Candide

marcescence asked: Heym, just came across your blog on the athiesm tag. I haven't read any of your posts yet, but I also think that "His Dark Materials" was a huge factor in my becoming athiest after 15 years of Catholic school. Glad to know that story has opened up other people's minds as well!

It’s a wonderful, beautiful series.

Your question has inspired me to write up how I rejected God.

Yeah, when I was a kid I loved science, especially astronomy, and geology, evolution and dinosaurs. And I remember really struggling to reconcile what I knew about the history of the world with the story of a Biblical creator. I came to the conclusion independently that it must just be metaphor and was happy to say that til age 9ish. Then I read HDM and it opened my eyes to the idea that, wow, there were people that actually criticized the Church. I was coming from a place where everyone is Catholic and goes to church every Sunday - I had never met a Protestant, or a Hindu, or a Muslim, or whatever. I didn’t really know they existed. Anyway HDM sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind and it was a philosophy book called the Philosophy Files that crystalized for me the implausibility of a personal God. I was astounded and excited about this. I thought I’d made an amazing discovery. Age ten I walked into school and during RE proceeded to explain to the teacher that the Bible wasn’t the written word of God, and that the New Testament was cobbled together in the 5th century AD. I told her there wasn’t much evidence for God. And she started crying! I mean actually, crying. She thought I was going to hell.

Then the headteacher came and started shouting at me that I was an arrogant little brat and how dare I think I was right when everyone else in the world believed in God.

My parents didn’t believe me. 

Ever since that day I realized God was irrational. I was forced to go to Church still tho.

When I was sixteen I said I was done, and refused to go to mass anymore. My dad said I would go to church as long as I lived under his roof, and that I’d get kicked out if I didn’t. I was banned from everything and ignored. I live in a crazily Catholic community and not going Church is equated with evil. In the end i decided that they were all too childish to change their minds and so, I’m ashamed to say, I caved in and I still grit my teeth to go to mass to keep em happy… I don’t want to fall out with them, as I need to finish my education.

When i turn 18 I’m gonna try again to quit. I’m gonna have a talk with them before my birthday and explain why as an adult I deserve the respect to choose my own views. While I was a kid I ‘respected’ their blind faith, now I ought to get some respect too.

These places exist IN AMERICA, they’re completely legal, and they’re only growing. It’s the new solution for parents who have kids that don’t conform blindly to their religious and political views, let me explain: After the initial shock of what I thought was a kidnapping, it was explained to me that my parents had arranged for me to attend Horizon Academy (http://www.horizonacademy.us/) because I admitted to them that I was atheist and didn’t agree with a lot of their hateful views. Let me give you a detailed run-down of my experience here: To start off it’s a boarding school where there is literally no communication with the outside world, the people who work here can do anything they want, and the students can do absolutely nothing about it. The basic idea is that you’re not allowed to leave until you believably adopt their viewpoints and push them off on others. The minimum stay at these places is a year, an ENTIRE YEAR, that means no birthday, no christmas, no thanksgiving etc.; my stay lasted 2 years. The day to day functioning of this facility is based on a very strict set of rules and regulations: you eat what they give you, do what they tell you (often just pointless things just to brand mindless submission in your brain), and believe what they tell you to believe. Consequences for not adhering to these regulations include not eating for that day, being locked in small rooms for extended periods of time and the long term consequence of an extended stay. There’s a lot more detail and intricacies I could get into, but my main purpose was to spread awareness to the only group of people I feel like could do something about this. Feel free to ask me anything about my stay, I could go on for days about some of the ridiculous things I went through.

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A certain set of American values are all about family, and giving parents the right to educate their kids at home, with no state interference. The problem is that sometimes we need the state to protect children from their own parents. This real life story is shocking and I admire the courage of the writer.

(Source: themarrowofabone)

If the God of the Bible existed, I’d do my best to make him not exist.

If he knew everything and could do anything, I know I’d probably fail. But hey! Better to die than live under that kind of tyranny.

If he had the power to create me with the free will to defy him, he has the power to take that free will away. That’s a worthless form of free will!

If he was all-good and loved me, I still wouldn’t forgive him. Because, you know what, my mother loves me and would do anything in her power for me, but we still don’t let her have the power to do whatever she wants for me, do we? We value our independence!

A benevolent dictator is still a dictator.

