My blog has been found. Hooray!

I’m having a bad week.

Thankyouthankyou for all the Tweets, emails, and comments. I really appreciate everyone’s support. It just goes to show that you can find good, caring people online just as well as in “real life.”

I told Steve on the way home from the hospital, “Today, I think, is the first day I become an antitheist.” I don’t know if that will be true a month out, but I feel so angry about the havoc religion has wreaked upon my entire family, it’s REALLY hard to say it’s harmless and to live and let live, because even though I’ve been an atheist for about 2-ish years now, it still affects me every day. Fundamentalist religion doesn’t live and let others live, so it’s almost impossible to just let it go without painful ramifications.

But I don’t know how to reconcile these feelings with logic, which is that I do believe in religious freedom. Times like this really test your resolve for what you believe in. I guess I want religion gone, but not forced gone. Mostly I wonder what will it take for fundamentalists to realize that their system doesn’t work? The deaths of their children are not enough? Depression is not enough? Miserable marriages are not enough? The loss of relationships with your extended family is not enough? Demonstrably false logical methods employed are not enough? Easily exposed lies that fundamentalist organizations tell are not enough? The loss of relationships with your adult children are not enough? Why cling to something that makes you miserable and is so obviously bad for the family they promise to help strengthen? Honestly, this is one thing about fundamentalism I don’t understand, because I left when I realized it didn’t work, and I became an atheist when I realized the errors in my logic. So I wonder for those who are left and travel through similar waters as I, what will be enough? When will they see the lies? When will they see that it makes them miserable and tears their lives apart for nothing? When will they look over the chaos of their destroyed lives and say “Enough!”? Even if there is a heaven and hell and God, does he really care if you believe he started the world through evolution or did it in 6 days? Where in the Bible does it say you’re going to hell if you believe one or two wrong things? If you interpret the Bible liberally instead of conservatively? So I don’t understand the payoff. Why destroy your family for something that probably won’t even matter in the grand scheme of things? If there is a God, and he does send people to hell, wouldn’t you rather have a few lower places in heaven with your family there than to give everything to be #1 at the banquet table, but destroying your witness to the ones who matter the most to you in the process? It doesn’t make sense any way you spin it.

I know there are plenty of good, religious people out there, so don’t think I’m beating up on them, though I think those people would be just as good without religion. I don’t care about non-extremist religion, and I still think that if religion makes you happy, then if you aren’t forcing it on anyone else (kids included) or hurting others with it, then you should go for it. But then I think about everything I’ve lost, that my family has lost because of religion. And it pisses me off so much, that I don’t care if 1 or 2 people are happy if the rest of the world is miserable. I think religion can go to hell. It’s a contradiction, but William James (or some other famous psychologist) once wrote that everyone has them, and all the better if you recognize them: you don’t have to fix them. I guess an ability to fix them requires one know everything, and most of us don’t. But I’m totally rambling at this point.

Right now, I guess I’m just sifting through everything and trying to figure out which end is up. I will probably regret everything I just said tomorrow.  I know it’s not all 100% logical, but I’m not really going for that right now. My apologies to my Christian readers, most of whom are kind and wonderful. I’m not trying to be offensive; it’s just how I feel today. I know I am mostly thinking with my emotions and not my head, so I may have a different take on it when things calm down.

So, a couple hours after I posted this morning, I received a phone call from my dad. My brother is in the ICU (the middle one who is a fellow atheist and comments on here occasionally). I was alone in the apartment because Steve had our car, and was running errands, and he forgot his phone. So I freaked out on Twitter before Steve got home, and we rushed to Little Rock, not really knowing what happened. When we arrived, my parents’ pastor was there, praying with them. When they finished praying, my mom hugged me and took me back to see him. On the way, she told me what happened. Since he reads here, I’m really hesitant to share everything with the world, but the basic story is he took some pills.

They think he’ll be okay. But right now, it’s kind of wait and see.

Right now, I feel a jumbled up ball of emotions that really makes no sense. My brother is brilliant, kind, and I think he’s great. So I’m really really worried. And another part of me is really angry at my parents, of all people, even  though I rationally know it’s not their fault. And another part of me wants to scream at the top of my lungs “Fundamentalism kills! Can you not see that?!” No, I am not feeling particularly tolerant right now, but I think I can live with that.And part of me thinks that this is not the time to think about that, and part of me thinks, “Well, it’s the truth.” And I go back and forth from one thing to the next. I am not trying to make this about me; like I said, I just don’t feel comfortable telling someone else’s story, so all I can do is go through it the way I feel.

