natural abilities, genetic predispositions and randomly tragic circumstances affect outcomes.

Some things are in our control and others not. ― Epictetus, Enchiridion and Selections from the Discourses

When I was a boy I would walk through the cemetery near my home and attempt to puzzle out the faded epitaphs on the oldest tombstones. Interments have been performed in that cemetery since the early 1800s and I often wondered about the people buried beneath those stones – who these people were and how they lived their lives. Some of those lives have been over for two centuries. Except perhaps a paragraph or two some family history, their accomplishments and failures are forgotten. My great grandfather is buried near my home. He fought in the Civil War and died before the Stock Market Crash of 1929. Considering the incomprehensible age and expanse of the known universe when compared to the diminutive extent of this planet and the ephemeral nature of all life, any discussion judging comparative values on how we spend our insignificant spans of time is probably silly. There is no one alive today that knew him or met him. I am aware of his military service record because I possess his discharge paper and some other documents. I also have a copy of his obituary that was published in the local paper. Some research on the Internet helped me find out he enlisted in the New York Cavalry at the age of 16 and census records indicates he was a carpenter. Whatever else he did in the military or in civilian life is lost to time. All his "productivity" is dust.

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt graduated from Harvard and plunged into politics, rising from the New York State Assembly to become New York City police commissioner. Then in 1901 he rose to the highest office in the land at age 42 after an assassin killed President William McKinley. His life was crammed with excitement and exploits which fill volumes. His "Rough Riders" Calvary unit received more publicity than any other Army unit in the Spanish American War. The Teddy Bear was named in his honor of after he refused to shoot a bear during a Mississippi hunting trip in November 1902. Yet, very few people I know have the slightest inkling about this man, often confusing him with his fifth cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt. The bold and daring accomplishments adorning Teddy's life is mostly forgotten. And, if any memory does endure of all his striving after the wind, it brings him no satisfaction as he's not here to enjoy it.

Considering the incomprehensible age and expanse of the known universe when compared to the diminutive extent of this planet and the ephemeral nature of all life, any discussion judging comparative values on how we spend our insignificant spans of time is probably silly.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. – From Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.

Eventually no one will remember anything that anyone has done. So why is it so imperative that every minute of my transitory life be filled with “productive” activities, however that term is defined?

Nothin' lasts forever but the earth and sky. It slips away. And all your money won't another minute buy. Dust in the wind. All we are is dust in the wind – From Dust in the Wind by Kansas

I worked diligently fulfilling the expectations put on me by parents, society, employers and others for over 60 years. I provided materially for my family, paid my debts, tried to repair my mistakes and generally did my best to be a compliant, obedient, productive citizen. Now that the kids are grown and I have the good fortune of having acquired sufficient retirement income to sustain my needs, I spend my time almost exclusively in pleasures that interest me and help make my life pleasant.

By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and trouble in the soul. It is not an unbroken succession of drinking bouts and of revelry, not sexual lust, not the enjoyment of [...] delicacies of a luxurious table that produces a pleasant life. It is rather sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs that lead to the tumult of the soul. – Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

The absence of responsibility I now feel when it comes to fulfilling others' expectations of me is a tremendous relief. Carefree freedom from most emotional drama is very pleasurable. The reasonable portion of tranquility finally available to me makes my life pleasant.

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. And to say that the season for studying philosophy has not yet come, or that it is past and gone, is like saying that the season for happiness is not yet or that it is now no more. Therefore, both old and young ought to seek wisdom. – Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus,

The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 19:50:52 +0200

By Sean ~

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them. – George Bernard Shaw

I became a born again Christian when I was in the Air Force in 1986. I didn’t have a big, spiritual conversion experience. I was told to pray for God to reveal himself to me and told he would. So I did. I prayed and said, essentially, “I don’t know if you are real but if you can prove to me somehow in the next 30 days, I’ll follow you for the rest of my life. If you are there and real, amen.”

How I got to that point: About two weeks earlier I was given a copy of a book about Armageddon and Revelations called “There’s a New World Coming” by a guy named Hal Lindsey. I devoured that book. It was amazing and Hal was quite convincing. So I went to the bookstore in the town near the Air Force base and bought a Bible. I wanted one that didn’t look like a Bible at all. I found a paperback New American Standard Edition Bible that fit the bill.

From Hal’s book I learned enough to believe that I should read the New Testament first. So I started reading the gospels. When I got to the end of the Gospel of John, I thought, “even if this Jesus depicted isn’t real, he’s a great role model and example to follow and emulate.” So I prayed the prayer above.

One thing that is either from my personality or just a lucky coincidence of my reading, that really, really sunk in was the importance of truth. This whole thing was suppose to be based on absolute truth. Jesus was not simply true, he was the Truth with a capital T.

If I had of researched that Bible the way I research everything else, I wouldn’t have stayed a Christian for much more than a few months. But something else happened once I identified myself, at least internally, as a Christian believer. Other believers encouraged me to start attending church. My first several months becoming a Christian was a solitary experience, for the most part. Beyond Hal Lindsey, no one talked me into reading or believing anything. What I had was mostly pure, if that makes sense. Until I joined a Bible study.

Some of what they pushed in that study didn’t align with what I felt I clearly understood from my own studies, with just god and me. I mentioned it to a friend from the gym who I was pretty sure was a Christian. He took me to his church and then to the pastor’s home for dinner. They said that the other group was well intentioned, but a little confused.

Around that time I started dating a nice girl who it surprised me to learn was a Christian but hadn’t been active in a while. She knew a great church for us to go to together. Another church, another set of interpretations that differed from the others and from my own studying.

I ended up just avoiding churches. I had a good thing going with god all in my own and they weren’t helping. This lasted about a year and a half.

When I get out of the Air Force, I made good friends with some Mormon friends of my next girlfriend (who became my wife eventually). They listened and sympathized with my struggles. It “reminded them of their church’s founder’s story” they said. “How about we do a weekly Bible study together?” Sounded okay to me.

At work I made a friend who would always sit off a ways and read his Bible at lunch time. Another Christian I thought. He was a good worker, very nice, and had an air of confidence, an air of something special. Eventually we got talking and he said, “why don’t you join me for lunch and I’ll share what I’m studying.” Sounded okay to me. He was a Jehovah’s Witness.

At this time I proposed to my girlfriend. We wanted to be married in the local church that her sister and some of our longtime friends attended. It was called the United Brethren Church. To get married there we had, you guessed it, had to attend six weeks of religious classes.

Now for a guy who was fully committed to not only The Truth but the truth as well, this situation was becoming a perfect storm. There was my truth, this truth, that truth and the other truth. And one truth about conflicting truths is they can’t all be true.

Well, I as getting married and I went with the UB version. It matched what I had gleaned on my own the best by a long shot as well. This process set me on a path as an amateur Christian apologist for many years. I became a minor expert on cults and a major expert on Mormonism. Hundreds of dollars were spent ordering books and documents on Mormonism. Thousands of hours of study put in.

What I didn’t realize was I was so focused on disproving those cults that it caused me to fully swallow many of the same types of false beliefs about Christianity. They say an anti-counterfeit agent studies the original (money, painting, whatever) so thoroughly that when they come across a fake even the most minuscule deviation junks out at them. I was like an anti-counterfeit agent who only studied the fakes. An error that would carry me along In Christianity’s current for another 20 years.

What for me was the turning point was what I started this post out with. “The opposite of love isn’t hate. It is indifference.” After being a very devout, sold-out to my core, born-again believer for over 30 years, praying every day, multiple times a day, attending church every Sunday, being very involved in weekly Bible studies and “doing life together” with dozens, hundreds of Christians I came to realize that whatever the Christian god was doing, he wasn’t involved in what I, or any of us, we’re doing. He was indifferent.

“The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them.”

As a truth seeker and a Truth seeker, I quickly concluded that the god of Christianity could not be indifferent. Based on the description of him in the book about him, indifference isn’t possible when it comes to “his children” here on earth.

When this realization crystallized I started paying attention to all the prayers offered up constantly by believers. Nothing ever happened. He could answer or not answer and the answer or non-answer could come in any form or no form at all. I realized that if God is all knowing and knows the future, if he had already decided the future as my very first experiences as a investigator revealed, then any answered prayer is at best a coincidence.

There’s a lot more to this story, but the next big turning point, the one that caused me to exit Christianity entirely, was finding the book, “Drunk With Blood.” Actually, LISTENING to the audiobook version of it.

I had been deceiving myself thinking that I was intimately familiar with the whole Bible. In truth I had never read much of the Old Testament. I had possession of everything I ever needed to avoid falling for this load of b.s. from that very first day that I bought that paperback New American Standard Bible. The same as just about every other Christian on earth .

Listening to Drunk With Blood finally snapped me out of my stupid when it came to religion. Not only did it disgust me, it destroyed all credibility I had placed in the New Testament. Jesus may be depicted as a wonderful guy, but when he claims his authority as The Truth and The God based on the Old Testament, I don’t know that guy. There’s no way that the Jesus depicted in American Churches today would ever, ever associate himself with the god of the Jews depicted in the Old Testament. They can’t both be true. And if one is false then they’re both false because they’re inexorably linked as one via the Trinity.

