For Christians who believe in hell:

Sometimes, a bit of satire explains serious issues well.

The notion of Jesus saving mankind from hell is completely ludicrous. Don’t get me wrong – if there was a hell, and Jesus had certifiably saved us from it, it would be a noble act. Jesus can’t take credit for ‘taking a bullet’ for us when he’s the one actually holding the gun.

As I’ve said before, what is the purpose of Christ at all? If the goal of the death of Christ was forgiveness from God that would exclude followers from hell, why couldn’t God just forgive by himself? Why use such a brutal and unnecessary proxy?

Best searches of the month

I get some weird traffic. Don’t ask me how, but every month, I get a ton of strange searches in my stats. Here are some of the best every month

‘images of how to spank your young son’

Easily the creepiest thing I’ve read all week.

‘careers suitable for someone who is not’

I think google is insulting me. I’m suitable!

‘atheists need more faith’

I couldn’t agree more, random internet searcher. You’ve come to the right place.

‘theology what a waste of time’

Less of a search, and more of a statement.

‘the catholic church isn’t very pragmatic’

You don’t say?

‘a good spanking’

I think we’re all a fan of a good spanking every once in a while, AMIRITE?

‘denail of god in modern society’

You’re denailing my god? How DARE you.

On Thanksgiving – Thank Yourself!

Today, I had a great holiday relaxing with my family. I napped, watched two football games and ate a ungodly amount of ham. When I got home and logged into Facebook, my profile was slammed with the ‘I’m thankful for’ statuses.

They mostly thanked God and family, but no one, not a single person, thanked themselves. I’m not saying family and friends aren’t vitally important, but today, think about what you have done for yourself.

Atheism doesn’t tell the whole story – I consider myself a secular humanist equally, as well as a atheist and naturalist. I am of the mindset that no one else except me is responsible for my successes and failures, and I will not give some faceless entity credit for what I have done – I should fully enjoy the fruit of my labor and fully take responsibility for the consequences of my mistakes. It’s how healthy people operate.

So everyone, thank yourself! You deserve it.

‘About the Author’ and a New Commenting policy.

I thought I would finally post an updated bio, as well as the new commenting policy I was working on.
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This year, I decided to start over.

I spent my college years pursuing a degree as a Christian minister, and stopped just short of beginning the post-graduation job search. Ministers leaving the faith isn’t unheard of – but I saw the life ahead of me, and I wanted nothing to do with it. Throughout my teenage years, and during my time in Bible college, I had serious doubts with the legitimacy of Christianity. Even while I was extolling the virtues of faith from the pulpit, my intellect disputed the words spilling from my mouth.

I decided I could take no more. I decided I would not make a living out of the fear and weakness of others. I would not line my pockets with the dirty money of the religious economy. I would not indoctrinate young children into a single worldview. I would not endorse a philosophy that has taken the lives of millions of people throughout history. I would not spend the rest of my life pretending to know what really happens to people after they die.

On August 29th, 2009, I cut the intoxicating delusion of faith from my intellect, and I renounced Christianity publicly and left the faith for good.

It was one of the most empowering and proud moments of my life. I refused to settle for supernatural non-sense, and I finally embraced the true value of a mind liberated by free-inquiry. Over the next few months, the response was overwhelming; the traffic on my blog nearly tripled, and I received more criticism for my work than ever. The nastiness wasn’t confined to random internet trolls, but past acquaintances and even family members decried my conversion. Emails, IMs, awkward phone calls and in person conversations were nearly incessant for the initial ‘coming-out’ phase of my atheism.

It was a slew of spiritual doctors who were all trying to diagnose my ‘condition’ – I was told that I ‘never had faith in the first place’ or that I was just ‘bitter and angry at the church’. I was told that I would ‘burn in hell’ and would be separated from God forever. I didn’t believe any of this non-sense, but what was abundantly clear was that these people viewed my atheism as a threat to their own belief system. I felt embarrassed for them – their outbursts were childish and stupid.

What has deeply impressed and humbled me is the response of my family and of my close friends. They never hesitated to accept me, even though my philosophy ran completely contrary to theirs. I read an article about atheism from Focus on the Family – they suggested that ‘all atheists have a strong hatred towards their own fathers or family units’ – but I quite love my dad and my family. I grew up in a loving and unique home, in a family with two caring parents. A true rarity in this day in age. I have no qualms with my own upbringing, and in all honesty, I wouldn’t have changed a bit of it.

My atheism is not the result of bitterness. It is not the rebellion of a young mind. It is not the eruption of repressed emotion – and I think this is what frustrates my detractors the most. If you spend any decent amount of time reading this blog, you won’t walk away thinking that this is the ravings of a petulant child, but of a well-reasoned adult.

It is my hope that this blog will help me create the best book I can – thanks to everyone who has been along side me through this process, and for those just discovering TPD, please get involved in our pursuit of intelligence, free-inquiry, and knowledge.

-Adam

The death of God in my life

This is a fairly weak attempt to put forward a short autobiography. I think if you’re reading this blog, you deserve at least some context on my personal life. This, by no means, covers everything that would need to be covered, but it’s a start.
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There is no criticism greater than the reflection of Christianity itself. Religion is flawed and broken; even the religious cannot deny this fact – but there is no critique as powerful as the juxtaposition of the doctrines of faith stood up against each other.

Theology is a pathetic field of study. It is the study in the unknowable, untestable, and unverifiable. It is the study of God; the study of a God who does not definitely exist – instead of a field of study devoted to proving the existence of a God at all, we have millions of Theologians who do not need this information, and act out of certainty that this conclusion is already true. They argue with their conclusion already in hand; they do not need empirical data. Theologians argue, debate and defend conclusions and theories – all ideals for which they have no real data to support.

Think of every theological idea you have heard – can you think of one that cannot be supported in another field? Questions of existence, ethics, and behavior can all be answered within the context of science, biology, and psychology. Not only can actual fields of study produce tangible results (which is much more than theology can claim), but every hypothesis that theology can produce can be explained more throughly – with actual information.

I attack theology because it is a hollow shell. It is merely a platform from which to operate; a fancy name for nothing, an intellectual version of the emperors’ clothes. Men and women all over the world are creating and exchanging ideas about who God is, what he dislikes, what he loves, how we should relate to him, why we should worship him, how we should worship him – and not one of these conclusions could ever be proven. God simply takes the shape of whatever each individual wishes him to truly be, because behind the prayer, worship, Bible study and devotion – there’s only the lonely, echoing thoughts of a single mind.

Ironically, most intelligent religious people will begrudgingly admit that there is a possibility that God does not exist at all; that their ideas could be completely wrong. In a logical mind, the debate should shift from this point; what good is learning about the study of God if we cannot certainly verify he exists at all? Their hopes are greater than their heads; their hearts stronger than their brains. Science, logic, truth are not as important as verifying their own beliefs. The drive to justify faith is supremely powerful.

I remember how powerful this drive was. It was overwhelming – it was much like altering your own state of consciousness, like being drunk or high; except you searched for the right words or tone of voice, from yourself, or from others, that would send that tingle up your spine. The tingle that made you sure God was talking to you, that the Spirit of God was touching you, guiding you.

I was preaching to a congregation one sunday morning. I was young, a little bit over twenty years old, and I had a packed house. I was preaching on the book of Acts, and I had spent several weeks getting the message perfect. The congregation mainly consisted of old-midwest-white conservatives. It felt like stepping backwards into time. Today, I was preaching about living the Christian life outside of the walls of the church – a message I genuinely believed in.

I was a natural public speaker; articulate, charismatic, passionate and academic – I held attention very well as a preacher. I was a thorough orator, I wrote my sermons out word for word, and made them sound exactly as they did in my head. Preaching was easy for me. During this Sunday morning, I felt something very unique and different, an emotion I had not experienced in my young life. Between sentences, in the middle of my sermon, I paused.

For no reason, I simply paused. I looked out at this crowd of people, and took in their faces. Some were slightly dozing, minds drifting off to another place. Some had the look of steady apathy – they didn’t think a kid had much to tell them, and they were probably right. It was the third expression that scared me.

