ExChristian.Net -- encouraging ex-Christians

Catholic Hierarchy Lobbies to Suppress Religious Freedom

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:30:46 PST

By Valerie Tarico ~

What do Koch Industries and the Catholic hierarchy have in common? A determination to shift rights away from individuals and assign them to institutions.

Since the founding of the United States our ancestors have wrestled with the question of who counts. Who gets the rights and dignity that define the promise of America? For two hundred years generations of Americans have fought to bring the rights of person-hood and citizenship to those who had been excluded: the landless poor, religious minorities, Blacks, First Nations, women, gays. But always, as we have expanded those rights it has been with the goal of giving greater dignity and self-determination to individuals.

Now we have both multinational and religious institutions seeking to do the opposite, to create rights/powers for organizations and ideologies that trump individual self-determination. In their crusade to block medical access to contraception, marriage equality and death with dignity, religious institutional leaders are going after a non-profit version of corporate person-hood. They want the organizations they control to have the legal rights of natural persons (in this case freedom of conscience/religion) just like multinational corporations want the legal rights of natural persons (in their case, free speech). The only real difference is which rights they find most conducive to their ends.

Many believe that it is morally obligatory for them to plan their families.Under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, places of worship and parochial schools are exempt from providing contraceptive coverage for their employees. This week, the Catholic Bishops demanded the same exemption for affiliated hospitals, social service agencies, and colleges (all of which, incidentally, receive vast sums of public dollars to support their work and most of which serve majority non-Catholic clientele). They insisted it was a matter of religious liberty. The Obama administration offered a solution that ensures contraceptive access for most American women. But they sidestepped the deeper problem of religious leaders demanding an institutional right to violate human rights.

This is a matter of religious freedom, as the Bishops say: Their aim is to suppress religious freedom. Conflict exists only because the employees of these institutions have religious beliefs that are at odds with the religious hierarchy. Employees of Catholic hospitals and Christian affiliated universities, including devout Christians, interpret God’s nature or God's will in many ways. They don’t always agree with their leaders. Many believe that it is morally permissible or even morally obligatory for them to plan their families, and they exercise their own freedom of conscience and religion by seeking contraception.

Catholic institutions now control 18% of U.S. hospitals, including many that have no competitor. They derive much of their power and financial well-being from public-private mergers and from government funds. The same is true of Catholic universities like Georgetown and Notre Dame. Perhaps a majority of American private colleges have their roots in one religious tradition or another. This means that at a practical level, individual persons are not free to exercise their own conscience if health care and educational institutions with religious roots suppress access to, for example, contraceptive services or death with dignity.

The hard won rights of natural persons belong to natural persons. They are baked into our constitution for a reason – specifically to protect individual freedoms against the aggregated power of institutions, whether those institutions are motivated by political power, religious ideology or money. The cry of religious freedom should be long and loud in this fight, and it should be coming from those of us who believe that freedom of conscience is far too sacred to be given over to institutions.

Pretty simple choice, right?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:44:51 PST

By Apostate Paul ~

You are the principal of a school.

You find out that one of the fryers in the cafeteria burst into flames, spreading quickly, and the fire department is ten minutes out. It's unclear why the smoke alarms aren't working in the school, but they aren't. The fire is likely to get out of control fast.

Do you:

A. Pull the fire alarm, alerting all students that they are required to evacuate immediately.

B. Get on the PA system and make an announcement, giving the students the option to evacuate if they are afraid that the fire may harm them, and advising them to do so.

C. After 5 or so minutes, go into a nearby classroom and alert the teacher and her students that they have the option to leave because there is a fire in the building, and tell them it is imperative that they alert the rest of the school, and leave.

Seems like a pretty simple choice, right?

Let's say you are God of the universe.

You have known since the dawn of time that humanity is headed down a path into eternal damnation. You watched them eat from the tree that started it all. Justice will eventually demand that they suffer forever for their sinful actions. It's unclear how they ever got into this position since they were created perfect, but, they are. It's likely to go downhill fast.

Do you:

A. Use your omnipotence to cleanse their sick, perverted bodies of the sin nature they have fallen into and restore them all to their full, original potential.

B. Proclaim to the world through a supernatural event that transcends time, speaking to all generations across history, that they are a fallen people, and give them the option of salvation and healing.

C. A few thousand years after sin first entered the world, go to a very small country in the Middle East, and explain to a handful of people in confusing parables that they have the option to be saved, and that it is imperative that they alert the rest of the world, and then leave.

Blatant, insensitive and unlawful religious favoritism

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:01:49 PST

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

While the Bible Belt of the South and parts of the Midwest has traditionally been the center of public piety in the US, events of the past few years have shown that no area of the country is really free of it anymore. They’re everywhere, folks, as my most recently published letter-to-the-editor here in Maine attests. Read it and weep.

"Blatant, insensitive and unlawful religious favoritism."

I have just finished reading “A Call to Prayer for Maine,” a document recently drawn up by the Maine Legislative Prayer Caucus which formalizes that organization and calls Mainers to prayer (see the last page of http://ffrf.org/uploads/legal/MainePrayerCaucusProclamation.pdf). Members include Governor LePage, the Speaker of the House, the Senate President, and over two dozen other Maine State Legislators.

The insensitivity and blatant disrespect of our nation’s Constitution inherent in that document is absolutely astounding! The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. That amendment prohibits governments from entanglement with or promotion of religion, and from impeding the free exercise of religion (outside of government).

Just last year, U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb ruled the National Prayer Day unconstitutional, saying the Day amounts to a call for religious action by the government and, since the act of prayer is a religious practice, government is barred from encouraging or discouraging such behavior. These Maine lawmakers are almost certainly aware of this; it appears they simply chose to ignore the wisdom of the Constitution and the court. This public display of piety by our lawmakers, in the face of the law of the land, shows a disturbing lack of respect for our secular government.

This Call to Prayer document is not only exclusionary but insulting to hundreds of thousands of Maine citizens. At one point, in quoting Joshua Chamberlain, a one-time Maine Governor and Civil War hero, the document reads, “This is the mystery of Christ . . .” This is a clear reference to Christianity as the favored religion of this official government caucus. This kind of language implies that all those citizens of other religions, or no religion - all the Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Wiccans, pagans, atheists, agnostics, etc. - are less important to these government officials. And this is precisely why the US Constitution’s First Amendment prohibits government entanglement in religion, as a way to ensure that all citizens are considered equal in the eyes of the government and the law.

These lawmakers need to be reminded that we sent them to Augusta to make and revise laws, not to preach to us about prayer and use their official status and our tax dollars to promote THEIR religion.

It gets worse. The fourth paragraph of the Call to Prayer document reads: “We stand at the threshold of another significant crossroad: either to acknowledge and embrace the vibrant character of our spiritual heritage OR TO PLUNGE HEADLONG INTO THE POSTMODERN VOID – A VALUE-NEUTRAL AND AMORAL VACUUM that endeavors to deconstruct much of what we hold sacred.”

The obvious implications of this statement are that without religion our society would collapse, and people who don’t pray (and perhaps all those who aren’t Christian) are “value-neutral and amoral.” This is grossly insulting nonsense! I don’t pray, but my values are essentially the same as 99% of the population of this state. I don’t pray because I don’t believe in supernatural beings. This says absolutely nothing about my values or morals, or my care and concern for my fellow humans.

The 2008 “American Religious Identification Survey” found that 25% of Maine citizens self-identify as “non-religious.” This government-sponsored “Call to Prayer,” effectively ignores their Constitutional right to have a religion-free government. Now some will say, “But the majority rules!” But they misunderstand. The US Constitution was very carefully designed to protect the rights of individuals and minorities against the “tyranny of the majority.”

The Call to Prayer document and the Legislative Prayer Caucus are insults to all non-Christian citizens of Maine. I am appalled and outraged that my taxes are being used to support such blatant, insensitive and unlawful religious favoritism.

Life of Immanence

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:45:35 PST

Paul So ~

Immanence is the opposite word for transcendence in that transcendence refers to God being beyond this reality, whereas immanence is about God being in this reality. However I want to talk about the duality of Immanence and Transcendence in terms of human values: that immanence involves living life here and now, whereas transcendence is to live life as merely instrumental to the life beyond this world.

I think most of us Ex-Christians are familiar with transcendence, even if we haven’t heard of the word before. Most of us are told what we are suppose to do, and what we are not suppose to do. When we ask why, our parents or pastors will tell us it’s because of God’s will, and that our purpose is for God’s will not for our own. What this suggests is that every command, prohibition, and permission in regards to our will is for the will for someone else who exist beyond this reality. All our actions and livelihood is not in accordance to our interest, but in accordance to something beyond our own interest. Without God, there is no interest or will beyond our own, to direct our will to some transcendent end. Many Christians deem this kind of life meaningless, but Nietzsche, a German Philosopher, argued otherwise.

Nietzsche argued that contrary to what most Christians believe, Christianity is nihilistic because it trivializes every value, pleasure, individual will, and interest in and for this world, for the sake of the values, pleasures, will and interest of someone beyond us. It is the will of the higher being that trivializes our will in order to make our will in conformity to his own will. It restricts the creativity and freedom of our will for the sake of the will of another being. Whenever we act according to our own will apart from the will of a transcendent being, it is called “selfishness”, “sinfulness”, or “blasphemy”. Our will is only for the will of another being who is beyond this world that we love. This world that we love is considered trash, but the world beyond is considered to be a paradise. Anything in this world is to be perceived with contempt. Even if we were to value this world, we should not value it as much as the world beyond this world.

So Christianity is nihilistic because it devalues everything in this world, including our own will, in favor of the will of a being beyond this world. What we will is not important, but what God will is important. But if God does not exist, then all there exist is this world, including our own will. There is no other will out there that trivializes or instrumentalizes our own will. Because there is no will out there to instrumentalize our own will into its own end, our will is our own and we have our own ends. Because there is no will out there to trivialize our will, our will is more important than we previously realize. What we do, what we experience, what we value, and what we desire is more important than ever.

All the success and failures belong to us, and nobody else. Our success is no longer due to someone out there who takes undeserved credit for it. Our failures are no longer measured in respects to the expectation of some being out there. All the success and failures belong to us, and nobody else. Our success is no longer due to someone out there who takes undeserved credit for it. Our failures are no longer measured in respects to the expectation of some being out there. Our failures are measured by our own expectations and our own needs. Our success and failures are also measured in terms of our relationship with our fellow human beings: our family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, countrymen, and eventually humanity as a whole. What we do here is so much more important without God than it is with God, because with God what we do is not important unless what we do is for the sake of God. There are millions of aspirations, desires, love, values, interests, and dreams that we have in contrast to only ten commandments God gives to people; all of these are denied for the sake of ten things God wants people to do, out of millions of equally valid things that people want to do. If we reject the existence of God, all we do is reject ten things God wants us to do (well…most of the ten, since murder, cheating, and stealing are out of the question). By rejecting God’s existence as well as very few of his commandments, we have almost infinite possible things that we can do for our own sake!

So this is my wager here: either we believe in the existence of God, do ten things that gets people to heaven, where we do one thing for eternity (that is to praise God) or we simply shrug off the God-question and return to our life here and now where we have so much things to do with so little time. If God exists, what we do here does not matter; if God does not exist, what we do certainly matters much more than ever. I personally believe that what I do matters, because I aspire to graduate University of Maryland to go to a graduate school in Princeton University to study Philosophy as a PhD so I can teach philosophy as a professor. I aspire to find peace of mind without God, I aspire to meditate and appreciate nature. I aspire to philosophize with myself and my fellow thinkers. None of this is for the glory of God; rather it is for the glory of living here and now in this world where life is a finite speck of eternal gratitude. '

Instead of longing for some kind of reunion with a being “out-there” to be a part of its life, I want to realize that I am already part of Nature, which is much more beautiful, mysterious, harmonious, and gratuitous; I am a node connected to all other nodes in a greater cosmic web without a weaver, for all things are weaved by themselves through the laws of Nature. I am sustained not by the will of God but by the air and food provided by the planet Earth, alongside with people who care for me. I am not subjected to the will of God, but rather I am circumscribed by my environment which is subjected to the laws of Nature. Life here is already sufficient enough for me.

An ongoing journey

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:33:32 PST

By S.L. Nield ~

First of all, let me introduce myself. (Or rather reintroduce myself. I wrote my first testimony not long after turning my faith in back in 2005 on this site).

My name is Sarah L Nield (Sarah) and I was born and bred and still live in one of the small market towns in the south east of Greater Manchester, where it meets Cheshire and Derbyshire.

Unlike a lot of the ex-Christians here I was brought up in a very reason driven atmosphere, where I was told to question and think for myself.

My (late) Dad was an anti-theist. He hated religion, especially Christianity, and seriously believed it was a lie to con people into behaving and not thinking for myself.

My (still with us) Mum is an atheist, brought up in a Christian household and gave up her faith at fourteen when she realised that it was all (her words) bunkum.
I was also born with a life-threatening congenital disability which (amongst it's symptoms) made me lose a ton of schooling. I was also bullied.

Anyhow, at sixteen I was an odd kid, rejected by my peers I would rather do things on my own, and it was then I met a group of young people who were friendly and accepted me. They asked me to attended their church because they said I desperately needed a friend and Jesus could be that friend.

So I went. When I was seventeen I went in for confirmation (had to be baptised as I never was) and then gave my heart to Jesus, became a Christian, out with the old in the with the new. This was in December 1980.

Much to the horror and disgust of my Dad who actually broke a lifetime of treating me with love and acceptance and shouted at me: "What's the matter with you? You're an intelligent girl, why are you being sucked into this falseness."

He would never attend church, not even when I was confirmed and took part in small plays. My Mum was bewildered by my conversion but I was her daughter first and a Christian second so she came along and afterwards let out a tirade of why it was all nonsense.

The years went by. I never left home because I had too much of a good home to do so. I learned to respect my Dad and not talk about my belief and try and convert him. My Mum told me flat out not to waste her time.

The regular churchgoers loved me as (they said) I had been saved from a terrible sinful situation. I was taught Sunday school and was one of the leading lights.
I can remember exactly when the questioning began. When Jesus made his triumphant entry into Jerusalem and he got his Disciples to steal an ass for him to ride in on.
In three of the gospels it said there was an ass, but in Matthew it said a colt and an ass.

So how many were there? One or two? There were eyewitnesses, disciples, locals, some reporting back to the Pharisees. They wrote what they had written. Surely such a gross total mistake could not have been overlooked.

