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When I left Christianity, some of my former Christian friends tried to comb through my life, looking for something to say, “AHA — he wanted to do sin x.  That’s why he became an atheist.”

I’ve noticed, since, that many Christians use this argument, as ridiculous as it seems to be, to dismiss the legitimate arguments atheists make against religion.

Here are five responses that may stop this argument in its tracks and, perhaps, get conversations back on track:

1.  The “Right Back At You” Option: You’re Just A Christian Because You Want To Feel Morally Superior

That’s pretty much it.  I mean, you say that we’re all sinners — but based on a rather ridiculous fairy tale, you claim you’re going to heaven for eternity and I’m not, as long as I’m an atheist. That’s incredibly arrogant.  You’re using your arbitrary beliefs to try to feel like you’re better than me.  And the more you’re out and about talking about the importance of the Bible’s virtues, the more you are using your rose-colored glasses to put you on an imaginary pedestal constructed by your own personal imaginary friend.  I mean, let’s be frank — a lot of the moral standards the Bible ascribes to are nonsense.  For example, a lot of the Bible’s supposed restrictions on sex are bigoted views of beautiful acts that don’t hurt anybody.  The “rules” just made up so that you can feel better than other people; they don’t help the world become a better place.  And, furthermore, when you’re trying hard not to “sin,” I tend to see right through it to your attempt to feel morally superior to me.  Same when you praise the virtues of faith and go on about how I’m in rebellion against your imaginary friend, or other items.  You are trying to set up ridiculous standards and following them so you can feel morally superior to non-Christians based on a moral system that, in many places, serves no purpose except your own sense of moral superiority.  The problem is yours, and not at all mine.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnekrPGm3MM[/youtube]

2.  The Critique Of The Christian Moral System: If All I Wanted To Do Was Sin, I’d Sin And Ask Forgiveness

If all I wanted to do was sin, I’d just claim the title of “Christian” and do it.  I mean, atheists are among the most hated groups where I live, in the United States.  So if I wanted to sin, I wouldn’t be an atheist.  I’d be one of those liberal Christians so I could still get all the, like, respect a Christian gets, and then I’d “sin” and praise God for forgiving me.  Because here’s the deal — in your system, even if I was a serial killer, if I genuinely asked for forgiveness at any point, God would forgive me.  We atheists don’t have that.  When we do something that hurts somebody else, we can’t go to a nonexistent God and ask for forgiveness and feel better about it.  No.  There’s no God; the primary offense wasn’t to God — it was to that person, and we have to make amends with that person, and there are absolutely no take-backsies granted by imaginary friends.  So in that way, being an atheist is harder than being a Christian who can just go up to God and ask for forgiveness.

3.  The “Actually, I’m An Atheist” Option: Why On Earth Would I Choose To Go To Hell?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CqLtbw0rlM[/youtube]

This seems incredibly, incredibly, incredibly hard for a lot of Christians to believe, but it’s true:  I don’t want to go to a place of torment for eternity.  Honestly, I don’t.  Some Christians will say, “Well, it’s not like you’d regret it right away — you choose to sin now, and it’s nice at first, and then it gets bad as you sink deeper into your sinful life in hell.”  Well, I don’t want that to happen either.  If I knew that my current lifestyle would land me an eternity in a bad place, I wouldn’t want to live it.  Guaranteed.  No amount of “sinning” in my 75 years of life (if I’m lucky) would make up for an eternity in hell.  It may be difficult for you to believe, but I’m absolutely serious.  I don’t know why on earth this is so hard for most Christians I talk to to get through their skulls, but I swear, it’s absolutely true.  Sure, I may want to have “sex outside of marriage” — but I’m cautious enough about that activity to the prospect of getting an STD, or concerns about how it may affect relationships I care about.  If the consequence was not a lifetime of AIDS, but suffering in hell for eternity, I’d be like, “No; I’m good” to a whole host of so-called “sins.”  If I thought that was the consequence — believe me, I would never want to “sin.”  I mean, maybe if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll have to admit that the reason I “sin” is because I don’t believe in sin because I do not believe in God.  Which shouldn’t be surprising — in case you missed the memo, that’s what an “atheist” is: someone who does not believe in God.  It may be a novel concept, but yes, we exist.

4.  The “Objection!  Irrelevant” Option: Maybe That Is A Reason. So What?

Why the heck does it matter that I want to sin?  It seems to be a red herring as to whether or not God exists.  The fact that I want to break the rules of some arbitrary code does not mean that the arbitrary code was made by the Almighty God.  We don’t use that logic in a lot of other situations. For example, there used to be segregation in this country, but a lot of black people believed that black and white people were equal.  A white person might say to a black person, “You just want to think that we’re equal so you can drink from the ‘white’ water fountain.”  Well, yes, that is a reason, Sherlock.  I do want to drink from the same water fountain, sit at the same lunch counter, sit at the same spot in the bus, and vote.  But those desires are evidence — not all the evidence, but part of the evidence — that I am equal to you in those respects; I want to do those things BECAUSE I think I am equal to you, not because I think I’m not equal to you.  So the question is not whether or not I want to drink from the same water fountain, so much as it is about a broader question of equality.  Same with this.  Maybe I want to “sin” because I don’t believe in God.  So the real question is not whether or not I want to “sin.”  The question that matters is whether the reason I want to “sin” — a lack of belief in God’s existence — is valid or not.

5.  “This Hurts You More Than It Hurts Me”: Maybe This Argument Highlights Your Own Doubts

By saying that atheists are atheists because they want to sin, and using that argument to dismiss them, the Christian community you’re part of has effectively insulating the standards of “sin” from criticism.  Which is exactly what one would want to do if the standards were bullshit and would fall apart if the rank and file questioned them.  The upsetting thing is that this argument takes for granted that you, as a Christian, can understand the desire to break the Bible’s arbitrary rules, but then it fights that desire with guilt that insulates the rules from criticism.  It also uses the resulting resentment from that blocked desire to distance you from those who, like atheists, have subjected these rules to the criticism they so badly need.  If that’s the case, something you may have to be honest about is that you have that resentment, which may be a major step.  And then, perhaps, consider another possibility — maybe that anger at the person doing something that the Bible says you can’t do is not best directed at the person, but at the Bible — especially if that “something” seems to be an arbitrary rule that makes your life harder to live.  Maybe it’s also an indication that you yourself have doubts, because think about it — if you thought God was with you and that atheists who sinned went to hell for eternity, wouldn’t you have less understanding  of the desire to sin?  Maybe the laws of “sin” are, in fact, arbitrary and shouldn’t be followed, and you were lied to, and your anger should be directed at the lies rather than to the people who uncovered them.  If so, that’s something that’s important to look into, right?

