A Journey From Pastor To Atheist (PRWEB.com; April 28)

WAUTOMA, Wisconsin: As early as second grade, author Larry Cartford had already showed interest in becoming a pastor. Throughout the years, this interest grew until he entered a Lutheran College as a pre-seminary student. There, a new feeling of doubt blossomed as he encountered the truth like never before. Readers can follow his journey From Pastor To Atheist in a book that will change their perception about the church.

In class after class, the author was taught to question the basics of truth, the meaning of existence and the place of God in the scheme of life. At college where he had to take religion courses each semester in none of these courses were the absolute truths of Christianity questioned. At seminary and graduate school, his doubts continued to expand. Caught in the dilemma of doubt, he tried to quiet the questioning by turning to the easy route of accepting the truth as Christianity stated it – life created by God, original sin, the need for salvation and so on and so forth. As he opened his mind to new concepts and teachings, his growing doubt began to challenge the foundation of his beliefs.

The author’s transition From Pastor To Atheist did not happen overnight. In his early ministry, he had always rejected atheism as an option. Yet before he left the Lutheran ministry, his interest in it grew and, after he resigned, it eventually became his way of life. Coming from the inside of organized religion, he knows its ins and outs, its restrictive thinking and its limited view of life and eternal life. Thus, Cartford approaches atheism from the point of religion and existential meaning, not from a scientific viewpoint.

This compelling book will provoke thought as the author exposes: how a supposed holy, infallible book distorts history; how an organization decides what is truth and what is heresy; how an organization restricts the way to salvation; and how an organization encourages fear of hell so it can control behavior. As Cartford reveals the ways of the gods for what they are, he hopes to facilitate thinking and encourage people to live freely.

For other examples of Christian preachers who became atheists, see the entry I posted on May 11.

Related posts:

1. Ex-Priest Stephen Uhl Speaks Out!
2. Staks Rosch Speaks Out!
3. Nickolas Conrad Speaks Out!

If you DO already know him, let’s hold hands and cheer as we review the inspiring story of this former Christian:

Student Atheist’s Mini-Documentary Wins Award (Erin Brown/The University Daily Kansan; Mar 30)

For 17 years, Chris Redford attended Sunday church services, participated in religious organizations and considered himself a devout Christian. He came to the University Of Kansas as a freshman in Fall 2001 with a mission to spread the word of Christ.

But after two years of science and philosophy classes, Redford’s beliefs began to change and he began to document his metamorphosis into atheism on his YouTube channel Evid3nc3. Six years later, these mini-documentaries have won him more than just a new point of view — they’ve won him $10,000 from the non-profit secular website Project Reason.

“A lot of things started that shift,” Redford, a graduate student from Wellington, said. “One thing was my education here, a scientific education, philosophy classes, classes in ethics.”

The biggest shift in Redford’s religious transformation came in March of 2004, when he read a New Mexico professor’s controversial review of the Bible on Amazon.

“I found it kind of offensive, but I thought I would try to reach out to him,” Redford said. “It turned out that he had more to teach me than I had to teach him.”

Redford communicated with the professor over e-mail for a week and the logic of the professor’s arguments began a dramatic change in his religious ideals. Redford began to see holes in the religion he had been committed to for his entire life.

“It was the most important thing in my life,” he said. “Basically any kind of higher criticism of the Bible, until then, I was completely unaware of as a Christian.”

Faced with the emotional and intellectual turmoil of his religious “deconversion,” Redford began to document his experience with videos. As a graduate student pursuing his doctoral degree in computer science, Redford had a passion for illustrating his journey with images. His YouTube channel, Evid3nc3, is a stream of videos documenting his transformation, and the different stages he went through as he gradually drifted from his former religious beliefs. Redford’s “deconversion” series has received YouTube awards and garnered a large following.

So when Redford stumbled across Project Reason’s video contest, he didn’t think twice about entering.

“Since I had been making these videos about my deconversion I had a lot of experience, and I decided to go for it,” Redford said.

Redford’s video argues for changes to U.S. symbols in order to include atheists, and also documents the history of U.S. religious symbols during the Cold War.

On March 23, he found out he won first place — a grand prize of $10,000 — out of 10 finalists.

“I was a little nervous,” he said. “There were some good competitors.”

After his life-altering experience, Redford reached out to the Society of Open Minded Atheists and Agnostics, or SOMA, at KU. Through his involvement in SOMA, Redford established friendships and connections with other students who shared his skepticism of organized religion.

Joey Ralph, president of SOMA said Redford didn’t tell anyone he had entered the contest until he had made the final cut. But Ralph said he wasn’t surprised that his friend had won.

“He’s the video master,” Ralph, a junior from Hutchinson said. “Obviously, for a $10,000 grand prize he had to put out a pretty good video and he did.”

Conrad Hudson, a sophomore from Topeka and member of SOMA, said Redford’s achievement is one that all members of SOMA can be proud of.

“Chris’ videos are an amazing honest and poignant look at someone’s journey, which I think is always something worth watching,” Hudson said.

Redford said he hopes people will come away more informed after watching his video.

“I really think the last 20 seconds or so are the most important,” he said. “It’s that this is a country whose government we all create. We’re all a community so if there’s anything…in our pledge or in our motto that excludes a certain group, then it shouldn’t be that way.”

For a few other inspiring stories about the power of reason and evidence to transform Christians into ex-Christians, go here and here.

To compare Chris Redford’s very public YouTube-documented journey with that of Mother Teresa’s secret one, go here.

Related posts:

1. Meet Todd Stiefel!
2. My Path to Atheist
3. Meet David Brandt…

Blame it on my parents. They always told me to “think for myself”. I doubt they ever considered what would happen if I really did that. 

Now, I suspect what they meant was, “Think what we tell you but do it in your own words.” Too late. When I was 13, I began to question everything and soon the total absurdity of religion became apparent. 

Because I have been “encouraged” (forced) to read the bible many times, it was easy for me to see the contradictions in the book, what christians professed to believe, and how they lived. 

When I refused to go with them to their church, they said they “Would make me go.” 

I asked them, “How are you going to make me? How will forcing me to attend church change my mind?” Already, their attitude was starting to harden me against everything else they would tell me. 