So my apologies if I say anything crazy today. Steve says I get a free pass today. I don’t know if I agree with that: I’m trying really hard. But I do appreciate the extra understanding.

I usually turn to the side a bit so it's not as noticeable.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have an eye problem: my right eyelid droops a bit (I edited it out of the site banner because it was too distracting, but if you look closely at some of my other pictures, you can see it). My mother insists it’s genetic because my dad has it, too, but my doctor told me it’s probably due to a high fever I ran right when I was born. It’s a condition called ptosis, and lots of people have it, but usually they are older people, and it’s caused by a weakening of the muscle (which is probably what my dad has). All they have to do is go in and tighten it up to fix it. However, doctors back in the 80′s advised my parents against the surgery for me because of some of the risks. It’s probably a good thing because for me, a tight muscle is not the problem, but a damaged nerve. Now there’s a newer surgery where they would replace the muscle entirely, but I don’t have the money for it, so it doesn’t really matter. People like to assume that because I’m 26, it doesn’t bother me anymore anyways, and that makes me mad because it totally does every bit as much as it did when I was 16. Hence why I haven’t posted about it, or posted a frontal picture of myself.

This led to major self esteem issues as a kid. I know a lot of people have worse things–a viewing of TLC will lead to a guilt trip every time , but growing up, I hated it. I pretended it wasn’t there. I squinted.

As silly as it sounds, this is actually the reason I came to despise Gothard. When I was 13, I sat in his conference and loved every word. I don’t remember the exact list of things to do for God to heal you, but he had one. I eagerly tried it, and it didn’t work. This crushed me, and he lost all credibility with me (I was a 13-year old super naive, super conservative kid: you really expect that I had some deep, rational reason for hating Gothard? Hehe.). Until the next time my parents dragged me, and I wound up burning all my CD’s: I guess I decided I had been doing something wrong: it wasn’t Gothard’s Biblically based system that was the problem: I didn’t have enough faith or had too much sin in my life. That’s the brilliance of religious scams. What other product would you buy that, if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be the manufacturer’s fault, but your own?

This was also the reason I never really tried any of the more charismatic denominations.  In the fifth grade, I went to a private school. This was before my parents decided to buy into the whole homeschooling movement. (By the time they did, it was too late for me, they reasoned. I guess.) My teacher attended a more charismatic church. Not quite pentecostal, but they did invite a faith healing preacher to come preach a revival. I wanted to go. I wanted my eye to be healed: no risky surgery needed! I begged and pleaded with my parents to take me. They didn’t want to, but finally relented and let me go one night. I found the whole thing so frightening, I never even went up to the altar.

So instead, I read all the stories in the Bible where Jesus healed someone. The common thread was faith. So I prayed and believed really hard, but nothing ever happened. Add me to the list of many: My faith didn’t make me well. People occasionally ask me what would make me believe in God. I usually reply “If God is omniscient, he knows!” But I guess this is something else, too: if I woke up one morning, or if someone prayed over me and it worked, I guess that might be a really good start.

Doing these Bible studies makes me wholeheartedly agree with almightygod:

(Found via TYWKIWDBI)

Anyways, it’s getting close to that time! We only have about 3-4 weeks left in Revelation (I think I can do it in 3, but I’m not sure), so I put up a “what book do you want to study next” poll on the right of the page. So far, a whopping 15 people have overwhelmingly voted for Genesis! (The one “other” vote so far counts toward Joshua.) So go vote to either bump those Genesis people out of the lead or keep them there!

Let the fun begin!

Revelation 15

John sees another “great and miraculous” sign. But of course, since this is Revelation, it’s not so “great” for us mortals. It’s seven angels with seven final plagues. John says this is good news because it will mean God’s wrath is completed (wait–he hasn’t judged anyone and tossed them into hell yet!). He sees a sea of glass that’s on fire, and the people who conquered The Beast played their harps. They sing a rather boring song, then the seven angels with seven plagues in the form of golden bowls filled with the wrath of God come out and get ready to spill out the contents on the Earth. This shuts the temple down until the plagues are complete.

Revelation 16:  The Wraith Of God!

