Hell Girl
25th February 2009, 09:12 PM
I grew up in a xian family. Mum was pretty strict. She taught scripture at my school and Dad was heavily involved in the church too. We had bible readings at the dinner table (yuck), were forced to go to church/sunday school, and were preached at ad nauseum. The moralising was awful, especially from mum. ALways on about saving myself for marriage and dressing modestly. Ghastly. I copped most of it because I was a girl - I think my younger brothers weren't so browbeaten.
I first remember having doubts about faith when I was maybe 12 or 13 - I asked the sunday school teacher why Judas was so hated, if without him god's plan for jesus to die and save us from sin blah blah wouldn't have gone ahead. Her answer didn't make sense of course, but she was an adult, so I suppose I put the matter aside.
When I was 13 I got mixed up in another loony evangelical outfit via a friend. I was known in school as a 'bible basher' - a horrible label for any child. One day in some form of 'youth group' or another at church, the group started praying that evolution would not be taught in schools. I piped up, 'What's wrong with evolution? I believe in it!'. (My mother had never been a creationist - just a very fervent anglican). Well - I was lectured and shouted at and ended up in tears and never went back.
I guess for the next few years my faith ebbed and flowed. It got stronger when I was unhappy and not so strong on other occasions. When I was 22 another friend (some friends, these!) introduced me to a cultish pentecostal church where I 'spoke in tonges' and saw all kinds of other nonsense going on. I must say I bridled at being told 'women must be submissive to men' etc, and I hated the whole evangelical money money money tithing cr*p. I met a bloke there who had a different concept of chastity to me, but in the end I adopted his concept, and we were preached at from the pulpit for our sinful ways. So I left that church. A couple of years later, the guru/pastor was accused of soliciting some of the young men in the church. I wasn't surprised - like Ted Haggard and many others, I think his god delusion had convinced him he was entitled, or something.
Then, happily, the upward spiral to atheism commenced. I got a bit interested in new age rubbish for a while - no idea why - maybe it was part of my letting go process... and then I thought maybe I was agnostic. But for the past two or three years I have been able to proudly say that I don't believe in a skerrick of anything allegedly supernatural. And what a lovely thing it is to finally be free of so much ridiculous mumbo jumbo. I can't say when the scales actually fell off my eyes and I declared atheism. I just remember little events that led up to it over a rather long time. Like going to a baptist church for a baptism and hearing the preacher say that when jesus returned to earth, it would be shown live on TV. I just had to laugh. And there was the time my (then) sister-in-law's husband, an insanely devout baptist, saw Boy George on TV and said, 'He oughta be shot!' Xian hypocrisy and their inablity to comprehend it knows no bounds.
I guess like many of you might be, I'm still angry at being indoctrinated as a child. I see it as a form of passive child abuse. It made me socially awkward and incredibly fearful (my Dad got mixed up with the JWs for a while, and I spent the whole of 1975 waiting for the world to end - I kid you not), but thankfully Mum threatened to divorce him if he joined up, so he left it well alone. I wasted so much time on church, bible, worrying about sinning and saving other souls, and even looking down my nose at people who were sinning (jealousy - secretly I think I wanted to join in).
I am angry about the rubbish I believed. I don't think I'm a stupid person, but I believed. How? Why? The absolute balderdash that passes for religion is mind-bogglingly pathetic, and yet I believed it. In latter years I have done a bit of reading and research about cults, and I think I understand, but I still wonder and cringe greatly.
I love being an atheist. My children (20 and 23) are atheists because they have been encouraged to be critical thinkers, not because anyone denied them faith. My parents are still church goers but something happened which caused them (and probably me too, now I think about it) to have a big rethink on their iron-clad morals - my younger brother 'came out'. To my parents' credit they modified their views, accepted my brother and his partners, and are very proud of him. My mum even defended homosexuality in church. My Dad still can't comprehend a life without god. All his arguments come down to, 'How did we get here then, if god didn't do it?' He used to 'witness' to me ad nauseum (nausea is right) in my ebbing-faith years, and I loathed it. Now, after a few heated discussions, he knows better than to take me on. He got a stupid book from somewhere called 'The Dawkins Delusion' and made a big show of reading it in front of me, instead. I smiled and said nothing! It's difficult to say nothing sometimes, but I think if my parents lost their faith now in their senior years, it could mean the destruction of their social network and probably give rise to anger like mine at lifetimes of believing rubbish. So I let it go. A few years ago both parents got into the work of John Shelby Spong, and mum at least says she no longer believes in the virgin birth and a lot of the other stuff. What a change!
I will say two things for religion. Without it, we may not have had a lot of the beautiful music of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, to name some composers who based much of their work on the bible. I would like to think they could have written the same music on secular themes, but I don't know. The second thing it has given us, is lovely buildings and records we can now look at to learn something about our ancestors and their lives.
Still, I think it has much more to condemn it than to thank it for. And still it holds people in its nasty oily grip - whether they are zealots or just go to church at easter and christmas.
