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Nil illegitimi carborundum : Don’t let the bastards grind you down
07/19/09
Why Do Unbelievers Get Your Doctrine Better Than You Do?
The one thing that astounds me and most certainly astounds other ex-Christians and former believers is how well you get the Christian doctrine can be measured on one or two metrics. The first metric is of course, how little you believe in the doctrine of the church to be true or how little you believe in Christianity’s portrayal of the truth, period. The second metric is how much money you are fleecing your flock out of, keeping them from finding anything other than the feel good verses of the Bible such as John 3:16 or any other verse that Christians mentally masturbate over. As an unbeliever, I know more about Christianity than other Christians do and some of my friends who are members of the church are amazed at the fact that a rotten ol’ atheist such as myself can recite verses with the best of them. They ask me why I no longer believe, why I do not believe or why I stopped trying to become a minister. The answer is simple, I understand the doctrine and I could not bring myself to continue the tradition of fleecing people out of their money. People think I am trying to be offensive when I say this, but it is absolutely true, it hurts me to think that I was so close to seriously robbing other people. And I could have gotten away with it.
Being raised a Christian, I was unlike many of the other Christians I interacted with – I had questions about the doctrine from a very young age. I had read the entire Bible by 10 and I was considered “saved” because I was baptized into my mother’s insanely devout Southern Baptist faith. I thought that if I could ask honest questions in school, that church should be no different, that I could ask questions about the Bible. I mean, everyone just seemed to be getting it but I just was not getting it. People give me a look of disbelief when I tell them this (no, not about the topic I would like them to disbelieve but rather, that I could have this revelation at such a young age) but I was a very weird kid. I did not even like kids when I was a kid, and that resulted in me being kind of a loner – aside from the fact that I had an abusive family. It gave me plenty of opportunity to read and learn more about the world around me.
“Experience is a harsh teacher”, as John Kramer said in Saw IV, “first comes the test and then the lesson”. This is truer than you know as when I started to ask questions to many of the people in the congregations, I was lambasted as being some sort of demon child, people were praying over me, the priest even tried to exorcise me. It all seemed so weird, because if I was having a problem in Science, no one was going to come over me and say “The Power of Darwin compells you, leave this child!” (they actually said boy, but I knew in my heart that I was a girl). When I tried to come out as a transsexual at 14, after doing much research, my family sent me to one of those ex-gay ministries to “cure” me of my homosexuality. So, this is why I am more inclined towards study then learning solely from experience, as experience has been a harsh teacher. I learned to bottle up my questions about the faith and keep my cross dressing on the down low, and pretend to be the good little son out in public. As I had said before, the motto around the house was “never let the neighbours know”.
I held my questions in until a year after graduating from high school because I still had fundamental questions in my heart and in my mind and could not deny them an audience any further. I had to learn from someone who was in an academic field so I had decided to attend Bible College in Calgary, Alberta. I continued to study the Bible on my own and even took courses such as New Testament Literature, the Life and Teachings of Jesus and even courses on how to be a proper youth minister, since that was my concentration. However, when I tried my questions there, I got the same response – I was ignored or accused of unbelief. I realized I had to study on my own so I took a little while from classes and actually started reading the bible, this time with an open mind and heart hoping that the holy spirit would come and reveal to me his truth and his plan. When I was finished, I knew one thing – that this was all a load of crap and that Christianity is a bullshit religion based on bronze age myths and fairy tales. Of course, since everyone at Alberta Bible College knew that I was starting to get it, they knew that I was going to stop believing since I had expressed no interest in fleecing my future flock.
I came back to school one day full of questions and enquiries for my teachers and the staff, knowing full well that if God was real, he was going to show me the answers through these people. And if he was not real, I would really be helping these people by planting the seeds of doubt into their mind. I was eventually stopped by Ronald Frasier, the director of Alberta Bible College, saying that I was badmouthing Jesus, not living up to the Community Life Covenant and was no longer welcome at Alberta Bible College. They did not refund my tuition and Mr. Frasier showed off his wonderful Christian attitude by calling my claims, “bullshit”, as of that day. Since that day until the first day that I had started writing publicly about Alberta Bible College, Mr. Frasier and his cohorts have been making offers to buy my silence. However, as of lately, I have been working on a book about my experiences in the Southern Baptist faith, my experiences of Alberta Bible College and how I have left the faith for good. . .
