I Wish I Had Never Heard The Gospel

By Jay ~

“I wish I had never heard the Gospel.”

I whispered this phrase to myself today while staring at the cross still hanging on my living room wall. Life was so much easier before religion got involved. I remember being a simple minded child before being introduced to Christianity. The world was beautiful, it had an almost magical glow to it. Then as I got older around age 13 it came—I heard the Gospel and “accepted Christ”…

It catapulted me into a couple of nice Christian teenage years. The first girl I ever made out with was at youth camp and that was pretty cool. I talked to God all the time and felt that He was leading my life. I remember crying out to God to save my Dad because I didn’t want him to go to hell. Then around age 17 or so rational thinking took over and I quickly left my faith and pursued things like college and getting married.

Fast forward about 8 years and I’m an alcoholic in a strained marriage that I almost lost with a failing business I had started. It was obviously time for a life change. Lucky me at the same time I had some weird, freaky sleep paralysis spiritual experience at an old Inn known to be haunted. My brain thinks, “Hey this must be proof of a spirit realm so since everything is going so bad you should go back the God you loved so much as a teenager.” I did and it seemed like things started to pull back together.

But I could never make sense of Christian theology in my head. I tried to apply the verse, “lean not on your own understanding” but then I thought, “why the hell would God create us with a brain if were not supposed to use it?” And so I took up some unorthodox theology. I got caught up in the charismatic movement where I could have a more open/less conservative view of God. I started believing as an inclusivist. I reasoned if God created this screwed up world then it’s His responsible to clean up the mess. And if Jesus really died for all—like the Bible says—then he has taken responsibility… although He still just kicks back on a cloud while kids starve and genocides take place.

As far as God goes, I’m through with the hide and seek game.I also started chasing after signs and wonders thinking if I got enough experience that my “encounters” would outweigh my intellectual confusion and I could finally just live happily as a Christian. And so my wife and I moved across the country twice going to different churches where I thought God was telling us to go. Both times I ended up in extreme financial issues and depression. The worst of it happened just recently and I finally decided to go to a doctor and a psychologist about the depression. They got me on some meds and I am doing much better now.

But as far as God goes, I’m through with the hide and seek game. I stopped going to church just over a month ago because I couldn’t take the ups and downs it would throw my thinking into. The problem with me is that I really want to believe in God but the truth is I don’t—at least not the God of the Christian Bible. I can’t believe in a God that would order homosexuals to be stoned to death and entire villages of women and children to be executed. I can’t believe in a God that I thought led me somewhere and then abandoned me depressed and in pain twice, when all along He knows just one flippin word from Him would snap me out of it. If I could just know He was there I would have felt better. The depression came from trying to make sense out of something that was untrue. The truth is I’m too compassionate, intellectual, just and analytical to ever be a Christian. To be a Christian I had to lie to myself daily and that is a walking contradiction. I cannot do it anymore.

My depression is much better after being on meds for 6 weeks but I’ve had these inclinations to keep trying to continue some sort of spiritual life but it’s so confusing. I’ve read up on Hinduism, Buddhism and Gnosticism and they are all quite interesting but not for me. If anything from studying Buddhism I’ve realized that labeling myself is where I first went wrong. Buddhism teaches the limits of words and if there is some Higher Power its not going to be comprehended through a book written 2000 years ago.

So that’s where I’m at now. I’m just being me. Taking life as honestly as I can, focusing on loving my wife and loving myself. The posts on here have been much helpful through the process. It’s very comforting to know that I’m not alone in the pain I feel from my Christian past. It’s also very intellectually freeing to not be frightened to read an article on Neanderthals, the age of the universe or micro evolution anymore. God bless the Neanderthals.

Website: http://thespiritualpilgrimblog.wordpress.com

Seeing The Light At The End Of The Tunnel

By Jen ~

Wow. I honestly can't believe I'm here. But I am. I'm still fairly early on in my de-conversion, but all these stories are so refreshing. For the moment, I'm considering myself more of a deist, but there's still so much more to learn, I know.

I was raised in the Grace Brethren Church, a very conservative and fundamentalist denomination. My brother, who was 13 years older than me, even went to a bible college and became a minister, and worked for them for quite a few years. My mother never really went to church. She always had some kind of excuse, like she didn't have anything decent to wear, or she can't sit that long, or something. I never questioned it for some reason. But she did watch alot of religious programs like the PTL Club, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jerry Falwell. But yet she sat and watched soap operas every afternoon. Go figure. Very conflicting values that didnt make sense to me, but again, I didnt question it. Thats where a lot of my sex education came from. LOL!

My father passed away when I was 8. So my brother was the main source of "spiritual guidance" for me. I remember asking him questions like "so if all this magical stuff happened back in bible times, why doesn't it happen now?" His answer was usually something like, " well that's because God was there then" or something like that. I can remember being told that the church offerings were "giving our money to God"...but then I thought, if God is the leader of the whole universe and can do anything he wants, why does he need money? And how does our money get all the way up to him anyway? But I was always afraid to ask those kinds of questions.

My time at that church wasn't a pleasant one, nor was it horrible. I always felt like an outsider though, even though my brother was one of the pastors. Most of the kids my own age were stuck-up and went to Christian schools. I didn't, so I didn't have that in common with them. I remember having fleeting thoughts of " if that's what being a Christian is, being snobby and unfriendly to people just because they aren't like you, then I'm not so sure I want to be one myself".

In the years after I graduated high school, I stopped going to church, simply because I didn't feel comfortable (and never did) and just felt as though I couldn't truly be happy living the way they expected me to. So many rules, never feeling as though I was ever doing the right thing, and even when I did, or tried to, I was always taught that we are sinners, that we are unworthy of God's love. Kinda takes the joy out of it, doesn't it?

Speaking of which, where IS all this joy, the "freedom", the act of "breaking the chains"? How can you possibly feel all this unending love when you're constantly told what horrible sinners we are? How can you feel all this "freedom in Christ" when we're expected to live by so many rules, no drinking, no dancing, no secular music, books or other media, no (or very little) mainstream tv, being "encouraged" to let go of our old friends and sometimes even our family members if being around them hindered our spiritual growth. What kind of life is THAT? It's no wonder so many evangelicals stumble and commit horrid acts such as molesting children or cheating on their spouses. And look how many of them are closet homosexuals. The standard of living they expect from you goes against human nature. It's impossible, at least to me.

Anyway, being over 18 then, no one could force me to go anymore so I didn't.

From that point I lived pretty much like any normal young adult. Hanging out with friends, having fun, partying a bit... I didn't get into trouble, but I certainly didn't act very "Christian". It was also during this time that my brother divorced his first wife, after which, even though he was still an ordained minister, really relaxed the rigidity of his beliefs. His ex-wife was mainly to blame for a lot of his distance from our family. We became very close again, closer than we were as kids.

His core beliefs remain pretty much the same, and he is a hardcore conservative politically. We don't discuss politics, mainly because we're on opposite ends of the spectrum and its been a source of tension at times between us. I haven't even entertained the thought of discussing my doubts and the beginnings of my de-conversion with him. I've seen how ugly he can get when talking about politics, I don't want to imagine what he'd say if I went to him with this. He's asked before if my cousin and her husband (who are both atheist) have ever discussed the subject of religion with me and that he was worried about their "influence" on me. He doesn't speak to them for this reason. The truth is, of course I've discussed it with them. But my doubts and frustration with religion and churches began before any conversation with them.

