5. March 2010 by Frank.

The guy who leads the song service is a pervert. He collects kiddie porn and exposes himself to a young boy helping him with chores. He’s not Catholic, he’s Independent Baptist. He faces eight years in prison and a lifetime on the sex offender list. He’s a local.

At a small (less than 100 member) church.

Everybody knows your name and all your business. Except somehow they managed to miss this moron entirely. Put him in charge of leading the worship service. Other church members are shocked, shocked I tell you. They had no idea, he seemed like such a nice guy. His voice was so beautiful as he praised god in song. How could this happen?

Your friendly neighborhood atheist isn’t shocked.

This kind of shit can happen anywhere. This church doesn’t believe in the gift of discernment of spirits. Why should they be able to see a pervert for what he is? Even churches that believe in spiritual discernment seem unable to discern anything. Claim you’re saved and you love the lord and we won’t question anything about your behavior until it’s way too late. Say the right words or have some musical gift or ability and you can lead the worship service every week. At least you can as long as no one catches you with your pants down.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of thing. At a different Baptist church, the worship leader for several years was a Freemason. He proudly wore the ring and everything. There were books in the church library that debunked and denounced Freemasons, quite clearly putting them in the cult/devil worship category. No one cared, not the pastor, the deacons (this guy was a deacon, too), or the congregation in general. Spiritual discernment? B’ah! Who needs it?

Christians are fond of saying they aren’t perfect, just forgiven. Forgiveness may be a nice thing to have but it doesn’t actually change anything. If you were a murderer before you were forgiven chances are you’re still a murderer. If you were addicted to porn you probably still are. The idea of forgiveness may give you strength to overcome it but since there isn’t actually anyone forgiving you, you’re pretty much on your own. Many christians seem to think forgiveness means they can act any way they damn well please.

You would think god wouldn’t want people like this getting into positions of leadership in his church.

You would think he would tip the pastor off. But like so many other things, god remains mute. He doesn’t intervene. He doesn’t prevent the bullshit from happening and he doesn’t keep the world from finding out. He let’s his church be exposed to ridicule. He lets his name and reputation be dragged through the muck of disgusting human perversions. It’s almost as if he doesn’t care.

Or as if he doesn’t exist.

I know I’m being rather cruel and snarky but I do feel for this guy’s family. He’s ruined their lives as well as his own. But where, may I ask, is his all powerful god? Where is his god who can not only forgive him but cure him of his predilection for sin? Where’s his god who can tame his unholy desires? Where is his god whom he worships and admonishes others to worship? Where’s his god to whom he sings?

My guess is nowhere to be found.

Couldn’t the great and powerful god at least protect the innocent little kid from this pervert?

I have it on good authority that this incident has upset the other church members. But only enough that it gives them something to gossip about this week. Life will go on. Some other great holy man (or woman) singer will rise up to take his place.

As for me, this just confirms what I’ve always known. If there is a god, he doesn’t give a shit.

The little church will go on and this unfortunate event will soon be forgotten. It should shake people’s faith to the core but it won’t. It should raise all kinds of questions but they will go unasked. Somehow this spiritual leader will be deemed “not actually a real christian” after all. If he publicly repents, he will be forgiven by the congregation and possibly even welcomed back. (Well, maybe not by the parents of the kid.) After all, he’s only human.

A very fucked up human.

Posted in wild guesses, humor, listen, hearing, emotion, religion | Print | 2 Comments »

24. February 2010 by Frank.

I was just looking at a site that claims it is all 64 bit software available to download.  While looking at their most popular and top downloads lists, I noticed a small red dot icon on virtually every listing on the first three or four pages.  Curious fellow that I am, I investigated the little red dot.

It turns out the icon means, “It is not 64 bit software.”

Rather hypocritical I must say.  It’s why I won’t dignify them with a link.  They obviously aren’t what they claim to be so there’s no way I would recommend downloading anything from them.  I wouldn’t try it myself and I certainly wouldn’t encourage you to, either.

I’m a nice guy.

So what does 64 bit software have to do with anything you come here to read about?  Absolutely nothing.  But this isn’t about software, it’s about hypocrisy, a subject which has demanded my attention lately.  I used to be quite a hypocrite myself back in my religious days and I need to confess my sins, so to speak.

It’s no great secret that religious, political, business, etc., leaders talk out of both sides of their mouths frequently, fluently, and without shame.  “I never said that,” or “I never did that,” is typically countered with, “Here’s a video of you saying or doing exactly that just the other day!”  Which quickly is re-countered by “That’s taken out of context and isn’t what I really meant or did, booyah!”

All these people are just trying to control what you think, what you believe, and what you do with your money or your vote. 

Religion is especially nefarious about it, basically trying to control your entire life.  Look at how much religion has moved into the political arena and consider what big business it has become.  If that isn’t trying to control all aspects of it’s followers lives, I don’t know what is.

God needs your money.  If I would have been successful at starting my own church I would have begun by claiming that god would provide all the money I needed to get such an endeavor off the ground.  Eventually, I would have to admit that god didn’t provide directly as I assumed he would.  I would then have needed to come up with some sort of teaching to convince my followers to give or give more than they were.  10%?  Not enough.  You weren’t really giving until you gave more than your tithe, it wasn’t counting toward your hundredfold return.  Oh, yeah, I have no doubt I would have been forced to go down that path by my own ambitions.