Then I purchased a second hand copy of Bishop John Robinson's 'Honest To God' and it blew me out of the water. It was there I was introduced to the concept of the unmoved mover, the deist god.

I was pulled for a quiet word when I told the children at Sunday school in answer to their innocent questions 'why did god let my hamster die?' That god just wound things up and left it. This, of course, was not official Christian doctrine.
I was told by my minister to not worry too much, that god was in control and he loved me and every question had been answered way, and then more firmly that doubt was a sin.

So I decided to risk the ire of god (after all he gave us a brain and reason so why not use it?) and learned more and more about the possibility that it wasn't all fully true.

Bishop Spong's fair goes for all gospel got my attention but it was a no no.
Other questions. Why did the god of the Old Testament murder thousands of people, drowning every living thing,(even the innocent animals). It seemed as if Stalin was lord. He was too petty and capricious, too human, to be the almighty creator of everything.

Some Christians believed works were necessary. Others didn't.

Some Christians believed anyone could be saved, others only god could decided.
All from the same Bible.

Was this god the god of discord or harmony?

What are my beliefs now? Agnostic deist.Funny thing is, I suppose it was my grounded in reality upbringing that saw to it I was never afraid of hell. The idea of being punished for eternity just seemed too silly and pointless to be true.

And while I was on the subject, where was the location of hell? Centre of the earth? Where?

I spoke with the minister and others and was told (again with respect) not to question god's ways as I was unsettling members of the congregation with my doubts.
My Dad died in January 1998. My Mum had a subarachnoid haemorrhage in February 2002. Apart from a few mumbled platitudes no one from the church cared. No one gave a hang.

Then a woman came with fake tears telling me how sorry she was that my Dad was in hell and my Mum was in danger of also heading for hell.

About five years before I eventually admitted it was all made up, a book of fairy tales, I got down on my knees by my bed and cried and prayed with every atom in my being for god to please reveal himself to me, that the he'd tested me enough and did he go out and rescue the lost sheep and leave the other ninety nine. I was becoming that lost sheep.

Dead silence.

Why was he ignoring me? What was my sin? Attempts to discuss it with other Christians were rejected as questioning and testing the lord which was a big no-no.
No one helped.

They did a lot of praying for me, but as my Mum said, (once she was home);
"Praying's no good. Why don't they go and do us some errands instead of quoting the Bible over the phone at us?"

Christmas 2004. I was sitting on my bed reading my Bible and still struggling to gain some presence of god when it hit me full on: 'This is just silly. You're wasting your time. There is no god.'

And yet I hung on, the thread holding me up was getting thinner and thinner until in May 2005 I finally gave up. Became an ex-Christian.

I didn't sleep for three nights. I was in a fever of confusion. My feeling of loss was acute. Best way I can describe it was letting getting a divorce from someone who had never really done me any harm.

But I had to be true to myself. And if god existed he would have made himself known to me.

So I went to church and told them that I could no longer in all conscience admit I was a Christian.

The proverbial hit the fan. I never had been a true Christians, and I had turned my back on the lord, spit on the cross, and had condemned myself to hell.

Only one woman stood by me. She had been a Christian since the 1950's and she said that I had to be allowed to find my own path. She was the one shining light in that terrible time when I was rejected by people, considered an enemy who existed to pollute them, show tares amongst the wheat, those I considered friends, whom I genuinely liked, but who turned on me because I no longer fitted into the box they had made for me and for themselves.

The worse thing of all, apart from the phone calls warning me with dire eternal consequences if I didn't drop my lying and turn back to the lord, was that I was walking on the street one day and one of the women of the church, whom I had had coffee with and swapped stories with and babysat for saw me coming and her little girl whom I had taught in Sunday school ran to me and this woman shouted her away like I was a child molester or something.

That still hurts six years later, the echo of the memory.

Anyhow. . .

Six years later, I am heading for fifty, have left home, have a job and a small social life, and am still a recovering Christian. Even now, I dream of praying and having a friend in Jesus. It will take me a while but a big dollop of logic reaffirms that god is imaginary and the Bible is just men writing to get others to obey and putting words into the mouths of a god they invented.

The latest reinforcement comes in the form of: If god created this planet and showed such an interest in one species of this planet, then why did he make such a massive universe, billions of light years. Why didn't he make a little universe, with just a handful of stars and the earth going around the sun?

And there is still the thrill of being able to try on new philosophies like trying on new coats, to see which fits, discarding some and wearing others. After a quarter of a century of forcing myself to see things one way this is still wonderfully liberating.

What are my beliefs now? Agnostic deist. Confused, or what?

Anyhow, I am going to shut up now.

Thank you for reading and thank you for this place where it is possible to start a sentence 'when I was a Christian' without being called a liar and a sinner.
You take of yourself.

Fight Club

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:31:15 PST

By Dave J ~

Many of the stories I've read online are from an older generation. Baby boomers growing up in the 50's or 60's with overbearing religious parents or grandparents. I come at atheism from a slightly different perspective.

I grew up in the 90's. My parents are devout Catholics. My older sister has cerebral palsy so while Mom and her 3 sons went to church, Dad stayed behind. This may have been well intentioned but in hind sight, it probably just became a cop out. As a child I was an altar server. No I wasn't abused. My priest was one of the nicest and most intelligent people I've met and I considered him to be a good friend of mine. As a child, I went to Catholic schools and was very devout in my faith, to the point of discerning the priest-hood.

Before I continue some may be skeptical of my atheism because of my young age, but I honestly can't see it fading. It started about 7 years ago when I was in high school. I was no longer the blind child who said prayers every night but I was still very Catholic. At my Catholic high school I was top 5 in my class, achieved the highest test scores and held positions of leadership. I wasn't particularly popular, but I had a close niche of friends and I was fine with that. Interestingly, my atheism began to cultivate the same time my depression did. I had the high school relationships that I thought would last, but of course did not. That will get any kid down, but if it was that alone, "No problem, this is just God's plan." as my mother always said. What began it all was my relationship with my father.

A functional alcoholic, my father always made ends meet for his family and I never went without. My father had inherited mental issues from his mother so I suppose the vicious cycle was eminent. My father was mainly emotionally but sometimes physically abusive. He is the type of man that once he gets rolling, he just won't stop. He once told me during one of his rants, "You're really unlucky that your mom came home. I would have just knocked you out. What you're gonna get now is much worse." I was 14. Eventually his behavior took its toll. How could someone who is supposed to love me unconditionally treat me the way he did? As told by the 1999 film Fight Club, "Our fathers are our models for God," I began to think maybe God didn't love me either??

For a couple of years this was in my head but I tried not to think about it. Then when I was a Junior in high school, it came to a head. I was severely depressed and suicidal. My father was going on a rage about something my brother did, but my brother had fled home so my mother and I were the only ones he could take it out on. Specifically me. Every day I came home from school a feeling of dread pitted itself in my stomach as I grabbed the door knob to my house. That day, my father told me how worthless I am. That no one cares about me and that if I ever did anything like my brother, "I'll f***ing kill you."

I couldn't take it anymore so I ran to my room and prayed as hard as I could. I was either going to feel better or kill myself (an event I had planned out) because I couldn't take the abuse for another day. Though I calmed down, it was that day I was sure my prayers weren't being listened to. They weren't even leaving the confines of my bedroom. Instead of God, I thought of my sister. She was born with a condition that would never allow her to live a full life. She can not learn or love. She'll never have any of it. So if I kill myself because of my dad, it's a direct slap in her face. That thought was enough to keep me alive.

It has been a long road dealing with my depression issues, but I have not contemplated suicide for a year and a half. The major reason for this is my atheism. I'm an imperfect person, but I believe a damned good one. I don't need to worry about what happens to me when I die. I don't need to worry about what God would think of what I'm doing. I live for myself and for my sister. I live for the people I love.

In my college studies I studied Biology and further understood how the universe works, Biologically, physically and chemically. It just makes perfect sense now that God has no place in any of it. Those who live with that delusion and under the weight of religious obligation are simply adding unnecessary baggage to their lives. Stop using God as your excuse for the good/ bad things that happen in life. Just live it. That's what I've done and I've never been happier.

I: mother, daughter, thinker, healer, writer, fighter, wife. I. I--not some mindless life--am woman!

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:45:19 PST

By Valerie Tarico ~

In the storm of controversy surrounding the (pink ribbon, race for the cure) Komen Foundation’s decision to defund breast care at Planned Parenthood--and their subsequent reversal--people I call pro-birth are out in force. They talk as if they alone know what is good or, as many of them claim, Godly. On the Komen Facebook page, one sneered at those of us he sees as hypocrites because we value both the work that Planned Parenthood does to save women’s lives and their contraceptive and abortion services. Abortion kills 25 million women a year, he said.

Abortion kills 25 million women a year, he wrote.

Women.

Women. Women?

I’ve grown used to the ways that these people, the pro-birthers, caught in the righteous certainty that all life and death choices should be theirs, manipulate our instinctive desire to protect children from suffering and harm: “It has a heart-beat.” “It has fingernails.” “It has a head.” I get annoyed, but I have my mantras too. “A fly has a heartbeat.” “It has an empty cranium.” “It’s a half-inch long.”

But women?! I am woman. I am more than my heart-beat and fingernails. I am more than my skull. I am –speechless, so insulted that I am left staring at the wall when I try to find words for the feeling in my gut.

Let me tell you about woman.

I am woman because I spent a long time being a girl, and a teenager, awkwardly trying to find my place among friends, trying to pray away bulimia, trying to find the clothes that would make my sturdy Italian body beautiful.

I am woman because my husband loves me, and his love nourishes me, and because my mother loved me before him and nourished me for nine months from her body, then another nine from her breasts and another seventeen years from her kitchen table.

I am woman because the world’s pain calls to me; makes me ache, leaves me certain that I will never be completely content with my little heaven while others are suffering in some version of hell.

I am woman because my legs are scarred from surgeries and broken bones, and my joints twinge, and my belly has wrinkles from carrying two daughters.

I am woman because I lie awake at night making lists of little things: the blackberry pastry I promised the girls, a call from my mother I forgot to return, the thermostat on the oven, the stains on the couch, the appointment with the pediatric orthopedist.

I am woman because I have had migraine headaches that took me to the emergency room, because I have known the death of a parent, because Schindler’s List left my body and soul shaking.

I am woman because I aborted a pregnancy we both wanted.

I am woman because I am never fully free of the fear of men, their ability to physically force me, to force my daughters, to force my sisters, to leave us torn or dead.

Tell her I am no more precious to you than an embryo.I am woman because I can remember the hot Arizona pavement on my bare feet and Puget Sound in August so cold I could barely breathe.

I am woman because my friends demand my company when I get too cave-bound, and feed me dark chocolate, and tell me that my writing is unnecessarily rude.

I am woman because I am fully a person. In me the universe is momentarily, minutely self-conscious. I know myself to be. I feel pleasure and pain. I can form preferences and intentions. I can lie awake in bed angry to the bone because someone values my life no more than that of an embryo.

If I could stand before that righteous pro-birther, the one on the Komen page, I would say to him. “I want you to look my daughter in the eyes and tell her I am no more precious to you than an embryo or fetus or near-infant. I want you to look my mother in the eyes and tell her that I was just as valuable before her body went to the work of closing my neural tube and developing my digestive system, before she went to the trouble of hanging 4000 diapers in the sun, before she made all those trips to the library, before she sat at the graduation ceremonies she had earned. Tell them.”

The pro-birthers are smart when they call what grows in a woman’s womb a baby or child or person. They know that those terms mean something sacred to us, they elicit a complex of emotions, intuitions and obligations that go deeper and wider than our rational minds can grasp. The blueprint that gets locked in when a sperm fertilizes an egg, the microscopic blastocyst, the embryonic lizard-thing, or the humanoid fetus with a hollow head isn’t substantial enough on its own to trump the hard won personhood of women.

It’s wisdom born of pain, I say to my daughters. But look how much I’ve gained. If you have to, you can do anything. You are strong. You are woman.
______________________________
Valerie Tarico is a psychologist and writer in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light and Deas and Other Imaginings, and the founder of www.WisdomCommons.org. Her articles can be found at Awaypoint.Wordpress.com.

Out of the Closet

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:02:19 PST

By Lynn, the Agnostic Pastor ~

We usually think of coming out of the closet in terms of the gay rights movement. But, as agnostics and atheists, we too are trapped in a closet. I really want to be out and open. My very core is one of honesty and integrity and the life I'm living now, in the closet, causes me great distress. I long for the day when I can say the things I truly believe (or disbelieve in this case), post quotes on my Facebook and be who I am. I know there are numerous clergy who in the same position. They have walked the journey of questions to a place of freedom in the truth, but they are trapped behind the pulpit. ABC news aired a great piece on pastors who have walked away from the faith but not their pulpits. You can see it here:

My heart goes out to each of these pastors. They, like I, entered the ministry with a strong passion to help others find truth. I never believed that the truth I would find is that everything I was 'taught' to believe is false. I feel a little ashamed that I couldn't see it for so many years. Part of it has to do with the way we were brain-washed. The christian community begins teaching their beliefs from birth. As children, we believe everything our parents say to us. From Santa and the tooth fairy, to the stories found in the Bible, we accept it...hook, line and sinker. I can remember asking questions as a girl and being told that questioning is a sign of weak faith. We are supposed to accept God at his word, without doubt. Verses like Hebrews 11:1 were quoted to me,

"Now faith is the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things UNSEEN" So, basically your telling me that my faith has to be based on NOTHING. No substance, no evidence. I believed this for so long, half my life actually. Never looking past the pages of the Bible for answers. I'm ashamed to say that it never dawned on me to do any research into the claims of my faith.

Looking back, I wonder how I could have missed it! I accepted everything that I was 'taught' and even went one step further and taught it to my congregations as well. I've preached sermons denouncing evolution, atheism and questioning God. I've encouraged my flock to abstain from reading those 'godless books' because it might cause them to question their faith. What hogwash! We should read and study and research everything! I was so arrogant, thinking I had all the answers. Now I realize I was simply following the dogma without thinking for myself.

I want to be out of the closet. I want to share the truth with others. I have a feeling that my skills as a speaker and leader will be used to help pastors who are struggling with their faith as well. But first, I have to be honest with the world. I have an exit strategy. My plan is to finish my commitment to this congregation and then gracefully walk away. You may think that I'm being cowardly, but I don't want to bring undue hurt to my church members. They must walk their own path and come to their conclusions on their own. I know that I will lose friends. My entire life has been centered on the church. I'm not even sure I know how to interact with 'real people'. I am attempting to reach out into the agnostic/atheist community in my town, but I have to be careful that I don't 'out' myself before I'm ready.

