1. January 2009 by Frank.

Matthew 5:18 (KJV) For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Or a little more clearly:

Matthew 5:18 (NIV) I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.

According to the Bible those are the words of Jesus himself. He had just delivered what is known as the Beatitudes and had declared that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them. He then went on to tell the people that just calling someone a fool would put them in danger of hell. And looking at a woman with lust in your heart made you an adulterer which would also send you to hell. He finished up with love your enemies.

There are all kinds of problems in this passage, things that make you stop and think if you actually pay attention to what it says.

Notice that Jesus believes in hell. Notice how sin will send you there. Notice how almost every heterosexual male on the planet is an adulterer essentially from the moment they hit puberty. Notice how Jesus wants you to love your enemies but how his enemies go to hell. Hell is obviously real, Jesus says it is. Fire and all. Sorry all you modern Christians that want to softsell the idea of hell. Your God created it and still believes in it.

As for all you folks who don’t think the Law applies anymore because you are under grace, guess again. The earth is still here (I assume heaven is too even though no one has ever found it it), it has not passed away. The Seventh Day Adventists are right, the Law is still in effect. You’re worshiping on the wrong day. I’ll bet some of you work on Saturday. Report to church immediately so we can stone you to death.

Tell me fathers out there do you follow this law? Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (NIV) If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and he rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the girl, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

So think about this; your virgin daughter whom you haven’t sold to someone to marry is out partying and gets raped and you find out about it. Do you kill the rapist or castrate him or at the very least beat him to a bloody pulp? No. According to the law of your most holy god you take 50 shekels of silver from the bastard and let him marry her. Permanently. No hope of divorce. The earth is still here, this law has not disappeared. Tell me ladies, if someone raped you would you want to be sold to him and then married to him for the rest of his life? This is the word of your “family values” god.

Speaking of adultery verse 22 tells us, If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. We’re gonna need a lot of stones to take care of that.

Verse 23 tells us that if you live in town and have sex with a rapist and don’t scream loudly enough for help we have to stone both of you. Verse 24 tells us that rape in the country with plenty of screaming for help is somewhat different. Because no one could hear your cries and rescue you, we only have to stone the rapist himself. Lucky you.

Feeling disgusted yet? Take off your faith blinders and read what your god actually said to you. But this is old testament! So what? Jesus said not one word would pass away from the Law until heaven and earth were gone. The old testament isn’t some kind of intellectual exercise for you to learn from, it is the word your god handed down to rule your ancestors. Women were property in those days. They could even be sold to their rapists.

Is this really where your morals come from?

This is the first of a series of posts about things that drove me away from my religion once my eyes were opened. I knew this kind of thing was in the Bible but my beliefs required me to ignore them. Churches everywhere turn blind eyes to the ugliness at the core of their faith. My eyes were opened.

This is what I saw.

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28. December 2008 by Frank.

I get overly excited on those few occasions when I get any feedback. Therefore I am constantly trying to figure out what people want to read about here. I have pretty good traffic but commenters are few and far between.

So I’ll do what I always do when I get flustered with blogging, I’ll write about whatever is on my mind.

I’d have to say the primary atheistic thing on my mind the last few months has been how absurd my former religion seems to me now. I read a considerable amount of atheist blogs on one hand and a like amount of political oriented flotsam on the other. There’s a lot of religion mentioned and ranted about by both sources.

It disturbs me greatly when I see some bizarre religious statement and then I realize I actually used to believe exactly that.

But how do I blog about these things? Do I get all scholarly and lecture? Or should I stick with the illustrative anecdote from my past church experience? I tend to want to lecture but I have been informed by more than one person that my lectures are not welcomed. And my supply of clever anecdotes isn’t all that big.

My wife is all excited about a former pastor who has returned to the area. She’s beginning to push to go see him. This man gave me many opportunities to preach and teach, I filled in for him many times. But there’s really no real relationship there that would compel me. My memory is quite different from my wife’s.

