Christian delete

If you’re new to the party, HERE are the previous posts in this series. If you want to skip the history and prefer the twitter version, I’m having an ongoing conversation with a born-again atheist. When I say “born-again atheist” I mean he was a born again Christian, but is now an atheist.

Below is part 2 of AtypicalAtheist’s response to my question:

CLICK HERE to read part 1

AtypicalAtheist: Fast forward to my senior year and I’ve proposed to high school sweetheart. When we begin discussing our wedding plans, we needed to agree upon what church we’re going to be married in. Hmmm…. well, by this point, I wasn’t affiliated with any specific religion anymore and really was a bit hostile to the idea. She wasn’t regularly visiting church either, but was of very strong faith. But I was rather firm that I didn’t want a standard service. Instead, I wanted something like a “New Life” kinda service (I may have that name wrong, but the idea is about right). Basically something more non-denominational. She assented to this I think without us really getting into my hostility toward the bible and toward what is now commonly referred to as “organized religion” – I didn’t have that moniker for it, but that’s what it’s now kinda lumped into. Anyway, we were married by a pastor in the Lompoc Mission – definitely not a traditional service.

Our first seven years of marriage were perfect really. We mostly didn’t attend church services, although occasionally, I was asked to attend an Easter service or my wife would just go to a service without me. Then she got pregnant after much trying in our seventh year. Here is where things began to change a bit for me, and where our perspectives on religion had a much more consequential impact. I was certain that I didn’t want my children “brainwashed with religion” (you can check with my wife – I’m certain I used that phrase a time or two) and she was aghast at my contempt for it. But it wasn’t based on deep research at this point, only based on my prior readings of the bible really. I remember two very distinct clashes between us in these early days that forever changed our personal rules of engagement on the religion issue:

1- We were in the outlet mall near I-Drive and there was a Christian store that my wife and kids wanted to go into. My wife started showing my eldest a bible and I nearly had an aneurysm (you see, my wife has never actually read the bible), and I made quite a pitiful scene in this store. I raised my voice saying things like “Do you really want your daughter to read how it’s ok to sell your daughters into slavery since it’s permitted in ‘your’ bible?” and “The amount of killing, rape and plundering makes this book rated X in my opinion. There’s no way I want my daughter to be reading this trash”. Suffice it to say that it was an embarrassment for all.

2- One year, my eldest was about 2 maybe, and my wife wanted us to go to a church service. During the service, I was openly hostile to the pastor who was just doing his thing… I was loudly sighing in disagreement and basically making an ass out of myself. I was in his place of worship trying to appease my wife by going to a service, and yet I was acting like I was in my own house being put off by his message. Again, a childish response to my ever-growing disagreement with religion and the bible, but my wife swore to never ever ask me back into a church service. It was for the best really.

As years passed, I (on more than one occasion) would make sure that any reference to God or Jesus based on some story, song, movie or whatever was at least accompanied by a quick (although probably painful from my wife’s point of view) mention that history is replete with people using gods to explain phenomena they couldn’t explain any other way. For example Thor… (blah blah) or Buddha (blah blah). You get the picture. I didn’t want only Christianity to be mentioned – I wanted all kids to know for sure that there are opposing views to religion and that just because mom (or dad) believes X doesn’t mean there aren’t other areas to investigate. I mentioned comparative religion many times in those years. And, to my wife’s credit, she was completely onboard with the idea that we shouldn’t just mention God/Jesus either. On this level, she completely agreed.

I started really researching atheism somewhere in my 30s. My wife started regularly attending church alone, and to counter this, I believe I went on a research “binge”. My spare time was consumed with reading books on various topics covering religion, evolution, and atheism. I purchased books, used the internet to research critiques for and against religion in general, not just against the revealed religion of Christianity. Ultimately, after much research, I concluded that I am, after all, an atheist. I am without belief in a god or gods.

There was one other blow-up regarding religion in my family I’ll share – largely because it shows my inability to convince anyone to “convert” to atheism, and why I’ve adopted a live-and-let live policy on this topic. My eldest daughter was dating a creep (yeah, he really was a creep), but the creep wanted her to go to church to be with him on Sundays. My wife was more than happy to take her. At one point, there was a large blow-up in front of my eldest daughter regarding my concern that church would somehow brainwash her. This, it seemed, was happening in spite of my attempts to educate my kids that religion isn’t necessarily true and that it was the construct of a superstitious people long ago. Anyway, my wife and I walked for hours around the neighborhood park one evening as I carefully and thoughtfully laid out my “acquired” evidences for the absurdity of belief in gods. And here’s the thing … it didn’t matter. To my wife, her faith is more important than facts. Her faith is more important than reality. It’s what gets her through her day, and to take it away by brute force would be evil. She needs her faith – who the hell am I to try to wrest that from her grasp. What a jerk I was in that moment. It was momentously important to me that she see the “truth”, but it wasn’t important to her.

