Archive for May, 2009
10 Reasons Atheists Are More Moral Than Religious Fundamentalists
In my experience, the bible goes on, especially in the old testament, about how to treat people who are different than you. It’s full of hate and cruelty, with some arbitrary rules thrown in. Only a few of those rules are sensible. The rest are about control. From the little I know of the quran, it’s even worse.
I’m not going to pick the bible (or the quran) apart. It’s not worth my time and aggravation. If you believe that the bible is the divinely inspired word of god, you’re only going to skim this article, find a few points to attack me while you brew up a cup of moral and righteous indignation, and then try to shove your fundamentalism down my throat because you’re scared of people who think for themselves and don’t have blind faith in fairy tales from the Fertile Crescent like you do. You don’t listen anyway, you just find ammunition then viciously attack. What great role models you are. How very christ-like.
On the other hand, if you are truly interested in breaking free of the iron fist of god ruling your life and keeping you in ignorant fear, you can go to the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible and look around for yourself.
The atheists who read this probably have already read that awful book, because as a general rule, we need to be more educated on religious matters than those militant religious folks that try to tell us how we should believe.
So, onto the 10 reasons atheists are morally superior, in no particular order, and my personal opinion about each one:…
Was I saved or brainwashed?
Part 3 of My journey into and, later, out of Christianity
The experience made me wonder how I got that way, because when I think back to my younger days, I was a nominal Christian. I was born again when I was nine, but I didn’t spend most of my time reading the Bible, praying, or witnessing. But when I was 14, all that was starting to change.
–
Friends from church invited us to their house to hear a preacher from Texas. Ernie greeted everyone at the door, and Helene ushered us down the stairs into the basement. The long, narrow room was filled with metal folding chairs lined up in rows facing a makeshift pulpit that was nothing more than a cheap music stand. There was no organ, but two electric guitars and a microphone stood in the corner of the room next to a small amplifier, and a tambourine waited silently at the foot of the pulpit…
Continue Reading May 19, 2009 at 12:22 pm writerdd 58 comments
Religious Disenchantment Narratives and the Arts Dissertation
My name is Philip Francis, a doctoral student at Harvard Divinity School, writing a dissertation on religious disenchantment narratives and the arts. I am posting here to see if there are any readers who would be willing to contribute to my project a short memoir of their experience of leaving the Christian fold, making particular note of the role of the arts, creativity, literature, beauty or aesthetic experience (broadly conceived) in this process.
This memoir could be sent to me directly at pfrancis@hds.harvard.edu or posted here. Questions about the project may also be directed to my email address.
The following are some basic guidelines and starter questions, but approach the writing anyway you like.
The memoir may be as short or long as you like and assume any form. It may be signed or anonymous.
Others have found it useful to structure their memoir as follows:
1. The Unsettling: reflect on your experience of the forces and factors that unsettled you from the system of beliefs and practices that you once held in a dogmatically unassailable manner. Were the arts in any way a part of this initial unsettling? Feel free to cite specific examples from the arts and literature, or your own creative projects…
Continue Reading May 17, 2009 at 5:41 pm deconversion 7 comments
Resurrection Challenge results
OK. As I promised, I tried the Resurrection Challenge. That’s an effort to harmonize the accounts of the resurrection of Jesus as depicted in the four Gospels, the beginning of Acts, and a short passage in I Cor 15. Of course it’s impossible to harmonize them, so what I’ve done is list each event in the order they occurred and given them numbers to show that order. Where more than one thing happened at one time, or where I couldn’t tell what happened, I added a letter to the number. So for events 1,2,3 the accounts accord OK. Then you hit 4a-d where more than one story comes out of the different accounts. As you’ll see, these differing accounts are usually mutually exclusive. Really and truly these contradictions cannot be reconciled.
Resurrection rectification effort:
1- Some women went to the tomb early Sunday morning. (Mary, Mary, Salome, more?)
2- Before the women got to the tomb, the stone was rolled away. This involved an angel descending, an earthquake happening, and guards being stunned. The guards recovered and ran off.
3- The women arrived at the tomb.
4a – (Matt) The women saw an angel outside the tomb and he told them to go in a see that it was empty…
Continue Reading May 14, 2009 at 6:59 pm LeoPardus 35 comments
Lord Of The Rings’ Heretics
RL Wemm recently posted this analogy here on de-conversion.com in response to an anonymous theist. It seemed worthy of being its own article, so with a few touch-ups (including two italicized additions of my own), here it is. (Thanks RL.)
Then imagine that your community has deified Bilbo as the Real Son of Gandalf, and Frodo as the Real Son of Bilbo. Imagine that Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, and Sauron have been imbued with a whole lot of magical and personal characteristics that are at variance with the descriptions of these characters provided in many sections of the Holy Books of the Rings. Imagine that your community tells you that it is the Evil Mind of Sauron that makes you aware of these inconsistencies and that dwelling on them is a sin that will result in eternal torture for you in the furnace of Mt. Doom along with the Unholy Ring…
Continue Reading May 12, 2009 at 5:13 pm LeoPardus 60 comments
Breaking the Cycle of Terror
I went to church with my friends, and heard a guest speaker say in so many words that Christians had to fear for their lives now that the Democrats are in power in the US. And this week I read an atheist blogger saying the same things in reverse — how Christians are stockpiling guns and are out to “get us” liberals.
Someone has to break the cycle of terror. I don’t mean fear of terrorists, either. I mean fear of the “other” in our own country. The liberals (including most atheists) are terrorized by the idea that the religious right is going to make our country a theocracy and take all of our rights away the conservatives (including many Christians) are afraid the progressives are out to destroy morality, eliminate religious freedom, and take all of our rights away. Both positions are ridiculous in the extreme.
The scary part is that if we keep going in this cycle, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone has to tone down the rhetoric first. I want to be part of the group that spreads reason and hope instead of buying into fear mongering. I hope it’s not too late and I hope some of you will join me in trying to break out of the destructive cycle we’ve locked ourselves into.
- Donna
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