One of the very first things I saw after becoming a christian was the church trying to control a couple of young people’s sex lives.  The girl had been divorced (which is a big biblical no-no) so the pastor and deacons felt they needed to intervene in her relationship with the new guy.  They insisted god gave them authority to make sure no one got into a sinful relationship which would condemn the young lovers to hell for eternity.  Essentially they said she could be forgiven but that she should either go back to her former husband or remain celibate.

Naturally when I came on the scene this young woman (and her boyfriend) befriended me strictly as a friend.  She was truly trying to make me feel welcome in the group, there was no misunderstanding of her motives or desires.  Nevertheless, one of the deacon’s (they preferred to be called elders instead of deacons) wife felt it was her duty to warn me about getting involved with this young woman.  Forgiveness, my ass.

This church, which was just starting, was trying to get into a teaching called “headship” that was widely popular in the early 80’s.  What it was, was an organizational structure that put the pastor at the top with the elders underneath him and then group leaders underneath them with all the ordinary folks in total submission to those over them.  You didn’t just answer directly to god, you had to go through the men (yes, it was all men) who were in authority over you.  Your wives and daughters had to go through you.  It was the foundation of a cult but they vehemently denied that every time it surfaced.

Yes, I started out with the really ugly side of christianity.

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) I studied the daylights out of the bible they gave me and became convinced their interpretation was wrong.  It was supposedly based on Moses and Judges after coming out of Egypt.  It was obvious to me that a rigid leadership structure was necessary to control a few million people but not a 100 person church.  I was all set to leave when they tried to implement their plans.

Like most churches, this one had a constitution which they called a covenant.  It was supposedly ironclad and could not be easily broken.  The pastor and his motley crew had bound themselves by it but the ordinary folks had not, yet.  They were having closed meetings to lay the groundwork for the new format when the same deacon’s (I mean elder’s) wife who had warned me about the divorced woman stood up in the meeting and accused the pastor of being demon possessed.  It seems she wasn’t too happy about being forced into submission and being required to be responsible for the other women.  Quite the shocker.

The very next day we were informed that the pastor and the elders had released themselves from their ironclad covenant.  The elders all turned tail and ran, never to be seen again.  No apologies, no explanations, no anything.  Six months after being saved, my church destroyed itself instantly, right in front of my eyes.  Why I stayed with christianity after that is a book length story all by itself.

Were all these people hypocrites?

Yes, they were.

Love, forgiveness, submission, covenants.  Love as long as you submit or toe the line.  Forgiveness if you obey but conditional at best.  Submission to those in authority over you, who are more mature in the lord than you.  Covenants that can’t be broken but which it turned out could be easily ignored.  What did it all amount other than a desire to control other people’s lives down to the most minute detail?

I’ll admit not every church goes anywhere near as far overboard as this church did.  But I want to point out that these elements are all present in all churches; the emphasis may not be the same but the goal still is.  They want to control what you think and what you believe.  That gives them control over what you do with your money.  It gives them control over what you do with your body and your relationships.  It gives them influence over your politics.  It gives them some measure of control over your entire life.  Maybe not as blatantly but far more than you might realize.

You reject all this and you risk becoming a societal outcast.

Reject the god of the godly life the majority around you submits to and see what happens.  You will find yourself alone in the wilderness without love or compassion from the godly.  They will condemn you.  They will treat you like cancer; something to be removed at any cost.

I know this because I used to be one of them.  I knew how to manipulate, to apply guilt.  I knew how to change people’s minds.  I knew how to control.  When I woke up and realized all that, I was ashamed of myself.  I never wanted to control anybody and yet I did exactly that.  I was actually quite good at it.

I was a hypocrite.

I’m not anymore.

Getting free of religion was the best thing I ever did.  That’s why I write this blog.  I bowed down of my own free will and I stood back up of my own volition.  I’m not out to change your mind.  If you want religion that’s fine by me.  Live it to the fullest of your abilities.  But know this, it doesn’t work for me anymore.  I intend to declare that to the world and I refuse to shut up.

Being an atheist is a pain in the ass.

But I’m not ashamed of it.

WYSIWYG!

Posted in interpretation, humor, wild guesses, listen, emotion, hearing, religion | Print | 3 Comments »

13. February 2010 by Frank.

Can anyone explain to me why Jon Stewart’s Daily Show has more hard hitting news than almost every “real” news show?  He’s calling out political hypocrisy that’s dead on while also being funny.  Case in point; the RNC having a big meeting at a luxury hotel in Hawaii in which they’re decrying the Democrats for being out of touch with regular people.  The absolute cluelessness of various people even when blatantly confronted with the hypocrisy was hilarious but sad as well.  These people on either side have no idea how us ordinary people live.

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Rachel Maddow had a segment pointing out Republican hypocrites who all voted against the stimulus bill taking credit for the good that same stimulus did in their districts.  Quite a few of them had large “check” signs made up which they handed to the happy recipients.  Bobby Jindal even signed his as if the money came from him personally.  What a bunch of douchebags.

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You may think all the anti-Republican stuff I mention is bit one sided.  Well, boys and girls, I used to be a hard core Republican when I was a christian nutjob.  I bought into the whole Republicans are godly / liberals are of the devil bullshit the religious right promotes.  I got all my news opinions from Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh before him.  I was convinced anything liberal or Democratic was a plot by Satan.  Only conservatives could be real men of faith.