What did turn out to be important though was this – by introducing the notion of multiple competing religions to my children, and multiple competing versions of “the truth”, I believe we’ve equipped our children to make a decision regarding their assent or rejection of religion. Instead of just being an atheist because daddy is, my kids know that many people believe a variety of things, and it’s up to them to make a decision based on research, not based on passed-down edict. I think we did that well my wife and I – and it took great concession / compromise on both our parts. If my wife had it her way, her children would be in church every Sunday. If I had it my way, my children would be in a free thought meeting every Saturday. We do neither, and instead have encouraged our kids to research and make up their own mind.

In the end, I’ve asked myself this… How would I feel if my middle child wanted to go join the Latter Day Saints? Well, I guess I’d be disappointed – unless of course, she researched the various religions, visited them one by one, and decided for herself that it was the one that represented the truth to her. In that case, I’d feel like we succeeded.

AtypicalAtheist

Click HERE to see all “conversations with a born-again atheist” posts.
NOTE: All comments will be held for approval. This blog is a no-hate zone.
Disclosure: Amazon links are affiliate links. I don’t use them because I make any money on the 4 cents per dollar, but because they track click throughs. And I am that addicted to stats.

If you’re new to the party, HERE are the previous posts in this series. If you want to skip the history and prefer the twitter version, I’m having an ongoing conversation with a born-again atheist. When I say “born-again atheist” I mean he was a born again Christian, but is now an atheist.

Below is PART ONE of AtypicalAtheist’s response to one of two questions I posed to him in my previous email.” (CLICK HERE to read part 2)

JSM: How did you – a self-professed born again Christian – become an atheist?

AtypicalAtheist: Hey Julie,

Here’s a book of info written over a couple of hours. I’ll answer the second question tomorrow.

You’re absolutely right – I was not coerced into accepting Christ as my Lord and Savior as a kid, nor was I coerced into immersion Baptism. Those were my choices, although in retrospect, they were kinda expected in my family. My upbringing, much like others I suspect, was that religion was handed down to me with the expectation of being assimilated. That is, whilst growing up, I wasn’t presented with a buffet of religious beliefs to choose from – I was presented with only one … on Sunday morning, we go see ReverendT at the chapel on base where we get a little sermon, I sing in the kids choir, once a month we take communion (the sweetest nastiest red wine and a wafer that stuck to the roof of my mouth), and then had donuts waiting for mom and dad in Sunday school because I was too young to participate.

I recall many services, but the two that stick out most for me was:

* Burying a time capsule in 1976 to commemorate the bicentennial after church on Sunday, July 4th, 1976 right there in the yard of the church.

* Playing Jesus in a musical … I remember soloing in a song called “3 Silver Coins”.

While we were on base, we went to church every Sunday, even when my dad was PCS or TDY. [that’s “permanent change of station” and “temporary duty travel” for us non-military folk] When my dad retired from the Air Force, we ended up with a Baptist church literally behind our house. I believe my dad went to that church, and rejected it for some reason (that I found out later). We ended up going regularly to a Nazarene church. We really were part of this congregation for over a year – and my dad used to write Christian songs to perform in the church. It should be noted that my best friends in 4-7th grade were Saul (Jewish) and Jacky (although her last name Goldstein makes one think she was Jewish, she followed something completely different that I still am unaware of even today). Anyway, at one point, my dad wrote the words to a song (By Bread Alone), but didn’t have a melody in mind. He gave me the words, and it actually started my songwriting – I wrote the music for the song, and performed it in the Nazarene church. I recall my dad being really proud that I had the guts to get up there and play the piano and sing to the song. At the same time, I noticed that, unlike the chapel on base, they didn’t clap at anything in the Nazarene church. There was a profound silence and many an “amen”, but no clapping. I recall not caring for that much. 😀

At some point (I don’t recall the point I’m afraid) my mom somewhat changed, and my dad didn’t do much about it really. We maintained Sunday as a family day, but it wasn’t really a church day anymore. My dad was still pursuing songwriting, but instead of Christian music, he pursued country music. I did however jump over the back wall to occasionally fill in on organ, and more regularly play the Krumar string machine for church services at the Baptist church. In fact, I was baptized in that church – I was in Middle School, but I don’t remember if it was 7th or 8th grade honestly. But one of those. The church was convenient because the parking lot was literally over the back wall from my house.

