23. November 2008 by Frank.

I just made a serious mistake in judgment; I went to the park.

We had a blizzard that dumped over a foot of snow on us yesterday. It was preceded last Monday by an ice storm. The entrance to the park is at the bottom of a steep hill. Which naturally meant the hill was covered with ice. I knew I had made a mistake as I passed a guy in a van on the wrong side of the road who had obviously slid over there while trying to go up the hill. To say that the roads in the park were a mess would be a gross understatement. But I have this thing about nature and beauty.

I also have a thing about not getting stuck if at all possible. So I did not stop or slow down anywhere in the park. By the time I got back to the entrance hill the guy had managed to get unstuck and had backed down the road. So I kept on going slowly up the hill carefully trying not to change speed. I was cursing myself for a fool all the way out but I made it without mishap.

When I related my story to my wife a few minutes later, I started to tell her what I said to myself. She interrupted and said/asked, “Lord, help me make it?”

“No,” I replied, I said, “You dummy! Don’t ever do anything this stupid again!”

Praying never occurs to me anymore. I have 35 years of Winter driving skills and my car has a brand new set of tires due to the aforementioned ice storm (my wife slid across a street and demolished the right front wheel on a curb – snapped the axle in half) and those reasons are why I drove out safely.

Back in the day I would’ve been praying/begging and then given god the praise even though it still would have been my driving ability to got me out of a bad situation.

I also would have had to contend with the nagging problem of why didn’t god warn me not to go in there in the first place.

My beliefs got me into conundrums like that frequently. The usual resolution was to determine I obviously wasn’t listening to his guidance. It never occurred to me to think there was no guidance being given. Whenever I prayed about what to teach or speak about in church I always got an answer. I was sure god was talking to me plain as day. But any other request seemed to fall on deaf ears. Financial guidance, emotional problems, health, all that sort of question never got answered in a way I could perceive.

It was not until later that I finally realized why I always got an answer about what to teach and speak about. It was really quite simple and completely non-supernatural. I was reading and studying constantly. I loved my bible and books about it. My head was quite literally filled with scripture. I could put together a talk with almost no effort since I was thinking about that sort of thing all the time. So it seemed as if god answered me without hesitation if I asked about his word.

Everything else, however, came under the heading of “Lean not on your own understanding.”

Christianity does not want its people to think for themselves. I could never see that. It was always a matter of god wanting me to depend on him more and more. When I first started letting myself read things to that effect I reacted very defensively, denying that such a concept was possible let alone accurate. But all you have to do is look at that one verse to understand the truth. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

I’m the type of person who follows these sorts of things all the way out to their logical (or illogical) conclusions. It’s not hard to find hundreds of verses which agree with and confirm this anti-intellectual bias in the bible. You can dig yourself a very deep hole with these words telling you not to think for yourself. All the while you’re doing it you’re telling yourself that you are seeking and acquiring the “true” wisdom that comes from god alone.

Not to bring up politics again but surely you cannot have missed all the religious ignorance on display during this election season, especially if you frequent atheist blogs. There were appalling videos all over the net. The vapid stupidity and ignorance was awe inspiring in a perverse sort of way. And atheist bloggers jumped all over every example of it. So this is a very real, very modern up to date problem. That these people were proud of their ignorance only serves to prove the point even further.

I couldn’t see it and even denied it while I was involved in it but the evidence is all over the place.

Religion deliberately breeds ignorance.

Since I joined the rational world praying no longer is part of my thinking. Giving god glory never crosses my mind. If I make a stupid decision, I make it on my own. And if I get out of it, I do that on my own as well. This is so much simpler and so much less stressful than my former religious behavior.

You go down an icy road there’s no one but yourself to get you back up it.

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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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2. November 2008 by Frank.

Several bloggers I read all the time have burned out. Another one bit the dust last night. He’s tired of the same old arguments and the same old responses.

And the sense of not accomplishing a damn thing.

I’ve been blogging a very long time despite the fact this blog isn’t very old. I never managed to get the traffic and the number of commentators that most of my favorites enjoy. I’ve moved through several different sites with different blogging software and have used many different names and titles. I started in 1998 immediately after the stroke. My first move was stroke awareness and activism, subjects which I had some very marginal success with. At the same time I was writing quite a bit of religion criticism. That didn’t exactly work very well with the stroke related material; it seems a lot of people involved with strokes were looking for religious comfort.

