Going back to God? Advice to an atheist in pain

I received the following from an atheist friend on Facebook - a young atheist, with an atheist spouse and two children well on their way to becoming freethinkers.

“I’ve been under enormous stress lately; the tragic loss of loved ones, anxiety ... stuff.  How do I cope with this without blaming "God" or wanting it to help me? I was raised Christian so I keep finding myself wanting to make god somehow a part of it and it isn’t making it easier since I am well aware that it doesn’t exist. I really just need some advice on how to do this while keeping it real!” – J.

My response:

Dear J.,

So sorry you've had to go through so much.

I assume you've been getting professional attention for your anxiety. If you haven’t then I encourage you to do so because there is no reason to suffer with medical science’s advancements. That said, I won't attempt any Psych 101 with you. 

As for the God thing ... relax. It is perfectly normal.  The religion meme runs very deep in humans. It will often reemerge in times of stress over powering your reason and logic. Having the inclination to ask “god” for support, or blaming it for your situation is not uncommon during periods of high stress and loss among otherwise rational non-believers who were indoctrinated early and raised in religious doctrine. How easy it is to wish there was really a comforting god to appeal to to relieve the pain; or a heaven at which to shake your fist, vent your anger, and demand answers for some perceived injustice.  It certainly would be cathartic and comforting.  You'd be doing the same thing if you were an Indian atheist raised in an ultra religious Hindu family - except the god/s in question might have a trunk, fangs or multiple appendages.   

I personally don't experience the god blame/appeal syndrome because I was fortunate to not have religious parents, thus virtually no religious upbringing.  But people like me are the minority in this country.

On the other hand, if you weren’t seeking help for your anxiety and instead opted to rely on “God’s intervention;”  or were blaming a mythical god for your problems instead of rationally reflecting on their natural cause and how to address them, then you would have justification for concern.   By virtue of your inquiry clearly that's not the case. You are aware that only reason, reality, and the effect of chemical reactions on the brain are in charge right now. Only time and a rational approach will heal and comfort.  

Right now your challenge is to get the anxiety managed professionally. If you do you’ll feel better and that specter of concern over backsliding into religious self deception will evaporate as gods always do when exposed to the light of science and reason.

Hang in there; you've got a camel friend in NH.

- Hump

If there were a God, we’d have to kill it.

Readers of The Atheist Camel Rants Again!  will be familiar with the chapter on “Faithicide,” a term I use to describe the gradual destruction of superstitious religious belief by reason and rationality in the scientific age.  In that chapter I dismissed “deicide,” the act of god killing, because it makes no sense since you can’t kill what does not exist.

But what if a god/God did exist and proved itself to be real?  How would we react?
I’ll proffer that it depends on the god’s persona. If it is a hands (or trunk, or tentacles) off god, who created us and lets us live out our lives as independent beings unfettered by its irrational  threats and demands; perhaps a fun loving kind of being that finds our behavior amusing or disgusting, but nevertheless nonjudgmental-  perhaps asking only for an occasional acknowledgement and thank you now and then I’d have no problem with it. Acknowledge and move on.

But if the supreme being in question was the Judeo-Christian God, and its persona is accurately portrayed in the Bible, both Old and New Testaments - what then? That’s something else altogether.

Then we would know this God’s personality in its entire minutia.  Its jealousy, its rage, its unpredictable nature, its sadistic side, its propensity for genocide ... mass extinction even. We’d know about the lies it has told, the cruelty of tests of allegiance, the punishments for supposed wrongs that it knew we would commit.. We’d have hundreds of examples of inconsistent behavior and contradictions.  Indeed the thing killed its own child to make some convoluted point of some sort and to placate itself.

If that wasn’t reason enough to feel disgust and revulsion for it, worst of all is the threat of an eternal punishment so horrific that it exceeds all human experience... eternal torture by fire.  Oh, not necessarily for the worst among us, for those people have an escape clause readily available to them.  No, they can opt out before they expire and live for an eternity among the righteous and God loving, or those who confuse fear and terror for love.

