Skip to main content

Why I Am an Anti-Theist

By Tim McGraw ~

Growing up I was an only child of a single mother in a radical pentecostal church, there were a few men who tried to be a “father figure” in my life. I always wanted to find my biological father, my mother told me, “you have fathers and you know they love you.” The first thing that is wrong with that is fathers plural. There was never just one, they were all there to “help” from time to time. But they really only cared if they thought “my soul might be in danger.” In other words, they were only there for negative. They only cared about correcting me and preaching to me. They, for the most part, did not want to show actual fatherly love in the sense that a young boy would have craved. As I got older, I was deemed a misfit. At 14 I was a danger to the community; they told me was unable to have contact with any of my peers for fear that I would “poison them.” They did not care about ME, they only cared about their dogma. They only cared whether or not I would comply with their lifestyle. Beyond that, they couldn’t care less. They just assume see me rot in prison, because that would justify to them that they were right and they could use me as an example. My poor mother is been so brainwashed by them, she feels she cannot make a decision without their approval. She always put them in front of me, believing always they had her and my best interest at heart. She believes that they are a direct line from god, and what they feel is best has got to be god’s will. They just used her for her tremendous musical skill, and I was just an afterthought to entice her services. They told me if I wanted to leave me and my mother would have to move to Dennison. They would put me in public school until I was 18. Then my mother would move back and I would be on my own. This scared me to death. Luckily my grandparents offered to let me move in with them. That is how I escaped.

When I got out I was mentally behind and completely unprepared. So it has taken me the last ten years to discover who I am and what I think. I am still of course continuing to search. I would say I am desperate for understanding, but I am not angry at life. I know it might sometimes come off as angry when I complain and rail about things that I annoy me or that I disagree with. The reason I do that is because I am an activist and an anti-theist. I like to challenge the status quo; I do not just accept that things just are the way they are. I employ logic and reason, and search for evidence to find out what makes sense to me. I started using Facebook as a tool to express my opinions. I soon found out that a lot of people do not want to exorcise their brain and actually try understand what I am questioning and why. I know this is an example of how religion poisons everything, Christians, and even more so for Muslims, do not like people to question their doctrine. Homestead would be a prime example of this. Therefore people who are still under the mindset of “do not question anything, just accept it for what it is” hate when people like me dare to question or make light of their dogma no matter how crazy it might seem.

I recently spoke to a reporter who is investigating allegations of abuse in the cult. My mother found out of course and decided to end our relationship. The passage my mother quoted me supporting her decision to discontinue our relationship is completely justified by the bible. “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26 There are scriptures that contradict that very passage. This is a prime example of “cherry picking,” picking a scripture that fits what is needed, but ignores other scriptures that say the exact opposite. I am sure a skilled theist can make up some justification to that scripture. “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” 1 John 3:15 not only is that scripture completely wrong, but it contradicts the criteria of being a follower of Jesus. Saying that someone is a murderer because they might dislike, or even hate a person does not make them in the slightest bit a murderer. That is like the scripture that says, “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matt. 5:28 It is impossible to control the thoughts of a person. How can you commit adultery “in your heart?” And it is only adultery if one of the people is married. These are scriptures similar to the commandment “Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s goods” which is the basis for our capitalistic economy, our society is run on the fact that people covet. What people think cannot be regulated. Besides, if nobody ever looked at anyone with lust, nobody would ever hook up or get married. Lust as they call it, is just a natural function of our brain called attraction. If we were not attracted to anyone sexually, how would we have propagated our species?

Several theists told me to read "A Case for Christ." I read it. Although it did not change my mind, I found it interesting. It actually bolsters my view. I would point out that Lee was not an atheist, he was a skeptical non-believer. He only interviewed ONE non-Christian expert. That expert was only to say that, in his medical opinion, Jesus could not have survived what experienced on the cross. That is an easy conclusion to come to. The rest of the experts are just saying why they believe the gospels to be the gospel. They might in their expert opinion think that Jesus was not delusional, and that he was in fact a god etc. I can concede that me might have existed, more likely he is just a representation of people like him, prophets who thought they were Messiah. However there is nothing, no evidence to support that he was anything but just an influential guy who had a lot of fans. The whole basis of Christianity is based in the concept that everyone is born in “sin.” Before Jesus, people were atoned for by blood sacrifice. Then Jesus came and died as the final atonement for all, but then he was resurrected and that proved that he was god as well as human, a demigod is what the Greeks called such beings. I reject the basis for this belief. We are not born into “sin,” thus we do not need atonement. Blood sacrifice is primitive, archaic and brutish. It only shows that primitive people did grasp what cause nature to work, they thought by taking life, it would in turn make the gods happy and give back life in a sense. Remember, the ancient central and South American natives performed human sacrifice to appease the gods. In their minds it made the sun to come up and the rain to fall. We find that abhorrent today, but yet the concept that a demigod sacrificed himself in order to “save” humanity is perfectly acceptable?