So I couldn’t find an audience.

By the time atheist blogs started appearing, I had pretty much given up trying to find an outlet for my anti-religious ramblings. I kept a general purpose journal going in which I ranted about whatever was on my mind at any given time only occasionally bringing up religion because it seemed to offend what few readers I had. The trouble with that journal, however, is that I don’t exactly lead a very exciting life and I have a hard time convincing myself that anyone finds my observations all that interesting. I’ve got about 30 to 40 regular readers and that’s not too shabby but I always dreamed of more.

During the course of all of this I also became a big fan and practitioner of digital photography. Before the stroke, I was a painter of fantasy style landscapes. The damage to my right arm and hand, however, put an end to that. That was very frustrating at first but then a camera clearance sale led me into a love affair with digital cameras and photo editing software. I quickly decided I wanted to make a living with a camera. So I eventually purchased a Nikon D70 on October 31, 2004. (Hard to believe I’ve had it for four years now. I just went out hiking yesterday and took some 1200 pictures of all the lovely but really late fall foliage.) That camera was supposed to be my first step toward making a photography business.

I mention that because that was the beginning of an elaborate site I had that combined all my interests, including writing science fiction. I was up to nearly 70 pages of content before a series of financial disasters forced me to give it up, I couldn’t afford the cost of keeping it online. This spectacular fall from grace pretty much wiped out my entire online presence except for that little online journal I mentioned previously.

Since then I have been trying to find my way back.

I tried to revive my previous anti-religion blog but that failed miserably, it attracted no interest whatsoever. I just recently deleted it permanently. I tried setting up a photoblog a few months back. That was even more of a spectacular failure. Thanks to Google Analytics I was able to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was the only one who ever looked at any of the photos on the site. Someone in Michigan running the Safari browser on Windows XP was 99.9% of the total traffic on the site. That was me and only me. So the photoblog is gone as well.

This blog is supposed to be the beginning of my return with a huge site covering all my interests once again. The stats here are quite good, far better than anything I have ever done before and very encouraging. But the crash and burn going on in the atheosphere concerns me.

What do atheistic readers want? Do you want the same old arguments over and over? Do you want personal stories about leaving religion behind? About trying to adapt to a new worldview? About problems encountered in trying to live in religious America? Politics? Seriously, what do we have in common as a group? Are we even a group?

My passion for religion and stroke activism has cooled over the years. At first, I was very seriously and very intently confronting those issues in my own life. But after ten years, I know what I believe and what happened to me. There’s no more internal conflict going on, the matter is settled. I tend to look back at that and compare it to things that are happening now. The difference astounds me but I frequently feel like all I’m doing is covering ground that someone else has covered much better previously.

I understand these bloggers feeling burned out.

So what I’m asking is what will it take to revive them? What do all of us need to do to keep it interesting and exciting? What new directions can we go in? Do we really need more college boy reasoning and debate or do we need real people dealing with real world scenarios? Or do we just need some good, old fashioned ranting?

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14. October 2008 by Frank.

I’ve been burned out lately. Hell, that’s not quite accurate; I’ve been burned out for several weeks. Stuck in a rapidly going nowhere job I’ve been getting screwed over and taken advantage of to an alarming degree. It’s physically and mentally exhausting me. And my pathetic excuse for health isn’t helping any.

So what do I do to make things better?

In the past, I would have prayed. And prayed. And prayed some more. I would not have gotten an answer but I would have kept on praying anyway. I would have had other people praying for me. I would have had spirit-filled super-preachers praying and laying hands on me. I would never have gotten an answer to any of it but I would have sworn to you wholeheartedly that prayer works. I would have been totally sincere.

But I look back at that now and all I think is, “What an asshole!”

I knew it didn’t work. I knew I wasn’t getting any answers but I would never admit that. You admit that, you’ve lost your faith. Without faith god can’t do anything for you. It’s amazing how readily eager Christians are to make excuses for god’s lack of performance. Christians are supposed to be able to speak to mountains and have them move with only as much faith as a mustard seed. Christians are supposed to be able to do greater things than Jesus did. He wasn’t subject to the laws of physics, why are we?