I have been out for a few months now. I can’t accept something so obviously untrue. I’m struggling a bit with the implication that with no god then this life is just over when we die. We just end. Forever. To paraphrase what Stan Lee once said to Larry King, “When we die I think it’s just nothing. But I can’t wrap my head around nothingness lasting forever. Forever!”

This doesn’t make me fear death. It makes me appreciate life more than ever before. No waiting and looking forward to see loved ones in heaven. No putting things off to do “in eternity” instead. I appreciate and want to show my appreciation for those I love and those I like more now than ever before. I also am finally totally clear that when I do something kind of good it’s just purely for that other person, animal, whatever, period. It’s not “for god.” It’s for them. Not for me. And even if it was for me, that’s not a sin. I’m allowed to do something kind of nice for me. No guilt. At least I accept that intellectually. Im still struggling with the ingrained thought processes.

I am not going to claim that I'm a good person or deserving of any special anything. But I can absolutely claim that now that I have jettisoned the false religious beliefs (I’m trying to). I'm definitely a more authentic person, more authentic friend, more authentic dad, husband, brother. It’s sad to me that giving up a belief in “the loving god of the Bible” and his reward or punishment system I able to be more truly loving. And I’m not looking at everyone who doesn’t believe what I believe at destined for hell. And I’m not looking at all the fakes who claim to believe the same as me wondering how in the hell they can possibly go to heaven. I don’t want to see them there. That’s not heaven.

Now I just see how precious we all are and how we all get a very brief time to BE and then that’s it. Forever. No one is going to burn in hell for eternity for believing in the wrong god. The closest thing to heaven we're all going to experience is the same as a nice restful night’s sleep. Forever.

I’m mostly okay with that. What choice is there? I’ve got about 20 summers left. If I were still engulfed in Christian belief I would just waste them away banking on heaven. Now? I’m going to try not to waste any of the time I have left. I’m going to make sure those I love KNOW I love them. I’m going to try to instill in everyone I can that we need to live NOW. Don’t put off the good that you would do. Don’t waste time. This life is not just a blip in our lives in eternity. This blip IS our eternity. It’s all we’re getting.

I apologize if I’ve rambled all over the place. That’s just a reflection of where my mind is at this period in my life. My mind rambles all over now that the absolute certainties I had as a Christian have been replaced with a different set of certainties. And a lot of uncertainties.

If you read all this I hope it was useful. Thank-you.

It is Proper to Doubt: Skepticism as a Form of Honesty

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 04:27:49 +0200

By Barrett Evans ~

Indeed, it is proper to doubt, Kālāmas, and to be perplexed. When there is a doubtful situation, perplexity arises. In such cases, do not accept a thing by recollection, by tradition, by mere report, because it is based on the authority of scriptures, by mere logic or inference, by reflection on conditions, because of reflection on or fondness of a certain theory, because it merely seems suitable, nor thinking: “This religious wanderer is respected by us.” But when you know for yourselves: “These things are unwholesome, blameworthy, reproached by the wise, when undertaken and performed lead to harm and suffering”—these things you should reject. —The Buddha, Discourse to the Kālāmas

In this famous passage from the Discourse to the Kālāmas, the Buddha makes a simple statement that can seem completely radical for the mind held in dogmatic religious thinking. Namely, that it is proper to doubt the doubtful. In almost any other area of inquiry, this proposition is entirely uncontroversial. In many religious systems, however, doubting the dubious is seen as a grievous moral failure. It is even considered scandalous by many to question whether traditional religious beliefs are true. In the words of Sikh scholar Hew McLeod, “Every religion includes a host of followers for whom the academic analysis of the faith is treated as a heinous crime or something approaching one.”

A major part of letting go of the dogmatic life is to release the rather extraordinary notion that having doubts about complex, unverifiable, and speculative metaphysical ideas and fantastic miracle stories is worthy of the worst sorts of condemnation. It would seem that the confidence of any belief, no matter what the area of inquiry, should be commensurate only with its likelihood, the quality of the evidence behind it, and its capacity to bring good to the world. Doubting the dubious may be best understood not as sin but as an ethical act—and an indispensable and foundational step in seeking what is true. As medieval philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard (1079-1142) wrote in his controversial Sic Et Non: “Indeed, the first key of wisdom is defined as constant or frequent questioning …. [T]hrough doubting, we arrive at questioning; in questioning we perceive the truth.”

In extolling the virtues of doubt, I do not have in mind the harsh, unyielding doubt of the dogmatic or uniformly anti-religious contrarian. Rather, it is the doubt that strives to remain teachable, is deeply interested in new questions and perspectives, and is fully cognizant of the finite and fallible nature of human judgments.

I would further posit that acknowledging reasonable doubts is not only ethically sound, but psychologically healthy as well. Modern cognitive theory in fact views defective thought patterns as a primary cause of mental suffering. As prominent psychologist Gerald Corey explains: “Cognitive therapy perceives psychological problems as stemming from commonplace processes such as faulty thinking, making incorrect inferences on the basis of inadequate or incorrect information, and failing to distinguish between fantasy and reality.” Within this framework, doubting unrealistic or toxic religious ideas may be seen as a path to better mental health through a more thorough personal honesty.

Author blurb: A former Protestant seminarian and ex-Roman Catholic, Barrett Evans is an agnostic who has retained a fascination with non-supernatural contemplative practices. He holds graduate degrees in divinity and counseling from an evangelical seminary and an undergraduate degree in history from Davidson College; he has also taken graduate coursework in religion at Wake Forest University. His book The Contemplative Skeptic is an exploration into the benefits of combining doubt with a non-supernatural, contemplative way of being.

Author link: The author’s personal story can be found at American None: “Doubt and the Good Life”

Ho Ho Oh No It Ain't So

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 05:26:55 +0200

By Carl S ~

It's that time of year when people hear the story of a star traveling right above Earth, leading men to a structure, where it stops and hangs around for hours! ( Global Positioning Star, or Ancient UFO?)

The reason for the Christmas story is said to be of utmost importance: It's claimed (no witnesses), the first humans did something naughty by following the advice of a Talking Snake! This “evil” was enough to punish the entire human race, forever. In order to pay the penalty for it, the child born on the first Christmas had to be tortured to death for three hours! This gory “solution” is preached as the greatest example of love! If you're willing to accept this package: would you believe all animals on Earth, predators and prey, could live peacefully packed together, on a boat, for over a hundred days? Would you believe only a few people on Earth worth saving were the ones standing by watching their friends and neighbors drown? What about five loaves of bread feeding five thousand men alone? Would you believe four thousand, with seven loaves? What if they're really big loaves?

Would you believe that, for children, faith is just another habit to learn, together with how to eat, just as they trustfully accept histories of family and ancestors, (which may or not be true), and learn cultured habits, right along with their potty training? Isn't trust just another survival mechanism? “Don't ask why” is the answer they get when they question a learned habit. These are all called, “tradition.” When one grows up, shouldn't one shelve or abort the impregnated fantasies? Not everyone does.

Most people don't take scriptural stories extremely seriously, and those who do often cause trouble. (Ask the witnesses to 9/11 and the Parisians who were there for reactions to the cartoon of Mohammed.) Allah/God, has no sense of humor. Comedians and cartoonists find a ton of examples to laugh at in alleged “holy” texts. Blasphemy is the laughter of free people with freedom to speak their minds and tell it like it is. If you don't think this is true, just look at the places where it's a crime, where you can even be executed for not pretending to believe.

When one grows up, shouldn't one shelve or abort the impregnated fantasies? Religious stories sound familiar, like something you'd find in Qanon and other conspiracy and alternate-reality sites. They all have millions of followers. Seems like the last time an abundance of technology went amok was in the Roaring Twenties, when “Anything Goes.” Now new bible printings will have to include the Prosperity Gospel. I don't know what your experiences are, trying to discuss beliefs, but whenever I ask for evidence to back them up, I get an angry, “It's The Truth!”or, “Just believe it.” Hmm,, same problem trying to have conversations with people of faith or cult members. Asking for proof is rejected, over their emotional intensity of being privileged insiders to secret worlds.

Nothing new, here. As far back as the 2nd century C.E., the Christian apologist Tertullian, wrote: “It is impossible for a man to return from death; therefore it must be true.” Investigate the multitude of bizarre things believed as “truth” on this planet, and you might be tempted to ask yourself Why should nonsense be respected when it's earned the opposite of respect? It's no mystery: What every single conspiracy theory/alternative reality, shares in common with cults and religions: they all require an initial “ leap of faith,” and to keep that feeling leaping. This desire makes every one of them “True.”

So here we are at yuletide in the 21st century, expecting rational judgements from Supreme Court justices entrusted to make decisions based on evidence alone, not faith, not opinion, not hearsay. Let's hope they have doubts about dogmas, because six of those justices belong to a faith which professes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that crackers are the living body of a man who died two thousand years ago. For a start, let's hope they don't take that one too seriously.