I don’t believe in God, but let me tell you this, if a scientific experiment proves tomorrow that the God of the Bible is real, it doesn’t follow logically that I need to worship him. There’s truth in that adjective God-fearing. If God is real, I’d be really afraid, because no matter how good his intentions, no matter how much he loves me, that much power concentrated in one person can’t be good.

God is the ultimate police state. He see and hears everything. God is the perfect totalitarian. He has complete control.

What life would be worth living if it’s not your life to live? If your life is just in the hands of God?

If you can show me God exists, the first thing I’ll do is make the Case For Satan!

If the God of the Bible existed, I’d do my best to make him not exist.

If he knew everything and could do anything, I know I’d probably fail. But hey! Better to die than live under that kind of tyranny.

If he had the power to create me with the free will to defy him, he has the power to take that free will away. That’s a worthless form of free will!

If he was all-good and loved me, I still wouldn’t forgive him. Because, you know what, my mother loves me and would do anything in her power for me, but we still don’t let her have the power to do whatever she wants for me, do we? We value our independence!

A benevolent dictator is still a dictator.

I don’t believe in God, but let me tell you this, if a scientific experiment proves tomorrow that the God of the Bible is real, it doesn’t follow logically that I need to worship him. There’s truth in that adjective God-fearing. If God is real, I’d be really afraid, because no matter how good his intentions, no matter how much he loves me, that much power concentrated in one person can’t be good.

God is the ultimate police state. He see and hears everything. God is the perfect totalitarian. He has complete control.

What life would be worth living if it’s not your life to live? If your life is just in the hands of God?

If you can show me God exists, the first thing I’ll do is make the Case For Satan!

sword-meets-rose:

candide94:

sword-meets-rose:

candide94:

A man who was his own father impregnated his own (virgin) mother, grew up and went about giving well-meaning but impractical advice while planning to get himself tortured and crucified to sacrifice himself, to himself, to exploit a loop-hole that he created to save humanity from an arbitrary rule that he created, after which he rose from the dead and became a man in the sky who loves you and who will do worse than kill you if don’t love him back.

You’re not a Christian because you make straw man arguments to get out of understanding, or even trying to understand, what we actually believe.

There is no such thing as a “man in the sky” for one, because God is incorporeal. Just for one thing.

Jesus is not the Father, and the Father is not Jesus, but both are God. So no, again, you are factually incorrect about that.

“well-meaning but impractical” advice? It’s only impractical if you don’t find ways to make it practical. Because treating others how I would like to be treated is pretty practical. It means you don’t be a douchebag to other people, basically. You don’t treat them like shit. you respect them.

“Will do worse than kill you”. Uhm… No. God doesn’t send people to Hell. People send themselves. If you don’t want to be around God, God isn’t going to force you to be with God. That would completely undermine free will.

Is this not the second time you’ve reblogged my rather tongue-in-cheek post??? And also: having been raised by devout Catholics, and myself still a churchgoer (for family reasons I can’t help), I feel that is quite a reasonable summary of Christian belief. And of course, because this is an exercise in religious discourse, I am can quite simply say this is what I [=my Church] believes and you have no right to question it. I have faith that this is why I am not a Christian, I have faith that this is what most Christians believe. You have faith in Christianity. Let’s be religious and respect each other’s views cos, well, we believe ‘em don we?

Well, you’ve admitted now that you only go because you’re made to go. You probably haven’t taken a theology course beyond the high school level, and if you have, I find it probable that you didn’t take it seriously.

This post is insulting to me for being a Christian. You think it’s tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not. It’s derisive and inflammatory. I’m not questioning what you believe, I’m saying that what you said is insulting.

Well, I am in high school so that can’t be helped. For what its worth I spent this afternoon discussing ‘what is life’ with the school chaplain (who has a doctorate in philosophy) and he seems to think I have a decent head on me…

Insulting? 

May I ask: so what???

If I were to write a post, say, criticizing Marxism by taking its doctrines and theories literally in a tongue-in-cheek fashion , would ‘but you’re insulting my beliefs’ be a satisfactory response? In a free society one has the right to criticize, possible offend, the political beliefs of others. Why not the religious beliefs? Science progresses by self-criticism and peer-review - why is it only religion that is allowed to get rid of criticism by calling it ‘insulting.’???