You know, you can call me a tight-rope walker for now. All I want is to make it to the other side.

Etiquette for Christians

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:02:19 PST

By Carl S ~

Do not impose your prayers on others. You would object strongly if others' beliefs were given privileged starring roles over yours. Extend the same consideration to others.

It is inappropriate behavior to preach sermons to those of other beliefs, and especially, non-belief, such as for example, telling a non-believer at a time of loss of a loved one and grieving, that she/he, "is in a better place now", or "I know that you guys don't believe this, but your loved one is in heaven." Such remarks are cruel and, though you may derive comfort from them, show no respect for the grieving.

It is wrong for you to take advantage of a person who is severely in pain, trauma, or recovering from the effects of anesthesia— thus frightening that person, and exploiting his/her vulnerability.

It is rude and thoughtless to use every important social gathering to impose a sermon upon the celebrants or mourners.

Not only is it inappropriate, but harmful, thoughtless, and bullying, to ridicule or humiliate those who do not agree with your or your denomination's beliefs. This behavior is unbecoming of mature adults and sets a bad example for your children, as intolerance. It is unacceptable in civil society.

Do leave behind the cruelty of blaming those less fortunate than you for their troubles, and your consequent judgments on them. This is unfair, even if you do help to ease their predicaments.

Do not assume an arrogant attitude that your tastes, addictions must be shared by others who do not welcome them. For the same reason, do not endeavor to force them on others.

In short, Christians ought to abide by the very rules of civility, fairness, and consideration and respect which they demand from non-believers.

And please tell me beforehand if you want to preach to my children.

What is real?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:31:40 PST

By Dano ~

I believe that I have found something much better than a relationship with Bible God and his son, whom he created with a mortal woman, to be a sacrifice to himself, so that he can forgive mankind for the sins that he, programmed them to commit when he created them.

Reality (Photo credit: nualabugeye)

After years of trying to make sense of this kind of mumbo-jumbo, found in the bible, which I will confess does contain a lot of poetic verbiage along with mostly nonsensical garbage I have discovered the simple beauty of just being realistic.

Since I am convinced that no one really can define adequately what they mean by the word, god, I have come to the conclusion that ABSOLUTE REALITY, is the purest definition.

I find myself loving reality, the purest form of reality that I can find, wherever I can find it. I have come to love the infinitesimal, relatively insignificant speck of life that I am, here on this insignificant planet, because of the realness of it.

I care not at all, about the imaginary life, in an imaginary place, presided over by an imaginary deity, that ancient people constructed, or by those who claim to understand it, and use to try to control this, the only life I have.

I love reading most, what other realistic people have to say. Those, who like me, detest the lies and hypocrisy of religion, and boldly condemn it, for its creating so much strife among people.

I feel blessed by whatever force that created me and my universe, whether by chance or purpose, and am awed by the fact that only after billions of years of evolution my species of animal life is the first and only one that is sentient enough to realize that this life can be cruel, but also beautiful.
Whether that prime force is intelligent or not, it has put into motion the creation of a universe and maybe an infinite number of universes, that is so vast as to be only slightly comprehensible to us.

How wonderful it is to be alive and to wake up every day and choose the things that I will do, where I will live, what I will eat, and who I will love and . It is MY reality, and I love it.

To put it another way the Christian religion is pure bullshit, a death cult and an invention by men, and sex between a man and a woman is great and beautiful, and real, an evolutionary process, and it perpetuates the human race as well.

Reasonable Faith Revisited

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:45:57 PST

By Jake Rhodes ~

Battle of Joshua with Amalekites by Nicolas Poussin

I am perpetually amazed at the vast digital sea of information raging about in the gargantuan abyss of the internet. Somehow its sweeping currents wield a formidable capacity to drag me off into the most unexpected reading. With that thought in mind, I want to share one such incident. Much to my (almost) pleasant surprise, I recently stumbled upon a rebuttal to one of my articles published on this site. Apparently an apologist by the name of Sello Rasephei surmounted the task of refuting the claims made in my article “Reasonable Faith?!... The Logical Fallacies within Dogma”. My article can be read here. Sello’s rebuttal is available here. Never one to back down from a debate, and almost never one rendered incapable of doing so in a civil manner, I thought it worth my time and effort to scrutinize Sello’s refutation and produce a response to his counter arguments.

A few points worth noting are apparent at the beginning of Sello’s article; they are of minor significance to his refutation so I will be succinct in addressing them. First, he prefaces his article with a generic complaint about ExChristian.net. He asserts, “As it is the case with websites that publish misleading information, they censor everybody who post comments that refute their claims. I have unfortunately been one of those censored.” (grammar original, emphasis mine). Personally, I have no direct experience of Sello’s interaction with this site. However, I have been informed that Sello was banned for reasons of inappropriate and/or rude comments. Whether or not Sello actually exhibited behavior that merited expulsion is of minimal concern to me. I am more concerned with his dubious claim. Note that he posits that all who refute the claims made against the veracity of Christianity are censored. This simply is not true. My experience with this site has not been thoroughly exhaustive, but I have seen several Christians that were allowed to present their beliefs and opinions through both comments and occasional featured articles. Only when such characters descend into incessant rudeness are they banned. This site’s disclaimer makes it clear that this is really not the proper venue for Christians to seek debate (due to its central focus of encouraging apostates and those presently in pain due to eroding faith), although cordial discourse is tolerated. At best, Sello’s claim is a hyperbole; at worst it is an outright lie.

I also found it quite curious that Sello did not provide a link to my article. Debate etiquette generally leads critics to provide links to the material at which they level their criticisms. Sello’s neglect to include a link to my article stirs questions about his motives for doing so. I suspect he chose not to link it because he insufficiently addressed my arguments, but let me refrain from getting ahead of myself. I will deal more with this later. Perhaps it was simply negligence. There is one more small matter I want to comment on before getting on to the theology. If I can take a moment to be just ever so slightly petty and pedantic, is it really so much to ask that he at least get my name correct? He refers to me as “Jakes” throughout his entire refutation. Such error admittedly has nothing to do with the topic at hand, but it betrays a lack of prudence on his part and is of course mildly irritating. Oh well, let us move on to the relevant points of debate.

Sello attempted to refute my claims in the order that I originally presented them, so I will continue in that same format. First, we arrive at the paradox of Christ’s simultaneous fully divine and fully human nature. Sello’s starts his argument with what amounts to either a willful sleight of hand trick, or a direct misunderstanding of my argument. He states “According to Jakes, being fully human and incapable of sin are two things that are mutually exclusive, meaning a person can’t be both fully human and sinless.” Ah, did anyone catch it? Notice that Sello’s clever equivocation confuses the inherent capability to sin with the state of being sinless by abstaining from it, a distinction I was careful to make perfectly clear in my original article. Living a sinless life is not the same as fundamentally lacking the capacity to sin. Seemingly aware of this error, Sello does concede that being sinless does not necessarily prove the inability to sin in his next paragraph. After stating that Jesus was in fact incapable of sin, he claims “So we can say with all confidence that being incapable of sin and being fully human are two things that are mutually inclusive, because Adam and Eve have proved that it’s possible to be sinless, while Jesus has proved that it’s possible to be incapable of sin.” However, Sello has not given a sufficient explanation as to why the inability to sin would not preclude full humanity; he has only asserted that Adam and Eve were temporarily sinless before the fall, but admittedly capable of sinning. My argument stands unanswered.

Sello’s next paragraph beautifully illustrates what I wanted to cast into light with my original article. After three paragraphs of running in circles and conceding most of my original points, he seems to realize that he has used reason to paint himself into a corner. He concedes “Let me agree with Jakes’ assessment that “The notion of being fully human and fully divine is a paradox”, but not for the reason that Jakes provided.” In what way does he escape the spot in which he has cornered himself? Sello drops the paint roller of reason, hoists himself up by his bootstraps, and unabashedly floats out of the room on clouds of faith. With an appeal to faith he says “So perhaps it’s not a paradox, but merely that our minds can’t fathom what it must be like to be fully human and fully God at the same time.” I cannot help but be reminded of Carl Sagan’s dragon in the garage (see his wonderful book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark). When an argument proposes logical contradictions or seems disproved through reason, conveniently remove it from the reach of reason and appeal to some esoteric understanding or even assert that it is simply not understandable. Believe in such a manner if you so choose, but understand that such is the dividing line between faith and reason.

Now we move on to my challenge concerning the eternal destination of those ignorant of the gospel. He argues “Unfortunately the church is to blame for Jakes’ lack of understanding of the reasons that God provides for sending people to hell” (sigh, the “s” tacked on the end of my name does get somewhat bothersome). He trudges on to assert that it is not lack of knowledge of the gospel that sends people to hell, but rather their own sins, for which each person bears individual responsibility. He even defers to the words of another apologist “Ray Comfort answered this question brilliantly by saying ‘No one will go to hell because they haven’t heard of Jesus Christ. The heathen will go to hell for murder, rape, adultery, lust, theft, lying, etc…’” Yes you read that correctly, ladies and gentlemen. He did indeed quote Ray Comfort. Please, kindly force the bananas and crocoducks out of your minds and stay with me here. What is worth noting is that Sello does not directly answer my question as to whether or not it is capable for one who has not heard of Jesus to enter Heaven based on the merit of their own works, or if they are damned. However, I would infer from his reasoning that he implies that those ignorant of the gospel are indeed sent to Hell, but on the basis of their sin (since all of humanity sins) rather than simply their ignorance. Sello appears to me to either ignore or rationalize the injustice of the option of repentance and accepting Jesus’ sacrifice having been withheld from some. I leave it to the reader to determine if his position can in fact be held with reason, while I will personally choose to hold it in contempt.

The third issue of debate is the existence of objective morality and its relationship to/dependence on the Christian God. In my article, I did not really aim to prove or disprove the existence of objective moral values, but simply aimed to call attention to the Euthyphro dilemma. Oddly, Sello seemingly admits that God has in fact given immoral commands. He says “Of course we know from the bible that God commanded Israel as a nation to attack and kill people, including women and children. Was that moral from a human point of view? No, it wasn’t moral, yet God still commanded it.” I am not sure what Sello means by “moral from a human point of view”, but I suspect he is once again appealing to some esoteric understanding, or rather misunderstanding, or morality. When worded in such a way, the word “morality” is rendered entirely meaningless and the whole debate becomes a moot point. Notice too that Sello did not answer the question I posed in my original article. I asked if someone would commit a murder at God’s behest. In the case of a believer concocting a response to the tune of “God would not command such”, I propose the hypothetical case that they were one of the Israelite soldiers commanded to slaughter Amalekite woman, children, and infants. I still await an answer.

Lastly, Sello addressed my challenge regarding the bible’s nature and authority. He asserts that biblical prophecy is a strong influencing factor for his certainty of biblical veracity. Sello seems incapable of understanding that prophecies’ vague and muddled wording leads to such spurious interpretations that practically anything can be seen as “prophecy fulfillment” when there exists a desire to believe. Next he claims “Secondly, the bible makes outrageous claims which could be proven by applying them. The biblical claim that you can know God through Jesus is the most outrageous claim in the world (see John 17:3), yet I have found the bible to be true.” There’s that esoterically poisoned subjectivity once again. Substitute the nouns in that sentence and you will have produced an equally valid argument for any religion you like. His third claim is that history and archeology have repeatedly confirmed the contents of the bible. Curiously, this never seems to coincide with the opinions of historians or archeologists. Mainly, I suspect this distinction is due to confusing scholars and scientists with apologists. I will leave it to the readers to research this topic on their own, but one easy example comes to mind. No historical evidence whatsoever has been found to support Herod’s slaughter of the innocents depicted in Matthew. This is quite puzzling because the first century Jewish historian, Josephus, devotes considerable attention to Herod, but makes no mention of such a travesty. The obvious explanation of his silence is that the whole account is mythical. The evangelist who authored Matthew was simply repackaging the story of Moses’ infancy. That is simply one instance off of the top of my head. Since Sello provided no references to back his claims of archeological and independent historical confirmation of the bible, I will be satisfied with my single example.

His fourth reason for justifying his belief in the bible’s divine authorship deserves a paragraph all to itself. Although not technically a “scientist”, my degree is in a scientific field, so I am at least somewhat qualified to comment on matters of science. Sello now moves on to the topic of science. He asserts “Fourthly, the bible has made outrageous scientific claims that have been proven to be true.” I will readily agree that the bible has made outrageous scientific claims, but I definitely would not agree that they are true. I posit that Sello should probably read more scientific works by men like Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, and Richard Dawkins and less by Ray Comfort. Biology, genetics, paleontology, geology, astronomy, and cosmology with unanimous agreement simply rule out the literal truth and scientific claims of Genesis. Period. This simply is not even up for debate anymore. The evidence for an ancient earth (and universe as a whole) and the common ancestry of all living organisms is so overwhelming that all but a small fraction of the most fundamental and charismatic sects of Christianity have reformed their theology and adopted a more allegorical reading of Genesis. I am reminded of Galileo’s quote about the bible giving directions for how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go (I am paraphrasing). For anyone curious, and even for Sello, I recommend the series “What Genesis got Wrong” available on YouTube. Let’s briefly mention a few of the bible’s big science blunders. It plainly teaches a flat earth and a geocentric solar system (see Gen 11:1-9, Daniel 4:10-11, Joshua 10:13 just to mention a few). The bible taught us that mental illness was the result of demonic possession, and not of neurological/psychological (material) causes (Mark 9:14-29). Not to mention, if Jesus had spoken differently about washing hands (Mark 7:1-8) many lives might have been saved. It is quite strange that the omniscient creator of the universe could not have advised his disciples to clean their hands, but for different reasons than what the Pharisees had given. He needed only to caution them about the sanitary necessity, since he clearly must have been aware of microorganisms. To mention another issue, how should we take the magic potion for discerning your wife’s fidelity (Numbers 5:11-31)? This could go on and on for days, and indeed has been explored by many far more qualified and erudite than myself, but I am tired of typing. The notion that the bible is scientifically accurate is simply incorrect on so many levels.

Sello concludes his article with one last stab at apostates. After making the absurd claim that he finds it impossible that “anybody can be a Christian without applying logic and reason first to the merits of Jesus and the inerrancy of the bible”, he goes on to poison the well. All of us who left the faith did so because we had no intellectual basis for it to begin with. He says “Of course there are people who didn’t scrutinize these matters first in their minds, and they went on to become ex-Christians” (spelling unaltered). This issue has been argued to such extent that I think it is basically pointless to keep up the banter.