My particular branch of Christianism usually prefered the you don’t have enough faith excuse. God’s failure to deliver was always your fault. Because you had a doubt. Because you said something wrong. Because you indulged in some sin. Because you didn’t pray hard enough. You didn’t offer sufficient praise. You didn’t put your full tithe in the collection plate. Whatever it was, you somehow tied god’s hands so he couldn’t get the answer to you.

On the other hand, I also spent time amongst the Baptists. Their favorites were, “It’s not god’s time,” “God said, NO!,” or the ever popular, “God only promised to supply our needs not our wants.” I never much cared for any of those because they directly contradicted scripture.

It’s only in looking back at it years later that I can see how absurd my beliefs really were. So many crises came and went without an answer from god. But I kept praising him anyway. He was just teaching me to trust and depend on him. Even when I got sued for not paying my bills after a series of financial disasters wiped us out, why, I was just leaning on my own understanding instead of seeking the will of god.

God never helped me out of any of these messes but I kept on praying.

Obviously I survived. I managed to solve one thing after another because I had to. I managed to get the money from one earthly source or another. I always gave god the credit, however. Even though he had nothing to do with it. It always struck me as odd how god was supplying my needs by my own hard work. That’s sort of what happens even if you don’t ask for his help.

Even now, my wife and my former SDA friend give god the credit for the SSI check my wife gets every month. Funny, it seems to me the $4000 lawyer was the one who won her case for us. And the money comes from the good ol’ US of A government which, by it’s Constitution, has nothing to do with god.

I haven’t prayed for over ten years now. Disasters far worse than anything before have come and gone. And I have survived them all. The only thing that’s different is that I didn’t waste my time and energy praying to a god who was never going to answer, I just put my mind to work and found a solution.

The scary thing about that is simply that that is precisely what I was doing all along but I wasn’t taking any credit for my own actions good or bad. It was all the will of god. Exactly the same results whether or not you call on god.

The reson is simple: there is no god.

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21. September 2008 by Frank.

Why is it that we are supposed to respect the beliefs of the religious no matter how ridiculous they are and they in turn have absolutely no respect for our beliefs or lack thereof?

My best friend is a devout Seventh Day Adventist. I have been going over to his house on Friday nights and arguing religion with him for quite some time. It was fun but I got tired of it. He wasn’t trying to convert me very hard but he was attempting to draw me in slowly. SDA doctrine is very rigid and dogmatic and essentially excludes all the other branches of Christianity for not abiding by those doctrines. They are the exclusive club among exclusive clubs. Their intense study of the bible appeals to my former sensibilities, however, so I kept going along with him because I really did enjoy examining those doctrines up close and personal. But a few weeks ago when he brought out the Ellen G. White reasons we can’t have fun stuff, my interest flew out the window.

So I told him so.

He was fine with that. No reason to ruin a friendship.

BUT…………..

We cannot meet on Friday nights any longer because that is Sabbath preparation time. Despite our disagreements we were studying the bible and talking about the things of god so we were good for Friday behavior. But not now. Now any other night is acceptable. Friday is god’s night.

And now the absurdity of it all has hit me square in the face.

I have been bending over backwards to accommodate his religious beliefs in this relationship and he hasn’t given one tiny bit in return. When we have gone out to dinner it always has to be a place of his choosing because it has to be vegetarian. I have had dinner at his house many times but he has never come to my house because we don’t do vegetarian dishes. I do all sorts of things on Saturdays but the only thing he’s willing to do is go to church. No matter what I say he always finds a way to add god to it so even if I specifically deny god had anything to do with it, he turns it around so god gets praised anyway.

And I just keep going along with it.

Obviously, I am a glutton for punishment. No, what it really is is desperation. He was the last real friend I had left. I have friends at work but they are only friends while we’re there, never outside the store. There’s no real relationship other than work. This guy was the last person that actually wanted to spend any time with me. So I kept going along even though his religion was getting on my nerves more and more and more.