Journalist looking for named/anon interviews on experience of sex and relationship teachings at UK churches

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 21:08:27 +0200

By Ellie ~

Hi all. I'm a UK journalist and ex-Christian with experience of UK purity culture in the Church of England and evangelical church/events.

I'm keen to speak to men and women 25-40 who experienced purity culture at church as children or young people about its impact on them, with a view to sharing those experiences anonymously in a feature for a UK title. Your stories would run alongside coverage of a story-gathering project at a major US university about the impact of purity culture, and a research PhD about the UK experience of purity culture. Sharing experiences of UK purity culture feels important to me, and seems like something that hasn't been done yet. I can share a bit more about my portfolio and experience as a journalist if you'd like to hear that before going ahead but to summarise, I have about 10 years' experience as a journalist, and three or four years' experience working closely with case studies on personal stories.

If you'd like to hear more, you can reply in-thread in the forums at https://ex-christian.net or message me directly using the forums messaging feature. Thanks for your interest.

The Great Grab Bag: Religious Diversity and Its Implications

Thu, 07 Oct 2021 21:08:56 +0200

By Barrett Evans ~

There’s no subject on which there is more difference of opinion among both the learned and the ignorant. But in this medley of conflicting opinions one thing is certain. Though it is possible that all of them are false, it is impossible that more than one of them is true. —Cicero (106-43 BC), The Nature of the Gods

Confidence in religious belief begs to be reconsidered when the sheer diversity of religious thought and practice is understood. While enumeration of the groups, sects, schools, doctrines, gods, scriptures, and practices of religions is inherently imprecise and subject to reclassification, it is nonetheless true that there have been many thousands of religious manifestations with myriads of differing supernatural beliefs positing thousands upon thousands of divinities. Though it is difficult to provide a representative picture of the true scope of this diversity, it has been so broad that it seems fair to say that it has only been restricted, in the words of one psychology of religion text, “by the structure and capacities of the human body and by the outer boundaries of human inventiveness.” While individual believers are often called to confidence or even certainty in specific religious beliefs or expressions, the innumerable variety of choices would seem to render the likelihood of reliable, comprehensive religious opinions as statistically negligible—even assuming that one of the options was known to be correct.

What follows is a somewhat eclectic list of facts and numbers which help quantify the incomprehensibly vast and complex religious alternatives that have been part of human religious experience:

0—There are multitudes of religions and sects that have appeared and thrived only to eventually lose all their adherents. Among the many dead world religions are the ancient Greek, Scythian, Babylonian, Hittite, Norse, Mithraic, and Celtic religions. One interesting defunct Christian group is the Messalians, a Trinitarian sect that eschewed the sacraments, devoted themselves assiduously to prayer, and existed from the fourth to perhaps the ninth century. From the Protestant tradition, one quirky example is the Muggletonians, a non-Trinitarian sect from England that lasted from 1652 to 1979.
2—A schism in Jainism between the Digambaras (sky-clad) and the Shvetambaras (white-clad) focused on whether it was permissible for monks to wear clothes and which scriptures were authentic. Two major historical sects within Zoroastrianism were Zurvanism and Mazdakism.
3—The Donatist Church of North Africa, which held that salvation was only possible within its fold, had at least three schisms: the Maximianists, the Rogatists, and the Claudianists. Not an insignificant sect, as many as 310 Donatist bishops gathered to denounce the Maximianist subsect in 394.
5—The Digambara Jains are divided into at least five subsects—Bisapantha, Terapantha, Taranapantha, Gumanapantha, and Totapantha. The ancient Sumerians had a great number of gods—but the five chief among them were the sky-god An, air-god Enlil, water-god Enki, mother-goddess Inanna, and her consort Dummuzi.
7—Though frequently described as monotheistic, Zoroastrianism has a group of seven lesser or derivative divine beings known as the Heptad or the amesha spentas. There are seven general categories of texts in the immense Hindu canon of Scripture: Vedas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas, Upanishads, Epics, Sutras, and Puranas.
8—Ancient Egyptians had a large pantheon of gods that included these eight: Anubis (the jackal-headed god), Horus (the falcon-headed god), Thoth (the ibis-god), Amon-Re (the sun-god), Osiris (a god of vegetation), Set (Osiris’ step-brother), Isis (the wife of Osiris), and the Pharaohs. The Baha’i religion, traditionally believed to be founded in 1844, believes in the following eight prophets or “Manifestations of God”: Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and Baha’u’llah (1817-1892).
13—There are thirteen main sects in “sectarian” Shinto. Dozens of movements have emerged from these thirteen forms. Some examples are the ascetical Shugendo, the Urabe, the Watarai, the Confucian-oriented Yoshikawa, Kurozumi-kyo, Suiga, Sanno-ichijitsu, and Minkan.
14—According to one enumeration, there were at least fourteen creeds created during the 4th-century Arian controversies in the Catholic Church. These include not only the original Nicene Creed, but also four different creeds of Sirmium and four different creeds of Antioch. One creed with Arian tendencies was known as the “Blasphemy of Sirmium” by its detractors.
16—There have been many different Sikh sects and movements including the following sixteen: Khalsa, Sanatan, Namdharis, Nirmalas, Udasis, Seva-panthis, Asali Nirankaris, Nakali Nirankaris, Radnasoamis of Beas, Sahaj-dharis, Nihangs, Bhai Randhir Singh da Jatha, Damdami Taksal, Sikh Dharma of the Western Hemisphere, Sant Nirankari Movement, and various Sant movements.
18—The traditional number of original Buddhist sects numbered eighteen. Only the Theravada school remains out of these original groups. Mahayana Buddhism was a later development—and there are now a vast variety of sects and communities in Mahayana Buddhism which include the major groupings of Pure Land, Tantric, and Zen schools.
19—Baylor University’s Baptist Studies Center for Research notes 19 different classifications of American Baptists (although there are certainly more). Theological differences include the predestinarian beliefs of Primitive Baptists, the Sabbatarian views of Seventh Day Baptists, progressive gender and sexuality beliefs of the Alliance of Baptists, the charismatic leanings of the Pentecostal Free Will Baptist Church, and the civil rights focus of the Progressive National Baptist Convention.
21—The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 21 Ecumenical Councils. (The Eastern Orthodox recognize seven, Oriental Orthodox three, and Assyrian Church of the East only one.) There are 21 “main groups” or denominations of Amish and Mennonites in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
24—The Talmud describes 24 competing Jewish sects.
Dozens—There have been dozens of Taoist schools and sects over the centuries. Among these are the Celestial Masters school, the Perfect Realization school, the Great Purity School, the Ling Bao, Heavenly Mind, Divine Highest Heaven, Great Oneness Taoism, the Five Pecks of Rice sect, the Sacred Jewel sect, the Heavenly Masters sect, the Highest Pure sect, and many other groups collectively described as Spirit Cloud Taoists.
33—There numbered 33 gods in early Vedic Hinduism. Among these were Indra (warrior and storm god), Agni (fire god), and Varuna (sky and water god). Modern Hinduism posits thousands of deities—although some conceptions of the faith describe it as monotheistic.
40—A bronze model of a sheep’s liver made by the Etruscans, known as the liver of Piacenza, is divided into forty regions—each one belonging to a different god. The number of Sufi orders has been traditionally numbered at
40—although there are certainly more. There are also approximately 40 different types of Amish affiliations.
46—Scholar Yu-hsui Ku (1902-2002) noted 46 sects of Zen Buddhists in Japan.
70+—Muslim scholar Al-Ghazali (c.1058-1111) noted that there were “seventy-odd sects” in Islam, but only one would be saved. The two main divisions in Islam are the Shiites and Sunnis. Shia or Shiite Muslims have multiple groupings and subgroupings such as the “Fivers” (Zaydis), “Seveners” (Ismailis), and “Twelvers” (Imami). Sufis, typically regarded as the mystics of Islam, have often been at odds both theologically and devotionally with their stricter and more legalistic co-religionists; however, they have operated in the bounds of both the Shiite and Sunni umbrellas. Other Islamic groups have included the Kharijites (which at one point were divided into as many as 20 different groups), Ahmadis (who believe that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad was the Mahdi and Messiah), black Muslim groups in the United States like the “Nation of Islam,” Quranists (who reject the hadith), Khubmesihis (who thought that Jesus was more important than Muhammad), Qadarites (who believe in free will), and the more rationalist Mu’tazilites. There are also various believers who have been more influenced by Western values who term themselves "Progressive Muslims.” According to one religion text, there have been “literally thousands of sectarian groups” within the general confines of Islam
80—Church father Epiphanius (c.315-403) cites 80 different types of heresies in his Panarion.In his 1864 Syllabus of Errors, Pope Pius IX outlined a series of 80 errors and heresies pertaining to modern liberal ideas and philosophies (like freedom of religion and the press). Interestingly, some of these claimed errors appear to be embraced in the teachings of the Vatican II Council (1962-1965).
100—Baha’u’llah (1817-1892) produced over 100 volumes of scripture that Baha’is regard as sacred. 1