Inevitably, the discourse ends with the “never a TRUE Christian” accusation. But truth be told, I simply do not care what another believes is true about my life when I was a Christian. I know with certainty that I believed wholeheartedly. Reason often guides a few of us out of the fold. I think Sello would do well to read the stories of Dan Barker, Daniel Everett, Robert Price, Bart Ehrman, and Charles Templeton, just to name a few. At any rate, this portion of the Christian/non-believer debate gets quite stale because it is the most subjective (and thereby difficult to subject to meaningful objective discussion). He ends by claiming “But the suggestion that Christianity is mutually exclusive with reason and logic is an intellectual embarrassment.” The irony literally stings.

The cage of Christianity: my journey and escape.

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:04:42 PST

By Rosanne ~

First of all, I want to thank everyone for contributing to this website. It has been a huge help for me. Please continue to share your stories and opinions, it’s greatly appreciated!

I grew up in Holland. My grandparents were Catholic, and I have a few early childhood memories left of Christmas Eve services in grand cathedrals, with many candles. These may very well belong to some of my best memories of Christianity.

When I was 4, my parents divorced. I consider myself lucky; I didn’t take it quite as hard as my older brother. I think I was mostly too young to fully comprehend it. We lived with our mother most of the time, and saw our father on most weekends. I see now that growing up without him around made my mom’s hold over me stronger than it should have been. She has a very strong personality, and this has cost me dearly.

Shortly after the divorce, one of her friends took her to an evangelical service, where she ended up “giving her life to the Lord”. Perhaps it gave her life meaning at this time, put the divorce in perspective, I don’t know. However, it was a turnaround for all of us. We started going to church every week, praying before supper, and reading from the children’s bible before bedtime. I didn’t care much, my mom seemed happier, and I liked the colourful stories. My mother remarried after a few years, and had another son when I was 9. Things took an interesting turn after that. We were a happy churchgoing family for a while, but the church didn’t seem to fulfill my mom’s “spiritual needs”. So we switched churches. And again. And again. For those of you who know anything about the number of denominations in Holland... there are many. I think it’s safe to say I’ve seen them all, except for maybe the Jehovah’s witnesses.

After several years we finally ended up in the Pentecostal region, where the congregation spoke in tongues during the worship, and where the manifestations of the Holy Spirit were more sought after than God himself. I have always had a vivid imagination. In fact, when playing to myself when I was younger, I would create characters around me and interact with them out loud, which undoubtedly helped me perceive this invisible God as real too. I still enjoyed going to church, but things at home were getting difficult. My mom and step dad started fighting a lot, mostly about Christianity and my mom’s past. (She claims that extremely traumatic events have occurred in her life. I can’t really judge this, because I wasn’t born yet. I do know however that she believes herself to be a victim of everything, and that her emotional glasses colour everything she sees.) I was only half involved in these fights (they would often include me), because my mind was on boys, homework, and my own future. Being a typical teenage girl, I just didn’t care much. It got worse when my mom tried to “commit suicide” at home a few times. She never succeeded, but she would lock herself up in the bathroom and scream her lungs out about killing herself. She saw many therapists and psychiatrists after this (of course only the God-fearing ones), but I don’t think any of them achieved much.

It’s been over 5 years since my initial struggle, and I am a little ashamed to say that only now do I dare call myself an atheist.Life went on, I was 17 at this point, and I guess we were back to being a semi-normal Christian family. Then my mother heard about these “amazing miracles” happening in a massive church in Africa, led by a man of God called the prophet. She became obsessed with it and ordered videos of the services, teachings, etc. To her, this was where the Holy Spirit was pouring out its power, and we had to be a part of it. At this point, my mom’s influence over me was as strong as it ever got. My younger brother and I were somehow trained to see everything her way. She wasn’t mentally unstable, no, she was merely misunderstood. We merely needed more of God in our lives. We needed to look out for her, because she was God’s special child, and God often spoke through her. I lived in fear, when I once kissed a guy my mother had a “prophetic dream” about it and confronted me about it. It scared the living daylights out of me. To me, my mother’s will was God’s will. Her opinion was God’s opinion. I even listened to sermons through her ears, and knew what parts she would approve of and disapprove of on the way home. But somehow this seemed natural to me. We were Christians, the world was against us, and there were so many misguided souls. If only we could all receive the power of the Holy Spirit like those people in Africa. We ended up visiting there for a week in the summer (they had an organized foreign visitor department). Impressionable as I was, and enjoying the difference in culture, I was very much intrigued. I saw several other young people who came there to be “disciples”, and who would spend a few months or years studying God’s Word in such a blessed environment. I had one more year of high school to go at this point, but I made a vow to myself that I would return there next summer, to give a year of my life to God, studying, serving and learning. Little did I know that this would be the decision I’ve regretted most in my life.

My mother came with me to drop me off the next year, and she stayed for a week. Unlike the nice accommodations I received as a visitor, the disciple bedroom was a plain room with about 80 bunk beds. All the women slept here, and the men had their own floor. I soon discovered that there were several married couples there, who were forced to sleep separately. The true face of the harsh African culture surfaced too. Parents beat their children on a daily basis, and thought nothing of it. People snapped at each other as a way of life. We had armed guards at the end of the property to “protect us”. I wasn’t quite prepared for this. I begged my mom to take me home with her after that first week, but she said I should give it a try, and if I absolutely hated it, I could always come home later. I surrendered to her wisdom.

And so the second chapter in my life began. I learned to live with only a handful of belongings from my suitcase, and with nothing to read but my bible and the prophet’s notes. I was only supposed to sleep 4-5 hours a night, and spend the rest of my time serving God. I found it strange that no one wanted to tell me about themselves. My fellow disciples would simply answer “The past does not matter. We must look to the future.” I, in turn, was also not supposed to answer any questions about myself when foreign visitors asked me. Not even what country I came from. I had to abandon everything my life was before, in order to find God’s true destiny for me. I was told that my parents didn’t matter anymore. They had fulfilled their purpose by bringing me into the world and letting me come here. This was God’s plan for me all along. My fellow disciples were my new family, and the prophet was our father. The encounters with the prophet were seen by many as encounters with God himself. I was intimidated by him, but I wanted his approval desperately, and worked hard. Church services were highly unorthodox, even compared to Pentecostals. There would be long prayer lines of people with illnesses, locals and foreigners, and most of them would vomit and spasm wildly when prayed for. This was seen as the demon leaving them and the Holy Spirit taking charge. It was widely accepted there that all sickness and negativity in this world comes from Satan, and that his demons would torment people. Demons would include homosexuality, stubbornness in children, barrenness, etc. Sometimes there would be mass prayers, chanting over and over “Holy Ghost Fire!” I did learn however, that God was apparently able to stay alive without the physical presence of my mother being there. I realized that my mother was not the only channel of God in this world, and that felt rather refreshing.

I stayed for eight months. I was now a new person, and completely brainwashed by this cult’s philosophy. I could only speak in bible verses or quotes from the prophet. I looked down on anyone who would do anything with their lives other than serve God 24/7. My parents had barely heard from me all this time and allegedly spent many sleepless nights hoping I was ok. In my mom’s defense, she has told me that she wishes she never let me go there. But at this point I couldn’t care less about her opinion. She was a minor servant in God’s kingdom, and I definitely outranked her at this point. When I came home to have my visa renewed, I was fully set on returning in a few weeks. But then my grandfather fell terminally ill. I had always been very close to him since the divorce. My family begged me to stay. They didn’t like the new person I had become (of course not, lesser minds always reject the chosen. The more opposition you encounter, the purer you are.) After a two week-long inner struggle with my old self and my new self, I decided that I could still do God’s work at home. I refused to stay though; I had to return at least for a few days to explain this to the prophet. So I went back, and sought a private audience with him. I explained the situation, and he simply said “you’re not going anywhere. You belong here.” Now I got scared. I was confused about God’s path for me. I didn’t sleep for a minute that night and went back to see the prophet in the morning. I cried in front of him (an emotion that was despised there, because it showed weakness) and begged to return home. He looked at me like I was a big disappointment. And with a wave of his hand, he dismissed me, and sent one of his drivers to take me to the airport. I ran to grab my stuff. Most of my fellow disciples never looked me in the eye again. I was now considered a betrayer, a deserter, and not worthy of their attention. On the flight home, I felt both liberated and heart-broken.

My grandfather died a few months thereafter. I know it meant a lot to him that I returned safely. Somehow shortly after his death, my mom and my widowed grandmother (her mom) had an extreme fight. About the past again, and my mom’s hurts, and about mourning. My mom pretty much said that my grandmother shouldn’t mourn his death because he was with Jesus now. Their bickering went on for a while, up to the point where they don’t talk anymore. (My mom has since moved away from my hometown, and forbids her youngest son to ever see his grandmother again.) I tried to stay out of this, but also refused to pick my mom’s side. I didn’t like how she called my grandmother a “witch” and a ‘blasphemer”. This was getting too crazy for me. Then I signed up for a Christian 5- month young adult course in Toronto. I needed to get away, I was very unhappy living at home again. However, the wounds from my cult experience were still fresh, and I couldn’t see myself doing anything else but “work for God.” This course was a step into a new direction for me, with much more focus on the Father’s Love, and less damnation.

And at this course I met the most amazing guy in my life. Of course dating was forbidden (it takes away from your focus on God) so we started sneaking around. He came from a very religious family in Canada himself, and had more questions and doubts than I ever dared phrase myself. For a while I felt very conflicted, here I was, in love with him, yet he didn’t seem fully committed to God. But his curiosity for the truth opened a door in the back of my mind. Looking back, for both of us, this course was the beginning of the end of our Christian lives. When the staff told us we couldn’t see each other again, I left before the course was over (the most rebellious thing I had ever done in my life!). Later that year I moved to Canada to attend college (with the support of my father, who was very happy to see me turn into a “normal lifestyle”). Interestingly enough, my boyfriend’s parents disapproved of me for the longest time, claiming I wasn’t a true Christian, not the right girl for him, and they blamed me for his lack of interest in God. In truth, it was him who pulled me out of the depths of Christianity’s claws. This rejection hurt a lot though, since my mother also fiercely rejected me for moving to Canada (and away from her). I realized how little approval from Christians really means. We started searching for reality, and seem to have finally found it.

It’s been over 5 years since my initial struggle, and I am a little ashamed to say that only now do I dare call myself an atheist. When so many lies and ideas are hammered into your mind, I suppose it takes time. It’s still a work in progress; I will catch myself once in a while living the Christian lie in one area of another. But I feel freer than ever, although I hate the amount of time I’ve wasted on this religion. Lesson learned I guess. I am grateful to have an amazing fiance who has been so patient with me all these years. We are now pretty close with his parents, and they seem to have mostly made their peace with our relationship and beliefs. I think his mom is still in denial, once in a while she'll ask us to pray for something. I suppose she can't bear the thought of her firstborn going to hell. My dad's side of the family has been a great help to me. They support us in our new life and are very excited about the upcoming wedding. The relationship with my mom has been very distant. We tried Skyping a few times, but I just end up feeling guilty and down afterwards. I don't think I'm strong enough to confront her yet, even after all this time. She has already told me that she will not attend our wedding, unless "something drastically changes."

I hope Christianity will not continue to dominate our families, but we’ll have to see... I know firsthand how deep these poisonous roots can go.

Rational Religion

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:04:42 PST

By John ~

This is from The Orthodox Study Bible: "Man is not sinful by nature. The Orthodox Church rejects any teaching that man has a 'sin nature' or that man is depraved to the core. Because we are created in the image of God there is indelible goodness in our nature that can never be undone. While we can become immersed in sin, we know that it is still not part of our nature, but a foreign force that dwells in us. Thus, sin is what we do, not what we are."

I wonder how many of us would still be Christians if we had been raised under a concept like this? From reading extimonies on this site, I would have to guess that most of us would still be Christians if we had not been exposed to high doses of fundamentalist doctrine.

In reading the above text, it seems to me that the Orthodox Christians agree (at least in theory) with the general principle that people are capable of good even without an atonement. This is a huge step up from what the fundies believe. What I don't understand about Orthodox Christianity is the necessity of a god-man to die. If people are capable of doing good and are (according to this) good by default, I think we can dispose with all but about a dozen words of the Bible and have done with it.

The more I consider this, the more I think that the fundies have done us a great service. As painful as the paradigm shift of leaving one's faith is, is it not better to be here on the outside? Isn't realizing how small and insignificant we are in the cosmos a far better motivator to behave well and take good care of this planet than listening to people spout on about what God thinks? Is it not better to take responsibility for one's actions knowing that we don't have an "out" waiting for us at the confessional?

People will squabble. It is in our nature. Scientists have a go at one another as much as anyone. People will fight over land or politics. The thing is, science, property and civics are all practical and useful to humanity. It is to the benefit of mankind that scientists disagree. It is to the benefit of mankind that people engage in political debate and even that there be revolutions when those in power are causing suffering. It is important that someone fights against anyone who wants to run ram-shod over the rain forests or oceans or other wilderness areas.

Here's the thing; what good can possibly come from theology that cannot also be gained by being humanist? Is there not more reason to shun religion than to embrace it?

As I said, people will squabble. But when they squabble about that which by its very nature cannot be known, how does humanity benefit?

To my mind, a "reasonable" religion is far more hazardous to humanity than the obviously idiotic teachings of fundamentalists (of any religion). By wearing the mask of reason, they put people off their guard.

Religion divides. Division is not always bad. But to be divided over mystical imaginings serves no good. Religious division has no bearing on improving the human condition. Indeed, much "religious" bickering is simply a thinly veiled squabble between tribes and ethnic adversaries, even (and perhaps especially) among the Orthodox.

Have religious people improved the human condition? Absolutely! But they have done so by first recognizing the value of humanity. To value humanity does not require any religious instruction whatsoever.

There is no good that a religious person or institution has done that cannot be attributed to humanist concepts.

There is much harm that religious persons and institutions have caused over theology.

And there is as much of this in the Orthodox faith as anywhere else.

It troubles me that I might have become Orthodox and never found my way out of religion. It troubles me that there are so many Orthodox (of many religions) who will never feel the need to challenge the premises upon which their faith is built. These will go on believing what they are told, thinking what they are told to think, and simply accepting teachings that should make them shutter with disgust.

