“Morality … does not apply to random bags of molecules”

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Charity

You’ve probably seen the latest campaign by the Center for Inquiry, Living Without Religion.

You don’t need God— to hope, to care, to love, to live.

The message will be spread via bus, billboard, and YouTube video.

The goal of this campaign is to dispel some of the false beliefs about atheists, namely that they are selfish, immoral people.

“One common myth is that the nonreligious lead empty, meaningless, selfish, self-centered lives. This is not only false, it’s ridiculous,” says CFI president and CEO Ronald A. Lindsay.

But, not everyone agrees that you can have a good life without god.

“You are talking about joy, and pleasure, and goodness and so on. If you’re employing words like that and you have no objective basis for the reality of those words … in other words, if you don’t believe in a moral law giver who actually gives meaning to the words good and evil, you can … put up billboards all day long and they mean nothing,” [Craig Hazen, director of the M.A. Program in Christian Apologetics at Biola University in Southern California] told The Christian Post.

[...]

The only way to know good, joy and love or even pain is if there is a moral law giver who can actually communicate those things, he maintained.

“Apart from that, you make it up as you go.”

He’s right, in a sense. The Christian definition of “good” is “whatever God says,” and the definition of “bad” is “everything else.”

Old Testament-style rape and genocide=good!

Gender rolls that don’t respect women=good!

Fearthought=good!

Homosexuals are an abomination=good!

So, yeah, the word “good” does not mean the same to an atheist as it does to a Christian. In fact, most atheists wouldn’t want that definition of good.

The same goes for love. In Christianity, love comes from God. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) So, creating humans and giving them a code of morality that you know they can’t follow, then punishing them when they don’t follow it, is love. Sending your son to be beaten and killed in order for you to forgive the beings you created for not being able to follow the rules you knew they couldn’t follow is love.

And then there’s joy! Joy means putting Jesus first, then others, then yourself! Joy means giving your life to serve the Lord, no matter what hardships it entails.

So, he’s right! We do have to make up our own definitions of those words!

Hazen went further to contend that an unbeliever is actually “borrowing the Christian worldview to give your atheist life meaning.”

“I just don’t know where they’re getting their concept of good. They are just random bags of molecules. Morality … does not apply to random bags of molecules,” he said.

I think I demonstrated above that we are not using the Christian definitions. And nothing about my life as an atheist has anything borrowed from the worldview I had as a Christian.

I don’t believe that I need to be a wife and mother, and nothing else. I don’t believe that I need to tithe to the church, even if that leaves us without enough money for food. I don’t believe that I need to chastise myself for thinking normal human thoughts, like “hey, that man (who isn’t my husband) is attractive” or “I don’t always like being around my kids.”

So, where are we getting our concept of good? I mean, after all, we’re just random bags of molecules.

Well, fortunately, we are random bags of molecules with sentience. All throughout human history, people have had a concept of good. More or less, the concept is the same. But, I don’t think they were all borrowing from Christianity.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

Today’s Dose of Homophobia

Posted on February 28, 2011 by Charity

There is a potential change coming to Vermont’s homeschooling regulations, so the popular homeschooling message boards have been very active lately. Today, there was a post from a woman who worked on the issue of marriage equality in Hawaii. She posted a little about her experiences and drew from that how it relates to the homeschooling fight.

It took literally 14 minutes for the following response to be posted.

This is a homeschooling group, and in the past, the moderator has requested that we leave other issues not related to homeschooling out of the discussion. I for one do not appreciate your foul language, and not all of us view homosexuality the same way you do. It distracts from our ability to present a united front as homeschoolers when irrelevant issues are brought to this group. Let’s try to focus on what we have in common…homeschooling.

*Sigh* The post was related to homeschooling. She is the one who can’t focus on what she has in common with the poster and is instead focused on her intolerance.

On the bright side, it took fewer than 10 minutes for people to start posting comments in support of the original post.

Ironically, she is the one who changed the subject to something irrelevant to homeschooling, since the topic of discussion all morning was her off-topic comment. The original post, had she not responded, would not have led to a discussion about whether or not the rest of us supported gay rights.