100+— There are perhaps 100 to 200 Presbyterian denominations in Korea alone. Controversies related to Shintoism, theological liberalism, ecumenism, and clergy corruption have all apparently contributed to the schisms.
103—According to Liu Xiang (77-6 BCE), there were 103 Confucian schools of thought in the 1st century BCE.
112—The Hindu Scriptures known as the Upanishads are about 112 in number. If all the known Upanishads were gathered together, they would be about as long as the Bible.
128—In the fourth century, the bishop Filastrius of Brescia catalogued 128 heretical groups.
Hundreds—There are “literally hundreds” of small, independent sacramental groups in the United States that have branched off from Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican communions—and that show a variety of traditionalist, feminist, New Age, Quaker, Gnostic, Protestant, charismatic, and other influences. There are also hundreds of “Cargo Cults” in Micronesia which frequently contain beliefs that “spiritual agents will, at some future time, bless the believers with material prosperity (which, in turn, will usher in an era of peace and harmony).” Perhaps the most famous cargo cult is that of John Frum, whose adherents build faux landing strips in hopes of being blessed with material goods.
370—Although some could be variant names for the same deities, there are over 370 known names of Celtic gods and goddesses.
400—The Mormons have had at least 400 different denominational groups since 1830. The five most prominent of these are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (main or Brighamite group), Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonites), Church of Christ (Temple Lot), Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Strangites), and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or Community of Christ (organized by Joseph Smith’s son, Joseph Smith, Jr.).
401—There are 401 Orishas or gods in the myths of the Yoruba people of Nigeria.
1,500—The Taoist canon known as the Daozang is comprised of approximately 1,500 separate works.
2,290—Not to be confused with the lengthy Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism or the extensive Tibetan Buddhist Canon, the immense Chinese Mahayana Buddhist Canon, commonly called the Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō, contains literally thousands of works.
10,000—According to the 2001 World Christian Encyclopedia, there are “at least 10,000 distinct and different religions” currently in existence.
36,000—The ancient Chinese concluded that 36,000 gods dwelled in the human body.
47,000—According to a 2019 report from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, there are currently 45,000 Christian denominations in existence and there will likely be 64,000 by 2050.
8 million—Traditionally, Japanese believers have claimed that there are 8 million Kami, or divine beings of Shintoism.
Countless/uncountable—There are innumerable Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhist belief—among the most popular are Amitabha, the future “messiah” figure Maitreya, Avalokiteśvara, Samantabhadra, and Mañjuśrī. Traditional African religions and Chinese folk religions posit so many gods that they are difficult to even count.

These types of religious facts demonstrate that all people—albeit in differing degrees and in different ways—have religious doubts. Even those who are very religiously or supernaturally inclined could of course not accept all the religious ideas and perceptions stated or implied by such information—in part because many aspects of different religions are distinct, discordant, or even flatly contradictory. And while broader and more ecumenical perspectives endeavor to be more inclusive, they not only lack uniformity among themselves, but are also necessarily at odds with multitudes of more narrow approaches that deny such liberality. In other words, a significant degree of religious doubt is a universal human trait. So, while doubting specific religious teachings can at times make one feel like an outsider in a particular community, it is helpful to remember how natural and even inevitable religious doubt is to the human experience. The famous words of Enlightenment philosopher and author Voltaire (1694-1778) seem to provide a proper perspective on this perennial human struggle: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”

Hashtags:

#nones

#agnosticism

#uncertainty

#skepticism

#doubt

#spirituality

#contemplative

#deconstruction

#exvangelical

#ex-catholic

#honesty

#humility

#freethought

Author blurb: A former Protestant seminarian and ex-Roman Catholic, Barrett Evans is now skeptical of traditional dogmas but retains a fascination with certain non-supernatural aspects of spirituality. For more meditations combining spirituality and skepticism (and for further sources for this meditation), see his book The Contemplative Skeptic: Spirituality for the Non-Religious and the Unorthodox. You can follow him on Twitter at @ContemplativeS4.

Before and After

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 19:19:07 +0200

By Carl S ~

One man made a very astute observation. He said before the ten commandments came to be, there were tribes. Mankind, therefore, already had social laws in place. People co-operated, loved, cared for, and supported one another. So who needed commands from one more invented invisible deity? All of this natural morality existed before the ten commandments. But what happened after them?

What about that Golden Calf story? It's in Exodus 32, if you're wondering. Long story short, after the Israelites are delivered out of Egypt, they make a stopover near Mt. Sinai, and Moses, the leader, goes up the mountain alone to speak with the “god” no one has seen. He's up there so long, it looks like he's skipped out on them. They're bored, and ask the second-in-command man to fabricate this god upstairs into an image representing that “god.” After he does (here again, according to Moses alone), the “invisible god” on the mountaintop tells Moses he's pissed off and is going to destroy the lot of them. Moses says he talked him out of doing this, arguing it would be bad for “god's p.r.” if the Egyptians passed it around, “their god only delivered them so he could wipe them out in the desert.” Nice move.

Moses just happened to be just another self-ordained god-spokesman, a.k.a. nut jobNow Moses just happened to be just another self-ordained god-spokesman, a.k.a. nut job, another one of those who go off as hermits with brains cooked and hallucinating in the searing desert heat, hearing their “god” speaking to them. (And he had over a month to spend chiseling letters in rocks.)

To continue, Moses, in a huff, and after 40 days away from his people, goes down the mountain and sees the people singing and dancing! Enjoying themselves! He breaks those ten commandments tablets he claims were written by “god,” (one of them being, “You shall not kill”), and makes the people eat the dust made from the idol he pulverized. As if that weren't punishment enough for idolatry, he tells the men from the tribe of Levi, “Thus says the Lord: grab your swords, go to and fro through the encampment, and “each one of you kill his brother, his companion, and neighbor.” Now just picture this taking place! Tallying up the slaughter, it's claimed “only” 3000 were killed. Compare that to the number of victims on 9/11/2001. Thank you, Lord.

Now, I myself don't believe a word of this story. To begin with, the ancient Egyptians, who kept meticulous inventory of day to day events at that time, never mentioned Moses or the Israelites being in Egypt. I couldn't care less, but millions of people believe this wacko story. I'm writing about it to point out something. Read the section following Moses's descent from the mountain to any believer, and that believer will have no problem accepting what followed. But think about this: before the commandments, the tribes came together and co-operated to make their journey. Families, husbands, wives, children, slaves, etc. After the ten commandments, after they “got religion,” then the slaughter of one another began. And no believer has a problem accepting this outcome.

Ten Thought Patterns that Trip Up Former Bible Believers

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 19:06:13 +0200

By Valerie Tarico ~

Perhaps it’s been years or even decades since you left biblical Christianity behind. You may have noticed long ago that there are human handprints all over the Good Book. It may have dawned on you that popular Christian versions of heaven would actually be hellish. You may have figured out that prayer works, if at all, at the margins of statistical significance—that Believers don’t avoid illness or live longer than people who pray to other gods or none at all. You may have clued in that Christian morality isn’t so hot and that other people have moral values too. (Shocking!) You may have decided that the God of the Bible is a jerk—or worse.

But some habits of thought are hard to break. It is a lot easier to shed the contents of Christian fundamentalism than its psychological structure.

Here are ten mental patterns that trip up many ex-Christians even when we think we’ve done the work of moving on. None of these are unique to former Christians, but they are reinforced by Bible-belief and Christian culture, which can make them particularly challenging for recovering believers.

All or nothing thinking. In traditional Christian teachings, no sin is too small to send you to hell forever. You’re either saved or damned, headed for unthinkable bliss or unthinkable torment, with nothing in between. Jesus saves only because he was perfect. Moderate Christians are “lukewarm.”

This kind of dichotomous black-and-white thinking seeps into us directly from Bible-believing Christianity and indirectly from cultures that are steeped in Protestantism. Sports? Enjoying the activity isn’t enough; you need to be all in. No pain no gain. Work? You’re a real worker only if you get back on the computer after dinner. Bragging rights start at 60 hours per week. Political? The more absolutist your proclamations, the more you’ll gain a following.
Good guys and bad guys. One consequence of black-white thinking is that we put people into two mental boxes—good guys and bad guys. You are either with us or against us, a patriot or a socialist, an anti-racist or a racist, one of us or one of them. Disagreement becomes synonymous with schism and heresy.