So, how is it that unbelievers or former believers know the scripture better than you? What was my life story supposed to prove to you, the reader? The simple fact of the matter is that Christianity stops it’s adherents from really reading the bible, making them think that no matter what the Bible says, god is good and we should be ever so grateful that he “loves” us. Well, I am here to say that if you are free, truly free, to read everything in the Bible without having those kind of blinders on, you see the story of a really sick piece of work. One that would kill, torture, rape and maim and justifies it just because he is the creator of all of this. Sorry but this shows to me that there is something deeply wrong with this god, or the character of god. Abuse is never okay and we are supposed to believe that this god, who willingly and indiscriminately abuses his followers loves us? This is why ex-Christians get it, because we know better than that. Did Jack Torrence love his son Danny, even though he tried to chop him up to bits with an axe? Of course not, so why does one fictional space daddy get to be loving but still abuse when we would just another’s behaviour as reprehensible. Sorry, but that shit does not fly.
No related posts.
Tags: Christianity, doctrine, Religion and Spirituality, scripture, the Bible
Your story is a shining example of why I hate American Christianity so very much. Everything you said about what your church, family, congregation, and college did, that’s what all but a fraction of a percent of so-proclaimed Christians do. They believe because their parents believed, and they live and teach their kids to live without any real knowledge of God or the Bible. Christianity has been Americanized to the point of being near meaninglessness, and oftentimes doing more harm than good to others.
I hit this point, as did you, and began an open-minded, question-everything study. Reading the Bible, Biblical literature, and asking the questions that no one in church ever asked. Only difference is, in Bible college and from the Bible and other Christian leaders (ones who practiced entirely what the preach), I got my answers. Good answers. Answers that only strengthened my personal faith and relationship.
So while we share a distain for the church and organized religion, we still seem to differ in where we ended up. I find that the teachings of the Bible, when studied entirely and applied, are not nonsensical and a crutch for the weak, but rather incredible truth and the hardest life you could live.
If nothing else, just know that not everyone is as blind and dumb as the overwhelming majority of Christians. Outside of America, where it is still persecuted, Christianity is as pure and as rapidly growing as it was in biblical times. One of the many reasons I’m leaving the states as soon as my degree is finished.
Talk to you later!
Chad, I’m afraid to say this but I feel that YOU don’t get what Christianity is all about. I could summarize the main point, the thesis of the Christian Bible plain and simple – Serve God or Burn Forever. He threatens to burn non believers (or anyone who does not love him but I think that by and large, non believers can be used in this instance) in the fire. This is a threat. Believe or be tortured endlessly.
I never said I didn’t get my answers. My conclusion was that the Jeebus story is total BS. I can only hope you are wrong in the fact that it is not truth because myself and many of the people that I love would be burning forever if it is true.
the ironic thing is that your blog is linked to the UU feed. the second U stands for Universalist, which at their heyday (the 1830s actually) was a fairly large Christian denomination that didn’t believe in hell, and knew – because the Bible said so – that all would be saved. I wont argue against your point, in modern UUism you can certainly believe that the Bible believes in Hellfire, just pointing out the irony of it.
As I have said many times throughout this site, when I talk about Christianity, I am talking about Christianity as it is shown through the Christian Bible. As people generally believe that holy books are inspired or actually written by the deities that have spawned then, I am deriving the beliefs criticized in this post from the Christian Bible.
The Bible does preach hellfire. I’m afraid that it’s black and white. It is sick and reprehensible but the sooner we recognize it, the sooner we can get people out of this death cult.
I will respond, but in the spirit of debate, not personal attack, which I hope is mutual. I use “you” in the general sense, not “you personally”.
Hell is not a threat, it’s a consequence. If you put your hand on a hot stove, it will burn you. It’s not the oven’s fault, it was your cognizant choice. A life lived in outright rejection of God results in an afterlife of separation from God. Such a place was created for the devil and his angels, and if you live your life in subservience to them, you end up with them.
