My conversion to Atheism (WALL OF TEXT!!!)

Wow, it has been a while since I posted anything.  Just wasn't feeling it....eh, I was lazy.  Here is my conversion story...

I’m of the opinion that most people don’t really become who they are until their mid-twenties. By “who we are” I mean that point in time when you have taken in enough information and wisdom so that you can face any situation life throws at you. Be it work, family, politics, hard times, big life decisions. When these situations arise we should be able to know our decisions were based on sound judgment and reasoning and the truest possible understanding of the world around us as. Becoming an Atheist wasn’t just a choice I made near the end of finding myself, but paralleled the road I took. And it doesn’t start with me walking away from, but trying to get closer to God.


I grew up the son of a pastor who preached in in Stewartsville Missouri. He and my mother, who was just as devote as him, were separated after a domestic dispute and I moved to Oklahoma with her when I was like, 8 I think. My dad never returned to church again (for reasons he never told me) but runs a trucker ministry while being a driver for CFI.

While in Oklahoma I grew up in the Bartlesville/Dewey area and went to the First Baptist church in Dewey, attended bible study, and other church functions every week (I believe they still have an old photo of me in their nursery). I prayed often and earnestly. For the next 10 years my faith steadily increased, especially after I joined a non-denominational Church that had a worship band, down to earth preacher, people dancing around and singing in tongues, the whole nine yards. As a teenager I made trips with them to Toronto revivals to get closer to Jesus.

I felt the presence of God. Sometimes I would tingle and sweat with the Holy Spirit. Other times I felt led by Him to give money to a certain cause, or to pay someone a specific compliment. These things still happen but I attribute them to myself just being a good empathetic person.

Around age 18 when I went away to college I got depressed from guilt, probably because I downloaded music, and watched a lot of internet porn. During this time I also met many different people from many different religions. Growing up in the Dewey area I was never confronted with someone who wasn’t a Christian (except for the Wiccan girl in middle school, who I still feel about making fun of to this day). Before my encounters with them I was of the opinion that if you were not a Christian then you were either evil, stupid, or just not right in the head. I mean, it was so obvious to me, all the evidence was there, and to believe in something else was crazy. First it was my roommate, Charlie; he was the first Atheist I ever met. Until this point I didn’t know it was even possible to “not” believe in God. I was taught that Atheists were just people who are angry at God. Charlie turned out to be relatively normal, just like me in fact and we had a great year being roommates. Then there were the two gentlemen I met in zoology, both Muslim but great study partners. It took nearly the entire semester before I got the gulls to ask why they believe in Allah. As I listened I instantly became aware that they believed for exactly the same reasons as me. Not only that, but they were taught about Jesus and the Christian bible while they were children to help strengthen their faith. I felt kind of cheated by my parents and my religion, why was I so hidden from other religions? I mean the truth of God has nothing to hide from, right? If it helps Muslims to learn about other faiths then it should work for me too and make me a better Christian. So I made it a point to sign up for a world religion course.

That holiday season my faith was truly shaken for the first time in my life. I was watching the history channel and they had a special on about the Jamestown massacre. At first I felt cheated again by my religion for being so sheltered. I mean this was an important part of Christian history, and could teach a valuable lesson about the terrible things that can happen if you can’t think for yourself. When they got to the interviews (of family of followers and followers themselves) I felt myself moving outside of my Christian box. I quickly realized that the people who killed their children and themselves were not crazy and not tricked by the devil. They seemed a lot like my mother, my aunt and other devoted people just like me. They clearly loved God just as much as I did. They prayed, probably more than I ever had. All these people wanted was what all religious people want. To live like God wants them too, right? Why would God let this happen? Why was there no intervention to stop them from feeding their children poison? He had plenty of opportunities seeing as how they spent most of their days praising him.
I tried to tell myself “his ways are above us”, but why? If we are involved wouldn’t that make much more sense for us to understand and thereby stopping atrocities like this that have no Good come from them at all, atrocities so bad, that I thought I had just figured out why this was never taught to me. These thoughts of questioning God were scaring me and made myself stop them and decided that I needed extra help. While continuing to attend church and pray on the matter I purchased an apologetics book my friend prescribed called the Divine Conspiracy to help strengthen my faith. I only made it half way through the book when I decided that it wasn’t giving the answers I needed, while beautifully written, I just didn’t feel satisfied. So if it wasn’t my faith I was trying to fix then what was it? Maybe faith wasn’t good enough for me? This thought also scared me; I realize now it was only because I didn’t understand what I really meant by “faith” at that time.

When my world religions class started I had been praying about my situation and hoping God would give me something that would pull me the direction I needed to go. It was in this class I found my new passion. I loved learning about why people believe what they believe. I soon found myself immersed in the writings of the Mahabharata, Siddhartha Gautama, Joseph Smith and the Koran. When we made it to Christianity I was reminded of my faith problems. Not at anything we learned. It was all basic with just a few things I didn’t know. But wanting to learn more of my own faith I decided to make my way to the religion section in Barns and Nobel. Immediately my eyes found a book called A History of God: The 4,000-year Quest of Judiasm, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong. Without even reading it I knew this was what I was looking for, it would help me understand why my religion is the way it is and hopefully restore some faith. I thanked God for making my search so effortless and went on my way.

The book was amazing. It was a complete dissection of all three religions and where they came from. Starting with pagan/multi God roots and working its way up to monotheism. Yes, when Judaism came to power they were trying to join together all the Gods into one. The original Old Testament Hebrew texts or, the Torah, document this well. In the early parts of the Old Testament the word God is spelled “אלים” the “ים” at the end makes it plural. The more I studied the more I realized that everything I was taught in Sunday school was wrong, Genesis was now completely bunk to me. Humans didn’t always worship Yahweh, there was thousands upon thousands of years where we worshiped whatever the heck we wanted to trees, the sun, or other people and the Christian really didn’t come along until much longer after. So if Genesis was true then all of our ancestors for thousands of years went straight to hell because God didn’t make an appearance until 6 thousands years ago. This led me to a logical conclusion, Genesis, Eve, the apple and the magic snake all had to be true in order for the fall of man to happen. If the fall of man doesn’t happen then Jesus doesn’t need to be crucified. If all of these things are unnecessary then why bother believing in them. At this point I was well out of my Christian box and these thoughts no longer scared me anymore. I was only driven for more knowledge. My pursuit for which religion was most true started with Buddhism. Although a beautiful philosophy and a agreat way to make yourself a better person when I came to the spiritual aspects I just couldn’t believe them with a straight face. This made me realize that it wasn’t any of the spiritual parts of any religion that made me want to be a better person but he philosophies, so I turned to philosophy. After years of study, and watching debates I became an Agnostic. After a little while as an Agnostic I found a program called the Atheist Experience run by Matt Dillahunty. It was this man and his amazing skeptical and philosophical skills that gave the bravery to take that final step. Along with from Dawkins, Dennett and Hitchens I came to realize that there is nothing wrong with being an Atheist.
It certainly wasn’t one single fact, but hundreds and hundreds from studies of all religions. Basically, Christianity looks very much like just another religion invented by ancient, superstitious people. Its claims about the universe are numerously false – until they are reluctantly rewritten to keep up with science, which has only made God smaller, less active, and more hidden.

And I can no more chose to be an Atheist then you choose to be a Christian, or choose to love your wife. These are things that happen through our life experiences and feelings from reason and how we interpret the world around us. Even I woke up on day and decided that I would pick a religion because I am scared of going to hell it wouldn’t be an honest route to take; I wouldn’t be worshiping a God because I believe in him, only out of fear of death. For me to become a true Christian again it would have to be something that would turn me away from all the evidence I have seen and the experiences I’ve had over the past 10 or so years. God should know how to do that, and it isn’t impossible because it worked going one way, why not the other?

Bachmann is a Freaking Comedian!

HAHAHAHA, Bachmann says HPV vaccine causes retardation. She is so funny...Wait! An influential person making stupidly false claims about an important vaccine, that isn't funny, it's utterly insane. She didn't even bother to visit the Center for Disease Control's website which, ooh I don't know, actually CONTAINS RESEARCH DONE BY MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS AND NOT SOME CRAZY CRYING LADY YOU PASS ON THE STREET.


Here it is. Took me 2 mins.
http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm


Now your telling me a presidential candidate went on, what I am guessing, is the most watched morning news show and made false claims about a very important subject that would have taken 2 mins to clarify?

Rick Perry, the Republicans' Messiah?

I'm going to start a compilation of Rick Perry shit here.


By Kathleen Parker

August 26

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rick-perry-the-republicans-messiah/20

11/08/26/gIQAGnY5gJ_story.html?hpid=z2

Rick Perry's rapid lead over previous Republican front- runner Mitt Romney was predictable. But it is not a good sign for Republicans hoping to reclaim the White House and further highlights the crucial battle within GOP circles: Who is the godliest of us all?

That's the mirror-mirror question for Republicans.

Forget charisma, charm, intelligence, knowledge and that nuisance, "foreign policy experience." The race of the moment concerns which candidate is the truest believer.

This was always a tough hurdle for Romney, whose Mormonism is reflexively distrusted by Southern evangelicals. Even so, in the absence of a better candidate, Romney had a fighting chance to win his party's support. Then came Perry.

Talk about a perfect-storm, composite candidate. Combine Elmer Gantry's nose for converts, Ronald Reagan's folksy confidence and Sarah Palin's disdain for the elites - and that dog hunts.