Christians "against" religion?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 02:04:42 PST

By Stephen ~

You may have seen this YouTube video doing the rounds lately (maybe, like me, your friends have posted it on Facebook).

It is a "Spoken Word poet" doing a little rant against "religion". But he's a Christian. Get it? Me neither...

When I see videos like this, I am not impressed by the show of humility and standing up against the big evil "religious" folk. I’ve seen this all before. The trouble is that Christians tend to define “religion” in a way that suits themselves. Since “religion” has a bad reputation these days – a large amount of which is due to evangelical Christians such as this young poet! – it is fashionable to join the anti-religion club and thus make oneself and one’s clan look more attractive.

There is something slightly devious and dishonest about this. It’s usually called “shifting the goalposts”: when somebody seeks to score an effective attack on your beliefs, you merely redefine certain words so that the criticism no longer “applies”.

By many, many common definitions of “religion”, Christianity – particularly evangelical Christian – fits absolutely. (Frankly, if modern evangelical Christianity is not a “religion”, then I don’t know what the word even means!)

Let’s try a few randomly-selected features of “religion” that I’m sure most people would agree are pretty standard, and see if they apply to Christianity. Belief in the supernatural? Check. Authority claimed via ancient scriptures? Check. Clearly delimited boundaries of who belongs to the group and who doesn’t? Check. Particular view of human nature that is asserted as more true than all others? Check.

Idiosyncratic rules on various areas of life, particularly sex, based on ancient taboos, way behind the curve of the secular moral Zeitgeist? Check...

Sure, evangelicals might reject certain features common to religion that they don’t like. The classic one is “doing good things in order to please God”. Enter our Spoken Word Poet, who criticizes the usual “works righteousness” thing that is supposedly the opposite of the “undeserved grace” that evangelical Christians like to go on about.

Some of the poet’s lines are just ludicrous (I insert my own definitions as follows): “One [the Real Version of Christianity™] is the work of God, one [every religion other than my own] is a man made invention”. Of course he sees it this way, but doesn’t the adherent of every religion think that their religion came from God, whereas the heathens/unbelievers/fools “made up” their beliefs instead? To be sure, it’s logically possible that Christianity, as one of the many religions in the world, just happens to be the true one instituted by the creator God himself, but seeing as so many people are more than capable (on the Christians’ own view) to delude themselves in countless “wrong” religions, it certainly weakens the case considerably.

My biggest problem with the “Christianity is about grace and is not religion” thing is that it is ultimately extremely hostile to non-Christians. Why? Because it defines the “good works” of everybody else as worthless, futile, misguided, even demonic. Look at the artful theological logic: everyone is a sinner, therefore no good works count, but Christians are saved - and even this salvation is God’s choice and has nothing to do with their deserving it - and once “saved”, good works of Christians actually “count” and please God!

Imagine if an earthly father were to behave like this. He tells all of his children that they are worthless scum, incapable of doing anything that would please him or make him proud, but then he arbitrarily chooses one of his kids and says, “You, my little chosen one, are forgiven, don’t ask me why! From now on, the good things you do count, but not the rest of you runts!” What a twisted and cruel father!

What Christianity effectively tells people is that by merely being born, you are already in “sin”. Never mind actually doing anything truly evil; just by living your ordinary human life, making the most of your chance at existing in this world, experiencing ordinary pleasures and toils like anyone else, you are condemned. And if you go further and actually try to act selflessly and do good in the world, this is also not good enough for “God”.

This is putting everyone outside of Real Christianity into a double bind. Not only are Christians the only ones able to truly define right and wrong (because they have the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and they alone “know God” personally), but even if someone else does do something that they would deem to be good, it doesn’t “count” because it’s not motivated by “faith”. However, when Christians do something good - no matter how trivial - it pleases God because it is done by “grace”.

But to return to the poet, this argument is a very effective way to immunize Christianity against any criticism. When people point out various failings of Christianity and all the bigoted, hateful people Christianity frequently produces, they say, “it’s not a museum for good people, it’s a hospital for the broken”. But how long do they really stick to this apparent humility? Frankly, I think, just long enough to deflect criticism. Once that’s done, Christians go right back to being self righteous all over again. Only they know the truth. Only they get to define what is right and what is “sin”. Only they are uniquely predestined by God to be chosen to do good works for him.

So is Christianity really not about “doing good works in order to please God”? Surely, the whole point of Christianity is that once you are “saved”, your old sinful life is left behind? You are a new person? The Spirit of God lives in you? You have freedom from sin, the correct motivation for righteousness and the spiritual empowerment to do good works? You work tirelessly for the “crown of righteousness”? But, oh, whenever someone points out that you’re not doing much of this, suddenly you can’t be criticised because you’re just a “sinner who has been saved”?

I love how “One [Christianity] is the cure and one [religion] is the infection”. This is an interesting semantic game. Christianity is normally defined as the cure for the infection called sin. “Sin” is actually whatever Christians define to be bad. Hence Christianity entitles itself to define the infection and also provide the “only” cure. How convenient. But the poet makes it sound like religion is the infection! That’s clever. So religion is depicted as kind of symptom of the underlying problem called “sin”, a very Christian concept that not all religions necessarily focus on or even recognise. He obviously doesn’t want to define religion as, say, “worship of the creator called God”, “seeking after the ultimate transcendent truth ”, “following a spiritual path”, “a community of people with a similar relation to a sacred reality”, or any other way of defining religion that could easily overlap with Christian itself! No, sin is the only issue - because we say so - and these other “religions” aren’t doing a good job of dealing with it.

And Christianity’s unique solution is “faith” not “works”. I struggle to see how this is an improvement. At least with “works”, you know who you are supposed to please (God), presumably you know what he wants, you know what pleases him, and you can take some pride in getting it right. Sure, the Christians say that the problem is, nobody can do “enough”, that “all fall short of the glory of God”, but what is their answer? Not that God simply says, “Look, I know you can’t do it, and it’s not your fault, so I forgive you, ok?” Oh no! That would be too easy! (Though that’s what any decent person would do. We know that our fellow human beings aren’t perfect, so we don’t hold them to this ridiculous standard and we would be fools to hold ourselves to it.) Instead, this God, who created us himself, and is in charge of everything, actually blames us for not measuring up. Then he gets angry with us (disproportionately so, since he will punish finite sin with infinite torture in hell), but - how kind of him - he provides a way out by allowing his son to be brutally tortured and killed and if we “believe” we can escape his wrath. Charming.

And this belief is an odd thing. You have to believe in a particular interpretation of a particular set of rather fanciful stories (that don’t look particularly less fanciful than all the stories from the other “false” religions that God allowed to develop in this world). The key point of this story - the death and resurrection of Jesus - happened roughly 2,000 years ago (and counting), with zero independent evidence supporting that it actually happened at all. If God could wait through 13 billion years of history (or 100,000 years of “human” history) before hatching this plan of his, could he not have waited another 2,000 years and let it happen in an age of video cameras, global communication and scientific method so that it could be witnessed by a lot more people and thus established considerably more firmly as true? Seeing as it’s so important?

Besides, why make belief the criteria? If all this horrible human sacrifice stuff was really necessary to do the forgiving (and I still can’t really see why it should be), couldn’t he just do it somewhere and impute the forgiveness to us all, regardless of where we happen to live and what religious upbringing we happen to receive? Why hinge everything on having a “correct” belief, particularly one that is not intuitively obvious nor easy to arrive at by historical or scientific study or even pure logic? No, “belief” as a criterion for pleasing God seems to me much harder, and certainly much less fair, than what Christians like to call “religion”.
So despite what it's meant to look like, this poet is this is not demonstrating humility and taking a stand against bigotry. Quite the opposite. By ruling out, a priori, the validity of every other religious view, and claiming that your "cure" for the dubious (and harmful) concept of sin is the only possible solution, you are actually demonstrating the height of arrogance and bigotry. Precisely why religion, particularly your kind, is so despised.

The social costs of the faith.

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:44:54 PST

By Eversion ~

We are all unique individuals, no two people alike, as we live, we change, grow, mature and develop our own preferences, desires, beliefs and world view etc. I like myself and I'm glad that I'm different in the way that there has never been or ever will be another like me after I cease to exist. I enjoy the freedom to be myself and make choices that are not forced upon me, it makes life worth living. Imagine if we all fit the same mold, how far behind we would be in our development as a human race.

Unfortunately in Christianity, individuality is a threat. When I was a christian my reality was that what made me me, was just not good enough. The quote below says it better than I could.

“We had to become like Jesus Christ and die to ourselves. In other words, you kill your own personality off and try and replace it with Jesus Christ. When I did leave I had killed myself off to such a point that there was nothing of me left, and that’s what keeps you in there because you can’t relate to anyone else.”~ Billy Jackson.

I'm sure others can see and that I'm not alone realizing the damage that can be done to a person, not just robbing them of who they are at the core but also in normal everyday social functioning, living in a complex world with others that may not think like you. So many problems I had relating to others, normal people that were not bogged down with the world's purpose, of being this big soul filtering machine based on whether we go to a heaven as a reward or a hell for punishment.

So many non believers could not stand me.I was trying to be like Jesus, but I was a hypocrite as it was impossible to be as perfect as he was but that didn't stop me from trying and much embarrassment and social suicide ensued.It was terrible and I made lots of enemies too and looking back I do see how I was pretty much *nuts* to them and I don't blame them for disliking me or wanting to except my strange and unprovable beliefs. It was easier to stick with people just like you, other believers but in the real world it's just not possible unless you live an incredibly sheltered life.

Still feeling the negative affects of this mind trip but things are getting better each day.Rediscovering my unique personality after trying to kill it off for so long is my focus for now until I'm fully recovered.

I'm not Jesus, don't want to be and never could be in the first place. The damages to self esteem, self acceptance,social function etc. are much too great and too much a burden, to place on human beings that just have this one special life to live.

Family Life in Heaven

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:51:31 PST

By Alex ~

I am writing this piece regarding the worthlessness of life described by many, but not all Christians concerning marriage and family life in Heaven. First off, I am writing this from a point of view for the possibility of an afterlife.

First off, I’d like to tackle one aspect which I haven’t seen mentioned on here:

MT 22:23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 "Teacher," they said, "Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him. 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?"

In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven” (Matt 22:30)

This part is often used to denounce marriage in Heaven in favour of a spiritual marriage with Christ. I find this a complete and utter abomination of what every man and woman on Earth hopes to find, a long lasting unification with a spouse. It is revolting that I read stuff such as ‘ I couldn’t bare to be with someone forever.’ Are you actually in love? You don’t wake up in the morning thinking ‘How long do I have to spend with this person?’

Furthermore, many Christians bang discuss the repulsive separation of God-given unity called divorce. Yet wouldn’t God be doing this on the grandest of scales? Separating everyone and putting Jesus Christ in their place instead? Fine, I get it that marriage according to Christians is supposed to represent the relationship between Jesus and the Church on a Heavenly scale, but to then denounce personal relationships which mean so much is an evil act of spiritual barbarianism.

Marriage, parenthood, sex, are all deemed as gifts from God, yet it is the ability to rip it all away at death which makes temporal marriage repulsive and detrimental for relationships which we as human beings actively pursue and seek to maintain.Why get married? How can you look at your husband or wife every morning, believing that once they die, they will have their every need attended to by Jesus which doesn’t include you? It’s OK I suppose, we’ll just be friends. We’ll still feel love for each other, but the love for Jesus will be greater (Shakes head).

There is the issue of people who have married more than once, as stated in the Bible. Surely there must be a process in which to ensure everyone has a companion and embraces the full merits of marriage? After all, Noah’s Ark illustrates a pairing of animals which is often ignored.

I am aware that Mormons believe in eternal marriage, but there are conditions attached such as marrying in a temple by someone with a priesthood. Why such conditions?

When I looked over the account of Adam and Even in Genesis (NIV), I noticed that God was walking in Eden and made Adam. He saw Adam was lonely and created a female. What does that say? That despite Adam having been in the presence of God, he was still given a companion.

Surely God would do the same, everyone happy with their marriage would be fine. Anyone not happy, or single, or with multiple partners would be arranged accordingly so that we’d all have a companion. It may not be marriage in the way things are done on Earth, but God would unionise two into one. Instead, Christians call it New Age thinking.

Next up is the complete self-centeredness regarding the prospect of being saved. So much is said about the fact that God will remove memories of unbelievers from your mind at the Judgement, that God will fulfill you so much, others won’t come into your mind. I’m sorry, but that sounds robotic. I shall refer to an example here. Lets say you’re in the New Earth and you’re making a cake which your mother taught you. You’re hosting a party with your friends. Your mother was a Hindu who is currently burning in the lake of fire. You try to remember who taught you how to make the cake. All you get is the image of God. A friend walks in with their mother who is helping you organize the party. You look at her for a while, then carry on with the cake. Do you get my drift? Does this sound right to you?

Some claim that you do remember those unbelievers, but as mentioned, you’re so engrossed by God, that anything else pales into insignificance. And that includes your parents, marriage, kids. What about liberty? A freedom to feel love for those you value the most, the ability to love independently and really value those treasures in your life, those which make you pure and contribute to the way you function as a being. I don’t understand the desire to disregard all of that.

The talk of ‘God is holy and just’ makes me cringe every time they refer to Hell as an eternal fire and brimstone place of torture. They talk about deception, yet if they took off their rose-tinted glasses, 99.9% of people would call it the doctrine of demons. The hypocrisy in fundamentalist corners in particular advocating the death penalty, torture methods (shocking stuff from the Republicans recently), yet they see themselves as the ‘elect’, full of love, grace, mercy, compassion and understanding. They talk about God being the giver of life, yet again, they take it away at the first chance they get.

Christian Heaven ... you are separated from your spouse, lose memories with feelings modified to deal with loss of loved ones forever and an eternal life where the feeling of Jesus empowers all other feelings. In fact, whilst I’m at it, why bother having a family? What is the point if most will be burned in hell or God and Jesus will take over the reins? Apparently, believers will be our new family. Any selfishness and self-focused thoughts will be removed. Can anyone else see the irony in the last two sentences?