Oops, been watching too much Stargate-Atlantis. I mean the Wrath of God. (Wraith kinda fits, too, but I will avoid the temptation to totally geek out and lose all my readers with the reason why.) The first angel dumps the bowl over the land, and it causes all the people with the Mark of the Beast to break out into painful sores. That will show them to want to work or buy food! If you recall from last week, that’s what the Mark of the Beast allowed people to do.

The second angel dumps his bowl in the sea, and it turned to blood so that everything in it died. Hmmmm:

Top Planet Destroyer:

(This is God in Bruce Almighty; It’s not supposed to be Morgan Freeman the person)

vs

I think God wins. No, I don’t think Jesus would recycle.

The third angel dumps his bowl in all the rivers, and the same thing happen to them. (Do angels not realize that all rivers lead to the sea? They could have saved themselves a bowl by dumping it into the river first.)

The Head Water Angel encourages God by telling him he is justified in causing all this suffering. Personally, I disagree, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Though at this point, I guess everyone left has ko’d all the Christians, and this is their punishment. So perhaps regular non-murdering people were killed in one of the massive torture and death events that occurred in a previous chapter.

The fourth angel pours his bowl into the sun, which is given the power to scorch people. Massive solar flares? Someone who knows more about the science of the sun care to comment? Anyways, the people seared by the heat got mad and cursed God, but still refused to glorify him. Stubborn people.

The fifth bowl was poured at the throne of The Beast, and everything turned dark. People were in so much pain that they gnawed their own tongues! And still didn’t praise God!

The sixth bowl was poured onto the Euphrates, and it dried up to prepare for the Kings from the East. The Euphrates, huh? Seems like a waste of a perfectly good bowl of wrath!

John can tell the next part better than I can:

Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet. They are spirits of demons performing miraculous signs, and they go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty.

So I guess we shouldn’t try to kiss these toads. I don’t think they will turn into handsome princes.

Next is kind of a random, amusing verse:

Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.

So don’t sleep naked.

No chapter of Revelation would be complete without some mention of lightening and thunder, and that’s what the seventh bowl does. An earthquake that makes the California big one look small happens, along with 100 pound hail stones. Note: the largest hail stone on record in the US weighed less than 2 lbs. I wonder what the wind speed would have to be to produce this size of hail? It would also be hard to produce that kind of precipitation with every bit of water on the planet turned to blood: blood isn’t just made of water, so there would be less of it. And if this is a planet-wide hailstorm, that would be a TON of water and wind. I don’t have the knowledge necessary to calculate it, but I wish I did.

The largest hailstone on record.

God's hail

The wrath is complete.

There’s this famous bumper sticker:

Reader Paul pointed out that the words could easily be rearranged: “Know Jesus, no peace. No Jesus, know peace”, and in fact, with this particular version of the sticker, my eyes automatically do that by connecting the colors. Am I the only one who connects the two blue boxes and the two yellow boxes before reading it left to right? I thought I remembered seeing another parody of this thing about peas. After searching for a few minutes, I realized it was part of this video, which I think I’ve previously posted (either that, or so many other atheist blogs did that I didn’t bother). I didn’t find it on a t-shirt, but I did find a new blog to read! (And if you want definitive proof that there is no god, there it is: If there was a God, he would give us an extra hour everyday just to find time to read the many excellent blogs out there! )

I confess, as a Christian, I became a bit offended over these pithy sayings. I used to love them, but around the time I turned 22, I realized that they probably did more harm than good. If we Christians reduce God to something trite and/or funny, I reasoned,  how can we expect non-believers to take us seriously? If we didn’t take God seriously ourselves, then how could we expect others to, and how could we be offended when they didn’t? We had one of those church signs at my last church, and I cringed every time I saw it.

But bumper stickers are even better than church signs. They range from the simply bad:

Sorry, atheist dudes.

To the arguing over what Jesus would and wouldn’t do:

So much for that, Charles Sheldon!

And how Jesus would and wouldn’t vote:

No, wait! That’s wrong!

Because:

Google “Christian bumper sticker” and a surprising number of anti-abortion stickers come up. So I realize that this isn’t a “Christian” bumper sticker, per se, but it is still bad enough to include:

And finally, a few that are kind of good:

So what is your favorite Christian bumper sticker?

It doesn’t take much to get Ken Ham to say something is amazing/rare/”I don’t have a clue what this means”, ergo GOD did it! Recently, he posted an article on black and white twins, a rare genetic blip that can cause one twin to be white and one black. According to Ken Ham, this means that the Bible is realz!