Something to think about.

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1. Thoughts on Black and Blue, and White and Gold

Contemplating links between white and gold…
“What did I do to be so black and blue?” — Louis Armstrong

2. Rage 24 Hours After the DOJ Report on Ferguson Came Out

3. Contemplation On Why More Attention Was Paid To The Ferguson Riots Than The DOJ Report

Being A Christian

When I was a Christian, I thought the best way to keep people out of hell was to convince them that they were going there if they didn’t accept the grace offered graciously by the Almighty God.  It might sound a bit crude when you put it that way, and if you presented that way of thinking about what I was trying to do to the old me, I probably would have shaken my head and said it wasn’t that simple before attempting to put it in much more complex, poetic Christian language.  Perhaps focus on trying to save people, on how the world was a place full of the weary lost, and on how I was passionate about showing them the beauty of God’s light.  Less emphasis on hell, and a more emphasized awareness that sometimes the world is cold and depressing.  I wanted to save people from the dissatisfaction, guilt, depression, and pain they felt in life; hell was just, more or less, the logical fulfillment of this inner pain.  The trials of this world, so deeply felt in so many lives, needed an answer in a God who would stand by them, if only they asked.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us-TVg40ExM[/youtube]

The thought that some might be going to hell wasn’t meant as a personal insult; I cared about the “the lost.” I simply didn’t want them to suffer – I didn’t think about the concept of hell as disrespectful to those supposedly going there, really.  It was just the way it was, and I wanted to save people from the natural consequences of their orientation and actions, as I saw them.

And so, like anyone who desires to rescue someone else they care about from certain fate, I equipped myself. I read apologetics and communicated, for hours, with non-Christians I sought out, trying to dissuade them from continuing down a hell-bound path.  I was going to make it my life’s work to keep people from going there, because the prospect of their eternal anguish kept me up nights.  The thought of anyone going to hell was more disturbing to me than the thought that anyone, including myself, was going to heaven.

As time went on, I looked into several different concepts of hell, especially as the hellfire one I grew up with became more and more disturbing.  As I studied, I came across annihilationism, the concept that they would have a second chance, the concept that hell was simply separation from God (without, necessarily, fire and brimstone), as well as several other conceptions of hell.  For several Christians, the presence of so many conceptualizations of hell relieves their concern for others supposedly there or going there. For me, there was an increase in discomfort.  The number of possibilities made me uncomfortable with uncertainty, and the awareness that, in most of these conceptions, I would be going to a forever-ever-after and others would not, disturbed me greatly.

What made it all harder is that, increasingly, I was trying to take the command to love your neighbor as yourself very seriously.  So as I grew even more empathetic, I began to realize, slowly, how difficult it was to love my neighbor while, at the same time, stomach the thought that my supposed neighbor was going to go to hell, no matter what the rationale for that fate was.

And I noticed, as well, that in prioritizing those I should talk to about hell, I tended discriminate and view some people as more likely to go to hell than others.  If you denied Jesus was the Christ, the chances of going to hell, it seemed, were higher than those of someone who didn’t.  It wasn’t a judgmental thing, in my mind; it was in the interests of saving people from this fate.  But it disturbed me, increasingly, that I couldn’t do this without seeing the people who were deniers as perhaps fundamentally flawed in a way that made their going to hell justice.

Faith vs. Doubt

As time passed, the idea of hell for those who did not have salvation grew more absurd.  How could I think that somebody was going to hell simply because they didn’t believe that a guy rose from the dead 2000 years ago, especially when there were so many incredible things said about this person in the accounts we had of him that would defy, it seemed, any honest person’s credulity?  No, I’m not saying that there wasn’t an ornate theological reason why, and that’s what I used to rationalize it.  But still, this was an incredible thing to believe. Maybe the people weren’t rejecting Christ simply because they were closing their hearts to God; maybe they were rejecting it for the same reason I would reject someone telling me that any other famous person rose from the dead.

For a long time, these thoughts weren’t convictions.  They were in my mind, and they didn’t disturb my faith all that much because they were in the realm of Doubt.  And Doubt was, I thought, something that was inconsequential to whether what I believed with Faith was actually true.  So these were annoying thoughts that bothered me, but for a long time they did not divorce me from what I thought was true in the realm of Faith.

Then, there was also the sin in the New Testament – it became increasingly difficult to see many of the biblically defined “sins” as wrong.  I mean, same-sex marriage didn’t seem sinful, once you saw it up close – it seemed like a beautiful relationship between people who loved each other.  Christians around me said, “Well, homosexuality is no worse than adultery,” but that didn’t make sense to me either, over time.  It’s not like it was a sin that wasn’t as bad or was just as bad as other sins.  It was just a beautiful relationship that wasn’t a sin at all, it appeared; it seemed something to celebrate.

I’m not saying that these things deconverted me, in and of themselves. But they were among the many holes in what I believed that I wanted to patch up with evidence and philosophy.  However, when I looked for answers, I saw still more holes in philosophy and in the evidence that Christian apologets presented.  And as I saw the holes, I saw, increasingly, that it wasn’t Christian principles that were judging people as going to to hell.  It was my choice to believe them.  And that choice was hurting people.  It was hurting the way that I looked at people.  It was hurting the way I looked at myself, in ways I didn’t know, then.  And as the holes became more numerous, I began to discover a fear of hell…

For a long time, I didn’t think I was really afraid of hell.  Christian apologists frequently say that doubts are no major threat to belief; in that way, doubts become more of an irritant to  be occasionally explored than serious threats.  And when you’re confident you’re going to heaven, you’re often not really afraid of going to hell (and in many cases, a very rational fear of hell in someone can indicate to other Christians in some — though certainly not all — traditions a proof of sin or a psychological problem).  But in many deconversions, as the doubts begin to grow, so does the fear, because you have been conditioned to think that the presence of doubt is irrelevant to whether or not what you believe is true.  So the suspicion that the doubt is relevant to whether or not what you believe is true…that’s dangerous.; that’s what you’re afraid of.  And as that suspicion grows, so does the fear that you’ll lose your faith and that you, personally, will go to hell.  In truth, though, it’s a fear you always had, without knowing it was there — something that kept you a Christian without your realizing it.