The man preached guilt. Loads and loads of guilt. You could walk into one of his services with a huge smile on your face, a spring in your step, and enough joy in your heart to cheer up a dozen clinically depressed people; listen to his sermon; and then walk away guilty, condemned, and far lower than all those people you were trying to perk up before. The man had a huge load and he wanted to share it.

He once stated, “I think about death every day.” He was big on preaching that you must be crucified with Christ literally every day of your life. Somehow crucifying yourself on Sunday wasn’t good enough to get you through until Tuesday. Your supply of sin was so big that Jesus could only take a day’s worth away from you each day. The ever popular “You must die to self” teaching was his strong suit. I didn’t realize it at the time but the man must have had some major issues in his life. Issues he was frightfully guilty about.

This guy was determined to keep everyone feeling guilty and condemned as much as possible. Sin is far more important than redemption to most churches. Sin is more powerful than Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice. Why is it in churches like this you constantly are told, “You’re just a sinner saved by grace,” and “There but for the grace of God go I.” Even though you accept Jesus your salvation isn’t complete. Even though you’re saved you’re still full of sin. You’re constantly in danger of offending God and ruining your relationship with him. So you had to come to church every week to hear how bad you still were, so you could learn to cling to God tighter and tighter. And by inference and association, learn to cling to your clergyman.

When I finally broke away from church the one thing that stood out among all others was that I stopped feeling guilty. Without those weekly reminders I had no reason to feel guilty. I wasn’t violating my own morals so I had no guilt feelings on my own. At church that was true, too, except that I was accepting the pastor’s own guilt and condemnation as my own. I was feeling guilty for things he said I should feel guilty about. Not about things I was actually doing.

I don’t have a problem with guilt, religious guilt. Why on earth would I want to go back to that?

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18. December 2008 by Frank.

Victim – (1) someone or something killed, destroyed, sacrificed, etc. (2) one who suffers some loss esp. by being swindled

I am not a victim. Never have been, never will be. I am a survivor. My mentor, Karen, whom I met shortly after the stroke altered my life, was extremely adamant about telling anyone who came to her for help recovering from a stroke, “you are not a victim! Never say that! You are a survivor!” She would kick your ass (virtually speaking) if you used that word.

She knew what she was talking about. Before her 6^th stroke killed her, the previous 5 had begun when she was only 15 and had left her barely able to speak and only able to use one finger of each hand. Nevertheless, she had built an online empire dedicated to helping stroke survivors. She worked from an old underpowered laptop hooked up to a piss poor 56K connection in the backwoods of Tennessee. She wouldn’t let anyone get carried away with self pity and she wouldn’t tolerate you calling yourself a victim.

I wasn’t inclined to use the word anyway but after getting to know Karen, it never occurred to me to use it again. She inspired me like no one else ever has or ever will. She didn’t want pity. She never complained about how hard her life was (although she would have been entirely justified if she had). She was a survivor and that’s what she wanted you to know about her ordeal.

That and the fact that you could survive, too.

Playing the victim is such a common thing in today’s society. I just read several articles today about Christians whining about atheist signs ruining their Christmas displays on government property. The government has two choices; either display religious signs and symbols from all religions or lack thereof, or, don’t allow any such signs and displays on government property. I believe the latter option is the best. No such luminary less than Chuck Norris (whom I can’t picture ever playing the victim) was whining about it with the words, “What about when Christians are the victim?” Christians love to be the victim. I fail to see how an over 80% majority that pretty much gets its own way in American society can possibly claim to be the victims against all us measly 5% atheists who are reviled just for having the temerity to exist.

The big bad (insert your favorite bully here) won’t let us have everything our way. They’re trampling on our rights. They’re offending us. Just knowing they hate us offends us. Oh, boo hoo, have pity on us.

When I hear the word victim that is what I start thinking. It is a weak, powerless position. Oh yeah, life can choose you as its victim, pounce on you and beat the crap out of you. But how you react and respond to that beating determines whether or not you actually become a victim.