When we discover the personal failings of a public figure like Bill Gates, we may move them from one box to the other, good guy to bad guy. Christianity offers no mental model in which people are complicated and imperfect but basically decent—we are just fallen (“utterly depraved” in the words of Calvin) and either washed in the blood or tools of Satan.
Never feeling good enough. Since we are acutely aware of our own failings, it can be hard internally to stay out of the bad-guy box. Some of us toggle between “I’m awesome” and “I suck.” Others have a nagging internal critic that tells us nothing we do is ever quite good enough. After all, it isn’t perfect, and that’s the biblical standard.
Hyperactive guilt detection. Biblical Christianity gives tremendous moral weight to all of this, and the practice of “confessing our sins one to another” turns believers into guilt-muscle body builders. We live in a world of shoulds and should-nots, and in the Protestant ethic, those daily failings are moral failings. A nagging sense of guilt can become baseline normal, with little bursts of extra guilt as we notice one thing or another that we have left undone or goals where we have fallen short.
Sexual hangups. For many former Christians, particularly for women or queer people but also straight guys who like sex, it’s impossible to talk about guilt without talking about sex, because sexual sins are the worst of the worst. When it comes to the Bible, getting and giving sexual pleasure are more matters of temptation than of intimacy and delight. Idolatry and murder share the top 10 list with coveting your neighbor’s wife. Then there’s virgin-madonna-whore trifecta. And don’t forget God hates fags.
Living for the future. Sexual intimacy isn’t the only kind of pleasure that biblical Christianity devalues; the consecrated life focuses broadly on the future rather than the moment. The small every-day wonders that comprise the center of joy in mindful living are mere distractions for a person who has their eye on the prize of heaven. As former believers grow convinced that each person gets one precious life, those individual moments can become treasures. But the habit of focusing on the future can make it really hard to center in the moment, breathe in, and bask in the ordinary beauties and delights around us.
Bracing for an apocalypse. Even worse than being drawn by the lure of heaven is being braced constantly for some impending apocalypse. We may no longer expect a Rapture or the Mark of the Beast or Jesus riding in on a horse. But the idea of a cataclysmic disruption in history looms large nonetheless. A sense of nuclear doom or pandemic doom or overpopulation doom or underpopulation doom may nudge us to action or be paralyzing. Either way, the experience is very different from being driven by a sense of curiosity and discovery as we face the unknown.
Idealizing leaders. Living in a cloud of anxiety makes us more susceptible to demagogues and authoritarians, people who exude confidence we lack, who convey that they know what’s right and true and how to solve problems. They prey on our fears and on our desire to do good and be good. They prey on our sense of ourselves as sinners and tell us how to atone. (Sound familiar?) They prey on dichotomous thinking, reinforcing our sense that people who don’t share our worldview must be evil and so must be silenced or defeated.
Desperately seeking simplicity. Biblical Christianity tells a story about us as individuals and about human history that is clear and simple. Multi-dimensional causality? Moral ambiguity? Conflicts with no good side and bad side—just sides? Problems with no right answer? Blurry boundaries between human beings and other sentient species? No thanks!

Fiction from Western cultures often mirrors and reinforces older Christian templates and tropes and specific types of oversimplification. And it’s all to easy to project these in turn onto the hard-to-parse and hard-to-solve challenges of the real world. We know deep down that things aren’t so simple, but it’s easy to act as if we live in a world of saints and sinners, elves and orcs.
Intrusive what-ifs. And so we struggle, with new and old interpretations of reality and thought habits competing in our brains. We tell ourselves it’s ok; that we’re ok. But often nagging doubts persist. What if I’m wrong? Many years ago I told a therapist that I didn’t believe in the Christian god anymore, but I didn’t talk to anyone about it because I didn’t want to take them to hell with me. He laughed and I laughed at myself, but it also felt very real.

The journey out is . . . a journey. Along the way people second guess themselves, especially if Bible-belief got inside when they were young. Years after quitting a former smoker may crave a cigarette. That doesn’t mean they were wrong to quit. It just means those synaptic connections got hardwired, soldered in place, and some of them are still there.

In the real world, growth is gnarly. It happens in fits and starts, with forward leaps and sideways turns and backward skids and times of stasis. Change is rarely linear. Flip-flopping often serves truth-seeking. Certitude is rarely a virtue. We seldom know where we are headed. Nonetheless, sometimes we can look back and say with confidence, Not that. I may not know exactly what is true and right and real, but there are some things I can rule out.

I often find myself quoting one former Bible believer who made a comment but left no name: I would rather live with unanswered questions than unquestioned answers. Embracing uncertainty about the future and the big questions frees us to live more in the small delights of the near and present—a nest of blue jays, a hug, the smell of butter on toast. That may be as good as it gets.

Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings. Her articles about religion, reproductive health, and the role of women in society have been featured at sites including The Huffington Post, Salon, The Independent, Quillette, Free Inquiry, The Humanist, AlterNet, Raw Story, Grist, Jezebel, and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Subscribe at ValerieTarico.com.

Freedom and Peace

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 16:51:00 +0200

By Blackfreethought ~

It is such a relief to know my actions do not have eternal consequences. My mistakes will not condemn me to damnation and my good deeds will not propel me into heavenly bliss. I live each day recognizing the frailty of my humanity and that strengthens me to do the best I can to improve conditions in the world while I possess the mental capacity and vision.

My life is much sweeter because I understand that I am responsible for its outcome, although many things lie beyond my control. The gods do not wrestle over the fate of my soul, since neither my soul or the gods exist. My existence is not a battleground for good versus evil, where my mind is the prize.

I no longer attempt to justify life rules that do not fit my intrinsic values. I do not have to explain why I follow a religious system, largely responsible for the ills facing my community. I can freely embrace the historical facts and pursue other interests.

My life is much sweeter because I understand that I am responsible for its outcome, although many things lie beyond my control. This is the only life I have and I am getting older. I do not need the words of Scripture to encourage me during a difficult time, I would rather have the companionship and connection with loved ones. I may get ill and fall victim to a cruel disease, but I will continue to do my best while I am able. I will not require prayers or prophecies for encouragement if I am in that spot. I hope to live a long and fruitful life. I get comfort when recognize that a god or church will not use me as a test case for or against faithfulness to a Christian belief system.

I do not have the time nor the energy to invest my time believing in a faith tradition promising freedom, but constructed on lies and oppression. Justice and equity will not come from above, they must come from the activities of people who desire to see people living their best lives. The systems of religion only get in the way of human progress, although I acknowledge that good people also contribute, in spite of their religious persuasion.

The realization of these and other ideas allow me to rest easier and find a zone of peace because I am free from religious dogma and beliefs. I am a humanist and atheist.

What is our Anger About?

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 16:07:26 +0200

By Yak ~

I want to talk about anger. Just a short spin through these forums reveals a constant undercurrent of strong anger. I don't believe that our anger is misplaced, and I think it is definitely justified. Real or threatened loss, including betrayal and deception is a strong basis for anger. But, being both a mildly introspective non-theist and counseling professional, I have to ask questions about our anger.

My questions are: (don't spit blood; read it through) Are we angry because we wish it (god) really exists? Are we really angry because we were told that there was a real "father" who actually "cared" for us, the way we had hoped as children? Perhaps like a dad who would back us up and soothe our hurts, listen and dispense wisdom when we were confronted by the vagaries and ugliness of life? But then, we inevitably discovered or finally admitted to ourselves that what we were told isn't true. In other words, we were deceived, got let down or betrayed. Of course, everyone eventually discovers that this divine conception isn't true, some taking longer than others to reach the point of discovery, but the discovery is made despite denials. Always.

There's a whole host of other ridiculous religious doctrines and convoluted teachings. Enough in fact to spark all the arguments we engage in on this site. Let's set those aside for this one and focus on the ones that are at the core of our disappointment: we were told someone/something cared for us but found that to be a lie.

I've been one of the most outspoken of us. My own anger --even rage-- seemed unbounded, and I can say that my rancor has been powered to a large degree not by the philosophical arguments of divine non-existence, but by the profound disappointment of being let down. Yes, I do agree that the idea of the existence of such a being is deeply troubling, but I think the focus of our anger is more about "why don't you exist" and "why do the stories persist that build up a deep hope that is ultimately dashed" rather than about our philosophical notions. In short, when we got let down, we got hurt. Many of us experienced far more dire consequences of religion, and we recognize the validity of those horrible experiences. However, I'm looking into what appears to be a more universal common denominator that arises from the text in the thousands of posts that so many have shared on this site.

Being honest about the matter, my anger is constantly re-vivified each time I read about, hear or see some human who has been deluded, damaged or killed by their own beliefs in some kind of divinity, or through the beliefs of someone else. (I see such damaged individuals daily in my practice)

We have a deep, animal need to feel protected, heard, helped and comforted. This is normal and is especially and immediately relevant to us due to the presence of uncertainty and threat in our environment. From the time we are born, we're hardwired to look to someone to fill that deep need. We humans devised god(s) to fill that need and proceeded to build many stories to support it. Not surprisingly, when people began discovering that it didn't exist to help the way we had hoped and, as a way of trying to explain why terrible things happened around us and to us, we had to distort the story and make the "father" we hoped for into the mixed bag caring-but-uncaring, benevolent-but-malevolent, unconditional-but-conditionally loving "father" that is clearly taught by several world religions. While ultimately clumsy in its execution, it's an understandable attempt at making sense of the stark and the often brutal divergence between the story we constructed and our experience of reality.

So, we're back where we started. But, due to distortions in the narrative, and the pain of our own unmet childhood need, we may wish it did exist but are faced with the universal experience that we, in fact, are on our own. Hence, our sense of loss at being let down.