Which is what brings me to where I am now. My questioning of the bible and Christianity began with homosexuality. My husband and I have many friends and family members who are gay. I've only begun to see now that I'm older (I'm now 42) that being gay is something you're BORN with, not something you become. So my question is, WHY would god allow these people to be born this way, but be subject to a life of misery and an eternity in hell? It just didn't make sense to me. That's when I began to think that the bible was written by man, not god. I compare it to a lot of the religious fanatics I've encountered throughout my life. The bible could have very well been written by people just like them, but in a different time. People claiming that god "speaks" to them. Just like a time I was at a womens bible study and the woman giving the message looked right at me saying that god was speaking to her right now, telling her to minister to someone. Well, a particularly needy woman in the group, the type who threw herself up front and got "re-saved" week after week and always had a crowd of people around her praying for her, ran up to this woman after the bible study, convinced it was her she was talking about. I gave the woman a glance and found her watching me as I made a quick exit. :-) So I use her as an example of the type of people who may have written the bible...THEMSELVES. Not divinely inspired.

There's just no reason to believe that there's the kind of governing power ruling over us that they describe. especially one who would allow innocent people to suffer while others who make a life of swindling people in the name of religion and making millions from it, are allowed to do so. There's no justice in it. My brain hurts from trying to figure it out, and my heart hurts for feeling like I've been lied to all my life.

In 2005 my husband lost his father in March and I lost my mother in November. Out of despair, we decided to start going to church together. The first one we tried was a Methodist church, which was his father's family's church. While we met some rather nice people there, I just wasn't totally on board, as though I was just going through the motions. Aside from that, there was overwhelming pressure to become more involved, being on the church board, helping with functions, staffing the nursery. (we don't have kids of our own) which brings me to that point. Since we had trouble conceiving, there was also a lot of pressure to adopt. We started the process, but backed out because all they wanted to give us were special needs kids. I'm not heartless, but we just didn't feel we were equipped to handle that kind of responsibility. So we dodged questions as to why we backed out, and they finally dropped the subject. Then came the issue of a certain young woman in the church. She was very dramatic and charismatic, involved in just about every committee in the church. She was also a "3-time cancer survivor" according to her. And also married with 2 kids. She also used her sob stories to develop a friendship with my husband and me, which turned out, she was more interested in a "friendship" with my husband more than me. Since they were on the trustees committee together at church, after the meetings she would want to hang out and talk. She began calling him almost every day on his cell phone. She would never call the house phone. I intercepted one of her messages one day while he was napping, and she said how she missed him, and when he gets this message to call her. She ended it with "I love you". I immediately confronted him and he denied any wrongdoing, and that he indeed was becoming uncomfortable with her constant calling, and he was just trying to be nice because of all she's been through. But after that he did ask her to please not call him unless its church business and that her message greatly upset me. Instead of apologizing, she started crying hysterically and said he was betraying her, and she thought they were best friends, and she loves him dearly...he said "my wife is my best friend and what you're doing is upsetting her and I can't have that." After that, we didn't speak to them at church and began to notice that quite a few people were treating us differently. I refused to continue going, and we told his family members what happened, so if anything was said, they could set the record straight. It turned out she was having multiple affairs on her husband, she never had cancer, and ended up moving away after she and her husband divorced. We still didn't go back.

The next church we tried was an Evangelical Free Church. I don't know what we were thinking. All the "rules for living" I listed above earlier? Yeah, that was them. Throw in some arm waving, healing prayer circles, and lots of guilt and you get the picture. We left feeling spiritually beat up after hearing the pastor preach week after week about this jealous, hateful god.

So then I met a wonderful liberal UCC minister through mutual friends on Facebook. I finally thought we found what we were looking for. We attended his church for 2 years and became very close to him and his family. We met some truly great people there, who we continue friendships with even now. But since we live in a very conservative area, it came to light that there were a number of people, most in governing positions in that church, who didn't like him and wanted him out. They concocted a plan to do so. This caused a huge division in the church, and most people that sided with him, including us, left. That was last November. We have decided once and for all that we are through with churches for good.

So that's where we are now.

I'm much more of a deep thinker than my husband is, and I'm not entirely sure where he stands on the issue, but I do know that he still believes in god. We've discussed it a little bit, and was pleasantly surprised when he said he had a discussion with a co-worker about churches being a joke. My questions go deeper than that. In time I may discuss it with my former UCC minister friend, because I think he would be much more open than my evangelical conservative brother would. But I'm just not ready yet. Our minister friend also asked us to be his youngest child's godparents. The baptism is next month. Should I follow through with this despite my doubts?

So many questions. So much to think about.

Supernatural: An Extimony in Disguise?

By -Demona- ~

If you haven't at least heard of the TV series Supernatural, you've obviously been living in a cave.

At first blush, the CW's popular television series might seem like your typical Monster of the Week show about two brothers who share their surname with a brand of rifle. But, interestingly, it dares to pose theological questions that other shows dare not ask, in a highly entertaining (and sometimes very meta) format.

Supernatural has, of course, gotten so entrenched in our collective consciousness that it's currently gearing up to begin its Ninth Season, after the Season Eight finale where the angels plummet en masse from Heaven.

Supernatural (season 5) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

All of the angels still sucking air, that is. Many of the (ostensibly) immortal beings died over the course of the show. Some were bad to the bone and others weren't so bad, but were still prone to high-handedness and racism against humans ("hairless monkeys" was the preferred anti-human slur).

The one decent angel who was in humanity's corner is the heroes' guardian angel—Castiel—went from jerk, to rebel-against-the-angelic-establishment-for-his-human-peeps, to well-intentioned extremist, to two kinds of batshit insane, to a repentant sinner himself. Yes, a recently fallen angel is one of the good guys!

The kicker? Castiel's big sin was accidentally setting loose the Big Bads of Season Seven: the Leviathans (a nasty, prehistoric, pre-angel race that hungers for anything made of yummy meaty flesh). A crime against humanity, rather than a crime against God was the sin of which he needed to repent. God had locked the Leviathans away in the first place because He, purportedly, feared they would nom up all of His Creation. Being an absentminded Daddy, when He locked them away He somehow forgot to swallow the key. Because setting free the Leviathans? It's a scaled-up version of a child getting his hands on his Daddy's gun.

Speaking of the Big Daddy, God never actually makes an appearance in the world of Supernatural. Not once. This is frequently lampshaded by the human protagonists, monster-hunting brothers Sam and Dean Winchester (the latter essentially calls God a dick for not stepping in to avert the Apocalypse). Indeed, the most powerful being ever seen on the show is Death, who promises to reap God one day before turning the lights off on this ol' Universe.

Death's also the only super-powered being the Winchesters have a healthy respect for. Death's first scene in the show proved how powerful a deity He is—the massive, deadly storm plaguing Chicago at the time was a then-chained-by-Lucifer Death cracking His knuckles (and grabbing a bite of pizza) in preparation of the Great Reaping the Apocalypse would have ushered in. Dean had originally planned to do away with Death via Death's own scythe, but Death simply took it back with a cool thank-you and warned Dean not to get snarky. Death summarily refers to Lucifer's attempt to start said Apocalypse as "a bratty child having a tantrum."

Also? Death drives a sweet white '59 Caddy with the license plate “BUH*BYE”. (A savvy nod to the pale rider in the Book of Revelations? Yes, please!)

"This is the angel of death. Big daddy reaper. They keep this guy chained in a box six hundred feet under. Last time they hauled him up, Noah was building a boat." —The Winchesters' mentor, Bobby Singer, on Death (SPN 5.10 "Abandon All Hope...")

"[I am] as old as God. Maybe older. Neither of us can remember anymore. Life, death; chicken, egg; regardless, at the end, I'll reap him too."

"God? You'll reap God?"

"Yes, God will die too, Dean."

—Death and Dean Winchester (SPN 5.21 "Two Minutes to Midnight")

It makes sense that the penultimate, and ultimately unconquerable, supernatural force on the show is Death Himself. He is the one power whose work we can actually see in front of us, the one we desperately try to run from, but who reaches us in His own unhurried yet implacable pace.

