The Moral Atheist

New age of reason?

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 11:46:08 +0300

When I made my decision to leave Christianity I felt so alone. I didn’t know anyone else that had taken this path and felt like I was doing something that no one else was doing.

Almost 10 years on from that day and I have been witnessing many Christians leaving their faith behind and joining the fold of non believers. Which has got me wondering, why? Is their an increased sense of awareness? Are people thinking more critically? Is it because I now live in a much bigger city where people tend to be more open minded? Or maybe it’s because I am now older and more people come to this revelation at an older age?

I don’t have an answer to this question, but the question in of itself is interesting.

I defaulted to an atheist

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 22:27:33 +0300

I have talked around this before. But many believers talk about being an atheist as if it was a believe, like a religion. The fact is this, plain and simple. I didn’t decide to become an atheist. I was a Christian, I realised that I didn’t believe. So that meant I defaulted to an atheist. It wasn’t the acceptance of a believe system, it’s the void of a belief system.

Bible Contradictions - Quiz Skit

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 21:51:18 +0300

Bible Contradictions - Quiz Skit:

This is pretty entertaining

Are they going to hell?

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 23:11:43 +0300

Something that always bothered me when I was a Christian was this. Are all the people who died without hearing about Jesus going to hell? Even if they were good people and would have believed if they heard? What about the non jews before Jesus came? And small children and babies that died without being old enough to “commit their lives to Jesus”?

I'm a non believer before I'm an atheist

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 22:49:14 +0300

This is my second post about the phrase “it takes faith to be an atheist”. This comment annoys me like you can’t believe because it makes no sense.

So to get it clear, I’m a non believer before I am an atheist. I used to be a Christian, and a fundamentalist one at that. I stopped believing because I couldn’t see any manifestation of a personal god above randomness and nature. To understand the details you can read my blog posts called “My Testimony”. When I left the Christian faith I did not entertain any other religions as l did not see them to hold any more water than Christianity. So that left me believing in no god and hence a non believer. So then technically that makes me an agnostic or an atheist. The difference is not that large other than an agnostic is a little less certain that there is no god than an atheist.

Being an atheist does not take faith. It is by definition a lack of faith.

Idealistic Animals - Dear Reader

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 00:04:14 +0300

Idealistic Animals - Dear Reader:

“We feed our hunger, clothe our cold, we’re just idealistic animals” - I love this band. Lead singer Cherilyn Mac Neil is also a south african, a similar age to me and has she has a similar story to me. If you listen to their 3 albums “The Younger” (under the name Harris Tweed), “Replace why with funny” and “Idealistic Animals” you can follow her story. And not to mention, hear their amazing music!

Love beyond belief

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 23:53:02 +0300

I’ve been dating the most wonderful girl for close on a year and a half now. She is the love of my life and I know that I will spend my life with her. I call her my Carbon Copy Girl because we are so alike. We do have one significant difference. My love is a Christian. I’ve heard it said that a couple have to have the same religious and political views to maintain a relationship. Well, clearly that isn’t the case with us. In the early days we spent a lot of time grappling with this and working out what this meant. What we realised is that it is about mutual respect. As soon as one of looks down on the other’s beliefs (or lack thereof) and considers them stupid for believing them then the relationship will be in turmoil. We utterly respect each other’s beliefs and engage in interesting respectful discussions about them. We both know where the other one is coming from and support each other. She reads my blog and I occasionally attend church with her. This shows that even though we don’t share the same view points we support each other regardless.

Probably the hardest part has been some of her friends. At the beginning there were those that said to her that she shouldn’t date me. They quoted the scripture “do not yoke yourself to the non believer”. Totally to her credit she never let them sway her.

A common atheist trait is to look down on believers as stupid for believing. Well, my Carbon Copy Girl is one of the most intelligent people I know. I understand what it is to believe and I know that you can’t just write off all believers off as unintelligent. In an alternative universe she is the atheist and I’m the believer. But we are still together!

Why I don't like the word Theist

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:43:38 +0300

When I was a Christian we used to use the word “secular” for things that were not related to Christianity but were linked to main stream society. So for example a musician who wasn’t a christian artist was a secular artist. However when I used the word secular when talking to supposibly “secular people”, they did not know what I was talking about.

Similarly, atheists tend to refer to non atheists as theists. Purely speaking this a terminology that does make sense, however I’ve never heard any religious person call themselves a theist. However most of them do call themselves believers, and hence I use this term instead.

By using a term for someone that they don’t even use themselves we end up encouraging us and them behaviours as, they (them) don’t even know the name of the box you are putting them in.