Are we angry because we wish it (god) really exists? It makes me both sad and happy because this painful experience of realization, once accepted (and that is by no means a simple or quick task --can I get an amen?), actually means that you and I are growing into the humans that we actually are meant to be --frail but strong, feeling lonely but never alone because we have each other, and able to a greater or lesser degree to handle life's vagaries. When we begin to accept the universe around us as a world of wonder, replete with the entire spectrum of experiences, from good to bad, including happiness and suffering, life and death --we finally let go of the apron strings and learn to stand on our own. It's only then that we can truly see and engage with others around us and "get" that this is the way life is meant to be lived. We stop focusing on our dream of how it could be and can begin living in the reality of our situation.

Those who cling to their childhood, need it the strongest and refuse to relinquish it are, understandably, the loudest deniers and sometimes the most dangerous and damaging to themselves and others. It's a case of "the childish will run riot." Their "tests of faith" and odd notions of "divine judgment" and supporting doctrines are remarkably consistent with the thinking of children between the ages of 5 and maybe 9, a time of life when concrete, all-or-nothing thinking is normal. After that age of course, humans are geared to begin confronting the world with its unpleasantness and not knowing, not having a quick answer to every problem, and the reality of uncertainty, which is a hallmark of life. All-or-nothing thinking is no longer age-appropriate by then, but those who are the most afraid and needy will cling to it giving rise to the oft quoted maxim when referring to those who are still trapped by religion, 'never underestimate the power of denial.' For those of us who hung on to the untrue story the hardest and longest, our anger is the strongest because the loss seems the greatest. And that makes sense. However, we needn't hide behind our anger with lavish arguments; we need only accept and express our anger at our loss so we can finally let go of what are now unrealistic childish needs and begin living as whole, integrated adult humans. Our philosophical arguments can then turn into mind candy to be bantered about vigorously, but without the added internal sting of needing to assuage the deep betrayal that we feel because we realized that were told to accept a painful untruth. Arguing ideas is so much more fun and instructive when they're unclouded by pain.

I think the process of growing through the worst of our childhood need for someone bigger to run to when we feel alone, hurt or uncertain is part of maturation. We're also learning to look within ourselves for answers and looking across to other humans for the understanding and the comfort we seek instead of looking "up" to someone who isn't there. We finally stop looking at the disconnected, static-distorted image of a divinity that fades in and out like on an old TV set and look around us and see life, ourselves and others clearly. We discover that we can talk with others and work through most of our problems or dilemmas. We discover that we provide the only protection we have. We move on. So. Yes. We get angry when we experience a real or threatened loss --and the realization that we do not now nor have we ever had a big daddy to turn to, despite being assured "he" was there, qualifies as a real loss, a legitimate reason for our anger.

But, and this is the lucky bit for us, this is a part of growing up and becoming a complete human. I'm glad to be human, only human, and that you are here with me, sharing this patently human adventure. I remember this happy fact when the noisy theists rehash their worn out arguments, trying to inflict guilt while exposing their own unmet needs and pain that they haven't found the courage to face and outgrow. They're afraid but still dangerous to those around them. They deserve our compassion, as we would have compassion for a frightened child who won't let go of the door going into the dentist's office.

I say in answer to the questions I started with: yes, we're angry because we were deceived. It is loss and justifiably so. So, let's be angry, take the time to work through it and get on with being grown up and free and let's do it together.

Your thoughts?

Is Eternal Life a Fate Worse Than Death?

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 21:09:59 +0200

By Carl S ~

I live in a country with a motto “In God We Trust” on its currency. It's a stupid motto, since the “God” it refers to, as every Christian child is taught, out of all the gods, is the only one who is “creator of Hell,” and therefore, never to be trusted. Any nation which unquestionally accepts this slogan is an unthinking nation. Let's just take a look at this “Hell.”

Have those who claim to believe in Hell really thought about Hell? Have they thought of what it's like to suffer intense unremitting pain, so the only ways out are in pain killers, opium, inebriation, and if it goes on, insanity and/or death, even by suicide? You'd do anything to escape pain like that. Some pet owners, when the only future for their pets will be hopeless suffering, choose to have them euthanized. Those who get bored with inflicting torture will kill their victims. The objects of torture eventually become used-up pieces of crap to them, They're no more fun.

So isn't Hell evidence this god has failed?Faith is a habit of denial and avoidance. It's willful ignorance. And yet it is held up as something to be respected! As Eric Hoffer said, “It's startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.” But the god of Christianity will never have enough satisfaction in torturing.. He tortures by delegating. Which makes him Satan. You can beg for mercy all you want, but the torturing won't stop. You're ignored and forgotten and left to suffer for as long as he wants you to, and that means forever. For what? Those who worship and praise their alleged “all-loving and all-merciful father,” accept his Hell without blinking an eye. If Hell is hopeless, it makes its creator/maintainer, also hopeless. They are proud of this? Somebody should teach them to think about their Hell.

Unthinking people believe their god is almighty, though he's unable to influence the mind of a man enough to convince him without a doubt he truly exists, so he's sent to Hell for not believing! That's fucked up. So isn't Hell evidence this god has failed? (As in one of my past posts, “How to Read Scriptures,“ he admits to failing.) If Hell still is acceptable, then this particular god is incapable of learning why keeping it in operation is a horrible mistake. Hell just must be absolutely forever since its god is: “yesterday, today, and the same, forever.” You can’t have one without the other. Doesn't this mean those who defend him, no matter what evils he creates or inflicts, are also incapable of learning? Something’s wrong with their minds.

From Philip Appleman's poem, “Five Easy Prayers for Pagans":

And forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice --
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise --
make the bad people good
and the good people nice;
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.

So, to hell with “Hell.” Or, for that matter, “Heaven.” On the subject of an alleged “afterlife,” here are some things I consider: Even if there were such places, I wouldn't be alive to experience them. What is a fate worse than death? It would be having to live forever. And I've thought about the one question we should ask a believer of any faith. “What do you remember of what happened during the two hours before you were born?” Is it any wonder why believers refuse to think?

Meaning of Life

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 20:49:21 +0200

By Rational Logic ~

Some Christians say that the atheist viewpoint on life is that it is ultimately meaningless. They quote Richard Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow who hints at such when he says “We are going to die…. how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state…? That prior state he is referring to, is of course is nothingness. If you ultimately return to nothingness and the whole universe will one day be nothingness does that mean life is ultimately meaningless?

To many Christians, William Lane Craig included, feel that if there is no god with no ultimate purpose then everything is ultimately meaningless, even “depressing” according to Dr Craig. And yet, when you look at a beautiful red sunset and a tear rolls down your eye, or you listen to music that uplifts your spirit, or watch children at play and smile, do you feel that life is meaningless? Of course not. It is these very things that give life meaning.

Christians have a different problem on their hands. For a great many unfortunate people in this world, life does indeed seem meaningless. Millions die each year of starvation, disease, war and disaster. If it is the ultimate plan of God that gives meaning to life, yet the vast majority don’t get to go to heaven because they either didn’t believe in god, or believed the wrong god, or the wrong doctrine of the same god, then where is the meaning for them? I think when Christians say their god gives meaning to life, what they mean is God gives them meaning for their life. There is no over arching God gives meaning to life.

Ultimately, the universe does not care whether you live or die. If you want meaning from life you have to find it within yourself. Certainly a non existent god or gods won’t give meaning to you.

Let's be Really Honest

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 20:38:09 +0200

By Carl S ~

Do fundamentalist Christians buy vibrators, condoms, birth control pills, pornography? Amazon, ebay, Paypal and Home Shopping Network won't tell. Do they have abortions? But they'll show up in force when they want to make public statements against their own personal choices. After mass tragedies, families and community members buy huge amounts of stuffed animals and flowers, purchased in mourning, to honor the victims. Those are primal responses, originating long before the burial practices of ancient Egypt! And not one Christian is aware the pagans initiated this response: toys and implements were originally buried with the deceased to be used in their afterlives. Now, thousands of years later in a market economy, lamentation, grief, and loss are sales opportunities for businesses taking advantage of the lucrative business of religion. (Doesn't this remind you of Christmas?) After these things, comes the ceremonial praising of a god by survivors, the prattle of victims being “in a better place, with God, becoming angels.” It's no wonder why a non-believer invented the Celebration of Life to be used in place of religious ceremonies.

With or without religions, we act from our nature, despite every attempt by religion to control it. Our lives do not require merely existence, but need experimentation, so we make a lot of junk, like belief systems, before we arrive at something workable. Humans became pawns to religions as soon as they created them. When creators think they have mastery over them, things get seriously out of control. This is bound to happen, since doctrines are gambling ventures contrary to our nature. This happens despite the fact life itself is usually gambling. In order to survive, we just can't help but tempt fate or thwart the wills of gods.

Life is good when we experiment with it. This goes beyond mere temptation. As children, we see how far we can push a parent before we get a reaction. You may steal a candy bar from the store, eat a forbidden fruit to find if it makes you wiser. You might experiment by using any way possible to get solutions for diseases defying our best efforts at eradication. It's called science, derived from “scientia,” meaning: “to know.” The pompous clergy, who condemn scientists, are getting the best of what science has to offer in medical care and technology. No prayer healing or low-tech broadcasting for them!