God is love, and what other consequence could there possibly be for living your life in total rejection of Love? His love and benevolence is more than apparent all day every day if you only open your eyes. In spite of all the terrible things in life, God’s love can still be seen everywhere. To choose not to see Him but to see only hate and to live your entire life only for yourself is to spit in the face of Him and everything He does for you, including redeeming you by giving up Himself as a sacrifice.
It takes just a second to kill a man, but you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison for it. Is an entire lifetime of rejecting God–and essentially an infinite number of possibilities to turn to God–not deserving of God finally saying, “Fine, have it your way”?
No, God created hell specifically for the punishment of non-believers. He SAW this coming. He KNEW that this would be the purpose for hell. Unless you wish to claim that he is NOT all knowing. And the scripture claims that it is eternal torment, unless you are saying that the Bible is incorrect.
The God of the Christian Bible is not loving it all but threatens people, tells people to deny equality to homosexuals, tells slaves to remain in servitude to their masters, makes wives the property of their husbands. If you open your eyes, you can see the Christian God’s malice and distaste for humanity. To lead your life using him as an example allows you to justify malicious, horrific actions much like the god of the bible committed or led his followers to commit.
And what sacrifice did this God ultimately give? You claim he gave his life but he took it back in the end. He came back to life. We have a word for that, and it’s called Indian giving. He gave nothing and is chillaxing in heaven right now with his multiple personality disorder (he just does not know if he is the father, the son or the holy spirit anymore…).
Living your life without any god is the utmost expression of how much you care for humanity. How much distaste you have for horrific acts such as genocide, murder, slavery, homophobia, misogyny, rape or any of the other things the god of the bible has done or advocated for.
It takes just a second to rob a bank but you’ll spend years in prison for it. Is an entire lifetime of rejecting Santa Claus and essentially an infinite number of possibilities to turn to Santa not deserving of Santa? That’s what you just said sounds like to me.
I can sense a lot of anger in your response, and I think now I understand why you have come to the conclusion about Christianity that you have. Those who’ve been wrongfully shunned by fake Christians always become angry at them, and eventually angry at God. And why wouldn’t you be angry? Instead of being loved unconditionally by the followers of the religion who claim unconditional love as their banner cry, you are cast out and looked down on. And it is this anger that leads you to view God and Christians as malevalent and nonsensical, because that’s all you’ve ever experienced from them.
This is why you come to the conclusion you do, even though countless billions have read the same words and found only hope, faith, and love; even though billions have devoted their entire lives to immersing themselves in the study of these words and still find only hope, faith, and love; even though thousands of people come to find only hope, faith, and love from these words for the first time and dedicate their lives to its message.
People who have lived their lives as fake Christians, who in no way live out the message of God in the Bible, are despicable, and will be punished justly in the end for their homophobia, close-mindedness, and contemptible misuse of the incredible message they were given. I’m more sorry than you know for what you and so many others have had to suffer at their hands and thoughtless words. But that still doesn’t mean that God is fake or that His Word isn’t true.
God is not the things that you say He is, nor is the Bible what you say it is. The truths of the Bible are hard to see if you aren’t looking for them, and easy to misunderstand if try to find your own meanings in them. All I’ve ever found in them is love, because I haven’t hardened my heart to avoid seeing them for what they are.
I don’t hate you, look down on you, or pity you for any reason. You are a good person and a good friend, and should not be judged by anyone. I hope that you can find it within yourself to come to feel the same toward me and all those who truly believe as I do.
No, I’ve come to the conclusion I do because of the basic doctrine and scriptures that believers of Christianity worldwide refer to as the Inspired Word of God, the Christian Bible. But you are right on one part, I AM angry. I am REALLY angry when people believe that other people deserve to be tortured for ANY reason. I was not cool with the waterboarding fiasco that our country saw and I am not cool with the torture that God threatens to his followers in the Bible nor the REAL component to that, the mental torture that ensued. It’s like waving a knife in front of someone’s face, but since it’s mental torture, it’s inside your head and does not go away as easily. If you find only faith, hope and love in the Bible, you should read deeper to find the true message of the Bible, threats against unbelievers.