Perry doesn't just believe, he evangelizes. He summons prayer meetings. He reads scripture while callers are on hold. Not incidentally, he's a successful governor.

Perhaps most important, he's a wall-scaling fundraiser whose instincts make him a force of nature in the political landscape.

If you're Romney, Perry is a nightmare that's still there in the morning. If you're Barack Obama, maybe not so much?

Perry's political instincts were in evidence when he timed his entrance into the race just as everybody else was trying to grab straws in the Iowa poll. If life is high school in adult relief, Perry is the guy who shows up in a truck with a winch and pulls the car out of the ditch while those other guys are looking for a jack.

Whether you like his politics or not, he emits a pheromonal can-do-ness. Apparently, plenty of Republicans do like his politics, which has much to do with the very devil-may-care attitude that eventually will become Perry's cross to bear. Gallup's recent polling shows him not just passing Romney, but dusting him. Among Republican voters, 29 percent now swear their allegiance to the Texas governor, almost double the 17 percent for Romney.

Huddled around the exhaust pipe are, you got it, the jack handlers: Ron Paul (13 percent) and Michele Bachmann (10 percent), followed by Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman in the single digits.

Perry's campaign strategy is to talk only about jobs- jobs-jobs, no matter what the question. That's both smart and necessary, but jobs-jobs-jobs isn't the money trinity with his base. Perry already hit that station with his prayer rally and various dog whistles to the

congregation: He's not sure anyone knows how old Earth is, evolution is just a "theory" and global warming isn't man-made.

That we are yet again debating evolutionary theory and Earth's origins - and that candidates now have to declare where they stand on established science - should be a signal that we are slip-sliding toward governance by emotion rather than reason. But it's important to understand what's undergirding the debate. It has little to do with a given candidate's policy and everything to do with whether he or she believes in God.

If we are descended of some blend of apes, then we can't have been created in God's image. If we establish Earth's age at 4.5 billion years, then we contradict the biblical view that God created the world just 6,500 years ago. And finally, if we say that climate change is partly the result of man's actions, then God can't be the One who punishes man's sins with floods, droughts, earthquakes and hurricanes. If He wants the climate to change, then He will so ordain, and we'll pray more.

Perry knows he has to make clear that God is his wingman. And this conviction seems not only to be sincere, but also to be relatively noncontroversial in the GOP's church - and perhaps beyond. He understands that his base cares more that the president is clear on his ranking in the planetary order than whether he can schmooze with European leaders or, heaven forbid, the media. And this is why Perry could easily steal the nomination from Romney.

And also why he probably can't win a national election, in which large swaths of the electorate would prefer that their president keep his religion close and be respectful of knowledge that has evolved from thousands of years of human struggle against superstition and the kind of literal-mindedness that leads straight to the dark ages.

Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive, but Perry makes you think they are.

Dawkins on Perry -

There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today's Republican party is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today's Republican Party 'in spite of' is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory.

Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

God Sucks at Miracles

The recent bankruptcy of Crystal Cathedral in Orange County has sparked a bidding war between a Roman Catholic diocese and a local university.

The Church itself is trying to fight the system and keep their Church by raising enough money to get it back. The comment below reflects their thoughts.

"I believe with every fiber of my being that God turned the eyes of the world on Crystal Cathedral because God wants to make a big bold statement," said Sheila Coleman, the daughter of the founder. "He wants the world to know that he is a God who still does miracles," she said.

Oooh, that makes so much sense. God decided a good use of his miracle powers is to bankrupt a church for a month or two then give everything back. Yes, how his boundless intelligence shows worthwhile miracles. Or he could grow back some limbs from child amputees... would that be too kind? 



And if someone's excuse is that bad things like that happen so we understand how important our life is, they are fucking insane. I don't enjoy the things in my life because someone else cannot do them. I don't care anymore about my legs because a little boy loses his in an African genocide. Or my intelligence because others have autism. Or my food because people are starving. The things that are important to me are important because I find incredible fucking value in their use or how they make me feel. And even IF a God did put great weight on have vs. have not’s...THAT IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH FUCKING REASON TO LET POINTLESS SUFFERING TRAGIDIES OCCURE WHEN YOU CAN STOP THEM!


Sorry for the yelling...I feel strongly about this...

Mocking and Ridicule of Fundies

I'm a frequent contributor to news-site comment pages. Namely, news-sites who post stories on subjects I care about. Here is a recent one I've flogged in several places: FCKH8

When I first started patrolling comment boxes looking for the latest bigot or intellectually dishonest person to correct, I would try my best to remain civil, to state my case in a solid manner hoping they would see the "light" or, in the least, to show a different side and give rise to an honest discussion.

This never really works... ever.