No, this irrational God would punish the best among us, the most intelligent and productive: the peace makers; those who have made our lives better and longer; people of conscience and rational ethics; even those who have opted to abide by this God’s earliest edicts, from five-thousand years ago and not his updated ones.  All of them are in for a never ending world of hurt.

If it were true as written in the god thing’s second edition that all those who do not love this God of vengeance and horrors; all those who see it as a tyrant and an oppressor of unimaginable power, with a psychosis that would make humanity’s worst mass murderers seem petty by comparison will face eternal excruciating unrelenting pain -  then we would have only two choices:  Acquiesce to its tyranny, or fight it to the death.

Where scientists never before bothered to contemplate the supernatural, many of them, and our freethinking brethren, would now kowtow to this God’s demands.  But many more would turn their attention toward one objective...find a way to destroy it.  An underground movement, an army of partisans, dedicated to freedom of thought, rationality, fairness and conscience battling not only for the freedom to live life free from omnipotent oppression and irrationality, but for the freedom and right to die and fade into oblivion without pain and fear.
.     
If there were a proven God of the Bible in all its horrendous glory man would be compelled to stop killing each other. The thinking among us would turn our undivided attention to find a way to kill this God monster ... once and for all. I’d volunteer to come up with the secret hand shake and motto.  Maybe “Death to the God Thing: Live Free and Die Like a Human.”  

Vacationing camel, or Lazy camel

One of those two things are for sure...possibly both.

But the Hump is taking a not so well deserved sabbatical during the dog days of summer.

Watch for a new blog article next week.

Stay cool.

Christian apologies: Always too little too late

It took the Catholic Church almost  four hundred years to admit it was wrong and apologize for the persecution of Galileo.  In 2000 Pope John Paul issued an apology for the Church’s role in the persecution of Jews; the mass murder of heretics; the Crusades; and their various manifestations of religious intolerance.  

Over the past ten years the Southern Baptist Church apologized for their endorsement of slavery.  The Lutheran church apologized for Martin Luther’s vicious anti-Semitic screeds. The Methodist church apologized for a preacher that led a massacre of Native Americans during the Civil War. The Mormons apologized for their sect’s murder of innocent settlers in 1857 at the Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah. 

What all these apologies have in common is they came between 400 and 140 years after the fact. The victims of those atrocities and wrongful persecutions are all dead and benefit not a sou from their crocodile tears of guilt or admission of wrong doing in the name of their god.  Apologies to the long dead wronged fixes nothing, purges the guilt of their religious delusions and fanaticism not a bit. Whether it is heart felt admission and request for forgiveness, or if it’s a cheap throw away, a ploy, a transparent PR play for some kind of redemption and acceptance I don’t know, and I don’t care. 

But what is clear is that they haven’t learned a damn thing.
- The majority of Christian sects continue to condemn homosexuality as a sin, as a deviant behavior of choice and relegate them to second class citizenship. 
- They continue to subjugate women to the whims of male dominated denominations; continue to invoke ancient biblical precepts to exercise control over women’s reproductive systems.
- They continue to sentence to death by AIDS third world peoples by condemning condoms.  

- They continue to deny the reality of climate change claiming god wouldn’t permit his planet to be destroyed by his creations. 

-They continue to perpetrate the lie of Creationism which flies in face of overwhelming scientific evidence and modernity.

-The Catholic hierarchy continues to pay lip service to condemnation of massive priestly pedophilia, engaging in a culture of cover-up and denial ten years after a papal promise to end it.

Will their apologies and corrective adjustments to these crimes against humanity ever be forth coming?  Oh, yes... it will come eventually. When they can no longer justify with myth that which science has proven; when the evidence for their failure to reason is blatantly obvious, so heinously horrific, and widely condemned; when their unsupportable apologetics falls on the deaf ears of the millions of apostates who have come to reality, civility and science; when their lies and denials and devotion to myth becomes more of a burden than they can bear in the face of truth - then the apologies will flow.

The only question is when: four hundred years, one-hundred and forty years, fifty years?  No sense holding our collective breaths.  We are all their victims and we will be long dead before it comes.  If history tells us anything religionists don’t relinquish their apologies readily. Their lack of honesty just doesn’t permit it.   

Dealing with death: How does an atheist cope?