[I]t is not just the Christian world where people find “black” and “white” twins incredible—it is also shocking to the secular world. They are surprised because they ignore the Bible’s account that we all came from one race (begun by the first man and woman, Adam and Eve) and dispersed as a result of the Tower of Babel, which led to the formation of people groups (Asians, Caucasians, etc.). They assume, instead, that human groups are deeply divided by significant variations over tens or hundreds of thousands of years and that different people groups originated from different “ancestral apes.”

But according to reality:

The odds are one in a million, say doctors, but it can happen with fraternal twins due the genetic soup in our backgrounds. Peter Propping, former director of the Institute for Human Genetics at Bonn University, told Die Welt that the black mother may have had some white ancestors, or that the white father may have had black ones. Very occasionally, the roll of the DNA die may cause the baby of biracial parents to inherit only the genetic coding for one color.

What? No shock from the “secularist” scientists? All you need is the right combination of genes. Whether the story itself is fact or fiction, the Tower of Babel has absolutely nothing to do with the science of how this happens. But then, since when is AiG honest?

The truth of the matter is, you don’t need answers in Genesis when reality supplies them just fine.

When I was in high school, we started going to these Worldview Weekend conferences. I don’t remember much specifically about them–I went to a ton of these conservative type conferences over the course of my life, and they’re all pretty much the same: liberals/atheists/homosexuals/Democrats/public schools/pick your poison are destroying the country, and we must fight to get it back. Much to my happy surprise, I found that there is a conference coming up in Little Rock in September, and it’s FREEE. Any Arkansas readers who want to go check it out, let me know! When I saw the speaker lineup for this WVW, I remembered Bob Cornuke! He’s the guy that thinks he found the Ark (of the covenant, not Arkansas or Noah’s ark, though if I recall correctly, he thinks he did that, too. ). Best of all, he found the real Mt. Sinai! As opposed to the fake one. So lots of good stuff.

While perusing conference information, I found this Worldview Test. Of course, I had to take it. (Note: if you take it, too, they automatically sign you up for email alerts, so use a junk email address if you don’t want them. Also, you can leave the group code blank.) If you answer all their questions right, get this:

For those of you scoring the highest score possible, Biblical Theism, you will be REWARDED with a beautiful, professional looking certificate. This certificate will certify that you took the test and scored as a Strong Biblical Worldview Thinker. You can print out your certificate at the end of the test, but it will also be emailed to you so you may save it or print it out on beautiful parchment paper. This certificate would look great on your wall and would also be very rewarding for students who take this test.

Woot! Of course, I was kind of looking forward to seeing what they’d say about me, so I answered their questions honestly.

I did answer a couple of questions “right”, I think. One said “All religions are equally true.” I put down “strongly disagree”, but it wasn’t for the reason they were going for, that Christianity is true, but because I think they are all equally untrue. Most say something good here and there, but I overall disagree that they are all “true”. Another stated that a person could earn his/her way to heaven. I clicked “disagree” on that one, too, but because I don’t believe in heaven. There were a few other little things that I think I would have written “tend to agree/disagree” when the answer they wanted was “strongly agree/disagree”, but most of those were my personal philosophy and ran more political than religious. My favorite “wrong” answer was to the question “The more one discovers about the universe, the more one discovers design.” Well, only if you don’t research what you discover! Just because something looks designed does not make it so.

I loved the subtext to the questions. Innocent sounding questions that carry a boatload of meaning if you know what they’re driving at. For example, “Our judicial system should allow judges, through their decisions and rulings, to guide and shape the foundational basis of law.” On the surface, the way the question is worded makes you want to write “disagree”–judges don’t make the law, they’re supposed to interpret the law. But they’re gearing you up to learn about judicial activism, which will eventually lead to claiming that judges who rule contrary to what a conservative family organization wants are part of an oligarchy, or even accusing them of tyranny, etc. So I kind of had to think for a moment on some of these type of questions: questions where I knew I might agree on the surface, but totally disagree on the application. I wound up leaving it as “no opinion” on those types of questions, and others I couldn’t answer due to my current religious status.