A holocaust denier bringing up his views in a job interview would be a really bad idea. This is because, not only will they not be taken seriously, but they will open themselves to harsh ridicule. Statements based on blind religious fundamentalism should be held to the same critical standard. When people say stupid shit because of their religion, I now feel the need to point out that their unfounded claims are going to encounter serious scrutiny. And, if I can find a spot, I'm going to let the jabs fly.

From my most recent exchange:
Dave - "It isn't surprising that gays are intolerant & hateful."
Me - "It isn't surprising that Christians are intolerant & hateful."
See what I did there? Your just spouting silly retoric without justification.
Where did you get your incredibly bad reasoning skills? ... They were making FUN of christian bigotry and closemindednes... The only intolerant & hateful people in this argument are those who spread lies and hate in order to press their own beliefs on others."
Dave -"By your actions, you're supporting what I've said.
Me - "Umm, nothing [I] said proved your above statement. You said "hateful & intolerant" and your point is still dumb and unfounded. What you can assert however, is that we are resorting to mockery and ridicule which, anti gay groups deserve when they spout their bigotry. Half the fun is making points the other half is mocking you small minded fundies while having a good laugh at your expense. Just like we do against racists or sexists, yes we compare you to them."

Now, I don't know if this guy was a Christian or not. But I didn't care. He had said "homos" are hateful for w/e the fuck reason and I felt like laying into him. I personally didn't care if I changed his mind. Asking someone such as this to change their minds is like asking my dog to do the dishes... They will approach it with the exact same level of comprehension. Mostly I am aiming to change the minds of others reading our exchange. Hopefully, some other fundie read it and it altered their point of view or made them think.  Hopefully? Maybe that one person was going to post something similar, but now sees that it will only lead to people like me mocking their stupid beliefs. I can only hope it did.

I Bet You This Guy is Voting for Bachmann

I lawled hard at this photo.

Atheists Secretly Want to Love and Worship God

Father Robert Baron tried to rationalize why so many militant atheists are making so much noise on the internet these days.  He of course doesn't come any where close because he claims "My wager, as a person of faith, is that everyone — and that includes Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins — implicitly wants God and hence remains permanently fascinated by the things of God."

Here is the whole post below:
http://thecatholicspirit.com/featured/why-are-so-many-atheists-on-the-cnn-belief-blog/

Well now, I'm a militant atheist and consider myself pretty well educated so I tried to let him know where he is wrong.  This is what I typed in the comments and I hope he reads it:

Hey, an atheist here and I feel the need to shine the light on some things you said:

" Are the advocates of the faith ready to meet that challenge?"

In my opinion, no. And they won't be until Churches can increase the level of legitimate education among their members and decrease the level of wilful ignorance. One of the most annoying things about Christians to me is their lack in understanding of not only the history of their own religion, but the wall that is built up by their parents and their Church to hide them from the rest of the world's philosophies. This leads to people bumbling around when are they confronted with strange philosophical analogies and questions or have an atheist throw Bible verses back at them. Oh yes, we read it. Any good atheist has read the entire thing and the Koran. The modern world is too small to keep all of our religious views from affecting one another and therefore, it behoves us to communicate with each other honestly and effectively.

"We shouldn’t imitate the Internet atheists in their nastiness,"

Sometimes we become annoyed at having to answer the same questions over and over again and we resort to short snappy answers. Don't let this scare you off. However, If you truly encounter a tone you don't like or they seem to be shot-gunning around your questions, then don't talk to that person. It's that simple.

"Everyone is searching"

No. This is not true.

"My wager, as a person of faith, is that everyone — and that includes Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins — implicitly wants God and hence remains permanently fascinated by the things of God."

This is untrue on many levels. You are asserting to know what is on other men's hearts and minds, that's just silly to start off with. And, you shouldn't find any intellectually honest atheists doing any mind-reading either. This leads to a  ignorant statement that they are lying when they assert that they are not searching for God. You've already lost the wager if you claim something like that. What If I were a Muslim and told you that, as a Christian, "Your lying about actually believing in Jesus. All of the strife in your life is because Allah is calling to you, but you refuse to see him."? I would expect you to get angry. Not only is the assertaion a direct assult to your deeply held beliefs...but it's completely unfounded. These types of accusations are not only dishonest, but also fail to open any sort of productive dialogue.

"Though the fierce atheists of today profess that they would like to eliminate religious speech and religious ideas, secretly they love to listen as people speak of God. This goes a long way, it seems to me, toward explaining their presence in great numbers on religious blogs"

No, it's not an elimination of speech and ideas we want. It is a broadening and universality of all philosophies and ideals, religious or not, with all subject to he same scrutinity to ensure they adhere to the tenants of equal human rights. Also, again, No I don't secretly long for your Yahweh. I have a passion for religious philosophy and finding out what people believe and why they believe it.

[John] "I think your spot on. They really want to believe in Him, and they can't stay away."

Again, I hoped I covered this well enough above. If not I can go over it again.  And feel free to ask me any other questions.