An atheist friend recently experienced the loss of three friends and family members over a short span of time and asked me for advice on how an atheist deals with loss. I suspect that when he was a believer the rituals and dogma provided comfort. But now, without the support structure of an imaginary afterlife, hope for future reuniting, and a “meaning” for the loss he is grasping for a reasoned substitute to ease his pain. 

I don’t think I’ve ever considered this before. I don’t mean dealing with death, I’ve done that, been there. I mean considered how differently freethinkers and theists deal with the grief of loss.

How easy and comforting it must be to imagine ones dead loved one running in a sunlit field in the afterlife – eternally young, physically perfect, ecstatic, and being chased by their equally ecstatic childhood cocker spaniel.  Or surrounded by a few generations of previously deceased relatives who embrace them and welcome them to eternal life and introduce them to their angel friends.  Or dressed in a white robe, glowing with contentment as they spend eternity fawning over their man-god and telling him what a wonderful god he is, like an eternity in Disneyworld, except they have to give Mickey oral everyday, forever.  Wonderful.

Heaven, Paradise, Valhalla, the Happy Hunting Ground, the Underworld, the Land of the Dead, the Spirit World, all have always held out the promise of eternal life as a way to avoid coming to terms with the ultimate new experience, the finality of death.  Nothing in a thinking person’s quiver of reasoned thoughts can compare to, or compete with it.  All we have is reality and for us that is quite enough.

It’s enough for me to know the deceased person loved me and I loved them. Enough to know the pain of illness has subsided. Enough to know their contributions to the world will live behind them and their progeny will carry on.  Enough to know that the cycle of life is unstoppable, inevitable, and is shared by all living things. It’s enough to know that the oblivion of death is no more fearful than the oblivion that was pre-life.  I take comfort in that, we all should.

I had no magic bullet of reason that would spare my atheist friend his burden of grief.  All I could do is tell him that while there would always be a hole, hollowness, in his life that those people once filled, that in time it will shrink. Oh, it’ll always be there, but the depth of grief he is feeling now will gradually be supplanted by wonderful memories of what those people brought to his life, and he to theirs. That is the gift they, we, leave behind.

 Let your sadness run its course. Time is the great healer. The brain is a marvelous thing that way.   I wish theists could appreciate the beauty in the simplicity and reality of that.
[ dedicated to my friend G. David.]

In the face of tragedy the grotesque face of religion takes center stage

I didn’t want to write this blog. I’ve been avoiding it for days.  The horrific Aurora, Colorado massacre doesn’t need my analysis or post mortem. The media has dissected, poked, prodded, speculated, pontificated and squeezed every conceivable angle out of it. Anything I could add would be just one more disgusted and horrified voice among millions.   

But I am compelled to denounce those who, like flies drawn to feces, crawl out of the dung to  take advantage of horrific events, to promote their belief, raise their profile, and make a living capitalizing on disaster and human failure.  Those who seize upon tragedy in order to up the ante of hate and ignorance in our world or promote their business.  A despicable segment of our citizenry who deserve nothing but universal disgust and condemnation from every person who, regardless of their religious perspective, retains a spark of intellect, honesty, respect for reason and decency .

I’m speaking of Evangelical preachers and Xtian shaman, self appointed spokesman for their imaginary god, purveyors of myth and fable who live at the fringes of reality and dare not miss this opportunity to espouse their fanatical devotion to stupidity, no matter how off the mark, far fetched, hurtful, divisive or mindless it may be.  Examples:  

Jerry Newcombe, an Evangelical leader, didn’t even wait for the smoke to clear before he to affixed blame for the mass murder on America’s loss of the fear of hell, and the removal of prayer from public school and separation of religion from our government  Then, to make sure his point is made,  when one step further and told the victim’s relatives that those who weren’t committed to Christ, weren’t born again, are burning in a terrible place.  I guess the shooter will be going to the good place...he was a Presbyterian in good standing, according to his pastor.  

Rick Warren, **  Evangelical preacher, shaman emeritus to the GOP, and head of the mega Saddle Back Church, blames the massacre on the teaching of evolutionary theory.  It seems children, and this murderer specifically, has been convinced by the study of evolution that they are no better than animals, and thus have opted to “act like animals.”  The fact that no animal species besides humans have ever been documented committing mass killings of their own kind seems to be lost on Reverend Warren.