In a way, I feel kind of bad for the woman who posted the homophobic comment. Not because everyone (rightly) piled on her for her comment, but because she is unable to see how that post did have relevance to homeschooling.

Despite the fact that the author of the original post (which I am not reprinting just because it’s so long) specifically stated the parallels, this woman was so offended by the mere mention of gay marriage, and the idea that – gasp! – she could have something in common with a gay rights activist, she simply could not see past her disgust and deemed the post irrelevant to a homeschooling message board.

And now she probably feels persecuted for all of the comments that have been posted denouncing her comment and supporting the original post.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged , | Comments Off

When I Came Out as an Atheist

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Charity

Today Yesterday, Friendly Atheist had a post about a guy who was in the middle of a mission trip when he realized he was an atheist, so he told his family and friends via email. At the end of the post, Hemant adds,

To those of you who once came out as an atheist to a number of people all at once, what did you say? Do you still have that note, letter, or email?

I first came out about my unbelief on my old blog She’s Right. Since it was a She’s Right reader, frequent commenter, and general antagonist who was the very first person I told that I no longer believed in Christianity, I thought it was only appropriate that I tell the entire She’s Right audience. (Although, I called my self an agnostic in that post.)

The first response? Wait for it…

Perhaps you were never a Christian…

Of course!

Anyway, I also came out to my closest Christian friends via bulk electronic communication. I sent them a facebook message. In my defense, they all had moved to Texas by that time, so my options were limited.

I pulled up the message, after reading the post at Friendly Atheist. I wrote this about two months after that post at She’s Right. By then, I was using the term “atheist” to describe myself.

If you are reading this message, then you are a person who played a role in my becoming a Christian. This is really hard for me to tell you, but I feel like I am being dishonest if I keep it to myself, so I am just going to blurt it out.

I am not a Christian anymore; I am an atheist.

I can’t really explain how it happened. I just had a lot of doubts about things that seemed inconsistent or false to me. The more questions I had, the more questions I found. Eventually, the doubts just piled up and I had to ask myself some tough questions about whether or not everything I believed was really true. I came to the conclusion that it is probably not.

At first, I considered myself agnostic, in the purest sense of “not knowing.” But as the weeks went on, I started to realize that I really don’t believe in anything.

It was hard for me to deal with the loss, because it is a loss. A loss of a god that I believed was a part of my life, a loss of the culture I had been a part of, a loss of the music I had been listening to, and other losses yet to be realized.

Right now I am going through a period of figuring out who I am and how to live life and make good, moral decisions in a world with no god. It’s really exciting and fascinating, not scary and bleak, as I feared it would be.

I wanted to just keep this to myself, but when I found myself privately telling a friend of mine that knows not to mention anything about it on facebook, I realized that I was sort of living a double life and I don‘t want to do that. I want to always be true to myself no matter how scary it is.

I sent this via facebook because I do not know everyone’s e-mail address. Bear in mind, if you reply to this, everyone who received it will see the reply.

I still love you guys and consider you good friends.

Peace,

Charity

It’s still hard for me to read that message. Mostly because it reminds me of the loss I still feel.

Most of the people I sent that message to didn’t even respond. That really hurt. I would rather be told I was wrong than be ignored. Reaching out to people who I care about, hoping they will still accept me, and then being ignored was one of the hardest parts of leaving Christianity. It was like I was shut out, without even so much as a word.

Since then, I have engaged in some small talk with most of them via facebook, but I still feel the sting of being out of the group. I know that we do not have the same relationship that we once did.

It’s not just with this group of friends, either. I feel that way about the group of Christian homeschoolers that I was close with online. I feel that way about the people I went to church with, too.

It’s a loss I feel like I never fully mourned. I still get sad when I think about it.

When I wrote that message, I was in the process of trying to figure things out. The funny thing is, I still feel like I am still trying to figure things out. That’s hard for me because I am the type of person that likes things to make sense. I always gravitated toward math and physics for that reason. I like neatness, equations, explanations. I like things to follow a pattern and make sense.