Growing Into Change

It was very hard.  In some places, it was horrific, depressing, and psychologically crushing.  But I couldn’t extinguish, try as I might, the suspicion that my doubts were relevant to the truth of Christianity, so this suspicion grew until it became a real possibility in my mind.  And one Friday evening, I remember, I pulled over my car due to my mind being weighed down by overwhelming philosophical and material and emotional evidence, and finally allowed that suspicion to cut me off from faith.

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that was the best decision I’ve made in my life. Afterwards I was able to look at others and myself without comparing who they were to what a book said.  It’s hard to overexpress how much unanticipated joy I felt in being released from the prescribed mindset that Christianity gave me; in many ways, it gave me the opportunity see the world and respect others in ways I had not realized the Bible had closed me off from before.  And it made me really care about the concept of hell that kept Christians in the faith and that misdefined so many people as flawed when they were actually beautiful people — a fact that could only be realized if we stopped using the Bible’s empty guidelines to view them and saw them as they actually were.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-t2ouOLYYw[/youtube]

Although I am the same person, in many ways, that I was as a Christian, I have changed in that I have gone from being uncomcortable with a hell I thought existed, to absolutely hating the concept of hell.  I hate how fear of it is used to invalidate people’s doubts — allowing them to have the doubts, but not to seriously consider the possibility that doubts regarding basic Christian doctrine reflect reality.  I hate how it often seems to give Christians tunnel vision when it comes to friends they care about, prompting Christians who love their non Christian friends to see these friends as in danger of hellfire instead of seeing them as the beautifully awesome incarnations of humanity they are. I hate how the concepts of sin that are propped up, in many ways, by the concept of hell are often the most beautiful things about people, in ways that Christians who believe in hell are barred from seeing.  And more than that — I hate the fact that people worship the God of a Christianity that says hell is what humanity deserves.

It really makes me angry, because the increase of understanding I have from seeing people without the suspicion they may be in danger of hell has shown me how much the concept of hell is harmful and misconstrues people.  That anger is a major part of what makes me not just an atheist, but an anti-theist.  And a lot of Christians get upset with me about how upset I get about hell, but it can’t be helped, in a way, because when I care about them I care more even more about how the concept of hell has so much dominion over their lives, our relationship, and, by extension, my own life.  I’m an honest person, so I tend to tell them clearly and directly what my stance is. I used to think hell was real, and so I wanted to save people from it, like a man wants to save someone from walking off a cliff.  Now, I think it’s a harmful concept, and I want to save humanity from it, as someone who deeply cares may want to save humanity from any concept that attacks the basic dignity and value in a human life.

It’s been a battle.  But I’ve been thinking about how this pursuit is nothing new.  It’s the journey that’s been driving me forward all my life.

Many of the Christian friends I knew before say I’ve changed.  But if you look closer, I think, you’ll realize I’m the same person — and it’s the person I’ve always been who has made me change into the person I am.

We usually talk about “conversion” and “deconversion” as if they are hard lines we cross that make us fundamentally different people.  But the truth is that those are just sign posts on the same path of life, I think.  Life and circumstances happen, and because of that I’ve ended up believing a lot of things that I no longer think are true, and each changing viewpoint has moved me a step forward in this relatively short journey of life. But there’s a motivation to move forward that’s always been a constant in my life; it’s hard to define, but it feels like love.

It’s not about religion’s unsupported rules and false claims, primarily, although that is a relevant and unimpeachable part of my anti-theistic stance.

The primary thing that keeps me going forward is a desire to have a relationship with humanity gets past dividing lies and becomes defined by the truth of our mutual existence.

I want to reach my hand out to you across the divide, and maybe once your palm is in mine, the power of that friendship can help us unite and stand by each other.  And the beauty of that union has the potential to replace the concepts of heaven and hell with a wonderful world that, in many ways, due to an increased understanding and appreciation of the world around me, I’ve begun to taste, every moment.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nGKqH26xlg[/youtube]

So, that’s why I’m here, an atheist now, trying to save Christians from hell, so to speak.

Thanks for giving me a moment to explain.

“You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens. These people are just waiting, waiting for a chance to contribute fully. And by that standard, 11 million undocumented aliens are already Americans, in my view.” — Joe Biden (2014)

One of my favorite memories is stopping at Carl’s Jr for a burger on our way back from fishing in Suisun marsh in Northern California. We didn’t bother washing our hands, my Dad and I, even after putting hooks through the bloody abdomens of our live bait, or unhooking the occasional slippery rough scales of a bluegill, trout, or catfish as its gills gasped for breath. I felt like a man. I always ordered the same thing – a western bacon cheeseburger meal. They don’t have many Carl’s Jr. franchises here in DFW, and the ones they do have tend to be in Dallas. It’s a shame, really, because it’s still my favorite burger. It brings me back to that drive, the hills, the marsh, the talks we had, poles in the water, enjoying the peace of nature with the steady hum of the crickets, the smell of marshland, the open sky, and the security of being young and knowing I was with Dad, the man I respected and loved most in this world. It was beautiful. Still is – all those memories mixed in with the onion rings, the bbq sauce, the charbroiled beef patty (the taste of manhood!), the sesame seed bun, the root bear watered down with melting ice. And even though my father was earning a six-figure salary at the time, we traveled in a car that was a few years old. Fishing wasn’t the same in a car that didn’t have history. As we drove and listened to the car under our seats crankily rumble over the old road, a background sound became the scaffolding for our conversations.