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O’Reilly is a blowhard but Limbaugh has become a caricature of himself.  He’s so far off the deep end it isn’t funny.  I lost interest in anything he had to say a long long time ago but I pay enough attention to know when he comes up with new stupidity, it’s important because millions of people believe every idiotic word that comes spewing out his mouth.  I think my absolute disgust of him hit a peak when he mocked Michael J Fox on his TV show.  What kind of complete asshole physically mocks someone with Parkinson’s because he doesn’t share his political viewpoint?

Lest you tend to think Limbaugh is irrelevant, look at how Republican leaders bow down to him.  The high and mighty Sarah Palin declared it was absolutely OK with her if Rush called people retards because it was satire.  When Rohm Emmanuel did it first, it was horribly offensive and he deserved to be removed from office.  Double standards or does Limbaugh have that much power over Republican leaders?  Frightening if you think about it too long.

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Speaking of Sarah, did you see her use her crib notes written on her hand after complaining that Obama uses a teleprompter?  Do you think that wasn’t a carefully prepared bit of political satire?  The words on her hand are so pathetic and she was so obvious when she looked that you know it was a set up.  What they were trying to prove escapes me but the simple fact that anyone takes this airhead seriously is extremely disturbing.  At least Obama can actually read the big words and demonstrate that he knows what they mean.  Sarah chokes on anything more than two syllables.

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I was going to make a bad joke using the word fellatio and/or various euphemisms thereof, but I decided not to.

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Speaking of hypocrisy on a more personal level, a super-christian employee at work was complaining how other employees on the other side of the store don’t follow policy.  We are required to walk customers to the product they want and hand it to them, none of this pointing to the aisle and leaving them to fend for themselves.  This is a valid criticism, several long time employees are notoriously inconsistent in performing this duty.  Within minutes of making this complaint, however, super-christian pointed a couple of customers to the back of the store and told them to let us know if they needed help.  This was rather pathetic.  Especially since the vitriol aimed at the other employees who are ruining our service scores was so fierce.

What happened to the biblical principle of not mumbling and complaining?  Was “SC” even aware of his own hypocrisy?  Or was he that totally oblivious?  Or did he know exactly what he was doing and just didn’t care?

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Last weekend at this time I was having a wonderful breakfast at a lovely Bed and Breakfast Inn just before an extremely relaxing full body massage.  This weekend I’m back in my rut.  I prefer last weekend but I can’t afford it again.  Nevertheless, my wife and I highly recommend Castle in the Country for an incredible weekend getaway.  If you’re in Michigan and want to enjoy your stay, you can’t go wrong with them.

Posted in communication, humor, wild guesses, hearing, emotion, religion | Print | 2 Comments »

25. January 2010 by Frank.

I went with my wife to church today because she was going to sing a special.  She did good.  The pastor, however, didn’t.

His main topic was prayer with faith being a secondary reinforcement.  Unfortunately for him his choice of verses quite clearly state that the prayer of faith WILL heal the sick.  This does not fit in with his beliefs or the doctrines of his church so he was forced to add conditions and alterations to the verse to make it mean something it did not say.  At the very least this is rather dishonest.

It’s also why it is no use trying to use logic and reason to refute these people; they are masters of making contrary statements fit their own preconceived notions by any means possible. 

Part of his elaboration was that in order for god to be god there had to be mystery involved.  Our minds are so petty that they can’t conceive the things of god.  His will is a mystery, his reasons for our suffering go beyond our ability to understand.  And since there is such mystery we can’t assume the prayer of faith will actually do what the bible says it will do.  Why?  Because we’re all sinners with tiny little pea brains.

Besides, it’s more about spiritual healing anyway.

What, may I ask, is spiritual healing?  Seriously, go in any church and try to get someone to actually explain what your spirit is in comprehensible terms.  I guarantee getting a straight answer is next to impossible.  Get them to tell you what’s the difference between spirit and soul.  If anyone has an answer it will be some variation of only the word of god can divide the two.  It is one of god’s mysteries.

Let’s just go with a basic definition; your spirit or soul is that part of your consciousness that makes you you.  Simple enough?

Now then let’s ask someone such as myself who has suffered brain damage what they think that means.  Any  small amount of research will show you that brain damage (injury, stroke, disease, drugs) can radically alter your personality.  It can change what makes you you in such a way that you can no longer even recognize yourself.  It can baffle other people so much that they will literally withdraw from you because they can’t comprehend how different you are.

If simple physical damage can change who you are and how you think how can there be some immaterial spirit being who is the real you?  How could I go from a fired up christian fanatic to a complete unbeliever without even trying?  I have a clearly defined dividing line between who I was before the stroke to who I am after.  There’s no grey area.  Faith was everything before and it’s nothing now.

Not that I just accepted that.  No, I studied relentlessly to find an explanation.  I studied different doctrines, church history, different philosophies; works I never would have looked at before.  I looked to science and medicine and found out about brain damage and what it could do.  I found actual, real, physical, natural explanations for what I was convinced was a spiritual problem.  And I learned to cope with it.

I found the truth and the truth set me free.

The truth wasn’t the bible.  It was cold, hard facts.