Their next idea was to have their minister talk to me. I told them it was a waste of everyone’s time. They persisted and had him come to the house to “Talk some sense into me.” (as if they ever works for anyone) After about 15 minutes, of him quoting the bible to me and me pointing out that he was either wrong in his quotes or showing him how it said something else in another place, he became very angry and told me I was going to hell. I suspect it was because I knew the bible better than he did and was, at age 13, able to prove how ridiculous his arguments were. 

I told him, “If there is a Hell I’ll see you there. Save me a nice place, OK?” He said I was an impertinent, disrespectful child. By then, I was angry myself and for the first time, I told a christian that he was a hypocrite, a liar, and a fool. My parents insisted that I apologize. I refused and left the room to a lot of yelling and threats. 

For the next four years, I heard about this at least once a week. So the night I graduated high school, I left my parent’s home and didn’t see them again for well over a year. By then, I had completed a couple of years of college, which fortunately, I was able to pay for myself. I was entering the army and wanted to try to make peace with them, but had to listen to the same old recriminations and arguments again. 

The next time I saw them was two years later when I was getting married. After several years of an on-again, off-again relationship they finally agreed to just not discuss it any more. I’d like to say that worked, but slowly subtle hints became outright condemnation. Then I took a job transfer from Ohio to Arizona, so family meetings were rare enough to become occasions for something other than contention. 

What did I learn? Even your family can turn against you if you refuse to share in their illusions.

Related posts:

1. My Path to Atheist
2. A Christian Whose Mind Was Changed
3. Meet Chris Redford!

Why I’m an Atheist

…I was, not unexpectedly, very religious before. I was born into a Hindu family in India, and hence naturally was fed Hinduism by my parents, parents and society in general over time as I grew up. And I wasn’t really reluctant, and did my best to understand the books and traditions. But I was always very inquisitive and kept asking questions, and often saw that there were no good answers for them in Hinduism. But that didn’t turn me away from faith, and I presumed that it was only because of my lack of understanding, rather than the lack of clarity in the philosophy itself…

…We were taught Indian history in schools, and I learnt about many progressive social movements of India’s past. I learnt of Hindu schools of thought that spoke out against many Hindu practices, especially Idol-Worship. Outside my academics, I read up and tried understanding their philosophy. Over the years, our history books also talked about the origins of Indian non-theistic religions of Buddhism and Jainism. Again, outside my academics, I read up on their philosophy and understood the philosophical roots of non-theism, and eventually, atheism.

My questioning mind found rationale and reason in these atheistic and non-theistic philosophies rather than what is popular Hinduism, which like most other religions, shunned questions, inquiry and criticism.

Related posts:

1. Stay Away from Hindu Temples…
2. Testimony of a Mad Atheist
3. My Path to Atheist

My deconversion to atheism was not a singular event. The first thing that influenced me was the broad spectrum of religions I experienced in my youth. The first was Sai Baba… cult. Not a cult in the ‘poison the drinking water and lets all die’, or even a cult in the sense ‘kill the unbelievers’. But a cult in the sense that there was a authoritarian leader who claimed to be god, complete with its own secluded world. This religion believed that he was from all religions, which meant that I leant about all religions, from Buddha to Mohammed to Jesus to Brama, Vishnu and Shiva. They had a very rosy picture of these religions, and they ignored the contridictions between them. And as a young child I became fascinated by the literiture behind these gods.

The importaint thing to note is that I took all these religions equally seriously. Add to that the new age spirituality I got off my mother, and you have a really messed up kid. With age I slowly grew out of it, but it made me live a really strange and restricted adolescence. More on that in another post.

This conundrum of religions that I was brought up with was brought into further conflict when I was sent to a Seven Day Adventis(SDA) high school. Through sheer terror of the devil I started to follow them, but the fact that I could never rule out other religions kept me from coming into the fold. Additionally I never really bonded with the other children, thus there was not much compelling me to become a SDA. There was one time, when I went on a drama troupe and I felt I was starting to get along with the other children, and I began to believe that this was the ’special’ religion that really represents god.

Then in the end of the performace, we had a party night. All the children ( roughly 8-12 year olds) plus us ran around mucking up, attacking each other with pillows, that sort of thing. Then the rest of the boys in my drama troupe, minus me and another boy who was more or less a half hearted semi SDA believer got bored with the childish games, and brought out their towels, rolled then up and wet them, turning them into ‘roo tails’, and whipped the other children with them. Given how painful this was to be whipped by, I thought they had gone a little too far. But I was shocked when the night was over that the rest of the boys in my troupe (minus that other boy), laughed about how they had ‘cained’ the other boys, even drawing blood in some cases. All of these people good SDAs. I was shocked, and I thought that these boys would be in trouble. But no, all that happened was that they were told later that ‘maybe they’d gone a little too far’.

Upon witnessing that, I decided that any religion that could ignore their own moral code like that was not the true faith, and I came up with the concept that it didn’t matter which religion was right, as if you lived a good life, god would accept you…

Read more at The Mad Atheist…

Related posts:

1. From Hindu to Atheist
2. My Path to Atheist
3. Robert M. Price’s Testimony

My persona is Chris Agnostic.  No, this is not my real name, simply a name to be easily identified.  Think of it as a stage name if you will.

My path towards Atheism started when I was young.  I grew up in a family (Mother and Father) who didn’t go to church.  The only time I went was when I visit my Grandmother, who was a devout Pentecostal.  When you are young and go to Church, all of it seems awesome (and intimidating).  My Grandmother’s church was a small one, few people went.  Looking back, I realized that many of them were as old as my Grandmother.  We had Sunday School and went to Church twice on Sunday’s, which the night service was always boring and I remember always thinking, When will it end?

As I grew older, I began to see flaws.  My Grandmother was well liked at her Church, everyone thought she was sweet and a delight to have around.  But once she came home, she changed.  Me and her were on different ends.  She herself had 6 daughters, and each daughter on the average had 2 children, giving me about 11 other cousins.  Out of all of the Cousins, I was the only one who didn’t get along with her.  I was a Star Trek fan.  I was a fan of Sci-Fi.  She constantly made fun of my likes and my dreams.  She was meaner to me than any other.  How could this be the same person who was well loved at Church?  I didn’t like her.  It is interesting how Christians are always quick to point out that it is wrong for me not to like my Grandmother, or Brother, or any other family member.  But Love, like Trust and Respect, is something that is earned and not automatically assumed.

I digress…

This was perhaps the seed that started me towards the path, but at the time it left me in a state of wanting to learn more.  As I grew older, I found that I knew little of religion.  As I had mentioned my parents were not religious.  My Mother growing up in the world of my Grandmother, left her despising religion.  When I got to High School, I was certain (without a doubt) there was a God.  Just the Bible remained a mystery.  I grew up in Mesa, Arizona.  For those who don’t know, it is a predominately a Mormon Town.  It was founded by Mormons.  I am not inciting hate here, but my growth was limited due to growing up with people of the Morman faith.  I had found that many children of the faith despise the pratice and were quickly wishing to escape from it.  I did try talking to those of the devout, but I never found the answers I was looking for.

By High School I had met other Christians, even went to a club called FCA (For Christian Atheletes, which most of the people there were not Athletes, perhaps they should opt to change their name).  I went for a whole year, but was still left empty by the experience.  I even dated a girl and fell madly in love with her who was a devout Christian.  But she didn’t return that love back.  She helped me on my guide but it didn’t solidify me in faith.  Also during the time of High School, I learned of Evolution and felt that God and Evolution were mutually exclusive.  But I felt I was the only one who thought like that.  It wasn’t until a few years ago I came across Kenneth L. Miller that I found I was wrong in thinking I was alone.

After High School I joined the Air Force, where I encountered many different people of faith.  I went to Church on Sunday, which was interesting but found myself often falling alseep.  I tried going to different Church each week and found them all to be boring.  Eventually I stopped going.  Once I was out of Basic, on few occasions I went to church but I still questioned everything.  There was a girl there I met who was devout in her beliefs and she knew of my situation.  We became friends, good friends.  We talked a lot.  During our time together, I was able to get her to question her beliefs, stating that the only reason she believed in what she does is because that is what her parents told her she believed in.  For a short time she questioned that and open herself up to new possibilities, but then decided that she wanted to hold onto what she already believed in.  I am OK with that, at the very least she questioned it.

Another person I met in the Military gave me a Bible.  I complained that I had trouble understanding the Bible since it was written in Old English and was written like poetry.  I wanted to read it like a book in modern times.  I would often get a response that you cannot change the word of God, thus why it cannot be translated.  I wish I had the insight I do now back then and point out the books of the bible were not originally in English.  This other person gave me a Bible that was a “Living Translation” so now I could better understand the bible.  I was told that it was not best to read the Bible straight through and in fact you needed to read in a specific order contrary to chronlogically.  So I started with Corinthians, and I encountered a verse that stated “Women do not have a voice in Church”.  This angered me and I suddenly realized (though I knew before, just didn’t really connect the dots) that the Bible was bad as it has been used to discriminate against people through history.  That started me on the path that while I believed in God, I felt the bible was wrong.

But I was alone.  Who could I talk to about any of this.  No one.  I didn’t realize I was now Agnostic.  I felt I was still Christian, just not according to the Christians.  Over time, I learned that I was Agnostic Theism.  And that was pretty much my life until about a year ago.  I was working, and suddenly without any other thought leading up to this, it hit me, Why do I believe in God?

Until then, I was always certain I believed in God.  I event went to Church a few times, but often found myself alone as I often disagreed with the message being delievered (also I once brought up the teaching of Buddah when discussing that of Solomon).  No matter what else I had a lack of faith in, my devotion of God remained.  But I realized the only reason I believed in God was because somewhere along the way, someone told me there was a God and thus, I believed in God.  When I took a step back and looked at everything, I realized, there is no evidence for God.  I never came to God on my own, I just accepted what Authority figures told me.

I felt conflicted.  For 28 years of my life, I was certain there was a God, and now I couldn’t hold on to that belief.  It pained me.  I still had no one to talk to.  I didn’t know what to do.  So I started to try to find evidence for God, see if I could come back to the notion that there was a God.  Often times in great distressed, I relied on asking help from God and wondered if my doing so was evidence that there was a God.  But I came to the conclusion it was mere instinct to do it, possibly one set by my own evolution.  But I am not controlled by my instincts.  The only thing that held true for me was evolution.  That at least had evidence.  So, the first task to my becoming Atheist was to train myself not to turn to God in distress.  That was difficult at first, and I knew it to be the right thing to do, although at first I questioned if I was being dishonest with myself.

During my time of questioning my faith and being on the path towards Atheism, I met some people who were also Atheist in a Guild for Team Fortress 2.  I suddenly didn’t feel alone and I also discovered that YouTube had a lot to offer me.  Specifically of Penn & Teller show (you know the name), and the work of Thunderf00t (Why do people laugh at Creationists).  I looked at many others, including George Carlin before he died and it just all made sense to me.  There was no God.

Also during the time Ben Stein movie came to my attention and I didn’t research on it (without watching it) and I learned who Richard Dawkins was.  So I thank Ben Stein for helping me on my path for introducing Richard Dawkins.  I often talked to my Mother about all of this and what I was going through, and she bought 2 copies of The God Delusion, one for her and one for me.  It was in this book I read of the 1 – 7 scale of Faith and that he was a 6.

I adopted this scale for myself and made it 1 – 100.  At the time I recongized I was an Atheist, I put myself at 90 (which Dawkins would be 91 – 95).  Watching all the videos and talking to a lot of people I came to a couple of conclusions.  So I will now give an overall conclusion of my path and where I started as an Agnostic Theist to where I am now:

30 – Agnostic Theist

I strongly believe there is a God, but I know the Bible to be mostly wrong.

90 – Atheism

I cannot support any evidence that God exists, or any universal consciousness exists, and it is likely it doesn’t exist.

