I’ve had this conversation a shitload of times with a ton of Christians.
I’ll say that one of the major problems I have with their religion is that they think I’m a sinner headed to hell. This statement is met with a couple responses. First, they’ll say it’s not up to them; it’s up to God. I’ve responded to that previously — I’m tired of Christians hiding behind a God they made up to distance themselves from their atrocious beliefs. Quit passing the buck. Own it.
The second is that they’re sinners, too, just like me. But, unlike me, they are saved, because Christ made it that way due to their belief in His sacrifice (which, if you’re a Calvinist, happened strictly because of His sovereign will).
Some Christians think that they made the choice to belief in Christ, others think that God’s irresistible grace was revealed to them by the Holy Spirit, and still others seem to think something in between. What I’m going to say about this business of Christians being saved and non-Christians remaining unsaved should apply to all these positions.
First, the fact that you think we’re all supposedly sinners does not make your worldview better in my mind; it makes it worse, because now you’re making a statement about other people besides me, people who I think deserve respect, and saying that they are sinners, too. If you were insulting just me, that would be bad enough. But insulting everybody — that is truly atrocious.
Second, if you think the way we are saved is through belief in Christ’s sacrifice (regardless of who instills that belief), or something similar, then you really have a major flaw in your thinking — you’re saying that the entire decision as to whether people deserve to be in heaven or in hell is dependent on one belief — the belief that a godman who was born of a virgin died for each and every one of our sins. That is truly disturbing. It seems better to judge people by their actions, as opposed to whether or not they believe the outrageous claim that a godman rose from the dead for everything bad a group of people ever did.
Third, you’re still saying that you’re better than me. Because if you’re a sinner, why wouldn’t you go to the same hell I’m going to? The answer, according to most Christians I’ve heard from, is either that Jesus takes their place or took their sins away (or some combination of both).
But usually Christians will ALSO say that Jesus doesn’t take my place or take my sins away because I don’t believe that the son of Old Testament God came through a virgin’s vagina to perform a shitload of miracles before being post-death buried in a tomb that he waltzed out of just before floating up to a heaven no one’s ever seen. And because the Christian does believe this, Jesus supposedly takes their place, or takes their sins away, or however they fit the fact that I’m going into hell and they’re going into heaven into their theology. Somehow, they think that Christ will or does make them better than me — otherwise, they’d say they’re going to the hell I’m going to.
So, because of those three branches of reasons, the logic “I’m not better than you — Christ makes me better than you” doesn’t really seem to follow for me. It actually makes things worse, not only because it makes a negative judgment on all of the mankind I love, but also because it states that we are not valued based on our actions — rather, it claims our value is based on a rather outrageous belief. The entirety of who we are is bound up in whether or not we believe ridiculous things about a guy who died 2000 years (if he ever even existed).
Furthermore, when Christians say this, they should realize that we as atheists see this as just them saying it. We don’t believe in God — so their statements often sound as if they’re looking for a way to make our nonbelief deserving of eternal hellfire, and their belief deserving of eternity in heaven. And if you look at the strict logic of the setup…this seems to be the case.
Thanks for reading.
Note: Whenever I talk about theological matters, someone is bound to say, “But not all Christians believe that”! I think I covered dominant Christian belief fairly well, but if you want a standard response to that reaction, click here.
I think a lot of the irate, rude comments you hear from atheists (including those that go beyond what I would say or endorse myself) are return insults. They’re told by much of the surrounding culture, at least in most of the United States, that they deserve eternal torment forever. Worst. Insult. Ever. So they try to lash out with something worse.
But there is nothing worse.
There is nothing worse.
There isn’t.
What is a worse insult than telling someone, however “politely,” that they’re going to spend eternity in hell because they deserve it — and then worshiping a being you made up who is in charge of that judgment?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Try to think of something. Just try. I don’t think you can.
Any Christian who talks about how insulting atheists are has to understand this first. No, I won’t endorse or stand behind all personal insults atheists throw. But I will insist they be understood in context.
And if your response is, “You don’t believe it, why should it bother you?”
Well…do you believe the insult thrown at you was a true statement about you? No? Then why does it bother you?
Because I think that offensive thing about you is true and you don’t?
Wow…isn’t it amazing how people become geniuses when it comes to themselves? Quit playing dumb.
When it comes to this insulting business, the Christian’s hell started it, not atheists. It’s been around longer, it’s more entrenched in cultural thinking, and it’s so normalized that most people are under the illusion that you can talk politely about your belief that people deserve to burn in hell forever and if anyone protests against the belief it’s THEM who are the rude ones.
Maybe stop believing that, if you do. And if you have to leave Christianity to do that, so be it.