What I want to point out to people is simply this; if your faith and beliefs require you to add words or alter their meanings from your own sacred texts, then, obviously, your texts aren’t quite so sacred as you claim.  You know the verse doesn’t work but you can’t admit that.  So you throw in some mystery.  You add some variable that allows you to fail so that you can claim god’s word didn’t fail.

If the bible was really the word of a real god it wouldn’t need such dishonest help.

Would it?

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

17. January 2010 by Frank.

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve seen or heard or read about Haiti this past week.  A monumental tragedy brought on by natural forces.  More than likely you’ve heard that paragon of virtue and christian compassion, Pat Robertson, blame the disaster not on nature but on a pact with the devil made back in the seventeen hundreds.  Which he assures us is a true story and even quotes the devil to prove it.  How anyone can take this douche bag seriously is beyond me.

But his lack of compassion should hardly be surprising; his god has shown no compassion whatsoever.  You see human beings giving their money, time, and physical efforts regardless of nationality or religion.  You see countries pouring out all sorts of humanitarian aid.  You even see some churches helping.  What you don’t see is any indication of is a merciful god doing anything to protect or help hundreds of thousands of people who lives have been destroyed.  You sure don’t see him helping to get all that aid to the people who actually need it.

That really isn’t the topic of this post, however.

A person I know is on a 3 state trip due to a family matter.  This person has quite a lot of followers on FaceBook.  He asked them to be praying for “traveling mercies” when he left.  Traveling mercies are sort of a pet peeve of mine.  Considering the appalling lack of godly mercy for the people of Haiti, I find the mere asking for such mercies rather appalling in itself.  The family of an impoverished widow is wiped out by a relentless force of nature and there is no mercy for her.  But the wonderful, loving, christian god will keep his needy followers safe on the freeway or help find their car keys when they’re in a hurry?  What is wrong with this picture?

This person isn’t unique.  I used to be the same way.  No matter what was going on in the world (and there’s always something horrifying going on) I thought my intimate little god was right there with me in the most mundane things of daily life.  It never occurred to me to question how he could help with my stomachache but ignore the guy down the street bleeding to death from a knife wound.  Selective mercy; what a concept.

Except, of course, that is what the bible says plain as day.  “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on who I will have compassion.” That’s Romans 9:15 but read the whole thing.  That’s where god declares some are made for ignoble purposes and he puts up with them in order to display how great he is.  Like he did with Pharaoh and Moses.  Other verses claim he has mercy for all but it doesn’t take much to prove that isn’t true.

Everyone turns a blind eye to the suffering of others at some point in their life or another; you literally couldn’t cope with all the suffering in the world if you didn’t.  But god is supposed to be bigger than all of us, why is it he can’t seem to handle all of it either?  What bugs me is how his followers can so easily ignore reality as well.  These people are suffering horrors I can’t even imagine but please lord help me drive my car safely.  Except that the part about these people are suffering horrors I can’t even imagine does not even enter the equation.  It’s just I need travelling mercies.

No, I’m no great humanitarian myself.  There’s nothing I can do.  In the old days I would offer up a prayer or two or give some pitiful amount to a religious charity and claim I did my share.  I can still give some pitiful amount but there’s nothing to pray to anymore.  The results are the same.

The only help the people are going to get is going to come from other people.

Feel free to keep begging your pathetic little god to watch over you.  I am ashamed of myself for how much of that I did in my life.  These things I rant about seeing christians doing are all things I used to indulge in myself.

It’s disgusting.

Posted in communication, wild guesses, hearing, emotion, religion | Print | 9 Comments »

15. December 2009 by Frank.

Pain hurts.

Toothache pain hurts more than some other pains.

Nerves running through your sinus cavities and directly into your brain from your teeth hurt more than other nerves.

In other words, ouch!

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Christmas music has rotted my brain already after only a couple of weeks.  One two hour shopping trip with my wife has driven me to the edge of Bah Humbug permanently.  I know that I should get out of retail if I can’t stand all the crap that goes with retail this time of year but I am stuck for the time being.  Why anyone thinks Christmas is a christian holiday is beyond me.

Christmas is an artificial marketing phenomenon designed to move as much unnecessary product as possible while liberating vast amounts of money no one can afford to actually spend.  It is a day of greed without equal.  Churches can whine about commercialism all they want but the truth is that the holiday has been usurped from them just like they usurped it from the pagans.

I have some old Charlie Brown paperbacks from back in the day.  In one of them I was looking at there was a routine with Charlie Brown upset about trying to buy a Halloween mask.  He was upset because they didn’t have any.  They didn’t have any because they were already putting up Christmas decorations.  This book was dated 1959/1960.

Think about that.  The same thing people whine about now was common fifty years ago! 

The Christmas season has been starting right after Halloween for at least the last fifty years and yet it is rehashed like it is a new phenomenon every one of those years.  It is probably a safe bet to assume it goes back even further.  Talk about keeping your traditions alive.

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I have encountered a few people who use the phrase, “Merry Christmas,” as if it were some kind of attack.  I think these folks buy into the whole fake “War! On! Christmas!” bullshit that Fox News likes to promote.  They get mad at me because I don’t offer any holiday greeting at all.  I personally don’t care and my store doesn’t require it, we’re supposed to thank people for their business and be friendly but that’s it.  I’m friendly enough but I don’t feel any need to give any kind of holiday greeting just like I don’t feel the need to say bless you when someone sneezes.  You do know the superstitious nonsense that’s based on, don’t you?  I just don’t see the need.  (Although I will return a holiday greeting to people just being nice about it.)