My mother in law died from a series of strokes. She was a victim. She didn’t know how to fight back and none of us knew how to help her. You could see the life go out of her eyes. She gave up and it destroyed her.

I saw the exact same thing happening to me.

Nobody knew how to help me, either. My doctor was just as ignorant and unhelpful as her doctor had been. My wife didn’t have a clue how to help me. My daughter was only 14 but she at least had enough sense to listen to what I was saying at the time. She was the only one who did listen. Until I met Karen online. Don’t be a victim!

Re-read the definition of victim at the beginning of this article. Now contrast that with the definitions of survive and survivor:

Survive – to remain alive or in existence after – to continue living or existing

Survivor – (1) one that survives (2) someone regarded as capable of surviving changing conditions, misfortune, etc.

Which would you rather be?

TinaFCD used the phrase “stroke victim” in one of her greatly appreciated comments. She also mentioned she likes rants. So, since the word victim sets me off and I like to rant, I thought I’d kill two stone birds with one rock, so to speak. No matter what degree a stroke affects someone it is in some way life altering. If I had chosen to be a victim I would probably be dead by now. At the very least, I would not be able to walk. No one ever notices how I walk but even after ten years it is not natural to me. But I chose to be a survivor so I learned how to walk again.

They tried so many drugs on me and they sent me to all kinds of therapy. Nothing worked. I could have chosen to be a victim. I could have sat in a chair for the rest of my life drooling on myself. You would not believe how strong the desire to do just that was at first. I could have chosen a drug induced stupor that sure felt good but left me incapable of doing anything. I could easily have gone down the same path as my mother in law. There was nothing to stop me.

But I am not a victim.

I am a survivor.

I chose the pain. I chose not to be a victim. Like Hugh Jackman said in Van Helsing, “The pain let’s you know you’re alive.” Sure there are times when I would give anything for some relief but all it takes to knock me out are a couple of beers or one good stiff drink. I don’t sleep well but the only time I feel good (relatively speaking) is when I’m asleep.

I don’t know if this seems like much of a rant to anyone else but nothing pisses me off faster than someone playing the victim.

Anytime I catch myself doing it, I have to kick my own ass.

Posted in communication, interpretation, listen, stroke | Print | No Comments »

16. November 2008 by Frank.

I’m tired of politics.

Well, actually, I’m tired of political stupidity.

A guest in my house opined this brilliant piece of logic last night; “People are afraid of him because he’s a black man with a really unusual name, a scary foreign sounding name. I mean, nobody knows what he’s going to do. Nobody knows what kind of a man he is.”

The stupid, it burns!

If this is your sum total aversion to Obama then you really are a deep thinker aren’t you?

I wasn’t involved in the conversation, this person was my wife’s guest. But I have heard this same load of tripe for the last few weeks from a variety of sources, my co-workers and religious folks. I really don’t care if anyone is for Obama or not. What bothers me is how superficial the objections are.

“All you have to do is change that ‘b’ to an ’s’ in his last name and look at his middle name! It makes you think. Doesn’t it?”

No, it means you’ve stopped thinking.

It means you’re already brain dead and should report immediately to the nearest cemetery. Don’t worry, you won’t be alone.

What’s with all the politics? I thought this was an anti-religion blog. Well, yes, it is. Unfortunately, even the religious stuff is political lately. A couple of days before the election there was an elaborate article written by some fundamentalist whackjob which quite clearly and unequivocally stated that you could not be a real Christian and vote for Obama. It was quite heavily endorsed by an amazing amount of scripture that the author used to imply that a vote for Obama was really a vote for Satan. After the election, I’m sure you haven’t been able to avoid the story about a priest who doesn’t want to serve communion to any Catholic who voted for Obama before they repent and do penance for the horrible sin of voting for the most terrifying pro-abortion politician in history. God doesn’t like that.

Surely you’ve heard that the Mormon’s spent millions protecting the sanctity of marriage in California. I wonder how many starving children or how many suffering families could have been helped by all those millions? God hates gays so much he’s willing to let millions go hungry. Wow.