Eyes looking straight forward, brow slightly furrowed, backs leaned towards their knees. They were listening to every word, every syllable – they mirrored the emotion in my words and my body language. When I talked about sin, their heads dropped as they stared at the floor, convicted like criminals. When I spoke about forgiveness, their eyes lit up and smiles emerged.

It was power. It was the first time in my young life that I had palpable influence over others. It was twice as intoxicating as merely praying, singing and reading Scripture – I was telling everyone how they should live. And they listened. It’s easy to sustain nonsense philosophies when others follow your lead.

I finished my sermon and waited near the back door to shake hands and talk to people. The congregation heaped on compliment after compliment – and after the first several people, my mind began to wander. These people want a master; they show up to this church every single week to have the Bible interpreted for them. They show up every week to be taught about the same story over and over again.

I quickly grew tired of ‘teaching’ the knowledgeable. I failed to see the purpose of echoing the same message constantly. The rabid insistence of repeating the story of Christ confounded me deeply – do they not understand? It is not a complicated story by any stretch of the imagination: Jesus is born, dies for our sins, is resurrected. Why didn’t we live like Jesus actually lived, instead of reading the same stories over and over again? Why weren’t we feeding the hungry or fighting corruption? Why did Christians prefer to park themselves in pews once a week, instead of doing something significant? Church sucked the life out of the living. A total waste of time.

I slowly found myself disbelieving the message I was preaching. Christianity had nothing to offer me – how could I offer it to anyone else? As much as I would like to claim that there was a definitive moment where I killed my faith, there really wasn’t one at all. It was a slow and steady ascent to free-inquiry.

I had known for some time that I was an atheist, but the climax of my disgust with Christianity came at an awful time – I privately declared myself an atheist several months before my own wedding.

I came home from work, intent on telling my fiance about my new-found atheism. She was tapping away on her computer on the kitchen table, when I finally told her.

‘I think I’m an atheist’ I said meekly. ‘I can’t believe in any of this anymore’.

She sighed, as she snapped the laptop closed. ‘You were holding on to faith for the both of us.’ She replied. ‘I’m not surprised, but I don’t know what this means for us.’

We had talked about our plans to stay away from Christianity – she was as fed up as I was. I had already told her that I had no desire to work in the church at all already, but leaving the faith entirely was a different thing. My family is deeply religious, and I had no idea how they would respond to the news.

‘ I don’t think I can tell my family yet’ I told my fiance, while cracking open a beer I had pulled from the fridge.

‘No, I don’t think you should at all.’ She said, no doubt envisioning a wedding-day breakdown. ‘Why would you need to tell them now? Just wait. There’s no reason to hurry this, Adam’

I had almost wanted to just tell everyone and get it over with. I just couldn’t pretend anymore. It made me sick to talk to my Christian friends – they talked about their churches, what God was telling them, and what Scripture they were reading, and I just wanted to burst. Even though I couldn’t take the religious life anymore, I kept my atheism to myself until after my wedding.

Planning the wedding was stressful enough – I wasn’t about to add any extra strain upon my family or my future wife. Although, in retrospect, our collective non-belief wasn’t much of a mystery in the wedding itself; we insisted the minister use absolutely no Scripture at the wedding. We refused to hold the ceremony at a church. We removed the sexist verbs from the vows. We didn’t sing any hymns, and we didn’t want religion to intrude upon our day. We simply told each other how much we loved each other, in front of our family and friends, and it was supremely beautiful. It was perfect.

After the wedding, I was faced with a clear-cut decision career decision. I had to decide what to do with my education. I could continue in the ministry track – and simply fake it. Believe it or not, a minister at a full church can pay quite nicely, and it would bring a great deal more income in than anything else I would be qualified to do. There are many ministers who are currently doing this right now – after going to school for so long, there is simply no other way for them to make a living.

I decided that I couldn’t live like that. I’d rather start from scratch, and find a different vocation than to continue in a life I didn’t believe in.