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It hasn’t been much of a season for big blockbuster movies.  2012 was ok but I have no desire to see it again.  I refuse to bother with teenage vampire romances even though I really like vampire movies.  I have high hopes for AVATAR because James Cameron does have an impressive history of great sci-fi.  SHERLOCK HOLMES has Robert Downey Jr. so that’s two major points in it’s favor but it also has Guy Ritchie directing which is a potential downer.  We shall see.

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Right wing religion in the news has been on the lame side recently.  Getting Rick Warren to speak out against anti-gay laws in Uganda is hardly of interest.  Why would anyone believe anything the lying bastard says?  And Uganda is hardly a bastion of human rights to begin with.  If you want to see where prejudice lives just look at organized religion.  Really how is this news?

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There haven’t been any really good church signs to mock lately so I’ll have to use a lame one.  “A man wrapped up in himself makes a small package.”  Sort of Christmassy.  All of you secularists are self centered, small minded people.  If you focus on Jesus, you’ll be a big package.  Less of me and more of thee. 

Except that doesn’t really work.  If it did why would the church feel the constant need to teach its people to be humble?  Why would there be so much focus on what is called brokenness?  Pride is a bad thing, it has to be beaten out of you.  The only ego to be fed is the big guy.

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It’s no secret I don’t get much in the way of comments here despite having pretty good traffic.  Lately, I’ve noticed that if I comment on someone else’s blog the thread immediately dies or my comment is completely ignored amongst all the others.  I have several examples of both.  Apparently I am death to conversation.  Even after much introspection and wringing of hands, I still don’t know why.

It’s really strange because I’m such a nice guy.

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The baler was full at work yesterday so I had to make a bale.  All 4 wires broke when the bale hit the pallet.  There’s no way on earth to tip that back into the machine and even if there was you could never get the door to close again.  So I had to move it all by hand.  It was 30 degrees back there so I had on my sweater but I was sweating profusely.  And the Christmas music was blaring on its 4th or 5th go around.  So I spent 4 hours in frozen hell cleaning up the disaster.  You better believe I’m in the xmas spirit.  Ho Ho Ho, indeed.

Posted in wild guesses, humor, signs, hearing, religion, emotion, Uncategorized | Print | 1 Comment »

23. November 2009 by Frank.

I’m getting tired of being told no real atheist is 100% certain there is no god.  I’m sick of hearing the words “trope” and “meme” as if they magically expressed some deep truth.  I’m quite exhausted by all the logical arguments.

We’re not all college age debate squad members.

And I know for a fact that the average church goer does not seek out unbelievers to use logic on them.  Nor are they likely to understand logical arguments if they do encounter one.  As much a deal is made about witnessing and saving the lost, the vast majority would rather just let the pastor do it.  I was in church, in ministry, for 20 years; I know whereof I speak.

So why are so many atheist blogs so big on trying to debate and prove wrong theologians and apologists?  Seriously, where does one go to find the local theologian, the wise holy man who knows all the arguments for and against?  There aren’t any mountaintops here in Michigan to make a pilgrimage to.

If it makes perfect sense for people to reject every god except one, then how is it that when one rejects that final god he still isn’t allowed to be 100% certain there are no gods?  What?  Have we got an additional supply of gods we don’t know about?  Am I being facetious?

Definitely.  I get tired of being told what I can and cannot think.

Practically everyone I know is some form of christian.  I do not debate any of them, I have no desire to do so.  I could show them so much proof their beliefs are wrong from their own holy bible that you would think anyone would be convinced I was right.  I don’t bother because it’s futile.  Anything I say goes into a very selective filter so that the christian never hears anything they don’t want to hear.

You can’t even get a Baptist to hear a Pentecostal belief correctly.

What chance would an atheist have?

There’s a time and place for debate and anyone can blog about whatever they want.  I actually enjoy some sound logic now and then.  What I resent is being lumped into groups that I’m obviously not part of.  We do that to the religious all the time and think nothing of it.  But they aren’t all the same, they don’t all agree, they certainly don’t all think alike.  Atheists don’t have any common bond other than a lack of belief in god(s) and yet we still try to put labels on each other and define how we all should think.  Sorry, that doesn’t work.

I read.  I come across words and phrases constantly that I have never heard anyone use in conversation.  I am reasonably sure I would have to define those words to whomever I was talking to, if I were to use them myself.  Meme and trope are two such words.  Atheist blogs use these words with alarming frequency and yet I have never heard them spoken by anyone.  I come in contact with a lot of people.  Atheist bloggers seem to think that everyone sits around thinking about these concepts if not all the time at least most of the time.

But what in the world is a meme?  From Dictionary.com, “Richard Dawkin’s term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitize people into propagating them much as viruses do.”  Or “Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution.”  Heavy stuff.  College professor speak.  Atheist bloggers picked up on the concept and obviously ran with it to the extent that one of them is mentioning a meme every time you look around.  I find it odd that my spell checker knows meme but apparently hasn’t heard the obvious sounding but totally obscure parasitize.  Put simply, memes are thought viruses.

