Comments on: Coping mechanisms

By: Büyü

Büyü — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:08:01 +0000

wow some really thoughtful and funny posts here.

By: the anti_supernaturalist

the anti_supernaturalist — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 02:56:57 +0000

God is irrelevant to prayer — you can pray whether it exists or not. Miracles are irrelevant. You are meant never to get a response from God.

what is prayer? — it’s not about what you want — it’s what others demand from you

The lack of a direct response to prayer is not a response of ‘no.’ It’s simply a non-response. Moreover, it is really important that “God” never respond directly. To hear God speaking to you — or drinking water while suffering a hallucination that it’s wine — makes you a likely schizophrenic not a saint. (Obviously…how could a non-existent being respond?)

Jesus admonished his followers against prayer as asking-for-stuff — “consider the lilies of the field” — or prayer as public performance — “they have their reward.”

Once rid of dead formalisms, prayer amounts to a purported alignment of a person’s intentions with “the will of God.” Or YHVH, Allah, Ahura Mazda. Pick your favorite 1-god from the big-4 near eastern traditions.

Prayer, basically, is one fat red herring. The word ‘prayer’ simply gets redefined until the action it points to becomes attitude adjustment (or, openness to the will of a god). Just how one explicates the concept of “God’s will” and how one would know it are further entanglements in the webs of God-as-Spider.

All that matters is your attitude — are you prepared to submit to an authoritarian god proxy (priest-pastor-evangelist) and authoritarian institution “guiding” your life? Are you prepared to submit? (‘Islam’ by the way means ‘submission’.) Well it’s your problem. Or better yet, you are your problem.

Yes, you have a problem with adapting to a schema of institutionalized authoritarianism — and the xian diagnosis is always the same — the problem lies with you, not the 1-god of the big-3 monster theisms.

Xianity and Freudian psychiatry are one in creating fictitious “illnesses” (‘sin’ and ‘neurosis’) for which each offers sham cures at premium prices.

the anti_supernaturalist

By: phyllis

phyllis — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 18:42:31 +0000

wow some really thoughtful and funny posts here.

By: Volly

Volly — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 01:18:15 +0000

Prayer was the weak link in my chain of faith. Eight years ago, after nearly 15 years as a born-again Christian, nothing was going right in my life. Finances were a disaster; I could only get temp work. Every time I landed a new assignment, I’d do the usual giving thanks, and the very next day, it seemed, the assignment would end. One day I asked myself what would happen if I didn’t pray? Sure enough, I got an assignment that stretched into nearly a month. And as soon as I gave thanks for that, the next day I was informed that the assignment once again had ended. So it started with me being “angry at God.” But the next phase was during one of the later temp assignments, when I sat idly at a desk with time to think, and reflected that I had felt happy as myself at some point, long before. I wondered where that “me” had gone. And then it hit me that things were pretty good, even if not perfect, back before I became a Christian. Everything started falling to pieces after my conversion. It wasn’t just circumstances, though — it was my entire sense of self. I had been so caught up for 15 years in a cycle of self-loathing and self-denial. No wonder I hadn’t succeeded. At that quiet little moment on a Friday afternoon, I felt the fragments of myself pulling back together, and I declared myself to be in charge of my own life and destiny, leaving “God” out of the picture, whether or not he existed. And yes, the following Monday a temp-to-perm job came through, and that led to something very permanent just a few months later. Everything came together; I was never unemployed again. I felt better, stronger, and more optimistic. I actually thought I still believed in God at that point; just didn’t want any part of him. I guess you could say I deprogrammed myself. The longer I stayed away from prayer, church and Bible, and just lived my life without any supernatural suppositions, the more energy I had to concentrate in a rational way on my life situation and take real steps to fix it. “If it is to be, it’s up to me” became my motto. It wasn’t until I joined the UU church for the social connections and fellowship that I began to meet numerous ex-believers and realized that I had already found my own way to freedom. I have not looked back since.

I believe in an ordered and mostly predictable universe that sometimes throws us a curve or gives us a break we didn’t ask for or expect. I do not believe there’s a humanlike intelligence behind this. It’s just an “I-don’t-know.” That’s the spiritual thing we all understand on some level, the thing that religions attempt to quantify and build elaborate structures around. When life is challenging, I remind myself that nothing I am experiencing is unique; billions of people on earth now, and countless others before me, have gone through whatever it is. We are all in this together; we all have inherent worth and dignity, and there is an interdependent web of existence, of which we are all a part. I conclude that the outcome of a problem has more to do with my approach to it and my attitude than anything else. And then I wait, if there is nothing more I can do. I look for opportunities to act and try to take the right steps when the situation begins to change. It’s not a perfect world, but it is manageable, and without turning ourselves inside out with theology. …Sorry this was so long-winded!!

By: Lyra's Alias

Lyra's Alias — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 06:08:09 +0000

Dan – I’m sorry, I can’t even be irritated at that one. It’s just too funny.

Tomas – Yep – all of 21 years.

By: HeIsSailing

HeIsSailing — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:08:47 +0000

athnostic says:
Thank you for this blog. I’m really glad I found it.

Glad you found us. I rarely visit this site anymore, but it was here at the season in my life when I desperately needed it. Ridding your life of Jesus and Yahweh was a fresh new beginning, and the last 3 years of my life without worrying about supernatural or spiritual creatures spying on me have been wonderful. Write an article and and place it here if you feel the need..!!

By: Tomas S

Tomas S — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 10:44:04 +0000

Mr Pluscrosspluss — eewwww! I bet you’ll get a few extra days in purgitory for that blasphemy – the daughter of god “bleeding” on the cross for the life of the world.

Lyra – you must be young. If you’re over 30, “the change” usually refers to the kind of change that brings hot flashes.

By: Dan +†+

Dan +†+ — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:49:37 +0000

The last day will feel a bit more painful then cramping though. Period.

Revelation 20:15

You need the “flow” of good blood that will save you. Revelation 19:13

By: Lyra's Alias

Lyra's Alias — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:12:37 +0000

^That last sentence made me think of getting your period for the first time.

I laughed pretty hard.

By: athnostic

athnostic — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 22:26:29 +0000

Thank you for this blog. I’m really glad I found it.

I’m currently in the process of breaking ties with religion. Strangely, I felt much more anxiety changing denominations than I have getting rid of god altogether; perhaps because I no longer live in fear of doing it wrong and ending up in hell. I will mourn deeply the loss of respect, friends, family members, and just plain having people be nice to me. Christians are truly the nastiest most judgmental group of people in existence and so I’ve largely kept my thinking quiet.

I will continue to visit since this seems like a truly welcoming place for those undergoing “the change.”