Put a Sacred Cow on The Barbie
1 February 2009 by jimmerI was thinking on this the other day and have determined that It can be so much fun if you all join in.
After having drunk from the wellspring of reason for a few years. I realized that I was not in any manner able to believe or accept a god or higher power of any kind. But while reading the bible as so many of us have done I concluded that I never believed in the Resurrection. Oh I tried but no cigar as they say And I was Catholic and an altar boy.
What it was really is that I had been fully in awe, as a young un, of the space program.
I knew that heaven was not just right there in spite of what I was taught in Catholic school. Fortunately Catholic school did not mix science and religion. To us we had religion every day but science was all together separate. We learned about the speed of light and all that goes with it. When we learned about the estimated distances of the universe I began to question the bible stories. They didn’t measure up to the scientific knowledge we were learning. In the back of my mind, or maybe in my subconscious, I knew the bible was just wrong and made-up. If it had been directed by an omni-anything god then why was it full of inaccuracies? Thiis I ask all of You then.
What story dio you have for us about your non-belief?
My personal favorite is the resurection. In my opinoin people do NOT come back to life after 36 hours.Ahh woop[s
Also Nasa has been looking for this cat but to no avail. I’m sorry but people do not come back from the dead. And it is as simple as that. Please list your responses. lets have some fun. The more absurd the better. I thnk that monkey thing from India is good too
1 February 2009, on 1:25 am
Jimmer–
When I was a kid, I too was really into astronomy. Initially, I thought the Universe was a testament to “Gawds Awesomeness,” but then slowly came to realize that the Wholey Babble did no justice to the planet earth in it’s descriptions, let alone the universe as a whole. And although I rejected the theory of evolution until about the age of 15, I did wonder how scientists could be so right about so many things, yet so terribly “wrong” when it came to the origens of the species.
In college, the point where the questioning turned into true (and terribly anxiety producing ) doubt was when I took a religion class. “Why do you believe what you believe?” our instructor, an ordained Methodist minister, asked. The only answer I came up with is “because it’s what my parents taught me.”
The next semester was a history class–Western Civ up to 1580. This means we started with Pre-historic and Biblical era europe and middle east. What’s that? There’s little to no evidence to support any of the major biblical accounts? How could we know so much about so many other cultures, even before biblical times, yet have a dearth of academic support for accounts taken for granted by so many to be authentic? How could xtian archeologists, who wanted so bad to find physical evidence, beyond the bible, find so little to support these stories?
By this time, I bought into the thoery of evolution. The nail in the coffin for my faith was the realization that the house of cards came tumbling down when you rejected a literal interpretation of the Genesis story. If that story didn’t happen, what did Jesus need to save us from? Sure, Jesus said some good stuff, but was he the first to say it? And again, what end did the grissly crucifiction serve.
And I finally made the trip from agnostic to proud atheist when I read “The End of Faith.” And suddenly, my life became so much simpler and so much happier. No more logical acrobatics.
But, after the trip I made, I have a great appreciation for why many never abandon their faith. It can cause a great deal of pain and can be a great deal of work. I had a friend in grad school that went to counseling because she was having obsessive-compulsive thoughts that consisted of a voice in her head telling her there was no god. I wanted really bad to tell her that voice was the voice of reason trying to break through the indoctrination, and the OCD was a result of trying to obsessively hold onto something which was incompatible with her very logical mind. The obsessive thoughts were not “there is no god” but rather “there is a god, damnit, there is a god, thereisthereisthereis…”
In the end, I figured that was a trip she had to make on her own–I did not want to be the one that triggered the kind of anxiety I had to go through to return to non-belief.
1 February 2009, on 3:20 am
I too was raised in the Catholic church and like Fritzy never questioned my belief because it was all I knew. The reasons I started questioning the church were much less about theology and much more about politics and society. Many in my church (and the priests) were very vocally against gays, sex-ed and seemed much more concerned with the battle over whther girls could be alter servers (which I always felt odd that women were unfit to even serve at the altar) then they were about helping the poor and other issues of social justice that I began to question the intentions of the church leadership. They seemed to have less interest in the teachings of Jesus then they did the rantings of Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich.
