The Slow Wearing Down

It's been a while since my last post. Sorry about that.

No, actually, I'm not terribly sorry.

You see, when I began my transition out of religion, it was all I could think about. It became an obsession of sorts and I needed an outlet for my thoughts. So I blogged about it. Something interesting happens over time though: once you start breaking down the walls of religion and faith-based reasoning, it isn't long before you're standing in an open field, no walls to be seen. The world becomes your oyster, whatever the hell that means. Knocking down walls is therapeutic. It feels good to free yourself from this voluntary captivity, and it's liberating. However, once you're liberated, there  is little point in continuing to liberate yourself. So, quite simply, religion loses it's appeal. It failed to hold my attention any longer.

"I guess that cloud kind of looks god-shaped."

Every argument from theists is more or less the same, or at least they all make the same sort of logical missteps that can only be struck down so many times before I get bored of playing whack-a-mole.

Oh, I can't prove God wrong? Well, the burden of proof isn't on me. You can't prove wrong the millions and millions of things I can make up, but that doesn't make them true.

Oh, God made your baby well again? Well, what's wrong with the doctors and all the human beings that you can actually see helping. It's easy to give credit to something with no measurable effect on the world if you don't care about proving it.

Oh, the universe has a beginning, and so does everything, therefore at some point you find God? Well, aside from the fact that you're assuming to know more about science than scientists, you're also ignorant of what a lot of cosmologists and astrophysicists tell us about pre-BigBang.

Oh, there's no evidence for Evolution? Yes, there is. End of argument.

"...Bitch"

You see? It gets old pretty quick. You quickly begin to learn that life is much bigger, much broader than refuting religious silliness. If that's all there was, life would be more repetitive than an actual game of whack-a-mole. (It's so good, I used it twice)

So, over time, I've continued to grow, continue to learn, mature, yada yada yada, now I'm perfect. So, I was thinking that now I'm more or less through the deconversion process, I might channel my knowledge or insight, such as it is, back into the community. After all, there are plenty of people who are stuck in the middle or who have gone down a much different path from mine and still need someone to talk to or a place to find solace and like-minded thinkers.

Sure, there are plenty of websites that do this, but this is the only one that has me. So this is where I'll continue to post my own thoughts and discussions in an effort to help, in some small way, those of us who are still learning how to live in a world without religion.

This is really something of an experiment, so the more feedback I get from readers, the better.

As always, every opinion is up for debate, just keep it civil or I'll have no god smite you.

Now, More than Ever

As time marches on and the tides of time test my new foundation in life, I find that the stance of Atheism only strengthens itself under criticism. What a pleasant stance to have.

Reality makes more sense in the light of reason. In the midst of Religion, it is only muddled, cloudy and tough to keep straight. It relies heavily on rationalizations, whereas free thought finds solace in rational thinking.

God is inconsistent. His followers spend a hell of a lot of time defending him against all the things that don't make sense. They say he is infinitely loving, except when he doesn't want to be, and then it's not his fault anyway thanks to freewill. All criticism is deflected by some vague interpretation of a book that was never written to refute such claims. Blindly gripping what cannot be firmly held.

Commandment Eleven.

Science, reasons, logic. What solace I have find in these words. No longer are they to be feared as the arrogant, rebellious challenges of man. They represent the vastness of the human mind, intellect and reasoning power. Much like the painter's brush, these tools are limited by their holder, but knowledge can be combined and together we all benefit from real knowledge.

There is nothing known that is not known as a result of science. Everything else is wishful thinking and guesses.

I'm reminded every day of my former life. It feels like much further behind me than it actually is, but I couldn't be happier. All things make sense now, all questions either have answers or test the limits of our knowledge. No more trusting beyond my own mind, my own sense of correctness, my own sensibilities. In the past, I would have seen such thinking as arrogant, smug, rebellious. Now, I see myself as imperfect, but growing. I'm actually capable of doing things on my own and needn't feel guilty for acknowledging that.

I basically walk around like this.

I detest faith based reasoning. I hate the foolish and harmful decisions it pulls intelligent people toward due to ignorance. I wish everyone could understand the beauty of reality, but unfortunately as with many other things, fantasy is much more appealing in the right now and requires much less effort to become an expert.

Atheism is the one thing that ought to be proselytized were the sharing of religious opinions not so repugnant. Live and let live as the people say. Easier said than done, sometimes.

My life has meaning, my efforts have purpose. I make my own destiny and it has never felt better. Life in the light of truth is incomparable to any other fantasy. In some ways it is harder, you have to think for yourself, you know? In other ways, it is so easy it's impossible to imagine a time when I didn't embrace it.

It's a shame people are so dependent on religion, it's a shame they cannot see how their religion breeds dependence in them. Religion is a vicious circle of weakness, insecurity and fear masked in truth and righteousness.

To my fellow atheists, it's an honor to be counted among your numbers. To the rest of you, just try testing your beliefs, would you? After all, if talking snakes are real, then why can't we come from monkeys?

Religion Never Hurt Anybody

What would you do for your children when they're sick? Probably anything, right? You'd take them to the finest doctors, pay whatever it cost, you'd see as many specialists as possible. Even if it was something fairly common like asthma, if your child was suffering you'd do whatever you had do to, right?

So you can also probably sympathize with these parents who had their daughter beaten bloody, impaled with a red hot poker and left paralyzed for life in order to exorcize her asthma demon? I mean, anything's better than asthma, right?