Otherwise…maybe rethink whether complaining about insults or a lack of “respect” should really be your game plan.
Perhaps focus a little bit less on how much we “respect” your judgmental imaginary friend, and a bit more on whether we’re right.
I’m an atheist, but my heart bleeds when I see someone determined to show “Childlike Faith” at difficult times in their life.
When someone is struggling with life and says, “I love Jesus, and I trust he’ll get me through this” I usually won’t rebut, without invitation, “No, he won’t. God doesn’t give a shit about you, because he doesn’t exist.” I won’t lie; if you ask me my stance on God, I’ll tell you straight up. But I’m not out to ruin people’s sense of security just for the sake of doing it.
Because — well, let’s be real for a second. We’ve got an average of about 75 years on this planet. And while we’re here, in addition to seeing the wonder of nature, science, love, and the rest, all of us are going to have hard times. I’m of the school that thinks it’s perfectly fine to admit that sometimes life is shitty, painful, hard, or lonely. And when it is, people need to lean on a friend, oftentimes, and when there don’t seem to be real ones available, the temptation is powerful to give in and make one up.
Yeah, I’m first in line to remind others that we shouldn’t lie to people. But I am also a humanist because I give a shit about people’s feelings. It really pulls at my heartstrings.
Seriously. I mean, my heart naturally kinda wells up and I tear up a little when I hear about the kind of faith you hear in songs like “Bring Him Home.”
I have Christian friends with this kind of faith — friends who are going through hard times, who manage to get through the next day, they believe (and they may be right) because they think the God of the Universe loves them. That love gives them a kind of hope to chase where there wasn’t one before.
But even as this makes my heart go out to them, this also makes me angry. Or, actually…because my heart goes out to them, this whole system makes me angry.
Because it’s like a carrot on a stick.
The one chasing the carrot on the stick does not make me angry. I mean, maybe — if the, like, chase for the carrot ends up in the carrot-chaser having so much tunnel vision that he knocks down and hurts other people. OK, sure, that bothers me. But the basic desire for the carrot? That hunger, that hope? No, that, in its raw form, I get. Everybody’s got a hungry heart.
What makes me upset is that these people are being fooled. They will never grasp the carrot on the stick. They will stretch for it all their lives, reaching for it above other aspirations, above the angst they feel for the other would-be partners in their lives, above freedom in the love they could show actual real existence…and they will never get it. They will live and grasp for and plead for it all their lives, and they’ll die, and that’ll be it. And in the process, without them even fully knowing it, their tunnel vision for a carrot causes them to regard the carrot over anything — no matter how beautifully alive it is — that may get in the way of their chase.
Does that make sense? Does it make sense that the fact that I care about them would make me angry?
This system strikes me as profoundly cruel. And yet it’s fairly delicate work to describe why I think that’s cruel, because saying that it’s cruel sounds awfully like I’m insulting Christians, personally, sometimes. As if I’m trying to ruin their beautiful story. When that’s not the case at all — I want everyone to have a beautiful story. I just get upset when I see people pacified with lies.
Which is why I’m not quite as passive as some atheists. I choose my battles, but overall I’m trying to remove the blinders, take away the mirage of the carrot, and show the person that no, God doesn’t exist — but there are people who care and want to make the world better for you. You don’t need the carrot, because we’re here.
That’s why I’m not just an atheist; I’m a secular humanist. In my mind, the reason I speak so strongly about religion is because I care about the people within it, just as I care about the people outside of it who are, oftentimes, very negatively affected by it.
I can’t be outspoken about atheism without being outspoken about humanism, because I think that a lot of people who have that kind of innocent, desperate side faith in God (as opposed to the proud, arrogant side of faith — which is often on the other side of the same coin in the same person) are looking for someone(s) who care about them.
I get especially angry when God is used as a way to try to silence people who have very serious grievances in society. But this anger is often mixed with empathy. An example would be this guy with a hole in his head.
Experiments with radiation were done on his head, and as a result he grew up with a huge hole on the top of his head. And because he believed in God, he decided to forgive.
I feel for this man. Somewhere along the line, people may have pacified him with a version of God that said he should accept his fate without further legal action because God had a better tomorrow. So that hits a soft spot in me. But the other thing is that…he tells others suffering that they should act like he did. And that’s where I have to speak up — because no, you shouldn’t be pacified like that. You have a right to expect justice, instead of the lie of a nonexistent puppet-God.
And I see this among many people — God is too often used as a way to pacify people who have very serious problems in society. The focus is on the carrot, on putting one foot in front of the other, instead, sometimes, of very real outrage at the injustices suffered, or instead of enriching connections to people who actually exist.