Like it or not religion is wrapped up in politics.

So is racism.

So is stupidity.

I really wanted to believe this country was making progress. Maybe part of it is. It sure isn’t around here.

I’m tired of politics.

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9. November 2008 by Frank.

“Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical,
Liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re
Acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable!”

(Logical Song by Supertramp on Breakfast in America)

Maybe politics hasn’t changed in the last twenty years after all. No, I like the alternate reality explanation better. Somehow I crossed the barrier between the real world and the twilight zone without realizing it. Yeah that’s it. I did too much “LDS in the sixties” (shameless Star Trek quote) and now I’m having flashback hallucinations.

Either that or I live in a world that is batshit insane.

Welcome, comrades, to the Glorious People’s Republic of Americka! Yes, we’re all socialists, communists, and Marxists now. No, I’m not quoting religious right whackjobs! That’s what supposedly normal, intelligent, ordinary people I work with are saying! I was so excited about the results of Tuesday’s election and went to work eager to talk about how wonderful it was. Instead of getting to share the enthusiasm, I was greeted with a barrage of whining about socialism and the fall of democracy. The effective end of our way of life. No one in that damn store was happy about Obama.

Which surprised the daylights out of me.

Of course this part of Michigan is so heavily conservative Republican no Democrats ran for any of the local elections. The only choice was Republican, write in, or no vote. But I had the mistaken idea that hatred of Bush would tip some of these people the other way. Wrong.

Which is why I usually keep quiet about politics.

I confessed elsewhere that I was a die hard Republican for most of my life. I hated Clinton (but not because of his lack of morals – it was his lack of a spine that bothered me) and I came to loathe Bush after voting for him twice. When it became clear he had no regard for the law, the constitution, or even the people, I became convinced that conservatism had become a dirty word. As I told my co-workers, even the rats knew when it was time to abandon a sinking ship.

In order to keep myself balanced, I used all kinds of sources, right and left, extreme and mainstream, religious and non-religious. That’s much easier to do nowadays with the internet, you could actually be fully informed. Unfortunately, you can also be sucked into a parallel dimension full of the most vile, disgusting, drivel you’re ever likely to see. Ed Brayton calls it The World NUT Daily. It’s actual name is World NET daily but Ed is much closer to the truth. You can find it easy enough but I’m not going to dignify them with a link.

They don’t deserve it.

These people are so far right wing, Christian nutjobs, and bigots that they should be isolated from the rest of the world so they could live in their own hate and filth and bigotry until they become extinct. Tell me something, how can someone calling themselves Christian advocate pulling their children out of public schools because our government is training them to be liberal socialists? How can this same loving Jesus follower flat out state that you need to buy as many guns as you can and make sure you have as much ammunition as possible? Because the Marxists have taken over the White House?

How can good old Pat Boone (yes, the Pat Boone from back in the day) tell a young boy that the country got on the wrong bus on Tuesday and now we have to be driven around for four years by some unAmerican terrorist nutjob who’s going to destroy our wonderful way of life. And make us all be godless communists.

So again I ask what freaking parallel universe is this? And how did I get here?

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good alternate reality story as much as any other science fiction fan. But the key word there is “fiction”. This stuff is happening right now in the “real” world. I like my fiction to be on screen or in books not in my face.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that there are people out there right now who think that Sarah Palin is the next conservative savior for 2012.

Shudder.

I want my mommy.

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22. October 2008 by Frank.

I have been told that my stroke survivor story would be of great benefit and inspiration to suffering Christians the world over. All I have to do is give god the glory.

I can’t do that.

I did not survive the stroke with any help from god. I didn’t pray. I didn’t praise. I didn’t worship. I didn’t bow down. God did not deliver me from evil.

During the actual stroke event I was praying. I was very much god centered and oriented at that time. I knew something was horribly wrong with me but I didn’t panic because I had full trust in god to get me through it. There was no doubt in my mind that god was right there with me. You can see why Christians would think this is the beginning of a wonderful testimony.