85 – Agnostic Atheism

God is supernatural, and thus not a physical entity of the Universe.  Scientific Understanding is that of testing the phsyical realm.  Since God is not of the physical realm, this concludes no evidence of God can exist.  This gives the conclusion that if God exists, there is no evidence.  But no evidence does not give way that there is a God.  My conclusion at this time is the simpliest explination, there is no God.

80 – Agnostic Atheism

In philosophy, there is always a mover.  If we see an object, turn our back, and then look at the object again to see it in a different place, then we conclude there someone or something caused the object move, which there was someone or something to cause that unknown to act.  We can go back and back and back to where we reach the ultimate unknown, which gives rise to God.  If the Big Bang happened, then something set it into place.

83 – Agnostic Atheism

But if there is a God, and God created everything, then what created God?  If God is complex, then he arrived through his own method of evolution.

As you can see, I still set that there is no God, but I give rise to the oppurtunity that there might be a God, but it is likely not the Christian God.  If anyone is interested, I will be happy to post my scale from 1 to 100 that identifies where you fit in with your beliefs and understandings (or lack there of).  It is comprehensive, but I think it is a nice tool to help people identify themselves.  I urge anyone to ask me questions.  I plan on someday soon posting videos on YouTube to discuss various aspects of the Bible, for the purpose to prove that Atheist do read it, and to gain understanding/clarity of the Bible.  Perhaps one day I will believe in God again, but I do not see myself going any higher than Agnostic Theism.

I am proud to admit, I am an Atheist.

Related posts:

1. Testimony of a Mad Atheist
2. A Black Atheist Speaks Out
3. What kind of (atheist/theist) are YOU?

I might have eventually shared the story I did in my last entry in any event, but I especially wanted to share it today because it seemed like the perfect “These issues still matter!” introduction to an older essay I came across last night and really wanted to share.

It’s an essay about how one devout Christian went to college, majored in Bible studies, eventually asked himself the sorts of questions I asked at the end of my previous entry, and was prompted to abandon his Christianity as a result.

I hope you find the essay as interesting as I did.

And if it helps any other Christian (or any non-Christians) to seriously confront the sorts of questions that all too often get lost in the noise and the smoke of what passes for religious debate these days, so much the better….

—– How The Problem Of Pain Ruined My Faith (Bart Ehrman/Beliefnet.com; April 17, 2008)

For most of my life I was a devout Christian, believing in God, trusting in Christ for salvation, knowing that God was actively involved in this world. During my young adulthood, I was an evangelical, with a firm belief in the Bible as the inspired and inerrant word of God. During those years I had fairly simple but commonly held views about how there can be so much pain and misery in the world. God had given us free will (we weren’t programmed like robots), but since we were free to do good we were also free to do evil – hence the Holocaust, the genocide in Cambodia, and so on. To be sure, this view did not explain all evil in the world, but a good deal of suffering was a mystery and in the end, God would make right all that was wrong.

In my mid 20s, I left the evangelical fold, but I remained a Christian for some twenty years – a God-believing, sin-confessing, church-going Christian, who no longer held to the inerrancy of Scripture but who did believe that the Bible contained God’s word, trustworthy as the source for theological reflection. And the more I studied the Christian tradition, first as a graduate student in seminary and then as a young scholar teaching biblical studies at universities, the more sophisticated I became in my theological views and in my understanding of the world and our place in it.

Suffering increasingly became a problem for me and my faith. How can one explain all the pain and misery in the world if God – the creator and redeemer of all – is sovereign over it, exercising his will both on the grand scheme and in the daily workings of our lives? Why, I asked, is there such rampant starvation in the world? Why are there droughts, epidemics, hurricanes, and earthquakes? If God answers prayer, why didn’t he answer the prayers of the faithful Jews during the Holocaust? Or of the faithful Christians who also suffered torment and death at the hands of the Nazis? If God is concerned to answer my little prayers about my daily life, why didn’t he answer my and others’ big prayers when millions were being slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, when a mudslide killed 30,000 Columbians in their sleep, in a matter of minutes, when disasters of all kinds caused by humans and by nature happened in the world?

I read widely in the matter. I read philosophers, theologians, biblical scholars, great literary figures and popular authors from Plato to Sartre, from Apuleius to Dostoevsky, from the Apostle Paul to Henri Nouwen, from Shakespeare to T.S. Eliot to Archibald Macleish, from C. S. Lewis (with whom I was very taken) to Harold Kushner to Elie Wiesel.

Eventually, while still a Christian thinker, I came to believe that God himself is deeply concerned with suffering and intimately involved with it. The Christian message, for me, at the time, was that Jesus Christ is the revelation of God to us humans, and that in Jesus we can see how God deals with the world and relates to it. He relates to it, I thought, not by conquering it but by suffering for it. Jesus was not set on a throne in Jerusalem to rule over the Kingdom of God. He was crucified by the Romans, suffering a painful, excruciating, and humiliating death for us. What is God like? He is a God who suffers. The way he deals with suffering is by suffering both for us and alongside us.

This was my view for many years, and I still consider it a powerful theological view. It would be a view that I would still hold on to, if I were still a Christian. But I’m not.

About nine or ten years ago I came to realize that I simply no longer believed the Christian message. A large part of my movement away from the faith was driven by my concern for suffering. I simply no longer could hold to the view – which I took to be essential to Christian faith – that God was active in the world, that he answered prayer, that he intervened on behalf of his faithful, that he brought salvation in the past and that in the future, eventually in the coming eschaton, he would set to rights all that was wrong, that he would vindicate his name and his people and bring in a good kingdom (either at our deaths or here on earth in a future utopian existence).

We live in a world in which a child dies every five seconds of starvation. Every five seconds. Every minute there are twenty-five people who die because they do not have clean water to drink. Every hour 700 people die of malaria. Where is God in all this? We live in a world in which earthquakes in the Himalayas kill 50,000 people and leave 3 million without shelter in the face of oncoming winter. We live in a world where a hurricane destroys New Orleans. Where a tsunami kills 300,000 people in one fell swoop. Where millions of children are born with horrible birth defects. And where is God? To say that he eventually will make right all that is wrong seems to me, now, to be pure wishful thinking.