But I’m mad as hell at the fact that the Duggars were hypocrites — making families ashamed of things they themselves were doing. And I’m also upset that, afterwards, they tried to encourage people to forgive them, and that others said that we should because of God’s grace.
No. Quit hiding behind God’s grace to be nasty to people, or to force people to accept “God’s plan” instead of making you uncomfortable with criticism, honest struggle, or demands for change.
Quit using God to convince people to work against their own self-interests, and those of the rest of humanity.
Quit creating a God to coerce people into acting outside of their desires for irrational reasons that have nothing to do with what actually exists.
Stop victimizing people that way.
It’s not the victims I’m angry at, nearly as much as the results and machinery of the victimizing.
I love many Christians who are close to me, and it breaks my heart to see them sacrificing relationships, freedom, knowledge, and their own self interests for a God who doesn’t exist they’ll never see.
In this one life we have, we have our last chance to stand by each other, to give a shit about each other’s lives, to be passionate about our relationships with each other and existence.
To fight against ideologies that get in the way of us standing by each other because of bullshit dedications to something above ourselves, especially something that arbitrarily splits us up into those going to heaven and going to hell.
I dream of a world in which we stand by each other, through the difficult times, through the fights for injustice, through the passionate and the low times of our lives, through each of our 75 years on this earth, with as much dedication to ourselves and as little interference from meddlesome nonexistent beings as possible. It’s the divisions these dieties create that bother me.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that my whole problem with Christianity is not Christians so much as the fact that they are being lied to and are often made to feel guilty because of the lie.
I don’t hate Christians. I love Christians, and that’s why I hate Christianity.
Oh, #notallatheists, mind you. There’s, like, “10-15%” who are OK, in his opinion [Edit: Dave Armstrong took pains to say in the comments that, in context, he meant that ONLINE atheists tended to be sub-par, not necessarily in-person atheists].
Yeah…
Now, I’ll be the first to say that sometimes Atheists are insulting towards Christians. In fact, there was this one time when myself and another atheist were arguing against this Christian, and the atheist said something so cruel, so outrageous, so outlandish, so personally insulting and cruel, that I publicly backpedaled and had to distance myself from that comment. It was the most offensive way she could have insulted the Christian. I mean… as someone who has been through thousands of internet debates in his ten years of religious debates on the Internet, I’ve heard a lot of insults. I’ve been called just about every name in the book, and I’ve heard the side I’m arguing against get called just about every name in the book. And yet, in the middle of ALL THAT, THIS insult really took the cake. It was terrible. Horrific.
Are you sitting down? Deep breaths. Ready?
This atheist said…that this Christian deserved to go burn in hell. For eternity.
That is insulting. That is the very worst insult I’ve heard an atheist ever utter. It still shocks me, even now. Especially as this Christian was one of those people who, like, actually believed in the hellfire-and-brimstone kind of hell. How much would you have to despise someone to say that that’s what they deserved? Forever?
Wow. It really boggles my mind. So I get why these kinds of insults get on Dave’s nerves; I really do. It really offended me…until a few months later, when it hit me.
I have been, as an atheist, told I deserve eternity in hell. And not just by the random Christian. But by their book. A straightforward reading of their book says that I deserve eternity in hell.
To be sure, most Christians are like, “Yeah, but we ALL deserve eternity in hell.” At least when they’re in “nice mode.” Which isn’t very nice, because first of all, that’s insulting everyone who exists in the world I love. And second — let’s be real here. It’s just playing with words. No, really, it’s playing with words. You can do all the theological gymnastics you want, but when it comes right down to it most Christians are saying that because I don’t believe (or don’t have this special “Holy Spirit” making me believe, or whatever the theology) that some godman died on a cross for the sins listed in the Old Testament, walked out the tomb three days later, and floated up to heaven…I’m going to hell. And because they believe this, they aren’t.
That’s insulting. That’s saying, when you get right down to the brass tacks, that I deserve to go to hell, but you don’t because Christ has “saved” you. I know a lot of Christians don’t like it in that raw form, but if you look at the raw facts of the case, from our perspective — you think you’re going to spend eternity with Jesus, and that we’re going to go to hell. That’s insulting. You can remix it and arrange it any which-way you like. But when it comes to this insulting business, y’all started it, not us.
And you’ve got a long tradition of these insults. There’s the Bible, which has jewels like this (from Revelation 21, NIV):
Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur.This is the second death.”
