Holy Hate and Terror
For this, my first blog entry, I would like to strike to the heart of why atheists are speaking out now more than ever in the past. Why do we sound off with so much vitriol in our condemnation of religion? Where does this deep seated hate come from?
I will admit in being quite angry in many of my debates against primarily Christians on the forums. For this I can not in good conscience apologize. The anger in me is not directed at the individual so much as at the hateful and fear based religion they cling to and perpetuate. A religion that demonizes those who do not adhere to the teachings of the bible and retains its followers with threats of stark terror and punishments for those who dare to challenge its message; I will not excuse it, defend it, or rationalize it away. I will attack it. It is a primitive dogma that speaks out of ignorance to create barriers and to fuel justifications to hate.
The bible is truly one of the worst possible contrivances of the human mind. In no other way can any movement hijack an intelligent person’s thought processes and propagate intolerance and unswerving allegiance to hate.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
—Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
So let us explore the hatred and intolerance that the bible perpetuates.
Romans 1:26
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relation for unnatural ones.
Romans 1:27
In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Romans 1:32
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
The Christians love to throw Jesus out in front to try and shield of their messages of hate that they teach. However, it is clear that this is a shoddy cover that doesn’t even fool most of its believers. Below is a YouTube video of a Christian woman who is an Oklahoma State Representative. She stands by what she says in this message even after it was released to the public.
This is nothing unusual. I have heard this hate-filled rhetoric my entire life while growing up as a Christian. I have heard it from fellow Christians, preachers, even my own family members. What is really confounding is that people still spread this message of hate and intolerance even if they have beloved family members who are homosexuals.
This condemnation does not stop at homosexuals. Anyone of another denomination, lifestyle, or religion is fair game. Across the nation from one church to another you can hear preachers speak with fiery passion of the condemnation of other groups of people. And not one member of the congregation will offer up a word of protest. Frankly, I find this just as chilling as a Nuremburg Rally. And while we are on that point, let us discuss the horrors of the Holocaust. Why did it happen?
The Holocaust’s primary reason for happening stemmed directly from the rampant anti-Semitism that was rife in European Christianity. This hate for Jews is a time-honored tradition in Christianity and Islam and it is still alive and well today. I’m sure everyone is aware of Mel Gibson’s enormously successful film, “Passion of the Christ”. Are you also aware of his later arrest for drunken driving where he babbles about the evils of the Jews?
http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/28/gibsons-anti-semitic-tirade-alleged-cover-up/
The report says Gibson then launched into a barrage of anti-Semitic statements: "F*****g Jews... The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the deputy, "Are you a Jew?"
However, let us now delve into something much more insidious within all the Abrahamic faiths. Something that is so despicable and cruel that I almost choke on my own bile when I contemplate it.
These religions, at their core, use fear to maintain a hold over their followers. Even worse, it has the parents teaching this extreme fear to their children. I clearly remember the stark terror of the idea of Hell. I am not alone in this fear. Following are unaccredited accounts from many of our members:
"I wanted to get baptized at the age of 5. I told my mother so but she thought I was too young to understand. For the next two years I had frequent nightmares because I believed back then that baptism was required in the faith for salvation. I would lay in bed trembling over it. I cried sometimes. Finally my mother relented when I was 7 because I tearfully pleaded to her that I didn't want to go to hell and to please let me get baptized."
“I used to have nightmares fairly often about going to hell - sometimes it was just being in fire, sometimes it was just being sent there and I'd wake up before arriving - I clearly remember one when I was about 15 where I was shown a huge room that had every torture device humans ever invented and told I would be going through every single one of them over and over again.”
“It used to keep me awake at night.I still have that nagging fear that maybe it's all true, and maybe I am going to hell,...”