As it turns out, my various wrestlings with the problem have led me, even as an agnostic, back to the Bible, to see how different biblical authors wrestle with this, the greatest of all human questions. The result is my recent book, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer. My contention is that many of the authors of the Bible are wrestling with just this question: why do people (especially the people of God) suffer? The biblical answers are striking at times for their simplicity and power (suffering comes as a punishment from God for sin; suffering is a test of faith; suffering is created by cosmic powers aligned against God and his people; suffering is a huge mystery and we have no right to question why it happens; suffering is redemptive and is the means by which God brings salvation; and so on). Some of these answers are at odds with one another (is it God or his cosmic enemies who are creating havoc on earth?), yet many of them continue to inform religious thinkers today.

My hope in writing the book is certainly not to encourage readers to become agnostic, the path that I took. It is instead to help people think, both about this biggest of all possible questions and about the historically and culturally significant religious responses to it that can be found in the most important book in the history of our civilization.

According to Wikpedia, “Bart D. Ehrman is an American New Testament scholar and textual critic of early Christianity. He is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written about how the original New Testament texts were frequently altered by scribes for a variety of reasons, and argues that these alterations affect the interpretation of the texts.”

Related posts:

1. William Lobdell & The Christian Proselytizers
2. Testimonial of a Former Committed Christian
3. What Atheists Assume about Christianity

A few years ago, I published on my blog in french my memories about my first contacts with religion during my childhood and how I dealt with it at the time. I said in myself that someday I would translate the article in English in order to publish it on Facebook but I’m lazy and a special kind of procrastinator. I regularily postponed the idea until I met a couple of francophile American friends on Facebook whose husband gladly translated the whole article. Be Toni and Gerry Gandel enough thanked for this kind attention.

Before you read the article, I have to explain a few French cultural terms so my non-French readers can understand the context and the words I used.

CE1 : Second class of primary school in France. The children start the school at 6, learn to read and count in the CP class then continue in CE1 the next year.

Guy Lux : A popular variety show on TV anchorman in France during the 60’s and 70’s. American equivalent : Ed Sullivan.

Catechism classes : Equivalent in the USA to “Sunday school”, except in France it takes place on Wednesdays, as this day if off school.

As I said earlier, the translation from French to English has been performed by Gerry Gandel, with my few corrections. Gerry, you did a great and professional job. Thank you again.

Now the article. Any comments encouraged.

*****

The title of this article seems poorly chosen, but I don’t have a better one. In fact, the origins of atheism of every human being are in his/her actual birth. A newborn doesn’t believe in god and, what’s more, has no need of a god. It’s rather of the conscious origin of my atheism that I want to speak.

My first unconscious atheist act goes back to when I was five or six years old, when my grandmother bought me a chain with the medal of a saint. I didn’t understand what she was saying about what this medal represented. I had no idea of what religion could be, but I had the impression that I was getting shanghaied into something that I couldn’t accept, let alone understand. When I was alone in my room, I pulled the chain from my neck and threw it and the medal between the bed and the wall. When they asked me where the chain was, I confessed, got a scolding and refused to put it on again.

The consciousness of my atheism goes back to two events having no direct connection with a divinity or a given religion, but with the “supernatural.”

First event: I was about seven years old and in the CE1 class. The teacher, I no longer know for what reason, began to tell us more or less: “OK, I think it’s time to destroy the myth: there’s no Santa Claus! Are there any students in this class who believe in Santa Claus?” The class was dumbstruck; half of them no longer believed in Santa Claus; the other half, to which I belonged, believed in him. The teacher went on: “It’s your parents who leave the presents.” Shocked at the time, I walked home after school and I asked my mother. She was eloquent in support of the teacher. Then she added this phrase which would remain with me: “Marvels and magic don’t exist.” My mother succeeded in convincing me. In a sense, her explanation was much more logical even if it was difficult for me to admit to. What she said made sense while the existence of Santa Claus was in any case improbable.

Second event: I was in the habit of buying the TV Guide the day it came out on the newsstands giving the list of the programs for the following week. Once I got home, I would check all the programs that interested me. Opening the magazine to the Saturday page, I noticed a variety show with the picture of a man in a top hat holding a dove on his finger. That artist, whom I normally referred to as a “magician,” was to participate in the variety show. But under his photo following his name, was the term “illusionist.” In “illusionist,” there is “illusion” and up to that day, I accepted the routines of those artists literally. That is, if there was a dove, there really was a dove created from nothing. There again, I asked my mother. “But it’s not all true? It’s only an illusion?” I asked her. “Yes,” she answered, “it’s a trick. An illusionist is clever with his hands. If he seems to hold something in his hands, it’s only a trick. And she repeated the phrase that she had told me once before: “Marvels and magic don’t exist.” I was convinced once again even if, as with the question about Santa Claus, her explanation had shaken me up and forced me to a radical and difficult examination of the world around me.

A year later, my grandfather and grandmother were staying with us during summer vacation, and they brought my cousin, two or three years older than I. My grandfather was a deeply religious man. Every time he arrived in a strange place, the first thing he would do was take a walk to visit the local church. During this vacation, he had taken my cousin aside and enlisted him to initiate me into the Catholic religion. For the balance of the vacation, they had placed in my bedroom, a second bed in which my cousin slept. I can see us at that period, in our respective beds, in the middle of the night, he whispering to me the principal elements of belief: there exists according to him an all-powerful god who created the universe, a god who knows everything, who understands everything, who is omnipresent, who walks on water, who was crucified then resurrected, whose flesh can be eaten and whose blood can be drunk by going to church. I asked my cousin a few questions, he answered me within the limits of his knowledge. Then we fell asleep.

The next day, I went to play to play outside while my cousin was still sleeping. I reviewed everything he had told me the night before. Already the idea of believing in god without proof sounded false. The idea that we have to believe in god because “that’s the way it is,” was never a reason for me to accept either religion or anything else.

And it’s no less true today. I thought of my mother’s words: “Marvels and magic don’t exist.” I had no reason to place the hypothesis of the existence of god in any other framework but that of the marvelous and the magical. And if they don’t exist, it’s easy to infer that god doesn’t exist either. And I concluded that what my cousin had told me that night, was nonsense right down to the last word until I had proof of the contrary. At that point, I adopted a kind of enlightened agnosticism. But one thing bothered me: why do people believe in god? And why do certain persons accord so much importance to what I believe? Unable to resolve these questions, I left them unanswered. I would find the answers much later, after I had been an adult for many years.