The danger of boxes (Us and Them)

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:34:53 +0300

Human nature is to box/ group things together. This is a useful mechanism as it allows us to make calls on things with less processing going into the decision. For example, if go to a few branches of supermarket chain A and to a few branches of supermarket chain B and I find that most the shops from supermarket A are expensive and the produce isn’t fresh while the supermarket B has competitively priced and high quality food I would probably tend to favour stores from supermarket B. I have therefore then boxed these supermarket chains into a good place to shop and a bad place to shop.

But this human tendency has some huge shortfalls, especially when it comes to people. While boxing people into groups can be useful it can in fact also be dangerous. The most dangerous boxes are “us and them” boxes. The group I belong to (us) is superior to the group that they belong to. We are right and they are wrong. Have you ever wondered how countless Nazis could have committed incredibly haness atrocities against the Jewish people. We tend to think of Nazis as monsters, but do you think that they were born monsters. The sad truth is that they were certainly very average people. So then how did they end up committing such atrocities? Well they were brainwashed to believe that they (us) are the elite pure race and that the jews (them) were no more than vermon. With this mentality they were able to mass murder good people and then go back to their families and love and take care of them. A chilling fact! This is an extreme example of the power of us and them.

But why are we so happy to quickly box people like this. Well, as I’ve said before this is an instinct that facilitates quick decision making. But it’s more than that, by belonging to a group you feel like you belong. You have a place in the world.

I’ve spoken before about how I’m not a militant atheist. But I’d like to build on this now. It is argued that religion creates great atrocities and that religion is the cause of many wars. This is due to the fact that people are often prepared to die for their faith or even worse, kill for it. This all comes down to the Us and Them mentality again. “The muslims are wrong (them) and we are right (us), clearly they worship a false god”. And so people are strongly polarlised along religious lines. But what happens when an atheist is so fervent in their non belief, even enough so to call themselves a militant atheist and to strive to bring the end to religion? Well, then we have an us and them situation. And now if we are prepared to fight for what we don’t believe and believers are prepared to fight for what they do believe, then we are in trouble and are the cause of exactly what we said we were against.

"For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened, that unleased..."

Sun, 19 Jun 2011 16:53:32 +0300

“For millions of years mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened, that unleased the power of our imagination, we learned to talk!”

- Hawkins (used in Pink Floyd, Keep talking)

Losing my Religion - The Transition Phase

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:07:04 +0300

Deciding that you no longer believe in the religion that you spent your life dedicated to offers some difficulties. What you did, what you thought, the way you acted were all influenced by what you believed. Now you have to reassess everything. When you were anxious you used to pray. What do you do now? What do you do with all the Christian music you amassed? Do you change your opinions on things like abortion, homosexuality and premarital sex. This is one of the hugest changes that anyone can go through. It isn’t easy, but it is liberating. You can now formulate your own opinions based on reason not based on the teachings of the church.

Purpose of "My Testimony"

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:53:28 +0300

This post relates to my series of posts called “My Testimony”

So to what end did I share “my testimony” with you? Well, when I was going through this I felt utterly and completely alone. I felt like I was the only person in the world going through this. In the years since I have discovered that I’m actually just one of many, but at the time I felt utterly alone.

So I post this in the hope that someone else going through something similar knows that they aren’t alone!

My Testimony - The Aftermath

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:32:00 +0300

So now I had decided that I didn’t believe in god, but my family still did, I was a Praise and Worship leader at church, I had a christian rock band and my entire social calender revolved around the church. This wasn’t going to be easy! Not at all!

First thing I did was sit my very religious mother and brother down (who I lived with at that time). I explained that I no longer believed in god and how I came to this conclusion. My mother, who wasn’t exactly happy about it, wasn’t too worried either. She was under the impression that I was going through my questioning time. I think she still thinks this today, 8 years down the line.

Next I had to break it to my pastor. Now my pastor at the time is one of the most genuine lovely people I know. I would not say a word against him. (Sadly I recently found out that he has developed Parkinson’s disease. This just goes to add to what I said about randomness. If there was a loving god, then he would be the last person on earth to get this horrible disease, but let’s get back on track.) After I told my pastor the news he asked me if we could go and get milkshakes and talk about it. So that’s exactly what we did. I explained to him how I got to this conclusion. He wasn’t very pushy, he mostly just listened. Like I say, I still have great respect for that man. He then suggested that we meet again a week later to talk more. That follow up meeting was never set up, and I think we were both grateful for this.