Fred Phelps, of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church, has announced his plans to picket funerals, harass mourners and protest in Aurora to promote his sick contention that the deaths were god’s punishment for the US’s continued acceptance of homosexuals.

Franklin Graham, the successor charlatan to his father Billy Graham’s cash cow ministry, don’s his ministry logo cap and t-shirt  (see above) and travels to Aurora with his team of prayer merchants to pray for the victims and let them know he and “He” is there for them, as though without him the devastated folks would never heal.  Naturally, if his mega business gets promoted by some camera face time, so much the better.

Then some Xtian wood working fanatic builds twelve 3 ½ foot tall 2 x 4 wooden crosses on bases, trucks them into town, and sets  them up - one for each of the deceased. Seems he did the same thing for the Columbine massacre thirteen years ago.  Those victims are still dead.  I imagine the twelve new crosses will have a similar non-effect on the recent victims. I wonder if all the deceased are actually Xtians, or if he gave it a moment’s thought, or if he even cares.

And on it goes.  Instead of promoting unity, kindness, understanding and giving real support to the people affected they and we are treated to  threats of eternal torture; the condemnation of science;  the hate sign waving; the meaningless platitudes, hosannas  and useless prayers; the tortured reasoning and utter lack of it; the erecting of miniature execution devices as monuments to delusion... all rolled out for everyone to marvel at  like some grotesque carnival of de-evolution.  Like a convention of witch doctors chanting their gibberish, brandishing their rattles and totems, vying for a following.   Like a bizarre dance of death cultists.  

The perpetrator of this horror will get his due.  Justice will be served, albeit it will be of little comfort to his victims and their families or the town that will bear this burden forever.  But the perpetrators of religiously inspired hate, divisiveness and delusion, the promoters of useless myth and ignorance who would spew their obsession and seek to capitalize on this tragedy will escape with their skins in tact.  There is no justice in that.

[ ** CORRECTION:  following the publication of this article, a reader advised me that the statement attributed to Rick Warren was a misinterpretation by another atheist blogger.  I apologize for this error and retract it.  Whole story of the error here:    

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/page/2/

Hump’s Annual Non-Religiously Oriented, Short List Rant of Secular Annoyances

Many of you have probably been asking yourselves “Isn’t it almost time for Hump’s Annual Non-Religiously Oriented, Short List Rant of Secular Annoyances?”  If you are among those astute readers, indeed you are correct. It is precisely that time. 

So here, in no particular order are a few of the things that have irked the hell out of me over the past year that have absolutely nothing to do with religion or the religiously afflicted as far as I can ascertain. If some appeared on a prior years’ list it is due to my poor memory and my perpetual disdain for the subject.

1. Magnum Ice cream bar commercial where an attractive actress leaves her car in a sweltering traffic jam, and trots across the hoods of her fellow stalled drivers’ cars to reach the ice cream truck parked a dozen vehicles back. And under the image is this disclaimer:  “DO NOT ATTEMPT.”   (see above)

I struggle to understand exactly the intent here.  Is it to imply that anyone stupid enough to buy their ice cream must be stupid enough to re-enact such a preposterous stunt?  Can they really believe a moron, or psychopath would appear in court with their equally moronic lawyer and use the defense: “But your honor...they didn’t say NOT to destroy the hoods and roofs of a dozen cars!!”  and also believe that without the disclaimer they’d be found liable, at least outside of Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas?  I know this is America, but even THAT would be stretching our nation’s infamous idiocy.  When will corporate America stop telling us they think we’re all idiots. WE KNOW ALREADY!

2. Donald Trump.  As though this needs a more detailed explanation - he has largely abandoned the business world, probably seeing the hand writing on the wall of his fading success there, and opted to become a full time TV clown, wanna be king maker, media whore and professional asshat. 