Death is the one being who makes His presence felt, and He doesn't care if you believe in Him or not, because your opinion on the subject doesn't matter to Him. What you believe has no importance to how He does His job.

Because you're still gonna die, anyway. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but give it time. He's got plenty of it, but you don't.

Seeing such a smartly put-together dude like Death makes the Almighty look all the more clueless. God's big moment when Lucy finally broke out of lockdown? Sweeping the Winchesters a few hundred feet away from Lucifer's true form, as Big Bro Satan emerged in the middle of a blinding column of light that annihilated anything in range. Oh, and God put Castiel back together after Lucifer turned him into chunky salsa (which literally took all of two seconds).

Thanks, Dad. That's very helpful. How about locking your bratty kid in his room again and changing the lock before he destroys everybody else's toys? No? Too tough for ya, Big Guy? Oh, that's right—You must be extremely busy. So many prayers to ignore and demons, man-eating minor gods and eldritch abominations to let run around loose. Oh, and you can't even say so yourself, huh? Just gonna let your gardener pass the message along? Fabulous. Guess who's not getting a Father's Day card this year?

Yes, pretty much all of the above snark is actually in the show itself, in one form or another.

"I... I don’t get it. God’s not talking to nobody so..."

"...why's he talking to me? I sometimes think it's because I can sympathize—gardener to gardener—and, between us, I think he gets lonely."

"Well, my heart's breaking for him."

-Dean Winchester and Joshua, Heaven's Gardener (SPN 5.16 "Dark Side of the Moon")

Ultimately, one lone human's filial love and selfless sacrifice in the name of that love is what guarantees the Michael-Lucifer Armageddon Cage Match comes to a world-saving screaming halt.

The Winchesters save the world over and over again. The only being they "pray" to is Castiel, because he can hear when his charges call his name wherever they may be, because Cas can hear radio waves and... stuff (no, seriously). The Winchesters, and the many monster-hunters who sacrifice their lives to ensure that people can sleep at night, are the heroes of the story.

Meanwhile, God's turned off his smartphone and His most powerful kids have their thumbs up their collective butts.

Supernatural is a show that champions the best qualities that make us all human, while beheading the idolatry and blind obedience of religion.

Sounds like one hell of an extimony to me!

The religious self-destruct, while the people of the Lord say, "Amen".

By Hopi ~

One among a legion of "fools" brave enough to say, NO MORE!

It's been many years since I've stopped by this site. Ex-Christian, along with all of its wonderful members, was instrumental in the healing process I walked, nay, crawled through on blistered knees, when breaking free of religion.

It was with petrifying fear that I left the faith of my youth. It was that ever-present fear of HELL, which kept me tethered so long to faith in a nihilistic desert God of war, intent on throwing anyone who doesn't believe "his" nonsense into a fiery pit of doom and sadistically torturing them forever more. And this, my friends, is sold to us as "love".

It was in the summer of 2006 that I had the good fortune of signing up for a World Religion class at my local community college. Had to fulfill the Humanities requirement, so I figured this class would be an easy A, not to mention a way of solidifying my own faith. Oh, naive little creature that I was!

Rather than strengthen my faith, that class began me down a path of questioning that inevitably led me straight through the door of light and reason. A light, when once adjusted to, can lead us to a far more fulfilling existence than the one we believed ourselves to be living as one of the "flock". How convenient for "them" that followers be known as "sheep".

I have always been an insatiable seeker of knowledge. I have always questioned everything. Even as a Christian, I would exhaust those around me with my inquiries. Why this? Or what about this? How this, and how that? You all know the questions I speak of here: the ones about Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs, and Jonah and the Whale, and what about all the people throughout time that grew up in another corner of the world and were not taught the "good news", and why would a loving God send all of those great people to Hell, and if love is not jealous, but God is a jealous god, then God is not love...and so on...

But this class, this World Religion Class taught by a Roman Catholic, was different. Because those nagging questions, the ones I had all those years, the ones never answered satisfactorily or reasonably by faith, finally began to be met with the right answers, and I became AFRAID. Afraid of that place they told me about so long ago - that eternal place that taught me to fear and to never question and to keep in line with the commandments, as if I were incapable of living morally without fear of that place.

And then I became angry that I was afraid. Angry, because instinctively, I understood that no God worthy of my sacrifice, love, and devotion, was also worthy of my FEAR. No God, I thought, who demanded this kind of faith, the kind of faith that might one day lead me straight to the guillotine in obedience to it, should punish my doubt or questioning. No God, all powerful, all knowing, and omnipresent, should really be concerned with someone like little ole me, making "his" claims the object of my investigative research and intellectual inquiry.

And so that is exactly what I did. I questioned, I read, I exhausted every link, and every night I cried myself to sleep in the dark, shaking, sobbing, praying to the ceiling that "He" show me the truth WHEREVER IT LEAD ME. And somehow, that is exactly what happened, little by little, I did find the truth, but it wasn't "HIS". It was my own, and that "truth" was that none of us may ever know the answers to our existential questions, and that is OKAY.

And so, when I had come to the end of my research, I found myself on the other side of faith. I found and accepted that all I had believed in and held so dear for so long, was bogus bullshit conjured up in the minds of desert dwellers, not content with just staring at the sky and lying in wonder of it, and I was sad. Sad, because I no longer had the answers, and that left me feeling empty. I missed being sure of myself, of the Universe. Yet, I also knew this was illogical, because I had never really been sure to begin with, now had I?

And so I came to understand that these earlier, inquisitive, yet superstitious homo sapiens, not acquainted with the scientific method, needed answers to the existential questions of life, and the more powerful of these homo sapiens assigned human-like, masculine-like, dictator-like, and war-like qualities to an unseen force that may or may not exist, and called it "God," daring the meeker ones among them to say otherwise, keeping them in line with this boogey man bearded sky Daddy, who could see them touching themselves in the dark and would send them to this place called Hell for doing so.

I am angry because all around, I have to live in a world where I am rejected and considered the foolish one, while I watch the news cover stories of horrible atrocities taking place around the world all because of religious IGNORANCE.It's been 7 years since I broke free of religion. My Christian friends thought, I'm sure, that in time, I'd come crawling back in fear, but I haven't. In time, they thought, I'd somehow be enlightened again by the beauty of their biblical truth, but it has eluded me. There is no going back. Like the prisoner in Plato's allegorical cave, I have been set free of my shackles to discover that the frightening shadows on the wall were only puppets meant to scare the prisoners into conformity and fear of ever trying to escape. Well, I have escaped, and I'm angry again.

I am angry because all around, I have to live in a world where I am rejected and considered the foolish one, while I watch the news cover stories of horrible atrocities taking place around the world all because of religious IGNORANCE. I am rejected and avoided by the Christians who once claimed to love me. Now they love me with "god's love," which means: from afar. I don't miss them. Now I live in a world populated with billions of people who are HUNGRY for an apocalyptic end to the world, people who salivate while watching the news, looking to the sky for their imminent redemption, expecting Sky Daddy to be riding the clouds in a chariot so he can whisk them away to safety, while the rest of us kill each other and burn in the fire of our own heathendom: punishment for the sin of disbelief.

And I am scared again. Scared, because I really like it here. I really love this place called Earth, with all it's splendid beauty, all it's magnificent creatures, all it's wondrous wonders. Scared, because it might not be here much longer if the nihilistic believers have it their way. For they are awaiting a "better" place and so in the meantime do nothing to make this place the better one they seek. And I want to shake them and tell them to WAKE UP! Wake up to the beauty that surrounds you. Look at what you are doing to yourself, to each other, to the planet! It's not too late! It's the meek that shall inherit the earth, remember?!? But they don't listen. They go on singing their hymns about their loving God, ignoring the dying masses, and praising God for the destruction of their enemies, and so above the roar of their hypocrisy they cannot and will not hear me or others like me, as we scream NO MORE!