Now that we have that straight, what’s a trope? From Dictionary.com, “any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than a literal sense.”  Don’t be embarrassed, I had to look up metonymy and synecdoche, too, although my spell checker does know them.  Let’s just say figure of speech shall we?  I used to get in trouble when I was a kid because I enjoyed reading the dictionary.  I was delighted to find cool sounding words that no one knew the meaning of.  I stopped doing that a long time ago but obviously other word nerds didn’t.

The point is, nobody talks like this in normal conversation.  What are we doing, trying to sound intellectual?  Or just trying to give the impression that we’re all a bunch of deep thinkers compared to our religious targets?

I do have to admit that there are quite a few atheist bloggers I read that actually are college students.  But outside their little groups who actually talks like this?

I have the misfortune to be related to some people very heavily involved in politics, law, and big money.  Occasionally I have been in their presence when they are communicating in political, legal, and wealth language that I barely understand.  I politely listen, keep my mouth shut, and manage to get the gist of what they’re talking about.  It isn’t pleasant and, again, most people don’t talk like this.

It’s also extremely obvious that nothing I think or say would be of interest to any of them.

I get the same feeling with quite a few atheist bloggers.  That’s what I’m ranting about.  I haven’t read all the relevant books, I don’t know all the right words.  I understand all this stuff far better than you might think but I don’t find it useful in dealing with other people.  Logic and reason are wonderful things but beating people over the head with them doesn’t work.  Someone struggling with losing their faith isn’t necessarily looking for cold hard facts, they may need some kind of emotional empathy more than that.

I had to deal with my stroke altered life and my loss of faith at the same time.  I didn’t have anyone to turn to, no one stepped in to help me or lead me to someone who could help.  My doctor knew nothing of stroke effects beyond his PDA and textbooks.  If there was any kind of support group in the area, no one referred me to them.  Not one but two churches turned their backs on me, there was no spiritual counseling either.  There weren’t any atheist blogs back then and, in a way, I’m glad there weren’t.  All the memes and tropes and logical arguments thrown around today would have left me cold back then.  I needed cold hard facts.  I needed solid reasons and explanations for what happened to me.

I didn’t need word games.

I certainly didn’t need anyone to tell me what to think or to believe.  I didn’t need to be assigned some label or to be put in some category.  I didn’t need to be alienated from the very people who actually could understand what I was going through.

That’s what disturbs me about a great many atheist blogs currently.  They seem hell bent on alienating the very people they claim to be trying to reach.

Lighten up, people!

OK.  Rant over.

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

21. November 2009 by Frank.

Many years ago Lester Sumrall was speaking about a big time evangelist in Africa (sorry, I can’t remember which one) who proudly told him that the first thing they taught newly founded churches was how to raise money.  Sumrall thought that was a fantastic idea.

That’s not too shocking, Sumrall was all about raising money.

Get them saved and teach them how to give to the church right away so you can get even more saved and teach them how to give to the church right away.  I’m not just referring to tithing, no, tithing was a requirement.  You weren’t actually giving until you gave money above and beyond your tithe.  If you didn’t tithe, god didn’t accept any of your other offerings, although the church gladly took it anyway.

Sumrall even stated that he thought it was also a good idea to send the deacons out to people’s houses to collect their tithes, offerings, and pledges just in case they didn’t come to church or “forgot” to pay up.  Money was more important than anything else in that ministry.

I joined up for the prayer line ministry.  I was shocked to discover that not only was I to pray for the callers, I was required to solicit them for money.  I was supposed to imply that god would be more inclined to answer their prayers if they financially supported the ministry.  I was also expected to man the telephones during their telethons, making calls to previous donors asking for more.  Some of these people on the list had given as little as ten cents.  I was then asked to continue making such calls weeks after the telethon was over.  Imagine my surprise one Saturday afternoon I was in the call center at the TV station alone when a couple I had seen in church came in and started calling people on the list.  It turned out they weren’t there as volunteers, they had been hired and were being paid to make the same calls I was making.

This whole ugly business very nearly destroyed my faith at the time.  Looking back, I wish it would have, I could have saved a few more useless years as christian.

But I was of the mind that one rotten apple didn’t mean the whole bushel was corrupt.

There is a perception that most televangelists are nothing more than big time con artists except among their followers.  This seems completely obvious to anyone not under their sway.  Having been up close and personal with several of them I know it as a fact.  Take a good con man and add in the ability to use religious guilt, you’ve got a multimillionaire televangelist.

I went to a Kenneth Copeland convention once even though I couldn’t afford the trip.  His teachings had me convinced I could do it by faith because I was sure god wanted me to attend.  I had to go to a worldly quick loan company to get enough money to pay for my hotel and to get back home, god didn’t help me at all.  Copeland, worth millions, was in the same restaurant as I and a number of other convention-goers.  Was he generous and treated all of us to a nice dinner?  No.  His fawning fans insisted on buying him and his wife the most expensive meals on the menu and pay their tip.  He was a great spiritual leader and god was just blessing him for doing god’s work.  I could have that, too, if I would just totally give myself to god as well.  But somehow or other, it never worked for me no matter how much I gave myself over to praying and studying the word.  I didn’t know how to raise money from the easily deceived.

But without exception these people know how to raise money.