Christians, who are, overall, bible believing, worship the fictional God of this bigoted, fundamentally insulting nonsense. Wouldn’t bother me as much if they were a small minority, but most of my surrounding culture actually cosigns this and thinks this about me. That’s insulting. I would never, ever, ever, ever say something so insulting about anyone as what’s in Revelation 21. And, contra David Armstrong, who tries to say these are “fringe” Christians (where he seems part of this “fringe” himself), the more conservative form of Christianity, which most likely to believe the most offensive forms of this nonsense, is not the side exception to US Christianity, but the largest and most stubborn of its forms.
Again, these insults aren’t new, and they haven’t quit. So many Christians I personally know still, in their churches and in their worship (even where they don’t say so out loud), seem to embrace sentiments strikingly similar to this gem from early church theologian Tertullian when they sing about heaven and being “saved” from a hell that I supposedly deserve and am going to:
“At that greatest of all spectacles, that last and eternal judgment how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause.”
“What a spectacle. . .when the world. . .and its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? As I see. . .illustrious monarchs. . . groaning in the lowest darkness, Philosophers. . .as fire consumes them! Poets trembling before the judgment-seat of. . .Christ! I shall hear the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; view play-actors. . .in the dissolving flame; behold wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows. . .What inquisitor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favor of seeing and exulting in such things as these? Yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination.” [De Spectaculis, Chapter XXX]
I mean, seriously. We “insult” you by saying your beliefs are wrong and harmful. You’ve been actually insulting us over the past couple thousand years by not only saying our stance is wrong and harmful, but that we, personally, deserve to go to hell for all eternity.
And we’ve been relatively silent here in the West for most of Western history. It’s only recently that we’ve begun to talk back — but for hundreds of years y’all were burning us at the stake and torturing us if we even dared utter that we doubted a godman rose from the grave 2000 years ago. I mean seriously. As the video below discusses, Christians put us on racks that dislocated all our body parts, they used “heretics forks” (terrible — watch the video) on “blasphemers and people who used the Lord’s name in vain,” and…well, just watch this.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAPCVOOS7ec[/youtube]
The likes of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were in favor of death for heretics, as was much of Christendom. As Aquinas put it,
With regard to heretics there are two points to be observed, one on their side, the other on the side of the Church. As for heretics their sin deserves banishment, not only from the Church by excommunication, but also from this world by death. To corrupt the faith, whereby the soul lives, is much graver than to counterfeit money, which supports temporal life. Since forgers and other malefactors are summarily condemned to death by the civil authorities, with much more reason may heretics as soon as they are convicted of heresy be not only excommunicated, but also justly be put to death.
Where was all your concern about “insults” then? For that matter, in the huge insulting superiority complex at the heart of Christianity, where is all your concern about “insults” now?
We’re trying to have a conversation, here in the United States. You aren’t being persecuted by us. As A.C. Grayling put it:
Religious apologists complain bitterly that atheists and secularists are aggressive and hostile in their criticism of them. I always say: look, when you guys were in charge, you didn’t argue with us, you just burnt us at the stake. Now what we’re doing is, we’re presenting you with some arguments and some challenging questions, and you complain.
I have family members I dearly love who worship, every single week, a God who says that because I rebel against Him I’m going to burn in hell for eternity. They say this God’s judgment is perfect, holy, and right. And they are decent people, I think. It’s this religion that I grew up in and that they grew up in, that is a couple thousand years older than any of us, that did this to our relationship. It’s this stupid fucking religion that insults the very bedrock of our humanity, fundamentally impairs our relationships, and says that in order to survive in the world with any sense of dignity you have to plead to a bully God that was and is manipulated at will by past and present theologians.
And these bible-believing Christians are about 71% of the US population. Christianity is like the big bully on the playground. Atheists only take up about 3.1% of the US population. And yet, continuing the trend, there is a shitload of materials written against atheists, a ton of material written on keeping your children in the faith and away from becoming atheists, a lot of warnings about the darkness of atheism…and so on, and so on, and so on. It dwarfs anything we atheists have been putting together…and there are so goddamn few of us. Why are you so obsessed with us, Christians?
Seriously, guys. You all are really, seriously obsessed insulting bullies, and the moment we call you out on it, you get all offended.
Wake up. You are not being oppressed in this country. You’re not being persecuted in this country. You are in the majority over atheists by a ratio of about 23-to-1. You think less of us than we think of you, because you think, many of you, that we’re going to hell for eternity — and you think this of a group that, tied with Muslims, already is one of the two most disrespected views on religion in this country. And yet there are people of your number like David Armstrong who have the nerve to go on and on about how we are supposedly obsessed with insulting you. Maybe if you didn’t try so goddamn hard to bully and insult this minority, marginalized group by worshipping a God who says those who don’t believe in Him will spend eternity in hell, and letting that worship of God alienate so many of us from family, friends, and society (to varying degrees, of course — Bible Belt Texas isn’t the same as Bernie Sanders’s Vermont), we wouldn’t complain as much.