And so I came here today, looking once again for my Ex-Christian friends to comfort me, my brothers of reason and lucidity to enlighten me. I came here today, seeking assurance that it's not too late. Too late to make things right for the billions of children longing to live in a world free of war, a world where they may freely seek the answers to their questions without fear of punishment from God or man.

Discussing Morality

By Apostate Paul ~

"So, you're an atheist now."

Morality (Photo credit: dietmut)

One of my buddies asked me this one idle evening after work. A few weeks prior, I had sent out a letter to all of my Christian friends informing them that, while I still respected them and wanted to maintain my relationship with them, I no longer thought that Christianity held any water, and I wouldn't be pursuing it anymore. I would still be the same goofy, Ultimate Frisbee-obsessed guy trying to live a virtuous life, just without the religious parts.

"Yes," I said, laughing. "Why?"

He smiled and said, "We've never mentioned it in person. You said a while back that you were always happy to discuss it with me. So do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Sure, what's up?" I said, wondering what I was about to get into.

"Well, you said that you were planning to continue living a 'virtuous life' even though you stopped believing. So... what standard do you adhere to when judging whether or not something is objectively good?"

Ah. I immediately recalled the string of C. S. Lewis quotes I had seen this very friend posting over the past two or three weeks. I was about to get a dose of the first three chapters of Mere Christianity, wasn't I?

"Actually," I said after a moment of thought, "that aspect of my life didn't change much when I left Christianity. I still operate on the same basic question I did before -- does it help and not harm? If the answer to that question is no, then I consider it evil. If it's yes, I consider it good."

He looked unsatisfied with my answer. It was clear that he was looking for something different.

"Well, I'm glad that you have a definition for it, but how did morality get that definition? I mean, if you just gave it that definition, couldn't someone else just give it a different one? And then before you know it, we could say the Holocaust was a good thing. It can't just be a feeling that someone made up or it has no objective basis."

There it was. After a few seconds and the realization that my next statement would effectively kill the discussion, I prepared to say that I didn't really believe in an objective form of morality. I thought it was subjective by nature, just like all other standards.

But then, something popped into my head. Objective morality? God? Wait a minute...

"Well, like all words," I said, "we humans made up the definition for morality. Just like we made up the word for all the other words we use in order to communicate with each other. But the subjectivity of a word doesn't really have to do with the objectivity of what it's referring to. The word apple means a red piece of fruit, and the word is made up by us, but the fruit isn't. So, some guy made up the definition, but not necessarily the concept to which it refers."

About half way through my long spiel, he got that look on his face where he wanted to move on to his next question, but he waited patiently for me to finish, and paused an appropriate amount of time before voicing his question, trying not to look like he had ignored the last half of my statement.

"Right, I get you. It's like the color green. We use the word 'green' to describe a certain wavelength of light, and we could change the word but it wouldn't change the color, just how we describe it. Or like a chair. We use the word 'chair' to describe a thing we can sit on, so if we used a different word like 'bleg' but still were describing a thing we can sit on, it wouldn't affect the essence of the chair even though the word's meaning may have changed. The essence of the object that makes it what it is has not changed."

"Exactly." I said, quite glad he had understood.

"Ok, I agree with you. So... where do you think morality gets its essence from?"

We still weren't quite there. "Well, if morality is objective, or exists outside of any particular perspective, then the origin of morality is probably the same origin as all the other abstract realities in the universe. And I have no idea what that is. Where did the universe come from? We atheists just have random guesses at best."

"Oh." He sat for a minute, and then continued. "I am asking what made the moral standards. Because all standards need a maker. I believe that God made the standards. But I don't understand where your standards come from. They can't just come from nowhere."

Sure enough. This was straight from C. S. Lewis' book. After a moment, I asked him a question.

"May I ask what YOU believe? I mean, I assume from the way you worded your questions, you believe in an objective form of morality?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Objective meaning that morality exists outside of any particular perspective?"

"Um... Yeah, pretty much."

"Well," I said slowly, "I don't mean to attack your beliefs here, but your questions make me think that you don't actually believe in an objective morality. That last question sort of sealed the deal, unless I misunderstood you. Here's how I understand it: If morality is objective, it doesn't have to have a maker any more than anything else requires a maker. In fact, if some perspective is required to make sense of something, like a standard, then it's not objective, it's based on that perspective. So if you feel like God is required for morality to be universal, perhaps you believe morality is inherently subjective. If you really believe that morality is objective, you wouldn't need a perspective to make it,, would you?"

He sat still for a few minutes, thinking. "I hadn't thought about it that way. Hmm. I feel like I'm missing something because I do believe in objective morality. But I also believe that God is necessary."

He glanced at his watch. "Oh, it's getting late. I need to head out soon. We'll continue this discussion next time, okay? Thanks for answering my questions, bro."

"Any time, man." As he grabbed his keys off of the coffee table, I posed one final question.

"Have you ever read about Euthyphro's Dilemma?"

"Nope. What's that?"

"It's Plato's version of what I was trying to say. You should check it out some time."

"Alright," he said. "I'll take a look."

---

So the next time a Christian decides to tell you about how they believe in objective morality to evangelize you, let him or her know how glad you are that he or she doesn't believe God is necessary for a universal set of morals either.

Website: http://www.regenesis-blog.com

A Doubtful Existence

By Saphire ~

There are many Christians that could tell you the time and date of their decision to follow Christ. I never could. Simply because I'm not really sure when it happened. When I was fifteen, the youth pastors at my church decided that I needed to make a decision. They set up times to talk to me about God and Jesus and the need to decide if I wanted to be a Christian. Honestly, I just decided to become a Christian because I wanted them to leave me alone. I remember lying in my bed and saying the "sinner's prayer" over and over again. I had always heard about this weight lifting off your shoulders, of feeling peace and joy. I didn't feel anything. I just kept thinking I must have been saying it wrong.

But eventually I believe I became a Christian. I did all the things that make you a good Christian. I went to church multiple times a week, joined the choir, went on retreats, and even became a missionary. I had good friends, my family eventually became Christians as well, and I enjoyed my life. Leaving the church started for me when my best friend told me he was gay. I'm ashamed to say that I responded like most religious people. I told him that he needed to pray and allow God to change him. I told him that I was disappointed in his lifestyle choice. To this day I still feel nauseous when I think about what I said. One day we were talking on the phone and I heard the pain in his voice. I listened to my best friend weep as he struggled with who he was and who he felt God wanted him to be. My heart broke for him. And so the questions began. Did I really believe being gay was wrong or was I just repeating what I had been told in church?

This question only opened the door for more questions. I became so frustrated with how the church was treating people, not just gays but anyone who was different than them. So I began looking for a progressive form of Christianity. I didn't want to walk away from my beliefs, but I couldn't hold to the traditional views. I found a progressive from of Christianity but instead of finding something that allowed me to keep my beliefs it actually gave me the information I would use to walk away. Progressive Christians do not believe the bible to be infallible. At first when I read this I felt incredible freedom. But later it just became a slippery slope of doubt. If the bible is questionable than what can I actually believe in any of it? Once that question was asked my path was clear. There was no way I could be a Christian in any form. The questions just kept coming. Are we truly so evil that God would have to send his son to die this horrific death for us? Is salvation really only based on geography? If God is all knowing and all loving then how can he create a world knowing that most of his creation would spend eternity in hell? And really eternity? ETERNITY? Is that really justice? Etc.