Suisun Marsh in California, where Dad and I fished

My favorite radio personalities at the time were the gravelly voice of Rush Limbaugh, the measured no-nonsenseness of Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and the personable, perpetually outraged Michael Savage. All of these personalities – they did something for me and that strong sense of tradition, security, and peace I was feeling as my father drove on. They made the world seem safe and secure. It wasn’t like I hated liberals or was heartless or intentionally insensitive. These radio warriors and were people that reinforced the world’s clarity, that exposed its foundations, that revealed to me the machinery behind the blessings we had and stood guard to make sure these blessings remained. They made the world clean and safe and richly alive with traditional, hardy, secure values.

Michael Savage was my favorite. Back then, in the mid 90s, he ranted and railed about three things: Borders, Language, Culture. He claimed these made this country great, and that, without them, everything that we loved in the world would collapse. I think he probably believed this strongly. I certainly did. My dad seemed to. It wasn’t like we hated illegal immigrants – the very idea of an immigrant being illegal and yet living in the country violated the law. That was kinda where things ended. And the laws and rules were there for protection. It wasn’t heartless – the rules kept us safe. It wasn’t about people and being cold towards them – it was about how much we all depended on the conservation of our borders, language, and culture for our survival and the survival of all the people I knew and loved and cared about in the world. For our family’s safety and future, and the preservation of our dearly held freedoms. For the future of a country I deeply loved and the security of the camaraderie I felt with my Dad and nature and the world on those fishing trips. The rusty static sounds of the ranting Michael Savage from my Dad’s shortwave radio were all mixed in with the light red glow spreading over a wide open sky of awe-inspiring sunsets, the ripples widening out peacefully from the disturbance of a freshly cast line, the beauty of it all seen through our straight stares as we sat on the dirt of the bank, reeds surrounding us, and the steady creaking of the crickets coming from an ambient everywhere. Security, beauty, belonging, vastness, the beauty of God and family and country all around us and settling in our hearts and minds, and the steady background hum that somehow allowed me to put my feet on the ground of it all – within our borders, speaking our language, and validating our sense of culture. All of it seemed to make the moment possible, and Savage was the centerpiece of it all at least as much as everything else.

The US-Mexico Border

If I had stayed in Suisun, gotten a degree in a non-humanities field, and grown up, got married, and had children back there, I might be out on that marsh right now, fishing and listening to Michael Savage all these years later. But now I can’t stand it. Not just because I disagree with him, but because that teen kid in love with that moment is still in there and hurting even as who I am now looks forward. Maybe that’s immature, but it’s the truth.

I suppose things changed when I started working at Cracker Barrel. Up to then, I hadn’t met an illegal immigrant who I actually knew was one. When I was working on my BA in English at Northern Arizona University, I worked, simultaneously, as a secretary at the college of education, a secretary at the college of admissions, and an admissions counselor for the orientation program. The jobs looked decent on a resume, but I was jealous of the cash my roommate was bringing in from waiting tables at a popular nearby Denny’s. At the time, the best family restaurant to work at in Flagstaff, AZ (where the university was) was Cracker Barrel. It was the only location for about 140 miles in any direction, and it was right on I-40, where people came through from the South on their way to Nevada (Vegas, Reno), California (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco), and so on. So it was almost always extremely busy, and the people coming through were usually tourists, in a good mood – the best kind of people for decent tips. Plus, I needed to develop social skills, and I thought working as a waiter and adjusting my social interactions based on tip feedback would do that. I didn’t make a killing, but it was more than my other three jobs – which I quit as I started my Master’s in order to make more money while applying to educational jobs that might match what I was making at Cracker Barrel.

When I started working there, a middle aged woman helped us, on occasion, by bussing our tables – and it was often badly needed. She only came when it was fairly busy, didn’t speak much English, worked hard, and eased things whenever we were in a pinch. Her calming eyes mathed a friendly smile, and she got along very well with everyone there. We all loved her.

I’ll never forget the day our boss gathered the entire crew together and said we were going to have inspectors come through looking for illegal immigrants. And then, in the middle of his speech, he said that the middle aged woman was an illegal immigrant, that they (the managers) were paying her 4 dollars an hour under the table, and that they appreciated her hard work — as they were sure we all did.

I was stunned.

This lady was a beautiful person. She deserved every dollar of that money. I did care about her and I appreciated her. I mean, she was a PERSON. And she was only making 4 dollars an hour?! Was that enough for her to live on? No, wait, she was illegal. She should go back to Mexico, where she was from, right? Why was I so concerned about her? It was confusing.

Then there was a cook – the fastest cook at that Cracker Barrel, and probably the best cook I’ve ever seen at a restaurant of that class – always high quality food, always on top of everything. A little short, a bit pudgy, extremely friendly, and – fast as hell. Holy shit, he was fast. And he was almost always smiling, whistling, or, when his favorite song came on (“Me and You” by Cassie), dancing. I found out, later, that he was getting paid and staying in the country long after his green card expired. And the dishwasher. And another cook, who worked at Cracker Barrel and at my roommate’s Denny’s. This last one – I saw his wife and his two little girls, and got a glimpse of their closeness when they came by my roommate’s Denny’s once to pick the dad up.

The day the inspection came, almost all the Hispanic employees didn’t show up for work. Then, afterwards, they came back. And we talked about their stories. I was still trying to be against illegal immigration, and felt a moral dilemma. These people should be reported and sent back to Mexico, right? But I knew them; they were my friends. We had been through a lot of shit-crazy hectic times at that restaurant, and there was a camaraderie there. Reporting them would feel like a betrayal.

So, I was in the breakroom with one of my American coworkers and a couple of these immigrants a bit after the inspection – they were cooks on break. And we were debating this illegal immigration issue, and I said, “Why don’t they go back to their country?” And the American coworker said, “Here, these guys work an 9 hour day and make $20.” He turned to the immigrants. “How long would it take you to get that in Mexico?” The reply came back– a week and a half to two weeks for $20 for a pair of decent jeans. And getting a job wasn’t easy – so once you had it, you had to work your ass off to keep it (I later found out that Mexico was the second hardest working civilized country in the world) — because there was a looooonnnggg line of unemployed people tripping over themselves for your job as a dishwasher or line cook. Here, they could make $20 in a day, which gave them plenty to send home.

I never forgot that. And I think that, although it took me awhile to formally cross over, that’s when I began to change.