What I was afraid of was demons. There was a stretch of time, maybe several weeks, maybe several months -- it's hard to gauge time from when I was a kid -- where I hardly got any sleep because I was afraid demons would possess me. The thing is, this pastor was an expert on demons, and he told us impressionable young prepubescent kids that if we thought impure (sexual) thoughts, demons would have an open door to possess us. What sucked was that when my glands kicked in, sex was pretty much all I thought about, and since I wasn't married, every one of those thoughts was bad. It was especially bad at night, because when my mind wandered as I was drifting off to sleep; my thoughts were out of my control. I was terrified that a demon would get me right then, so I stayed awake. I read, I played Nintendo, I played my guitar with the headphones so I wouldn't wake my parents. Only when sleep deprivation caught up with me did I go to sleep. When I woke up, I always prayed fervently that if there were any demons in me that Jesus would please cast them out, because I didn't mean to let my mind go when I went to sleep.Unfortunately, I'd also been taught that Jesus didn't listen to the prayers of the demon possessed because they'd already chosen their path.”
“Yes, I did truly believe in Hell.Not only that, but it did scare me. ...I think it scared me profoundly in a different way--I absolutely *had* to know which religion was the "true way." Of course, once I latched onto Catholicism, I bounced back and forth between being scared of going to Hell for some of the heretical thoughts I was having from time to time, and also scared of going to Hell on a what-if-the-Catholic-Church-really-is-wrong basis.”
“There was about a two month transition period from my christianity to atheism and in that time I constantly thought about spending eternity burning in hell. Looking back I can't believe I was scared but then again I was raised thinking hell was a real place.”
“I believed without doubt there was a hell, and I was scared of it. I would often 'recommit' myself to make sure my soul wasn't in danger of being backlidden and going to hell. Like others, I was also very scared of demons. Even in my later teens I lost a lot of sleep as I was too scared to close my eyes at night. I frequently had nightmares and would stay awake from 2am to sunrise sometimes, just laying in bed.What I want to know is how can a christian read these stories and justify the brainwashing and terrorizing of children with stories of a place like hell?”
“Yes, I used to have nightmares. The worst was after I read Dante's Inferno. I remember trying to force myself to believe cause Hell was so terrible.”
“Oh yes! The first books I remember being read as a child were bible stories, and one of the books had this picture of the devil being thrust out of heaven into hell and it really scared me! I think that the fear of some sort of eternal suffering is what kept me from really coming "out" as an atheist for so long.”
“The way the teachers tried to deal with the children from atheist parents was to tell us about Hell. A lot, and with lots of colourful detail. I remember only a little of it, but I do remember having horrendous nightmares and even being a little afraid of my parents (having also been taught that they were evil witches and a reason whý I was supposed to be destined for Hell etc. Anyway, I thought they might want to poison me and boil me in a cauldron, the fantasy of small children can run in all kinds of very, very weird directions)”
“Hell is actually what got me to start rejecting the fundamentalist beliefs that had snared me for years.What happened for me was that I had a daughter. I love this little girl more than life itself, and one day it occurred to me: "Could I send her to Hell?"
And the answer, of course, was no.
I tried to imagine her serially raping and torturing several children to death. In other words, the most awful, horrible crime I can imagine. Then I imagined what my reaction might be. I would be horrified. I could imagine turning her in to the police. I could even imagine understanding that she had to be executed to protect the world from her savagery. But eternal torture? No way.
And that was the thing that started my rejection of Christianity I put 2 and 2 together and realized that I was being expected to worship a deity that was morally inferior to ME.
I went for a little while with the apologists' version of hell...a world without the presence of God, but that was so completely incompatible with what I read in the bible that it made no sense. It is one thing to say that Genesis, Chapter 1 is an allegory. That is obvious. But there's no getting round Hell as a place of eternal punishment.
So yes, I did believe in Hell, and it kept me in the church a good bit after I had lots of doubts. But eventually, that was the piece that drove me from Christianity forever.
“what are they going to do to me in hell?, burn me?, stink of sulfur really bad?, stimulate the tips of my nerves to trigger electric response in my brain?, doesn't that seem so.. well.. primitive?, and this thing goes on forever?, those mechanisms are in my body to detect danger and god is sorta abusing them to make me suffer?,what happens when the human race is eradicated?, everyone remain in heaven and hell forever?, is there really a crime worth eternal punishment?, could such a loving and caring god really torture it's OWN creation, infinitely?”