I stopped attending church at age 17 and at 18 moved to Vancouver B.C. where I had the opportunity to live in a liberal culture with people from all over the world with many different beliefs. Learning about these other faiths opened me up to new interpretations of our existence. But most importantly, meeting people with no religion at all allowed me to feel that it was OK to not believe.
Once I reached that stage I spent a year hopping from fringe cult to fringe cult (christian, new age, metaphysical and just plain odd) and watching the way the leaders used the same techniques to control the thoughts of their followers. The similarity I witnessed in the fringe cults with meetings held in trailer homes, living rooms and in the woods to the Catholic Church I’d grown up in is what lead me to proudly state I am an atheist and I am totally against the manipulative mindf*ck that goes by the name religion. That the only difference between a couple lonely housewives and runaways rubbing a stone in prayer to their spirit guide, a fat gay man in spandex and tiara burning incense to break a witch’s hex on some woman, and the sprinkling of holy water on a congregation to wash away their sins was the quantity of followers. None was more crazy then the next, and all were being milked for money.
1 February 2009, on 8:16 am
I was raised (ruined?) Baptist – which is Catholic without the theater. I was perfectly fine with the “just believe, you don’t really need to know” crap until I went to a private baptist college.
That was when I first came into contact with that peculiar pastime known as “my theology is better than your theology”. And it pissed me off when two of my best friends were **expelled** because they questioned the “official” theology of the school. That’s when I started to question.
And then I became the target of the gay bashers of the school and was soon expelled myself; apparently one’s love of Jesus and devotion means nothing if you suck cock.
I tried other religions including catholicism, and my venture into anglicanism was derailed when that church went charismatic! Boy that was a hell of a show!
After a while I realized that it’s far more important to be a good person than it is to swallow some hate-enabling theology.
I now see religion as a license for hatred, intolerance and, lately, in America, a platform for sedition and a quest to establish an American taliban. And it all hides behind the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion.
Religion is the refuge of people who are either too lazy or too stupid to think for themselves.
1 February 2009, on 11:05 am
My husband and I have just received our T-shirts with that message “There’s probably No God…” across the fronts and web site addresses on the back. I wish they had written the message a little smaller as the “No God” part of it doesn’t lay nice and flat on my chest so it’s not easy to read. I can see a lot of people will be staring at my chest this summer as they try to make out the words. Good thing my husband isn’t a jealous sort.
Interestingly, my husband and I traveled the path to atheism together. Which is probably rather rare.
I was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist church. I was “in love” with Jesus and you could not have asked for a more devoted believer. But during my time at a church-run high school I was introduced to a “heretical” magazine published by Robert Brinsmead, an SDA preacher who didn’t quite agree with the main stream SDA views.
At this time, my present husband was across the continent in Seattle, Washington when he was introduced to the same magazine and got involved with its publication. He was being kicked out of SDA churches for his support of the heretic. And through it all ended up divorced from his first wife.
Well, the magazine’s catch phrase was “come let us reason together”. Robert Brinsmead was a thinker and the more he thought and questioned ideas the more we thought and questioned. Over time he introduced us to the Dead Sea Scrolls debates and books about their discovery and the archaeology surrounding them.
Eventually the inspiration and power of the Bible became less and less impressive. Along the way we were introduced to Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason” which nailed the coffin shut on the gawd of the Bible.
Another book suggested by Bob was “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of The Bicameral Mind” by Julian Jaynes. This one really got us thinking that even the theist position we had adopted might have some serious logical flaws. There was a time of being in limbo with our brains trying to sort out how to maintain a belief in gawd while so much scientific evidence was dismantling the foundation.
My first husband, didn’t quite understand the path I was taking toward free-thinking. He was headed in the opposite direction toward occultism, psychic and paranormal hullabaloo. So that marriage eventually disintegrated.
Shortly after that my present husband and I managed to get together. That’s another story.
Then during an interview I heard on CBC radio, I discovered Carl Sagan. He had just published the book “The Pale Blue Dot”. It was a fascinating discussion and I was compelled to get and read the book. That was it. Any thought that religion had any answers to the mysteries of the universe were completely dispelled. The Cosmos series and “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan added more fuel to the flame of our atheistic thoughts.