A few months later, while I was playing outside, I got thirsty and went in to get a drink of water. My mother was watching a TV show about the sixteenth century Wars of Religion and particularly the Saint-Bartholemew’s Day Massacre. While I was drinking, I watched snippets of the film distractedly. You saw a rather violent scene of mass murder of Protestants, and then a close-up of a Catholic holding a Protestant on the ground. The Catholic had the point of his sword to the Protestant’s neck. “Give up your religion or I’ll kill you.” “Never,” answered the Protestant. That scene shocked me. Not because of its violence and bloodthirstiness, but because I could understand neither the motivation of the aggressor nor that of the victim. From a Catholic point of view, I couldn’t see why it was important to kill that man, this fellow human being who hadn’t harmed him, for the reason that he didn’t worship god in the same way. From the point of view of the Protestant, I couldn’t see why he preferred to lose his life rather than abandon his faith. Common sense shows us that life is of inestimable value. That sequence appeared completely absurd to me from one point of view as from the other. And nothing, absolutely nothing justified the fact that two persons could kill one another for that reason. It was really sick.

My grandfather insisted that my mother register me in a catechism course. I went two or three times but it left no traces. I understood nothing that was said and I was bored to death. The teachers talked on bravely in vain but nothing they said made sense to me. Moreover, the course hours cut into my free time, which didn’t make me any happier. After a few sessions, I asked to be allowed to drop it, which was done. I came out of it with a fine, brand-new catechism book bought senselessly since I only opened it to the first pages in the short time I was in the course. I never opened this book again which was certainly lost in a move. It was a great disappointment for my grandfather when my mother told him that I didn’t want to go to catechism class any more.

At school, there were Muslim children. I was shocked when they told me they didn’t eat pork. I love “charcuterie” and no religion or authority will dictate what I can or cannot eat, and still less when it’s something I particularly enjoy. I told myself that religion is absolutely no better in other faiths, that Islam equals Christianity in stupidity. Later I realized that that affirmation is applicable to any other religion not necessarily mentioned here, whether practiced or not, whether polytheistic or monotheistic, whether past, present or coming. Religious rules, above all if they deal with food, literally revolt me. I remember wanting to eat meat on purpose just because it was Good Friday and for that reason, fish was on the menu. A favor that was not accorded me.

At the age of 11, they were trying to talk me into having my first communion. I told them no. My mother said: “You’re taking a chance, you might wish you’d had done it. If you ever want to get married in church, you have to have had your communion. And everybody will make fun of you because then you will be the only adult to take your communion in the company of children 11 years old. Think about it.” “I’ve thought about it.” I held the line. I didn’t take communion. When my sister and my brother turned 11, they didn’t take communion either, to the consternation of my grandparents. I’m not any the worse for it today and I tell myself that I was right to be so stubborn and to refuse to be blackmailed. Because that’s what it was, blackmail.

I used to play with a boy my age who lived on our street. From time to time, his cousin of approximately the same age would come with his parents to visit the family of my friend. The little two-boy band of buddies became larger by one boy. The cousin was enrolled in a private Catholic school. From time to time, he’d recite his religious lessons which he knew by heart. He repeated them as if they were a recording, or a juke box that would play without our having to pay anything. This untimely zeal left me speechless. You could have thought it was a tape recorder repeating itself without understanding its own cassette. I can still hear it: “Jesus dead on the cross, resurrected on the third day,” bla-bla-bla. What babble and what unconditional surrender! Because it is surrender. This would be confirmed for me later.

In the varieties broadcasts of the 70s on TV, there was a group of hippies called the Children of God. They were always smiling and happy, living together in a community, dressed in long white robes down to their ankles. They sang in French with an American accent. Their songs even made it to the hit parade, until one day the police found out that they were involved in child prostitution. At that time, I had no idea that anything was wrong, and I thought it was just a group who liked to get together to sing and express their enjoyment of life. It was the first time I’d heard the word “sect.” And the group which had sung on Guy Lux’s programs was only a show-window to advertize the sect through recordings and TV.

As I got older, every time I pursued to the end any given religious dogma, I’d come to the conclusion that it was at best illogical, at worst absurd. That is to say, belief was incapable of sustaining itself, of arguing its own case. On the other hand, science gave explanations, it proved what it claimed to prove, it made sense and I found it scandalous that religions always have to deny what science says. Science is after all only the observation of the things which surround us. To replace scientific knowledge by belief amounted to me to see the grass and to declare that it is not green if faith says it’s not. Moreover, faith raised more questions than it answered. Nevertheless, I remained in my agnostic position of “I don’t believe until I’m shown proof but I have nothing against belief if the proof is convincing enough.” It never was. What’s more, between science which proves and belief which proclaim without proof, without seeking proof and worse, without wanting to look for proof, the choice is easily made. The reasoning of believers is thereby falsified right from the start since it is the worst way of looking at the world around us.

At around 17, I was having a discussion with my grandfather. At a given moment, I don’t know why, he said to me: “Repeat after me,” and he recited the first verses of Saint Michael, pausing between the verses to allow me to repeat. After two or three verses, he stopped, looked at me and said: “You don’t believe.” “No, I don’t believe.” And I saw the disappointment on his face. I’ll always remember it.

Since I was a little boy, I was fascinated by advanced technology because I saw in it the means of projecting myself towards the future; I saw it as an instrument of social progress, a means for the liberation of the human race. I didn’t know at the time how right I was. I thereby came to love everything that moved in the direction of social progress. On the other hand, I was led to reject whatever removed me from humanity; and it so happens that religion is a part of that. There again, I didn’t doubt the validity of my first analysis. To sum up, I consider science, culture, intelligence, technology, democracy, a critical sense—all things that propel the human race forward. On the other hand, there is religion, the army, war, propaganda, ignorance, acculturation, illiteracy, alienation, dictatorship, poverty—all things that pull us backward. Which is what led me to revere the first and reject the second violently. That religion is clearly in the second category, there is not the faintest shadow of a doubt. I operate so strongly according this principle that I refused to see the film trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” when I learned that the author of the book was angry with modernity and progress, which is the exact opposite of what I am.