What you’re doing is the ideological equivalent of stepping on someone’s toe and complaining that THEY are being rude for telling you to fucking stop.
Now, I know that there’s a lot of theological bullshit that Christians may think I mowed over, and I’m not ignorant of the fact that there are a zillion different concepts of hell.
But here are the facts: Christians who think I’m going to hell (however you define it) because I deserve it (however that fits into your theology) are pissed off at ME for being upset at that theology — a theology directly affecting my family, friends, and culture.
That’s really fucked up.
When it comes to the insulting business, you started it, and you’re perpetuating it. For you to complain when people verbally fight back is thoroughly hypocritical.
Or, arguably, in other words, Christianity as usual.
On Thursday, a gunman went into an Oregon community college and killed 9 people, reportedly asking each of them whether they were Christians. In a move that has been echoed by the #iamachristian hashtag, several of the ones who died, according to widely cited sources, seems to have said, “Yes.”
As an atheist, I applaud the responses of each of these victims. Not because I agree with them; I’m a pretty antitheistic atheist who frequently argues that Christianity is fundamentally harmful in society.
I applaud that response because I strongly, stridently believe that violence should not be allowed to dictate our stances on what is and isn’t true. I have to admit that I respect people whose view of truth (whether I agree with it or not) refuses to be intimidated by a criminal’s gun in their face. We atheists do not have to agree with Christianity to applaud the courage individuals exhibit in refusing to abandon their passionately held stances in the face of violent threats. As an atheist and a skeptic, the courage these victims appear to have showed encourages me not to be swayed or manipulated by violence and intimidation.
On the flip side, although I’m still trying to further investigate the facts on the gunman before assessing his motives, I do know this: the gunman’s beliefs lacked a care and respect for human life. As a passionate secular humanist who tries to make sure respecting and empathizing with other human lives fuels his thinking and reasoning, I despise, on a fundamental level, the gunman’s beliefs and choices.
I understand, Christians, that we disagree with how to best respect and empathize with human lives. In some places we probably disagree very strongly, and I hope that in the future our care for each other and desire to understand each other within our mutual humanity will prompt further discussion and debate. And because we are passionate about human life, the debate may often be passionate and heated as well. But that’s not because we want to destroy humanity, like the shooter. It’s because we care about ameliorating the future of a humanity that includes both of us. That sense of empathy drives us, fueling our disagreements and, occasionally, even changing our minds.
So this shooting, and the courage of the victims, serves as a strong reminder that violent coercion should not change anyone’s mind.
And the heartless, cruel actions of the shooter are a reminder that a sense of empathy and respect for human lives should.
I understand that we probably disagree strongly on the best ways to show that empathy and respect to humanity. We can discuss that later.
Because right now, whatever our ideological differences, and even in the face of mutual inspiration from people whose stances refused to be swayed by violence, we both share a deep sense of sadness in the aftermath of this tragic loss of human life.
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” — Steve Jobs
I gave too much of my life away to Christ. I wouldn’t have admitted this when I was a Christian, even to myself. But I remember being deeply grateful, after 28 years of giving my life to Christ and “renewing my mind” to be in tune to God, to see myself in the mirror and not think of myself as a child of God, but as myself. It was a surprisingly beautiful moment.
I can remember, if I go back to my very earliest memories — back when I was about 4 years old — not believing in God. I was just me, interacting in the world. I remember it very faintly, but enough to get some sense of what it felt like. And somewhere along the line, I was convinced that this me was a sinner who needed to be “saved” — so I gave everything I was away to Christ. I wasn’t myself anymore. I was a Child of God.
It wasn’t sad for me. I was so convinced I was a sinner in need of grace, at the time, that it felt like the best moment of my life. I was clean! I was loved by the great God of the universe! I was His kid!
And I felt, after I committed my life to Christ at 12 years old, like I had made the most profound commitment of my life. I was a Man of God. It was so humbling and beautiful that there were several nights I cried in gratitude.
No, that’s not an overreaction. If you think you deserve hell, and then believe that a great God of the Universe loved you so much He would have His son die a cruel death so that He could adopt you and you could spend forever in eternity with Him, you would do the same thing now and again, probably. You wouldn’t be able to stop talking about it.
But I was wrong.
That old me wasn’t a sinner who needed God’s grace. It was just me. And I was still just me — except now I was trying to be someone I was not. And this someone was a lie of a phantom who didn’t even exist.
I was giving the one short life I had away to a phantom that didn’t exist. And it was taking over my connection to other people, the universe, and even myself.