My mother had never been a strong SDA believer and I think her doubts made it easier for me to finally break with the church of my youth. Through the whole process she has also adopted a more agnostic approach to life. My father is still a member in good standing in the SDA church and I’m sure his nightly prayers include a request for me to see sense and come back to gawd and his chosen few. He doesn’t pester me with his religious beliefs, however, and for this I am very thankful.
Often my husband and I talk about how silly it is that xians accuse us of willfully refusing to believe in the savior of the world. There’s nothing willful about it. Who wouldn’t love to believe in a wonderful paradise awaiting us after this life? I didn’t plan to become an unbeliever. It just evolved that way.
1 February 2009, on 11:13 am
For me, the seeds of my beliefs began in 7th Grade. I was in a Catholic School because my parents put me there. They had me preparing for Confirmation, when I began to notice a similarity between all the religions of the world. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Norse, Greek, etc. They are acted the same way. There was one core belief in all of them, afterlife.
This got me interested and I really started looking at how religions evolved, and I noticed a clear flow of one religion into another. Christianity was a clear mix of Judaism and Greek/Roman mythology with some more Mesopatamian ideas thrown in.
Then I saw what religion caused. All the pain, all the suffering, all the violence, and all the hate. Human sacrifices of the Aztecs, the Crusades of Christianity, the Jihad of Islam. I asked myself how the leaders of these churchs could allow those, encourage those.
Then I looked beyond the religion and found that in every case, the leaders of a religion are greedy and only seek to enrich themselves. The Catholic Church preaches to its people to sell everything and give to the poor, while the Pope sits in his own COUNTRY, a country worth more than half of Africa, and does nothing.
I could not stand it, the pain and hypocricy, so I looked for an alternative. The more and more I looked, the clearer and clearer it became to me that there was not god. Religion was protection from the great unknown of death. That is why every religion has power. People fear death, so they seek to protect themselves from it. That is why I am atheist.
1 February 2009, on 11:34 am
I was raised Southern Baptist. Fortunately, my parents didn’t force me to go to church, and I was able to quit relatively young. I just found the whole thing creepy especially Vacation Bible School. Even at 11 years old…I didn’t feel the “holy spirit” or whatever they were talking about. So I just kinda drifted on, afraid to tell people I didn’t feel it. I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t feel jesus christ in my heart or whatever. I tied for many years in my teens…and never could. I thought I was damned because I couldn’t have faith in something I couldn’t feel. I was terrified someone would find out. (being a xtian was a really big deal in my rural southern hometown not being a “true” one could get you snubbed by your peers).
After I got older and I had attended my fair share of science and history courses, and after reading the bible a few times. I decided to never try again to accept xtianity. I came to the conclusion that it’s a hoax and just a tool of manipulation for the masses. I decided that I’ll no longer support that which tells little children that they are somehow wrong and incomplete from birth. And the only way they will feel whole again is to allow their freedom of thought to be bound in the chains of someone else’s dogma.
Personally, I don’t think that religious people are just dumb or lazy. I think they feel the normal human incompleteness that a lot of us feel. It’s heavy to take your own training wheels off. It’s too difficult for people to accept that this life, which is sometimes very shitty indeed, is all there is. The emotional attachments that people form to their loved ones that die also make them want to believe in an afterlife. I don’t think they are lazy or stupid. I think they are insecure(as most humans are about the unknown) and have been preyed on by religious institutions that know for a fact that people will go through hard times and they can sell them a dream. It’s sick. The brainwashing from early on that somehow you are bad and incomplete, and then when life beats people down and they really feel that way, that’s when they go for the jugular.
A lot of people live their whole life for something that doesn’t exist, refusing to get a grain of pleasure from this one because they are afraid of depriving the feast their next. These people think that just under the surface of their dogma lurks a rapist or a killer in their heart. Then they project this onto society and think the rest of us are just like them. I think this is the start of a lot of crimes and wars. It’s sad…the saddest thing there is in my eyes. I just cannot adhere to this even if it means giving up my own comfort and confronting a shitty day here and there without an incantation.
1 February 2009, on 12:52 pm
I don’t think they are lazy or stupid. I think they are insecure(as most humans are about the unknown) and have been preyed on by religious institutions that know for a fact that people will go through hard times and they can sell them a dream.
Angel,
I tend to agree with you on this, for the most part. Although lack of critical thinking skills does go a long way toward keeping people chained to the sickest of the religious ideas. Even belief in an afterlife doesn’t have to include the hideous hell fire stories so many Xians and Muslims promote.