I’ve mentioned before that I was planning to become a full time preacher. I was completely sold out to god. The thought of becoming an atheist had never occurred to me. I had absolutely no desire to leave my faith. I had no reason not to believe in god.

My blood pressure that morning should have been fatal. In a way it was. I know there are all kinds of scientific explanations for near death experiences. I understand that most such experiences happen in the mind and aren’t the least bit supernatural. But knowing that does not diminish the “realness” of the experience.

I left my body and was looking down at myself quite clearly while I was laying on the floor. That was just as real to me as it is sitting here typing and listening to music on Pandora. But I know that can be explained. It can also be explained that I felt I was drifting away to nothingness. Everything had gone black, sound was rapidly receding, there was no pain, there was no sensation. I thought I was almost dead and I was perfectly content with that. I wanted to keep going into the nothingness forever.

I thought I had entered the presence of god, it was perfect peace. But there was no one there. There was no light. There was no sense of another presence. There was no sense of anything. I was on a tour of a cave once in which they turned off the lights to show you what absolute darkness was like. I think everyone stopped breathing simultaneously. The complete absence of light is devastatingly shocking. We were each completely alone and isolated. My experience was like that. But it didn’t scare me.

Your HDTV would need a 10,000,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio to demonstrate that.

To say I was confused afterwards would be quite an understatement. I was confused and I also didn’t care. About anything. Nothing had any importance to me. I didn’t care what the nurses and doctors were doing to me. I didn’t care about myself, my family, my friends. But what was really surprising was that I didn’t care about my god either.

He was gone from my thoughts. It never occurred to me to pray. I didn’t want my bible. I wasn’t eager to get back to church and teaching the word. My attitude struck me as odd but didn’t really bother me any. I had made a complete 180 without the slightest bit of emotional reaction whatsoever.

A large part of my memory was gone. My personality was radically altered. I had no emotions except anger. The “I don’t care about anything” syndrome kicked in full force. Naturally, I was then diagnosed as being depressed. I was quite sure I wasn’t depressed, it was far deeper than that. My brain was no longer functioning in any manner approaching normal. I knew that deep down at my most fundamental level I was no longer the same person.

I did not get any support from friends or family and certainly none whatsoever from either of two churches I belonged to. People started acting like I had some kind of highly contagious plague (probably either the Rage Virus or the T-Virus), and while they weren’t actually running away from me, they sure weren’t drawing near. Neither was god even though he had promised to draw near to me if I drew near to him.

My faith wasn’t doing anything for me. It wasn’t long before I came to realize that the failure of my faith had caused the stroke in the first place. I really believed I could beat my high blood pressure just by believing. I hated the side effects I was getting from all the medicine I was taking. So I was highly motivated to believe in faith healing. I knew in my heart that faith in god could beat any medical problem. So I stopped taking the meds even though I had been warned that to do so could prove fatal. Oh yeah, I was a faith giant.

I was a fucking idiot.

Just a tiny little minute amount of blood got blocked from my brain and all the sudden I couldn’t control my body. My memories were wiped out. My personality, who I was – my identity, my “me” was eliminated. I embarked on a life of continual pain, filled with altered perceptions, without the comfort of god to fall back on. He was quite literally gone.

I couldn’t find him anywhere. His word which had been alive and vibrant to me was dead and lifeless. There was no hope or encouragement in it. Verses and phrases used to jump off the page but now sat there meaningless and uninspiring. I became aware that I wasn’t even praying anymore. I don’t recall making any conscious decision to stop. I gradually became aware that I didn’t want or need any help in the form of faith. Faith had utterly failed to keep me safe.

Instead I started reasoning things out. I started researching various aspects of the stroke online. I found scientific explanations for all the bizarre things that had happened to me. I started communicating with other survivors and I started seeing disturbing similarities in our experiences. I started seeing inexplicable things that had happened to my mother-in-law were happening to me. I came to the conclusion that the best thing I could do was to keep my mind active.