If our Earthly relationships are eroded or substituted in this Heaven, then who’d seriously want a part in it? It is no good seeing these relationships being reduced into mere friendships, where marriages are abolished in favour of the ultimate cosmic marriage, where parenthood, best friends are replaced by equal friendships. Every close relationship we have holds a jewel of love only we as individuals can recognize. Our love for our mother and father is different to that for our husband, wife, partner, best friend, but each are so unique. Each are a unique piece of treasure which does not deserve the claim by Christians to be wiped out in favour of equal portions of love to everyone or to be focused on Jesus only. This is not selfish. This is ultimate love for those who have been there for us in trials and tribulations. I do not want my special love for my parents to be embedded for neighbours or strangers. They hold a different kind of love which still involves compassion, understanding, friendship, loyalty and sacrifice. There is something about parental love, love for a spouse, a child which does not come into the same category as love for a stranger. It is love, but of a different, deeper kind. This should not be removed. If anything, it should be enhanced.

My biggest insecurity is being alone and losing those I love the most. The Christian Heaven does this and worse, it acts as a substitution. You can have Jesus Christ instead. What about both? Why am I continually told that relationships are redefined in Heaven? Sounds like an absolute nightmare.

Dr Paul Enns wrote a book called ‘Heaven Revealed’, which was a Biblical analysis on what Heaven is like. This is a segment of a review from Amazon.com;

At first I was seriously concerned that the main point of his book was just that we will be reunited with believing loved ones in heaven. His grief over the loss of Helen is repeated over and over in the initial chapters. It almost seemed that he was more happy to see Helen that to see Jesus! But as I continued reading, I saw more focus on God's glory and less on his own personal loss.

Then, at the end of this person’s review:

I admit that I have not suffered the death of someone very close to me, so the prospect of heavenly reunions doesn't speak to my heart as much as it does to the author and to many readers who have. I do look forward to seeing God face to face and consider this the highest reward of heaven.

I think the review speaks volumes. I have written a piece on here called ‘Crown me with many crowns’. Rewards should be family, peace, joy, unity, helping others. When you meet strangers for the first time, you do so behaving in a dignified, respectable manner. However, we all need a stable base to go to. We have our parents, our wife/husband or friends. Where is this sanctuary in which all humans need to rest, energise and share their deepest feelings? The answer always seems to be God according to Christians. What about my family? What about my closest friends?

On a more aggressive note, why is everything in Heaven void of anything on Earth? God created the Earth according to Christians, yet they seem to hate everything on it. Will they admit that they do not like God’s Creation? No, they will not.

So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Christian Heaven. One whereby you are separated from your spouse, lose memories with feelings modified to deal with loss of loved ones forever and an eternal life where the feeling of Jesus empowers all other feelings. Is this really Heaven, a place which is ‘Anything But Earth’? Or a cult seeking to have their every desire met by one entity at the expense of others?

Problem with Repentance

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:02:30 PST

By Paul So ~

When I was seventeen years old I took my faith very seriously; I took my faith so seriously that I could pray over an hour if I felt compelled to do so. But why did I feel compelled to pray over an hour? As a Christian at the age of seventeen, the most important phase is to be forgiven, but forgiveness is only possible through confession and repentance. I learned this from reading a few passages from the bible and from other Christian devotional books. However, while I understood what it means to confess, I didn’t exactly know what it means to repent. When I read some of the devotionals as well as some of the passages of the bible, and begun to reflect on the meaning of repentance, it dawned upon me that repentance done by a single human being is impossible.

The reasoning behind this thinking was that a sinner cannot repent unless he realizes the benevolent nature of God through the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. When I say the sinner cannot repent, I really mean he cannot repent on his own, rather it has to be through God who does it for think. This reasoning was supported by biblical passages in Romans 2:4:

“Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance”.

The idea that repentance isn’t something that sinners do, but something that God grants to sinners was also found in Acts 5:31 and Acts 11:18. In other passages, which I couldn’t find, it also says that the holy spirit inspires repentance among sinners.

It dawned upon me that I cannot ask for forgiveness yet, but rather I have to ask for repentance. So for many months this is what I did. However there were several disturbing problems with this theological notion of atonement. First, how do I know that I have not committed a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? After all, the blasphemy against the holy spirit was not well-defined, and there are couple of different interpretations of it. In Mathew 12:31, it talks about the blasphemy of the holy spirit as the only sin that cannot be forgiven. So if this is what I did, then I cannot receive repentance at all. I thought I was in deep trouble. It leads me to the most painful and excruciating existential and spiritual anxiety that was more disturbing that mere physical pain. I seriously was contemplating on committing suicide on several occasions. I got out of this pathological phase by praying more and by choosing one of the more “safer” interpretations of the blasphemy against the holy spirit as a persistent sin against God, so it’s no longer just on act that causes this blasphemy, but a persistent and deliberate behavior. After this insight I got out of it but there were other problems that were not resolved.

Second, how do I even know whether I am in the state of repentance? Even if I did ask for it many times, how do I know that I actually received it? What are the signs? None of this made any sense to me. Are deep spiritual emotions the sign of repentance? Or is it a mere knowledge of the fact that I am repentant? Is it through a dream, or through some other ambiguous signs? I had many questions that went through my head that related to this question: How do I know? How do I know that I am not merely deceiving myself to believe that I am being repentant when I am truly not? I tried to “systematize” my own theology of atonement by trying to connect the dots from passages to passages, and I assumed that different narratives contain symbolic meaning of repentance, but I couldn’t find them, and I always felt that there were discrepancies or disconnectedness among them. I tried to ask other Christians, including my father, and all they said was to have faith that I am going to or I have receive repentance. At first this was convincing, but eventually it did not help. To have faith that I am repentant merely amounts to believe that I am repentant because I believe that I am repentant: this is obviously circular and unhelpful. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I knew that faith is just not going to give me knowledge, but only let me make an assumption. Even if I did have faith that I am repentant, how do I know that my faith is not displaced on a wrong assumption? How do I know that the devil is deceiving me into believing that I have genuine faith in my repentance? How do I know that I am not just deceiving myself into believing that I received repentance? I became like a theological version of Descartes who doubted everything, and when I doubt but received no answers to my troubling questions, it eventually lead me to depression, cynicism, bitterness, and loneliness.

Third, one of the most subtle problem I had with repentance was this: I have to be repentant by asking for repentance; this simply did not make any sense. Immanuel Kant, a famous German Philosopher of the 18th century, was raised a Lutheran Pietist by a group of evangelical pietists who believed that to be repentant is to ask for repentance. Kant knew that there was something wrong with this line of thinking:

“The separation of good from evil is brought about by supernatural operation, i.e. contrition and crushing of the heart in a repentance, which borders on despair. Only divine spirit can bring us to a sufficient state of repentance. We must pray for it- being contrite that we are not contrite enough”

When I read this passage from the biography of Kant, it became clear to me that “being contrite that we are not contrite enough” was incoherent and self-contradictory. For Kant however, it was something more. The biographer said “This was repugnant to him. He considered it hypocritical because the grieving and contrition were not ultimately the responsibility of the one to be converted”….”On this hypothesis, we could never know whether we really were converted, because this would presuppose knowledge of an unknowable supernatural force” Kant’s problem with repentance was very similar to my own, and I no longer felt alone in my confusion with repentance: it was really confusing because it was incoherent and we simply cannot know if we really were repentant. Kant also made another striking point that if we cannot be repentant apart from God, why should we be held culpable or blameworthy? If we cannot repent without God, why would God punish us for something which we cannot do?

Even if I did have faith..., how do I know that my faith is not displaced on a wrong assumption? I guess the fourth problem is that I didn’t feel like I received any answers in my prayers. I felt so depressed a frustrated with the notion of repentance that my prayer felt futile. The first three problems combined made my “spiritual journey” seem futile all together. What it really amounted to was that there was not theology of atonement, because there were theologies of atonement. In other words, there were several ways to interpret atonement because the notion of atonement was vague, and the only clues are the fragments of biblical passages that mentions it. I talked with this to some of the most friendliest theology students, and they admitted to me that the atonement is far from being the most clear doctrine in Christianity. They still had a clear belief about it, but they admitted that different Christians have different understanding of it.

The problem of repentance, however, only lead me to reject Christianity but it didn’t lead me to reject the existence of God; I became a deist afterwards. In a couple years later I was about to reconsider Christianity until I began to read parts of the bible that exposes some of the atrocities that God endorsed. I eventually rejected the belief in the existence of God when I begin to examine the arguments for the existence of God and the nature of God. You can read more about it in my other article “Discordance”, but the gist of it is that when I studied philosophy and examined Christianity more closely, I begin to see more incoherency to the point that I no longer believe in any of the fundamental beliefs that most protestant fundamentalist would hold close to their hearts.

Thus, the problem of repentance ironically lead me to the philosophical life in which there was a liberating doubt that extricated me from the incoherency and dogmatism of superstition. Whereas philosophy gave me the liberty to ask questions, to formulate beliefs based on any reasonable justification, and to re-examine or modify my beliefs in accordance to new insight an evidence, I don’t think Christianity gave me the same privilege.

The Hiddeness of God

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:02:30 PST

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

"I've never understood how God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion by faith -— it strikes me as a sloppy way to run a universe." - Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

According to Christian theology, an invisible god created the universe and sustains and rules it today, making this god the most powerful force in the universe. But, why then is he so hidden from us? We know of many lesser invisible things, such as gravity, electrons, and magnetism, which we have discovered, measured, and described by their effects on visible things, but such evidences of a god are highly ambiguous at best.

Amongst the apologists, there appear to be four main arguments for the “hiddenness” of god: the testimony of the Bible argument, the free will argument, the mysterious ways argument, and the “spiritual sight” argument.

Christian and fence-sitting visitors to this site should think seriously about these arguments, and learn what they can about both sides.

Testimony of the Bible Argument

The essence of this argument is this (from http://www.gotquestions.org/God-hidden.html):

“So why does God no longer speak audibly to us? There are several reasons for this. As noted above, God has already spoken, and His words have been miraculously kept for us down through the ages. Now we have the completed canon of scripture, and we need no further miracles to “validate” the Bible. In His perfect Word is everything we need “for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). The Bible is complete and is perfectly able to make us “wise to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). . . “

But how can we be sure the Bible is the “word of god?” Surely the fact that the Bible says it is the “word of god” can’t be taken as proof. Anyone could write that. So, what evidence does this gotquestions.com writer offer?

Well, here’s a bit of that evidence: “His first miracle – creation – was the primary evidence of God’s existence and exhibited many of His attributes. From what was made, man could conclude that God is powerful, sovereign, and good.”

There are a number of things wrong with that statement, but let me point out just one of them. The claim is that man could conclude that god is good from what was made. But, is cancer good? How about grotesque birth defects? Are murderous earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes and tornadoes good? It could be argued that nature is trying very hard to kill us. Why should we infer from this that god is good?

Personally, I think the very best argument against the Bible being the word of god is the enormous number of obvious tall tales in it. For example, there are talking snakes and jackasses, a magical fruit tree, 900 year-old men, a wooden boat which could carry multiple samples of all the animals on earth, and a man who walked on water, calmed a storm with a command, made food materialize, healed people with a touch, etc., etc. There is no evidence in the world today, which anyone can point to, that would prove any of these claims, not one. Perhaps these stories read like myth and legend because that’s what they are. After all, that is the simplest explanation, in keeping with Occam’s Razor.

Free Will Argument

It is often argued that if god were to clearly show himself, and prove his existence, that would remove our free will in the matter. My short version response is . . . so what? I have no free will in the matter of gravity or hunger, either. I know they exist. So what? That knowledge helps me to survive in this world, so why isn’t that a good thing? Why should we accept that a lack of knowledge about something is a good thing? This seems to be an all too common claim when it comes to religion.

One writer (at http://www.seekerstrove.com/hidden.html) argues: “If God were to reveal himself in his awesome glory who would not come? All would fall on their faces, trembling in terror. Do you think that God wants a personal relationship with people who came to him because they were afraid of him? What God wants from you is your love.” This is clearly contradicted by Matthew 10:28, where Jesus says: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” If Jesus isn’t saying in this passage that we should fear god, then what the hell is he saying? There is also Proverbs 9:10: "The fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom." And if god wants us to fear him, then why doesn’t he prove his existence to us unambiguously. After all, I am not going to be afraid of something I don’t believe to exist. And what kind of love is it that fears the object of that love, anyway? How does one bring himself to love a being that he fears? That is not a healthy love.

Why should the knowledge of the existence of a god who can hurt us be hidden? What could be more important for us to know? Why should it be a secret? Is it because it wouldn’t be a proper guessing game without this hiddenness? Is it that god simply wants to turn our salvation into a guessing game? Is god some kind of child? And if the New Testament god is the one true god, then why are the cards stacked so heavily against people who live outside of Europe and the Americas? Isn’t this unfair? So, god not only wants us to guess, but he stacks the cards against most of us? Why does this sound more like the work of a Satan than a god who loves mankind and justice?

How can we take seriously the argument that god wants to remain hidden when there is so much contrary evidence in the Bible? God spoke with many people in the Bible; Abraham, Noah, Job, and others. Why wasn’t their free will important? Also, god was once so anxious to show himself off and spread his message that he came down as Jesus and appeared to thousands of people, performing all sorts of miracles. What about their free will? Why is it important to preserve our free will in the matter, but not theirs? The free will argument is clearly chock-full of holes.

Mysterious Ways Argument

To my mind, this is perhaps the silliest argument of all. Essentially, this argument says that if there is something that makes no sense about a god’s ways, such as his hiddenness, then we should just ignore it, that we’re just not sufficiently intelligent to make judgments about such things. Does it ever occur to the proponent of this argument that he is just taking someone else’s word that he is dumb?

The faithful tell us that we can’t know the mind of god - that our puny minds can’t hope to understand him. Yet, this god supposedly wants us to believe in and worship him (or so the Bible claims). So this ultra intelligence, who created us and knows our every thought, can’t make himself understood by us? Does this really make sense? How could anyone expect to sell me a philosophy, a car, or a religion, if he can’t speak my language and make a sales pitch that I can understand?

Worse still, because most believers are satisfied with the “mysterious ways” claim, we have a world of hundreds of religions and thousands of sects, and we argue and fight and kill each other over who’s right. How can it make sense to infer from this that a real god, who loves people, is in charge? And how can I know which god’s “mysterious ways” I should believe? Should I accept Allah’s mysterious ways, or Ganesh’s, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s? If a god doesn’t have to make sense, then how can I possibly choose which is the real god, or even if there is one? Would a real god expect me to just guess, or take someone else’s word for it, that he’s the real one?