I remember being quite shocked when I heard Jane Goodall during an interview express her belief in a god. It seemed reasonable to assume she was atheist. Somehow her years of research with chimps and her firm grasp of evolution does not exclude a belief in god. I don’t understand it, but there’s nothing stupid or lazy about her.
It would be interesting to hear a discussion between Jane Goodall and Richard Dawkins on the subject of god. Maybe there’s something online. Going to check on that.
1 February 2009, on 3:47 pm
Wow those are some very good responses. The one thing that gets me stil to this day is the idea of prayer. I wonder if anyone has done a comparative study on praying as opposed to doing. I made a comment to a friend that they should hold off on the prayers and actually do somethong. Well they didn’t receive that too well. But over time I think that idea works its way into a persons subconscious and they begin to act differently. It has taken a few years but this same friend is begining to see the difference.
I agree on the point also about not being lazy or dumb. I attribute the carte blanche acceptance to having been indoctrinated at an early age. It is hard to go against your own identity when your identity is so acutely wrapped up in a religious belief. And the religious leaders count on that very point to gain their power and control over people.
I also think that most folks intuitively/subconsciously know that this belief is not quite right but so long as they play the part they have a place to call home.
Logical acrobatis. Exactly. I heard it put that the human brain cannot hold two conflicting thoughts and remain healthy. That was somehow instrumental to me in making my move to atheism. And that is also how I came to be free from the woo of so much more than just religion. I began to evaluate more and more about what I believed and considered to be true. And I am still doing it today. Past indoctrination is hard to shake.
1 February 2009, on 4:27 pm
I just saw this at Richard Dawkins website. As part of ideas on a new bus slogan campaign.
There is not “F” in God.
http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,3521,New-Bus-Campaign,Richard-Dawkins,page43#comments
1 February 2009, on 4:51 pm
I’m going to give you one that I didn’t consider until long after I became an atheist. An argument that I’m often confronted with by well meaning Christians is that I ignore the good parts of their religion in my haste to cast out the bad. The old baby and the bathwater argument. Often, the defense of Christianity comes down to the Sermon on the Mount and those magnificent Beatitudes that seem to dazzle Christian do gooders. Now, I hope that the Christian do gooders continue to do good, but they haven’t given much thought to the Beatitudes. The entire teaching of Jesus is based on a false promise. The false promise is that things in this world will not get better, but just wait until you get to the Kingdom of Heaven, then everything will work out. Jesus is often touted as some liberal rabble rouser who fought for the little guy, but he didn’t. He didn’t give a shit about poverty and inequity. The only problem he had with poverty was that there wasn’t enough of it. Rich people don’t need as much Jesus as poor people, so the way to get more followers is to make sure everyone poor.
1 February 2009, on 7:52 pm
I became an atheist at the age of 7 for two reasons:
the God of the Bible was a He with a capital “H” and being a female I felt a little left out. AND
I imagined what was outside of the universe (was it white?) and thinking that Star Wars was cool because it happened in a galaxy far, far away…
Now I’m a happy Astronomy/Biology teacher who is teaching a one-day atheism seminar at my school on 2/11.
Lucky me. Poor religious people.
1 February 2009, on 11:23 pm
I agree with you Jimmer. Past indoctrination really is hard to shake. I know I have been a skeptical person even as a kid and it took me a long time to come to the fullness of a conclusion from the earliest shreds of doubt. Well, especially due to the culture I was confronted with everyday. Social pressure was hard for me to deny as a teenage girl, but as I got older I decided I don’t really care. Nothing can make you feel like you fit in with a bunch of religious people if you feel like you really cannot agree on these fundamental principles. I sincerely don’t mind being different, and often I even delight in it now. A lot people probably feel a sense of belonging that is hard to reject. I obviously did not, so it was easier for me to ditch it.
4 February 2009, on 12:40 am
Angel
Ditto here. It is really hard to get along when you have to deal with people who so willingly change the rules to fit their own needs and then change them back when you have a need.
I also found it tedious to get along with the religious who are nothing more than bigots and low achievers. By the time I got out of high school I was so happy to be able not to go to church or have anything to do with those people under those circumstances any longer.