The spectacular failure of my faith led me to research church history which in turn led me to question church doctrines. That led to further bible study. When you study the bible with the faith blinders off you become aware how poorly written it actually is. There is no consistent eloquence in its words. There are literally hundreds of pages of the poorest written drivel you will ever read. There are contradictions of contradictions, errors, and flat out lies. The god depicted in the old testament is a monster, the behavior of his saints is atrocious. But that shouldn’t be surprising because they act just like him.

Or is it he acts just like the barbarians they are? I get confused.

Jesus is no better. He is exactly the same yesterday, today, and forever. That being the case, he must be just as much of a barbarian as his father. He said all of god’s promises were yes and amen in him, he said faith could move mountains, he said he would never fail nor forsake you, he said he was coming back in his follower’s lifetimes. He lied.

Then he said he would send you to hell for all of eternity for not believing him.

All this studying finally convinced me there is no god. Everything I believed was clearly contradicted by the very same book I used as a foundation. Faith requires you to make excuses when the words of that book fail to be true. Faith means choosing ignorance over reality, hopeful imagination over solid evidence.

But all I have to do is lie and praise god for bringing me through the crisis. I could inspire millions of Christians if I would just do that.

I would much rather tell the truth that religion and faith did absolutely nothing for me. Only by using my mind and its marvelous ability to reason was I able to survive. Millions of atheists would probably be inspired by that.

Posted in interpretation, emotion, religion, stroke | Print | 1 Comment »

13. September 2008 by Frank.

Posted in wild guesses, interpretation, communication, listen, hearing, religion, emotion, education, Uncategorized | Print | 3 Comments »

5. September 2008 by Frank.

My wife is very disappointed in her church because they decided to make the youth pastor the new senior pastor. He’s under 30 and his style is definitely more appealing to teenagers. Despite this, she is more determined than ever to be fully involved with their AWANA club and choir. And even after 10 years she still doesn’t understand why I want nothing to do with it.

You can’t just give up on god and lose your faith.

The thing of it is she isn’t so gung ho adamant because she’s a bible scholar, it’s all emotion for her. Emotion and training. She has never read the bible, not even the new testament, just bits and pieces she was told to read. Her mother constantly harped on her family to go to church and now she feels it’s her duty to carry on that tradition. She believes all the “right” doctrines that her church promotes but has no idea what they’re based on or what makes them “right” in the first place.

I’m not putting her down. I’m just using her as an example. The vast majority of people in that church have only a rudimentary knowledge of the bible. This was true of people who had been believers for over 50 years as well as those just starting out. I used to question the Sunday school adults why they held certain doctrines, very few of them knew. This is the average American churchgoer. Assured that their’s is the only way but lacking a love for the foundation of that way.

I was the exact opposite. I could have cared less about all the social programs and activities. I hardly ever studied what the pastor said to study. I studied the bible cover to cover relentlessly. It was of the utmost importance. My viewpoint was that without a solid foundation you could be swayed by anything.

Which is where the strangeness comes in. You can’t sway my wife or her church at all. They won’t budge. And they won’t be persuaded.

I came from a charismatic church that preached love for the word of god. It was a church full of people who were sure they were “mature” believers because they studied the bible thoroughly and because they were filled with the spirit of god. They had all the spiritual gifts functioning to build up the body. They had a much better base than those old dead mainline denominations.

Except that they fell apart and imploded because of false doctrines.

All their bible study and spirituality didn’t do a thing to keep them from destroying their church. I saw the same thing at Sumrall’s church. He had his own bible college, the church bookstore made a huge profit selling his college syllabi. Studying the word was a huge part of the church activities. And yet there were totally unqualified guest speakers, false teachers, and in some cases, complete idiots allowed to preach there. I never saw the slightest bit of discernment that these people had no business preaching.

Sumrall never missed an opportunity to condemn the old mainline “dead” denominations and the Baptists never missed an opportunity to condemn word of faith and pentecostal denominations. While they all claim to be bible based and preach love for the word of god, their foundations are radically different. The Baptists were far more cohesive because of their social structure. These big faith churches don’t have that.