My best friend told me that he is deciding what to hold on to and what to leave behind. I find myself doing the same thing. There are ideas and a way of life that I don't want to let go of. I want to hold onto the teachings of Jesus about compassion, mercy, love, forgiveness, and charity. He, or whoever made him up, had some great things to say. But his divinity and the Christian idea of God is nothing I can subscribe to. Neither is atheism. For me I see it in the same realm as Christianity just the opposite spectrum. I've come to the realization that I do not want to live a life of certainty. Living a life of certainty only draws you in to the great debate of who is right and who is wrong. I find myself leaning towards agnosticism as it is open to the realm of possibility. There are some things I cannot possibly know. The only thing I can know for sure is how I want to live my life. I know the person I want to be and so that is my focus. I'm not interested in proving anyone wrong or right. I simply want to have and give the freedom to simply be.

Embracing the Reality of Uncertainty

By the Spiritual Pilgrim ~

In recent thought I have realized that whether I decide to continue in the Christian faith, or move in to a different form of faith, in any direction I want to go with my worldview I will have to embrace uncertainty. If I decide I don’t believe in God I have to live with uncertainty. If I decide I do believe in God I have to live with uncertainty. So basically what I’m realizing is quite simply that I need to embrace this reality. I need to find peace in not knowing.

The hard part for me is that the times in my life when I have felt the most joy and the most fulfilled have been in times of strong faith. From that statement the answer might appear simple that I should choose a life of faith and pursue that joy. That’s what I’ve tried for the past two years and I keep ending up back in the same painful position of disappointment. These times of joy and fulfillment never last more than a day or two usually and rarely have lasted up to a month. But I always whiplash right back to disappointment and depression. I have felt bi-polar at times and I just cannot live with the double-mindedness anymore. I’m over the vicious cycle. As I’ve said in another post—If God does indeed exist then I am quite frustrated with Him.

I’m realizing is quite simply that I need to embrace this reality. I need to find peace in not knowing. I’m sick of the hide-and-seek game. I’m sick of only having dreams, impressions and “prophetic words” to hear from Him. I’m sorry but sometimes I need more than a damn impression. I’m sick of reading the same words in the Bible again and again only to not see what it talks about happening in my life. I’m sick of praying for sick to be healed with nothing happening. I’m sick of the answer for everything being to pray about it and “God is in control.” Clearly He is not because so much of the world lives in poverty, suffering and anguish. Oh, but this is the effect of the fall. That’s right, it’s all man’s fault that there is suffering, not God.

My words sound angry and I am. I am angry at one of two things. If God exists I am angry at Him for deciding to make life the way He has and being so distant from humankind. If God does not exist I am angry at myself for buying into the lie of hope in religion. I’ve told God that the ball is in His court. If He is interested in me then He can come and get me. Otherwise I am through pursuing… at least for now. I think the most honest answer to life is agnosticism. Agnosticism simply and honestly says, “I don’t know.” So that’s where I stand today. I don’t know and that’s ok. That has to be ok because it’s my only choice.

These words hurt to write. I can feel disappointment throughout my entire being and some fear too. Religion had become my self-medication. It was my fix all. It took me out of alcoholism. It gave me hope that there was a way out of my depression. I feel that I only supplemented one addiction for another. I feel more lost than ever.

Website: http://thespiritualpilgrimblog.wordpress.com

Hope

By Carl S ~

Maybe you have heard the saying about hope being such a beautiful thing, like desire with wings that flies. Allow me to give you my personal observations on hope; as an example, the mousetraps in my garage. Though they have claimed many lives, I keep reloading them with temptation, and the mice never learn. Sometimes, two mice are dead, which means that one is already dead as a warning to stay away. And there is the knowledge that the traps smell of previous deaths.

"It's a trap!" (Photo credit: Stéfan)

It isn't only mice that are not learning, but other creatures that keep getting trapped or killed because of their hope. Human beings seem to “never learn,” as the song states, about the trap-bait of wars. They never seem to be able to resist the glory-of-winning hope, even when glory implies death. So, no, hope isn't necessarily a good thing after all, when it blatantly and blindly chooses to ignore reality.

Isn‘t it, after all, hope that impels so many throughout the centuries into churches, temples, shrines, and mosques? Isn’t this, more than anything else, the motivation? The bait is the access to the tree of inside knowledge, the fruit of eternal life. More than anything else, it is the irresistible bait, the hope- temptation of life blissfully unending - as it always has been. Especially, it is the bait of food of special knowledge, forbidden to outsiders. In every faith, martyrs die for this bait.

Faith is the trap. But the bait is hope.

Perhaps the bait of hope is a bait in small doses, luring the potential victim in. Perhaps the first dose is a high, and free, followed by foretastes of paradise, hopes of immortality, but demanding more and higher doses. And the dispensers of the promised bliss are the pushers of hope, of inside access. This is a hope that the mousetrap won't snap for these particular, chosen “mice;” that by faith dosages and hope, the reward will come, that fate will be avoided or overcome. But, as an old world adage goes, ”Hope is the last to die.”

There is the human hope that by merely refusing to believe something, it will not come true. There is the hope that special incantations can make exceptions to reality. There is hope that death isn't final. My experience with the mouse traps show me the results of not learning.

That mouse, which can't resist the bait, might lie to itself that it will not end up like the others because its hope is more powerful than its reason, yet it provides a carcass for my crows to feed on. Yes, hope can give wings to dreams, but it can destroy, too.

What Am I Doing With This Cross?

When the drug called "God" refuses to fix us

By Mark Davis ~

Is it an understatement to say that some adults carry unresolved issues? It’s quite possible that all of us do. After all, as children we may not have had the facilities nor the guidance to fully and properly process any traumatic experiences. And so, our survival instincts kicked in and had us bury and escape the full brunt of the trauma. It is common knowledge (I think) that depending upon the degree of trauma that is buried, the interference in an adult’s life can be extreme and chronic.

We often say of the addict -- be it to drugs, alcohol, sex, work, chronically “falling in love” or any other process or substance -- that he or she is using it as an escape. It’s understood that there is something inside them that they are running from- they are turning away from themselves in some way. We call the using of a drug a “fix,” because the user believes on some level it’s going to fix the problem. We on the outside looking in know that the drug, whatever it is, won’t work. The trauma will still be there waiting… until and unless the addict can turn toward themselves and find a way to bring healing.

At the age of 16, I fell in love with God. I felt like I had found the great Fix in the sky and that the grief and trouble of my past was erased and gone. I was as high as a kite. The model here was similar to the addict model: turn my eyes away from myself and my troubles and turn my eyes to the Savior Jesus Christ. At some point, eventually, the comedown came for me. The old troubled undercurrents in me returned, and it made no sense to me. I would have preferred to forget myself and those troubles- so, why wasn’t God taking them away and allowing me to forget myself? From other believers around me, I was hearing things like, “don’t let Satan tempt you into sadness and anger,” “give it to the cross”, “read more scripture”- no one ever suggested to me to move toward myself. Our doctrine said explicitly that my nature was sinful, so there wasn’t going to be any solution there within me. I would “always be a sinner,” but no worries- my salvation lied in Jesus- it was only him that mattered…

No one in the church apparently knew what transformation actually looked like -- not even in scripture -- and so no one could tell me or show me the way out. If someone did have it, or if it was to be found in scripture, no one ever shared it with me, at least. And, as I’ve said, the clear message given to me was to more or less use God like a drug -- as a distraction from the devil in me.