After a few years of striving I could feel the cracks.
I could feel I was trying to be someone I wasn’t. It crept up on me slow. I saw things as beautiful that I, as a Child of God, was supposed to see as ugly. I saw things as ugly (like the concept of “sin”) that I was supposed to see as beautiful. I was told I was supposed to be a Child of God because that’s who, supposedly, I already was…but slowly it dawned on me that this was a trick to flatter me into giving my life away to a phantom.
That the person most alive in my life — the nonexistent Christ — was a void, like a black hole, consuming my life and keeping me from meeting the person I actually was.
And so, on April 6, 2012 — Good Friday — Jesus died for me, and I left Christianity.
It’s been a process, ever since then, getting to know myself. As silly as it may sound, thinking back to my earlier memories (even back to 4, before I believed in God) was how I began to sort out how I would carry on my life after faith. It was like I was meeting myself, the real me, and accepting myself for the first time.
It’s been a ride, but I’m glad I finally stopped chasing the phantom and managed to get to know the real me a bit more now, though I wish I had done it earlier.
Based on my experiences, I would strongly encourage people to leave the phantom if they wish to meet themselves and who they actually are.
Wouldn’t it be sad to go through your whole life giving it away to a phantom who didn’t exist? Taken over by a lie that wasn’t you?
So don’t give yourself to the Bible’s narrow vision. Go ahead. Broaden the focus. Explore the nooks and crannies of it. Accept yourself. And let the hundreds-year-old dead corpse die as you free yourself and discover yourself.
Letting the lie of Christ die can allow us to discover the truth of who we are. And, at least in my case…there is something profoundly liberating in seeing you don’t have to banish who you are in order to become someone else you are not — especially if they don’t even exist.
I’m an atheist, and not one of those passive ones; I think the idea of God is a bad one, through and through. That sometimes gets me labeled an anti-theist, and I’ve learned to openly embrace the title.
I think I have good reasons for both my atheism and my anti-theism.
I’m an atheist because, as I’ve sincerely tried to figure out what the world is like through logic, reason, and empirical evidence, I’ve hit upon the conclusion there is no God.
And I’m an anti-theist because I am a secular humanist. I’ve run into a bit of disagreement over the validity of that connection lately (a lot of it from atheists), so lemme break it down real quick.
God (by “God” I mean the “God-concept” — if you’ve been remotely paying attention, you’ll remember that I don’t believe in God), by definition, would have authority over humanity, right? He would be over all creation, all animals, all people, and the entire universe.
Which means that God would (in theory) be more important than all these things. So, if you believe in God, every time you have a choice between caring about what people want and what God wants, you have to choose what God wants.
In other words, God would be more important than people.
As a secular humanist, I think (the false concept of) God should not be seen as more important than people. And a God that isn’t more important than people doesn’t fulfill most people’s definitions of God.
Therein lies my anti-theism.
This might seem very straightforward for some readers. But a lot of people (several atheists included) have some problems with this.
One is that God can motivate people to do a lot of things we like — give to the poor, raise their kids, and care about other people. Getting rid of God, the argument continues, isn’t guaranteed to make us better people; the better goal is to work towards being good, decent people, and see God as a way to motivate people to be good people. Why, I get asked, would I have a problem with that?
The first problem I have is that using God that way would be intentionally using a lie to control other people’s lives. And when you control people with a lie like that in order to get them to do good things, you can manipulate the lie, just as easily, to get them to do things that are bad. It seems better, to me, to tell them the truth and show them what honesty looks like so they are harder to fool, instead of letting a bunch of pastors they give money to decide for them what they should think and manipulate their minds and actions.
The second problem I have is that it disturbs me to think that people are being nice to each people just because God says so, not primarily because they care about each other directly. There’s still a being in that theology who is more important than people (and doesn’t exist), so people following this being would be caring about others for HIS sake instead of caring about other people for their own sakes.
I think we should get rid of the middleman (who often, in the real world, gets in the way of human relationships with His cumbersome rules) and love people directly.
Something else people say is that the mere fact we get rid of God doesn’t mean that people will treat each other better.
That’s true, of course. But I think that seeing getting rid of God as a step towards improving relationships with other people can enable us to treat each other better (if treating each other better is our goal in getting rid of God). We could do better if we found ways to love each other directly, I think, as opposed to having the way we treat each other be overruled and governed by a concept of God that has caused untold misery in human relationships.
Some people say they like religious rituals, and ask if I’m against that. No, I’m not. The best God is the one who is a myth in your mind. If the rituals make you enjoy life more, knock yourself out. Just admit that it’s a hobby, not something you actually believe in. Sometimes I read fiction for enjoyment — doesn’t mean I actually believe what I read is real. It’s part of the joy of living.