Unlike Sumrall’s church where people were definitely following the man, the Baptist church is on their 7^th or 8^th pastor with almost no variation in how worship is conducted or the types of sermons presented. The people are there for each other not for the man of god and the word he brings to them.

I never fit into that. Even though I was teaching constantly and filling in for various pastors I never really belonged. I was regarded as an outsider from the very first time my wife took me there. The reason was quite simple but it eluded me for a long time. I wasn’t a Baptist. I was one of those dreaded Pentecostals and I didn’t have the decency to keep it secret. Eventually I took a stand for that and got myself thrown out of the church. I was informed that I would be happier somewhere else and that I didn’t belong among that congregation. And, of course, I could never be allowed to speak there again.

So I was not a typical Christian. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to the average pew warmer. My foundation was the bible. The social part was secondary or nonexistent (at least at Sumrall’s church). It was also missing at other churches I attended and tried to be a part of. The first church I started at that destroyed itself tried to force a social order on itself. It failed miserably. Social foundations happen on their own.

Perhaps that explains why being away from church never bothered me any.

It also explains why the bible is what finally convinced me god doesn’t exist. It was my foundation as a believer and, ironically, it’s my foundation as an unbeliever.

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30. August 2008 by Frank.

Thou shalt not have any fun whatsoever.

It leads to impure thoughts, evil desires, corrupt thinking, wanton abandon, a lifetime of sin, the neglect of god, and essentially more sin than Jesus can possibly forgive even if he has eternity.

That’s a lot of sin. SIN I say!

I actually had the joy of reading excerpts from one of Ellen G. White’s books (which one? I’m not sure – the pages were copied without any titles) last night. It was mainly talking about raising children and controlling their behavior by keeping their minds focused on god all the time. While admitting that everyone needs rest and relaxation, the activities involved in that must be godly. None of this playing card games, checkers, chess, dancing, and, god forbid, bowling. And no going to the theatre! I’m sure TV and movies would have been included on the list if such things had been around back then.

Just to be perfectly clear, what I’m saying is reeking with bitter sarcasm.

A couple of weeks ago I offered to take my Seventh Day Adventist friend to see THE DARK KNIGHT even though I knew he’d turn me down (which he did). Well, he decided that he should explain to me why he turned me down. He chose to do that by showing me excerpts from Ellen G. White. It was everything I could do not to laugh my head off. Even when I was totally gungho I wasn’t this far gone.

But I do have to admit that many times I found myself doing things that my leaders said I had to do to be holy. I wasn’t doing them because I believed they were required by god, I was doing them because I was told to. Why in the world someone would obey the rantings of a constipated, old preacher who thought that any form of pleasure was dirty and sinful is beyond me. But I have seen this before. Sumrall once preached against the evils of playing cards. Because some people play cards for money, somehow that evil gets infused in all playing cards, and thusly corrupts anyone who uses them. I often wondered if that was the case how come he didn’t condemn kitchen knives? After all, some people use kitchen knives to kill other people. By his reasoning the evil of that should become part of all kitchen knives and thus anyone who uses a knife will be tempted to kill someone else.

Not to mention the far more obvious point of preaching for money.

I do enjoy discussing religion but I can’t take this anymore. My SDA friend is my best friend but the more I find out about how he wants to live his life, the more alienated I become. I will give him credit in that he admits believing such things is a personal matter and can’t and shouldn’t be forced on anyone else. But the simple fact that he believes this nonsense is staggering to me.

If it feels good, don’t do it.

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21. August 2008 by Frank.

First off, let me apologize for the lack of posts lately. Between vacation, stress at work and home, and correspondence with a preacher who caused me to question myself caused me to get way offtrack with the purpose of this blog.

I’ve made no secret that I intended to become a preacher myself and I was reminded of all of that by corresponding with this fellow. I found those reminders oddly appealing. Mainly because with them I had a purpose.