Because part of me was determined to find healing, I slowly turned to other spiritual heritages and to the field of psychology for guidance and wisdom. I know today that the only way “out” of my trouble was to face the so-called devil in me, with gentleness and compassion (exactly the opposite of what the church advised!). I also know today that inside of me, hidden within the buried grief that we made a devil out of, was a wealth of joy and life that I didn’t believe or know was even possible here on earth…

Taken from notes on the song "Only You", from the Mark Davis and the Inklings CD "Because There's Nothing Outside"

markdavisandtheinklings.com
godinchains.blogspot.com

Christianity’s Three-Headed Beast

By Daniel out of the Lion's Den ~

Accuse a Christian of being a polytheist by worshiping three gods, and they will vehemently deny it. Yet in their own creeds and hymns, they confess that they worship three persons. In a feeble attempt to hold onto the Jewish monotheistic roots of their religion, they have conjured up a three-headed beast that they can’t even explain. Its funny how Islamists, who are farther removed from Christianity, can make the objective observation that Christianity is polytheistic.

Since the Jewish and Christian religions have historically cobbled their gods together by borrowing bits and pieces from other world religions, I thought it would be interesting to look for hints of the Trinity in mythology. These puzzle pieces could reveal how such a notion came to be. I have read that Christians in the first several centuries would evangelize by comparing elements in Christianity with similar elements in other religions. “Jesus was born of a virgin, conceived by the Holy Spirit, just like Perseus was conceived when Zeus rained down in a shower of gold on his virgin mother, Danae.” And, “Jesus was martyred and rose from the dead, just like Dionysus was eaten by the Titans, then his grandmother Rhea brought him back to life.” So let’s take a look at the Greek and Roman triadic deities, who would have had the most influence on first century Hebrews.

Cerberus

In Greek mythology, Cerberus is a three-headed dog who guards the underworld, preventing the dead from escaping. The three heads can respectively see the past, present and future – remind you of anybody?

Chimaera

Another creature in Greek mythology is Chimaera, a three-headed monster which breathed fire. It had the heads of a lion, a snake and a goat. It was both male and female. It was a sibling of Cerberus. Sighting the Chimaera was an omen of storms, shipwrecks, volcanoes and other natural disasters (but who actually saw it?)

Geryon

Geryon was a fearsome giant warrior with one body and three heads. The tenth labor of Hercules was to steal cattle from Geryon, at which time Hercules killed Geryon with a poison arrow.

Virgil wrote the Aeneid between 29 and 19 BC. In this epic poem, Erulus, king of Praeneste, was given three souls by his mother, the goddess Feronia. He also had three sets of arms with which to defend himself.

Bearing honorable mention would be 1) the Furies, a trio of deities of vengeance, tasked with tormenting those in the underworld who swore a false oath, 2) the Sirens, three femme fatales who lured sailors with their music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island, and 3) Cyclopes, which were three brothers who forged Zeus’ thunderbolt and Poseidon’s trident.

Furies

These are just the tip of the iceberg, as triune gods are an archetype in world religions throughout history:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_deity

In the years leading up to Roman Citizen Paul’s epistles in which he lays the ground work for the formation of the Trinity doctrine, there was established in his society the belief of deities or immortals which either 1) were three headed, 2) were three souls in one body, or 3) existed in a groups of three. Certainly the apostle John traveled extensively in the Roman Empire, ending up on the Isle of Patmos, which today belongs to Greece. Are we to think that he was not influenced by the local culture? He perhaps wrote the most explicit verse in the canonized books concerning the melding of three deities into one monotheistic unmoved mover:

For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. – I John 5:7

In the aftermath of the New Testament authors and the revised Nicene Creed of 381, Christians are left to “apologize” for a Trinity doctrine that simply makes no sense. They are relegated to invoke silly analogies, such as how water can exist as a liquid, gas and solid, or how a man can simultaneously be a father, a son, and have a spirit. Or if you drink enough green beer on March 17th, you can use a shamrock.

Good News?

By Joshua Olsen ~

Damnation

I'd always viewed this notion with a sidelong glance, this is to say I simply could not understand it. I'd been brought up to believe that god was love, that god was forgiveness, that the purity of the love of god transcended all things.

Hell

Pure, unimaginable, nigh-pornographic suffering. Forever. Until the universe unravels. Torture, agony, despair.

Herein came the disconnect from which I would ultimately never recover.

God creates humans, sick as evidently we are, and commands us upon pain of eternal torture to be well again. God, knowing all things, is well-aware of that to which our inclinations will lead us and yet chooses to imbue us with them anyway. God is therefore either unbelievably inept or unbelievably callous and stupid and indifferent. You must believe in X Abrahamic religion or you will suffer eternal torture. God, being all powerful, could simply give the entirety of the world an unambiguous sign as to which religion is the correct one, an inarguable omen that god is indeed a factual being, but he won't.

And hell awaits

It didn't take a lot of digging to reveal that "hell" came about as a bastardized, ham-fisted idea stemming from the "Hel" of Norse mythos and the Greek "Tartarus".

Well, I'd already done some research, I'd already started the inexorable process of critical inquiry. I no longer feared hell, having seen it for the bogus fabrication that it was. Might as well keep the questioning rolling right along.

My own ancestor, Martin Luther, the yammering, hysterical, anti-Semitic founder of the Lutheran church once said "In order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, one must close his eye of reason".

Martin, it occurs to this particular ancestor of yours that you were dangerously close to stumbling onto an actual point.

What I found in my discovery of critical inquiry was that one question lead inexorably to another. Having been dispossessed of the "most sublime of all truths", I found that I wasn't disillusioned. For the first time in my life I felt free: I wasn't consumed by fear, hatred, guilt, intolerance and tribalism. I was no longer poleaxed by the constant questioning of why I was thrown into a universe against my will, without my consent, to be subject to an unalterable celestial dictatorship. What I realized about my time as a Christian is that all the while, I was absolutely certain of my damnation. I was certain of this because, in the darkened corridors of my mind, I didn't believe but I desperately wished to. I wanted so badly to believe that I had all the answers and yet there was that persistent echo from the depths of my being, perhaps my intellectual conscience, telling me that I was a fool, that no human before me or since had all the answers, that limitation is the quintessence of my race.

In hindsight, perhaps I was always a charlatan.

I know there are more like me out there. I know that they meander through the services, the hymns, the tiresome, unlettered rants about eternal suffering. I know the fear they feel, that fear that is bred only in the certitude of one's damnation, the dread of the darkness to come for those who doubt god.

I've had a gun pointed at my head before. I can still summon the stimuli of the experience: the coldness of the barrel, the acrid yet musty scent of the oil on the gun. I was almost certain I was going to die that day. However, the fear of death paled in comparison to the fear of where I'd be going after the bullet painted the wall of that dingy little apartment with my brains.

Humans should never have to live with this sort of fear. Humans should never have to be blackmailed into virtue and decency. Humans should never be threatened with torture for thinking for themselves. Humans should never be treated as second-class citizens because of their sexual orientation, over which they have positively no control.

To tell children that they are overseen by a god that they MUST love and simultaneously fear is positively disgraceful: it is the sort of emotional connection a rapist might force upon his victim. And for a good portion of my life, this is precisely how I lived my every cognizant moment. For a good portion of my life, I attempted to walk a razor's edge while inwardly laughing at myself, laughing at my folly and the inevitability of my doom.

This was the good news the church brought me. The good news was that, ultimately, I was constructed in such a way that I could not believe. Irrespective of my piety, my virtue and many failed attempts AT it, it would always be my doubt that was the fulcrum upon which my fate turned.

And that's really the point of all this. Doubt. This is the only unforgivable sin in Christian doctrine, the only sin from which there can be no repentance and no absolution. Doubt. In the sleep of reason, monsters awake. In the slumber of rationality, we humans BECOME the monsters.

Take heart, dear reader! I have Good News! The good news is that this horror, this nihilism, is no longer necessary. We have shown, time and again, that human beings can be just, noble, and heroic in the absence of god. Indeed, by my estimation we've always been that way: without god.