With or without religions, we act from our nature, despite every attempt by religion to control it.When you got sexually involved for the first time with the right or wrong person, ignoring the warnings of your religion, (touted as that big part of your “whole life”), was it terrible, that “loss of innocence?” Your religion tells you humans were punished by being expelled from an earthly paradise of Eden. So? We're not cut out for a protected “Eden” existence; we'd be bored to death! We dare to “sin.” So? We lie - sometimes we need to lie to find out what's true, just by observing nature alone. So? We notice sex is essential for emotional health; virginity's just a phase. You got a problem with that? Clerics lie continually; their followers don't have a problem with that.

Experimenting can get you mixed up in the wrong crowd, but, if you choose your terms, may cause you to reject them and head for the healthy lifestyle. Experimenting with blasphemy and pornography, like experimenting with new musical forms and writing styles, seems inevitable when they succeed. We tempt life, we mold and manipulate it, (like every other animal does, and in ways no other animal can).

Despite centuries of propaganda trying to convince everyone there's a god involved in every aspect of life, we are left with: shit happens. In the common everyday world, how do people act? According to Annie Laurie Gaylor, most people live as if they're atheists. No religion necessary. No creed. So?

What a Waste

Tue, 16 Mar 2021 20:25:09 +0200

By Carl S ~

I'll never back off from saying that churchgoers, “are only telling each other stuff.” I once told a man in his church's parking lot, “You don't really believe a man standing here can float right up into the sky, do you?” But the one thought sticking to me like a burr, means more than any other: “Life is too important to be wasted on religion.”

You'd think that's ridiculous, coming from me, one who has written on religion both here and in letters to the editor, for years. Have I been wasting my time and energy, better spent on just about any other activities, esp. pleasurable ones? Maybe. Do “true believers” have problems wasting their lives on their beliefs? Or are they only exercising their imaginations in mental masturbations? It's like wasting bottles at a shooting range in innocent fun.

I may offend and anger believers. I criticize, disrespect, and mock their beliefs, but I've never incited or encouraged them to torture, deprive another of human rights, properties and freedom to be themselves, or inflict harm on any other in any way. Can you say the same for so many followers of holy scriptures? The “good book” is a manual to commit good and evil. So, why waste time in trying to analyze tar-baby texts, written by primitive or mentally ill ignoramuses?

Religions appear to be invented for waste: wasting time in prayers, wasting the money one earns to support bullshitters, wasting childhood by imposing indoctrination belief in fantasy beings, with so many of those “good ones” examples of the worst of evil. Childhoods are wasted whenever children are taught to obey religious “authorities” to the point of becoming victims of fellatio and rape. Wasted innocent lives result when delusions wage war against reality.

Faith has no grounds for respectThink of centuries spent in time, sweat, the money and misery spent building cathedrals, abbeys, temples, etc., while the populace lived and died in poverty and serfdom. Those efforts and monies should have been spent making their lives better. How many of those “sacred” buildings now lie in ruins, abandoned by their gods and worshippers! Was it fun or entertainment, watching animals being ritually slaughtered by the thousands at a time, for a god or gods? What of the innocent tortured and killed as “witches, heretics, infidels?” What a waste. Was it worth it Jesus, or didn't you see that coming? Millions of emaciated and tortured bodies stack up. The God of the Christians was more powerful than that of the Jews. But the god was the same bloodthirsty role model for both, and did nothing to stop this. Blind beliefs drove and accomplished the Holocaust, beliefs in racism. Faith in a mass murderer, a God or a fuhrer, has consequences. What a waste they both created.

If you investigate all the faiths, all the things humans believe and have believed throughout this world, you're going to conclude: faith has no grounds for respect. Look at the millions of bizzare and unreasonable shit people seriously believe, have believed, the utter nonsense all of them take seriously- even to the point of slaughter. You're really watching macabre comedy. The “holy” examples they extoll are deluded clowns. They're the celebrities of a madhouse run by agents leading seriously deluded flocks. Sacred beliefs are follies of human imagination. If people want to waste their time and lives on them, go ahead, we say: but don't enforce them on the rest of us. We have our own lives and imaginations to create conditions for the betterment of the here, now, and future.

Naturally good and sensitive individuals waste their energies torturing their consciences with thoughts and fears impregnated in their minds by pushers of an all-judgmental god. Lives are wasted in following “his prophets,” in beliefs which deprive others of rights, because, “Those who believe otherwise are enemies?” The gods demand we waste what precious time we have to live, on them.

Answers to Christianity

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 15:16:31 +0200

By Rational Logic ~

Time and again common questions are asked of non believers by Christians. I answer these in this section. Note, many of these questions contain a personal perspective so answer from non believer to non believer will vary.

1) Are you absolutely sure there is no God?

No. When you dig deep into the philosophical nature of knowledge (Which the phrase “are you sure” implies) we cannot honestly say we absolutely know anything. You might be very convinced, but that doesn’t mean you know in an absolute sense. This question also reeks of a pascals wager inference which basically says you should believe in God just to be safe. If you believe and there is no God, no harm done, if you don’t believe and there is God then you spend eternity in hell. There are massive problems with Pascals Wager that I explore in detail in other sections.

So while I am not absolutely sure there is no God, I am fairly confident there isn’t one. Certainly not the God Christians propose, as there is no evidence for such a God. Claims made by Christianity can be falsified (Shown to be untrue). The same goes for any of the Abrahamic Gods.

2) What happens when you die?

That’s it, you die. As far as we can tell, once a person dies they are gone. Their consciousness ceases, and their physical body decays.

3) What if you are wrong and there is an afterlife?

Much like question 1, I’m not absolutely sure there is no afterlife, but if there is then I’d be pleasantly surprised. If the afterlife existed and also a hell then that would prove that the God who created said hell is an immoral dictator who punishes people eternally for the simple crime of not believing on bad evidence. If that is the sort of God you wish to worship, then so be it. At that point I could only rest knowing that I had been honest with myself and others to the best of my abilities.

4) Where do you get your morality from?

Not the Bible! I get it from the same place as anyone else which is the human ability to feel empathy towards others, and ability to make conscious informed decisions about what is good and right. We can see what happens when a person lacks empathy – they commit terrible crimes, or hold horrific views of others while justifying it as moral because an ancient book says its bad. Homosexuality is probably the best and most visible case of a dichotomy between emphatic morals and biblical morals, though there are many other cases. The problem with this question is the inference that only God can give people morals. Yet Christians do not stop to think that this lowers humans to worse base morality than other animals. If God is the only thing that gives you a moral compass then you are, but a puppet on a string who is at the mercy of what ever mortal code God imposes at any time. And if God is the only thing keeping you from being immoral then you already are immoral!

5) If there is no God can we do whatever we want?

This is very similar to question 4 with the inference that without God there is no absolute morality therefore killing and raping isn’t objectively wrong. Again, if you think this then you are already lost – even if you are a born again Christian! We can’t do whatever we want, nor should we. Most people have the innate ability to imagine and feel what it would be like being raped or killed and so knows that is a terrible thing that they wouldn’t wish on anyone. What is interesting though, is what people who claim to have God on their side are capable of. Hitlers religious views are shrouded in the mists of time. This real opinions lost to history. But we do have his writings, and in them he indicates strongly that he believed, at some stage, in the Bible God. It is likely as he became more unhinged he replaced God with himself. Religious to the end. An important fact to note here is that belief in any God has never stopped bad people from doing bad things, just as non belief has never stopped good people from doing good things.

6) If there is no God how does your life have meaning?

This question makes me sad, because it implies that the only thing giving people who believe in God any meaning is their belief. They care not whether that belief is true or not. My life has more meaning since not believing in God. Why is this? Well If there is no God how does your life have meaning?instead of believing I am a predestined son of God going to Heaven for Gods glory one day, I realize that I have but one lifetime to experience life itself. To be the best person I can, to care about others, to live and let live. Once you realize this life is the only life you get, it makes it all the more meaningful. We don’t sit around waiting for God to come take us to heaven. We enjoy life and embrace if for the few short years we have.

7) Where did the Universe come from?

Do you mean the local observable universe, or all possible universes? The cosmos as a whole? We don’t really know, and if there is one thing people hate its not knowing. Our best current science indicates our universe came into space and time from a singularity 13.7 billion years ago. Had any thing existed before, will anything exist again? We just don’t know, and I don’t know is sometimes the best and most honest answer to give. The implication of this question is that it all had to start somehow, and the Christian answer to that is God. However if we apply the same logic then we have to ask the question: Where did God come from? At this point most people will do some hand waving and declare that God doesn’t need an explanation, he always existed. This is special pleading. If the question of where did the universe come from demands an answer, so the the question: Where did God come from?

8) What about miracles?