I’ve never been financially sound, I’ve been struggling my entire adult life.  A large part of that is because I was trying to tithe and give offerings when I didn’t actually have enough money to do it.  These people convinced me that god had to have his share first (meaning the preacher and his church) before I paid my bills.  God’s 10% had to come off the top.  Unless you did that nothing else you gave mattered.  I made some horrendous financial decisions because of that teaching.

How the vow of poverty from days long past morphed into the prosperity gospel I have no idea.  But it did and now there are some branches of christianity that revolve around money far more than the son of god.  Sumrall taught that god wouldn’t heal you or bless you in any other way if you didn’t pay up.  Somehow if you deny me before men, I’ll deny you before the father got reworded to if you withhold your money from me, I’ll withhold the father’s blessings from you.  Anyone who sat under that ministry and got free of it knows that is the truth.

I frequently try to excuse less greedy churches.  Unfortunately, they still operate in the same realm.  Why is giving money a part of every worship service?   Why does it need to be done publically?  Jesus said not to let your left hand know what the right hand is doing.  What purpose does passing the offering plate serve other than to show other people your piety?  Seriously, why can’t church finances be done behind the scenes completely?

Because not very many would put any money in if they weren’t constrained to by some well applied public guilt.

You can’t serve god and mammon.

Apparently that isn’t true.

Money can’t buy happiness.  But it can buy off god.  Somehow that just doesn’t sound right.  Somehow that sounds like something human hucksters would do.  Hucksters in priest’s clothing.

Posted in interpretation, communication, wild guesses, listen, education, hearing, religion | Print | 1 Comment »

12. November 2009 by Frank.

I used to believe everything that happened had a purpose.  I was sure there was no such thing as coincidence, all the events of my life were part of god’s plan from the mind boggling to the miniscule.  I can’t think of a single scripture that actually says that but there are plenty of them that imply it.  I was not the only one who believed that.

I dare say most christians believe it to some extent or another.

When his followers were concerned about where their next meal was coming from Jesus pointed out that god feeds the birds and they were worth more than birds.  Even the hairs on their heads were all numbered.  Think about that.  Every hair on every head (well, except for bald guys) numbered.  Really implies god is very much interested in every single aspect of your life.  He keeps track of each hair on billions of people.

With that kind of attention to detail how can anything be just random coincidence?

Once you accept the premise that everything has a purpose or a reason, you’ve just gotten yourself into a huge can of worms.  I doubt everyone goes overboard with little day to day trivialities but what happens when something major happens?  There has to be an explanation for it.  Somehow it has to be part of god’s plan for your life.  God must be teaching you something.  God wants you to suffer through something so you can help others suffering the same thing.  He’s going to use your misfortune to bless someone else later on.  It’s in the rationalization of the reasons that you cause yourself the most stress and grief.

Why did god let my wife have a seizure and drive the car into the side of an office building?  I was at my faith peak when this happened.  It was insane the things I came up with to explain it.  The stupidest one of all was that he allowed it because she loved her new found freedom of driving more than she loved Jesus so he had to show her how wrong she was.  Jesus must be first in everything.  After all, he kept her from getting hurt, didn’t he?

It didn’t matter that we had just bought the car and it was a total loss.  It didn’t matter that the insurance premiums skyrocketed out of range of my budget.  It wasn’t important that the subsequent doctor visits with the extremely expensive medicines that our insurance didn’t cover nearly drove us to bankruptcy.  The financial stuff wasn’t important to god,  it just meant I had to learn to trust him more to supply our needs.

Nor was it of any importance that the testing of all those medicines severely altered her personality and nearly ruined our marriage before it even started. 

This is just an example of what kind of thinking believing everything has a purpose produces.  When I had the stroke, the same thinking kicked in but there wasn’t any faith mixed with it.  It led me to questioning everything I believed about my faith.  I started with the assumption that everything I believed was wrong, that somehow I had followed the wrong teachings or had misunderstood something vital.  That was how I gradually learned the truth that there wasn’t any god plotting and planning my life.   There is coincidence.  Shit happens.  Randomly and without reason or purpose.  The universe or even the immediate world around us is hostile to life.

It usually makes no sense whatsoever.

The deaths of my mother and my father-in-law were ugly, horrendous, devastating events.  There was no purpose in my mother suffering intense agony for three weeks.  No one got saved or grew closer to Jesus.  No one’s faith got stronger.  My father-in-law died abruptly without much warning, his health wasn’t good but nothing life threatening.  That has devastated my wife and her siblings.  He was the only thing that held them together as a family.  What’s the divine purpose behind that?

The problem is the rationalizing these events to make them fit the belief.

I know for a fact that this causes tremendous stress.  Much anxious hand wringing accompanied an abundance of prayer asking god for a reason to make sense of it.  Since no answer is ever forthcoming, your own mind starts trying to fill in the blanks.  Depending on how creative you are, you can come up with some seriously bizarre explanations.

Believe it or not, the stupidest idea I came up with to explain my wife’s accident was the one that satisfied both of us.  Looking back at it now, I can see how petty my god actually was, which is a pretty good indication of how petty minded I actually was at the time.  Imagine it, Jesus so wants to be the prime focus of your life that he allows (or wills) you to have an accident that destroys your car, part of an office building, your financial situation, causes years of disastrous drug trials which nearly cost your job and marriage, and severely pushes your faith to the breaking point.  All for what?  So that you’ll love him more and learn to trust him for everything.  Brought on by the joy my wife finally had at being able to drive a car whenever she wanted for the first time in her life.