Perhaps doubt, at the end of the day, might be something offhandedly heroicReligion is our first attempt at ethics, at morality, and to some degree health care. As it is our first attempt, it is also our worst. As such, I believe it should be left at the roadside, along with other tedious traditions spawned during the infancy of our species, a species so full of fear and, paradoxically, wonder bestowed by virtue of our cognizance.

Good news! One day, this will happen. One day, the religions of today will be looked upon with a chuckle and a shudder, they will be looked upon with shame when one considers what we higher-primates have done in their ignominious names. This is, of course, provided we don't turn the earth into an irradiated wasteland in the name of these religions.

If we do, I'd say we had it coming. I'd say we were too collectively stupid as a species to survive. I'd say that the human creature was destined for failure because we learned how to eradicate our species before we learned how to be reasonable. I'd say that ultimately the animal in us beat the human.

I'm no nihilist in this regard. I don't want the human race to simply peter out, like the countless other species that have vanished forever. It would be decidedly ironic however if we, like the dinosaurs, met our fate in a storm of fire and ash.

Good news! As long as people like me live, we won't allow that to happen. We will fight each and every day to make certain that it doesn't. We will combat the wickedness and stupidity of religion until we are ground to dust because it's all we can do, because we have faith in this species and wish for it to continue, not merely to perpetuate the existence of our own lives, but for the lives yet to come, the future yet to behold.

Perhaps doubt, at the end of the day, might be something offhandedly heroic.

Know that you're not alone in your doubt, in your skepticism, and when you stand against those who would force their beliefs upon others, who would deny others their rights because of their metaphysical convictions, many consider you hero.
I know I do.

Never stop fighting. Never give in. Never surrender. Reason must prevail. The human race can't afford for it not to.

Why It Takes About 1000 Times More Faith To Be Christian Or Muslim Than Atheist

By Dan Forsman ~

I keep seeing it written or stated that it takes the same amount of faith or even less to believe in a god than it does to believe there is no god. This is typically used to demonstrate that either Christianity or Islam is a much more logical and reasonable choice than atheism. But Christianity and Islam require their followers to accept as fact a very large number of specific inflexible beliefs, many built on top of one another and all originating two thousand years ago. Each belief is separate and requires an amount of faith that is dependent on that particular beliefs’ credibility:

• a god created the universe,
• a personal god is actively involved in human activities, 
• life continues after death, a god became a man,
• god performs miracles, 
• god is loving, 
• god created hell, 
• god has a plan for mankind, etc. 

The non-believer makes a relatively simple commitment to disbelieve in any god they have heard of which typically includes christian, Muslim and numerous other gods. She/he has faith that at least one necessary component of each god doesn’t exist.

I want to try and compare the amount of faith required to reject a god to the amount of faith required to accept as true the basic tenets of a belief in a particular god. I have already introduced the basic logical reason for why belief in either the Christian or Muslim religion takes a lot of faith: they both require many many individual beliefs (hundreds). Some of those individual beliefs require an enormous amount of faith because of their extraordinary nature and some would logically necessitate testable evidence that is so far lacking.

Consider that Christian beliefs encompass all those beliefs already mentioned previously plus belief in:

• a god/man who is his own father,
• a god/man born of a virgin, 
• a god/ man who performed miracles including bringing humans back from death, 
• a god/man who was killed and remained dead for 3 days then came back to life and promised to return soon and vanished into the sky for about 2,000 years to date,
• a god/man/spirit who is one single god, 
• a god/man/spirit that inhabits,improves and helps believers,
• a god/man/spirit who answers prayers,
• a god/man/spirit who oversaw the writing, numerous edits, and erratic distribution of a history/manual/guide book for all humans beginning about 2,000 years ago,
• paradise for believers who become eternal (although still appearing to die) upon accepting the faith, etc.,etc. 

By contrast I don’t think either a Muslim or Christian would claim that it requires anything more than a cursory act of faith to dismiss a competing religion’s god because it is a basic requirement of each religion that they reject any god other than the god of their own religion. For the atheist the experience of rejecting a god is remarkably similar to that of a Christian or Muslim. She or he typically holds some very basic god attributes to be incredible, for example she/he rejects the possibility of a personal god or rejects the idea that the mind continues to function after the body dies or discounts the idea of a god having taken on the form of a human in some past time. So the typical atheist rejects a particular god categorically in much the same way as does the Muslim and Christian because of a conflict with a core belief.

Everyone faces an earthly life that is uncertain and many significant questions don't appear to have clear answers. Whether or not belief in a particular god satisfactorily answers the unanswered questions is up for debate. But it’s entirely possible to leave all the great questions unanswered and hold nothing more than the single reasonable belief that no personal god exists and build from this a meaningful fulfilling life without belief in any god. A great deal more faith is required to become a Christian or Muslim as faith in the hundreds of accompanying dogmas and historical records are required. What can and should be debated is whether the enormous investment of faith necessary to become a Christian or Muslim can truly be justified given the carnage that has so often followed in their wakes of these religions.

Lessons in Discordianism

By WizenedSage (Galen Rose) ~

Eris (Ancient Greek: Ἔρις, "Strife")
is the Greek goddess of chaos, strife and discord,
her name being translated into Latin as Discordia

A recent posting on this site mentioned the parody religion called Discordianism. In tracking down the link provided, I found a whole barrelful of laughs. But I also began to discover something more serious.

Reading about Discordianism quickly brought to mind Poe’s Law. For those who haven’t heard of Poe’s Law, this is a snippet of what Wikipedia has to say about it:

“Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing.”

That is, a parody of something extreme is impossible to differentiate from the thing itself.

But, religion (or most of them) is extremism by its very nature, since, to be taken seriously, it requires one to assume a supernatural realm for which there is no physical evidence, and that is clearly an extremist position. If I am correct in this, then there should be many parallels between a parody religion, which is extreme by intention, and a traditional religion like Christianity, which is extreme by its supernatural nature.

The following is a brief definition of Discordianism taken from Wikipedia.

“Discordianism is a religion and subsequent philosophy based on the veneration or worship of Eris (also known as Discordia), the Greco-Roman goddess of chaos, or archetypes or ideals associated with her.”

(Who knew that our own Discordia at ExChristian.net was named after a goddess? I suppose we should have suspected this, given her eloquence and rapier wit.)

Discordianism “. . . was founded circa 1958–1959 after the publication of its (first) holy book, the Principia Discordia, written by two individuals working under the pseudonyms Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst.”

The religion has been likened to Zen and Taoist philosophy in its appreciation of the paradox and the absurd; Discordianism is centered on the idea that both the apparent order and disorder of the universe are merely illusory.

The Pentabarf is the doctrine of Discordianism which contains the five most fundamental of all Discordian teachings. Rule number 5 is of particular interest:

“A Discordian is Prohibited from Believing What he reads.”

Notice the parallels of this statement with the absurdist facets of Zen ("If you meet the Buddha on your path, kill him."), and the Taoist religion ("the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao."). You see, if one is prohibited from believing what he reads, then he is also prohibited from believing that he shouldn’t believe what he reads, and the statement thereby recurses back on itself.

Now here’s where we begin to see the more serious parallels of Discordianism with Christianity. Notice that the fifth law - prohibiting one from believing what he reads – is also tacitly observed in Christianity where, despite Jesus’ claim that his followers will be able to do greater miracles than himself, no Christian actually believes this. Similarly, despite Jesus’ clear claim, in simple, direct language, that true believers’ prayers will always be granted, no Christian expects all his prayers to be granted.