It was right around this time that I began studying the bible. Not at the behest of anyone in particular, but because people in the Baptist church seemed to have very different ideas about the bible than the folks at the Nazarene church and different also than in the on-base chapel. I’m trying to remember exactly what prompted my first reading of the bible, but it was around this time, and I remember very different experiences at each place. Now, having the benefit of the internet, I can see that the two churches have very different views regarding the trinity – perhaps this was the trigger. I’d be disingenuous if I stated my exact impetus – it was so long ago that I cannot recall. I just know that my first reading was after visiting all three places of worship. I know I read the bible to try to make sense of differences. I didn’t have the benefit of the internet to look things up – all I had was my bible. Funny enough, it’s one I still have today. It’s still in its bible cover replete with pen and pencil holders, and dedicated to me on my 11th birthday (1978). In fact, my dad and I painstakingly added bible book page turn stickers to the entire book. The bible is … “The Living Bible, Paraphrased, Study Reference Edition with Concordance – Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. Wheaton, Illinois” – Copyright 1971.

I read the thing cover to cover – I can’t honestly say exactly how long it took, but I have my little John 3:16 bookmark and made a little progress each day. There were things I didn’t understand – like Numbers 21:8 (I still have it underlined in my bible). I also have sections with blue and yellow highlighters that I recall using for various conditions. I have yellowed James 2:13, and blued James 2:22 and Psalms 34:15. I (funny enough) circled Sin as well as Repentance in the concordance. I also found a few places where my mom wrote in cursive in the bible – perhaps she borrowed it from time to time – I don’t recall. Anyway, my recollection of my first reading was one of a bit of titillation at some of the parts, and also it seemed that God was pretty mean. Lots of people being smoted and killed. This seemed to be weird to me because of how church people were saying how loving God is, but I was finding passage after passage to negate that sentiment. I see various other underlinings such as Numbers 15:30-31, and 35 which indicate I found some significance in them. Of course, it could have been find-the-passage from VBS – who knows. But I do recall this – I was a bit put off at the number of slayings. I really don’t believe I understood much of Revelations at the time either, and I found all the letters from Paul to be rather tedious. But I read. Oddly enough, after I finished the bible, I didn’t find I had much of a taste for it anymore. We moved to the other side of town and I was entering high school – so religion really fell off for me. I didn’t re-enter a place of worship until I was in 10th grade, and I was playing the piano for someone at another church.

It started innocently of course – Mrs. P. couldn’t accompany someone because she was sick – “Could you please just play this one thing for me at church? It’s only two services …. please???” In the end, I played regularly for 4 young ladies (I don’t recall playing for any guys now that I think about it). But in one case, Lisa (the Amy Grant fanatic) had me playing at churches everywhere. And they didn’t seem to be affiliated churches – like all Baptist or all Presbyterian or whatever. It was like she had an agent and was being booked all over… I’m sure it wasn’t that, but in retrospect, that’s what it seemed like. I played in Catholic churches (lots of stand, kneel, stand, kneel, and lots of Latin. But they never cracked the bible), I played a Christadelphian church where someone did something in tongues and I saw a snake participate in the service, I was in a relatively quiet church I believe was either “New Life” or something similar that I don’t have anything specific to note just that it wasn’t really specific about anything, and I also played in Pentecostal and Lutheran churches. I know the Christadelphian church wasn’t for Lisa, and neither was the Catholic. One common theme resonating throughout was “give me money” and “we’re the only right ones”. It seemed to me everyone can’t be right, and why are they always passing the plate around??? In one service I played, they passed the plate twice – once for regular tithing, and once for the new annex they were building. Gaaack!

It was around this time that I was thinking … jeeze – there are sure a lot of versions of “the truth”. I could go with this one, and be wrong, or that one and be just as wrong. So who’s right? So I read the bible again, multiple times. I think I largely skimmed some of the more boring parts my first-re-read, but I did look over each page again. Other re-reads focused on the New Testament and did laser-focus on Hell, or trying to count up the Old Testament murders. Other times, I tried to find differences in stories. I guess in retrospect, I’ve really only read it cover to cover twice, not the six times I stated earlier. The two times were complete readings. The other four times (at least, maybe more) were to focus on things that differed from church to church or were trying to find inconsistencies. In talking with Lisa one day, I mentioned a bit about some of my findings, and she said something to the effect of “Well, that’s the Old Testament God. We don’t really read much of that anymore, we’re much more concerned about the New Testament and God’s love”. That’s when it kinda hit me that she would get out of it whatever she wanted and didn’t worry about the other stuff. I recall speaking at a high-level on this to my mom, but I really don’t recall the outcome other than “take what you want and leave the rest”. Hmmm

I guess that left me with a bit of apathy then toward the bible. Several “experts” with the same book in hand, all demanding we believe different things with respect to the same document, and all claiming they’re right. Add to that my Jewish friends which believe that they’re right, and everyone believing that a god could command the killing of children and be somehow loving and just. That pretty much did it for me I think.