It wasn’t all that dramatic, admittedly. But the thing about it was that the rules got challenged by relationships with people. I don’t have all the answers, and I do want to keep America from becoming as economically bankrupt as Mexico, so people still have a place to come. But the Mexican immigrants I worked with were not lazy – they were the hardest workers I had ever come across. They were intelligent, they were friends, they were family members, they were people. And that blew a lot of the rules right out of the water in ways that prompted me to care more about people than empty rules.

Over time, that’s changed my view drastically, transforming my views on politics and religion a near 180 degrees. And, even so, the world still isn’t as black and white as the portraits drawn from my dad’s shortwave radio static; I don’t have a short, sweet ending to this, and things are really a lot more muddy and head-scratchingly complicated, and I feel quite a bit less secure. The thing is, I still long sometimes for those old days of security and unquestioned rules that made things black and white and simple and safe, even as I look forward to try to promote new, innovative, caring solutions as well as I can from my small corner of this universe. So…this morning, in my old car, I went to Burger King down the street and had their new BBQ burger, thinking it was similar to that old western bacon cheeseburger, and I sat at a table and ate it as I watched Obama speak about the immigration crisis and kinda waited for the old memories to come.

The burger didn’t taste the same. I walked back to my car and felt as if I was floating between the past and the present somehow – things seemed surreal. To put my feet more or less on the ground, I pulled up the link below, watched it, and let my eyes water. Nothing was resolved, and more needed to be done, and questions overshadowed answers, and the world wasn’t all OK and I wasn’t sure it ever would be, but somehow I felt — not at peace, exactly, but as if I had something to hold on to. I don’t really understand “love” and I think its meaning is often abused, but I tend to think something in that word’s connotations comes close to it, more or less.

“mmmmhmmmmmmhmmmm…mmmmmhmmmmmmhmmmmmm…mhhhmmmmmhmmm….

Feeling my way through the darkness….guided by a beating heart…”

A couple months ago, this video went viral:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh0r7C63_J0[/youtube]

Several parodies were made of the “delivered’ man’s speech, as well as several memes.  Most people saw him as a poser and poked fun at his insistence that he wasn’t gay anymore.

It turns out there is a bit more to the story.  Apparently, he was never “delivered.”  He says that he “needed prayer” and was pressured by the speaker, who said very disturbing, upsetting things about gay individuals in the pulpit, calling them “sissies” and making other derogatory remarks.  It appears that Andrew Caldwell, the man in the video, was caught between a rock and a hard place — he wanted prayer and support, and to do that, he had to deny his gay feelings.  You can see in the original video that after his statement, the speaker urged people to come around Andrew Caldwell and support him.

Caldwell had no idea, of course, that the video would go viral, and in the news report here  was distressed.  He said that he was not delivered from homosexuality in the sense that he still has feelings for men.

But that’s not the worst part of the story.  The worst part of the story is how Caldwell was treated.  Slate writer J. Bryan Lowder totally called what the results were going to be when he said, among other things, the following:

The church community appears to be important to this man, and it is clear that he cannot be openly gay and remain a part of this particular one. Nor, it should be said, can he find shelter in the church queen archetype; the success of the gay rights movement has had the consequence of making those kinds of previously tolerated roles increasingly untenable. But considering his effeminacy, his faith, even his blackness, would the mainstream gay community be any more welcoming? Given what we know about the historical treatment of those issues “over here,” I am not at all sure of that.

In the end, I wonder if we are not so much embarrassed for Caldwell as we are embarrassed that people like Caldwell may see so little of value in current gay culture that denying themselves in order to find acceptance where they can is an appealing option. This video introduces us to a fellow queen who is hurting, and on some level we realize we can offer little succor without doing violence to other aspects of his personality. And so instead of blushing, we laugh. 

Remember, the whole reason he lied was so that he would get supported by those around him, and what he found, instead, was notoriety, embarrassment, and even physical attacks of violence for being seen as gay after he claimed he wasn’t.

Now, I could take this time — and doubtless many will — to laugh hysterically at Caldwell’s hypocrisy.  But I’m not gonna.  Because I know a bit about what it’s like to be afraid of being rejected for who you really are, although I’ve never suffered national embarrassment from it or been physically beaten up for it.  I was once a Christian with severe doubts, and I didn’t want to tell the truth for awhile because I was afraid of being isolated, and that insecurity was hell.

I mean, honestly…does anyone reading this not have a secret they don’t dare to tell someone for fear of losing love?  Has anyone over the age of, say, 25 ever not been in a situation where they felt like they didn’t fi

I like going into Barnes & Noble every once in a while to browse the books.  One of my favorites was the PostSecret collection.  So much vulnerability.  And people thought that keeping the secrets kept them safe…and in many places, they were right.

There’s a lot more to say here about the ineffectiveness of attempts to “pray the gay away.”  Exodus International, a group dedicated to gay conversion, closed down in 2013 and issued an apology.  And, of course, there have been several anti-gay activists who have been secretly gay, and this could be seen as another on the list.  I’m not saying it’s right; the lies hurt a lot of people.

They hurt the people who feel they have to hide to be loved.

I know that atheism is about nothing more than a lack of belief in God or gods.  I get told that incessantly.  Even though I mentioned that I know that here, someone else, somewhere, is probably going to complain that I’m missing that with what I’m about to say…

But the truth is that if we are not accepting and understanding of the plight of individuals like Caldwell, we will make their lives hell.  We don’t have to be accepting of him.  But if we aren’t accepting to someone like him who is desperate for acceptance, he’ll probably think that in order to be accepted, he has to lie.  He may think that he can get more love and respect from suppressing his sexuality in the church than expressing it freely outside.

Or it may be more complex than that.  In any case, it breaks my heart, in a way, to see how much his life was ripped apart by the viral video.  Maybe it needed to be parodied and made fun of to help other gay individuals, so I’m not saying it’s a cut and dry moral issue.  But at the same time, when I see the hurt in Andrew Caldwell’s eyes when he talks in the news report, my vision waters up.

I don’t know how to end this.  I guess I could tie it neat with a nice little bow, but the truth is I don’t have the answers…so before I say something insincere, I’ll wrap this up.