Even so, some things aren’t worth saving when they become so one sided you can’t tolerate them anymore. When you tell me that common ordinary things I do all the time are an abomination to your personal beliefs but you don’t expect anyone else to live by your beliefs, you’re still managing to condemn my behavior while still pretending you’re being nice by tolerating me.

Unfortunately, when I let you do that to me constantly, I’m pretending, too.

So it’s all over but the death rattle.

And that’s a shame. Religion divides people. Any religion. You’re either one of us or one of them. If you’re one of them, we can tolerate you if you behave a certain way and give us a certain amount of respect and lip service. If you don’t, well, who needs you?

I don’t have any friends. I’m going to have to change my name to Charlie Brown. But I think that’s copyrighted.

Rats!

Posted in communication, wild guesses, religion | Print | 7 Comments »

13. September 2008 by Frank.

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

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.

Posted in communication, interpretation, wild guesses, emotion, religion | Print | 1 Comment »

6. August 2008 by Frank.

When no one believes what you say you may find yourself in a rather odd situation. Do you get mad and change your presentation? Or do you continue in the same manner? When what little feedback you do get indicates that your message is not being understood does that mean your writing skills aren’t quite what you think they are?

Or does it just mean your audience wears blinders because they don’t understand how you could possibly leave their god and reject their teachings?

I think that’s it when it comes to religious folks. They can’t conceive of deliberately walking away from Christianity so any statement that you have done just that is beyond their comprehension. You’re not really an atheist, you’re just mad at god and disappointed in men.

How can you be mad at someone who doesn’t exist?

No, I’m not mad at god. Disappointed in men is a whole other matter. I’ve been lied to repeatedly by “holy” men of god. I’ve been conned out of my time and money by one preacher after another. I’ve been taught that I have to respect them and obey them. I’ve been prohibited from questioning them. I’ve been told they speak the very words of god.

I’ve also been told that they are just men after all when they fail. Well, it turns out that’s all they ever were. Just men. Ordinary men who like to have some degree of power and control over others.

One of the rather more bizarre christian double standards is the one that says believers are the only Jesus the world can see. This supposedly sets a high standard for believers to achieve. However, if you do look up to a christian leader and he fails, then you are told that you shouldn’t have your eyes on men in the first place, they should be on Jesus. Do I really need to explain the flaw in that logic?

What set me off on this topic was some well intentioned email from a couple of religious guys I communicate with. One flat out declared that I am not an atheist or and agnostic, I’m just mad at god and disappointed in men. I don’t believe his intention was to call me a liar but that was the effect his words had on me. The other managed to put in the implied threat of get right with god, give him the glory, or continue to suffer the consequences. Again, I don’t think he intended to be threatening. But that’s how it came across.

I’ve run into this before. I can’t possibly be serious. I can’t possibly not believe. Therefore I must be lying to myself so if I would just soften my heart and repent, I could go back to the way things were and be useful to god again.

No, I can’t. The stroke changed me. It changed the way I think and feel. It changed the way my mind works on a very fundamental level. It knocked my “faith blinders” off. Before the stroke the Bible was alive and vibrant, a complete inspiration to me all the time. After the stroke, it was dead words on a page written by ignorant, primitive men. It is full of errors and contradictions. When I started realizing that those weren’t just things god hadn’t revealed to me yet, when I admitted the truth to myself, the bible became faith’s worse enemy. I didn’t become an atheist because of emotion. I didn’t walk away on a whim. I took a cold hard look at the foundation and found it full of holes and cracks, some of them quite glaring and obvious.

Just a few examples:

God supports, encourages, and gives instructions on how to own slaves.

God’s punishment for being a victim of rape – the woman must marry her rapist and never divorce him.

Work on the Sabbath, you die.

Dishonor your parents, you die.

Honor your mother and father to have long life (it’s a promise of god)

BUT hate your mother and father if you want to serve Jesus!

Thou shalt not kill (10 commandments)

UNLESS god orders it in which case you have to kill all the men, women, and children (even babies), and all their animals (UNLESS the women are young and are virgins – god says your men can use them).

There’s much, much more. But these are just a few of the things that convinced me there is no god. These are the commands of barbarians, not a loving, holy god.

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