It is also noteworthy that while the Bible commands death for homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers, etc., and no Christian actually believes such edicts are moral, Christians nevertheless claim god and the Bible as sources of moral absolutes. Thus, like a paradox or koan, if a Biblical statement is obvious nonsense, rather than accept it as evidence of the author’s ignorance, or a simple falsehood, the good Christian refuses to believe what he reads and simply ignores it. If cornered, most Christians will “explain” this by claiming we should not expect to understand the infinitely superior mind of god. Thus, if a Biblical statement is obviously false, absurd, or immoral, then it cannot mean what it says and the Christian is effectively prohibited from believing what he has read.

God is proclaimed as ultimately and inviolably “good,” despite his having created evil, and his commission of numerous atrocities such as the genocide of many tribes and the Great Flood which destroyed nearly all humans.Another interesting teaching of Discordianism is the “Law of Fives,” as summarized in the Principia Discordia: The Law of Fives states that: “All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5.” Lord Omar is quoted later on the same page as having written, "I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look." The key to understanding this principle is “the harder I look” phrase.

As one commentary on Discordianism stated,

“… the real Law of Fives is realizing that everything can be related to the number five, if you try hard enough.”

Sometimes, of course, the steps required may be highly convoluted.

With regard to Christianity, Lord Omar’s pronouncement on the Law of Fives might be re-stated as,

"I find the ultimate goodness of god to be more and more manifest the harder I look."

This dogma is routinely verified by Christian clergy and apologists, although the “reasoning” is, of necessity, highly convoluted. For example, in Christian dogma, god is proclaimed as ultimately and inviolably “good,” despite his having created evil, and his commission of numerous atrocities such as the genocide of many tribes and the Great Flood which destroyed nearly all humans.

Another way of looking at the Law of Fives is as a symbol for the observation of reality changing (in the observer's mind) that which is being observed. At its most basic level, the Law of Fives states that perception is intent-sensitive; that is, the perceiver's intentions influence the perception.

Thus, the Christian who INTENDS to see Christ as a great philosopher achieves his purpose despite the obvious stupidity of much of what Jesus said, such as make no provision for tomorrow, cut off your balls if you can handle it, the world will end soon, etc.

Also, Christians regularly claim to feel a deep, personal connection with their god and/or Jesus. This too, is a case of the perceiver's intentions influencing the perception. If one expects long enough and hard enough to feel the presence of god, it becomes virtually certain that he will do so. Paradoxically, while Christians insist on the one hand that god is everywhere and infuses reality thoroughly, on the other hand they are equally certain that god only manifests his being to those who genuinely search for him. In a Christian, Zen-like, Discordianist-like claim then, while god is everywhere, he is still very hard to find; in fact, despite the fact that he is everywhere, you have to intend to find him. (Which brings to mind the Zen-like observation of the Discordia of ExChristian.net, that it seems god can do anything . . . except prove he exists.)

Okay, perhaps I have not exactly proven my hypothesis that serious religions are extreme in their basic nature, and are therefor essentially indistinguishable from parody religions. Nevertheless, I am confident that I have made a compelling case for further study.

Free from Fear

By Emmy ~

There are millions of people going to hell because they don’t know Jesus.” I was sitting on a pew at the back of the church, listening to the same type of message that I had heard innumerable times in my life. There was nothing new, different, or spectacular in the pastor’s words. I’m sure, on that particular morning, hundreds of other church-attenders were sitting in similar pews, listening to the same sort of message. But, as I sat there, heart racing, a numb feeling rising from within, I quietly said to myself “I just cannot do this anymore.”

I left the building that morning and have not gone back since. It was, however, relatively easy to leave the building. It was not so easy to make peace with it all in my mind. I had no idea that my faith was about to be challenged, even more so, I would never have been able to imagine, at that particular moment, where it would lead me to. In the years leading up to that particular church service, my struggles with Christianity had been long and, at times, very difficult. What others around me all seemed to be able to accept, with ease, caused me to have confusion and a sense that something was not right.

The same faith that had comforted me was the same faith that had made live in fear of a god who, apparently, would have sent us all to hell if it weren’t for Jesus. The same faith that motivated me to read my bible, memorize verses, and pray to a Jesus who I thought loved me, was the same faith that I gave me a feeling deep inside that I may be going to hell because I was just not good enough. As a child, my mind would play tricks on me; I was fearful my “sinner’s prayer” was not good enough, not sincere enough, or something just not right. After all, it was of absolute importance to get this correct as it was the only way to save myself from an eternity of burning and torture. I had a very unnatural fear of fire from an early age on. I now realize this was connected to the fear of burning in hell, or, to my deep despair, many others burning there right in this very moment!!

In the months following my former church service, I was determined to find a more peaceful path. I spent every spare moment pursuing theology, history, mythology, science, and various religions. What began to unfold before me was captivating. I learned of other religions, with supernatural events, so similar to my own. I read the fascinating discovery of the Nag Hammadi library, the Roman Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicea. I learned about Greek mythology, paganism, and how much of this is actually intertwined into the Jesus written about in the gospels. I met some fascinating people online and in real life, atheists, Gnostic Christians, Buddhists, mystics, Universalists, Mormons, Catholics, all who openly talked to me about their beliefs. I slowly began to realize that I could no longer worship, or even believe in a god that would send all these people to hell. Instead of following the life of a humble Jewish carpenter, I started to view this as nothing more than partaking in violence—something that deep down inside, I had known for years, but was far too afraid to ever challenge.

Losing my belief in Christianity was like losing a huge chunk of me. I had to take a close look at who I really was. I was horrified and became full of grief when I read numerous accounts of what Christians had been responsible for throughout history. Everything from the Inquisition to the slaying of countless Native Americans became very real. I had heard of these things before, always from the Christian perspective, with the emphasis that we were the victims; we had always been the persecuted because the “last days” were upon us. This opened up my eyes to an entire different philosophical outlook; my connection to humanity was growing, a human race that I felt I had isolated myself from, and I now wanted to be a part of. However, there was one problem—I was losing my Christian beliefs, and that literally scared the hell out of me.

With all this new information and the years of struggling with Christianity, I was angry. The place where religion-induced fear and guilt had lingered was now replaced with anger. Anger towards the intolerance I encountered from Christians, pastors, and other people in my life. Unfortunately, my new insights came at a cost, the loss of relationships with disapproving friends and family. Likewise, I experienced anger and self-hatred towards myself for having given so much of my life over to this belief system, yet never really learning how to live. Underneath all of this was a fear that if I tried to carve a path of my own, instead of following orthodox religion, I would somehow end up in hell—what if they are right, what if I there really is a hell. I was plagued by these thoughts, yet underneath all of this a strange, new love and softness was growing, but at this point in my life, I often chose to ignore it.

Losing my belief in Christianity was like losing a huge chunk of me. I had to take a close look at who I really was. If an anthropomorphic god existed, which one was the right one? At times this was the utmost importance in my thoughts, yet at other times it just didn’t seem to matter anymore. I suddenly had to take responsibility for my own morality, my own internal convictions, and my own life. This was a bit like learning how to walk on my own two feet, so scary, yet exhilarating all at the same time.

I had been told, somewhere along my way, that I needed to become my own best friend. Once my mind was calmed, my heart started to listen and that is exactly what I started to do. I silenced my disquieting thoughts and tiresome pursuit of a monotheistic god by turning to the philosophy of Buddhism. This helped me find peace, not just within myself, but with all things, just as they are. I also came to the realization that I have agnostic views about god, something that had quietly been there for a long time.

Today, I cannot disregard the increasing passion that life was meant to be lived now, or the connection I feel to humanity and this planet that we all share. I am more concerned about finding a way to see people beyond the labels, and doing what I can to erase this “us vs. them” mentality that we all seem to get caught up in. I am also so happy to finally be free from the struggles I had with religion.