I suppose I could leave you with a cropped pic I took from the PostSecret book I read in Barnes & Noble that seems somewhat fitting:

People seem to think the Old Testament is pretty damn puritanical when it comes to sex.  It’s probably because of that long list of restrictions that are often repeated in several Old Testament books, like Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy — the sheer number of rules and their extreme consequences get people to think the Old Testament law is really puritanical when it comes to sex.

And some of the punishments are ridiculous and offensive. Homosexual acts you commit with another man? Whatever homophobe wrote the Old Testament said that deserved stoning.  If a married woman decided to have a little sex outside of her marriage with a man (even if the man she had sex with was unmarried and unengaged), both her and the man were stoned to death.  Pretty goddamn extreme. Bestiality?  Stoned to death.  Sex with your daughter-in-law? No prison time or fine. You did get stoned to death, though.  Sex with your mother or stepmother?  Stoned to death. Sex with your brother or sister?  Stoned to death. Raping an engaged woman?  Stoned to death.

Pretty strong consequences?  Yes. Capital punishment for sex acts seems pretty severe.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_DFbw4IW-s[/youtube]

But comprehensive?  Hardly.

There are three serious loopholes in the Old Testament rules. They clearly show that the Bible is not puritanical when it comes to sex acts. Just…really misogynistic. More proof (as if you needed it) that the Bible was written by a man.

1. There is nothing anywhere in the Old Testament that says a married man can’t have sex with as many unmarried, unbetrothed women he wants.  Not a single verse.  If a married woman has sex with another man, married or unmarried, both of them get stoned to death.  But if a married man wants to have sex with a woman who is not claimed by another man through marriage or engagement …. the law is absolutely silent on the matter.  He can just do it without suffering so much as a fine.  And marry her, if he likes (as there’s no limit to how many woman a man can marry — but since a woman can only have sex with her one husband without getting stoned, there is a limit to how many men a woman can marry).

2. The Old Testament doesn’t say one word about lesbian sex.  Nothing, zero, notta.  If gay men have sex, both of them get stoned; I suppose God thought it might mess up their manhood somehow or, like the average conservative male, was homophobic concerning gay male sex but thought female-on-female sex was hot.  But lesbians?  Nothing at all.

It almost seems as if the writer of Old Testament law was a misogynistic, homophobic asshole.  Talk about a double standard.  I mean, these are the kind of laws you would expect from someone who only respected woman insofar as they were claimed by men, and who thought gay male sex was gross but lesbian sex was awesome.  In other words, this seems like the codified musings of a drunk college sophomore at a frat party, not the wisdom of an Almighty God.

And then there’s one thing that’s just plain disturbing. There’s no minimum marriage age.  None.  Because women had no autonomy — their worth was basically dictated by the men placed in charge of them.

And what if, say, a fifty year old man raped a seven year old girl?  That’s terrible, horrible.  I mean, if gay male sex gets the death penalty, shouldn’t this?  “No,” the misogynistic asshole “dictating” to Moses writes.  All the rapist has to do is talk to Dad, pay three times the bride-price, and marry her.  

Now, I’ve talked this over with Christians before, and they usually say one of two things.  One is that marriage and praying the bride price and is justice for rape, no matter how horrific.  Justice for rape is paying to marry the person you raped?  Wat? Do we really want to debate that that’s a load of bull?  Let’s not; it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes me depressed for extended periods of time about the state of humanity here in the Bible Belt of Texas.

The other is for them to say “But it was the culture of the time, you understand.  The women would have been happy to marry their rapists.”  I’m sorry.  After meeting women who have been raped, I think I’m on pretty safe ground in expressing my doubt that women who are raped want to marry their rapists.  Especially when the age disparity is so wide.  I could say more on that, but I shouldn’t have to, so I won’t.

As bad as that is, it’s nothing compared to the third loophole.

3. There is nothing saying that you can’t rape an unengaged virgin and marry her, no matter how old she is — and if you killed her father in battle, you could do it for free.  I know that’s terrible — what makes it more disturbing is that it’s true.  If you kill the father in battle, there’s no one to pay a bride price to, and no father to talk to.  She’s not “owned” by a male, so if you rape her…that’s it.  No stoning.  No fine. No punishment of any kind.  In fact, you may be able to live off the plunder you got from her dead parents in addition to having sex with her to your heart’s content, whether she felt like it or not.

It’s absolutely horrifying.  Surely this kind of thing would not be remotely allowed in the Old Testament?  There wouldn’t be an example of this scenario being set up, would there?  It’s just a made up hypothetical by a bitter atheist…

I wish that were true…but then there’s Numbers 31 (From The Message):

^7-12 They attacked Midian, just as God had commanded Moses, and killed every last man….The People of Israel took the Midianite women and children captive and took all their animals and herds and goods as plunder. They burned to the ground all the towns in which Midianites lived and also their tent camps. They looted and plundered everything and everyone—stuff and people and animals. They took it all—captives and booty and plunder—back to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the company of Israel where they were camped on the Plains of Moab, at Jordan-Jericho.

^13-18 Moses, Eleazar, and all the leaders of the congregation went to meet the returning army outside the camp. Moses was furious with the army officers—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—as they came back from the battlefield: “What’s this! You’ve let these women live! They’re the ones who, under Balaam’s direction, seduced the People of Israel away from God in that mess at Peor, causing the plague that hit God’s people. Finish your job: kill all the boys. Kill every woman who has slept with a man. The younger women who are virgins you can keep alive for yourselves.

So if you raped these virgins — of all ages mind you — that was it.  The men who went into battle could keep them alive “for themselves.”  And remember — these women had just experienced their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and almost everyone they’d ever known get slaughtered by the men who took them into their custody.  Due to the command of Moses, who wrote the Old Testament law supposedly “dictated” by God.

I think this is disturbing and despicable injustice.  I couldn’t stomach it my last few months as a Christian.  I can’t stomach it now.  There is no excuse for this.  How can Christians worship a “God” who had such misogynistic, homophobic tendencies?  Why isn’t it obvious to them that such laws were crafted by misogynistic, homophobic men?  Ugh.