I have been reading "God is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything." It is an amazing book. If you want a glimpse into my general philosophy on the subject of religion I would recommend reading it. I don’t think that it is fair to say the reason I am skeptical, and reject religion is because of my negative experience at Homestead. The arguments for religion stand and fall on their own merit. When I was younger, about 13 or so, I remember asking the question (after learning about the ancient Greek gods) “What makes those gods different from our god or Allah? What makes Christians correct? What sect of Christianity is correct? Is everyone who was unfortunate enough to be born on the wrong continent with the wrong religion going to hell because they have not heard ‘the good news?’” I would say my skepticism started young. My activism however is because of Homestead, I see what religious mind control does to people and therefore I do anything in my power to undo and prevent it from happening. I am not just an anti-theist either; I am an activist for equal rights and freedom from tyranny for everyone as well as the separation of church and state. My biological father is a gay, transgendered woman. Before I even met her or knew anything about her, I had gay friends, dated trans-women and discovered that I am bisexual. Equal rights for everyone, especially for the LGBT community is very important to me. I am fanatical about equal rights for marriage, I myself do not ever plan to marry but to say two consenting adults who want to make that kind of commitment is wrong, to me is appalling. The government needs to live and let live. It should only make laws in order to prevent harm to other humans. Otherwise leave us well enough alone to think, believe and love whomever we like.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE FRIGHTENING FACE

By David Andrew Dugle ~ O ctober. Halloween. It's time to visit the haunted house I used to live in. When I was five my dad was able to build a big modern house. Moving in before it was complete, my younger brother and I were sleeping in a large unfinished area directly under the living room. It should have been too new to be a haunted house, but now and then I would wake up in the tiny, dark hours and see the blurry image of a face, or at least what I took to be a face, glowing, faintly yellow, high up on the wall near the ceiling. I'm not kidding! Most nights it didn’t appear at all. But when it did show itself, at first I thought it was a ghost and it scared me like nothing else I’d ever seen. But the face never did anything; unmoving, it just stayed in that one spot. Turning on the lights would make it disappear, making my fears difficult to explain, so I never told anyone. My Sunday School teachers had always told me to be good because God was just behind m

The Blame Game or Shit Happens

By Webmdave ~ A relative suffering from Type 1 diabetes was recently hospitalized for an emergency amputation. The physicians hoped to halt the spread of septic gangrene seeping from an incurable foot wound. Naturally, family and friends were very concerned. His wife was especially concerned. She bemoaned, “I just don’t want this (the advanced sepsis and the resultant amputation) to be my fault.” It may be that this couple didn’t fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation. It may be that their choice of treatment was less than ideal. Perhaps their home diabetes maintenance was inconsistent. Some Christians I know might say the culprit was a lack of spiritual faith. Others would credit it all to God’s mysterious will. Surely there is someone or something to blame. Someone to whom to ascribe credit. Isn’t there? A few days after the operation, I was talking to a man who had family members who had suffered similar diabetic experiences. Some of those also suffered ea

Reasons for my disbelief

By Rebekah ~ T here are many layers to the reasons for my disbelief, most of which I haven't even touched on here... When I think of Evangelical Christianity, two concepts come to mind: intense psychological traps, and the danger of glossing over and missing a true appreciation for the one life we know that we have. I am actually agnostic when it comes to a being who set creation in motion and remains separated from us in a different realm. If there is a deistic God, then he/she doesn't particularly care if I believe in them, so I won't force belief and instead I will focus on this one life that I know I have, with the people I can see and feel. But I do have a lot of experience with the ideas of God put forth by Evangelical Christianity, and am confident it isn't true. If it's the case god has indeed created both a physical and a heavenly spiritual realm, then why did God even need to create a physical realm? If the point of its existence is to evolve to pas

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two