I progressed from agnosticism to atheism between 1996 and 1997 at the time of the civil war in Algeria. Every day the media announced “New tragedy in Algeria; bomb explodes in a market: 20 dead.” Or: “Horrible massacre in Algeria; entire villages wiped out: 200 deaths.” Or “A man and his father, 84 years of age, were killed as they were fetching water from the village fountain”; or “A 12-year-old shepherd was killed while tending his sheep”; or “Fundamentalists tied a man to a bottle of natural gas, then fired rifle rounds into it causing it to explode; later they found the man’s intestines draped over the surrounding tree branches; they stabbed a pregnant woman in the stomach; they threw a six-year-old girl out of a window; and they boiled an infant in the soup pot”. All perfectly innocent people. Every day, the horror of the new facts was added to that of the preceding days, before we could even recover from the first. When they were asked why they killed babies, the fundamentalists answered that “it was to keep them from becoming impure like their elders.” When you want to put down a dog, you say he’s mad. Think about it.

In 2001, the events of 9/11 finally turned me into a militant atheist. Religion is not life. Religion is death. It’s even the adoration of death, the preference for death over life. Anyone who thinks he will live better in Paradise than on this earth has no fear of dying by blowing himself up, killing, along with himself, innocent people; since terrestrial life is, according to him, less beautiful than the “Beyond.” At the same time, he commits this gesture to give pleasure to god. But what a blood-thirsty god it must be. And this god, so powerful as the believers have it, who needs simple mortals (imperfect by essence, the dogma says) to accomplish his task, is decidedly not as powerful as they claim if this is how he proceeds.

A childhood friend, someone I hadn’t seen since I was 15, took the cake: in the interval, he had become a Jehovah’s Witness. He, so brilliant during our childhood, so conscientious in school, succumbed to this most elitist of sects. I’ll explain: he is convinced, like the majority of believers, that his is the best religion (the other religions for him are false, naturally), which persuades him that he is a member of the elite (I have the right religion and the others are wrong). I’ve heard him criticize celebrities known for their connection with other religions/sects (it’s all the same). For example, Tom Cruise and Scientology; Bob Marley and the Rastafarians. I’ve heard him make nasty remarks about archeologists because they study periods in history going back beyond 6,000 years in contradiction to what the Bible says. I caught him being anti-parliamentarian every time a political event took place (Jehovah’s Witnesses consider all politicians evil). I was flabbergasted when I realized that he was pleased at what had happened to the Americans after 9/11. “You could have at least a little compassion for 3,000 innocent people,” I told him angrily, pushed to the limit by his lack of sensitivity. Each time an earthquake took place somewhere in the world, there he was waiting for information on the subject. An earthquake could in fact herald the onset of Armageddon, god’s anger, which would have incited god to flatten this evil human society, a society that will be re-established from the 144,000 virtuous human beings, chosen by god himself. What a program! That’s what they tell him in the sect, and his interest in earthquakes is only to verify that what the sect tells him is true. How can I tell him that the act of seeking proof reveals his doubts.

There are two kinds of believers: followers who never plant bombs, who never kill for their god, but who constitute by their very existence a means of bringing pressure on others to forbid abortion and birth control, to oppose euthanasia, to discourage sexuality, and to assure the renewal of the generations that guarantee the perpetuation of religion. The other kind of believers, substantially smaller in number, are those capable of killing and being killed for the interests of the gurus, the pope, the rabbi or the mullah, because it is to the advantage of the latter. It is impossible for me to justify such a system; it would be like standing up for Al Capone. It’s because of gurus that the largest number of wars were fought in the last 2,000 years. To mention all the events, ancient or recent, caused by religion: The Saint-Bartholomew’s Day massacre; the Albigensian crusade; the Troubles in Ulster (Northern Ireland); the Palestinian conflict; Darfur; 9/11; Africans who die from AIDS in uncounted numbers… I willingly desist, not wishing to transform this note into an enumeration, but the list is long and frightful.

Rather recently, I came across a fair number of atheist websites that not only revealed to me that my denunciation of religion was more restrained than needs be, but they supplied me with new ammunition to fight the elements of dogma. A few examples: when Noah’s flood began, all living species not in the Ark were drowned? How about fish? They say that Cain took a wife, but according to Genesis, at that time, there were on earth only him and his parents, Adam and Eve. Where did this second woman come from? They say that Jesus dying on the cross redeemed our sins. First, the Bible doesn’t say how. Second, how does this death constitute a sacrifice since Jesus was resurrected three days later? Nothing explains it.

Religion is a weapon of mass destruction. The goal of the gurus is to convert the most individuals possible so that the gurus can enlarge their zone of influence to the detriment of other beliefs and non-believers alike. Their only plan is to become powerful, influential and rich.

Related posts:

1. Did Muhammad Exist?
2. Monday School: Did Jesus Really Exist?
3. Faith

I still don’t believe in God. I’m still questioning. I’m still thinking. I’m still learning.

My health hasn’t been the greatest this last year. I had to miss another year of school (working at home, again) because my mental state is still too fragil for me to go back to school. And it turns out I’m not even bipolar. Ha. Ha. Ha. A misdiagnosis. The second one actually. I actually have something called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Go figure. Oh well. It’s all turned out for the best. I joined a youth group associated with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) in my home town and I’m actually doing some public speaking telling my story of my struggle with mental illness. It’s amazing. I’m getting better and am hoping to be able to go back to school for my senior year next year (fingers crossed).

But of course, you all want to hear about my dad, right? Well, he and I are doing as well as can be expected. We don’t talk much. He doesn’t take my mental illness well. He doesn’t want me medicated. He hasn’t once come to see me speak on stage. But the Bible waving and preaching has subsided. He still has his moments from time to time, but I’m handling it.