But the one thing I have learned this past 16 months or so is that life does not make sense. And I need to stop trying to make it fit into a neat little box, or I will never find peace.

I guess I am getting closer to figuring than I realized.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged | 2 Comments

Christianity Gives Motherhood Purpose

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Charity

A while back, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag considered the question, “Why are women more likely to be religious if the vast majority of religions are so sexist?”

I don’t know about other women, but I have my own answer to that question.

Believe it or not (and some of you who know me will have no problem believing it), I never wanted to be a mom.

That’s a hard thing to say, since, well, I am a mom and I love my kids very much. I would do pretty much anything for them, and I have sacrificed a lot to try and give them the life I thought would be the best for them. Whether or not that was a good thing remains to be seen. But, one thing’s for sure, I would go to the mat for them, and even they know that.

To admit that I never wanted to be a mom feels a little bit like saying that I wish I never had my kids, or that I don’t love them, so it’s a hard thing for me to come to terms with, let alone tell the whole world.

A lot of little girls dream about becoming moms. They play house and pretend their dolls are real babies. They think about what kind of mom they will be. They imagine their perfect wedding day.

Not me. Ew. I was too busy playing with my chemistry set and imagining living alone in a fancy loft in NYC with no man, no kids, just my career and my social life.

But, I did become a mom, if unintentionally. And I don’t believe in doing anything half-assed, so I took my responsibility very seriously. So, I have always tried to be a good mom, a dedicated mom, a mom who is always there for her kids and doesn’t put her career first.

Still, every time I had to say no to a job offer because it required too many hours or, worse, decided to stay at home completely, I died a little inside. I had dreams, dreams that would never come to fruition.

Then, I found Christianity. Not only could I be forgiven for the indiscretions that led to my unintended pregnancy, I had found a culture that not only valued motherhood, but held it up as the highest calling for a woman.

You may call that sexist; I call it salvation.

This was the answer to all my problems. Finally, I would be able to put my ambitions aside and embrace motherhood with a sense of real purpose. I would be serving the lord in my home mission field, raising three young men who would go into the world and do three times the work building god’s kingdom that I could do. Instead of being an obstacle to being somebody important, motherhood was going to make me somebody important.

I poured all my energy into being a mother, wife, and homemaker, telling myself that I was honoring god and fulfilling my god-given purpose. I communed with other godly women online who reaffirmed each other in our dedication to serving the lord through motherhood and supported each other through our struggles against the temptations of our ambitions.

That worked for me… for a while. But then, as you can imagine, it still wasn’t enough. I still had these desires to be something other than a mother. Only now, I had a heaping helping of guilt to go along with it. A god-sized helping of guilt, and it almost crushed me.

For years I struggled to push these “worldly” ambitions aside and let god be enough.

But, being, you know, imaginary, god never was enough. What’s worse, I started to resent my kids. I never resented them before for mucking up my plans. They didn’t ask to be born and I freely chose to put them first. But now I wasn’t freely choosing; I was doing it because I thought that’s what god required of me, and I resented it. And, of course, I felt guilty for resenting it.

Needless to say, it did a number on my psyche.

Once I left Christianity, I thought about putting my kids in school and pursuing a career, but I decided that it wasn’t the best choice at that time for our family -for any of us, including me. But, that didn’t mean that being a mom was all I had to be, and I have been pursuing other interests.

And, what do you know, I don’t resent being a mom anymore. I actually even enjoy it sometimes!

I probably won’t ever have that fancy loft in NYC and the career and social life I dreamed about as a girl, but I am finally okay with that. I like my life, and I still have plenty of time to do a lot of things that will be fulfilling. I even get to raise three amazing (if not sometimes annoying, loud, and/or smelly) boys in the process.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

C.S. Lewis Was Not Very Logical

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Charity

I can’t believe that I ever thought C.S. Lewis was logical. Take this quote that I saw posted on a friend’s facebook page:

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” -C.S. Lewis

Really? The most probable?

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. ” – Inigo Montoya

How is “I was made for another world” even probable at all, let alone the most probable?

Here I thought the most probable explanation was that he hadn’t uncovered the root of the desire and how to satisfy it, not to oversimplify things.

How can anyone even make the statement “which no experience in this world can satisfy,” unless they have had every experience possible, which, incidentally, isn’t possible?

If Lewis is one of the best apologists Christianity has to offer, it’s a wonder the religion hasn’t died out yet.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged , , | Comments Off

I Hate Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Charity

I am warning you, if you love Valentine’s Day, or even like it, you might want to skip this post.

I hate Valentine’s Day.

It’s true. I like Valentine’s Day crafts and decorating and baking. I mean, what’s not to love about pink hearts and chocolate? But, I hate Valentine’s Day.

I guess a woman who thinks love is for suckers and a man who thinks Valentine’s Day is a Hallmark holiday are not exactly the poster children for romance, but that’s not why I hate it.

I think Valentine’s Day just sets people up for disappointment. And I think that sucks.

There’s so much pressure to make it special. The perfect dinner, just the right gift, the most romantic night ever. How could something like that not end in disappointment?

I did get a nice surprise this morning, when my 7-year-old came in my room and gave me a construction paper heart that said, “Happy Valentine’s Day Mom,” and a hug. How could I not love that?

But then, I pulled a muscle in my back while making cupcakes and have been in excruciating pain ever since. Yea, Valentine’s Day!

The thing I hate most about Valentine’s Day is the constant stream of sappy, over-the-top expressions of love. Facebook is the worst. Ugh!

I may have mentioned that I think love is for suckers. Yeah, I am a big time cynic when it comes to believing in the happily ever after kind of love you see in the movies, or on diamond commercials.

And don’t tell me I just haven’t found the right person or I will punch you, after I barf.

I’ve been in love. I’ve been head-over-heels, over-the-moon in love (though you would never catch me gushing about it on facebook – ever). I am just realistic about the fact that love is not that perfect thing that people try to make it out to be.

Love leads to pain, and vulnerability, and disappointment, even in the best of relationships. It’s not all roses and chocolate and the perfect night out. That’s the nature of loving someone. In order to do it, you have to leave yourself open to all that bad stuff. And it’s inevitable that the person you love will hurt you, even if they don’t mean to. You know, being human and all.

That’s not to say that I don’t think we need love. It’s important. Not as important as air, or food, or even facebook, but it is important. It also kind of sucks.

I wonder if I could get that on a Hallmark card.

Posted in Random Thoughts | Tagged | Comments Off

There Is No Evil

Posted on February 3, 2011 by Charity

Our local alt weekly newspaper recently published (online only, unfortunately) a poignant piece in response to the horrific shooting in Arizona, titled, “Evil … or Mentally Ill?”

After the tragedy in Tucson a few weeks ago, it was inevitable that we would hear the word “evil.” Sarah Palin called the accused gunman “an evil man.” Former teachers referred to his “evil stare.” The New York Post said he looked “every bit the face of evil.” Even President Obama used the word in his moving memorial speech: “Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world…”

Jared Loughner may be a lot of things, but he’s not evil. To call him that is to grossly mistake him for something that’s biblical in scope when the reality is far less profound: Jared Loughner is mentally ill.

That we have a Harvard educated, intelligent, articulate president who relies on scripture to explain complicated problems is disappointing, to say the least.

But, it’s easy for politicians to call the man who committed such unthinkable acts “evil.” To admit otherwise would be to admit that they hold some culpability in not providing enough care for the mentally ill.

That’s not to say that Jared Loughner would not have slipped though the cracks of even the best mental health care system. But we will never know, especially if we keep passing the buck off to some mystical force we call “evil.”

This issue really strikes a still-raw nerve in me. As I have talked about before, my son, who suffers from a mood disorder, went far too long without treatment because I was convinced that his behaviors were due to a Satanic influence.

Why do we have so many people – politicians, college teachers, newspaper reporters – giving legitimacy to this concept of “evil”? There is no such thing. There is nothing mystical at work here. Even though we cannot imagine ourselves ever doing something so heinous, there is still a logical explanation for it.

My son does not have a severe mental illness. He has mood swings that are controlled by very low doses of two different reuptake inhibitors. Yet even with that slight imbalance, I saw behaviors that were quite extreme. I can only imagine what a person with severe mental illness is capable of.

With Jared Loughner, we don’t have to imagine. We saw the tragic results.

It’s easy to dismiss Loughner as evil and go on about our lives. It is much more difficult to call out the use of antiquated superstitious beliefs to explain things that science has answers for.

The problem with the former is not only that it allows us to continue ignoring the inadequacies of our mental health care system, but it also gives credibility to the fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who are preaching and teaching people that Satan and demons are real.

I was drawn into the world of spiritual warfare teachings. This is what I wrote in a post last year, recalling my journey to Christianity and back,

Everywhere I looked, there was confirmation of this idea that there is a battle going on in the heavenly realm for our souls. Every time we would step out in faith and do something great for God’s Kingdom, we would come under attack, in the form of negative thoughts, bad attitudes (especially from our children), and other events that seemed to stand in our path.

Soon, every doubt I had about Christianity was thought by me to be an attack from Satan. My circle of Christian friends confirmed this belief as true and everything that went on in our lives was viewed through this lens.

I started to fear worldly influences as an attempt by Satan to undermine my beliefs and the plan that god had for me. So, I limited what I would watch and listen to. I even limited what the kids could watch and listen to. After the “Freedom in Christ” conference, I even went though all of my books and CDs and threw out anything that was against god, including yoga videos and most secular music. It was black and white – if it wasn’t honoring god, it was working against god and not something that I should let in.

That is certainly not the kind of belief system that President Obama demonstrates or endorses, but when he says things like, “Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world…” it gives credence to those beliefs.

Those beliefs are, at best, ignorant, at worst, dangerous. It’s time we stopped encouraging them.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged , , , | Comments Off

Why Does Your Birth Year Plus Your Age Equal 111?

Posted on January 20, 2011 by Charity

I saw this on a friend’s facebook the other day.

Read this and see if you think it is STRANGE…This year we will experience 4 unusual dates…. 1/1/11 – 1/11/11 – 11/1/11 – 11/11/11 !! NOW figure this out…. take the last 2 digits of the year you were born plus the age you will be this year & post what you get……… “I got 111!” AND YOU WILL TOO!!! COPY AND PASTE TO SEE WHAT YOUR FRIENDS WILL GET AND WHAT THEY THINK IT MEANS!!

OMG! 76+35 does = 111 – what does it mean?!!1!11!!??

There are actually a lot of people who do think there is some sort cosmic meaning to this phenomenon. I don’t mean to make fun. My brain automatically searches for a mathematical explanation, but it’s quite common for people’s brains to go straight for a mystical explanation.

The reason this happens is pretty simple. We are living in a different century than the one we were born in. (This only works for people born in the 1900s.) So, the last two digits of our birth year + the age we were at the end of that century will equal 100 years, a complete century.

To explain that a bit further, the last two digits of your birth year represents the number of years that passed in that century. (Example, 1976 was 76 years after the beginning of the 20th century.) The age you turned at the end of the century, 2000, represents the remaining years from your birth year to the end of the century. A century is 100 years, so when you add these two numbers, you will get 100. (I was born in 1976 and turned 24 in 2000: 76+24=100.)

Since this is 11 years after the turn of the century, 2011, our birth year + our age this year = 100+11, or 111.

So, the next time you see something like this posted on facebook or being talked about at a party, you can marvel your friends with your smartypantsedness.

Posted in Geeky Stuff | Tagged , | Comments Off

Kids Say the Darndest Things (About Hell)

Posted on January 16, 2011 by Charity

The quote from Percy Jackson that I brought up in the previous post reminded me of another thing; I often forget how insightful children are.

I have yet to talk to my children about my deconversion. They do not know that I am an atheist. They don’t even know that I am not a Christian. They obviously know that we stopped going to church. And they are perfectly content not to rock that boat, lest they have to start going again.