Despite the fact that God himself advocated homophobia and close-mindedness. As for misuse of the message, I believe that the message continues it’s original purpose to this day – financially supporting the priesthood. God is fake simply because of the fact that if he was real, then he is a truly malevolent being that allows hundreds of thousands of African children to die of starvation and disease.
God is the things I say he is because I choose to look beyond the claims everyone else make to see if they are true. I do not accept the claims at face value, I do research to try to validate my stance on things and everything I have seen and read about Christianity and this god you worship further justifies my belief that he is in fact a sadist. And when I say that, I mean no offense to anyone in the BDSM community. I will agree with you though on the fact that the truths of the Bible are hard to see if you aren’t looking for them. Problem is that if people actually opened their eyes and started to read the Bible without bias and think about what these things actually mean and their implications, there would be far fewer Christians. You have hardened your mind against seeing what the Bible actually says, passages where God kills a million ethiopians.
I don’t hate you, look down on you or pity you either. But I do believe that you are fundamentally mistaken on what you believe and that further research and open-mindedness is needed.
I dunno, I’m still pretty sure it’s mainly to do with being angry. Being a Christian, I’ve had more than my fair share of run-ins with angry atheists and angry people of varying levels of agnosticism, all with one thing in common–they had encountered some sort of unpleasantness involving their church experience in the past. After that, every one of them began “studying the Bible with an open mind” A.K.A. “reading the Bible deliberately looking for faults, and of course finding them because that’s what they want to find, and no amount of evidence against their supposed findings will persuade them otherwise, which is ironic because they’re so open-minded now”.
And if a closer and more open-minded reading of the Bible is all it takes to realize how flawed it is and how evil God is, than how could it possibly be that the multiple millions of people who, as I type this, are suffering persecution and so many horrible atrocities because of their faith, and who spend most of the day pouring fervently over every word in their Bibles (not coincidentally, these are the people who live out their beliefs…go figure) are not sitting up and saying, “Wait a second…turns out God actually sucks. Screw dying for my faith in Him”. NOBODY reads the Bible more than these people, and if there were ANY tiny hint of a real reason whatsoever to show that God is evil, why would these people allow themselves to be tortured and killed for Him? Maybe it’s because they know that this life means absolutely nothing in comparison to the afterlife, a knowledge God demonstrates by His seemingly small regard for people dying on earth…death doesn’t matter! Not the slightest bit, not considering how much more is out there beyond our stupid little lives that we try so futilely to protect.
Also, it cannot be said about me that further research and open-mindedness is needed. Unlike most angry non-believers who claim to have read the Bible thoroughly, I continue to read it, and to research it much further than I’m sure most of them ever dreamed you COULD research it. Have you read the passages that you select as your evidence of God being a sadist in their original Greek/Hebrew? Read biblical and other commentaries pertaining to the cultural and historical situation in each case, the “story behind the story”, if you will? Consulted Bible scholars holding multiple doctorates in Bible on each specific reference? Because I have, and each time, I get answers that completely quiet my doubts and nearly blow my mind sometimes. For instance, about 6 months ago I collected the various instances I could find regarding women being under men because that had been bothering me for awhile, and I asked about them and read more about them. What I found was not a “men > women” meaning of any sort like I’d wondered, but very good answers for each case that I’d been perplexed about.
The God of the Bible; of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and of you and me, is NOT a evil sadist, and He is very very real.
Of course I’m angry, I never denied it for a second! I’m angry that people can explain away horrific acts in the Bible and that it lessens our empathy for others. Studying the Bible with an open mind means being able to see the flaws, not ignore them like many Christians do. Not explain away the gruesome acts explained in the Bible. You can find faults aplenty in the Bible because it waas written with a primitive code of morality where women were treated as property. The homophobia and misogyny in the Bible reflects the era in which it was written, the Bronze Age. I’d like to think we’ve come far since then and we should honour the advances we’ve made a little.
Just as you believe that God is good and all the shitty things he does in the Bible can be explained away by Biblical scholars. They are in essence saying ignore the nasty parts. It is wrong to rip open pregnant women. But sadly, the believers in the Bible justify this. I wonder if this is how people like Andrea Yates can commit brutal crimes and blame them on Satan telling her to because people actually believe this shit. People actually believe there is a Satan out to get you and fuck with your life. Really.