In the end, the mysterious ways argument is a red herring, designed to take our attention away from the nonsensical claim that there’s a god who desperately wants our worship, yet stays carefully hidden, providing only the most ambiguous signs. But it is the handiest argument of all. When the believer is pushed into a corner by logic, he can pull out this argument to show he is no longer interested in logical argument. Maybe believers are willing to accept that they’re too dumb to spot nonsense, but I’m not.

The “Spiritual Sight” Argument

According to this argument, god is not hidden at all, but is known through the human spirit. Here’s one explanation of this theory (from http://groups.northwestern.edu/christians/Why_is_God.html):

“God made man with three parts - the spirit, the soul, and the body. The body is for contacting physical things . . . The soul is for contacting psychological things, such as thoughts, love, hatred . . . The spirit is for contacting God, who is Spirit. . . Maybe God tries to hide Himself so that only His true seekers will find Him.”

To begin with, no one has ever proven this “spirit” thing even exists. Try defining the word “spirit,” to get a sense of what I mean. It seems to be the kind of word that has as many shades of meaning as there are people. Also, I have five perfectly good senses, so why can’t god show himself thru at least one of these senses, instead of this so-called sixth sense of “spirit,” which can’t even be proven to exist? What better way for a god to leave me in doubt than to avoid using any of the more obvious senses? Now I believe in school spirit and team spirit, but these are just feelings. But many people have claimed that ghosts are spirits, or that they have been in touch with the spirits of long dead wise men, etc. An awful lot of nonsense has accumulated around this word “spirit,” and a very good argument could be made that spirit is nothing but feelings.

For example, the same site had this to say about connecting with god through the spirit:

“You Can See God . . . You cannot see God with your eyes, but you can see God with your spirit. To believe without seeing Him with physical eyes is more blessed.”

I’m betting that was written by a man who wanted desperately to see god, but never did. So he turns it into a good thing, that he never did. He continues:

“The way to use your spirit to see God is to talk to Him. Say, "Lord Jesus, I want to see You in my spirit. I want to contact You. I want You to reveal Yourself to me. I want You to come into me and live in me. Thank You, Lord." If you speak to Him in this way, He will be hidden from you no longer.”

Now isn’t this just telling us that if we try really, really hard to believe something, then we just might succeed? Might this approach work just as well for “seeing” Mohammed or Satan? How does this approach differ from self-hypnosis?

There are many cases on record of crime suspects being grilled for endless hours by police - the interrogators constantly suggesting how the crime was done, and insisting they knew the suspect was guilty - until the suspect confessed to a crime, and actually believed he was guilty. Later, DNA, eye-witness, or other evidence proved the original suspect could not have committed the crime.

Our minds, you see, respond amazingly well to the power of suggestion. One should remember that the point is not just to believe something (as the writer above suggests), but to find the truth. Through the power of suggestion, millions have come to worship Allah and dozens of Hindu or other gods. But their “spirits” didn’t find the truth, because they were merely responding to their feelings. Your feelings can tell you nothing about what exists outside your own head. For example, you may feel that you are deeply loved by someone, but that feeling may have more to do with your psychological need than with the facts of the matter. The “other” in this case may be merely acting a part. You would need to rely on concrete, external evidence to uncover the truth of the matter. And the same applies to gods.

Conclusion

The Bible insists, over and over, from beginning to end, that to believe in and worship this god is the ultimate obligation and meaning of man, and to not believe is the absolute worst thing a man can do, and assures him of misery and/or an early death (Old Testament), or everlasting torture in hell (New Testament). If god wants us to believe, and we don’t, then the ruler of the universe is not getting what he wants. Does this make sense? Otherwise (if we believe there is a god), we must accept that he wants us to play guessing games with our salvation. Does this make sense?

All we really have to go on are those ancient stories, those incredible tall tales of the Bible written by primitive, superstitious men. So, either we take their word for how the world works, or we are lost. Does this make sense? Those ancient scribes made many claims, but none of those claims can be supported by concrete evidence in the physical world. Under those circumstances, believing requires a leap of faith, but a leap of faith is just a guess by another name; it is merely presuming as fact something which can’t be proven.

Doesn't it seem reasonable that if a god truly interacted with this world, and wanted us to know it, then it would be obvious, and we would not be dealing with a god who hides? According to the Bible, he is all powerful and WANTS us to know it. So why are all the alleged signs of his existence so ambiguous? In fact, there in a nutshell, is a pretty decent argument that Bible-god does not exist.

Now, believers will often argue that we should believe something even when it makes no sense to us. In any other area of life, to believe something when it makes no sense would be considered stupid. Thus, to just believe, we risk stupid. Most folks seem willing to take that gamble, but I am not. And no god with a lick of sense or an ounce of compassion is going to fault me for honest skepticism. To me, the world appears to involve no gods. When I read the Bible, it's as if those primitive men with their endless tall tales are saying to me, "Who are you going to believe, us or your own eyes and mind?" No contest. I believe that my own mind, fortified with several hundred years worth of scientific discovery, is much the better suited to finding the truth about the world than those superstitious ancients.

Snow White: Antichrist

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:02:30 PST

By John ~

A friend of mine once proposed to me that Disney's Snow White is the Antichrist. There you see her lying in state while the seven dwarves (who represent the seven churches) bow before her. A prince (the false prophet) comes riding up, kisses her, and restores her to life (false resurrection). Therefore, she's the Antichrist.

Makes sense to me.

The theological underpinnings of Snow White are simply one in a string of Disney tales. Prince Philip (the savior) slays the dragon (Satan) to rescue Sleeping Beauty (the Church). Simba is separated from his father and flees (the fall of man) only to live in an unnatural state until he is reconciled to Mufasa (God the Father). Goofy becomes possessed when he gets behind the wheel of a car (representing how modern science separates us from our true nature in god). And less obvious examples such as Peter Jackson (Pontius Pilot) crucifying the characters of Aragorn, Faramir, and Galadriel (the Father, Son and ...Holy Crap! Are you serious? She wasn't freakish in the book!)

Now, try to point any of these out to a Christian and they will either call you a moron, laugh, or roll their eyes. The same people who think Tim LaHaye's version of the end times has merit will not take you seriously. These seemingly rational people who will talk to you about demon possession will discard your earnest pleas to beware the Dwarf Whisperer (Snow White, aka Antichrist). People who actually think there is such a thing as a "true Christian" will mock you for your Disney-beliefs.

I don't see why? My silly story is no more fantastical than theirs. Maleficent and Satan are both fictitious characters. So what's the big deal?

I keep hoping to come across some radical fundamentalist preacher on the street just so that I can be temporarily possessed by the demon Grumpy and give him what-for. And if he drives that demon away, there are six more for him to contend with.

Make that five. The spirit of Dopey is apparently already at work among the religious.

Can We Encourage Others With The Truth About The Liars?

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:54:16 PST

By Yak ~

Yet Another Representative of Christ Shown to Keep Toxic Secrets: http://news.yahoo.com/priest-fathered-child-removed-york-church-170202021.html

The old adage that "The fish rots from the head-back" certainly proves itself to be both true and relevant on an on-going basis.

Secretly fathering a child while in the institution of higher learning that "forms" priests in their role as spiritual leaders, "pastors," confessors, truth-tellers and even judges of other people's faith (ever been told by a christian pastor/priest/minister/teacher that "your conscience wasn't formed correctly" when you took issue with their crazy-making?)

Famously, (and joining the long, distinguished and rapidly growing list of religious vow-takers-and-breakers) Thomas Merton, a member of the Catholic "Trappist" or "Cistercian" monastic order -- one of the golden boys of their religion -- also fathered a child while at school. But, true to form, members of his organization have made sure that his woman and his child are covered up.

Whenever sexual indiscretions occur in Christianity both the leaders and the followers engage in aggressive denial, minimizing, and altering the stories, and, in an outright demonstration that religious brainwashing is both real, rampant and insidious. Incredibly, they still believe that they still inhabit the position of the moral higher ground.

I did hear an elderly monk say once, "never underestimate the power of denial." No truer statement was ever made by a member of religion.

Wouldn't it be interesting if there was an easy to reach online list of these people, the dates, and the names of those who were involved --and the cover-ups-- so that there is reliable proof that one can turn to when a person decides to leave the seething and tricky cauldron of "holy" and arrogant religion?

I can't think of a more helpful and compassionate way to encourage those who wish to de-convert and get their lives back. "The truth will-out," as the old saying goes. So, why not use the truth as something helpful and kind to those who are sick and tired of the lies, denial and shame, but who find themselves being scapegoated and shamed by the very religious people they are trying to get away from?

I wonder: with the rapidly increasing number of illegitimate children discovered as being popped out by christian leaders, we may be doing the milkmen of the world a terrible disservice.

It may be time to revise the old saying from being, "He/she doesn't look like his/her father, he/she must be the milkman's kid" to "He/she is the christian leader's kid."

To the Milkmen of the world: we offer you a sincere apology. You're indiscretions appear to have been up-staged by religion.

Your thoughts?

Blank Checks

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:25:02 PST

By Andrea ~

Imagine that you are with your life, husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, or anyone else that's close to you. You're with them on the first day of a new year. They ask you what you hope to do this year and you say ''This year I will be a blank check for you(insert their name here). You decide what you want me to do with my life this year and whatever it is,no matter if I like the idea or not,I will do it.I will be like a blank check and you write the cost, of whatever you want,on me and I'll let you ''cash in'' whatever amount you desire from me.'' Then for the next 365 days you do everything this person asks from you.No matter if its insane or if you don't understand any of it...you do it with a smile.Every time you want to say ''What the hell am I doing this for?'',you bite your tongue and instead say ''Thank you for the opportunity to serve you this year.''

Aw isn't that sweet? Isn't that how you showed your love for someone on New Years? We all do this right? Haha... not so much.I would hope that no one reading this has actually done that. Unless you had a lobotomy'... I'm pretty sure no one would be this much of a door mat for someone. Most of the time,if someone has a relationship like this,everyone around them worries about them. They worry that the person has lost their voice in life and has sunk to taking endless orders from people. There is only place, as far as any that I've been involved in,that actually thinks this is a healthy way to have a relationship.That place is Christianity.

All of us, with a good heart, has made a sacrifice for someone at least once right? We've all been to the store and spent the money on a birthday present for someone... even though we were tempted to spend it on ourselves. We've probably all let someone else in the family have a turn to choose the restaurant, even though we didn't really want to eat there that night. Or sometimes maybe its on a bigger level... you cut back on buying clothes for yourself and save money because your daughter wants to take dance lessons. It's a natural part of life right? If we didn't do that once a while it would be hard to survive and no one would be happy. We all know why we're willing to sacrifice for people we love... but how many people know why they are willing to distort that same idea of sacrifice for the sake of religion?

I think that religions like to look at other religions and think they are so dedicated that its ''scary.'' While giving themselves a pat on the back for not doing anything that's'' going overboard.'' To most Christians living now...a girl who is Muslim, and covers here face all the time is living a sad overly controlled life. Yet when it comes to themselves, it's a good thing to say that Jesus has their whole life planned and they will everything and anything he asks of them. Some of them even say to Jesus ''I give you all control.Its not I who live but you who lives in me.'' That's only one of many creepy sayings that I remember from them.

So what is about this God idea? Why is that no one else can do outrages things for their God(or they are called crazy) but when it comes their own God.. they believe he should walk all over them? Why is it that people know where to stop,on the level of sacrifice, when it comes to relationships with actual people but not with God?Why is it that if someone told their best friend that they were going to die to her will and live for her.. people would think she's crazy, but in their ''relationship'' with Jesus that's considered an honorable thing to say to him?

That whole way of thinking just blows my mind because its so scary but, in modern Christians, it only seems to be applied to God.

The truth is.. I did it once and I still don't understand what happened. I'll admit that I was never a total robot(if God asked me to stick my head in the oven for an hour I probably wouldn't have done it) but I was willing let him control most of my future.I don't naturally tolerate being bossed around very much.If someone wants to control me too much then that relationship will probably last five minutes. That's just not my personality to be passive about that. But even I was sucked into the ''let God walk all over you'' way of thinking. So it left me always wondering..what is the deal with that?I was reminded of it strongly today because that hypothetical ''blank check'' idea that I talked about... I didn't make that up.That was real and I saw some Christians talking about how it was who they wanted to be for God this year. But I didn't find it surprising..what else besides religion that convince someone it's good idea to be a blank check?

The Hug

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:24:36 PST

By Tania ~

The house is empty now. Everyone has left to go to prayer meeting. I had to go to the basement for something, and I saw one of the many God books on the desk. And I remembered that hug, that hug that reminds me that I cannot share these thoughts with my family yet – or maybe ever. It would be too much.

They know that I am having doubts. They know that I am not sensing God, that my experiences with prayer and church and Christians in the past year have significantly changed my thoughts about this faith that at one time meant the world to me... And, I think – I should hope – that they know me well enough to know that this is not a phase, this is not me rebelling or being selfish or lazy or judgmental.

They know how I am in my relationships (not perfect in any way, but probably as “normal” as most people!). They've raised me in a simplistic, non-materialistic way, and I've stuck to that because I think it is the best way to live. I have volunteered with the dying for years now and I am training to become a funeral director – and because of that and also because I am generally a curious person about many things, I have spent much time reading about dying, death, the meaning of life, values, beliefs, spirituality. religion, etc. I am well-read; in fact, I've been told that I read too much and think too much!

Back to that hug...

In our family, we do not hug much – maybe a few times a year? I “came out” to my brother as much as I probably will. And he hugged me – tightly, fiercely, wordlessly. I don't know what that meant. He's my big brother, the one who reassures, corrects, advises, tries to set me straight. To this, there were no answers. I don't know if he felt that I am hopeless, or maybe he felt sorry for me, or maybe, maybe, he understood exactly where I'm coming from. A few weeks ago, I admitted my doubt/disbelief about all this God stuff to the Bible study group I sometimes attend (I don't give up easily! God, if He's there, honours that, right?!); when asked what these doubts were about, I admitted, “God. His involvement in my life. His existence. Everything. He used to seem so close and so real, and now... there's nothing.” (I don't think people do that much in any group I've ever attended. Keep quiet, right? I can't do that.) The leader's response was not what I expected. I expected a bit of, I don't know, admonition? Encouragement? Brushing aside of my remarks? Instead, slowly, quietly, thoughtfully, his response was, “Well... that was very honest of you... and... we're here for you....” That answer hurt. I am grateful for what he said, but I guess part of me was hoping he'd tell me that Satan had messed with my mind or that "We all go through that" or "Just have faith!" I don't remember if he did say anything else. His hesitance in replying and the way in which he did not attempt to re-convert me or immediately offer prayers or answers – that, I will not forget.