Every once in a while, someone will ask me if I hate God.  I hate rape, and homophobia, and misogyny, so if that means I hate the creation of the horrifying concept of God in the Old Testament, then yes, I hate Him.  To do otherwise would be a profound insult to the dignity of human friends who, like, ACTUALLY EXIST.

And then, they tend to lean forward, look me deep and patronizingly in my eyes, and ask pityingly, “How’s your heart?”

What, you want me to imitate your heart?  You want me to read about laws that seem to endorse misogyny, pedophilia, and sexist homophobia, that enforce the perpetuation of these injustices with the death penalty and built in, shockingly disturbing loopholes that would make any special interest lobbyist look like a saint, and have a heart that will praise the invisible concept of God, handcrafted by such deeply prejudiced and cruel men, who commanded the laws that have caused so much hurt and pain over the millennia?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I like my heart the way it is.

I’m afraid I must decline your invitation to exhibit the insincere expression of remorse you request.

The problem, I hope you understand, is that I respect you as a human being too much for me to respect your God.  I have a hard time understanding why you respect this God yourself if you have any sense of dignity for yourself or, perhaps more importantly, for the human race in general.

To illustrate — Explain this: Why would anyone who has a heart for humanity worship a God who supposedly drowned most of the humanity He had made (with all their associated five sensory experiences and emotions) in a worldwide flood simply because He thought they weren’t respecting Him?  How on earth is drowning the world — complete with men, women, and children –a way to treat humanity that deserves respect?

My own answer is that I fail to see how that act deserves anything but the harshest insults.  Even if this God were real, I prefer to think I’d not give Him creedence as I saw men, women, and children choking in the rain and waves.  Could you imagine what the sight would have been like?  I mean, have you ever nearly drowned?  It is actually, if you are unaware, a thoroughly horrifying experience.  Having nearly drowned before myself, I can tell you that the most noble thing I could have possibly done in that situation if I had the least bit of empathy is not praise your God, but curse Him with all the poetic vulgarity I could muster.  A “Goddamn” would be fairly mild compared to the insults such wholesale slaughter would deserve, in my humble estimation.  With all due respect, it would be somewhat difficult to honor the stance of someone who not only refused to insult this being, but decided to praise Him, as you claim to do.  It is difficult to imagine being heartless enough to serve such cruelty.  What does it feel like, I wonder?  What does it do to your heart?

I certainly do not think I would have followed this God’s code for war conduct either.  Had Moses, Joshua, Saul, or David presented me with a battle plan from God to slaughter a city of men, women, children and infants, I would have cursed their God and, most likely, the men of God who perpetuated the blood-torn brutality due to blind allegiance and, possibly, bloodlust.  To be frank, I consider an insult in such a situation the least respect human lives are due.  I would not lace my sandals and slash open pregnant women’s bellies like a so-called soldiers of God.  I would not bury my sword in children or any civilian.  Even if this God did exist, I would like to think that I would hold fast and deny, even to the point of perishing myself, that this God remotely deserved anything other than the most insulting epithets one could muster.  Saying to this God “Goddamn” would almost feel, honestly, as if it were not quite insulting enough.

I realize you may be thinking, “Oh, but that’s the Old Testament.”  But this is the same God, supposedly, that you demand I show respect to.  I have some trouble determining why this God would be worth any praise or respect whatsoever.  A God who has commanded genocide and stands by that position is not anyone I would ever want to worship, regardless of which pages of your book He happens to be mentioned in.  Neither do I think a God who would insult the beautiful intimate relationship two men can share with stoning.  I would also not respect a God who remotely thought that a woman who was raped should probably marry her rapist, regardless of the surrounding cultural opinion on the subject.

Honestly, the very notion of your request that I take back my “Goddamn” because it supposedly insults God seems a bit out of propriety’s place.  It is I who should feel insulted on behalf of humanity for any semblance of respect you give such an abysmal excuse for a supposed deity.

And no, the fact that you claim these things are the fault of human sin does nothing to absolve God of the issue.  God made the whole mess, however you decide to slice and dice the creation story(ies) in the first few chapters of Genesis, from the ground up.  And please, none of this nonsense about free will.  We both know that God created free will so, like the gambler when he flips a coin, I see Him as responsible for the results of that creation just like He’s responsible for everything else.  All the bellowing demands that I worship Him as set apart from His creation are nonsense to my ears.  It was all His doing, if He existed, so it would be fully His fault.

At any rate, my objections only become more grave when we turn to the New Testament.  At least in the Old Testament, this God had some rules to be followed.  In the New Testament, whether or not you are cast forever in its new innovation of hell depends not on what you do right or wrong in your life, so much as it depends on your ability to believe a rather ridiculous fact.  According to most of its proponents, to avoid going to hell for eternity — which is everlasting torment — I would have to believe that the entirety of humanity was fundamentally sinful.  That none of us deserve to be in the presence of your God.  That none of us deserve to really live.  And in order for us to remotely breath the earth’s air with any semblance of dignity, we have to give up the precious, valuable lives we were born with and give them away to your concept of God.

And during the inquisitions, although I am unsure of my own fortitude, in lapses into my most optimistic frame of mind I tend to think that the neither the rack, nor the stake, nor any torture device known to man would have ended my respectable determination to curse this supposed God who was then, supposedly, in favor of it and countless other atrocities.  I would respect anyone who did the same, I believe.

I suppose I could continue, but suffice it to say that I insistently decline to erase my insult to any God that would demand I declare humanity morally bankrupt.  It is baffling, furthermore, if you think that, somehow, the fact that this God supposedly gives me grace after He has declared that I am unfit for anything except for an eternity in torment is a feature of your theology that I should respect.  No, I do not respect any theology that declares humanity is fundamentally morally bankrupt insofar as it fails to give the entirety of its vitality to a dead phantom.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI[/youtube]

I should say something further.  I am somewhat appalled and profoundly insulted myself, and on behalf of the humanity my heart values, that you think a God who is of the opinion that myself and my fellow human primates deserve eternity in hell deserves the remotest semblance of deference, let alone worship.  And it deeply concerns me, sincerely, to see you praise this being with a smile on your face.  It is somewhat appalling, to put it mildly.