There are no genuine recorded miracles that can be confirmed, that are not explainable by natural causes. The Biblical stories are just stories without any way of verification. Personal testimony and witness is one of the worst for of verification. Why? Because the human mind is susceptible to all manner of dysfunction that makes people think, see, and hear things that are not real. Also miracles are report across all religions, not just Christianity. We cannot therefore isolate Christianity and declare it is special. How does the Christian respond to other religions miracles? Strangely enough the same way a non believer responds to Christians claims of miracles – doesn’t believe until verification is provided. If you believe in miracles then ask yourself; why has God never healed an amputee? Cancers are healed, keys are found, people are saved. Yet a limb never grows back. Why? Because all other ‘miracles’ occur naturally, even if they are improbable. Improbable is not the same as impossible. For a miracle to be confirmed it would have to be impossible to occur naturally.

9) How come every society has religion?

Rather a strange question considering that if God was real, and has truly revealed himself to everyone as is claimed in the bible, then one might wonder why there are other religions. The real answer however lies in evolution, and mans discomfort with not knowing. The evolutionary side comes in with the ability for humans to formulate answers to questions we can’t answer. We hate not knowing, so we come up with an explanation. If a natural one is not readily available we will create a supernatural one. Lightening: Bolts from Zeus, earthquakes: God is angry. Crops failing: punishment for not pleasing a God. As time has progressed, so has religions. Religion shows up outside a belief in a particular God: political ideology comes close to religion at times, as does cultural movements. Humans find it advantageous o gather around others who share the same beliefs -this creates a bond in societies where everyone knows what everyone else believes in. When this is taken away people get extremely uncomfortable. That is why societies across the world have created religions.

10) Do you really believe the world would be better off without religion?

I find this a complicated question. Religion has done much harm – and the religious need to acknowledge that. However, religion has also done much good. Some people need a religion in order to function in their daily lives. It gives their lives meaning. Certainly the belief in a higher power has taken people off the streets, and given them purpose and meaning. Given the resources and numbers available to religion this is perhaps not surprising. The day may come when secular resources are just as well equipped for dealing with peoples needs and religion ceases to play such an important role. I certainly think that if fundamental literalist religion disappeared the world would be better off. These are the religious views that allow people to fly planes into buildings, and deny science in the face of facts in order to cling to a literal interpretation of their particular holy book. These versions of religion certainly do much harm and humans would be better off without them.

I Was Free Born -- My Story

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 20:00:35 +0200

By Rational Logic ~

Religious History

I was a Christian from birth for 32 1/2 years of my life. When I was born my parents were in a non denominational church which followed the teachings of a Pentecostal (Ex Baptist) divine healing preacher. Several years after I was born my parents left the church over doctrinal disagreements and started house meetings. This continued for some years with the group being a lose affiliation. After sometime my father felt the leading of the spirit to become the pastor of this small group and thus founded the church that would influence my entire adult life up to this point. Over the years the church dynamic has changed, but has maintained its basic identity as what is best described as a non denominational Christian church heavily influenced by the doctrine of the afore mentioned Pentecostal preacher.

First Doubts

While I would have never considered myself a very religious Christian e.g. I have never religiously read the bible or prayed every-single-day-without-a-beat. I did, however, whole heartedly believe in what the church taught. As I grew older and was exposed to the odd outside bits of information I became aware of worldviews and scientific facts that didn’t correspond to my ‘biblical reality’. However, for the most part I put these doubts aside. After moving into town and taking up university level study I was exposed to even more outside information.

The first real cracks, however, were from inside the church, from the pastor in fact. For whatever reason we moved on from previously held beliefs about the divine healing preacher and the ‘truth’ of what he said were questioned and overturned. An important note, the church still held he was a man of God, just not quite the Prophet we were for many years led to believe. This started a questioning in my mind of, well if we, or God, or the pastor was wrong about him for all those years what else are we wrong about? This moving away occurred when I was about 21. I would once again put aside doubts and trust in God up until around October 2015 when I was 32.

The Questioning

In October 2015 the entire family would go on a cruise ship for a holiday. There was one particular day that was very rough, we were not allowed out on the upper decks so I went to the library. There I found and read a book by Z. Sitchin who proposed that ancient writings of the Sumerians about the Annunaki were telling actual events of an alien species that created humans long ago. Further research proved that Sitchin’s assertions were largely incorrect, but it did let me know that there were ancient writings out there – writings that contained stories similar to the ones in the Bible. I got very interested in the Nephalim, the Annunaki, the planet Nibiru etc. and how they related to the Bible. If you have no idea what I’m talking about at this point, don’t worry you are not missing out on much. This all lead me to a lot of researching and watching documentaries surrounding the subject. These didn’t impact on my belief in God, because for the most part it was mumbo jumbo nonsense. What did happen however, as does with the internet these days, is I ended up watching some scientific documentaries about archaeology in regards to ancient Israel. As a believer I fully expected any archaeological documentary about Israel to confirm Biblical history, which I believed was the most accurate history of the earth as well as God’s word to his chosen few. What I found really rocked me. As I now know, there is very little archaeological evidence to support anything in the Bible.

The Debates Stage

A few months after the cruise I started watching formal religious debates on youtube. The first debate I watched was an Intelligence Squared debate titled Is Islam a Religion of Peace with Ayaan Hirsi Ali debating against the motion. What was important about this debate was it opened up knowledge of another major religion and the method of critical thinking the debaters against the motion used. What applied here, if one was honest, should also apply to Christianity. This brought me to Christian vs Atheist debates. Frank Turek vs Christopher Hitchens debating Does God Exist would be the first of many, and introduced me to the powerhouse that was Christopher Hitchens. I would go on to watch many many debates, and over time noticed that when pushed for answers the Christians would fall back many a time to a logical fallacy. Special pleading, God of the gaps, begging the question, false dichotomies etc were employed time and again by Christians.

Digging Deeper

During this time I began to probe deeper looking for answers. The account in Genesis had been thrown into doubt so I looked at scientific explanations. I would discover that there was no scientific evidence for Noah’s flood, or any archaeological or historical evidence for 2 million Hebrew slaves leaving Egypt. Furthermore calculations showing what would be necessary for some events recorded in the Bible to be real were staggeringly improbable. I came across questions I had never thought to ask. How much water would be required to cover the entire earth to the height of Mount Everest? How much water per day would be necessary for 2 million Hebrews in the desert? The answers to these cast even more doubt on the inerrancy of scripture. I also started studying ancient mythologies, discovering many similarities between both the stories told, and the development of the various religions around the world. At the later stage of my de-conversion process I would look into the history of the New Testament and Jesus. This would at the very least throw serious doubt as to whether what was recorded in the Bible actually happened.

The Realisation (That I didn’t believe) and De-Conversion

At some point in May/June of 2016 while at work thinking about the information I came across I had a gut wrenching realisation that I no longer believed what was written in the Bible. My first thoughts were that in my search I had lost my faith and that the fault was mine. I became terrified that God would judge me for being an unbeliever and would punish me. At this point I was having something of a crisis of faith, I hadn’t unequivocally lost my belief in God. I kept searching for answers, something that would provide information that would get my belief back. But the more I dug, the more I realised that there was no basis even for the New Testament. Very few Christian apologetics made any significant points that countered the growing evidence against the Bible. Peter Hitchens made a few great points during an Oxford debate that were not Bible based, but his own conviction, which up to that point I felt was one of the best arguments for Christianity. However Peter failed to make a strong case for God. Around September/October 2016, while still not having a solid opinion on all that I had learned, I accepted that I didn’t believe the Bible, or God, the Devil, Angels, Demons, Heaven, or Hell. Not the Christian version, the Islamic version, the Hindi version or the Greek version. I concluded that they are all religions made up in the minds of humans, propagated via religious leaders to the masses who taught their children that their religion was the truth, the one true and only truth.

Post De-Conversion

This will naturally be an on going tale, but for this section, this is the immediate after affect, telling the family, and hopefully a few enlightenment’s for those who find themselves in a similar position. Telling the family of my non belief and leaving the church was I think the hardest most painful thing I have ever done, and may ever have to do. What possibly didn’t help was the fact I just told my parents over dinner. There was no hints or warnings or suspicion that I might be having doubts. Perhaps they were blind to it, because in my mind I thought I had laid in hints over the months that I was having doubts. Apparently this wasn’t enough and it was like a frag grenade going off. Some family members were quite hysterical, claiming they were having chest pains because of me as if their reaction was my fault. As I would later learn, this is a common defense mechanism to a challenge to dearly held beliefs. It was a rough few months, but as often happens time heals, or at least allows an acceptable existence. My family and I have largely come to the agreement that we don’t discuss religious matters. They don’t try and reconvert me, and I don’t tell them why their beliefs are wrong. During this time I joined certain forums and support groups which helped immeasurably. For a person who had no decent contacts outside of the church group it was a lonely time and the online communities helped ease the pain. As of writing I am still involved with various groups and seek to help others. Like me, they having lost their faith and started their journey out of religion need support. I hope this story helps someone else on their journey out of religion as they realize they were not born a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, but that they were free born.

Website: https://iwasfreeborn.wordpress.com/