It’s like this: I don’t have a problem with you watching Star Wars and enjoying the portrayal of The Force. You can find out as much about The Force as you like. You can buy memorabilia, you can go to Star Wars clubs, you can go to the landscapes where the movies were filmed — all that. Knock yourself out.
But the moment you start thinking that The Force is real, go onto the highway, close your eyes and let the Force “take the wheel”…we got a problem.
All I’m proposing is that we don’t treat nonexistent beings that aren’t real as more important than the people who are.
And that’s why I think God is not more important than people.
“If you had never heard of the Bible … let’s say they put it on the back of a fucking Captain Crunch, how quick would you recognize that as true? Would you go, ‘Hey, this is exactly what I was looking for! Yeah, the fucking flood and the Ark — this sounds incredibly true!’ You’d throw it in the trash, would you not? That’s why they have to pump it in your head when you’re still little, and you’ve got a soft spot, and you’re Santa-Claus eligible. And they cork it in with fear.” — Doug Stanhope
Noah’s Ark is not cute.
It’s not cute to tell kids that if they don’t believe in God, they deserve to drown to death.
It should not be controversial to say that mass genocide is not cute. But for some reason, when I say it I am liable to be labeled as being rude and disrespectful.
You know what’s rude and disrespectful? Teaching a roomful of kids that they should be happy that those God picked lived, and that the drowning of everyone who God didn’t pick is somehow cute.
That’s not very nice.
It’s the ultimate hubris. Supposedly, Noah’s Ark is a cute story, for many Christians. Suitable for kids. Because — isn’t it wonderful! — God saved 8 people, and two of every animal (yeah, I know it’s six of clean animals, but that weird clean-unclean business messes up the narrative and is usually omitted). He saved them. He drowned the rest of the world, and he decided to save this small group of people and animals.
Isn’t it marvelous how special God followers are! Isn’t it…cute?
Now, I realize that saying Christians teach the Noah’s Ark story to children as “cute” is like telling tabacco companies in the 1980s that smoking advertisements are marketed to kids. They clearly are marketing the story to kids, but they’ll deny it or say that’s just a subset of Christianity.
But it’s not.
Type “Noah’s Ark” into Amazon. Do you find in-depth studies of the event on the first page? Any sorrow for the fact that it’s mass genocide? Adult materials? No. As of the time of this writing, the entire first page of 17 results is kid’s stuff. And it’s not even an argument — the top item is named “Fisher-Price Little People Noah’s Ark,” the second item is a Noah’s Ark picture book that won the 1978 Caldecott Medal (an annual award given for best illustrations in a children’s book), the third is the “KidKraft Noah’s Ark Shape Sorter,” the fourth is the “Toys of Glory Noah’s Ark Playset“…and it keeps going like that for the entire first page of 17 results.
And in 13 of the 17 items on page 3 (where that Russell Crowe blockbuster Noah finally arrives).
Etc.
Christians who say this story is not being marketed to kids as a cute story they should love are probably either lying to themselves, you, or a bit of both. Tons of money is being spent trying to tell children that Noah’s Ark is cute.
And this is how they rip the hearts and minds from children and hold onto them until adulthood.
It’s part of why I feel sorry for fundamentalists even as I’m angry at them. Some may disagree, but I tend to think that somewhere in there is the little five year old kid who was told the Noah’s Ark story was cute, and that if they stopped following God they deserved to drown to death, and as they got older the old fears stuck.
Now, in response (now that they can’t deny the story is being marketed to kids as “cute”), some Christians may rush in and say that the rainbow is a beautiful sign that there won’t be a flood again.
Bullshit. You just replaced water with fire (or separation from God, or whatever passionately held view of hell you happen to have). And when you teach a kid to be happy about Noah instead of sad for the drowning world, it’s no wonder that they can then stomach the genocides of the Old Testament and, worst of all, the concept of hell. It’s not a big mystery. It was hammered into the kids’ heads when they were five, in many cases.
I know some of you may be thinking, “But it’s just a story. What’s the big deal?”
Look beyond the huge marketing push to make mass genocide kid friendly, and see the pure facts of the case…it’s mass genocide. Should you be teaching that this is OK?
The correct answer is “no.”
The only way that this can remotely be a “cute” story is if you teach children not to think about those who supposedly died. Are those really the kinds of children we want to raise? Or do we want to teach children to care about their fellow members of humanity, whether they are religious or not?
Mass genocide is not cute. And if you’re teaching children that it is, stop. Teach them that those who disagree with them deserve to be loved and cared about, not drowned to death or sent to hell.