This is what faith based decision making leads to in its most extreme cases. No tests are done, they simply declare the poor girl cured and continue on. Well, what the fuck happens when her asthma flares up again? They'll move the goalpost and say something like "her faith wasn't strong enough" or "she did xyz and allowed the demon back in" And an entire community looks the other way.

This is why religion must not be allowed to grow uninhibited. It must be opposed for the sake of little children who have no say. Faith healing over modern medicine is not a phenomena specific to foreign, uneducated lands.

Case in point.  Now, they certainly didn't beat the poor buy into a paralytic state. But he fucking died. The child is dead from an easily treatable condition because people choose faith, a method which has never passed any test, has never accomplished any measurable result in anything it was applied to and they picked it over a fucking doctor because a really, really old book made them feel guilty about trusting reason and scientific efforts.

No, but people need religion, right?

Religious Tolerance at its Finest

So this poor guy was forcibly impeded from his basic human freedom of choice.

We can only learn so much from an article, but it doesn't appear that he was proselytizing, or challenging the old ways. He simply wanted to explore his own roots like any curious adult might. He built something with his own time and money for his own personal use and the bigots banded together to tear it down.

Why? Because they believed it was satanic.

Nevermind that "Satanic" has no real meaning. It's not like it had horns and was called the "Satan Invitation Location". These ignorant morons think that it's evil because some missionaries told them it was evil. The missionaries think it's evil because someone told them.

"I fucking love sweat lodges!"

In spite of the fact that there is no such thing as witchcraft or magic these people formed a mob and destroyed and restricted the efforts of another human being for fear of them. All in the name of Christianity.

Faith is of no value to knowledge and is extremely pertinent to ignorance. Why do we tolerate such an intolerant, illogical basis for decision making? Why is faith-based reasoning not laughed out of courts and strictly punished when it crosses these lines? Why must we continue to walk on eggshells around people who are too stupid to challenge their own idiotic beliefs?

Why does reason not rule and are we getting closer or further from it?

I feel it's best to resist the vocal ignorance when we come across it, we ought not accommodate their stupidity. We should stand firm and make ourselves immovable objects that they must be forced to contend with. You can keep your stupidity corralled up in your own house, but do not even think it will be accepted in mine. Truth must be held over superstition. Feelings are not as important as reality and people must come to terms with it eventually whether they like it or not. I would even go so far as to say that crimes committed in the name of religion ought to be deemed hate crimes and punished as such. If the group of vandals were white while the owner of the sweat lodge was black, this would be a different matter. If he were making a gay demonstration and they responded equally, it would be a big deal as well. So why must religious differences be treated so lightly in the eyes of the public. This should just as unacceptable as any other form of intolerance.

Yes, we should be intolerant of intolerance.

Atheist Bingo

See this Atheist Bingo Card that by simply listing them, pokes fun at the questions we often receive right off the bat.

Some of these are quite comical and of course, all of them have an answer. Here are some of the more common ones, in my experience:


You can't prove there's no God: More importantly, you can't prove there is one. You can't disprove Zeus, Invisible Pink Unicorns or that the universe didn't begin 5 seconds ago with the appearance of age. Nobody can prove a negative, but that doesn't mean the assertion is therefore verified. Idiot.

You are so closed-minded: Ironically, it's my open mind that got me this far. Not accepting certain blind faith assertions because they aren't convincing is not being closed minded, it's limiting the amount of nonsense you use to make decisions. The ideal amount of nonsense is zero. Being convinced of a certain point of view and remaining so in spite of your poorly reasoned logical slow pitch lobs is not the same as being closed, merely I'm already past your tired point of view and you can't see past it. Moron.

Where do you get your morals?: I get them from the society like you do. We don't have to consciously vote on morality to determine what we will and will not tolerate. Some would say Homosexuality is immoral, but this view is quickly shifting. When it gains popular acceptance on a larger scale, will everyone be wrong in calling it moral? By what testable standard? (hint: the bible doesn't count. Gays have been around a bit longer) Murder, we can agree, is immoral. I wouldn't want to be murdered and I wouldn't want others to be murdered. I support this as a good place to draw the line between good and bad. I don't use the Bible as a basis and i certainly don't claim an unobservable being created them secretly and waited 4.6 billion years to share them with us. We can see that killing is harmful to a peaceful society, so the morals themselves have evolved. In the Old West, you might have been able to kill more often than today. Morals change with the times. No need for God. Turd.

Hitler/Stalin/Pol Pot was an atheist too, you know?: Aside from the fact that Hitler was a Christian, Stalin and Pol Pot were atheists. But they were never committing atrocities in the NAME of atheism. Religions of all kinds have done far worse in the name of their God than anyone has done in the name of Atheism. Being a thing doesn't mean your actions are driven by that thing. Jackass.

There are no atheists in foxholes: Aside from this being demonstrably untrue, do you really think that belief is valid when it's only motivated by mortal fear? Do you hold your own decisions dear when they are made under duress? Surely people seek comfort in hard times and may trade rational thoughts for irrational ones. Does that make these irrational thoughts suddenly true? Of course not. Don't be silly. Nuts!

Nothing but emotional arguments or logical fallacies. It's amazing to me that so many people continue to believe, though I guess I was on the other side once as well.

Do you have any others you'd like to rebut?

What it Takes to Deconvert.

Found this little gem.

What do you think? Is this accurate? Anything missing from this list?

Evidence of God

Okay, so in reality, this just made me laugh. A lot. Thought I'd share it with all of you.

Enjoy.