The psychological abuse of teaching your children that they could potentially spend an eternity in such a threatening and painful realm of existence cannot, in any way, be condoned. It is a sickening torture delivered to a helpless and trusting child by those who love them most. And the sad thing is that there are only two outcomes that normally occur when someone is raised in this manner. They either cling to it without question and perpetuate the same abuse onto their children, or they realize how disturbing and unrealistic it is and stop the cycle of abuse. Sadly, those that do free themselves from religion will always have barriers forever in place between their loved ones who still believe. It is truly sad to know that so many people remain trapped in this belief for their entire lives. I feel nothing but pity for those people. It is the religion I hate, not those trapped within its teachings.
That is why I am often seen as angry when I debate religion. That is what propels me to fight it. One way or another, everyone loses loved ones to religion. I for one will not allow such brainwashing hate mongerers to have control over my children’s minds. I will never abuse my children with this sickness.
The hate-filled terror-inducing religion stops here.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
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First, regarding the State
First, regarding the State Representatives view on homosexuality: This is the second time in 5 days I have heard a person that represents our government, 'protects my freedom' and has a position of power speak in a way that is dripping and oozing of their god belief. I can only imagine how often this happens and we don't hear about it right away or at all (remember Huckabee's statement about "you can't change the word of god so we must change the constitution"?)
Although I wasn't raised in a religious household, the threat of 'hell' was thrown around when my sisters and I misbehaved. IF those threats were backed up with an actual religious text and religious routines (saying grace, church etc) I shiver thinking about the possibility of how the brainwashing may have taken hold.
I don't have kids. What I do know is only from observing my friends and family and here is what I see--the parents I know are determined to take their children to Church because, as they say "I don't know what to tell them when they ask about life so I want them to have the right guidance" --- shouldn't that guidance come from the parent?
The majority of my friends and family are not 'hardcore christians, they are what I call bandwagon jumpers when it comes to church and calling themselves "christian";
It is the thing to do so they 'fit-in'.
It is the thing to do to 'show their patriotism'.
It is the thing to do when they don't have time to explain to their child how to think critically.
It is the thing to do so their child will fit in at school.
It is the thing to do to have a routine / balance in their life.
Great first blog Watcher! Keep them coming.
-Renee
Slowly building a blog at ~
http://obsidianwords.wordpress.com/
Good stuff Watcher!That
Good stuff Watcher!
That first video once again renewed my "I'm sure glad I'm up here" feeling. You would get ostercized pretty quickly spouting stuff like that in BC.
Very good read Watcher. I'll
Very good read Watcher. I'll be sure to come have a better look later. Another thing that fuels the resentment towards religion i that even if you do manage to get out of it, many can't tell their families for years. You are stuck living a lie you hate, and this isn't going to help relationships much.At the end,it's important to try remember one thing;
Respect the believer,not the belief.
Psalm 14:1 "the fool hath said in his heart there is a God"-From a 1763 misprinted edition of the bible
Argument from Sadism: Theist presents argument in a wall of text with no punctuation and wrong spelling. Atheist cannot read and is forced to concede.
Quote:"I don't know what to
Translation: I don't want to deal with having to be a responsible leader and teacher, so I'm passing the buck.
To me, this is all that religion boils down to. It's not merely a fear of Hell, in my opinion - it's fear of having to be responsible for what you do and what consequences you reap for your actions. "I don't want to burn forever, so instead of delberating over tough choices in life, I'll just do whatever and ask Jesus to forgive me," "I want X really badly, but I don't want to have to deal with the notion that my own fallible pursuit to get X might fail as a result of poor decision making/planning (or just bad luck), so I'll just pray for X and blame the result on God either way," "I don't want to open myself and my own opinions up to the world for criticism and debate, so I'll just do what the Bible says, smile and nod my head," etc...
Excellent post, Watcher. Listening to political leaders talking when they don't think anyone is listening remains chilling, as always.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940