And I won't forget that hug.

This whole “losing my faith” thing has shaken me up a lot, and I am not a person who keeps silent when things are bothering me. But in this case? When sharing my latest “testimony” is such a far cry from the testimonies I've shared as a Christian over the years?

I will keep quiet for now, unless asked.

Thank you, all of you, for your honesty, for sharing what's weighing heavily on your hearts and minds. I've just discovered this site, and it helps knowing I am not alone. I have this feeling, deep down, that things will turn out okay and the truth will set us free and all that... it's just that right now, it's a bit too deep down.

"Word" Processors

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:28:34 PST

By Carl S. ~

Several years ago, Newsweek magazine published the results of a survey asking different denomination members to define "God". Yes - that god. The definitions of "God" fell into four or five different categories. (I made a point with my wife one day that her definition of God was not the same as her brother’s, sister-in-law’s, my niece, etc.) Thus, theology, as a method to define "God" and “his” mind, wishes, and duties to Him turns out to be a means to control via . . . words. And it works.

A noted Father of the Catholic Church, Thomas Aquinas, wrote of the "Five proofs for the Existence of God." Aquinas, an erudite philosopher quoted occasionally by theologians, is considered by them to have written a brilliant exposition with his "proofs", but, as one thinker noted, his "proofs" only make sense if you accept his premise to begin with, and he offers no proof that his god exists. What Aquinas offers is what every theologian feeds on and lives off: words.

There is no way to counter invisible non-entities, "spiritual” claims, when words have adoration. Even a three year-old kid’s words can be taken as acceptable "sacred truth,” when words mean so very much.

The proofs for a divinity’s existence and the truthfulness of claims handed down by the divinity, depend on one's geographical standing on Earth. As astronauts circle the Globe, they cross over the many interpretations and contradictions of just how those "proofs" are defined, some involving several gods or aspects of the same god. Even in space, the premise is a premise, with no proof. No proof, for instance, even in space, that anything in the universe was created. What a view! Meanwhile, down on Earth, earthlings are harming and killing each other, over beliefs in an invisible "creator" and what they intransigently accept as "his wishes."

Meanwhile, here on Earth, many maintain that this "great invisible spirit", is a "father." This label came from Jesus. That’s one. “

The Talmudic god is a trickster, doing whatever turns him on, good or bad. (Christians won't accept this, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of it, they believe this too, but they make excuses.) Definitely male, because he enjoys destroying. The Moslem god, Allah, appears to be just another fate-playing ogre in need of regularly scheduled praise, appeasement, and calloused foreheads, and a misogynist. Pick a god, any god . . .

"How do you live without God?" Answer: Everyone lives without God, because there isn't any.When it comes to words, I am reminded of one of my favorite word-masters, John le Carré, who put these words into the mouth of a master spy: “The world is run on lies." Indeed. Heads of state lie to other heads of state, corporations and politicians lie to their constituents, spouses lie to each other (even though little lies, out of love),governments lie to one another, and clergy lie to their congregations and followers.

Pastors know that the Nativity story is just that - a story. The pope, celebrating Christmas mass, knows this too. They lie and lie and continue to lie, and there are no checks and balances, no catching them in the act.

Let us not downplay the significance of words and their power to not just communicate, but inspire and motivate for better or worse, those who hear them. But with believers, words have a value that raises them to a sacredness which they will not challenge. They carry the connotations of possessing absolute truths. Consider the word "spirit" alone, a word which originally meant "breath," and as used in scriptures, meant that the spirit was breathed into beings by a spiritual force, and departed on death, since the person stopped breathing. Ditto “soul." Sin, redemption, original sin, grace, transubstantiation, damnation, etc., etc. . . . Put them under the microscope of logic and what is known of reality. They don’t really tell us anything, hold no water, and yet their merely being spoken has magical connotations for believers, who hang on these very words, along with the words of prayers and other incantations. Thus, "theology“ is the study of and explanation of . . . words. The entire enterprise and edifice of religions is dedicated to the buying and selling of invisible vapors and feel-good fantasies. While human beings are struggling and even starving to death from lack of help, thousands of word-processors of "the word" are taking money to talk trash.

The word "ambiguous" keeps coming to mind: ”Open to more than one interpretation; doubtful or uncertain; undefined." The vernacular of beliefs is ambiguity, resistant in all ways to explanation, clarity, respect for ascertaining truth. Beliefs create a world of their own. Lies to evade truth and support ambiguity are told so often and elaborately that the liars come to actually believe their own lies. Does this habit lead to personal convictions? I think so, from experiences in dealing with them. And don't all of us have experience of where they're coming from ourselves?

Do we not have not merely the right, but duty, to hold the "proofs" of religions to scientific scrutiny, to place them under the microscope of truth-claims for the sake of verification, as we do for every other claim? "Tradition" is a sorry excuse to perpetuate ignorance. Already, Religious presidential candidates, using the habit of their belief-ambiguity, are tripping themselves up when pressed to explain their "unquestionable" beliefs. (Again, le Carré:"A man who cannot speak clearly, cannot think clearly.”

You wouldn't believe how much crap I've heard about this god, his angels, what heaven is like, how he felt when he died on the cross, how much he loves me, how many died for the faith (by the way, how many died against the faith, because faith refused to be questioned?) Words, all words. No proof, evidence. All allegations. They can weave complex cobwebs, but still they're cobwebs. And if they want to claim that everything they assert is a ”mystery," let them, and as soon as they solve these “mysteries,” then they can make claims. Until then, and after thousands of years of preaching this non-sense, they can put their money where their mouths are. It’s time they fleshed out their “word.”

Personally, I recommend "none of the above," and as each religion rejects the "proofs" of another's beliefs, I reject them all, since none of them has any. But . . . , they have megatons of words.

There is an answer when I am asked, "How do you live without God?" Answer: Everyone lives without God, because there isn't any. But, everyone has imagination, and nobody lives without imagination. The proof can be found in words.

The Free Will Argument

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:38:49 PST

By Klym ~

I am fairly new to the ex-xtian community, so I still struggle to explain my nonbelief to Christians. How do you reply when they give you the free will argument to explain evil? Aside from wanting to ask them if they really have two brain cells to rub together, the answer seems pretty obvious to me.

Christians seem to have no problem believing that a human being can be "possessed" by the devil. Why then, do they believe there can be free will? If we truly have free will, then neither the divine nor the demonic could control us, right? And, free will seems such a convenient way to explain away horrendous suffering and crimes that human beings should be angry about. It seems to just give Christians an excuse to do nothing about the injustices in the world.

Does a severely mentally ill person really have free will? I think only to the extent that their brain chemistry allows it. Now, don't misunderstand me, I do think we have free will to some extent, but it is influenced by where we were born, the culture we were brought up in, our level of intelligence, and many other variables that cannot be easily measured.

That's one of the things that bugs me about Christianity. I LOATHE easy, trite answers to the difficult questions of life. Like the following:

"There but for the grace of God, go I."

How sickenly arrogant!!!

"God's grace is sufficient."

For WHAT?

"God will not give you more than you can bear."

This one makes me so angry I can't even find words to qualify it.

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. As I said earlier, I am still fairly new to the atheist world, and I seem to be in the "phase" where I just want to scream at people when they say such stupid things. Does this phase pass? I don't want to become as judgemental towards Christians as they are towards us. I don't want to be a "bitter" non-believer. I really want to be tolerant, seeing as how I used to be one who thought and believed such stupid things in the past. (I hope I didn't say them out loud very often, though.)

How did you all handle these feelings in the beginning? And what are your thoughts on the free will debate?

Spiritual Naturalism

noreply@blogger.com (webmdave) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:43:02 PST

By Paul So ~

It is often believed among Christians that non-believers who have no religion cannot have true spirituality; the reasoning behind this is not mere bigotry, rather it is the assumption that spiritual life is wholly dependent on a relationship with God. However I want to go beyond this assumption by arguing that spirituality can be independent of religion (including Christianity). I will argue this by expounding on a naturalistic/atheistic world-view in which Nature is the source of spirituality, not God. However before I do this I want to define or elaborate on what spirituality is; I know that spirituality cannot be thoroughly defined in an exhaustive manner, but at the very least I want to elaborate on the general idea on what spirituality is in order to further explain why it is possible without God. I also want to elaborate on what Nature is in the most simplest way possible…after that I want to relate them together to see how the pieces fall together.

Spirituality is the cultivation of the mind through the activity of the mind that leads to tranquility or equanimity (I’ll use the word equanimity), and this cultivation lies in understanding who we are and understanding our relation to Nature. By Nature, I don’t mean “Gaia” or “Mother Earth”, I mean the entire face of the cosmos which the Atheist French Philosopher Andre-Comte Sponville called “The All”. Spinoza called it “Eternal Substance” or “God”, and Einstein also called it “God” but we can just call it Nature (with the capital “N”). Nature is “The All”, according to Sponville, in that it is a totality of existence that is “unconditioned” (does not require a cause) where as all little nature (planets, stars, universe, multi-universe) are conditioned by the totality of existence (in other words, by conditioned, it means it is dependent on Nature). What this means is that all thing are dependent on Nature, but Nature itself is independent; all things are part of Nature, but Nature is not part of anything else.

To be spiritual is to practice a way of life that brings equanimity to the mind, and I believe that this practice is trying to understand ourselves by understanding Nature. By understanding Nature, we understand ourselves as a part of Nature, as a contingent or dependent individual beings on of whole reality itself. Without Nature, we wouldn’t exist to occupy any reality. By understanding Nature, we see ourselves as being part of something that is exceedingly greater than us; Because Nature contains all things that exist, and there are almost infinity of things that exist, Nature is just so vast and ineffable…there are over trillions of trillions of atoms in the universe, which make up those trillions of stars in the universe, and there are still more billions of galaxies that are made up by those same stars…When we compare ourselves to this universe, we are just a speck that is part of a whole greater reality, and who knows maybe our universe is part of a chain of multiverses that is part of a chaotic inflation. If this is true, then we are infinitely finite compare to the “Totality of All Existence”.

“It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.”How does this bring a peace of mind? By accepting reality, I think we become less intimidated and insecure; we tend to see ourselves separately from Nature by being preoccupied with our daily lives; there is nothing intrinsically wrong with living our daily life, but to live our life without realizing how vast the universe is, our mind will tend to be more unsettled by events in our lives that are pale in comparison to infinite reality. Our mind is always occupied with the more limited aspect of our life, and in this preoccupation all we ever see are things that are right in front of our eyes. What we tend to forget is that both the things that are right in front of our eyes and ourselves are also part of something greater in the perspective of Nature. By shifting our perspective from the ordinary life to reality as a whole, I think we will see our own ordinary life into a different perspective. All our mental events is part of the totality of events that are dependent on Nature; our sorrows, jealousy, hatred, anger, fear, hope, love, joy, laughter are all part of Nature. Not only are they connected with each other, but connected to everything else around it. We affect things around us, and things around us effect us. The Self is nothing more than a transient feature of a persisting reality; it is a chain of physical and mental events, and underneath this chain of event is a substratum of Nature, or the “Ground of Being”

In other words, we accept death as a part of life, because life, by being part of Nature, is a transient feature of Nature, since everything that exist in Nature is impermanent in Nature, while Nature as a whole remains strangely permanent in so far as it still exist. I am not saying that by accepting death we should kill ourselves or allow things to kill us; we should avoid death when it is in our finite power to do so, but precisely because our agency is finite within the mist of infinite causes we cannot always avoid death. When death comes to us in inescapable circumstances, we should try to face it with equanimity and courage. A Stoic Philosopher once said that “Philosophy is really about learning to accept Death”. I agree with this, although I humbly admit that I am far from achieving this.

But it is precisely because of this acceptance that life can be lived fully. We being to see that life is an opportunity to spend our lifetime wisely in order to achieve equanimity and happiness. Life is spent wisely to achieve happiness and equanimity by loving one another and loving humanity. It is spent wisely when we love Nature itself by understanding it, but want nothing in return from Nature; likewise we love other people selflessly without wanting anything in return. But instead we waste our lifetime in prejudices, superstition, hatred, violence, envy, selfishness, and many other vices; by wasting our life in our vices we are making other people’s life miserable (or letting their lives remain miserable). Seneca, a Roman Stoic Philosopher, once said this “It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.”

This quote seems to imply another important message…instead of being discontent with the brevity of our life, we should be accept that life is sufficient enough for us to spend it wisely rather than waste it. We should be content with ourselves rather than being merely discontent. We should realize that Nature in its capacity has only produced intelligent life that can only live in a certain period of time; instead of complaining how futile or meaningless life is, we should try to spend it wisely to make our life worth living, as well as making other people’s life more bearable.

So how does this apply to my life? I admit that I do not always see myself as a part of Nature, but many times when I examine myself, that is my thoughts and emotions, I realize that by understanding and examining them I become more calm and accepting. By understanding myself, I realize that I am part of a contingent history that is related to other things that circumscribe it. I also try to understand other people sometimes, and it helps me see things from their perspective, from their contingent history, and that calms me down too. Now that is somewhat close enough to seeing myself as a part of Nature, but not exactly there yet to be honest. However I strongly believe that by understanding myself in relation to Nature, I can develop equanimity. Understanding consists in accepting reality, and acceptance of reality leads to the stability of the mind that use to be unstable because of its ignorance. But since understanding minimizes ignorance, it optimizes equanimity as it ingrains the understanding of reality into the mind to the point that it accepts it more. This is when I realize that True Love is Understanding; True Love also consist in being selfless and accepting, and Understanding seems to fit into this description; it fits in because by understanding ourselves we ironically become detached from ourselves (selfless), and by becoming detached from ourselves, we become less biased about our self-conception and see ourselves as who we are (acceptance).

So how does this relate to spirituality and Nature? Well, to understand our place in Nature we also accept it, and by accepting it we become content with it, and by becoming content with it we achieve equanimity and practical wisdom that motivates us to treat other people in kindness, and this way of life is a life well spent. This is my own spiritual view on Naturalism, but I don’t always practice it because nobody is perfect. I use to think that life is meaningless without God, and the peace of mind is impossible without God. I realize that I was wrong; peacefulness is not found from beyond, but it is found within; it is found not in heaven, but here on earth, in this reality, and more specifically it deeply lies within the capacity of our mind to achieve it. So, I want to spend my life achieving equanimity to see life differently, rather than being discontent and unhappy just because there is no cosmic sky father.