My ex-husband's father was murdered in his christian ashram in India two years ago, by hindu extremists. He wasted a whole lifetime trailing around India preaching xian crap to people who already believed in a whole other type of crap with its own stupid rules, regulations, rituals and other assorted garbage. Not to put too fine a point on it, faith sucks !
I first remember having doubts about faith when I was maybe 12 or 13 - I asked the sunday school teacher why Judas was so hated, if without him god's plan for jesus to die and save us from sin blah blah wouldn't have gone ahead. Her answer didn't make sense of course, but she was an adult, so I suppose I put the matter aside.
When I was 13 I got mixed up in another loony evangelical outfit via a friend. I was known in school as a 'bible basher' - a horrible label for any child. One day in some form of 'youth group' or another at church, the group started praying that evolution would not be taught in schools. I piped up, 'What's wrong with evolution? I believe in it!'. (My mother had never been a creationist - just a very fervent anglican). Well - I was lectured and shouted at and ended up in tears and never went back.
I guess for the next few years my faith ebbed and flowed. It got stronger when I was unhappy and not so strong on other occasions. When I was 22 another friend (some friends, these!) introduced me to a cultish pentecostal church where I 'spoke in tonges' and saw all kinds of other nonsense going on. I must say I bridled at being told 'women must be submissive to men' etc, and I hated the whole evangelical money money money tithing cr*p. I met a bloke there who had a different concept of chastity to me, but in the end I adopted his concept, and we were preached at from the pulpit for our sinful ways. So I left that church. A couple of years later, the guru/pastor was accused of soliciting some of the young men in the church. I wasn't surprised - like Ted Haggard and many others, I think his god delusion had convinced him he was entitled, or something.
Then, happily, the upward spiral to atheism commenced. I got a bit interested in new age rubbish for a while - no idea why - maybe it was part of my letting go process... and then I thought maybe I was agnostic. But for the past two or three years I have been able to proudly say that I don't believe in a skerrick of anything allegedly supernatural. And what a lovely thing it is to finally be free of so much ridiculous mumbo jumbo. I can't say when the scales actually fell off my eyes and I declared atheism. I just remember little events that led up to it over a rather long time. Like going to a baptist church for a baptism and hearing the preacher say that when jesus returned to earth, it would be shown live on TV. I just had to laugh. And there was the time my (then) sister-in-law's husband, an insanely devout baptist, saw Boy George on TV and said, 'He oughta be shot!' Xian hypocrisy and their inablity to comprehend it knows no bounds.
I guess like many of you might be, I'm still angry at being indoctrinated as a child. I see it as a form of passive child abuse. It made me socially awkward and incredibly fearful (my Dad got mixed up with the JWs for a while, and I spent the whole of 1975 waiting for the world to end - I kid you not), but thankfully Mum threatened to divorce him if he joined up, so he left it well alone. I wasted so much time on church, bible, worrying about sinning and saving other souls, and even looking down my nose at people who were sinning (jealousy - secretly I think I wanted to join in).
I am angry about the rubbish I believed. I don't think I'm a stupid person, but I believed. How? Why? The absolute balderdash that passes for religion is mind-bogglingly pathetic, and yet I believed it. In latter years I have done a bit of reading and research about cults, and I think I understand, but I still wonder and cringe greatly.
I love being an atheist. My children (20 and 23) are atheists because they have been encouraged to be critical thinkers, not because anyone denied them faith. My parents are still church goers but something happened which caused them (and probably me too, now I think about it) to have a big rethink on their iron-clad morals - my younger brother 'came out'. To my parents' credit they modified their views, accepted my brother and his partners, and are very proud of him. My mum even defended homosexuality in church. My Dad still can't comprehend a life without god. All his arguments come down to, 'How did we get here then, if god didn't do it?' He used to 'witness' to me ad nauseum (nausea is right) in my ebbing-faith years, and I loathed it. Now, after a few heated discussions, he knows better than to take me on. He got a stupid book from somewhere called 'The Dawkins Delusion' and made a big show of reading it in front of me, instead. I smiled and said nothing! It's difficult to say nothing sometimes, but I think if my parents lost their faith now in their senior years, it could mean the destruction of their social network and probably give rise to anger like mine at lifetimes of believing rubbish. So I let it go. A few years ago both parents got into the work of John Shelby Spong, and mum at least says she no longer believes in the virgin birth and a lot of the other stuff. What a change!
I will say two things for religion. Without it, we may not have had a lot of the beautiful music of Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, to name some composers who based much of their work on the bible. I would like to think they could have written the same music on secular themes, but I don't know. The second thing it has given us, is lovely buildings and records we can now look at to learn something about our ancestors and their lives.
Still, I think it has much more to condemn it than to thank it for. And still it holds people in its nasty oily grip - whether they are zealots or just go to church at easter and christmas.
My ex-husband's father was murdered in his christian ashram in India two years ago, by hindu extremists. He wasted a whole lifetime trailing around India preaching xian crap to people who already believed in a whole other type of crap with its own stupid rules, regulations, rituals and other assorted garbage. Not to put too fine a point on it, faith sucks !