Skip to main content

After 23 years...

By Travib ~

I spent the majority of my childhood in the ropes of religion, but my doubts began at a very early age, around 15 or so - but it all came full blown five years ago, exactly one year after my best friend passed away after his second battle with cancer.

The doubts began as passing thoughts, with how our military gets away with killing so many people during wars, even though the bible states that we are not supposed to kill. Add in that the science classes through the years began to make better sense with actual proof seen through the lens of a telescope into the night sky, along with several lingering nagging questions about how my family, the vast majority of which are hard-core Christians, can have so much infighting when we are supposed to love each other. After reading a particular bible verse however, it all made sense: The one proclaiming that unless you hate (not dislike), but hate everything, including life itself, you cannot be a disciple of Christ. I am supposed to hate my entire life, family, friends, the whole works, for a deity that supposedly preaches love.

Anyhow, I digress. My best friend passed away on May 28th of 2006, his second battle of cancer that he ultimately lost after outliving his "expected" time. His first battle had ended with him victorious shortly before I met him my freshman year of high school. He was a symbol of strength for me, a man who had fought and survived cancer. We became really quick friends and eventually that bond grew into a feeling of being brothers in everything except blood. For five years, he was a healthy guy - despite his cancer and treatment he took, he managed to regain a lot of his muscle and we both joined into martial arts at the same time, moving up the ranks together all the way to black belts. In March of 2006, he had experienced pain in his hip. Upon a doctor and the following examine, it was found that a tumor had grown and was spreading rapidly. The same cancer that he had bested once, had come back with a vengeance.

Being that he was a devout Christian (as was I at the time), he had chose to forgo the treatment this time as the doctors had stated it would only be delaying the inevitable. He knew, at this point, he was dying. The news shocked many of us, but we respected his decision and remembered that, for so many years, if human medicine couldn't cure it, God could. I, along with many of his family and friends, prayed for hours on end at times: I know I prayed every morning, every night - asking for my best friend to be spared of this cancer and allow him to live his life and help keep a good person in this world.

Come mid-to-late April of that year, he fell into a coma. He was unresponsive and the doctor declared he was officially comatose and there was no guarantee that he would wake up. His family began making the preparations for the last moments. For weeks, I continued praying, even harder now: pleading, begging, crying for the cure to come from the man upstairs.

May 25th of 2006, he awoke from his coma and was talking like nothing had happened. Though I was unable to see him and talk to him (a fact that haunts me to this day, thanks to some "friends" that decided I was not important enough to take along to see our mutual friend), I was slightly relieved to hear that just maybe, my, along with many others, prayers had been received. Later that night though, he had stated to his mother that he was going to get some sleep. He never awoke again, and on the morning of the 28th, he was declared dead. I received the call while at work, and my entire being just shattered.

It was then, for the rest of that night, I began to ask questions. My best friend, a devout man in the ways of Christ, a man who never had a bad word for anyone, would not hurt a soul unless he had a really good reason to do so, was no longer walking this Earth. But given that I always heard the age-old adage of: "Its God's plan", I tried to shoo those questions away. It wasn't until I went to his funeral and later that day, had to hear the news of a murderer/rapist of a young girl was going to serve life in prison that I truly began to doubt it all. This man, who raped and murdered a young girl, was going to live his days out in jail - probably live to be a ripe old age, while my best friend passed at the age of 22.

At that point, I set to reading the bible from cover to cover over the course of a couple weeks and I was absolutely appalled at the things I was never told in the pews at church. The atrocities committed in the name of, or by, God - the rapes, the murders, the pillaging - things that today would land you at least in jail, if not in the lethal injection chair. From there on, after reading Revelations and seeing the sheer stupidity of it all, along with the contradictions in that, many of the apostles said that the "end days" would come in their lifetime, led me to believe that religion was one of the biggest scams in the history of mankind. A power used to control the masses, and a good one if you think about it.

From thereon, the death of my best friend was the movement that started it all from my de-conversion. I've heard every rebuttal from "God's plan" to "God's will" to "God needed him more than we did" etc. Why does the all-powerful, all-loving, all-seeing God need humans? His imperfect creations? The ones he had to supposedly destroy in a flood because of our "evil" ways? I am six years removed from the passing of the man who left a huge impression on my life. And people want to tell me that this deity is a supposed all-loving and the one who answers prayers.

My transformation was complete three years ago, and has gotten stronger every day since such with the amount of negatives I have dealt with. This supposed "punishment" from God, I dare say: Bring it on. Is that all you have? Because in the end, praying the imaginary man in the sky does a lot of good. I get a lot of evil looks when people say they are praying for something, and my response: "Good luck praying to the god that doesn't exist."

Thus ends my story, I am now a happy atheist that feels rather liberated from the chains of religion. My best friend showed me the best of humanity in life, and his passing, sorrowful as it is, has shown me that in this world, there is no god that would allow these things to happen.

There is no god, period.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

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

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro