Complainin' Atheists

[damagecontrol]

Has anyone noticed that the places on the planet where people's lives tend to be the crappiest are often the places where religious beliefs are the most extreme.

Chickens and eggs, perhaps?

[Jael]

how do you measure crap-ness of life? 

[Spiders]

how do you measure crap-ness of life? 

I don't think it actually needs to be measured. I wasn't planning to try.

[Kit]

No need to prove it but I saw this today of the relation of the monks to the people of Myanmar.  I will note that I'm a supporter of the monks.

With tears welling in her eyes, Thi Dar, 45, pressed her hands together in respect before the first monk she saw at the clinic here and told her story. The eight other members of her family were killed in the cyclone. She no longer had anyone to talk with and felt suicidal. The other day, word reached her village that a monk had opened a clinic six miles upriver. So on Thursday, she got up early and caught the first boat.
...
While the government has been criticized for obstructing the relief effort, the Buddhist monastery, the traditional center of moral authority in most villages here, proved to be the one institution people could rely on for help.
...
“The monks’ role is more important than ever,” said Ar Sein Na, 46, a monk in the delta village of That Kyar. “In a time of immense suffering like this, people have nowhere to go except to monks.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/world/asia/31myanmar.html?scp=1&sq=monks&st=nyt

[Erin]

You know what would be awesome?  Is if newspaper headlines indicated criminals' religious affiliations:

"Christian Man, 27, kills 160+ in Oklahoma City Bombing"

"Christian Football Player Murders Two"

etc.

I just noticed this one, and I'd like to give it a big YES!

[Jael]

spiders: furhter to Gloria Jeans - here is the latest mercy ministries magazine link.

 pages 4/5. 


h ttp://www.mercyministries.org/shared/docs/public/magazine_fall2007.pdf

[Intransigentia]

Well, I'm pissed off at least once a day that my abusive childhood brainwashing has left me with the feeling that I'm going to burn in hell even though I KNOW it's not true.

vinoveritas, this pisses me off on your behalf, and on behalf of all the other children who are taught to be afraid of hell.

I'm another child that was brainwashed about hell.    Even though I rejected religion in my early teens, I was able to get it out of my brain but the fear wouldn't leave my heart.  I kept on having panic attacks and screaming nightmares about it until my early twenties.  It didn't help that the other message I got brainwashed with was that only straight people go to heaven.  It also didn't help that it was generally accepted among the godbags I was exposed to, that Judgment Day was going to be September 23, 1998.  I didn't actually start living like I was going to have a future until maybe three or four years ago, because it took me that long to absorb it into my bones - even though I intellectually knew it was all lies.  I still can't handle watching movies that involve a nuclear apocalypse - I didn't see Terminator 2 until a couple years ago, and I ended up fetal in a corner.

So that might have something to do with why this particular atheist is a loud, angry one.

[aw, fisticuffer at large]

In middle school just as I was sloughing off xtianity and heading toward atheism I used to pray for hours every night that I wouldn't go to hell. Talk about a fucking waste of time.

[Lilithc7]

I didn't actually start living like I was going to have a future until maybe three or four years ago, because it took me that long to absorb it into my bones - even though I intellectually knew it was all lies. 

Me too. Years ago I  talked to a psychologist that specializes in treating adult children who'd been raised in 'endtime' cults, and he told me that is the biggest problem by far is that we rarely plan for the future because we're sure that some catastrophic event will happen in the very near future, so why plan ahead...why go to college, save money or have children?
The church I was in predicted the end of the world something like 4 times between the time I was 2 and when I finally left at 17. My family would actually prepare every time one of the dates would approach...and I would be told that I would die but NOT go to heaven because only adults got to ascend to heaven. I would go to some purgatory type place for many years, until I could be reborn into the 'new world of god'.
Ugh...such insanity. I never expected to live past 5, then I never expected to live past 10...then 14...and on and on.
What mental torture to tell a child she's going to die next year, (and won't get to go to heaven or anyplace nice), then change your mind and tell her, no, wait, you're going to die in 4 years instead!
Grrrr!
I totally BTP as the all the people running the church were old, white wealthy MEN who didn't give a shit about children in the least. I mean really, "Beat your children, break their spirits, tell them they will die and won't go to heaven" is exactly what the fuckers preached.
The only way I can deal with it without going too insane with rage is that thanks to those asshole ministers I will never be a religious person. I will always think for myself and trust in myself, and live my life how I want. But it took me years to get to this place.

[slythwolf]

Okay, so I haven't read through the thread yet--I look forward to it, but I've had insufficient sleep and I'm kind of loopy. But I have some things to complain about about religion.

1. I am sick and fucking tired of having to respect other people's belief in fairy tales. Your (general you) believe in Jesus (or whoever) is the same as belief in the fucking Jolly Green Giant. These are fictional characters. I have some fictional characters that I like, and sometimes I even pretend to talk to them, but I acknowledge that since I a) read about them in a book, b) can't see, touch or hear them and c) have no other evidence of their existence other than in that book and the collective imaginations of their fans that they are FICTIONAL. They are not real. Their stories are entertaining, sometimes in a creepy kind of way, but it's still fiction. Talk to your imaginary friends if you want to, that's fine, have a blast. But I resent having to pretend that YOUR imaginary friends, against all odds, and over and above the imaginary friends of everyone else in the history of the world, just might be real. Why is this stuff more likely to be real than every other mythology of every other culture ever and for that matter the Lord of the Rings or Harry fucking Potter? It isn't! And you know what, I don't mind if you believe your imaginary friends are real, we all have our quirks but I don't have to not think you're a little delusional for it, because you are.

2. In a related story, I'm tired of the fundy woman I know from choir advising me, whenever I mention the tiniest of problems, to talk to her imaginary friend about it. Apparently her fictional character can help me with my problems. I don't buy it. George Carlin was right; I might as well pray to Joe Pesce, he might actually come over and get something done.

3. The fact that I can't talk about my atheism in front of most people really pisses me off. I have to spend most of my time "passing" as a theist so as not to get lectured by every other asshole about why I should just straighten up, fly right and believe in imaginary sky fairies. Do I lecture each and every one of them about why they should straighten up, fly right and stop believing in imaginary sky fairies? No! Because that's fucking rude!

I have more. I don't remember them right now. Another time.

Edit: Aha! I remembered one.

4. The privilege, oh my bog, the privilege. I almost joined what sounded like a cool roleplay on a message board a few days ago, until I got to the rule that said "Profanity is okay in moderation, but absolutely no taking the Lord's name in vain". Really? I can't roleplay as a fictional character who says "Jesus Christ" on occasion because you personally think that would make my RP character burn in hell or something? Fuck that noise. And just because I can, "Christ on a trailer hitch".

Also now I have read through the thread and saw the brief discussion of atheists getting married in churches--I am happy to report that I successfully pushed back against the pressure to do that! We could have got married in Nigel's parents' church and it would have been free, but instead we're paying the $300 to rent a ballroom on the local university campus and having the mayor marry us because, as I told Nigel, my mother and my theist best friend (all of whom said it made sense and I was right to think this way), there is no way I'm promising something I consider important by swearing on a bullshit story I don't believe in.

[AoT]

I'm tired of people telling me that I think they are stupid for going to church.  Just because I don't believe in god(s) doesn't make others stupid for doing so, and where do the godbags get off telling me what I think if them.  Grrr.

[vinoveritas]

I'm tired of people telling me that I think they are stupid for going to church.  Just because I don't believe in god(s) doesn't make others stupid for doing so, and where do the godbags get off telling me what I think if them.  Grrr.

Send them over to me. I actually do think they're stupid for going to church! *wink*

[slythwolf]

Well they tell us what we think about everything else, really, what's to stop them. These are a group of people many of whom will summarily inform me that deep down I really do believe in Jesus and I'm just, I don't know, mad at him or something. Which completely leaves aside the fact that if the christian god did exist I would have every right to be mad at him because he is a sociopath.

[AoT]

God seems far worse than a sociopath.  I'd go so far as to call him a homicidal maniac.  How many people die in the old testament?  More than two million[1].  That is an huge number, especially given the smaller population of those times.  Not to mention the godbags these days who think he still does stuff like send floods and earthquakes.  And the fact that people like me, who don't believe in him, get tortured for eternity, for what?  Not for doing anything bad, just for not believing something that corrupt men tell me as a method for them to gain power.  I blame lots of religions, but Christianity really takes the cake in terms of fucked-upedness.

1 ttp://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-many-has-god-killed.html

[Lilithc7]

God seems far worse than a sociopath.  I'd go so far as to call him a homicidal maniac.  How many people die in the old testament?  More than two million[1].  That is an huge number, especially given the smaller population of those times.  Not to mention the godbags these days who think he still does stuff like send floods and earthquakes.  And the fact that people like me, who don't believe in him, get tortured for eternity, for what?  Not for doing anything bad, just for not believing something that corrupt men tell me as a method for them to gain power.  I blame lots of religions, but Christianity really takes the cake in terms of fucked-upedness.

1 ttp://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-many-has-god-killed.html

I can't remember if I've related this story here before.
 When I was about 14 and was in a fundi-church, I happened upon a book that someone had dropped on the sidewalk. It was "Your Erroneous Zones". Being a daughter of fundi-parents, I though "erroneous" had something to do with erotica, 'cause the words look kinda the same, and because my parents had pulled me out of grade school because I was a girl and "girls have no need for an education, since they will only marry and have babies...ya don't need to know how to read to do that". So I grabbed the book and smuggled in, hiding it under my mattress.
Anyway, the book was written by Dr. Wyne Dyer, a psychologist (I believe). (He's now a New Age guru). The book described all these sick mental problems people often have, and how they destroy their lives and their families lives because of them.
Well, at 14 I realized that "God" had every single illness listed in the book. That's when I knew for sure that the Bible had been written by mentally and emotionally ill men.
I decided to reject Christianity right after finishing the book (though it took me 3 years to finally stop being physically, emotionally forced to attend their brainwashing sessions they called "church").