Now the next part of my story is about the christian rock band that I was the front man for. But for this to make any sense I’ll need to give you a bit of a back story. Remember when I said that I “converted” two people from apathetic Christians to fundamentalist ones (or Anglican to Charismatic)? Well, I started the band with one of them (he was lead guitarist in the band). Now back to the story. So I told the band, and inevitably this meant the band broke up, cause you can’t have a non believing singer in a Christian band. Later I went for a long walk through a forest with my former lead guitarist and “convert”. He was extremely upset about this and at one stage he even cried. A few days later he called me and said we couldn’t be friends anymore because the bible says “do not yoke yourself with the non believer”. I was so upset that I hung up on him. A few days later he apologised, but as you can imagine our friendship was never quite the same again.

My core social group at the time of my deconversion was my church cell group. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, many churches hold several weekly weekday meetings led by someone in the group and held in member’s of the congregation’s homes. I didn’t only see my cell group at cell meetings and church, I saw them several times a week for movies, dinners and what ever else you can think of. After telling them that I was no longer a christian we still all remained friends, but they never treated me quite the same again.

Now anyone that knows me will tell you that I am a very social person, and by the time of my deconversion I was very well known in my home town. Problem was, non religious people that I knew thought of me as this bible bashing believer and dismissed it when I said I didn’t believe. And christians who used to be my good friends became more distant. Two years later I moved to a big city and started afresh. I have since made many very good friends, both believers and non believers. I just needed my chance to start again somewhere where no one knew me from Adam (irony intended).

My Testimony - Part 10 "and that is how I became a non believer"

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:06:00 +0300

So in 2003 all these things culminated to a point. I made a decision that I was going to face my doubts head on. I concluded that if I can take my doubts head on and still come out believing, then I would be a stronger christian for it. So I prayed to god and said to him, “I’m straying, like the sheep in the parable of the lost sheep. I need you to come and fetch me”. I told him that I needed something tangible, something that would show me that he is definitely real. Many people in the churches claimed to have heard the audible word of god. So I asked god to also talk to me in an audible voice. Surely if he can create the universe and hear everyone’s thoughts at the same time then he can talk to me. I hid what I was going through from other people because I didn’t want anyone tipped off to talk to me “cause god gave them a word for me”. I wanted anything that happened to happen purely of god, not of man. And guess what? I got nothing! Absolutely zip! Not even a Christian friend saying something!

So then I said my final prayer. I said to god that if he is real and he wants me back, then all he has to do is talk to me and that if he did that at any time, then I would be the strongest believer ever. 8 years later and still no word from god.

And that’s how I became a non believer!

My Testimony - Part 9 Randomness

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:22:00 +0300

I was brought up to believe that god looks after his people. Therefore Christians (“true believers”) should generally be more healthy, successful, happy, etc. However, as I went through life I noticed that this didn’t seem to be the case. Good things happened to Christians and bad things happened to Christians and good things happened to non Christians and bad things happened to non Christians. There seemed to be no real difference. When baby James died, this point was hammered home harder than ever.

My Testimony - Part 8 Baby James

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:12:00 +0300

When I was in my final year of school my Geography teacher had a baby boy. They named him James. He was from a religious family. In fact his grandfather was a pastor and dedicated me as a baby (dedication is a tradition followed by christian denominations that don’t practice infant baptism). The following year James was diagnosed with leukemia. James severely required a bone marrow transplant, a cause that my entire home town got behind. Prayer groups were held for him and practically everyone who prayed in the town, prayed for him. James’ illness took a huge toll on my former teacher. This man who used to be care free and fun loving became old and somber over night. So I said a prayer to god and this is what I said “Dear god, please either heal baby James or take him back to yourself (i.e. let him die) very soon so him and his family won’t suffer any longer”. The reason I prayed this was as follows. When someone that has been prayed for and they get better, then the church claims a miracle and thanks god for it. And when they have been praying for someone and they die, then the church says that god wanted to “call them back to himself”. So I figured that if god wanted to “call baby James back to himself” then there is no reason why he should let him and his family suffer unnecessarily. Well baby James did eventually die, after being sick for over a year! More than half of his life! Everyone had been praying for him and his family believed, so how could our loving god let him and his parents suffer like that for so long just to die? I simply battled to make sense of it.

My Testimony - Part 7 The Bible

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:25:00 +0300

I would like to start this part of “my testimony” by saying that from watching YouTube videos and reading about other Christians who turned Atheist that reading The Bible is one of the most commonly stated reasons for rejecting the faith.

So growing up in a Christian home one of the first things you learn is that The Bible is the “word of god” and that what The Bible says is true and you cannot argue with it. Hence the expression “take it as gospel”. Being a good Christian boy, I read my Bible everyday. One day I decided that I would read The Bible cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation. I actually did this twice at different times. As I read The Bible I realised that much of it was highly contradictory (if you want specific cases, then Google ”inconsistencies in The Bible”, you’ll be shocked by how many there are). Also, as a charismatic christian you are pretty much led to believe that you have the correct understanding of the bible and that all other denominations have it wrong, especially the Catholics and The Jehovah’s Witnesses. But when you read the bible for yourself, you see that everyone’s views come from some aspect of the bible and that everyone is ignoring most of the bible. It is actually impossible to follow the bible exactly as if you follow one aspect, then you violate another.