                                                                           

If his peculiarly excessive lip manipulations which always seems to be forming the word “ORIFICE” no matter what he is actually saying isn’t enough to want to see him impaled, then the constant Obama “birther” fixation, and his need for the GOP to throw him bones by pretending they take him and his endorsements seriously should be enough to make even an atheist invoke Psalm 109’s imprecatory prayer on his behalf.  It would be a cheap shot to even bother and mention that thing on his head, so I won’t. [it’s ferret cage sweepings]. 

3.  Alec Baldwin’s useless brother Steven has been the target of my wrath in the past for his failed acting career, and his addiction to drugs, alcohol, Xtian fundamentalism and gross stupidity.  But this year Alec himself takes the spotlight.

NO you self absorbed insipid twit... the airline doesn’t have to accommodate your fucking game boy on the runway; and NO you sophomoric man-boy, your video game enthrallment doesn’t take priority over the time and patience of a few hundred of your fellow passengers ...even those low lives in coach and business class who want to go home and see their families unencumbered by your tantrums. Elitist Jerk.

Hey Alec, you get paid a few million a year and thus are subject to public scrutiny. If the pressure of people taking your picture and earning bucks off of your inexplicable and undeserved success is too much to bear to the point where you need to punch them out or break their cameras... at least man up and stop lying about it. Coward.

Oh... and by the way, I don’t care how much of a Liberal you are, or that it was fourteen years ago -  calling for the death of a politician and the execution of their family because you don’t like their politics should have gotten you a few years bunking with “Ben Dover” in a federal prison. Maybe next time.  Maniac.   

4. Ann Curry is finally gone.  But I’m not above kicking her while she’s down.

It took too long.  If NBC had listened to me a year ago, it would have saved them millions in severance pay and their loss of first place in the ratings.  On the positive side, what she lacked in the ability to read a teleprompter Ann made up for in being devoid of talent, insipidly insincere, and permanently addled.  And yes, Matt hated her too.

5. Anthony Weiner, Aka “Tony the Weiner Wagger”, disgraced NY congressman who tweeted pic’s of his manhood to lucky female recipients, got exposed, lied about it; got caught and nailed.

Look, Anthony, once you are caught trolling with your pocket fisherman, don’t go announcing you’re going to make a run for mayor of NYC.  Even your Mom probably laughed at that.  Who are you going for the priest and porn vote?.  What’s that, maybe 15%, 18%  of the population of NYC?  C’mon.  You should be too embarrassed and ashamed to even appear on TV news shows.  You probably don’t realize the only reason you are given those gigs is because your appearance is tantamount to giving people a car wreck to watch.  They are disgusted, but just can’t turn away.

6. Dunkin Donuts.  News flash ... America DOES NOT RUN on your freaking coffee and donuts. America runs on fossil fuels, an underfunded and weak public education system, and a local, state and federal system of lies, graft and self serving obstructionism.

It is the height of undeserved arrogance to suggest that if every one of your hideous third rate coffee dispensing hovels burned to the ground that America would cease to “run.” McDonalds and Burger King maybe...Dunkin Donuts ... not!  Change that slogan and change it now, nobody buys it!

7. Michelle Bachmann, and anyone who even remotely thinks the woman has an IQ and deserves to hold public office. This woman barely qualifies to represent the lowest rung on the ladder of human evolution.

Bachmann’s latest foray into the world of lies, stupidity and misinformation casts aspersions at an aide to Hillary Clinton, implying she has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.  Why?  Because she has a Muslim heritage and last name. Never mind she was born here, and has served with distinction for twenty some years in her country’s service, has clearance from every law enforcement agency in the government, and has never once been associated with a Muslim cause.  If unfounded accusations got  Joe McCarthy the spotlight and launched the nation into a few years of manufactured hysteria and witch hunts, maybe Bachmann can get it to work for her too. 

On the down side, the aide in question IS married to Anthony Weiner, so we do have to question her Muslim taste in Jewish perverts.  Bachmann would serve her country best by getting plastered to the grill of a bus traveling down Pennsylvania Avenue at 60 mph.        

Well ... I better stop there.  There are three or four other irksome people places or things that deserve my wrath, but I’m already teetering on the brink of a seizure just rehashing these.  Hell, you take it from here.  I’m going to smoke a Valium and swallow a camel.