I really don’t think that’s too much to ask. Especially when the relationship our children have to humanity is at stake.
Shakira’s religious affiliation is a bit dubious. She was raised Catholic, and in 2013 she said she struggled with faith, but recently she’s stayed fairly quiet about her position.
As David Clohessy, national spokesman and director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), stated recently:
Francis is masterful at symbolic moves and public relations that foster the impression of reform but change little or nothing….
For years, Vatican officials have written letters to bishops about this scandal. But since virtually no bishop is ever punished for ignoring or violating church abuse guidelines or policies, many bishops ignore or violate them. So a letter from the pontiff to his prelates, regardless of content, is meaningless.
To be blunt, Francis hasn’t exposed one cleric who has committed or is concealing child sex crimes. Nor has he ordered any of the world’s 5,100 bishops to do so.
And he’s continuing the ancient, hurtful practice of dealing with abusers internally and essentially stiff-arming secular law enforcement. That’s inexcusable.
Indeed, one of the recent tactics seems to be allowing suspected molesting priests to move (without defrocking or investigating them) to poor areas in South America — the very continent Pope Francis was hand-picked from.
Which also happens to be where Shakira is from. And not only that, she is extremely passionate about the rights of children in Colombia, her home country within that continent. As her UNICEF profile states:
Shakira is the founder of the Pies Descalzos Foundation, which provides displaced and underprivileged children in her native Colombia with access to quality education. In addition to building projects which ensure that children have safe and well-equipped learning facilities, the foundation supplies nutritious meals; educational enrichment through art, music and recreation; and economic opportunities for families. Shakira also established the Barefoot Foundation, which advocates globally for universal access to education and she is the co-founder of ALAS, a movement of Latin American artists and businesspeople dedicated to early childhood development interventions.
As a Goodwill Ambassador, Shakira has expanded her child advocacy efforts on the global level. Through public service announcements and her participation in fundraisers and other events for UNICEF national committees, she has increased awareness of UNICEF’s work in areas such as HIV/AIDS, education and child protection.
And on that “child protection” front, so far on his US visit Pope Francis has twice infuriated child abuse survivors by focusing on how difficult the scandal has been on the church and highlighting the “courage” clergy members showed as the Catholic Church struggled with a public relations problem due to the child abuse accusations.
Less focus was placed on the victims. And, more disturbingly, Pope Francis continues to keep the records that the Vatican has on child molesting priests under lock and key, instead of turning it over to law enforcement.
Given this background, had a UNICEF supporter like Shakira sung in support of religion, she would have been further insulting those victims.
She could have been neutral. But no.
She seems to have decided (with her genius-level IQ) to go the other extreme. Singing “Imagine there’s no heaven…and no religion, too” in front of Pope Francis and the UN.
For the children…the time has come, Pope Francis, not for meaningless platitudes, but for action.
As she put it before singing,
Our children have the right to equal opportunity — to thrive, to be happy, and healthy, and safe. Now is the time to not just imagine, but do.
I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me tear up a bit.
Note: Due to inaccurate reports from source articles, a previous version of this article stated she sangbefore the Pope spoke. A correction from an event attendee and a look at the schedule itself show that Shakira sang the song right after the Pope’s speech — which seems to be an even more ballsy move.
And meanwhile, Davis has felt a bit put out. Because in spite of that praise, her dear Democrats (like yours truly) haven’t given her the support she’s looking for.
ABC reports that Kim Davis recently stated: “I’ve always been a Democrat, but the party left me.” The source also states that Davis’s mother was a Democrat while serving as a County Clerk.
Davis also complains that the governor of her state hasn’t helped her out, either:
Davis meanwhile lumps blame for her legal problems on Steve Beshear, the state’s Democratic governor, who refused to call the state legislature for a special session and allow lawmakers to hammer out a way to exempt religious clerks from issuing the licenses.
How terrible.
And it seems official. She’s talked to her husband about how the Democrats left her, as well:
“My husband and I had talked about it for quite a while and we came to the conclusion that the Democratic Party left us a long time ago, so why were we hanging on?” she told Reuters in an interview at a hotel in Washington, where she has traveled to be feted at a Family Research Council event later on Friday.
(Yes, that’s this Family Research Council, the same one labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.)
As a Democrat…why are you leaving us, Davis? Stop, don’t, come back…
Assuming that [hopefully] that didn’t make her change her mind…I guess she’s all yours, Republicans.
![By Jan Tik [Flickr/ CCL 2.0]](http://wp.production.patheos.com/blogs/barrierbreaker/files/2015/10/Angry-1.jpg)