In my quest for deeper faith, I started making notes in sermons. The bible is quoted left right and center in sermons, however, when I got home and read the actual scriptures that were being quoted, I realised that they had nothing to do with the conclusion that the preacher reached. I did this for a while and only in very few occasions where there consistencies between the scriptures being quoted and the conclusions being made. I realised that they were actually taking half a sentence here and half a sentence there and piecing them together to say what they wanted, but when you read the verses within the context of the chapters they came from, you realised that they were saying something entirely different to what was being preached. I started to realise that Christian doctrine within denominations was consistent with itself, but was not consistent with The Bible, the supposed root of the information and “the word of god”.

My Testimony - Part 6 Miracles

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 14:59:00 +0300

From a young age my mother told me about miracles. How god used his mighty men to raise people out of wheelchairs, cast out demons, heal cancer and a whole lot of other miraculous events. I obviously believed her and I thought that it was just a matter of time before I saw such things happen. I went on church camps where mighty men of god told us about all the miracles that they had performed and how, if you had unwavering faith, then you could do it too. It was all about having faith. But as time went by I heard more and more about miracles, but I never saw them. Yes, I did “speak in tongues” (which interestingly I can still do today, even though you are only meant to be able to pray in tongues through the anointing of the holy spirit) and I was “slain in the spirit” (Basically someone prays for you and you are “so overcome by god” that you fall over. Interestingly, often when someone will pray for you they will push your forehead. I remember once some guy did this to me but I refused to fall. He didn’t look impressed). I saw people writhing on the floor and “demons being cast out”, but I saw nothing that couldn’t be explained by something else. I went to healing rallies, but that was a just a whole lot of hype and charisma. Yes people did stand up and get out of wheelchairs, but these were only people who could walk but had difficulty doing so. I never saw a fully paralysed person rise up and walk. And the ones that did get out of their wheel chairs got back into them to go home.

Interestingly, one of my mother’s best friends is a paraplegic. She has been in a wheelchair since she was 3. She is a devout christian and even works for a missionary organisation. She’s been to many a healing rally, but she still has no use of her legs. Surely she would have been one of the first people that god would have healed.

My Testimony - Part 5 Great Men of God

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:25:00 +0300

From about the age of of 11 to the age of 16, we (my family and I) attended a large charismatic church. The church had a congregation of about 1 000 people. One day the head pastor made an astonishing confession. He had slept with his secretary (he was a married man). So he did the honourable thing and stepped down. Thus began a search for a new head pastor. And then he was found, a true man of god. He said all the right things, he was dynamic, he was fresh, the congregation loved him. He used to preach things like “if your eyes are red, if your knees aren’t red, then you aren’t praying enough”. We all truly believed this man was a great man of god. This pastor then launched a program to pay off the church mortgage in record time. He inspired the business men in the church to inject huge sums of money to get this mortgage down. Several months later, the eldership (basically the equivalent of the board of a company) discovered that he had bought a really nice new car from church money, increased his salary considerably and had been borrowing against the church mortgage. The eldership fired him immediately. He then took the church to court and sued them for unlawful dismissal. The following Sunday he walked back into the church and 1 000 people stood up and walked out! And so ended this mighty church of many, by a mighty man of god.

My Testimony - Part 4 History Class

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:07:00 +0300

So one of my subjects that I took at school was History. Out of my 7 subjects, it was the only one that taught critical thinking. It taught me how to understand diverse views on the same topic and even argue them from different and totally conflicting stand points. I believe that to this day this is one of the most valuable skills that I possess!

The other significant aspect of History class was my teacher and class mates. While other people tended to be polite (and awkward) while I imposed my Christian views onto them, the people in this class would take my views head on. This had never happened before. I fervently argued from the accepted Christian standpoint and I always came back to this point, “well the bible says it and that’s good enough for me”. But the arguments that they made seemed to make sense and it used to bug me. But I never let this on. At some point, I found out that my teacher, who I thought was so evil, used to be a christian. This bugged me a lot. One of the moments that got to me the most was when one of the quietest girls in the class asked me, “have you always been a christian”. I replied, “yes” and she said “interesting”. These few words probably impacted me more than all the arguments we had over three years in that class. They made me think, “if I wasn’t brought up a Christian, would I be one today”.