Everyone else knows as well, about my de-conversion I mean. My friends have accepted me just fine. I’m actually getting along better with my peers. On the surface, everything seems great. Except for one little thing: my family doesn’t believe that I’m actually an atheist.  To them, I’m simply “having trouble with my faith.”  It’s kind of ironic actually. I finally get used to the idea of being an atheist, gather up the courage to tell the folks, and look what happens; they don’t believe me. I was stressing horribly about how I was going to tell my sister and my few Christian friends. Well…I didn’t have to tell them anything. Word spread around the church that I was “having trouble” and needed prayer. Of course my mental illness is brought up. Of course I’m angry at God and that’s why I turned my back on Him. Why else would anyone leave the church??

Yes, I was terribly bitter when I first realized this is what everyone thought. Then I realized something else: what if it’s not such a bad thing? Who cares if that’s what they think? There’s nothing I can do about it anyway. I realized as long as I don’t compromise myself, I don’t owe anyone an explanation. Life goes on.

And it did. Then I got depressed. Suicidal. I did things I’m not proud of. Things that make me cringe just thinking about. I lost myself. Was it because I was without God? Did I need Him in my life in order to get through this trial?

I started doubting my doubts, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It eventually led me to go to church, just to try it. I wanted to see what it was like to be looking in from the outside of something I used to be so very much a part of. I went to my sister’s church. One I’d never gone to before and where no one knew me and my “troubles”. It went fine. Nothing changed for me. I made the mistake of going back the next week, and well, all hell broke loose.

I can’t for the life of me remember what the pastor’s sermon was about. All I remember is that he turned into my dad up on that stage. Every word was a knife cutting into my gut. Shame. Your mind has been poisoned. Shame. Morals like Hitler and Stalin. Shame. This is the truth! What do you live for?! It took all I had to calmly walk out of that sanctuary instead of bolt at a dead run screaming like my body wanted to. I went to the parking lot by the car and cried until I was sure my brain had melted. My sister came eventually and we left. I don’t remember much after that.

This is how it was for me for awhile, and how it continues to be even today. I see my dad everywhere. I can’t escape him. I close my eyes and see him pointing at my bleeding arm, bleeding because I cut it, and hear his voice: this is an act of an unsurrendered life to God. My dad’s words hurt me. His actions hurt me. He isn’t a bad guy, really. He’s just got a lot of problems that he’s never bothered to look at. I have told myself that I don’t care what he thinks and that I’m done with him. But he’s my father. I can never be “done” with him. Inside, I’m still that little girl that wants her daddy to be proud of her. In some ways, I think I’ll always be that little girl.

Related posts:

1. My Path to Atheist
2. Irish Atheist/Agnostic
3. Atheist Personality Disorder?

When I was young, we did go to church every Sunday. However, I never paid attention to what they were saying. Like most other children, I was just there for the cookies, not divine revelation. I did read my kids bible cover to cover when I was six, since even as a child I wanted to be knowledgeable. Religion wasn’t shoved down my throat despite this. My parents always encouraged my brother and I to read and learn – I remember reading lots of books about dinosaurs (my brother was into them) and science (everything else that I was interested in). There was never any question for me as to the age of the universe. The bible was wrong, science was right. I suppose my brain was “wired” toward science.

We moved when I was eight, and my grandparents sent me to a bible camp that everyone had gone to on their side of the family. I had a lot of fun, as there were a variety of activities, kind counselors, and entertaining songs. Interjecting all this were these “campfires” where they would discuss god. I cannot recall if it was that summer or one following where I came to two conclusions. One, god did exist. Two, he was a total a**hole.

I believed there was a god because I believe in Santa Claus and that my stuffed toys had souls. I was young, and I lived in a world of fiction and imagination. I didn’t like god because I was fiercely independent. I could take care of myself, I didn’t need someone to tell me what to do or look after me. All the adults in my life pretty much had a monopoly on that. I also needed something to throw all my hatred at. I was in a new town, away from my childhood friends, and every time I tried to make new ones they ended up stabbing me in the back. I was a very angry child, and I needed to get that emotion out.

Fast forward to when I was twelve. I had a few shaky relationships, but I was basically damaged goods. That year when I went to camp, the idea of someone who loved me no matter what was beginning to sound pretty appealing. I decided to stop hating and start loving. The minute I did, it was like this incredibly huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

After that, I wore a cross, listened to Christian music, and even prayed. I never really felt close to god, however, or remotely Christian like. I felt so fake. So three weeks or so after I “converted” I lay in my bed late at night, trying to figure things out. I looked at both options before me. Hating god felt wrong… yet loving him felt wrong too. What was I to do? 

Then, this tiny voice spoke up, “Maybe it’s because there isn’t a god”. 

It was as if everything just fell into place. I knew instantly that I had finally gotten it right. I felt elated, like yet another weight had lifted, and I was floating above all those believers and their silly beliefs. I soon came crashing down to Earth, as I also realized that my parents would not approve. I cannot explain why I knew this… but instinctively I figured out that I had stumbled onto something taboo, and forbidden. It filled me with sorrow momentarily, but I knew that I had every right to think the way I did. Yet I still kept the naïve belief that they were my parents, and they would love me no matter what. It was a constant battle between emotion and reason.

It’s been three years since then. My parents know my beliefs now, and I predicted correctly their reaction. I don’t trust them as much as I used to. I’m still dealing with a lot of stuff*, and my emotion constantly swings between being really happy about being free, and really sad my dad (for my mom has accepted it) doesn’t want to open his mind. I have come to terms with the fact that when I die, the universe will go on without me. For the moment, I am content to live my life to the fullest, because life is pretty sweet**; why would I want to squander it waiting for the next one?

“Was Carl Sagan a religious man? He was so much more. He left behind the petty, parochial, medieval world of the conventionally religious; left the theologians, priests and mullahs wallowing in their small-minded spiritual poverty. He left them behind, because he had so much more to be religious about. They have their Bronze Age myths, medieval superstitions and childish wishful thinking. He had the universe.”

*You know, teenage angst, depression, suicide. All that fun stuff.
**I think; logically I know I shouldn’t waste this life, but emotionally; well f**k, I don’t really have any emotion right now.

Related posts:

1. Testimonial of a Former Committed Christian
2. My Testimonial
3. Reason – Not Personal Philosophy