I also had a purpose when I was a stroke activist. I felt I accomplished something significant when I collected stroke survivor stories and posted them on my previous website. I was trying to help people by providing information that I felt was completely lacking. I couldn’t afford to keep the site online but the stories are still at http://groups.msn.com/smilinstrokesurvivorssociety

in their entirety. I reached a point where I felt I was not making any progress so I stepped away.

But am I now an atheist activist? No, not really. I’m not trying to convert anyone. I’m not terribly political. And I’m not much for causes. I keep my opinions and beliefs to myself at home because I’m tired of my wife calling down the wrath of god on me. I have very few friends and all of them are Christians. The only one I knew who admitted to being atheist was also gay but he moved to Saginaw. Although I’m sure there are others of the atheist persuasion around here, I don’t know where to find them. They don’t advertise.

I mentioned before that the Christian writers accused me of being a phony atheist. There’s no way I could stop believing in their wonderful god so I must just be mad at him because of all the bad things that happened to me. But they failed to understand that I’m not mad at anybody or mad about anything, including the stroke. What I am is baffled that I devoted 20 years of my life to something so devoid of reason as Christianity. What convinced me of that is the bible itself. The stroke shut off my faith, killed my emotions, made me incapable of caring about anything, and destroyed what little health I had left. Studying the bible to find answers to all of that afterwards was what convinced me there was no god.

I started with the assumption that something was wrong with my understanding of god. That somehow what I had been taught and was teaching myself was not the correct interpretation. So I looked for alternatives and found them. None of them were satisfying either. So then I began to consider what non-believers had to say. I particularly began reading deconversion stories. These folks frequently pointed out things in the bible that had led them to conclude it was wrong. In fact, over a period of time, I came to realize that many of these people who had become atheist knew far more about the bible than most people in church. Even though they were atheists, they were still far more educated in biblical history and theology than the average Christian.

If the bible actually is the word of god then there’s something seriously wrong with that dichotomy.

Take this example for instance:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10 vs 37 (KJV))

and the corresponding verse in Luke:

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14 vs 26 (KJV))

Read the whole chapters to keep it in context (that’s a favorite Christian meme if ever there was one.) Now then, tell me, how many people have you ever actually seen live by this? Especially verse 33, “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” Come on. Go in any church of your choosing and find a true believer who actually lives this. I’m sure you’ll find plenty who give lip service to it but find someone that really truly puts Jesus in absolutely first place in his life.

Sure you can probably find someone willing to give up his/her family but try finding someone who will give up all their stuff!

You hear all the time how Jesus/god has to be first in your life. Even at my most gung ho, I’m going to be a preacher stage, I couldn’t honestly claim this was true. I would say it was. I would claim it was. But deep down I knew it wasn’t. My family is first, more important to me than life itself. But the bible gives you a convenient out for this little dilemma, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 John 4 vs 20 (KJV))

You see the contradiction there? You can’t claim to love god (who’s invisible) if you hate your brother (who isn’t). Unfortunately, you can’t really claim to be a disciple of Jesus unless you hate your family and your own life. But you can’t love Jesus if you hate your brother. So that must not be what he meant and it was written so confusingly to keep Satan from finding out what his plan was. So because none of that makes any sense you’re off the hook.

Seriously. I used to think like this. Not one but several churches I was part of over the years thought like this. Your love for god has to be so strong that your love for your family and your own life seems like hate. Catch the rationalization there? But if you don’t love people you can see, how can you love god? So you have to have it both ways.

This kind of religious “reasoning” goes on all the time because the bible contradicts itself and is full of errors. As long as you believe that it is the inspired word of god and is inerrant and infallible you have to deny any of it contradicts itself. You cannot admit that A and its exact opposite B are not both true if the bible says they are.

So that is my purpose now; to point these things out and comment on them. I’m not out to convert anyone. I’m just trying to get you to think. Well, maybe, I’m trying to annoy you a bit. Maybe I’m just cleaning out my system by writing it all down. Maybe I just want 20 years of my life back.

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