Hey, New Guy Here! And Here's My Story....

[Guest Phugolz]

Hello, I am Phugolz. Obviously an online nick, but that's how you can address me. I am a 29 year old male with a mixed past with the church. So here's my story:

 

I was born the product of an extramarital affair in 1979. My father was a 42 year old ex-cab driver from the Bronx in New York City, my mother was a 22 year old farm girl from upstate new york. My mother had one child before me in 1977, who died after 2 months, which is why she went daddy shopping to find my dad. As a child, my parents never really talked about God or Jesus, or anything. My mother was raised Methodist, I've never heard a peep from my father about religion. Knowing his personality he probally believes in something, but he'd never admit it. We celebrated Christmas, and Easter,and I never got baptized. I was lucky.

 

Then fast forward to age 13. We moved halfway across the country to a new place. I wasn't very popular, as at the time I had huge glasses and no idea how to dress myself. I was very lonely, so I started praying. I had always had a very base understanding of god, and 50/50 believed in him. So I started going to church out of sadness.

 

Now the church I went to was one of the more unique and modern ones. I never was told I was a sinner. I never got the "homosexuals are evil" speech. But little logical things bothered me. Like my sunday school teacher asking us why the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Romans were no longer around. Her explination was they didn't believe in god, so he destroyed them. That didn't sit right with my understanding of the ultra-forgiving/loving deity. Plus, even though I never got that "homosexuals are evil" speech, there was a strong bias, and my mother came out of the closet as a lesbian when I was 11. So around age 15 I left the church, which was very sad for me, because these people were a true exception to the evil in christianity. They had all the positive, heartwarming stuff, without the negative fluff. If I told my former pastor I'm now an atheist, I'm sure he'd feel hurt, but he would accept me and love me no matter what. This was a church you could be gay, and though most people would think it was sinful, you'd never be treated any different. At one point I wanted to be a pastor just because all of these people were so damn nice.

 

Doesn't seem to be one of the classic horror stories. But imagine eliminating all the negatives of a church, what ammo could I have to change my faith? It was a long and hard road for me, with a lot of guilt along the way.

 

What helped me, of all things, was reading the bible. Ironic, eh? I started noticing the first few books of the bible, everyone's name was a pun of some sort. (If you ever want to see this for yourself, read the footnotes in the NIV version of the bible) Reading about men offering their virgin daughters to protect male strangers, to daughters raping their own fathers, god killing men for ejaculating on the ground, (Or outside the woman) Impossible worlwide floods, the story of creation, the obvious bias against Jews, even though that was where christians came from....

 

The errors kept coming. So I started doing a LOT of bible study. The more I read it, the more questions came up. Like: "If heaven is a place of eternal happiness, how is that possible if happiness is an electrochemical signal produced by out biological body?" "How can god have a gender? And if he's male, is there a female version of him?"

 

Then I started reading history, something most christians are afraid to do. I found out about Judaism's polytheistic beginnings, the evolution and incorporation of legends into sacred text, the COMPLETE AND TOTAL LACK OF ANY HISTORICAL EVIDENCE OF THE EXODUS. It dawned on me that there is no possible ways that the bible could ever be considered real. A hundred years ago, or two hundred, sure. Back then with the lack of education it was very easy to buy into this stuff.

 

Human beings have the mst complex and intelligent brain that the earth has seen. We have used our minds to create and manipulate everything around us, and we only get more creative. But when we can't explain something, we fill in the blanks with what seems logical. A lot of humans believed the earth was flat. It made sense, if you kept walking, eventually it had to end, the alternative was it went on forever. We used to think the moon was the back of the sun. Logical as well for the time, one comes up during the day, the other at night.

 

Jewish people believed for CENTURIES that our sky was the underside of the ocean in heaven. Observe Genesis 1:6:

 

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

 

Not too many people understand that was a HUGE part of Jewish belief. They read right past this in the bible without giving it a second though. In Jesus' time, that was the standard belief.

 

So these are just some of the things that have allowed me to disconnect from the christian belief structure. I think it's obvious that human beings, when faced with unknown circumstances, will fill in the blanks. This goes for oceans in the sky, all the way to theories of atomic structure. We make educated decisions with the information we have and try to fill the rest. But the issue is, there are still MILLIONS of uneducated people out there that are content to live horrible lives, full of hate and anger, all based on a belief structure that comes out of a book that is nothing more then a collection of "fill in the blanks." I escaped. I found logic. I think education could do the same for anyone else.

 

IT's just a damn shame that christianity fights education. Out of all their sins, I think that one is the most evil.

[florduh]

Welcome to Ex-C.

 

Looks like you arrived at your "ex" status as many here did - Bible study!

 

I always said diligent study of the Bible will lead to willful ignorance to accommodate faith, a career fleecing the flock as a professional preacher/priest, or atheism. I opted for atheism.

 

Enjoy yourself here.

[Guest QuidEstCaritas?]

Welcome!

 

[deb]

Enjoyed your story! Welcome, looking forward to hearing more from you.

 

Deb

[pitchu]

Welcome to the forums, Phugolz.

 

Nice to have a functioning brain, ain't it?