That is a very small, pathetically needy god.

“God moves in mysterious ways,” says the previous generations.  We weren’t strongly religious when I was a kid but I heard this over and over.  It gives rise to letting your imagination run wild trying to make random events conform to your predetermined beliefs.  One of the great flaws of christianity is the idea that god leads you in the path you should follow.  This leadership isn’t verbal; it’s hunches, guesses, intuition, feelings, coincidences that can’t possibly be coincidences, mixed with a large portion of what you really want to be true.  If you claim you’re actually hearing the voice of god it’s the mental hospital for you but you’re still supposed to claim god is leading you, that still, small voice you know.  Interpreting bible verses to fit your situation is also encouraged.

But it’s all just guesswork.

You make stuff up to fit a pattern that isn’t really there.  How thoroughly you do this determines how much unnecessary heartache you cause yourself.  Sometime when I feel like really humiliating myself, I will reveal some of my more outrageous rationalizations.  I have trouble believing I was once so thoroughly deluded that I was sure god wanted me to start my own church.  All sorts of events made it seem so plausible, so necessary.  It started early on for me when I decided I was sent to the Baptists to wake them up spiritually.  When it became obvious they didn’t want to be awakened, it wasn’t too hard to shift gears and decide those were just training exercises.

Why, when they threw me out, it was just god telling me it was time to get moving.

Purpose driven life?

No, thanks.

Way too much trouble and far too complicated.

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

28. October 2009 by Frank.

I know some christians that like to post on Facebook.  Some of the things they post spark memories of when I used to do such things.  Some of them are things I was aware other people were doing but never bothered with myself.  Some are definite behaviors I indulged in.

The first one that sparked a memory was the request for travelling mercies.  I used to hear people pray for this all the time, I never did because I thought it was foolish.  But there were people who wouldn’t go more than a few miles without having the whole church praying that god would grant them travelling mercies.  Somehow, it seemed to me, these folks thought god wasn’t aware they were going anywhere and that travel can be dangerous.  They wanted some kind of force field around their vehicle to protect them from potential harm.  Having been involved in several wrecks over the years, I had already come to the conclusion that god wasn’t going to prevent an accident no matter how many times you asked him or how many people you had praying for you.  He never seemed to be the least bit concerned that your insurance premiums were going to increase nor did it seem like he cared how badly anyone got hurt or how much property was damaged.  When my wife had a seizure and drove the car into the side of a building, folding it up like an accordion, we gave him credit for keeping her from getting hurt but I could never get over why he let it happen in the first place.  So even as a christian I thought travelling mercies were bullshit.

On the other hand, some one else has to go for some nasty medical tests and wants prayers to keep himself from bad results.  I indulged in this sort of thing not necessarily asking others to pray for me but calling on all my own faith, rebuking the devil, claiming the blood of Jesus, and standing firm against any evil that might befall me because I was a man of god.  Because satan wanted to bring me down.  Even though I believed in divine healing I still didn’t want to come down with some horrible affliction.  Unfortunately, god let me down with all this as well.  My faith was no match for high blood pressure and god did not intervene.  There was no protection or deliverance from the stroke, either.

There also wasn’t any result with casting out the epilepsy demon from my wife.

The only thing that works with any of this is man-made medicines prescribed by human doctors who like to think they’re gods.  The thing of it is, I don’t see how anyone can continue calling on god for matters of health.  You witness enough suffering (go spend some time in a long term care facility) and agony of both the saved and the unsaved and then tell me you see the hand of god involved with any of them.  Watch your best friend be eaten alive by cancer, watch a mother’s grief when her daughter’s head is torn off in a motorcycle accident, watch an elderly woman grieve because her husband was killed by some teenaged moron with a cinder block while her husband tried to help the kid get his car out of a snow drift, watch your own mother die in agony because her pancreas decided to consume itself, watch your father-in-law die from an untreated and undiagnosed black spot on his foot and then come and convince me that god gives a shit about anyone’s health and wellbeing.  All these people were (and still are (if still alive) christians) when it happened.  God neither prevented, intervened, nor relieved any of this suffering despite the prayers of several churches full of mighty warriors of faith.

Not very impressive for the creator of the entire universe.  When I see these prayers being requested I just shake my head.  I used to believe despite all the evidence to the contrary so I can’t really criticize them too harshly.  But sooner or later you’ve got to admit there’s something radically wrong with believing in a caring healing god.

The Baptists have a sort of work-around for these things.  They don’t pray for the sufferer to be healed.  That way when nothing happens they’re off the hook.  No, they pray for the doctors to have wisdom or for the medicine to do the job it was designed to do.  I’ve seen several of these types of requests lately.  This sort of prayer lets god get away with doing nothing because they can blame the doctor or the medicine for failing instead.  I used to go along with this while in church but secretly prayed for complete healing while alone.  It didn’t do any good either way.

Least in frequency, are posts praising god for answering prayers.  Don’t want to jinx the results, you know.  I used to have to pressure people to get up and praise god in church.  It was worse than pulling teeth.  Their faith was so tenuous that they were literally afraid that praising god would somehow cause everything to fall apart. 

Looking back on all this now I wonder how otherwise intelligent people can become so deluded.

Posted in wild guesses, interpretation, listen, hearing, religion, emotion, stroke | Print | 3 Comments »