My results? This was fun. I scored a negative 32 points, which puts me in the: Communist/Marxist/Socialist/Secular Humanist Worldview Thinker category. Heil Hitler! Oh, wait, wrong dude. Gotta love how they lumped all those philosophies together! Now that might be worth printing off and framing! Especially considering how I’m pretty fiscally moderate, with very slight leanings to fiscally conservative. Less than 2% of their test takers were social humanist communists such as myself. Too bad I don’t have as much pull as PZ Meyers so we could pharyngulate the hell out of this thing. I think the weirdest thing is that they did have a secular humanist category (which did get 2.7% and even higher in my age bracket), but I scored beneath even that. They rank them in order of their preference, with strong biblical thinker at the top, and communist atheist at the bottom, so apparently, I am not even a good enough atheist! I don’t know where they got the communist stuff, though. Most of their political financial philosophy questions, I left blank because I didn’t like the way they worded them. Guess that’s probably what happened. Either that, or not all secular humanists are actually atheist, and the deists get a few extra points. Not sure. But I do know that Steve is more fiscally conservative than I am, and he also scored in the communist range.

Of course, the next thing I had to do was see what this shiny cool certificate looked like. Fortunately, I know what all the “right” answers are! So, here is what it looks like when you are an anti-feminist, homophobic, history revisionist, and science illiterate:

Laura You Took The Challenge And Put Your Worldview To The Test And Worldview Weekend & Worldviewweekend.com

Certify That You Scored the Highest Level Possible On Our Worldview Test

Strong Biblical Worldview Thinker

We Commend You On Having A Biblically-Minded, Christian Worldview

I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ. Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. Colossians 2:4-8

Worldview Weekend and worldviewweekend.com developed the worldview test with the assistance of some of America’s leading Christian worldview authors, speakers and experts.

Overall, I find the arrogance of this guy amusing. In order to have a “Christian” worldview, you must agree with him on everything from politics to education to religion. It is actually quite astounding how many political issues were shoved into this supposedly religious test. I wonder what moderate/liberal Christians have to say about that! (I can guess.)

Aww, how cute! They even have their own little seal!

(Major points to anyone who can catch the parody in the title.)

While cleaning out my email inbox this morning,I found this lovely gem.

Dear Friend of [Redacted] Ministries,

I am requesting that you give this your prayerful consideration and forward it to everyone you know.

I urge everyone to please support this movement. Please support, attend and/or help organize a TEA Party rally in your community.  Please encourage others to do the same.

Please support T E A (Taxed Enough Already) Party day, April 15. Our country faces a grave danger.  Our elected officials in Washington are leading us down an unwise path.  We need to act now to stop this situation.

Please go to this web site for more information: http://www.teapartyday.com/

May God continue to bless America…  What will it be if He does not?

Chaplain [Redacted]

(Emphasis his.) Hmm. This particular chaplain runs a 501(C)(3) organization. I know ministers can’t endorse a specific candidate, but how about this? This is old, but I am curious. I figure something like this happened:

Minister: Hmm, I really like this TEA party thing. But how can I get the word out? Oh! I know! I have this handy little email list of supporters of my organization! I’ll just use that! (Types email, hits send!)

Even if it’s legal (and I think it probably  is since the AFA is also nonprofit, and they support the TEA party movement, though their organization at least pertains to politics), I still think it’s incredibly unethical, particularly considering that his organization has absolutely nothing to do with politics. He runs a chaplaincy program and ministers to emergency service workers, etc. Nothing to do with right wing morality or politics. Using an email list of people who support your desire to help others in crisis situations to endorse a political party is super tacky, especially considering that there are Christians out there who might want to support this ministry and vote for Obama. I think it’s tasteless when pastors endorse politics from the pulpit for the same reason (apart from the legalities or separation of church/state type stuff). A pulpit or ministry is not the place for this type of thing because there can be no discussion or exchange of ideas. This alienates those who may agree with a minister on religion, but not politics. A preacher’s job is to preach the Bible, not interpret the Constitution or become a political ad.

I sent this to Steve for his Ask Steve column, but I don’t think he’s done the research on it yet. So more comments to come, and I may redact the redaction when I have more information!

(Note: This particular post has nothing to do with my personal view on politics, and I am neither endorsing nor criticizing any specific political party in this post.)

I know everyone has been dying to know the answer to the “how old am I?” question I asked. Since I know people have lost tons of sleep over it already, I will give you the answer! Drumroll, please!

At the time of this writing, the most popular answer is 16. However, the six people who guessed 14 were correct. I was 14. Yay! You win money. Monopoly money, that is!