(CLICK HERE to read part 2)

Click HERE to see all “conversations with a born-again atheist” posts.
NOTE: All comments will be held for approval. This blog is a no-hate zone.
Disclosure: Amazon links are affiliate links. I don’t use them because I make any money on the 4 cents per dollar, but because they track click throughs. And I am that addicted to stats.

If you’re new to the party, HERE are the previous posts in this series. If you want to skip the history and prefer the twitter version, I’m having an ongoing conversation with a born-again atheist. When I say “born-again atheist” I mean he was a born again Christian, but is now an atheist.

Note: So far, I’ve been including the back and forth of these conversations in one post, but I think I’m going to shift and begin posting most of these emails one at a time. The fact that you don’t see my response to AtypicalAtheist’s email below is ZERO indication that I agree with the statements he’s made. Just means I haven’t responded…YET. Conversely, a post that contains only my statements is ZERO indication that AtypicalAtheist agrees with anything I’ve said.

… snip … (from the “ground rules” email):

JSM: “…your statement “It does not trouble me for people believe in god any more than it troubles me for people to believe in UFO visits, guardian angels, or Santa Clause.” leads me to conclude you don’t view faith as reasonable, logical or rational. Actually, I think you’ve used all three of those words. I’m curious as to why you believe faith in Christ is incompatible with reason and logic. And I don’t take it at all personally, that holding such a belief, you might view me as lacking in reason and logic because I myself have faith in Christ.”

AtypicalAtheist: Hey Julie,

I’m glad for your qualifier – people often take these things personally. Suffice it to say I don’t find it a reasonable belief, but I support your right to believe as you wish. As to why I don’t find it reasonable, I think we’d have to back up in the conversation to the beginning. You profess belief in a god (the Christian God). Before we begin a discussion, we need to agree on some definitions I think. First, let me start with defining atheism and agnosticism – I touched on this early in our conversation, but it’s important to me not to gloss over it. Then, I’ll ask you for a definition or two so we’re on the same page…

1- Theism comes from the Greek root ‘theos’ meaning ‘god’, and is the belief in the existence of a god or gods. Atheism literally translates into ‘without’ + ‘belief in the existence of a god or gods’ because in Latin, the ‘a’ prefix means without (other examples include asexual, amoral, anarchy, anhydrous, etc). So – atheism is simply being “without the belief in a god or gods” and nothing more. It doesn’t say why there is a lack of belief, it simply is the lack of belief. According to my readings, the lack of belief could be implicit (for example, a tribe of Amazonians that don’t happen to believe in a god or gods), or could be explicit (someone that is familiar with the concept of a god or gods, and rejects the concept).

2- Gnosticism comes from the Latin word ‘gnostos’ meaning ‘known’, or ‘posessing knowledge’. Agnosticism is then literally ‘without knowledge’ or ‘without ultimate knowledge’. As a general term, agnosticism now signifies the impossibility of knowledge in some area – commonly, a person who believes that something is inherently unknowable. Coined by Thomas Huxley some time in the 1860’s, it was his assertion that “anything beyond the material world, including the existence and nature of God, was unknowable”. Contrary to popular belief, an agnostic isn’t some kind of middle-ground between belief in theism and atheism.

3- Atheism does not imply any type of moral code or world view. In fact, it’s merely the absense of a belief. There is no positive assertion or statements in atheism, just a negative one (without belief in a god or gods). So, lumping all atheists together in one bundle is as wrong as lumping all theists together under a common label. There are plenty of theists that don’t believe in the death penalty, do believe in a womans right to choose, and even don’t believe in Jesus. There are as many varied and principled and unprincipled atheists as there are principled and unprincipled theists (think Jim and Tammy Faye). Bottom line here is that one cannot infer that an atheist subscribes to any particular positive beliefs. The failure to believe in fairies does not entail a set of principles or a code of ethics – merely that one is an afairiest. 😀

So let me get a couple of definitions from you…

* What is your definition of a god?

* What are the attributes of the Christian God?

Thoughtfully,
AtypicalAtheist

Click HERE to see all “conversations with a born-again atheist” posts.
NOTE: All comments will be held for approval. This blog is a no-hate zone.
Disclosure: Amazon links are affiliate links. I don’t use them because I make any money on the 4 cents per dollar, but because they track click throughs. And I am that addicted to stats.