cranny said:
Lestat, hey bro I went out at lunch and got the book. I can't wait to start it. Man I love these types of threads. It feels so good to know they're other people out there that have the same questions and experiences w/ organized religion. Growing up here in the south, you didn't question anything or else you'll burn in hell forever. As an adult I still have friends where I have to be carefull w/ what I say about questioning religion. Thanks for the info. on the book
I think you will really enjoy the book, its a well researched and written book.
I have told people this many times, but I grew up in a fundamentalist christian home.
My parents found jesus in their early 20s and were "born again in christ"
Growing up I went to church Sunday morning, then we came home for a few hours and returned at 6pm. I also went to church Wednesday nights at 7pm. There was no youth group of sunday school, I had to sit through the same sermons as everyone else. The entire congregation was about 12 people too, fundamentalist baptist.
I went to a private school until 6th grade when I did everything I could to get expelled. Finally I got into a fight big enough that I was asked to leave and never return.
Once I got into the public school system I excelled, but that isn't the point.
I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior when I was younger, I prayed, I tried to live my life as a good Christian.
But as I got older and I started to think for myself, I realized that everything didn't quite add up. The first thing I noticed was that there were A LOT OF DIFFERENT christians out there! They all believed in Jesus, but they lived their lives in different ways. Some people went to church, others did not, some friends could see R rated movies, some could not. I couldn't watch much TV at all, because it was almost all sinful.
The breaking point for me was when I was 12.. I was playing in the yard with a neighbor doing karate kicks on a tree.. the kid tells me "I can't play karate" i ask him "why not?" he says "cuz we are jehovas' witnesses"..
so I didn't get it.. what the fuck does being a jehovas witness have to do with playing karate??? I realized that his parents just didn't want him going around kicking anyone or anything.. so they tell him its against their religion.. basicallly meaning that if you do it, you can go to hell for it!
I ask my parents about this.. they basically told me that jehovas witnesses are a cult and they won't go to heaven.. so now I have this shitty feeling cuz my friend is gonna go to hell.. so I go to him and tell him that his religion is total crap, a cult, and they and he is going to go to hell unless he asks jesus to be his savior.
Well his parents paid a visit to my parents.. there was a lot of shouting (seemed un christianlike to me).. and i was no longer allowed to speak to this kid... sucks.. i lost a friend over religion??? and he believed in the bible too.. i just didn't get it.
Also, I was a good baseball player.. I got to play 2nd base in pee wees.. you know where they have like 20 people in the outfield and the people who have a clue get to play the bases and what not? Well since I had to miss 1 practice a week on wednesday nights I got bumped from 2nd base to the shitty outfield.. im still bitter over that.
The next awakening came when I met friends in public school.. i met people who were all different flavors of Christian.. i met mormons.. i met jewish people.. muslims.. buddists... guess what, my parents had answers as to why all of those people who were wrong, and of course, going to hell. That just didn't add up to me.. some of these people were NICER then me.. seemed to be all around better people in some respects.. how on earth are they gonna go to hell?
Then something big clicked again.. I realized that all of these friends of mine were simply doing what their parents told them to do! There was no free thought or free will involved.. if their parents were mormon, they were mormon.. if their parents were catholic, they were catholic, if their parents were muslim, they were muslim.. what the fuck!! we are talking about the fate of our sould for ALL OF ETERNITY!!! It simply just can't come down to what our parents told us was right??? could it??? I mean some people are born into wealthy families.. others into poverty.. its not a choice, its random.. how could religion be so random too? how could all of these people be so wrong and go to hell?
So either I got really lucky being born to the parents i was born too (and lucky that they found jesus in their 20s even after living in sin beforehand).. or eveyone's got this whole thing really REALLY wrong.
All the evidence and searching I have done since has all lead me to the same conclusions.. the biggest one being, religion is extremely flawed... and there is no evidence to support that any one religion is any more right then the rest!
I've done a LOT of research on the subject since... religion seems to have been something that evolved out of neccsessity... this is getting long winded but bear with me.. back in cave man days people were subject to all kinds of horrific events.. volcanoes.. hurricanes.. tornados.. tsunamis.. flood.. famine.. these events took HUGE tolls on early civilizations... most if which had no clue who moses was and what not... we're talking people in all parts of the world..
so when something bad hapenned, these people would be FULL of anxiety.. wondering if it is going to happen again.. wondering if there was something they could do differently to prevent it. We now know through science how and why all of these events occur, we also know that we are powerless to stop these events for the most part.. we are good at preventine famine in most areas, but we can't control the weather which can be deadly..
So these people lived with CONSTANT anxiety.. what are they supposed to do? This anxiety lead to higher heart rates, blood pressure, weakened immune systems.. it literally shortened the already short life span of many early people. So what did they do? They came up with religion, belief systems.. something that would explain all these crazy happenings in the world...
and what did they do to put themselves at ease? They worshiped gods.. rain gods.. sun gods.. volcano gods.. they would do ANYTHING to makes these gods happy. For example, it was common practice in the Americas to sacrifice your most valuable possesion to volcanos in hopes of preventing an eruption.. what was their most valuable posession? Virgin women. People actually would take their young virgin daughers and sacrifice them on public alters to appease a non existant god!!! There is and was no proof of a volcano god, but all the people needed to see was one eruptioon and they were convinced that there was someone controlling it!
Even in more modern day history you saw this same flawed thinking.. the inquisition, the salem witch trials... all of this torture and suffering done by the most RELIGIOUS of people.. in the name of some god.
I'm sorry, but there is no way I can understand how and why a logical, intelligent, rational being would subscribe to something that seems so absurd. The only way to reconcile everything is to allow yourself to be duped (believe in it) by the myths and folklore that has been passed down from generation to generation.
Its time to wake up.