It can because you refuse to see the nasty parts of the Bible for what they are. Are you telling me that Bible scholars can justify cruel, sadistic actions? I don’t have to consult Bible scholars to know that taking women as the spoils of war is a sick practice. I don’t have to consult the original Greek or Hebrew to find that forcing an unmarried woman to marry her rapist is a disgusting practice. Somehow, I wonder if these people were involved in OJ Simpson’s defense trial. You can get explanations for all of these things but assuming the bible is right, we have real victims of real crimes against them and the God of the Bible endorses these. He endorses the passage where they talk about ripping open pregnant women and bashing little ones against the rocks. The bible is severely “men > women”. I wonder why it is that more women don’t rise up against Christianity given how misogynystic it is.
Your Bible clearly states that your god is an evil butcher, more evil than Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot combined. Of course, we can all be grateful of the fact that he is just as real as Santa Claus.
Like I said, you seem to be casually perusing the text and grabbing onto verses to use as your examples without understanding them at all, or even reading the context. All the mentions of ripping open pregnant women were not at all condoned by God, but actually were punished by God. And the case of marrying a raped women is not only taken out of context, but is misread by you entirely. First off, by looking at the verses before, you can see that God is not condoning rape, but in fact saying that the rapist is to be punished by death. And here, the HEBREW (yes, studying in the original language DOES clarify) word for raped is “shakab”, which also commonly refers to “consensual sex”. These are just a couple of the explanations that clearly show how CRUCIAL it is to read context and to ACTUALLY study passages that seem unclear.
No one is condoning or explaining away anything, just clarifying the ignorant misunderstandings of careless readers. Again, NOT condoning or explaining away, but rather CLARIFYING CARELESS MISUNDERSTANDINGS caused by taking words out of context and by doing no research whatsoever beyond reading that one verses again. I’m not, nor is anyone else, refusing to see anything, rather we take the time to study the verses. But most of the time THAT’S not even necessary to get the basic meaning, you just have to read the whole context!
“Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!’”
–God, in Job 38:2-5
Oh? Where did god punish these people? Where does it say these things? And I assure you, the rape thing is not taken out of context but is rather accurate. He may not condone rape, and he does, I assure you, but he requires a woman to marry her rapist and this is clear in the Bible. If this were not the intent of the words, why have translators from different periods of time and cultures (i.e. the King James Version translators and the NIV translators) write it as rape. Furthermore, if the HEBREW word confuses “rape” with “consensual sex”, that shows a really depraved society that condones rape or equates it with consensual sex. We know that this society condones rape given the religions of the area and their behaviour, specifically Islam. Islam requires women to wear the oppressive device we know as a burka to justify the fact that if they leave a square inch of skin uncovered, it justifies rape.
It is crucial to read context, I agree but whenever you point out the really depraved shit that goes on in the Bible, Christians cry “out of context” because they can’t get past the bullshit idea that god is love and see anything that opposes that shiny veneer hiding the nasty shit in their faith as out of context. This is a faith that threatens to burn non-believers in eternal torment known as hell. This is a faith that justifies the fact that god wiping the earth of it’s entire populace is a good thing when in fact, it’s genocide. This is a faith that justifies the death penalty for homosexuals. Simply put, this is a sick and depraved faith.
In the airline industry, there are two types of passengers, rev and non-rev. Rev (short for revenue) passengers paid for an actual seat on the plane and are a lot harder to put on standby or boot off the plane if the weight needs to be reduced for take-off or landing. Non-rev passengers are those who are flying for free, namely people who are using frequent flyer miles or who are spouses or family of someone who works for the airlines. No amount of lip service or misreading of airline regulations turns a non-rev passenger into a rev passenger, it’s that simple. So if you need to lose 200 pounds and you have a non-rev passenger, guess who gets kicked off the plane and put on standby? If I say a passenger is a rev passenger instead of a non-rev, that doesn’t make her so.
Funny you should bring up Job because I can’t think of any better example that shows how little god cares for those who love him. After all, look at all the horrible things that happened to Job and this “loving” God has the audacity to taunt him and ridicule him after all the shit he’s put Job through?