They actually told me that when I asked them if they wondered why we stopped going, a few months after we stopped. They did wonder, but they thought if they brought it up, we would start going again, so they didn’t say anything. Yeah, like we stopped going because we forgot!

I ended up telling them that we wanted to take some time to think about what we believed. The previous summer (the year before I stopped believing), we spent some time checking out different churches, so our spiritual indecisiveness was nothing new to them.

I still haven’t checked back in with them about what I believe. And my guess is they still don’t want to bring it up, for fear of returning to church.

I often wonder how I should handle talking to them about religion. I don’t want them to grow up holding onto the beliefs I raised them with during the 5 and a half years I was a hardcore evangelical Christian. Yet, I also don’t want to convince them not to believe in anything. I feel like that’s their choice.

As it turns out, I think there is little concern that they will be evangelicals. That’s where Percy Jackson comes in.

My 14-year-old started reading the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series back when he was 10 or 11, when only the first two books in the series were released, long before the movie. He immediately loved the books. Not only is it a great series, but the titular character also has ADHD, which makes him better at battling monsters, and positive uses for ADHD can be hard to come by for a boy struggling with the disorder.  He was so interested in the stories that he also read books on Greek mythology, becoming very knowledgeable on the subject.

One day, my oldest two sons were having a conversation about Hell and my 12-year-old, who by this time had also read the Percy Jackson series, said, “How do we know that hell is like it says in the Bible? How do we know that it’s not like the underworld in Percy Jackson? No one can really know. Maybe there isn’t even a hell at all.”

I smiled when I heard this. I guess I underestimated their ability to think critically about religious belief.

Last night, my 12-year-old said something else reassuring. “I pray to whatever god may be up there…” That doesn’t sound like the kind of dogmatic religious belief that I don’t want them to have. Besides, I think he meant that figuratively.

One of these days, I will have to have a conversation with them about religion, probably several. But for now, I just need to keep doing what I have been, exposing them to different views and teaching them to think for themselves.

Addendum: This morning my 12-year-old created a facebook account and he listed his religion as “awesomeness.” Heh.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged , | 4 Comments

We Must Sow and Reap and Store, For We Are Not Birds

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Charity

One of the things about leaving Christianity that has been really hard on me is the return of financial stress. See, when I was a Christian, I had convinced myself that God would provide for all of our needs no matter what happened.

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? – Matthew 6:26

I convinced myself so deeply of that, I completely stopped stressing about money.

Over the past year, the stress about money has crept back in, though, and now it is causing me sleepless nights and headaches.

Even with tithing, we were still doing better financially than we are now. Part of that is the cost of living going up, but most of it is the fact that we started letting ourselves have all the things we had been denying ourselves due to our beliefs. You know, the fun things.

It’s not fun to stress out about money, though, so I am working on getting my finances back in order. It looks like it will only be painful for about another month, and then things will be back on track. We should still have money for some fun stuff, but we will be having fun within our means.

This experience of having money troubles made me realize just how brainwashed I was. I really believed so strongly that God would take care of me that I did not even worry about anything.

I would love to be that carefree again, sometimes.

I am sure there is a way to worry less than I have been, and I am working on getting that under control, but I have to admit that there have been quite a few times that I wished I could have that child-like faith again, even if only for one night. At least I would be able to get some sleep.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a few days now. Today, I read something that reminded me about it. I read books out loud to my 12- and 7-year-old sons. Right now we are reading, “The Lightning Thief,” the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, by Rick Riordan.

Chiron, the centaur teacher at a camp for children of gods, is explaining to Percy, who is a demigod, that humans will not notice if a monster is trying to kill him. He explains,

You will see things just as they are, being a half-blood, but humans will interpret things quite differently. Remarkable, really, the lengths to which humans will go to fit things into their version of reality.

Remarkable, indeed. I continue to be fascinated, and at times aghast, at the lengths to which I went to fit things into the Christian version of reality all those years.

Still, I can see why I and so many others choose to do so. Sometimes seeing things as they are can be a bit painful.

Posted in Religion & Atheism | Tagged , , | 3 Comments