So, that said, I hope you understand when I say that I think the most fitting courtesy I could give to the sadistic imaginary friend of you have is the same courtesy your book, and you, indicate that He will give me if I refuse to agree with His deeply disturbing interaction and position on the humanity that He himself supposedly made.  According to the book of Revelation, and most Christians, as an atheist who insults this perverted deity as regularly as he can manage, I will end up being damned to hell.

I extend the same courtesy to your God that He extended to me by reciprocating this assessment of appropriate judgment with a “goddamn.”  To be honest, I tend to think something a tad stronger is most likely more fitting, but at the moment I was feeling a tad cordial; I may have a more suitable reaction in the near future.  I hope you understand if that’s the best I can muster at the moment.

So, for the sake of your own dignity, and mine, and that of humanity, I hope you understand my decision to indulge in a reprise of my insult towards this instigator of humanity’s falsely percieved subservience….

Goddamn.

So, I’ve noticed a trend among Christians.  Very rarely do I meet a Christian who has become one due to evidence and reason.  In fact, more often than not, the reason one seems to become a Christian has to do with a desire for meaning, a quest for their life to matter, a need to have their moral standing validated, or some other similar reason.  It almost never has anything to do with the fact that they have researched heavily their stance and come to accept it.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeWPScnolo[/youtube]

Many Christians seem to think the same desires that brought them to Christianity are in me.  I was actually at a talk of an apologist named Frank Turek recently where he advised a young college girl who was concerned about her non-Christian friend that the best way to bring that young Christian friend to Christ was to get as close to the non-Christian friend as possible, and wait patiently until that non-Christian was going through a crisis. At that crisis point — when the non-Christian had reached rock bottom — the non-Christian would call up the Christian girl, Turek continued, and ask for help.  And that moment, apparently, was when this non-Christian girl would supposedly be most receptive to the gospel.

That may seem perverse, but it actually makes some sense.  If the Christian sees God as a personal being who helps in times of trouble, who gives you dignity and validation, and who makes your life matter, then it actually makes sense that a Christian would want to share this gift for dark times with a friend who was also going through a dark time.  But the problem is that, for people like me and many other atheists, such testimonies don’t really make a difference.  We believe our lives have a meaning we give it, that our moral standing is pragmatically and experientially superior to the Bible’s, and that human lives, including our own, matter. We don’t need your God for meaning, even if we can somewhat understand why you might.

Most Christians, however, don’t really seem to understand that; they seem to think that because their personal testimony is in need of a God, that means that our personal testimony, similarly, needs God  — even if we deny it.

It’s in human nature, really, to think that you’ve arrived and that the other person should take notes on what you’ve learned in your life.  In many ways, I’ve done that; I’m sure we all have.  But when it comes to Christianity, the fact that what you have seen gives you personal joy and comfort doesn’t mean jack squat, because you can find that joy and comfort in any one of 4200+ religions in the world.

The thing is — there are a lot of ways to make people feel good.  If you are having a hard time, a good song, a decent movie, or a beautiful novel may be able to lift your spirits.  But that is not proof that they are portraying real experiences that can be applied outside of their stories.  And it definitely does not follow that the fact that you enjoy listening to Bach means someone can’t like listening to Led Zeppelin.  It just is something that makes you feel good; it doesn’t give you authority over someone else’s experience.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr1I3mBojc0[/youtube]

The Bible has some interesting stories in it.  But the fact that they make a Christian feel good when they’re going through a tough time doesn’t make them true.  It just means it makes them feel good.  The fact that watching The Lord of the Rings or reading John 3:16 makes your life feel meaningful does not mean that either of the stories are true.  It just means that it makes you feel good — perhaps for very profound, complex reasons, true, but that’s what it comes down to.

I think that’s why I often feel a bit awkward when religious people share their testimonies with me.  If they obviously made a powerful impact on the person, I see that, and have some appreciation for it.  I can see how Christianity can, for some people, make a Christian-themed life seem more meaningful to them than alternatives, just as I can see how someone can prefer Star Wars 1,2, and 3 over The Lord of the Rings trilogy (it may be somewhat difficult for me to relate to in both cases, but I can see it).  But that doesn’t mean that I necessarily happen to have the same tendencies.  And it’s certainly not proof that any of the stories are true.

So, you might be wondering:  Why does any of this matter?  If religion makes people feel good about their lives, why not just let people be religious?

Because most religions — and in particular Christianity, the one I’m most familiar with — also usually claims that the things that make them feel good are true.  And in doing so, they tend to endorse, on some level, the claims of the Bible.  And that doesn’t mesh with me.  It’d be like my buddy saying that Star Wars was awesome, and then going from there to say that we needed to get in my car to stop the construction of the Death Star or something, using the force to steer.  No, I’m not down with that.  If we’re going to make decisions, we have to make sure we make rational ones that are based in an empirical world, using theories that predict somewhat reliable results.  Otherwise, we might end up hurting same-sex couples by saying their marriages are somehow inferior, or telling the mother that her recently atheistic son is going to spend eternity in hell.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0xQcEH7Dqo[/youtube]

So that’s why the Christian story that may seem so beautiful to Christians is so harshly objected to by me, largely.  It’s not because I doubt that the personal testimony you have to give gives you, personally, a sense of a more firm moral standing, meaning, and hope in life.  There are many stories people believe that seem beautiful to the person believing it, and I have as much respect for that beauty, in many places, as I do for a song or a movie someone else appreciates.  I start to harshly object, though, where the personal testimony seems to seek to take over my own experience and/or that of others I care about in irrational ways.

So, you’re better off showing me that what you believe is TRUE rather than just saying that what you believe makes you feel good.

And truth is not guaranteed to look beautiful, especially at first.  But I’ve found that seeking it is a beautiful story in itself, and one I do have a certain enjoyment in — even as “truth” itself is difficult to define.  When someone tells me, as religious people are wont to do, that an atheist’s life is stoic and cold, that’s something I can’t really relate to. There is a certain beauty in living a life based on empirical evidence that is focused on people, rather than one that fundamentally depends for validation on someone who is not flesh and blood, at least for me — which is one of the reasons I am not really a fan of Christianity.  Not really my style.

There’s much more for me to say on the subject — especially on reasons why the reality Christians think is true doesn’t appeal to me in the least — but that’s all I’ll say for no.